[wallabee4]

I would source this to A. growing up in a hoarder household with little socialization B. having a severely abusive 1st boyfriend (whom I saw as the escape at least from hoarder) for 11 long years, But I am, by golly, almost 50 years old and I no longer want those old pains to affect me. Yet I see that it does.

I am like a dog with a bone when it comes to righting whatever I see as an injustice, I think, really because nothing/no one ever helped me when I was a kid in that house or tortured by my abuser. Both times I had to wage a many year struggle more or less to stay alive and 'win' by escaping 'someday' Both successful escapes physically, but I'm thinking not so much mentally...

I definitely behave in such a way as to not consider the social backlash I have no social sense, I suppose.

I alienated myself in our first neighborhood by reporting a local child molestor (for a friend who was the mom of victim but scared daughter-in-law of the abuser.) She has thanked me so many times over and yet must stay silent to her family that she was the one who asked me to report it. Still, I was the one who ended up sacrificing/being ostracized, as much of the neighborhood was related to molestor and didn't appreciate the report and subsequent (yea!) jail term. For what? It wasn't my kid (although it could have been, the wife of molestor had offered to babysit) I couldn't walk away. I couldn't self-preserve. I couldn't let it be. I also couldn't figure out how to do the right thing and also preserve my social standing. Nor did I care much.

But now my kids are older and I don't want Mom's lack of social game playing to affect them. Yet it has.

I somewhat alienated us in our new neighborhood by confronting our neighbors directly about their kids stealing several neighbor's mail (I'd seen the kids and later heard from Uncle that they stole mail looking for DVDs to try to find dirty ones as he'd caught them years before watching them in a vacant vacation cabin they'd broken into) I couldn't believe he hadn't done anything 'years before' to put a stop to it. I confronted parents and insisted they pay for the concrete base for a free post office security mailbox for the neighborhood. They did, but now none of the many related neighborhood kids will play with my kids. My kids do in fact side with Mom on this one as another girl stole an IPOD from my daughter's room on a play date (months later returned it, saying her sister had taken it, whereas her sister hadn't been here when it went missing) and my kids don't want to be friends with thieves. They see Mom's wisdom here. But I'm not sure it is correct wisdom. As it ends up socially ostracizing us all. Frequently.

I GTE that no one likes being held accountable. I GET that few people ever hold others truly accountable, for self-preservation reasons. What I don't GET is HOW do I GET self-preservation to be part of my own make up?

Give me what my choice is here. Do I just ignore this and suffer the thefts to stay friends with neighbors? (evidently what everyone here did before we moved in)

As it is now I face a bully who has devastated my kids. She gets away with absolutely everything she has done. She saw me in the store the other day and called me a swear word swear word swear word with no provocation. I'd simply passed her in an aisle. She orchestrated legal proceedings via a BFF who filed false charges against my husband (it was thankfully quickly shown up as false). She helped sever a dear friendship both my kids and I had with an elderly woman, her grandma (my kids considered woman their 'adopted' grandma). And yet, I feel I am the cause of it all, ultimately because I stood up to hold her accountable at the outset. (And poor grandma had, too, followed my lead and that's what led to grandma severing our friendship to self-preserve on the backlash of her standing up for herself) And this is small town and juvenile where they post all sorts of lies on Facebook about us (just like you might hear going on in Junior High) and the gossip mill runs rampant. My husband is cheating. We have vile sexually transmitted diseases. We are liars. We belong in padded rooms, etc.

I thought I'd reached some possible HOPE in a very great lawyer took our case of defamation/slander on contingency. Then after a closer look see lawyer advised we drop it as lawyer predicts it would get much worse community wise than it is now and it's simply not worth it. And I know lawyer is correct. I know the potential for disaster, especially for my kids.

But I think my brain wants to be able to (figuratively) shoot and kill my abusive boyfriend and suffering the consequences wouldn't bother me as long as he was dead. So in everything I fight, I probably go too far and now I see how I have taken my husband and kids along for the ride. I probably don't self-preserve well (or at all) but I'll be darmed anyone hurts my kids (including me)

I don't want to feel this way. I want to just let stuff roll off me, walk away and not see it, not be bothered by conscience, protect my kids (from me) and not then worry I am teaching my kids the wrong thing

What, mentally, do I need to replace my thoughts and feelings with to change my life outlook? To stop wanting to fight every injustice I see (to the death). To not constantly question how lousy of a person I must be as I literally see everything as saving the Jews from the holocaust (that comes to me as my father and uncles were right in the thick of things in WWII). Crazy, yes, I know.

HELP!