The True Face of Evil

Tags

abuse, children, Conscience, evil, God, Mercy, Momma, narcissists, prayer, rape, sexual assault, sociopath

My precious Angel Toes and me circa 2002

In 2001, after finally successfully freeing myself from my children’s father, I was newly married to a decent and handsome man. A man who struggled with his own demons like we all do, but who innately was good st heart who carried the burden of conscience even when he made mistakes or bad choices. Although I divorced him and he made some choices that really hurt me, I could never hate this man. I believe in my heart, he never had the intention of hurting me or anyone nor did he receive pleasure or joy at knowing he had. 

This is a remarkable reflection for me and led me to a stark realization of bad versus evil.  I have certainly made bad choices myself… I have a great many regrets and things I would choose differently in hindsight if I had that option.

I was raped at gunpoint in 2002 while walking to the little store close to my house. Without getting into the crude details of that experience, I’ve recalled one very poignant moment within that over and over throughout the past 14 years since it happened. 

I was scared and confused when this man pointed a gun at me and instructed me to walk quietly a few yards to the baseball dugout in the park I was strolling through. All that flashed through my mind in those moments of terror  were me 4 and 6 year old daughters faces; their tiny little hands and arms reaching for me, their beautiful eyes looking up at me as I read them bedtime stories each night, and their  little voices saying, I love you, Momma“.  All I feared was a flash of their lives without their momma and what that might look like for them. Of course I wasn’t the perfect momma by any means…. but they were loved beyond reason and treasured with my whole soul and I would without hesitation die protecting them from pain or harm. So although I’ve always been very critical of my imperfections and my biggest daily prayer was to keep learning to be better and better every day, if not for the world and myself, at least for them, my gifts from God whom had entrusted me to be the best mother to them I knew how in spite of my imperfections as a human being. 

I did not care in the moment of a gun pointed to my head of dying, I did not think of my husband, I did not think about my job, or even my beloved daddy. The only picture and thought in my head was of those precious, perfect babies. 

So when we had walked to the dugout I pleaded with this man only one thing, I have two babies at home who need me. I’ll do anything you say but please don’t take me from my babies.  He did not respond to these words, he demanded I remove my pants.  

I did as I was told and only then did anything but my children flash through my mind. I had the fear  of him being inside my body, my husband, and my wedding vows and quickly wondered to myself if this would be considered a violation of my sacred vows. I wondered if my husband would ever make love to me the same again or see me in the same light after another man had been inside my body. Strangely enough, this was a brief thought as I was taking off my pants and my panties, standing vulnerable in the outdoors even though somewhat hidden inside the baseball dugout. 

As the man came closer to my body, pulling his pants down, my thoughts went immediately back to my children’s faces, voices, hands, and little toes I loved so much to kiss after their baths and when I tucked them in at night.  I lost all sight of my husband’s feelings or broken vows and thought only of their lives and futures without a momma. I pictured their little toes growing as time went on and easing into adult shoes rather than the light-up sneakers or tiny little sandals they currently wore. I wondered if anyone would think to kiss their “angel toes” after I was gone and I wondered why I’d never told anyone of our nightly “angel toes” kiss-fest so that their papa or their daddy or whoever would be tucking them in from now on, would know this was an important nightly event  to my children.  Angel toes matter !!!! Why hadn’t I told anyone about this important routine?!?!!?? 

This is when I started pleading out loud to God and to this man pushing himself up against my half naked body. I don’t know where the words came from even, but I pleaded, God, where are you? Then, Do you even believe in God? My children have angel toes! 

I looked in this man’s eyes as I said those words. And I saw a flash of recognition… or conscience.. or consequence… I really can’t know what it was, but I saw it and I believe it was his conscience. I’ll never know why this man chose to pull a gun on me to rape and rob me, but I will never believe this man is evil. I have seen evil and it has no conscience. I clearly saw a flash of conscience in his eyes right then. He told me to shut up. He told me to turn around. But it obviously affected him and it certainly ceased his momentum of the moment as it seemed he could no longer continue while I looked in his face. 

I turned around as he demanded. He then roughly said he would just give it to me in the ass then. But something had changed… something I can’t define exactly. His voice and his words were still gruff and cruel and his hands on my arms were still harsh but something had changed. Almost as though he had lost his motivation, whatever it had been. 

This man, a rapist and robber, had a conscience. I would swear to it. The energy changed completely after those last words I’d said and after I turned around, it was as though his heart was no longer in it even though his words remained in control and demanding to finish this one way or another. 

This is the defining difference between bad and evil. I have looked in the eyes of a narcissist as I pleaded for mercy or compassion. I have had my heart bleeding and aching in pain and misery as I begged my ex or my mother in the past and there was zero moments of conscience or regard of any kind. When they are destroying pieces of your heart and soul and spirit, their eyes are like snake eyes. Flat, cold, and sinister… void and empty of any feeling, compassion, or conscience. I may as well have been pleading with a snake not to bite me or to apologize for biting me after the fact. 

In fact, in my experience, narcopaths actually seem encouraged when I’ve plead for mercy, as though that has given them the ultimate pleasure of total control. In that moment of pleading for mercy, they know without a shadow of a doubt, that they are/have inflicted intense damage and have absolute control over the well being of your mind and soul.  There is no moment of pause. Begging for mercy motivates and encourages them by handing them complete control. 

