Let me clarify my title.
I am not really a hating person. I am normally considered a goodie two shoes, a strong caregiver and someone you can take for granted ... all around liberal earth mother who wants to see the best in everyone and will gladly give you my last dollar if it helps you. I try 10 different ways to make sense of things and to understand people.
But I have had it. I don't want to be nice any more. I want the liberty of accepting my feelings and I want my family and friends to respect the validity of my feelings.
My first grandchild was born recently and it has created a slight tempest in a teapot. I don't want to keep my ex from having a relationship with his grandson. I don't want my daughter-in-law to like me better than she likes my ex. I'm fine with that ... what I don't want to do is play nice with him. And that is the fly in the ointment.
I have been divorced for 15 years after a horrible, emotionally abusive 24 year marriage. In that time, I have mostly avoided my ex, as well as avoiding most talk about him. I simply don't like the man and I am DONE with him. However, now, my children are talking about having holidays together and want me to be more accommodating.
I have hemmed and hawed and gone around saying that I would really rather not. BUT the pressure is there to "be nice," since that is what I have always been. Today I finally realized that I have every reason not to want to be around my ex. He was emotionally abusive of me for 24 years and has never apologized. He cheated me of money which was rightly due to me. He wanted me to sign over all our savings. My lawyer made me accept spousal support because it was due to me and forced me to admit that I did not have to take care of him anymore. (It took me a while to really understand this emotionally.) He lied to people about me, many of them my friends. I had lots of clean up to do financially and emotionally. At this point of my life, I am not financially sound, but mostly doing decently.
My sons were in high school when I got divorced. I went through driver's ed and car and health insurance with them. I paid for their college (still paying parent loans). I bought cars, books, phones, etc. The ex gave me $500 a month for 4 years and claims their successes for his own. He has never acknowledged what I did or am still doing.
Today, I came to the realization tha I do not have to like him, nor do I have to play nice. I do not need to not make a scene or make things worse. BUT I can stand up for myself.
It was liberating to finally tell myself that I do not have to bend myself into a pretzel trying to be nice to someone I genuinely dislike, that my children are grown and have to accept that I will not "play nice" with their father. YEAH!!!
Then I thought about how much I have been making myself "play nice" with the crazy Republicans. I have been saying things like "they are personally nice but I don't understand their politics." Or I say, "I'm sure if they realized how this impacts their lives ..." I live in Oklahoma so I have had lots of opportunites to say these things to myself and to try harder to understand.
But I am done.
I am not going to stay silent when I hear a woman tell a young friend to go into special education because you have job security since special ed is federally required. But just the day before she had been advocating smaller government and praising Inhofe and Coburn.
I will no longer walk away when another woman I know praises the Republicans for making the USPS more "efficient" while adding that her husband is in no danger since he is a vet and has seniority.
I will no longer have only a very mild question when my friend who works for American Airlines tells me that he is not worried about his pension because if American doesn't come through, then the government will pick it up like it did for the Enron people. And by the way, he hates unions, Social Security and the Democrats.
I don't have to play nice with people who so carelessly abuse and willfully misunderstand the system which gave them a help up. I don't have to feel guilty for not respecting them and for choosing not to stay in the doormat position.
I AM DONE.