Tend your own garden please....

I'm a little heartbroken today. The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of changes. For the most part they've all been wonderful, welcome, and wanted.

However hanging over all of these new adventures and opportunities is a dark cloud. My father is very concerned for me and the kids. I understand this, I accept that he is doing his "daddy job" and trying to protect me. But I'm a grown woman, I'll make my own decisions, and if this is a mistake it's MY mistake to make. I've shared my personal fears and hopes and dreams with my former sister in law during all of this, whom I had always considered one of my closest friends and allies.

Well today she stabbed me in the back in the worst way. She broke my heart a little to be honest. My mother called today to let me know that I can't talk to J anymore. She doesn't have my best interest at heart and she's trying to sabotage me. Apparently yesterday J (who works for my families business part time on the weekends for extra money) got my father all worked up in a tizzy. She told him personal things I had confided in her. She pushed all his buttons and it was like poking a hornet's nest with a stick. There has been major fall out.

I always new J was bitter about her disastrous love life but I never knew she would let that poison our relationship. In the span of five years she has been divorced twice. Once from my brother, and again from the man she married less than a year after knowing him. She is in "man hater" mode these days, looking for evil intentions in every act, having no faith in men in general. I told her, "I believe in love, I believe in marriage. I believe the right two people can be happy together."

Her exact words to me were, "well I hope everything works out for you, but I have very little faith that it will" Well that in turn became her telling my father that BLT has no business moving here. That my parents were foolish to hire him. That it is a disaster waiting to happen, that my children are in danger, that I'm in "la la land" and calling BLT my "boy toy" basically feeding into all my father's fears for the girls and I. It doesn't matter how I feel, or what our history is... she pulled no punches.

She meddled in my life, in things that are none of her business. She caused a huge fight between my father and my mother, a screaming match apparently and she just stood back with a vile little smile on her face. My mother's stance is that I'm a grown woman and she trusts me, that it's none of her business and she is here to support me no matter what. My dad wants her to take his side, to stand by his prude, outdated moral stance.

Why would she do that? What benefit is it to her? What does J gain by trying to ruin what small amount of happiness I've managed to find?

She told my parents that she doesn't think they had an business helping me when I got divorced or when the X came to my house with a gun and went to jail. "Nobody ever helped me, I had to do it all alone." WTF??? She did not! She gets child support from my brother every month. She got help from my former in laws who treated her like extended family, she had my parents giving my brother extra cash so that he could buy her out of her share of their house. Directly and indirectly she got plenty of help...she still does. I've watched her children for her, and helped her in any number of other ways.

Why would she do this? I just don't understand. Why is my personal life open for their discussion and involvement anyway? What gives either of them the right? Why can't they just be happy for me?

I shed more than a few tears today... I'm so confused and hurt. I want to confront her, but really... what would I gain? I have trust issues to begin with. I should know better. I don't share, I don't talk to people, I keep my problems and my fears and my feeling to myself with the exception of about three people, well now two people. I should never have opened up to her... lesson learned. Trust no one. Tend your own garden. Don't give anyone the ammunition to hurt you.

Thanks for the hard cold lesson J. It won't be forgotten.