Self-loathing in Portland...

 As a divorcee x2, I'm well aware of my own shortcomings. I have been repeating them over and over in my head long enough that it's old hat, really.

Yet, when faced with another retelling of the most recent marriage demise, and subsequent child support drama, I am once again tossed into a self-loathing spiral. 

The picture painted by others is never as pretty as you might want it, and I get that. I certainly am not kind when I do tend to speak of some of the things that happened. I'm also aware that my retelling is equally colored with frustration and anger. 

However, I do try to accept my role (or lack thereof) in the situation. I was no more innocent in them than he was...

I'm not shocked. Not in the least. I watched him verbally eviscerate his ex's for 19 years - calling them every name under the sun, claiming that they were ultimately responsible for everything bad about his life at that specific juncture... As though, had they been perfect, he would have had such a better life. 

The fact is, it's easy to go down the path of the what if... Fantasizing over what could have been is a common past-time. But he has always taken it to a new artform. 

As an example: one of his exes was someone who he was in a relationship with for approximately a month. As he puts it, she was desperate to become a mom, but he hadn't known that when he met her. He swore she'd told him she was on the pill so, since she seemed OK, he never used condoms with her. 

The story continues, where he found out that she had been playing him and a black guy to see who could get her pregnant first. When he found out three months later that she *was* pregnant, he confronted her. He said that her response was "I'm allergic to all forms of birth control, I wouldn't have said that."

This was his justification for stating that she "trapped" him into being the sperm donor for her son. He said he'd pay for child support because it was his responsibility, but that once the child was 18, he was done. He wanted nothing to do with the boy, because he was "afraid of what [he] might due since [he] hated her so much."

He called her a whore, a cunt, a bitch... And those were on good days. She was basically ostricised out of the local cos-play community because his sycophants were so devoted to him.

He went after new women, then treated them like garbage as soon as they stood up for themselves - all while claiming to be a white knight, there to recuse women and make the world a better place for them. 

Just... Don't be fooled. His recent attack was just the beginning...