Family comes first

And if you don't have a family, like me, you make one.  I am my own cohort, but, like a Venn Diagram, I have various points of intersection.  At one point Jerry and I were family but he has been gone almost two years.  My family of the last year has seen fit to exclude me to some extent because of shifting relationships,  Gastric has been kind enough to include me with her family.  But, as I mentioned yesterday, Christmas plans, and it is sad to be to be alone on such a family day, are shot to shit.  That wouldn't be a problem save for the fact that plans had been made and now they have been unmade as I seemingly have been excluded from one made up family.  And that wouldn't be a problem except that the individual involved is apparently too frighten of me to be honest and tell me that their plans have changed and they no longer include me.  That they are making a new family and it includes me not.

I can put up with a great deal, but I don't deserve to be treated like an outlander when once I was part of that "family".  Don't be, as Hyphen opined during session yesterday, a chickenshit,  just be honest and tell me plans have changed,  I have time to make other plans but what has hurt has been their lack of honesty and consideration.  Gastric has opened her home to me but at this junction I had had plans to have people in for dinner and I don't know that their plans have changed and I am not going to renege on an invitation.  That's not how I work.  I have a commitment and I will honor that.  Should things change I can be part of an extended family with Gastric.

The dynamics of a relationship have changed but that person has been a chickenshit about being honest with me.  I can and am happy for them in a new relationship, but I don't deserve to be flung aside in light of that.  And please don't act as if nothing has changed.  They have changed...not I.  Maybe they are afraid I can't be happy for them.  I do worry but they are grown ups and entitled to their own life.  Who am I to judge?  But being slighted like I have been has hurt me to the quick and has caused me anxiety which is slowly morphing into anger.  I can't believe that person is so oblivious to everything else that they deign to treat me now as an afterthought.  Give me a hug, acknowledge the shifting paradigm, and don't be a chickenshit,

And that, good friends, is the catharsis I needed.  Bless you Hyphen and Pseudo-Hyphens for framing the issue and giving me the space to mourn losses.  And speaking of chickenshit, this was a pretty chickenshit way of handling this situation.  Ta-Da!