never going to....

So I had a conversation with S Sunday. We were talking about some family stuff and I may have (I know) gone on a tangent. But honestly, that tangent has been in me for so long that it was good to just verbalize it.
It was directed at S, it was just about family stuff that she and I have had to make a decision about and it was the culminating conversation.

But have you ever known someone that's never going to something? I mean, we all use the words always and never flippantly, "I never get to work on time" or "I always get stuck at the end of the line" or something like that. But I mean someone that will actually, statistically never something.
My example, it's no use fighting with AB because she is never going to think she's wrong. Her main goal in life is to make us feel less, unworthy, and selfish. She is never going to have an epiphany that says, "OH, damn. I sort of messed that up, I was wrong"
It's just never going to happen.
It does not matter how much money it costs her.
It does not matter how negatively it affects her health.
She will fight until her last breath to make sure that other people are as angry and bitter as she is. She will want to ensure that we're as hateful as she is.
So many other things I could say but I really just want to stop.

I do not want to be like her.
If (as a believer) Jesus is the person I look to on how to be. This woman and her mother are who I look to on how NOT to be. They are my examples of who I never want to be.
The mother, I've pretty much moved on from that. The father, it still floats up and punches me in the face sometimes, this idea that all that was good and righteous about his was a complete and total lie. But her.
The manipulation. The condescension. The complete disregard for anything that she couldn't control. The way she would look right through me unless there was a way she could utilize me in some sick twisted scheme to try to further annihilate my mom.

Sometimes when I pray I ask God to help me hate her a little less.
Strong statement eh?
I have to forgive this woman every day of my life. I have to be constantly vigilant that I don't focus to much on what has occurred and until Sunday could have still possibly occurred because otherwise I feel myself sliding into this vat of yuck that makes me see blindingly white hot rage towards her.

Should I look at it? Pick at it? Would picking at the semi-healed wounds really make it heal faster? Is this all really avoidance, or is it my way of dealing?
I have such a history of burying my head and avoiding things until years and years (and sometimes years) pass that I second guess my ability to truly move past things.
I had a therapist (yes I know HOW psychological of me) tell me once that if something is still bothering me then I obviously haven't gotten over it so I should feel completely justified in bringing it up as much as I need to to get over it.

I'm no longer sure that's right.
Somethings, they're better left buried, or at the very least somethings are better left dealt with in the privacy of your own prayers.
Slowly and surely these last 5 years I've been allowing God (ha, allowing God, as if he isn't GOD) to clean out these pits in my heart. One by one they're truly beginning to heal and be sealed shut forever through his grace and forgiveness.

This one. This woman and the wounds she has inflicted in the oldest parts of me are seemingly one of the last few wounds that were almost through and throughs.
There are days that it hurts so much I can't really look the pain in the face. There are days that I'm not sure I'm brave enough, strong enough, to overcome the long line of bitterness this woman and her mother attempted to instill.

But each day I wake up and I try to bet more like Jesus and less like these women.
Each day it gets a little better.
Better still now that this is settled.