I have many years spent with my mother and the father of my children and can recount so many times my shaken heart was desperate for them to stop inflicting pain; moments of literal and utter desperation where I looked in their eyes begging for mercy or even just a moment of compassionate reprieve from whatever their destruction of that moment was.

Never once did any flash of recognition or conscience come to their eyes or did they respond to my pleas with even a second’s pause or thought of the pain they were inflicting, either physical, mental, or emotional pain . They were energized to continue inflicting pain by my pathetic, weak pleadings for reprieve or understanding or compassion. Never before their acts nor after in the aftermath of their acts. 

Never once.  Unlike a rapist… 

Not. One. Single. Time.

 That is the true face of evil. 

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Real Life Monsters

Tags

abuse, Cruelty, Narcissistic Abuse, parental alienation, rape, Real monsters, torture

My monsters and murderers did not come to me wielding axes, brandishing revolvers, or wildly grasping shiny blades of gutting destruction. 

No, I was not so lucky. 

My assassins arrived with big smiles masking snide smirks and as time slowly passed, the effort to mask the sneers were less and less. The mask became an unnecessary effort as I ceased to understand the difference between a heartwarming smile and a sadistic snake-like sneer of sinister inner satisfaction at my growing confusion and chronic futile attempts to see the mask again… the smiley mask I mistook for  reality… to find a way to perform the same circus act (whatever it had been?!) that I had unknowingly performed in the beginning to cause them to grace me with that smile they’d presented at the start. 

The man who approached me for a comforting hug and pulled a pistol out of his pants saying, ” you’re not going to scream are you ?” was far more compassionate than my monsters. He ripped his mask off in seconds and I knew exactly who he was and he told me specifically what he demanded.

I would choose being raped and robbed with a gun pointed at my head all day long over my lifelong monsters. Mr. Rapist released me when he was finished.  Other than a few lingering occasional nightmares and anxiety attacks when I see people in hooded sweatshirts, Mr. Rapist didn’t prolong the torture nor send it out in decades of ripples washing out to every aspect of my life. His hell was fast and furious and the confusion faded over time. Mr. Rapist destroyed a tiny piece of my soul. 

My insidious monsters came straight to my door as life, spirit, and soul demons intent on sucking every last piece of joy I had known or could have ever known in my future. They left a desolate wake of barren lands where once there were lush waters of hope and green trees of faith. They did not release me until their burning destruction was complete and final. And I opened the door to them. 

This is what true monsters are. This is the after effect of dancing with the devil of narcissistic personality disorder; the Trojan horse blasting into every nook and crevice of your life, you love, your joy, and your spirit with furious fires of destruction that don’t stop until it’s cleared every last root of love and hope for the future. 

Yeah, I’d most definitely choose Mr. Rapist’s brand of hell over the sadistic narcissistic monsters any day. 

Force it!

Tags

Chaos, control, God, Law of Attraction, survivors, theories, Universe

I often wonder how the universe works it all? There are so many phrases to describe the tendency for the universe/world/God/random events to bombard us all at once with sheer shit. When it rains, it pours. The straw that broke the camel’s back. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. They say God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, God must think I’m badass./. The list goes on…

Why is this? Why does it seem to come in sudden torrents rather than spread out sprinkles interlaced with sunny dry spots to give us time to regroup? If God is in charge, it seems He might offer a gentler approach to life lessons (if these are even life lessons?). If God is NOT in charge, it would seem sheerly by the odds alone, these humongous boulders thrown at a person would naturally be spaced out among the lovely flowers being tossed in our hair. At the least a 50/50, right? Like a pattern of flower, boulder, flower, boulder, flower, boulder. Or maybe even more random, but still more evenly matched like flower, flower, boulder, boulder. flower, boulder, etc.
I’m no mathematician, so I don’t have a deep grasp of odds and averages, statistics and ratios, but, it DOES seem the natural balance of things would average out. Why on earth would it ever be like this: Woman finds out husband is cheating, husband leaves woman for affair, woman finds out she has cancer, woman’s father passes away unexpectedly, woman is now going through a divorce, woman breaks down, woman loses job. Is it just a snowball effect of the gravity of life events? Is it the Law of Attraction where the first negative struggle creates negative energy that temporarily takes over the woman’s mind/life and draws more to it? Is it that simple? If so, I’d think the Law of Attraction actively could counteract itself if the woman in this scenario began to refuse to take on the negatives of her situation and thus, would stop that gravitational snowball from continuing to drag her down the mountain of woes by her hair.
I’ve watched The Secret. It was so convincing that I really believed it. I did a little test run and it actually seemed to work. I was determined to be and think positive, thus negating all the yukky that seemed to have been drawn to me throughout my life. The more positive I insisted on being/forcing myself to think regardless of reality, the more nothing changed really. Nothing changed except that I got much more disappointed in the negative that kept coming at me in spite of my positive thinking and hopeful beyond reality outlook…just more disappointed than I would have been otherwise had I not convinced myself that I could actually somehow control random events in my life! 

Now, I’m feeling like I somehow brought that rape onto myself by not being positive enough; validating that if I’d tried even harder to be perfect for mother, maybe she would have loved me; if I’d been more “positive” when (before or after!?) my ex cheated, lied, and abused me, I could have stopped that series of events … On and on and on… 

I’m all for positive thinking, I really do see how it benefits most and seeing the glass half full rarely hurts anyone or makes things worse, but I also believe there’s a cap on how far one can go with that. We need to be mindful of how much responsibility we place on people for other people’s random behaviors and moods, partlicularly for survivors. 

