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Grace seeks sanctuary

Monthly Archives: April 2015

I don’t know much, but I know Crystal Gayle!

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Graceinspades in Abuse, Chaos, Cruelty, Daddy, Darlene Higgins, family, Fears, Narcissistic mother, Narcissists suck, Parental Alienation Syndrome, RANT, Sociopath Mother, Sociopathic games, Survivor, Words to a Sociopath

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8 tracks, adultery, child abuse, Darlene Higgins, narcissists

 

Someone might wonder how a woman around my age could know every Chrystal Gayle song ever written . I’m actually too young to know every lyric, beat, stanza, and song title of any of her songs, much less every  single one by heart, by cold dark middle-of-the-night memory….

On a dark night in 1977 or 78, I sat in the plush back seat of my mother’s huge  new fancy red and white Cadillac my step dad had recently bought for her, in the pitch black of night, with my older sister sitting to my left,, listening to this 8-track play over and over and over…and over… And over again…. While waiting for my mother who was busy sitting in a car ahead of us in a strange driveway in a strange man’s car for hours upon hours. Of course as a child, one doesn’t question why we children had to sit in a car for hours like that in the middle of the night while our mother begged and pleaded, manipulated and seduced a strange man in the  driveway of his house: a house, I’m fairly certain, he lived in with his wife and children …

This, coming after yet another huge argument between my step dad and mother earlier this same night, where mother’s adoring new-ish husband (of three) pleaded with her not to go and then ultimately pleaded with her not to take us with her where she was headed (to chase down her married lover who had a wife and young children of his own).

I’ll never forget how odd it felt hearing my strong, confident, hard non-stop working , quiet-type step dad beg.  And not just to beg at all, but to actually beg his wife, 25 years younger than he, to at least leave her children with him for the night while she ran around late into a dark night on a school night chasing another married man .

I was in the 3rd grade in Mr. DeVore’s class’s at Pike Elementary School in Cambridge, Ohio.  I loved school and I loved Mr. DeVore!! He was my favorite teacher so far! He had 2 daughters of his own and he was such a kind and gentle man, I often imagined he must be married to a beautiful, soft, loving woman with whom he had two very fortunate girls around my age who were probably loved every day by both of their parents. I imagined how they probably played games, laughed, learned cool stuff even at home, and got to have both their parents love them every day  and kiss them good night every night .

As I sat in the pitch black of night in mother’s fancy new car, after another huge ugly and sad fight with the man my mother had left my own daddy for only a few years earlier, while my mother left him earlier with the same sad, defeated look I’d seen years earlier on my own daddy’s face, I worried about getting to bed in time for school with Mr. DeVore in the morning. I thought about where Mr. DeVore’s two girls must be right that very same minute…safely tucked in their own beds after goodnight kisses from their real mom and real dad, sleeping peacefully until school time.

…while I was listening to Chrysyal Gayle sing the same songs over and over and over and over…

Why have you left the one you left me for? Has she heard, like me, that slammin door? Did you leave for good or just get bo-orr-orrred? Why have you left the one you left me for?

I can quote every song from that night because I spent hours sitting in darkness in a car alone with my 9 year old sister listening to these songs play so many times I lost count. This particular song stuck in my mind because my mother had just this night left the man she left my daddy for. Or so I thought after the fight and her sitting for hours in another car all night long while we waited for her and while my step dad Jim sat at home worried, sad, defeated, and had even begged mother to leave the kids at home for the night; at home , with our second dad after she’d already thrown away our first daddy too. And like our first daddy, this one had asked he if we could stay with him too. And once again, she had said no.

This time, I hadn’t been asked what I wanted or who I wanted to spend the night with. And I never opened my mouth to say I wanted to stay and sleep in my own bed with Mr. Bananas, my favorite mini stuffed monkey, to go to sleep and then to Mr. DeVore’s class in the morning that I loved so much to go to every day.  I was too scared of mothers furiously angry screaming and Jim’s begging… Even at 7, I knew and remembered this very scene all too well, Just like my first memories of life at all with my daddy and she. I knew better than to open my mouth at all, much less ask to stay with my step dad!  Oh, I knew better than to  say a word or God forbid, ask a question!

