Oh....K (part won)

 

ManKIND is generally no such thing. Kind, that is.

I started pondering this topic a few weeks ago and kept hitting my head up against a negative brick wall. I KNEW that I wanted my K word to be about KINDness but all I could focus on was UNkindness. Do you find yourself doing that or is it just me?

Or was it just me and what was happening those few weeks ago?

You see what happened was I got a surprise visit from my ex’s mother. Not a biggie you might think but I live on an island and in order to get to it considerable effort needs to be made. So one has to take a moment and ponder what the Universe was up to when she conspired to cross our paths.

The ex's Mother now lives in the UK and works for an agency that does “caring” work - looking after old people in their homes – but the gig that had her sailing into town, literally, was looking after some wingnut who was being sent on her annual cruise and needed minding rather than caring.

So you can imagine the rise of my eyebrows when I got the text asking me if I was going to be around then and if I was able to see her.

I must say in terms of being kind, she has been nothing but.

And yes, I could have said no. But I felt it was important to acknowledge the effort the Mother was making and her moxie, cos if you think about it there is a big difference in keeping in touch with me via text message and birthday or Christmas cards, to having me arrive to collect you from a cruise ship and bring you to the family house for a visit with my parents and I! I don’t know if I would have the balls to do that if I had a son who had treated his partner as UNkindly as hers has treated me and risk the wrath of the family.

But it was lovely seeing her and so nice that she was able to see where and what my new life is like, and lovely that she was able to see my parents again even though the whole time she was here there was a huge big stinking elephant in the middle of the room, so to speak! Just before I had to get her back to the ship I brought out a large package of all of the Dorkus’s precious stuff and asked if she were able to take it as I didn’t feel comfortable throwing it all away.

(Yes, his shit from our life together in South Africa is still in our basement garage in storage where it has been since we moved over here!)

Talk about hitting the elephant with a stick!!

She got very tearful and felt the need to apologise to me for how her son had treated me.  It transpires that the Dorkus is now married to some poor unsuspecting slag with 5 children from who knows how many previous marriages and they live in a one horse town in the middle of butt fuck nowhere in the Texas Panhandle. Oh, that’s right…5 children, 1 grandchild and (drum roll please…) an American citizenship. Although I really don’t think that the old trick of marrying an American to be "in status" works these post 9/11 days…however this news really did allow a lot of pieces to fall into place…finally! Ironically the Dorkus' Father, the Mother’s now ex husband, treated her equally UNkindly after over 45 years of marriage – took off with all her money and some trailerpark-ish slag.

I was surprised how upset I was by all of this, but not for the obvious reasons.  Not because there is now some other female sleeping in what was my bed with what was my man…dear god…she is welcome to that part of him with bells and whistles.

No, it was the careful planning and conniving that had gone into making this all happen. Making it all look like he was the victim and I was the big bad wolf in the story. It was the very VERY conscious choice to be UNkind to me…not just in general…but to me. THAT is what hurt.

“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.” ~

Dave Barry, "Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn"

 When I read that quote I realized this was something that I had always known but chosen to ignore. His Mother even alluded to his streak of cruelty, how like his father he was behind his seemingly innocuous and kindly manner and this made her fearful for his sake. What I also realized was that for all this time that I have been getting on with my own life – laughing and doing and being and outwardly fine because the tears have stopped – the truth was there was still a huge amount of shit to deal with; still a whole heap of emotional cracks that I had just slapped a coat of paint over that actually still needed filling. Bugger!!

This also coincided with a gal here on the island, a so called friend, taking a big blunt knife and for absolutely no reason at all other then her own “issues”, sticking it into my back. So of course I made it all about me didn’t I?? I didn’t slip or fall, I JUMPED right back into that black hole of self justification, oh woe is me and how dare they, how could they; a veritable victim fuzz ball cocktail!

And all of this transpired when I was pondering KINDness! A big fat dilemma right? I just wanted to grab hold of it by the balls and shake it til it screamed!

But I didn’t. I stepped out onto my terrace one night when the bloody neighbours dogs were barking and keeping me awake; and realized why…it was full moon time. It was also time to call in the big guns; to practice what I have so often preached to my nearest and dearest; time to ask my Angels for help. But not just generalized help…very specific help. I asked them to get their asses right over to me and help me get right over this shit and let go of the sadness, the feelings of failure, the anger, the darkness. And I didn’t just want one of them here, I wanted the whole bloody “A” team!!

I really thought I had done this before but clearly I had not done it with intent because trust me, not a day has gone by since then that I have not received some or other validation that my Angels heard me and showed up. Silly little things like clicking on a website or blog and getting goose bumps because I just know that I have been pointed to whatever words I am reading, or whatever vimeo I click on either by mistake or on purpose, or even as far as when window shopping on Amazon for books to buy and the list of books that come up that “others” have bought that Amazon think I might like. Blow your mind away books that I DID buy and am busy reading!!  Even as we speak I know that there is more, that there will be more. And the recurring theme of the direction in which they have been pointing me is fear and forgiveness. Dealing with those two, in essence, is how I can be the kindest of all to myself. It is actually none of my business why the Dorkus chose to be so UNkind to me: my business is why I allowed it to happen to other people when I was with him – like the way he treated his ex wife, the way he treated his staff...

the way he spoke to the waiter!

In fact my only business in having allowed him to treat me the way he did when I was stuck out there in the middle of butt fuck nowhere in the Texas panhandle is not why I allowed it but how and what I am doing to move forward from that ever happening again and if there is a why…why am I not celebrating my freedom! Celebrating my me-ness

I have consciously resisted this whole forgiveness shit but I now realize that it is the path that I have to go down.

Okay change the wordage…not down…along…up…whatever J

It will most certainly not happen just because I say the words…it will happen because I feel them. And I must say there’s a whole lot of excitement I feel waking up every morning and consciously deciding that I will try to be kind in word, action and thought but let me tell you, it takes a LOT of intent and conscious effort.

But wait…there will be more…tomorrow!

Pinky promise people!