No one needs to believe they created their own cancer, stroke, abuse, financial ruin, or  rape because they “invited” it in to themselves by struggling to stay positive and full of faith in the world even as it showers down painful chaos out of the blue! And especially not after the fact!!

Recognizing Real Life Superhero’s

Gifted people are not those that can act and are good at sports. It is those sensitive, caring, loving people who have been given hate, pain, and abuse their whole lives. Yet they still return with love for the world. They hold the key. Currently how our society is set up, is we treat the most caring sensitive souls like garbage. The ones who could save humanity are in psych wards, detox facilities, and treatment centers. Until we learn to embrace these gifted souls, our problems will continue to mount and destroy us. We embrace the wrong things and this is the result. We are killing them off. When they become extinct, we will all go away. It can be cured. The solution is simple. Love. Find an addict or someone with “mental illness” and give them pure love today. It will change the world. You won’t see the results, but it will This picture is my cousin Jon tonight. This is what an accidental drug overdose looks like. He is on a respirator right now. He is not a celebrity, so people won’t notice. But this happens to people every day and it is an epidemic. As a child he was tortured and abused. His stepmother didn’t want him so he was treated that way. His father wanted his wife to be happy so he was beaten and abused. Then at 16 everyone said he was “crazy.” He came to live with us and became my hero. He loved us and saved us. If Jon makes it out of this, he may never speak to me again or kill me. But at least he will be alive. This is Jons story.

via Wanted: Superhero for my Children! — takingthemaskoff

Trauma Therapy

Tags

Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Daddy, depression, desperation, estranged, fear, hopes, loveless, Mother, nostalgia, parent issues, Therapy, trauma, unacceptable

I fell deeper into that pit of despair a few weeks ago when my daughter reached out to me because her boyfriend had roughed her up.  Previously, I had thought I had already hit the bottom of that pitiful pit.  True to my inability to fully accept that it can always get worse (which I never seem able to let penetrate my mind), I’d enjoyed (for lack of a better word) the belief and feeling that at least I had hit the bottom of the misery pit.  That provides some relief in itself.  As I lie there on that cold hard scratchy floor from several different drops lower and lower over the years, I breathed a sigh of relief that although it was miserable and I was confused and terrorized from the various drops, I could breathe that I was, at last, on the actual bottom.  There could be no more sudden shocks as that floor disintegrated and I fell another story or two or twelve down the pit.

What a false sense of desperate relief!  More was to come as my daughter dangled the carrot of hope in my face…inches from my mouth…so close my mouth watered at the thought that I might actually get to taste this carrot of her love again.

As I scrambled, crawled, and begged for the dangling carrot of my daughters love and presence, I stumbled upon a thin part of the floor of my misery which broke it open.  I tumbled further down the Rabbit Hole of despair and confused bewilderment.

For several days, I simply plotted my death.  Desperate for the final solution to end this pain and prevent the possibility of more carrot dangling in the future, I had the answer, but not the sure-proof means and this is one thing in my life I simply cannot allow failure.

Without the means, I reached out for help.  I started taking antidepressants again after nearly a year free of them and I went to a local domestic violence shelter that provides free counseling. It took some pleading and finagling to talk them out of calling an ambulance to have me scurried to the hospital and admitted, but I did it!  In exchange, I agreed to try counseling (sigh….again).

Today will be my 2nd appointment.  My task given at session #1 was to find the one trauma point from which to begin this trauma treatment: a pivotal point, if you will.

In terror as though my life depends on it (no pun intended), my brain has scrambled for a week trying to select the point from which to begin this process.  It’s as though I have one bullet to hit the moving target.

Was it when my daddy went on vacation and only his dead body returned?

Was it when I was gang raped at 17?  Or raped at gunpoint again later at 31?

Was it from the beginning, any number of soul-injustices and spirit-murders I endured at her hand in my first 26 years of life?

Was it when my ex abused me mentally, emotionally and physically while I carried our first child only to add more abuse after she was born?  Or when he cheated over and over and then yelled at me for asking questions?  Was it when he spit on me and our infant daughter when I asked him what a receipt was for when I was reconciling our checking account?  Was it that moment I held her nursing and he looked me cold in the eye and said, “I’m on a downward spiral.  You and Lexi can come along or get the fuck out?”

Was it the moment my beloved oldest child attacked me verbally after my dad died and fabricated the ugliest lies I could imagine to set me up for her plan with my ex and my mother to destroy me once and for all?

Was it when I lost the only man I’d ever loved other than my father and yet he strung me along for years afterward declaring his undying can’t-live-without-you-love until I’d believe him finally and then he’d take it back again?

Was it when I was molested by the janitor at my elementary school? Or when my babysitter Marcy molested me repeatedly a few years later, but I didn’t understand it was molestation because she was a female?

Was it when I trusted my ex enough to move our children across the country to make his life and relationship with his children easier only to watch him break their hearts in the very ways I thought I had protected them from?

Or when he stole our home and tried to make us homeless by threatening my dad not to help us to punish me for not accepting him breaking our children’s hearts every day?  Was it when I listened to my children sob in depths I had never before had to sit helplessly and watch over this cruelty from their dad?  My heart ripping and the first time I felt rage in my life?

Was it when I was 2 months pregnant with my youngest daughter and suffered a massive stroke and told I’d never walk or work a job again on my own or be able to raise my babies on our own?  Being too ashamed to take a shit because I was mortified at the thought of someone having to wipe my ass for me at 28 years old?  Or that the prognosis given at the time destroyed my every idea of being a momma as well as lynched my independence and autonomy?