So I didn’t say, Mommy where are we going? Mommy, why are we leaving so late at night? Mommy, why is gentle, soft spoken Jim crying and begging you to “at least leave us kids” even though we aren’t really his own kids even? Why are we driving so fast down these old country roads? Why are we sitting alone in a running parked car for hours on end listening to these songs over and over while you sit in a dark car in front of us with a strange man who is not your husband OR my daddy?  I didn’t ask, Mommy will I still get to go to Mr. DeVore’s class tomorrow? Will I sleep in my bed? What time is bed time tonight? Isn’t it way after my bed time? Will I get to hold my favorite stuffed animal Mr. Bananas tonight ? Why was my step-daddy crying ? Will I ever see him again?

I knew better than to ask any one of these questions. And anyway mother wasn’t even in the car to ask them if I’d been brave enough to ever do so .

I got to know Chrystal Gayle really well that night though. And I knew her eyes must be brown like mother’s (not blue like mine) because she kept crooning  over and over and over again,

Don’t it make my brown eyes, don’t it make my brown eyes, don’t it make my brown eyes bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue….

And I really understood how much she, like my mother, must really really hate blue eyes!!! Gosh, she REALLY didn’t want her beautiful brown eyes like mother’s to ever turn blue like mine!! She kept saying that over and over and over.  I quietly wished for brown eyes too, every time the song came back around to play aain and again…and again… I wished for brown eyes like the lady singing this song and my mother and my sister even were lucky enough to have.  I understood then that the prettiest girls in the world must have brown eyes.  Mine were blue.

I didn’t know where I would sleep or when, where my daddy was or if I would see him again , or if I’d ever see Mr. DeVore or Mr. Bananas again… I didn’t know if my step-dad was all alone in the dark still crying in that beautiful house he had built for my mother, his wife  or why I had to sit in this car for so many hours… But I definitely knew Chrystal Gayle did NOT want her brown eyes to ever be blue !

Thanks Mommie Dearest. You and Chystal Gayle were a real source of morals, safety, comfort, and security for me as a young child!

Validation … Or no validation…?

03 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Graceinspades in Cruelty, Death, family, Gratitude, grief, loss, Narcissistic mother, Parental Alienation Syndrome

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child abuse, death, grandma, narcicissts

Up until about a year ago, I believed my maternal side of the family mostly hated me just like my “matriarch” always did.  I don’t know why or how I had that planted firmly in my mind.. They were never mean or cruel to me! Maybe it was the lack of trust or just my depth of general fear of mother…seeing these folks as extensions of her?

What I discovered instead though is a dysfunctional, but definitely loving and caring, part of my family I was never permitted to get very close to or spend much time with growing up. None of them seem to have the evil coursing through their empty hearts that my mother does.

Instead, after several heart to heart chats, I find out that I am not her only victim. Rather she’s had many long before I was even born and many since  she’s ceased acknowledging my existence at all.

My Mammaw (maternal side) passed away from cancer yesterday morning. My mother always said hideously ugly things about her mother and her sister to me growing up (just like she did about my daddy).  Half the time she wasn’t speaking to them which of course meant I wasn’t allowed to see them often or get very close to them. 

Apparently back in 1973 when mother left my daddy for a wealthy man old enough to be her father, my Mammaw testified in court for my dad to get custody of we children; A Shocking choice for such a traditional, deeply Christian  woman from the hills of Eastern Kentucky to think very small children are better off with their father!

My mother hated her for this most of my life,so my visits with Mammaw were rare and sporadic at best. (Out of love for my daddy and the desire to not do take my children’s opportunity to have a grandmother from them, I stupidly didn’t make this same choice as my mother… I have a post somewhere here about that truly ignorant and naive choice which I’ll pay for the rest of my life.)

I recall two deep conversations with my Mammaw . Both were after I was into my teens. Interestingly enough, these chats directly and drastically contradicted the stories my mother told all my life. First, Mammaw said when my sister and I were babies, every time she visited our house, mother was gone and daddy was home alone caring for us. Mother had always said my “no good dad was always drunk and running the streets leaving us alone with her and no food on the table”. Since my daddy was so affectionate and present when I was with him and mother seemed to want to be anywhere but home paying attention to her kids, and often took we kids on her various rendezvous with her lovers cheating on our step father whom she had cheated on our father with before leaving him , mammaw’s story really made sense and tied in better with the fact that she testified against her own daughter for child custody ( in the early 70’s even when most EVERY one firmly believed children belonged with their mothers!)

