Leah, part 4

2010 was our final year together.  The year began with a hope that this year would turn out better than the last year: what a joke!  Near the end of the 2010, I told Leah: if we have another year like this, we won't make it for another year.  And, in December, she decided that she had enough.  Let me emphasize the irony here: she decided that she had enough.  After all she had put me through, she was the one that decided she couldn't take any more. 

Today at church, I was chatting with a friend.  I told him that in '07, I went through a really bad breakup.  That was a time in my life when I needed to be alone.  It needed to be my kids and me, rebuilding our lives.  And, yes, I was lonely.  I needed to be.  But Leah would have none of that.  She forced herself into my life, capitalized on my loneliness, and applied a constant pressure.  This was to get what she wanted -- a place to live when she turned 25.  She didn't care at all about me and what was best for me.  I asked her, the week before she left: back then, didn't she think I had gone through enough? 

Early on in 2010, I decided to open a joint account with Leah.  No sooner did we do this, than Leah squandered a good bit of money.  She went to visit her mother in Myrtle Beach, but messed up the reservations for the return. To return on the date she needed to return, she had to pay extra.  Once she was back, that same week, she made another mistake that cost several hundreds of dollars.  She justified her behavior with “what was I supposed to do?”  I asked: “what would you have done if you didn’t have such free access to my money?”  I told her that I felt as though she was using me.  In the end, she said she understood and she said she was sorry.  She would get a part-time job and pay me back. 

She never got the part-time job.  She searched for maybe a month, and after that there was no sign at all that she was still looking.  She declared that, with a part-time job, she wouldn’t be able to take classes . . . an odd statement, since she had stopped taking classes when she moved in with me.  She declared that she wouldn’t be able to volunteer at my church any more.  She spoke of how she would need to cut back on housework, even though she really didn’t do much.  She didn’t, however, actually find a job.  When I think back to that, I saw an interesting pattern.  She did something that got me very upset (in this case, I was prepared to end the relationship).  She said she understood and was sorry and that she would make up for it or fix it.  As a result, I calmed down.  But . . . she didn’t actually follow through and do anything she had promised. 

Over the next few months, she continued to squander.  Having access to my paychecks, her food shopping costs shot up drastically.  She damaged my car, and I wound up paying for it.  Her car had some major problems, and I wound up paying for it.  Her debt to me kept growing.  She insisted that she would have paid me back, but she couldn’t find a part-time job. 

I started getting annoyed at some of her rude behavior.  If I ever put on a movie, Leah would IMMEDIATELY take out her iPhone and start web surfing.  As much as I love movies, I saw that I simply could not share movies with her.  She was also incredibly snobby about her movie tastes.  She acted as though movies I liked were below her, yet she was not noted for having such grand tastes herself (by the way, she didn't just act this way with comedies or action movies: when I would put on, say, a Shakespeare play, she acted the exact same way).  This was a personality trait Leah shared with her parents, and something I seriously did not like.  She once justified her behavior by pointing out that I didn’t like the movie “Rent”.  I told her that I, indeed, did not like that movie.  However, when she put it on, I sat and I watched it.  I gave it a chance, before determining I didn’t like it.  Unlike her, I didn’t spend the time rudely web surfing.  When she saw how much her behavior upset me, she said she understood and she will work on that.  Of course, she never did. 

Leah came home from a visit with her therapist, talking about how they were discussing her relationship with my older son.  She remarked that her therapist agreed: she blew her relationship with him.  She had a sad look on her face. We discussed things she could do to help rebuild that relationship.  Of course, she did none of those things.  She maintained a sort of cold war against my son: the two simply avoided each other. 

I took Leah to see “Godspell” one night.  Given the chip on her shoulder about Jesus, I wasn’t sure how she would handle this.  She wound up loving the play.  A few months later, I found auditions for another production of “Godspell”.  I asked her if she was interested, and she said “yes”. 

I decided I would audition as well.  Could Leah help me prepare for the singing audition?  She wouldn’t.  Despite being a classically trained singer, she couldn’t seem to help me with the simplest steps.  Instead, she declared that I was tone deaf, and would never be able to sing.  She even openly stated this to people (including members of her choir and members of this theatre company), as though it was an established fact: “he’s tone deaf”. 