Was it two years ago when I spent 40 thousand dollars in court pleading my ex for a visit with the children I had raised alone for 15 years only to be granted the right , fly across the country, and was told (in so many words) by my oldest and youngest to fuck off because they changed their mind when I brought up a promise Lexi had made to my dad, her papa, about piercing her face?

When was the pivotal point of trauma from which I haven’t returned or recovered?

 

 

 

 

Where the f*ck is it anyway?

Tags

Abuse by proxy, child abuse, Cruelty, Darlene Higgins, Domestic violence, gaslighting, heartless, Lies, Malignant Narcissism, manipulation, Mark DeDeaux, monsters, narcissists, parental alienation, Predatory, Sick Fucks, Thieves, triangulation

To whom it may concern:

I’m somehow to try to understand that the people who have destroyed my life, my mother, Darlene Higgins, and my children’s father, Mark DeDeaux, are hurt and angry at the destruction they allege I created in their lives.

Apparently, these people of whom I have zero (read zilch, nada) recollection of having done any damage or inflicted any pain upon were able to convince my children of what a horrible, awful, undeserving, worthless human being I am.

I haven’t seen either suffer or lose material property, or finances, loved ones, jobs, or their dignity at my hand.  I’ve not been at all aware of this “destruction” which has caused their hate for me.  Hate so big that they relentlessly poisoned my children against me, apparently because of the awful things I’d done to them?  These things I’m totally unaware of and can’t find a single memory of…

I’ve wanted to understand the hate, the burning desire to punish, the massive cruelty…  God, I’ve wanted to understand.

Being that I’m that person who once got angry at a virtual stranger and merely said ugly words to her… and still carried the memory, guilt, and remorse for those words 20 years later.  Being that girl who accidentally ran across this virtual stranger twenty years later and immediately apologized for this misdeed I enacted upon her so many years earlier.  I apologized to a woman who didn’t even recall what I had said, so futile and apparently non-damaging was this “heinous abuse” I heaped upon her of which the guilt I carried twenty years later still.  I guess the “cruelest” I ever intentionally was, was not only enough to cause all those years of remorse and regret inside me, but not even close to enough for this woman to even recall.  It is flabbergasting to try to wrap my head around the awful things I must have done to my mother and my ex to make them both hate me enough to destroy me.  How can I not recall what I did?

I recall being a child.  A desperate for love, desperate to please, pathetic for approval little girl.  I remember that.  I remember praying every night that God would show me how to earn and deserve my mother’s love. I remember not getting any answers and I remember trying everything my little mind could think of :  I just had to be perfect.  And after all, my mother was perfect in my eyes, so I could be perfect too, right?  I came from the goddess of perfection so if I tried hard enough and never quit trying to be pretty, funny, smart, polite, obedient, loving, sweet, and deserving, I could get her love. I remember that not working.  I remember lying to protect myself from punishment and getting in big trouble.  I remember telling the truth because my mother “hated liars” and still getting in big trouble.  I remember trying to be pretty and getting in trouble.  I remember trying to be intelligent and getting in trouble.  I remember not lying for her when she cheated on her husband and getting in trouble.  I remember painting my nails and getting in trouble.  I remember shaving my hairy  legs like every one else in my gym class did and getting in trouble.  I remember forgiving my friend for being mean to me and getting in trouble.  I remember sticking up for myself with others and getting in trouble.  I remember not sticking up for myself to others and getting in trouble.  I remember being noisy no matter how hard I was trying to be quiet and getting in trouble.  I remember trying harder to be even quieter and still getting in trouble.  I remember missing my daddy and getting in trouble.  I remember a babysitter giving me a piggy back ride and getting in trouble.  I remember writing my aunt a letter telling her how much I missed her and getting in trouble.

I also remember sneaking to use the phone to talk to friends and getting in trouble.  I remember sneaking boys over on Halloween to play Atari and getting in trouble.  I remember having vaginal discharge in my panties before my period and getting in trouble.   I remember trying to overdose on alcohol and getting in trouble.  I remember having people over when mother was out of town and getting in trouble.  I remember getting a C in geometry and getting in trouble.  I remember asking for help with my math homework and getting in trouble.

I remember using the wrong tone of voice and getting in trouble.  I remember having the wrong look on my face and getting in trouble.  I remember defending my sister and getting in trouble.  I remember not defending my sister and getting in trouble.

I remember letting my first boyfriend beat me and getting in trouble.  I remember smoking cigarettes and getting in trouble.  I remember not eating for 12 days while pregnant and being told to “go get on welfare”  I remember caring about the father of my child and getting in trouble.  I remember getting sick because I was pregnant again by the same man and getting in trouble. I remember wanting to have the same last name as my two children and getting in trouble.  I remember almost dying and getting in trouble.  I remember the psychiatrist who was supposed to tell me I was worthless defending me and telling mother she had serious parenting and mental illness issues and getting in trouble.

I’m not sure what I’ve forgotten.  I’m truly clueless as to which of these awful things I did as a child made me deserve hate and cruelty; made me deserve to have my whole world ripped from me; or made me deserve to take the only love I had in the world.  I’m not sure of the damage I did with these horrible acts.  I must have done some serious damage, though to spark the punishments I received and continue to receive.

