Something inside so strong...

I feel utter rage and can't vent it and it is making me feel physically ill.

I have never really hated. Hate, I have always thought is a waste of precious energy. I wouldn't give someone the satisfaction of thinking or knowing that they were hated by me. The wouldn't warrant that much attention.

When I split with Ex-husband-that-hasn't-died-in-a-car-crash, I didn't hate him. I was sometimes repulsed at the thought of him and sometimes I felt despair. In fact, I felt many negative things about it. But it was never lasting. Every feeling was overruled by guilt and pity.

I was sure that I was responsible for his vile side. Particularly in the years after the breakdown of the marriage. I had told him that I hadn't loved him and asked him to leave. Surely I should understand how he felt and that his rage being vented in my direction was justified. His erratic behaviour I blamed on stress and illness rather than his bad character, which of cause was stress brought on by me. I made allowances and forgave him too quickly for his actions, until it got to a point when I realised that I couldn't go on feeling to blame forever. That he should take responsibility for his own actions and that myself and the kids shouldn't be forced into feeling the way we did.

I still have him stuck in my life. He is an underlying disease that I can never rid myself of. He stays on the sidelines, festering away and I find it increasingly difficult to stop him having an affect on me.

He gets the bare minimum of me. No small talk, no consideration. He gets what I am forced to allow him and not a drop more. I dislike having to make eye contact with him and my skin crawls every single Saturday when for those few minutes, I have to be in his presence.

I'm annoyed at myself for letting him upset me today. A phone call was needed for some trivial arrangements followed by two more controversial topics that needed to be discussed. The vileness commenced...

Afterwards, sitting on my bed crying, I realised that I hated him. A nasty, evil burning inside of me wishing he would feel pain or hurt. Wishing nothing but badness for him, a life of misery. I think I became more upset by my thoughts rather than how he had made me feel.

I don't think he brings anything extra to the lives of our children. I don't feel they are better off for the contact they have with him. I hope in time they will realise that it was a forced contact and I tried my best to make others understand what he had put us through.

After reaching out to R in floods of tears, she vented with me on the phone, called him every name on the sun, tried to see things from his perspective, then realised that she couldn't and managed to find a few more names to insult him with, I felt better.

We have talked about revenge before now. Myself not being as vicious or vindictive as she. My revenge ideas were plausible such as tipping off the police when I suspect he driving with my children in the car whilst being over the legal limit of alcohol. Or investigating his extra earnings that he doesn't declare and highlight this to the Child Support Agency or Tax Office when he is claiming his lack of wealth and incapability to financially support his children. R's revenge is more, shall we say, "bunny-boiler," things that you would find on a late night talk show hosted by the Springer fellow.

But talking about the act of revenge always makes me feel better, realising that in-order for me to carry out these actions I would have to sink down to his nasty level, which is a place I am not willing to travel. I remind myself of how I believe in karma. It's just a phrase I latch on to in the hope that some mystical force will eventually find time in it's schedule to right all the wrongs he has caused to us.

Today was slightly different though. He made me reach a point where, truthfully, I wished him dead. I wished him pain first, then a violent death. Luckily it took R about 3 minutes to change my train of thought and I realised the worst kind of pain I could cause him. Pain he didn't even realised would hurt so badly. Pain that I hadn't even caused but was his own doing.

Pain will come when he looks into our lives as an outsider, a stranger, as my children, on their own terms slip away from him and towards my OH.

When he is older or lonely and he will think about how his son would rather spend time with another man than his biological father

When he realises that his daughter is on the arm of her Step-father as she walks down the aisle, he will feel it.

He will no longer be able to blame me even though he will most likely try. I can't manipulate the children into loving another person as they already do with my OH.
As they grow older, they will grow away from him. Not because of lies from their mother, but because they see for themselves. They look at him and they remember.

Anger, hatred, pity or guilt are feelings that will vanish and I will be left feeling nothing about him, as empty, as his life will be. That's when I know that the balance is right again, that he is finally paying the consequences for his actions.