I Think She Finally Gets It (or, alternate title: this could get icky...)

Excerpt from telephone conversation with Mrs_C:

Mrs_C: [Son] told me you were going in to work this afternoon. I thought when you said you called in sick these two days you wanted to spend time with me.

C: No - we stayed up too late the first night discussing logistics of the split for me to want to go to work.

Mrs_C: But you spent all day yesterday with me.

C: We were discussing the minutiae of separation and what led us in our relationship to the point we we would need to split.

Mrs_C: But you came over to watch the movie last night.

C: I told you that I wanted to spend time with the kids, and I don't have a DVD player yet.

Mrs_C: But you brought treats and brought a special one for me.

C: I brought soft drinks and popcorn. You can't eat popcorn, so I brought you rice cakes. This would be interpreted, how?

Excerpt 2:

Mrs_C: I thought you were playing a game with me. That you moved out to make a point.

C: And in the last 18 years, when have I ever played even one game? When have I ever relied on anything but straight words to communicate any idea? So if past behaviour is the most likely predictor of future or present behaviour, then the likelihood I'm currently playing a game is?

Mrs_C: And I wasn't listening...

Excerpt 3:

Mrs_C: You've been stringing me along for the last year.

C: Uh, excuse me. I've been rather direct on each and every occasion. You were the one that consistently asked me to stay and work at it longer. And I agreed. That hardly constitutes stringing. At each point when you have forced an assessment, mine has been the same - it isn't working.

Mrs_C: Yeah... I guess you did say it straight every time, but I would try to convince you to stay or play some game on you. I guess I always knew, and that's why I went a little nuttier - a little more over the edge every time. But I have tried to change. I have. You've noticed it.

C: Your behaviour never changed until your personal well being was sufficiently threatened. You didn't really change until after I moved out. If I was going to come back it would be forever. And you know that. And the liklihood of the change sticking would be - what?

Cadbury and Cadbury's boss/friend:

C: She always does this. She knew I was going to work this afternoon. She knew I would be heading out the door at about 12:45 and she calls and does some kind of spazzy thing.

C's Boss: It's called manufacturing a crisis. They don't even know they're doing it. It's all about self-centredness. It's a behaviour that's well documented in alcoholics, adult children of alcoholics, and people who have suffered in disfunctional families like family violence [info: boss's father was a violent alcoholic]. She knew you were leaving for work, so this way she could be more important than you going to work.

C: [silence] I'm just reeling here [pause] no - really - I'm bowled over - that makes so much sense. Everything is sliding into place on that one - it's like a Rubik's cube - all the colours on one side have suddenly lined up

[other conversation about personality disfunction and alcoholism and such]

C's Boss: No, [cadbury], you are doing the right thing here... Stick with your course.

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Read my post on healthy breakfasts on the other blog