I would like to apologize for my worthlessness, for my awful acts which caused unbearable pain and destruction to my mother, but I can’t figure out where/what/how I caused any damage to her. I would gladly take responsibility for being born, breathing, being a child, being immature, being lost, being desperate for love except that I did not cause any of that.  Please tell me what to apologize for?  Once upon a time I was just an innocent child begging and desperate for my mother’s love and acceptance.  I suppose I could apologize for stopping the begging?  Only, I never stopped begging or trying.  My mother decided at my second pregnancy that I no longer existed.  I begged for a few weeks after that and finally had to stop begging because I was trying to raise two children with a handicap all on my own.  I had to accept that nothing I ever did would make me worthy of her love or else I would have killed myself and left my two children with no mother at all.

In spite of the hatred you had toward me, I remember wanting my children to have the chance at you loving them. I remember Christmases and Thanksgivings alone so that you could be a grandma even though I didn’t have a mother.  I remember my dad suddenly and unexpectedly dying and thinking she would care about me maybe then. I remember trusting her out of desperation again (like when I was a helpless child) and her filling my children’s heads not only full of shit, but fabricated half-truth shit…not even shit that was mine to own and take responsibility for.   I remember meeting your first husband at the funeral (the one you told me all my life “beat you”) and feeling uncomfortable that after hating and punishing me for accepting and allowing myself to be abused by men all my life, that she would bring this man who “beat” her to my dad’s funeral.  If I punched him would she love me?  or would she hate me more?

I remember her hating everyone who made me feel loved.  I remember her hating anyone who made me feel hated.  I never understood what I needed to do/be/say/feel to be loved.  I still don’t.

But most of all, I don’t see where all these horrible things I supposedly did ruined her life? Or even hurt her?  Or how I knew what might hurt or upset her on any given day, as it changed so fast and often, I could not make sense of it.  I would like to apologize and own my mistakes because I acknowledge I’m fucked up and worthless, but I honest to fucking god don’t know how I caused damage, except for being born, being a child, being confused,  being desperate for love….  I wasn’t born with those things and I didn’t want them, how do I apologize for them?  And if I do, will I finally deserve your love?

To the father of my children:  What did I do to destroy your life?  Please dear God tell me because knowing you has ruined everything I ever dreamed of.  I lost my hopes, my dreams, my dignity, my health, my possibilities, my house, my lifetime memorabilia, and ultimately my children…. Because?  What was it I took from you?  What did I destroy and damage so much for your life?  I gave you two children.  I gave you 24/7 total access to them.  I gave you holidays with them.  I gave you carte blanche to their lives and their hearts. I gave you good stories to them about our past (which were lies).  I gave you my last hope of my childhood innocence.  I gave you my health.  You took my house and every happy memory I had from before or since I knew you.

What was it I took from you?  Where is the misery I caused?  What did I do to you?  Yes, I left you.  I left you after you destroyed (what I then thought was total destruction at least) and tried to save my children from growing up watching their mother be treated like a worthless, useless piece of shit.  Yes, I did do that.  And I still gave you 24/7 carte blanche access to their lives, their love, their time.

Please tell me what I took from you?  Please tell me how I’m an awful person? Please tell me where the damage I did is that destroyed your hopes and dreams, your health, your past, present, or future?  PLEASE????? Please tell me???????????

Because I’m not prideful or stubborn about being wrong or making mistakes like some I know.  I actually prefer to address and acknowledge my errors, and apologize, especially if they’ve hurt someone or damaged their life in any way.  I would love to apologize for all the things I did but I can’t bring myself to apologize for trying to live, for breathing, feeling, or wishing to be loved rather than abused.  I would love to say I deserve every bit of what I’ve gotten.  The strange thing is, these people can’t seem to tell me what cruel, awful, unforgivable things I’ve done to them.  Not a single thing.  Not now and not in my entire life.  Yet their hatred flows and flows…and no one seems to think that’s abnormal except for me.  Apparently, I’m the awful person because I can name what’s been done to me…to my children…to my health…to my life…  I can name every single thing.

To the father of my children:  you were lucky after all you had done to me that I even was willing to move to Vegas with our children and give you that chance.  From the first week, our children were crying about your treatment of me and them.  They hated it and I wasn’t going to subject them to everything I left you to protect them from.  You didn’t pay for our house in advance.  You didn’t lose any money.  We lost all of our lifetime belongings, the innocence my children had for what kind of man they’d been raised to believe their father was, our car, and our home when you stole it “for our own good” in spite of the fact that you hadn’t been paying for it.

So if my big “crime” against you was leaving you back in 1997, again in 1998, and a third time in 2009 in Vegas after “only 3 months”, that’s bullshit.  The third time my youngest came home from a day with you bawling and putting herself down was the final straw for me. That, after my oldest had cried her heart out the first weekend we’d arrived and was devastated we came all that way and you’d planned a weekend rendezvous with your latest flavor of the month for the day after we arrived from moving our lives literally across the country, leaving the only home and friends and family and foundation we’d ever know in our lives,  because “you wanted your children closer”.  Then told me “her heart was NOT broken” and that she could just “get the fuck over it” and she’d cried her heart out nearly every single day after that, hurt and miserable at how you treated us and at moving away from her friends and family at your whim just to be treated this badly by you , as well as watched you insult and belittle me, her mother,  for what I wore inside my own house to clean on a 102 degree day in the desert, even though you’d entered our home unexpected and uninvited…apparently just to hurl insults at me and our daughters for the type of clothes I was wearing to clean in.

