I've mostly been hiding from and ignoring all the issues that came up while SD visited this past summer. SO and I didn't talk about them for a while and largely just pretended like it didn't happen until the middle of last month. School made it easy to ignore for a while.

But it's impossible to ignore. Especially because I found out a few weeks ago that SO was lying about something to me since mid-July. And, when we talked about it, he used the same ignorant logic that SD used for justifying lying to me. The claim is that I'm a judgmental person which is rather hilarious in retrospect because, as my friends and family have told me repeatedly since it all hit the fan, I'm the least judgmental person that they know. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt to my own detriment. I understand and respect that behaviors are not monolithic representations of individuals, but, are manifestations of feelings, beliefs, past experiences, and perhaps anxieties, produced within a particular context. Needless to say, things have been difficult around the home ever since.

It made me feel like complete crap to know that both SO and his daughter are comfortable lying to me and blaming me for their crappy behavior.

I can, however, pinpoint a reason why SO and SD feel "judged" when someone disagrees with them, which is why they lie in the first place. GUBM. When things don't go her way, or when people disagree with her, they are fundamentally flawed and horrible individuals. It isn't that she is disappointed because something she wanted to happen didn't happen or that her opinion is not the only opinion in existence, it is that the other person is a lousy excuse for a human being. After 16 years of this for SO, and SD experiencing it for her entire life, first as an outsider and then first-hand,they are incapable of separating another person's perspective from such harsh and controlling judgment. SO will be entering personal counseling soon now that he is able to recognize this in himself - and, thankfully, he was able to come to these realizations on his own, at his own pace, and in a way that makes sense to him.

Right now, I'm taking it one day at a time. I'm just glad that SO realizes now that the lying was his own problem and not something that I could be blamed for. Also, that he realizes that the trust that once existed has been damaged and is going to take time to build it back up to where it once was.

I found out recently that SD's grandfather was diagnosed with brain cancer and, as such, she won't be visiting us over her Christmas break. While this is sad for her, I'm kind of relieved that she won't be here. I'm looking forward to having a break from school that isn't infested with SD nonsense. And, honestly, I think it will be far easier to handle - financially - the guilty birthday and Christmas spending that SO will inevitably want to do without having to shell out big bucks for transporting SD out here and buying fake-meat. We're going to go out to my mom's house for Christmas and SO said that, depending on how long we're staying there, he wants to try to go have dinner with SD. I told him that it would be all him and that I would not be accompanying him. He didn't seem to understand why.

Simply put, I don't have any desire to be around her and him when they're together right now. I also have no desire to be anywhere near GUBM. I'm not in the mood for the facade that SD can put on during brief interactions, or the coddling that SO does when she's around. I'm not in the mood for the extreme guilty parenting that will come out when SO is with her because he feels so badly about her grandfather's condition. Yes, I feel badly that she's going to experience a profound loss at such a tough time to experience such a loss. But, I'm not in the mood to experience SO's weirdness surrounding the situation because I can't sit there and listen to how awesome her grandfather is and how much she's going to miss him and how SO knows how much her grandfather cares for her and blah-blah-blah. This is the asshole who fed her mother drinks and let her mother drive drunk with SD and another child in the car. So, it's going to be really taxing to bite my tongue and I'd rather not exhaust myself in that manner. I just don't have the patience for it right now.

Maybe my opinion will change when Christmas rolls around, but, I won't guilt myself if it doesn't.