I asked her. Indirectly, hypothetically.
I was truthful about everything else, how the information was divulged to me without warning, how it was making me physically sick (I believe the term I used was nervous poos). Carrying the heavy weight of this knowledge, having to reprocess certain memories. The gross feeling of guilt because I couldn't remove myself from the conversation monologue.
I asked her What do I do if the person is close to me and I value the relationship, do I tell them?
She said, it depends. If it's something you can help with and prevent. If it's in the past then there's nothing you can do about it.
I said, yes, it's in the past. It would help me, but that's just me being selfish. More importantly, I said, If you were the person in question, would you want to know?
She said, This shouldn't affect you as much as you say it is, especially as you're still battling with your own demons. It's not healthy. If there's nothing you can do to help this person then just leave it be. We play the cards we're dealt with, so to speak. We are all products of the wrong choices we have made in the past.
I felt like, at that point, she knew I was talking about her. And I got my answer. If that was her, and it is, she wouldn't want to be confronted about it.
I agreed that I was internalising this whole thing more than I needed to, that maybe the reason why I was/am so upset, is because of that violation. I couldn't remove myself from the situation, I had no choice but to hear about it. I said that it felt like somehow she knew what I meant and that we were on the same page. I thanked her for looking out for me.
And, in case she understood or worked out that it was her, I did say, "Knowing what I know now, it made me appreciate and value them more, and everything they told me before."
And then she said, "It's ok [kid], it looks like you found yourself an unwilling participant in an uncomfortable conversation. They're awkward and tend to feel like an ambush. It's only on reflection when we've had time to process that we start to gather the facts and see reason."
I think when she said that 'It's OK' she really wanted to alleviate me of that guilt. She said that the one that divulged the information sounded malicious and that yeah, maybe it was meant to happen, that I was meant to hear it for whatever reason.
I think it was meant to teach me to see her as a real human who isn't immune to temptation and whose wrong choices have taught her and made her everything she is now. It makes even more sense, her advice to me before, about not forsaking what she has because she already knows what that's like. Her greatest fear is losing her family, not having her husband, her kids not wanting anything to do with her. Now I know why. It already happened, and it was so, so close to being irreversible.
It makes sense why her son couldn't tell me this one thing - 'family stuff' - that he said he will never be willing to share. It makes sense how devoted and protective her husband is to her. He is afraid to lose her again. It makes sense now how she is almost... pathologically eager to please everyone, to serve. She's making up for something so awful that she has done in the past.
But I am so in awe of how they were able to rebuild everything, now that I think about it. Imagine coming back to your family that you abandoned, from like a year with your boyfriend because life didn't go well with him... And then everyone is just asking, how is your sister that you were supposedly caring for? But then you and your husband are the only ones at the time, that know the truth. How do you sleep in the same bed and pretend to be OK in front of everyone else in your home?
To where they are now, as a couple.
I never want to end up in that position. She was right to tell me last week that it was wonderful that I felt so close to my husband. I reflect on our relationship now and I really don't want to take our marriage for granted.
I just want to give her a big hug. I said, Thank you, love you. She said the same and I think she knew.
2022-02-22.4:38 p.m.
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