I will never apologize for your choices.  You had choices to hurt us or not to.  You had choices to treat us with the respect we deserved for uprooting our entire lives for you or not to.   You, on the other hand, gave us only two choices: the choice to stay and put up with being disregarded, devalued, and mistreated or leave and protect ourselves from more.

That was on you and I will not apologize for it or own responsibility for how much it “hurt you” that we left.  You gave us no choice.  None.  You cared only about your latest girlfriend and having all of us in your control at your beckon call or whim to play daddy…or not to play daddy.  I didn’t do that “to you”.  You did that to us.  All three of us.  Savannah and I definitely got the worst of it, but it hurt Lexi too, watching you do that to us

Although you like to play neurologist and tell people why I had a stroke when you’ve no clue why I had the stroke because even my actual neurologist couldn’t discover why I had the stroke, you know nothing.  And you surely didn’t step up to the plate afterward when I was severely handicapped and rehabilitating so I could give birth to a healthy child and be well enough raise our children while you climbed the ladder to your success.  You didn’t step up to the p[late to lend a hand with our children.  You were too busy chasing money and women.   Darlene didn’t step up to the plate.  Only my dad stepped up to the plate to help us.

And for the record, the cause technically given for my stroke was stress.  I’m sure in no small measure stress which stemmed from years of abuse at the hands of the very people who run around crying what an awful person I am.  Stress from the fear of having to tell Darlene who hated your guts that I was having a second child with you.  Stress at once again not having a mother to hold my hand through my pregnancy.  Stress at being dependent on you as the co-parent to my two children.  Stress at the disappointment of not giving my children or myself the one thing I most wanted for them: a mother and father raising them together in their home…a happy, loving home with both their parents for my children.  Again, due to your choices of sex addiction, cheating, and abuse.  Darlene’s hatred of you and shunning me from her life because of my relationship with you in addition to your abuse, lies, and cheating in our relationship was the stress I had that caused me to have a stroke and become disabled for the rest of my life.  I do not owe you an apology for that.  I did not do that “to you”.  Once again rather, you assisted in doing that to me.  Leaving me with two options only:  to stay with you and let my children grow up watching their mother treated horribly or to leave and protect myself and my children from growing up in that environment.   As usual, you were the one with the ample choices.  I will not take responsibility for how that “hurt you”.

Stress from a literal lifetime of abuse at your hand and the hand of my mother are what caused my stroke.  I do not owe you or anyone an apology for that.

I have to wonder how your life is exactly what you wanted.  Darlene’s life is exactly what she wanted.  Yet, I’m the bad guy who’s worthless and awful, with some string of alleged “crimes” done against you people…the very people who have taken everything I ever worked to have.  My family, my health, love, jobs, future, hopes, and dreams.

Please do help me to understand how I’ve done any damage whatsoever to your lives?  Where is the abuse I heaped upon you?  Where is the place where I screwed you over to get better for myself?  Where is the fucking place that you needed or wanted me for anything and I did not show up?  Where in the fuck is it?  Where in the fuck are these damages done for my plethora of heinous crimes against either of you that you claim as you ripped my heart from my body, my children’s love from my life, and my life belongings, my home, my happiness, my hope, and my only joy left out of the desolate destruction of life I had left in the wake of you both?

Where the fuck is it?

Because

Because I don’t believe in love anymore, or dating, or even trying to find love.  Or God, or words, or hope, or reading, or romance, or putting on makeup to feel pretty, or showering, or wearing cute clothes, or sex, or drinking to numb the pain and prolong the inevitable.

Because I don’t believe in happy endings, or good defeating evil in the end, or that telling the truth matters, or that people actually care about others.

Because I don’t believe in life, or being forced to suffer emotional anguish for 42 years then to be ripped of the only thing from those 42 years that mattered enough to keep you going.

Because I don’t believe in innocence, or music killing the pain, or cooking, or eating.

Because I don’t believe in writing, or talking, or watching movies.

Because I don’t believe in buying your dad’s house to feel love that is no longer there and probably never existed really anyway, or believe in the beauty of nostalgia, or laughter, or even the memories of laughter.

Because I don’t even believe in my memories anymore.  They have been raped, pillaged, and destroyed by the same mother fuckers who shit on the first ones I had. Because their lies trump my truths, and because their abuse doesn’t count any more today than it ever did.

Because I don’t believe in reaching out, or the fleeting hope that a stupid astrological forecast might even bring some hope or good news.

Because I don’t believe in mothers, or children, or protecting those who can’t protect themselves.

Because I don’t believe in art soothing a broken soul, or art for beauty, or beauty at all.

Because I don’t believe in anything.

Because I feel more stupid than ever that it took me 45 fucking years to face how stupid believing in anything ever was while living with the life I was given, which has done nothing but repeatedly prove that hoping for better is a fantasy as silly as unicorns and Santa Claus.

Because I don’t believe in rebuilding hope from the rubble again…a-mother-fucking-again.

Because I don’t even have the pictures or letters or memories of once-upon-a-time believing I was loved.

Because I don’t have the precious artwork and baby photos of me as a momma with my children…the artwork I could never bear to throw away…because anything made with even the possibility of loving me was fucking precious, even if it was a scribble of pen on scrap paper…

Because even those were taken from me…taken from me because I did not protect myself from the monsters who took all of this from me before I rebuilt, and rebuilt, and rebuilt again.

Because every love I carried for 9 months in my body to protect, hug, hold hands, feed, bathe, and love for always was taken too.

