With friends like these...

In a mid-January post, I complained how the Effing Ex was lining up friends like votes in Congress, determined to pass her "I am the victim here" decree (just look at the tally!), but as I read some of the emails her friends (and mutual friends) send me, Julie is wrong to count many of these people as friends, or maybe they're as much friends to her as she is to them. You judge:

One of her oldest friends, who's known us both from the time we first met, said she's resisting the temptation to say “I told you so,” even though she cautioned me then about Julie’s lack of compassion.

Yes, I warned you about Julie, but I don't think I can take credit for anticipating she
would turn into such a bitch. I, too, believe that physical health is very
closely linked to mental and spiritual well-being and I am horrified that
Julie is not backing off and letting you focus on healing and living your
life.

A mutual friend wrote after an angry outburst on my part:

Julie is a broken, angry person who suppresses her rage and channels it elsewhere in passive, less overt ways. She is just as angry as you are but she doesn't have a 'health condition' that people can blame it on. Somehow she keeps it all pent up inside. You, on the other hand, wear your emotions on your sleeve, which in our society is always more difficult for all to handle, it makes you more vulnerable but it also makes you more open to love and joy. Therefore you are more alive than she will ever be. She is George Bush, you are much closer to Obama (though Obama would not send his kids to (private school name censored here)!).

George Bush?!

Bush because he is the epitome of a person who is soulless and has
used his soullessness- the way he treats people, negates their own
sense of self by naming them with idiotic nicknames without care, does not
integrate the other's experiences and ideas into his own belief system and
decision-making processes; in short, his lack of conscious and conscience:
Julie.

A former co-worker of Julie’s minced no words:

I'm appalled and shocked by Julie's cruelty and greed. Shocked. (I wonder if the angst of this relationship has been a tipping point for your health's resilience.) And I thought X’s divorce from that awful woman set a record. You wonder that Julie doesn't want to move on with her life. She needs to let go of your assets, take what she has and do something with it. This is criminal, and I abhor that she (and her lawyer) are thinking they can get away with what they’re doing.

And a subject of one of her (typically kiss-ass) journalistic profiles urged me:
“Get it over with. Life is too precious to waste on (particularly nasty expletive deleted) women like Julie.”

Finally, from one of our first friends we made as a couple:
“You'd think that Julie had a shred of compassion or dignity or something and just let you both move on.”


You'd think. But I'm not the one who needs to get it over with and move on; I wish one of these friends would give her this advice instead of sending it to me about her. In fairness I'm sure her family and friends have said similar things about me: indeed, one of her sisters accidentally bcc'd me on one diatribe in which she lamented how "unsupportive" I'd been, even though I was the one with brain cancer, Julie was unemployed and fully supported by me (both financially and as career cheerleader), but still unable to spare an ounce of compassion. Guess I could've done more. Like the shopping and the cooking? Nah, did all that. Take care of the boys and walk the dog every night? Nah, did that, too. Pay all the bills and pick up the tabs for vacations, meals out, mortgages, maintenance, and incidentals? Check, got that, too. Yeah, I see now what an unsupportive jerk I was.