Four years ago my divorce was finalized. In that same span of time I made a depressing discovery- The realization that there are people in this world, sometimes quite a few of them, who can’t respect you and enjoy your company at the same time.

I spent a long time abandoned by every friend and family member I had, save for a single person. I have not always made the most reasonable decisions. I still don’t. I never will. I’ll choose to be myself. Only now, I’ll also take example from an amazing and inspiring person in my life. When I find someone has so much to protest about how I live my life, I’ll promptly tell that person I’m going to live how I’m going to live and if they’re staunchly opposed they can fuck off post haste.

It took me a long time to reach this point in my life. It took an incredibly inspiring person to show me that I don’t have to be afraid to be myself.

At one point I found myself rejected by my mother, which I suppose isn’t as uncommon as one would think. I’ve heard many stories of divorced men saying their mothers took sides with their exes. The difference between my situation and theirs is that my mother is not a sane or rational human being. She’s far less mentally healthy than I. I’m not bragging. I’m bad off. I have anxiety to an inordinately high degree. I can be incredibly bipolar, having extreme highs and lows. Yet my mother is still mentally less healthy than I.

Her anger problems are some of the worst I’ve seen. She can turn ugly at the drop of a hat and over the most minute issues. Screaming - replete with saliva being heretofore flung into your eyes - and clawing, pushing, with heavy panting in between fervent outbursts; She is just as in need of psychotherapy as myself, or anyone else.

I can’t associate with her anymore, and it’s not even what she’s done. It’s not what I’ve done. The reason I can never have anything to do with my mother again is nothing that has been done, but what hasn’t been done yet. I forgive her, a thousand times I forgive her and hope she forgives me. But I can never let her have any place in my heart again. Her anger is too great. It’s too insurmountable, and she’s too proud to ever do anything about it. She’ll never write or talk or cope, she has no way to cope with what she feels inside. When she comes up against a situation that’s unpleasant she finds all her emotion spewing forth uncontrollably. It always ends badly.

I can’t have anything to do with what she might do one day. I can’t have anything to do with the people who so blatantly stabbed me in the back, either. What was done once can be done again. Whether it actually happens again or not isn’t even important. It’s that memory, etched forever in my skull, that sordid reminder that I can’t trust those who don’t deserve trust. Who can never earn trust again.

I have no associations from what was once the life I lived. I don’t mind it, really, but sometimes I need to talk about it. Sometimes I need to revisit the past so that I don’t recreate the past. I have to analyze and understand. I never do it obsessively, because the past is just the past. I have an amazing person holding my hand as I walk into the future. Someone that has helped me through some of the most difficult times of my life. I truly hope everyone that used to be in my life is able to live happily and forgive, forget, move on. It’s the only power we really have over our own lives.