Because every evidence of that love even maybe being real at some point is gone. Gone for our “own good” along with the home we created with it, taken from us with lies and deceit for our “own good”.

Because my every love and every hope for love and every fucking memory of love I had saved for my whole fucking life was taken from me “for my own good”, by a monster who’s never had a fucking thing taken from him his entire life. A selfish fucking monster who has to have EVERYTHING for his mother fucking self…ALL of it.  Even the tiny threads of hope that I had, the tiny momentary precious memories I had amassed, the love I thought I would really have at last from my children, the love I thought God gave me for my own with my children. Because the fucking monsters had to have that too.

That filthy whore, hope.

 

She says she loves me, my precious, beloved Lexi.  She says, “I love you momma”.  And for a minute this week, I started to believe….started to let myself hope again.  I can even remember the very first time this very child first said these very words of joy and hope to me!!  I remember!! So, I take those words, blow them up, and surround them with the biggest beams of sunshine I can muster from below my pit of despair…pulling them up from that tiny child of innocence in this aging woman’s soul.  Pushing aside the despair, the years of abuse and cruelty, past the desperation for death, past the hundreds of hopeless nights of tears, past the fucking wasteland that is me, holy fuck, I grabbed onto these words.

I fluff the words up like pillows I can hold tightly to my body, desperately holding that pillow against my broken soul, waiting to feel a moment of peace or joy maybe after all these years the words and the sentiments behind them were ripped from me.  These fucking words, I clung to like a drowning man gasping for just a whimsical random flash of oxygen to fuel his life for just another fraction of a second…

I breathed those four words in so deeply, it sparked my life-long fantasy that these words have value…have meaning…have substance.  The very same ridiculous fantasy which will be the death of me.  Well, that fantasy isn’t merciful enough to literally cause death; it only makes one so fucking pathetically desperate for death.

Last night I realized all my life I’ve been clinging to the very god damned thing that’s been slowly killing me all my life.  Me… my memory flashes back to millions of moments in time, clutching, clinging, scratching, and furiously begging for the mother fucking thing that would ultimately destroy me once and for all.

Oh hope is a false prophet, a mirage of water to a wandering soul lost in the desert.  Hope is a mother fucking whore.

I love you momma.  I love you momma and my friend is in the car, so I can’t stay long.  I love you momma and I don’t want to hear your feelings.  I love you momma and I love the people who’ve abused and destroyed you too, just as much.  I love you momma and  I don’t know who to believe.  I love you momma and I’m leaving because I can live without you in my life.  I love you momma and I need you to shut up about what’s been done to you by the people I love and want in my life.  I love you but I will let you spend another holiday alone without your dad or your children.   I love you momma as long as you shut up and smile.  I love you momma as long as you don’t speak to me of your struggles, your loneliness, your damage, or your destruction because I haven’t yet decided who’s telling the truth…but I love you momma.   I love you momma and Memaw and daddy don’t keep talking when I ask them not to.  They don’t need to keep telling me awful made-up fabrications about how you’ve been the worst, most useless person ever.  Thus, I don’t want you to keep talking about how they’ve destroyed you.  I love you momma and I love them.

Are daddy and Memaw destroyed?  Where is this damage to their lives I’ve caused with my worthlessness?  Where is it?  Where is their reason to be angry at me?  their reason for destroying the only thing that I had in my life that was mine..mine to love, mine to be loved, my only light in the darkness of the horrors they intentionally created?  Where is their destruction, baby?  If I knew it or understood how I destroyed their lives, maybe I could better suck up the damage they’ve done to my whole life…past, present, and future.  Where is the suffering I caused them?  I need to know it so I can shut up and take the medicine I deserve of the final, ultimate blow they delivered when my daddy died and they ripped me from the hearts of my babies.  I need to see it or at least know what/where/how it is, this horrifying pain I dished out to these people.

I love you momma.  I feel horrible about how I’ve treated you and how I treated my dad when he stole our house for our “own good”.  I won’t shut you out of my life again, but my friend is in the car and your words no, your tone, make me angry.

I love you momma but I’m going to spend this holiday with my sister and my dad and my grandma.  I love you momma but spending a holiday with you since your dad died just isn’t something that I want to do. I love you though momma. I won’t shut you out again.  Or anyone in my family… Well, I won’t shun you again as long as you SHUT UP about the abuse memaw and daddy have heaped upon you before me or how they’ve destroyed you completely at last using me to finish you off.

I mean it Momma, SHUT UP about it or I WILL shun you completely out of my life again.  This time not with lies as my excuse but because you’re insisting on speaking truths I don’t want to hear…Truths, I WILL NOT hear.  Or you shall  be shunned again.  The 4 times a year or so that I actually talk to your or answer your texts now after nearly four years of ignoring you, those WILL stop if you don’t SHUT UP.

I love you momma and I won’t listen to your feelings no matter how carefully you say them.  Your tone frustrates me, even when your words don’t.  I love you momma but not knowing who to believe frustrates me.  So I love you momma but my friend is waiting in the car and your feelings bother me so I’m leaving.  I love you momma but your truths bothers me too much and create too much confusion.  I won’t have them.  I listened to all the lies and ugliness about you from these people for four years and I’m done with listening to ugly things, so YOU don’t get to talk…  If you want me to be your daughter, you don’t.

I love you momma but my friend is waiting in the car and I don’t want the truths of your life.  I don’t want the devastation of your destruction at the hands of the other people who said they loved you because I love them too.