We both got parts in the play.  We worked hard over the next few months.  We didn’t work hard together, however.  Leah criticized my singing and my dancing (even though my dancing was much better than hers), yet never offered any suggestions to help: she would say "it's wrong", but couldn't seem to say what was wrong!  At one point, when trying to discuss a dance, she kept interrupting me and belittling what I was saying.  What was going on here?  I decided that I could not rehearse this play with her or around her.  When she saw that this was upsetting me, she said she understood and that she would work on that.  Of course, she never did. 

In the middle of all of this, Leah, the boys, and I went on vacation to Pennsic.  At one point, the local Baroness held a “Court of Love”.  People stood up and issued complaints about their significant other, and the Baroness would issue tasks.  It was all meant as fun and games.  Leah went before this to complain that I never buy her jewelry.  The Baroness took the expected course: I was to purchase jewelry for Leah at Pennsic.  The boys found this hilarious, and all four of us sat and laughed about this.  Suddenly, Leah yelled at my kids for joking about this.  I told her: this was NOT acceptable!  The kids had done nothing wrong.  This either was a joke, and they could laugh about this . . . or Leah had just bad-mouthed me in front of most of my SCA friends and behaved incredibly unappreciatively. 

At some point during this fight, Leah called her mother to complain.  Her mother communicated this with her other parents, and they decided that I was abusive to Leah.  They made their decision to take action on this. 

Months later, when Leah's stepfather made mentioning of this as his excuse for his actions against me,  her story about this changed.  She claimed that the next morning, I made a remark that Leah’s whole personality was a joke.  After making such a horribly cruel statement to her, THEN she called her mother to complain and vent.  I remarked that I didn’t remember having said that, and that it didn’t even sound like me.  Further, I don’t remember a lingering argument after that . . . she must have gotten over this incredibly cruel statement pretty quickly.  Further, she never even mentioned this horribly cruel statement to me until four months later?  I believe that Leah either made this up completely or she twisted something else I might have said.  She needed a justification for hers and her parents' behavior.  She didn’t call and vent because she had yelled at my kids for no reason: she called and vented because I had said something cruel to her.  Her parents weren’t racists, they hated me because I said cruel things like that to Leah. 

“Godspell” came.  For the final performance, all four of her parents came to see the performance.  During the intermission, her step-father came up and cornered me against the stage.  He threatened to kill me.  Leah’s mother and step-mother stated they agreed with him, but her father remained quiet.  He stated later that he agreed.  Where was Leah during all of this?  Leah saw her step-father talking to me, with his back to her.  She couldn’t hear what he was saying, so really had no idea what was going on.  Without knowing what was happening, she was SO upset that she ran outside.  She didn’t come up and tell her step-father to back off?  She didn’t even come up to see what was happening?  I suspect that Leah knew her stepfather was planning some sort of assault on me. 

Leah didn’t want to talk about what had happened.  Furious at their behavior, I found myself yelling about it.  She complained “why are you yelling at me?”  I saw that she was completely unsympathetic.  I wrote about the incident on my Facebook.  Leah told me that her father had learned of my Facebook entry and was upset about it.  She demanded I remove the entry and stop writing about the incident.  I refused.  I find this to be incredibly tacky: she demanded that I not write about having a death threat because it might upset one of the people that was involved with the death threat? 

For years, Leah had no problem saying that her parents hated me because I wasn’t Jewish. I applied a new term to that sort of attitude: racism.  Suddenly, she was up in arms.  Her step-mother wrote her an e-mail stating that it wasn’t because of racism that she hated me, but because of all these other reasons.  I told Leah: find me a racist that admits to racism?  Her step-mother's e-mail didn’t prove anything.  I challenged her: I reminded her of how her father acted the very first time I met him, when he knew nothing about me . . . it certainly seemed like prejudice.  Leah started rewriting history.  The hatred was because I was older, divorced and had children.  They would have preferred that I was Jewish, but that wasn’t an issue.  I told her: older, divorced, and having children were reasons to think a person might not be a good match, but NOT reasons for hatred.  She responded by avoiding at all costs the use of the word “hate”. She then fabricated the story about Pennsic, as a justification for how her parents grew to “not like” me because of how I treated her.  Once she left, she demonstrated that she was determined to bend over backwards to justify her parents behavior. 

