YOU’RE A FUCKING SLUT WHO’S LIED TO ME MY WHOLE LIFE!
These were the last words I ever heard from my amazing beloved 15 year old firstborn and adored daughter before parental alienation syndrome took completely over my life.
It was about 8 days after I buried my father, I’d been lied to non-stop by my estranged mother and sister the entire time while I had attempted to juggle the emotional, mental, and physical shock of this sudden and totally unexpected grave loss. The shock had manifested with mental confusion, emotional agony and had been accompanied by the severe immediate onset of various physical effects.
The nausea had hit first and had not ceased since that initial phone call from my sister who in a very purposeful soft and tender voice informed me my dad had dropped dead 5 hours earlier in Los Angeles, California and continued that gentle hushed dripping compassion tone while informing me of various probate laws she had apparently researched in the 5 hours waiting to inform me my dad had dropped dead.
Quite literally unable to eat, I had been existing on ginger ale and an occasional cracker since that day. Interestingly enough, from the day before his funeral, I had also had sudden back pain so severe, I could not stand up straight and had walked hunched almost in half for 3 days. The hotel shared a parking lot with an medi-center, I had hobbled to the morning of the funeral in desperation for help so I could make it to my dad’s funeral that day. I did make it through the funeral with the assistance of the pain pills the medi-center had prescribed.
At the time, this back pain was confounding. I had never in my life experienced back pain or had back issues. In hindsight, I find it fascinating that those days after arriving in Ohio where we buried my dad, while I was planning the funeral, my children had been spending time with my estranged mother, sister, and ex (my children’s father). I had been excessively grateful to these people for spending this time with my children while I suffered through the physical hell which had settled in as well as the emotional agony of planning my dad’s funeral. The irony is that my back pain set precisely simultaneous to these “helpful” people stabbing me in the back to my children with outrageous lies about me, their mother, as I thanked them graciously every day for helping me by spending quality time with my children.
I had watched Lexi grow more hostile and sarcastic to me each day we were in Ohio and it was hurtful as she had never in her life treated me with such bitter smoldering and random disdain ever in her 15 years. I did not respond in kind to this sudden hatefulness or even acknowledge it, I simply assumed my daughter was rightfully angry at the sudden loss of her grandpa. I had no one to offer me personal support, except my sister’s constant exaggerated over-the-top gentle “kindness” which was actually very thinly veiled manipulation that I grant her sole-executor of our dad’s estate.
I had no one. I was surrounded by only the very people who had abandoned me 13 years earlier and my ex who had mentally abused me and our children and then stole our family home to punish me for not tolerating his cruelty to our children, specifically our youngest Savannah but Lexi hadn’t been totally excluded in that cruelty either.
These three snakes, plus my children, were who surrounded me as I hunch-backed my way through burying my dad. So when Lexi suddenly started treating me with nothing but sneering hostile sarcasm, I did not respond. I assumed she needed a safe place to vent her pain and anger over losing her grandpa and I was more than willing to be her target as long as she needed to be angry.
However, the night she screamed these words, YOU’RE A FUCKING SLUT WHO’S LIED TO ME MY WHOLE LIFE!, I was immediately more confused and discombobulated, but my instincts told me that the suddenly “so very helpful three” had created something pretty nasty in my devastated and vulnerable 15 year-old daughter while I had entrusted them to provide supporting love and compassion to my children while I planned their grandpa’s funeral. None of the “helpful three” had ever provided love, support, or compassion to me, but I had not ever expected them to be willing to take advantage of my hurting and heartbroken children.
So, I learned the hard way how deep their hatred for me really ran. They actually all three hated me enough to literally lie and manipulate my children during this moist vulnerable and painful life crisis. I’ll never forgive myself for being so naive as to not assume they’d grab this opportunity to drench my children in poison. I really should have known better. They’d never shown any level of genuine conscience or authentic sincerity in my entire life. In fact, as far as I had involvement with these “helpful three”, they’d acted as nothing better than greedy, punishing, hateful sociopathic insidiously evil snakes slithering around the wake of our devastation with greedy opportunistic delight.
I own that stupidity. I take responsibility for it completely. None of these three people had ever shown me they were anything but the snakes they were. I don’t know why I assumed grabbing this rare and wonderful time of vulnerability to poison my children with their hate would ever be off-limits. Bit, I did. I suppose I looked at my amazing two daughters, so loving, so wonderful, so hurt by this loss, and never fathomed anyone could hate me enough to want to hurt them. That was just unfathomable.
Oh my, this was intended to be a post about my oldest being a confessed liar and even still, I can’t help but wander off to place the blame where it truly lies. Even as my now adult daughter continues her lies and embraces treating me even worse than the “helpful three” ever did, I can’t bring myself to hold her responsible for this.
Is that more proof of my stupidity? My desperate need to live in denial of sociopaths (the very kind of denial that made this possible at all)? Or is it the depth of a mother’s love and willingness to love and try to protect her children at any personal cost?
I don’t know. And, I know what it is doesn’t matter any more.
A few months ago in a very brief moment of acknowledging I exist, Lexi told me she had been lying to me for years prior to my dad’s death. I guess she grasped this moment of my desperation to have any communication at all with my child, to blow my wounds up and take a nice directed stab deeper into them, claiming our entire relationship (the one I thought we had) had all been nothing but a lie….for years.
