I have felt it coming for a few weeks now, the whole turmoil with having to choose between spending time with my H and spending time with my family, including siblings who are like children to me, for the holidays and my upcoming birthday. They are more willing than last year to let H come around and ignore each other, but that turns out to be almost more painful for everyone. I tried to check whether they were comfortable having him around for Thanksgiving, but no one answered me, so I ended up choosing to have Thanksgiving with H's family (which is only fair as the last two holidays have been with mine). I was fine through yesterday morning. I talked to T about it, told him how intellectually, I know there is a lot of hurt in there about the incident that caused this and the being trapped and the sense that no matter what I do, I am causing pain to those I love.

He reinforced to me that while I am trapped in a position to make choices and others will be hurt by whatever choice is made, that I am not the cause of the pain. That I may be the only one in this situation who is completely without responsibility for the current state of things. Basically, he kept trying to explain that it was not my fault, these horrible things that happened and the hurt that is still there as a result.

Ever since then, I feel pretty miserable and like I want to fight that statement, because I did have choices to make, still do, regularly, all the time, about how to invest my time. If it is my fault, then maybe there was some way I could have prevented things. If it is my fault, maybe there is a magical right combination of choices that makes everyone else happy, even if I have to destroy myself to make it happen. If it's not my fault, then I am utterly helpless, torn and completely alone in bearing a responsibility that shouldn't exist. If I have, as T seems to think, consciously weighed every decision I have made since then, considered everyone to the best of my ability, minimized the pain I cause to others...and yet there is still so much brokenness, and I let the reality of that weigh on me, it will crush me. I have enough heavy things now, that I feel "It's not your fault," is not something I can deal with at all. I'd rather it be my fault and thus make sense.

Not seeing my younger siblings this Thanksgiving was fine on Thanksgiving day and the day after. But, as soon as T gave compassion to this situation, I was flooded with this feeling of rending inside, of being torn apart, of not being able to love anyone quite like I aspire to without the tug of unfairness to the other party. It's just too much. I want to crawl in a hole and hide until the end of January, but that would be the most unfair to everyone.

Sorry. I don't know if I'll leave this up, but I'm hurting and just needed somewhere to vent it where no one knows the parties involved.