Many other stories Mammaw told me had these vast contradictions. I won’t share every one of them right now because this post would be longer than I have time to write this morning…

I think my second validation that I wasn’t born  the awful horrible, can’t- do -anything- right-child mother said was when my Mammaw apologized once to me when we were alone. She told me she knew mother hadn’t wanted me and treated me badly and that she’d always prayed for a way to get me away from her even wanting to adopt me herself, but that she knew she probably would never win that battle in those days and then she’d never have gotten to see me at all if she’d tried that. She told me my sister and I weren’t actually my dad’s kids and my dad suspected that but he didn’t care a bit , he chose to love us like his own anyway. She said I was the result of an affair mother had had on my daddy with a tall wealthy blonde man whom she’d hoped would marry her but who refused to. So mother had to play a second child off as my daddy’s. Mammaw said I was the “spittin image” of this man and that this was the real reason mother was so cruel to me because I reminded her of the man she desperately wanted and couldn’t have ( my sister actually looks Asian or Polynesian (weird??!??) and I don’t resemble anyone in my family) .

I cried a lot at the validation that mother’s  cruelty to me all my life wasn’t because I really did just deserve it. I cried to think that my Mammaw didn’t actually believe I was just a horrible child and to realize mother’s cruelty looked just as cruel and undeserving in her grown up eyes as well as my childish ones. I didn’t cry about my daddy though. Somehow I felt certain I DO belong to him no matter what. 

From my maternal side of the family, I’ve learned recently that mother has targeted everyone of them for one reason or another and has been extremely cruel/occasionally nice when it suits her to each of them all their lives in various awful ways as well. 

All these years, I truly believed I was the only person mother hated… When reality is mother hates nearly everyone at one time or another. She hates ANY one she can’t control or ANY one with a differing opinion than she. She also hates anyone who doesn’t go along with her blaming her victims for what she chooses to hurt them with.

Yes, mother hates almost everyone at one point or another. She has done unthinkably cruel things to many people, not just me. This validation almost feels good …except that I have to face the fact that she has done so much to hurt so many on her life. 

I almosr felt better thinking she only hated me. Thinking she only punished me for being so naturally very different from her. But certainly the validation that it isn’t “just that I’m a horrible human being “, but it truly Is just that she is  just a monster through and through is a bit of a relief. 

Although I never got to be as close to my Mammaw as I’d always wanted, I love her very much for her honesty, her utter devotion to Jesus and the Bible, her caring when I believed no one did or could,  and the validation she brought to my heart which gave me my first tiny pieces of hope that I wasn’t just an unlovable, horrible bad seed. 

Thank you for that Mammaw! And your easy giggles and sweet kisses and your chocolate pies which were always my favorite!

RIP Walsie Rose. You will be missed.

  

Death and evil 

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by Graceinspades in Coping, Cruelty, Death, family, grief, loss, Narcissistic mother, Sociopath Mother, Words to a Sociopath

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anger, death, faithless, good bs.evil, grandma, hopeless

it’s an especially awful feeling to be losing a loved one. A beloved woman who is the only pure heart and faithful spirit I have left in this world. 

And it’s particularly horrifying to feel the depth of ugliness of reality when faced with decisions about going to watch her suffer or even going to bury her and say a last goodbye …or protecting myself from that evil that I desperately need to steer clear of. 

I once not so long ago even, believed that when a good and true person died, there was no way evil would or could show up for that. In fact, I wonder if that was the final piece of faith and naïveté I had left in me. 

Now, I understand that evil not only DOES show up when good people die, but evil actually uses your pain to fashion an invisible knife with which to stab you in the heart while you’re suffering the pain of such a loss. 

Evil sees a persons depth of  sadness at loss as an opportunity. Evil can fake feelings and tears while simultaneously fashioning the knife they can’t wait to twist your pain further  into you…further into your soul than you imagined pain could ever reach… Further than you imagined you could ever live through… 

…And way further than anyone would want to live through. 

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