When she told me this, it had knocked the wind out of me. I had no idea how to even reply to such a deep and permanent stab. I immediately began sobbing and desperately trying not to let her hear my sobs and make her angry enough to end this communication ,albeit cruel stabs, it was still precious moments of hearing my child’s voice and her acknowledging I exist at all.
Beggars most definitely can’t be choosers, right?
And at this point, the “helpful three” had stolen my family, stolen my future, and stolen my childhood, but I held tightly to the 15 years I’d struggled through raising my children alone. The memory of those precious 15 years of the heart-to-heart mother daughter chats I’d always dreamed of having as a child. The 15 years of wild giggles and belly laughs I’d prayed for sharing with my mother as a child. The studying together and making it fun I’d longed to have as a child. The environment of unconditional love and trust I’d always wished for as a child. The heart-filled memories of desperately learning with my beloved two girls how to mother my children in all the ways I hadn’t ever known, but had dreamed of as a child. In the 6 years since they were poisoned against me, I had held onto this. Sure of only one last thing, these could never be taken from me. They could steal my past, destroy my future, but I would always have those 15 years of truth and happiness (with struggle too, of course) that no one could never ever take from my children and me.
Lo and behold, in one statement, Lexi had taken even this.
So, stifling my sobs for a moment of silence after her claim that our entire relationship had been a lie, I finally very quietly (desperate she not hear my stifled sobbing, creaky begging voice and scream at or hang up on me) pleaded with her, Okay Lexi, may I please ask you something though? Without you getting mad?
Was anything ever true between us? Did I do anything right? Ever? Were you ever actually as happy and full of love for me as you pretended? Was anything ever actually true or good, Lexi?
Of course it was, Momma! I have a million wonderful memories with you that I cherish!
(Still holding back my sobs) Oh, thank God it wasn’t all a lie then… Okay, may I ask you something else without making you mad?
When did it all become a lie? Was our relationship when we lived in our house on Roosevelt which you once claimed was the happiest time of your life and most treasure memories, was that real?
Here, I was desperate to sort through my memories of our life together and needed to know what I could still believe was real because those memories were all I’d held onto for the six years my children had pretended I didn’t exist and made outrageous claims of enduring lifetimes of abuse. All that had kept me going that someday my children would remember the truth, stop the cruelty, and let me back in their lives…
Oh, I dunno Momma… I guess when I was really little? I wasn’t lying when I was little and didn’t know any better…
Okay Lexi. Well, thank you for being honest and not getting mad at me for asking. I’m sorry you felt you had to lie to me most of your life. I’m sorry we didn’t actually have the relationship I thought we had. I’m sorry my best efforts to give you everything I didn’t have and never knew fell so drastically short. I truly never knew. I truly believed we had a wonderful open and honest, loving relationship. I don’t know why you felt the need to start lying to me. That’s exactly the opposite of what I’d tried to create and what I thought I’d done well. I wish I’d known how to do it right. I wish I’d known you felt this way. I’d have done anything in my power to fix it, but I could never fix something I wasn’t even aware of. I’m sorry. I guess I should have just known. I didn’t though. I really didn’t know, Lexi. I really thought we were happy, we were close, and we were honest. I was literally clueless and I’m so sad because if only I’d known… I would have done anything. Anything. This was my only goal in life from the day I knew you were growing in my body. I would have done anything. Anything for you.
At this point, I was openly sobbing and Lexi , clearly bored and possibly frustrated, had to go.
After we hung up, devastated and in utter shock and confusion, my whole body shaking, I, a grown woman who had endured gang rapes, many punches to the face, being strangled until I passed out, being slapped, having my face shoved into broken glass, being betrayed, a massive stroke, having my home stolen, being totally abandoned, and overcome the lifelong confusing hatred of my own mother…. I just sobbed and wailed like an infant, staring at my phone in disbelief.
I suppose it’s better to know the truth, right? As deeply as it stabs, as much as it doesn’t make any more sense than all the lies, as much as it goes against my every memory of reality, as much as it feels like it’s going to kill me with the worst pain I’ve ever known, it’s better to know the truth, I suppose….
In just one sentence, my beloved child, had literally severed my last lifeline. Now, even my most treasured memories were poisoned and destroyed, labeled as nothing but more lies and betrayals, from the one of two people in the world I loved and trusted most; I’d have done (and did do) anything for.
The last thread of hope ripped away so nonchalantly, with as much care and concern and deliberation as a snake devouring its unknowing prey.
This is my beloved child. This is my own heart outside my body. This is the person I would take a bullet for, would give my dreams up for, would willingly give my last crumb, my last cent, my life, my love, my world. This is she.
She also needed to take my last hope, my last memory of truth and happiness. She’d had to have that too. Nothing I’d ever had to give was good enough for her anyway. Nothing I’d ever striven to give her even had come close to being good enough. I would do anything for this child of mine. Anything.
Why did this hurt and shock me so much? This was, quite literally, exactly the only “love” I’d ever been shown in my entire life except by my dead dad. It’s exactly the way I’d always been “loved”.
So, I gave it to her. And said, thank you.
ADELE – ‘Make You Feel My Love’
Grace seeks sanctuary 