Karen Did What Karen Does

05/05/24

There’s an incident that happened involving EH and his family, which for years has sat inside me as a leaden chunk of betrayal and injustice.

He believed at the time, and has very recently indicated he continues to believe, that it was me who caused a drama at the hospital, by his dying sister’s bedside. 

This says an awful lot about how he views me.

That aside, his belief is entirely factually incorrect and it’s been a source of great pain for me that this is the narrative he and his family have stuck with. 

His oldest sister, Karen, caused the situation when she announced that she had a letter she wanted to read aloud to Grace. However, I needed to leave the room first because, quote, ‘she’s not family’. 

I was family enough when everyone else had washed their hands of Grace.

I was family enough when she was living at my house because her alcoholism had made her incapable of living independently.

I was family enough when I had to make the decision that she needed hospital care, and arranged to have her admitted.

I was family enough when I took the bus, after work, to visit her every evening, never missing a night because I was the only damned visitor she was getting. 

I took care of her, washed her hair, painted her nails, helped her with using the toilet, listened to her talk of dreams I knew would never come to fruition, held her as she cried about missing her children. 

I was family to Grace. 

But right there in the hospital room, as Grace was nearly at the end, Karen had to have her drama and lash out at me. 

I left the room utterly shocked and in tears. 

EH didn’t tell his sister she was out of order, nor did he come to comfort me. 

His mother at least came out to speak to me.

She apologised on Karen’s behalf and thanked me for not “giving her a gob full“, though she acknowledged I would have been justified.  She then patted my hand and went back in to ‘the family’. 

I sat alone on a trolley in the corridor, sure that EH would be out shortly to give me a cuddle.

When they eventually trooped out, he barely made eye contact with me.

Nobody said a word to me, and EH went off with them all to the hospital café, leaving me still sitting alone on the trolley. 

I struggle to think when else I have ever felt so alone, betrayed and ostracised. 

To this day, EH is adamant that I said something that caused all the upset.  He just can’t specify what it is I’m supposed to have said.

As far as he’s concerned, I was a cunt and there ain’t no changing that. 

Except I wasn’t.  He was for thinking that of me, and for letting all of that play out that way.

Across the years I ceased to make attempts to get him to see that things unfolded quite differently to how he perceives it to have been. However, that desire, almost need, to have him see reality has continued to eat away inside me.

I wanted to change the way he saw me.

Here’s the positive – when this subject was recently raised by him, I realised I no longer feel the need to correct the record, or get EH to believe me about who and what I am.

My self-belief is growing through all this damned hard work I’m putting in. I know what was true, about me, them, and the circumstances that day.

That’s all that matters.

I now know that anyone who loves me would see that truth. People who genuinely know and care about me don’t need to be persuaded that I’m a decent person.

He and his family can tell themselves what they like – it doesn’t change who I really am, and they can’t make me doubt that anymore.

My time and energy are far too valuable to be spent on people who are prepared to believe the very worst of me.

Far better to gift it to people who believe in all that’s good about me.

SNIP. SNIP.

Cutting those toxic, love addicted, ties.

JP