Stupid people.

I wasn't going to post today, too much work neglected in the past two days already. I've got the week off of my regular duties, and I need to utilize my time to tackle the ginormous job of CleanOut. Writing, right now, was also not part of the plan.

However...

My divorcing-friend called me up last night, ranting and raving about the stupidity levels she's facing, feeling trapped by and wanting to sink to the same levels to defeat it. It's easier to do that - the sinking, I mean - because there's very little actual effort involved. And really, doesn't that apply across the board, to any topic, when dealing with people that just don't give a shit to put any effort into beating their own obstacles? Who really has any desire to put in effort on the behalf of those that refuse to make an effort for their own good?

I think I finally convinced her that her fierce desire to keep her kids' father in their lives is only detrimental. Why am I an authority on that? Why do I feel compelled to convince her? What business is it of mine? Or, better, what are her reasons? -well, that's easy. She wants her kids to benefit from a relationship with their father. But it's worse than that. She's fighting for her ex to have a relationship with his kids. Something that he's only putting up a facade of actually fighting for. Thus, she's defeating herself, wasting her energy on something he doesn't care enough to fight for - for himself.

She and I often talk of how her mother knew throughout our childhood years together the sort of homelife I'd had, just by observing my behaviours, while my friend hadn't a clue. She thought every family was like hers - and looking around school, she couldn't have had a solid reason to think otherwise. We're all clever about hiding our weaknesses, especially as kids. We mask with lies, bad habits, big talk, bullying, or, the old stand-by, trivial pop-culture awareness/knowledge. I utilized two of these more than any others - lies and the pop-culture thing (which, btw, has simply become a fascinating habit over the years. I gave up the lies many, many years ago.) Kids, like she was, didn't consider that such behaviours could be masks - why would they be? What would a kid have to hide from their buddies?

So, when she calls me up and tells me the horrendous lies that she's seen the "in-laws" telling the kids in the family, or of how they deal with disputes between the little ones, or what they do with a sick kid, or how they try to weasel more and more out of her financially for their own responsibilities - namely the parental, financial responsibilities of a father - well ...I get fired up.

She has never before dealt, first-hand, with dysfunction. Honestly, of all my friends through the school years, she had the most balanced family life. Her parents didn't fight over piddly shit, let alone things like finances. They were on the same page and worked (behind the scenes) to maintain that balance. She didn't think it was weird. I didn't think it was weird - I was simply jealous. (there were actually about four years in the middle of our time knowing each other that we weren't close friends. I think now this might be part of the reason for that - neither of us knew how to deal with such a difference. Also, it's during these years that she got married, and no, I was not at the wedding.)

She's learning it now. Without going too much into the personal on other peoples' lives, suffice it to say this whole family does everything they can the "easy" way - with the smallest amounts of effort and the highest count of weaseling.

For the friendship that we now have, she calls me up when she's at the bottom of her Hope Well. When everything seems to be piling up on her and there is in fact, no light for her to look forward to. My family-history, the knowledge of my other, dysfunctionally-yet-adapted friends' histories, are fringe benefits for her. First-hand knowledge and sight of the damage that can be caused for people by such environs.

Why does this weigh on me? Why do I care so strongly? Because for the past ...oh, this is April already! -So for the past five months, she has been calling me with fears of the effects that family's dysfunction is having on her kids.

Here she is, determined to give her kids the closest semblence of a "normal family" that she possibly can. She desperately feels they need and deserve to keep their own father in their lives. She has never before understood how anyone could possibly be better off without one (or both) of their parents in their lives. I have. I know plenty of others that have. I've seen for myself the detrimental effects that an irresponsible, unhealthy, inconsiderate, abusive (physically, sexually, mentally and neglectfully), self-absorbed parent can have on dependant - and adult - children. Though extreme, she's facing a classic case. The only bit of abuse in the list that has not come to light in that family is sexual - but it wouldn't if it were there - for the layers of masking that've developed into concrete over the years.

Unlike my "arguments" regarding diagnosed kids, in which I admit to knowing very little about, this is a topic I know far too much about. I have no doubts regarding my knowledge, but instead a confidence I often wish I didn't have.

So in the past five months, I've told her often of how there is little valid reason to attempt maintaining a relationship that simply isn't there, just to feel that she'd doing the honorable thing. This is not an easy task. It's not that I want to convince her that she's wasting her time. It's not that I want to destroy something that she's worked so hard to make function. It's the fact that there isn't any function, there isn't any relationship. There's ridicule, there's favoritism, there's buying of affections and there are lies to destroy the relationship she has with her kids - to spite her, I suspect. So, yes, I feel she has to face the fact that the ties she's tried for so many years to make real...simply don't exist, and she needs to quit trying so hard. For her own sanity just as much as for that of her kids' mental health.

She's resisted facing this fact - the non-existence - since the first kid was born years ago. I suppose this has either gotten so disgustingly obvious, or my words have sunk in. Either way, she's seeing the facts more clearly every day. She understands now that there really isn't any benefit for her kids to be in the company of their father, or his family. Not that they should never see him (or them), but that they should not be spending more than a day per week, if that much, in that environment. It is seriously detrimental to all of the kids in that family. Hers are the most fortunate - she has the opportunity to get her kids out of it. She has begun to understand the reasons that she needs to utilize that opportunity.

The question becomes, how does she deal with them in the meantime, while she has little choice available? How does she use her intelligence against stupid weasels who have managed to gain enough "smarts" to fake-out ju... Oh, there's the lightbulb I was waiting for.

-- She's daunted because they'd faked her out. She thought she was above being faked out all those years ago when she agreed to marry the guy, when she thought he was the best thing that'd ever happened to her. She's been duped and expects everyone else to be duped too.

Maybe that's why, when I said last night, "It's obvious. To you, to me, and to everybody else" that she buckled. She's so worried that everything will come down to her word against theirs - but in fact, their words are so blatantly fabricated lies that there isn't anyone in the world that wouldn't see through them.

That is, afterall, when she said for the first time, "Maybe you're right."

I can't stress it enough that I wish I weren't. Not on this one.