Right after the incident, she claimed that she had heard from “other sources” that her step-father had not threatened me.  This turned in to the claim that he didn’t threaten to kill me.  When I pressed for who these “other sources” were, it turned out that this was a claim made by her mother.  Her mother, further, claimed that her step-father was saying simply what all four of them felt.  Her mother made the claim that all four of them knew what her step-father was planning.  I found this shocking: they knew he was planning on threatening me, brought him anyway, and did nothing to stop him or help?  They were complicit in this assault!  I now strongly suspect that Leah herself knew that her step-father was planning something; that she chose to run outside instead of helping (and, likely, putting the entire incident to rest).  Ultimately, Leah herself was complicit in this.  That was, likely, why she showed me no sympathy and worked so hard to justify her parents’ behavior. 

Leah’s claim is that she went to her parents and demanded they apologize to me, else she would have nothing more to say to them.  I do not believe she did anything of the sort.  She apparently stopped talking to her mother, but I believe that this had to do with her mother’s history of justifying her husband’s behavior.  Leah’s step-mother, when I went to her for help after the threat, screamed at me: she behaved far worse than Leah’s mother, yet Leah did not stop talking to her.  Clearly, Leah's decision to stop talking to her mother had nothing to do with how her mother treated me.  Leah had no explanation for this.  A week after the incident, Leah was exchanging cat pictures with her father, all the while she claimed she demanded he apologize to me.  Worse yet, on several cases, she forwarded me pictures of her father’s cat!  "Here's the cat of one of the people that threatened to kill you . . . ain't she cute?"  To put it mildly, I found her lack of sympathy shocking. 

Leah's next show was “Hairspray”, which she was performing with my younger son.  Her father and step-mother were coming for a performance.  Naturally, I was concerned about his safety (just as Leah had vented about me, she most certainly vented about my kids).  At my request, her parents were seated so that they could not interfere with the production.  People were watching in case they attempted to speak to my son.  At this point, I discovered that Leah had not told her father that ANYTHING was at all wrong!  When asked about their seating (why they weren’t being seated in the front row), Leah lied and told them that she didn’t know why!  I wrote an e-mail to her father, saying “stay away from my son”.  Her father was apparently furious about this. 

Leah lost her job.  Her father offered to pay for her insurance.  Leah told me: she couldn’t confront him about his behavior because she needed his help.  This, of course, was fine . . . given that she didn’t seem fit to confront him about his behavior for three months prior!  Right after she went out to visit him and go over different insurance options, she came home and declared that she was siding with her father: she demanded that he had nothing to do with the incident and could not be held accountable.  She then evolved this excuse into attempts at justifying his behavior -- that he was reacting to how horribly I was treating her.  To justify that, she needed to lie through her teeth.  Ultimately, her excuse stemmed from her constant venting about me.  At what point is it “venting” and at what point is it “badmouthing”?  I asked her: “you badmouthed me until I got a death threat . . . what are you going to do to try to fix this?”  Her answer was that she was leaving me. 

The week before she left, she determined she would not tell me why.  She, essentially, was running down the clock.  She devised nonsensical reasons and even started making claims reflecting her mental issues in the past (she claimed to have been “trapped in the box” again; she claimed to have been hearing voices again).  All these served to do was make me question all of those incidents.  Was it all a game?  I must say “yes”.  I made clear to her: once she moves back with her parents, I cannot allow her back in my life.  Her parents are violent racists that made a death threat against me.  If she is living with them, living in that echo chamber, it will not be long before she is a danger to me.  I don’t think she minded: she left.  One thing I managed to get out of the deal was that her father paid the money she owed me.  Of course, in a continued demonstration of his contempt, he refused to make the check to me.  He made the check out to Leah, but that was fine because we still had the joint account. 

Once word got out that she and I were breaking up, my kids came to me.  I expected my older son to be thrilled that she was leaving, but I was quite surprised at how much my younger son disliked her.  I don't know if I could have stopped Leah from leaving, but seeing how my kids felt, I knew that I shouldn't even try.  Her departure has brought the three of us closer together.  As for me: I was surprised at how easy this was.  Once she was gone, I felt a certain sigh of relief.  The other day, I went to the movies . . . and rather than missing her, my thoughts about her were that it was nice to go to a movie and not deal with her attitude.  Maybe I'm, indeed, better off with her departure.