so last night, at a party to do some fundraising work for a local festival, i met the current fiancee of my former fiancee. i knew she was going to be there - the host had warned me ahead of time - and i didn't want to be awkward, but i suppose some degree of discomfort was to be expected.

there were some conversations that were a struggle. at one point i was talking about my degus, and she jumped in, interrupting me, to talk about how awesome degus are, and how her fiancee had the cutest awesomest degus, and telling stories about them & these kittens that were living there at the time, blah blah blah. i found it extraordinarily hard to not interrupt & bitch her out. i mean please, she never met my fucking degus. she never met two of the kittens mentioned, and she's interrupting me to tell stories about them? a few minutes later, when the conversation moved on to a local campus she attends, & which guests work there, she asked how long ago i had worked on campus, and suggested i might know her awesome fiancee! "uh yeah. i used to be engaged to him." i managed to restrain myself and to gently point out that the degus she had just been talking about were, in fact, the same degus i had been talking about. what i really wanted to say was, "oh and the degus you were talking about, the ones you never actually met, those were my degus, that your charming fiancee dropped like a bag of burning dogshit when we split."

i don't actually dislike her, but i can't say i'm a fan either. she's extraordinarily young, and terribly insecure, and emotionally very teenager-like. it was hard listening to her bitch about my former mom-in-law, and whining about some really insignificant thing that had happened and how it was so obviously the biggest, worst thing ever to happen! and to sit there realising that had i not miscarried, i would have given birth to my first child (and said ex's first child) while she was still in elementary school. fuck.

as i listened to her talk, especially as i observed her distain for children & her self-absorption, i realised again how utterly grateful i am that the Ancestors, Spirits & my Higher Self did not allow that pregnancy to come to full term. a number of friends & family members are currently going through messy separations, and i am so utterly grateful that not only is the ex not in my life, but that this woman is not participating in raising my child.

when i got home i laid in bed for a while, angrily tossing and turning. it's amazing to me how most of my ex-partners are people i still utterly love and cherish, yet there are a few i'd still like to punch in the face. i don't know that there's a decernable pattern in who fits into which column, but the ex-fiance/handfasted partner/common-law spouse is certainly in the latter group. i'm still angry that he told me after we split that he would never again date a younger person, never again date a student, and yet at least two of the women he dated after leaving me were teenagers when he first started seeing them - this one included. i try really hard to not be judgemental about age differences between partners, but there's something extraordinarily skeezy to me about a man in his thirties who dates a 19 year-old. i don't know if it's my in-born suspicion of men, or my intimate knowledge of this particular man that has me judging him. i wonder, if someone continues to get older, and yet he keeps dating people who are younger, and younger, what does that say about his emotional development? i can't help but draw the conclusion that he's still avoiding all the difficult work of self-interrogation that enables a person to learn and grow as an emotional being.

so last night, after an hour or so of tossing & turning, i got back out of bed. i had a good cry for the child that i lost, and reminded myself that being grateful for the way things turned out is not a rejection of that child's life, nor is it being grateful for his death, but rather it's gratitude that he's waiting for a healthier time to come through. i smudged, and read some Dharma (Buddhist teachings), then sat in meditation and released all unjust anger. i let go of all that anger that no longer serves a purpose in my life now, or in the future. i released all anger that would harm myself or others. i held onto the anger that is just, that is productive & protective, all that anger that is meant for healing & learning, but all other anger i released. i feel pretty exceptionally good today after it all, and way less irritable than i've been over the last few weeks.

i think i'm getting a handle on this life thing :)