I love you momma but three holidays alone…three years ignored, abandoned, cruelly destroyed wasn’t enough. I love you momma but this holiday will be the same as the others.  I momma but you deserve all the fucking holidays alone until you finally die and make our lives, living with lies,  easier.  I know we destroyed your life, but for God’s sake, how can you be so selfish as to want to discuss  LET THOSE LIES STAND.

I love you momma but my friend is waiting in the car.

Love does not exist for people whose truth bothers other people too much to bother with.  I love you momma but you need to deny your truth.  I love you momma but I don’t care what the actual truth is.  I love you momma but I love the people who destroyed you and that’s where I’m going. Those are the people I choose for my life.  But, I will love you across the country while I’m with those people… if you’ll shut up.

Words are fucking shit.

Hope is a filthy lying whore.

Failed Beggar

I begged God again last night not to make me wake up. I Googled and Googled. The shittiest part of Googling for advice on successful suicide is that you’re inevitably led to a million sites which explain how easy it is to fail and the horrifying after-effects upon failure, which are the only life changes which might actually make your current Hell several levels worse. However unimaginable a worse life of Hell and misery seems to a person desperate for death, the effects of suicide failure shout them loud into your despairing fucking brain.
However, when reading about suicide statistics, even accidental overdose, it seems like it should be easy.
Moving forward…
Longing for peace, overdose is the first and most appealing thought. Seems almost foolproof if done with care and knowledge. Prevent vomiting? Check. Be somewhere where you won’t be disturbed before death? Check : my life IS that – no one bothers to “disturb” me… ever, really. No, I mean ever. Obtain the proper drugs which raise the percentage of success? Holy fuck, UGH. This seems on the level of impossible. Okay, okay, try an easier to obtain medicine? Shit, my success percentage just dropped by nearly 50% with just that replacement. Enter again the next-level-hell horrors of failure. My only obstacle to feeling mostly confident I would succeed is lack of appropriate drugs like Nembutal and Seconal.
Okay…. Hanging? Definitely won’t be disturbed. Good. Stroking out and hanging for days due to failure? Holy fuck. I’ve had a stroke before. If I stroked out, I’d be rendered physically incapable of a second try. Holy Holy fuck.
Gunshot to the head? Super high success rates! Yay! Wait, I have no fucking gun. I have no mother fucking gun, damnit. I also happen to have the misfortune of personal knowledge of a man who attempted suicide this way, survived, and is now a paraplegic rendered incapable of a second attempt at success and I’m certain his hell is a few levels worse than when he attempted. I also personally know two people who succeeded using this method. What is that statistically? A 75% chance for success? Hmmm….that’s not too bad statistically. Fuck me, I still have no gun. Buy a gun? How long does that take? In my current state of poverty, do I even have enough money to buy one? No. No, I do not. I do not have enough money to buy a fucking gun. FUCK.
The media makes suicide seem so easy. Last night, with the new confidence of this as my only option of hope left, I really felt empowered with the possibility of success. Then Google fucked that confidence up.
Google was even cruel enough to show me a mercy suicide done by Philip Nitchke in Australia where the 45 year old man wasn’t suffering from cancer or anything. He was just a 45 year old man done living with the hell of depression, maybe the hell of chronic inescapable abandonment and loneliness at being fully and completely invalid in this world, most likely as well as exhausted from feeling like his basic needs were a burden to everyone around him. Fuck, this made me jealous! Thinking and imagining his level of pain and the years of unsuccessfully trying everything to cope or heal that pain and now his pain is over forever. Lucky fucking bastard.
As a child, teen, and young adult, I used to fear going against God by committing suicide. I loved Jesus so much and was so deeply desperate to have God’s love and approval and to maybe get to go to Heaven if I followed His rules, that that was enough to deter me most of the time. I no longer believe in God. And the optimist in me who wants to hold on to at least the possibility of having that love in my life being possible laughs. Ohhhhhh how she laughs. She can hardly breathe as she guffaws saying, “You know damn fucking well if this God you loved enough to follow His rules all these years does, in fact, exist at all, He sure as fuck doesn’t love you, you stupid idiotic bitch. If this God exists AND loved you, you wouldn’t have this life, the chronic suffering, the lack of validity, the lack of love, the utter degeneration of your stupid fucking soul from the moment you were born.”
That’s my optimistic side pondering the possibility of God’s existence. Thus, it’s ridiculous to even bother to have my regular side explain the absurdity of this long-held fantasy of some beautiful force of good wrapping me in His love and wanting good things for me in this life I did not choose and cannot change or repair.
My final proof that God does not exist: I begged. I have begged and begged and pleaded. I have embraced change, I’ve desperately tried to grab onto radical acceptance about my life. I have fought the good fight for as long as I can remember. I have carried the burden of this life. I have forced positivity. I have begged and begged for direction or wisdom to live without the basic necessities of my soul. I have compared myself to Jesus and accepted that my Hell might be what I deserve because I was born imperfect and unlovable. How dare I complain after what God did to save my soul? The suffering of Jesus was so much worse than anything I’ve been faced with and Jesus was perfect, a truly undeserving person. Unlike imperfect, fucked up me who must deserve the Hell I was handed or it wouldn’t be my life, right?
I’ve desperately clung to everything. And I’ve begged. And begged. And begged. Still, I woke up today for just more of the only Hell I’ve ever known as life.
I’ve been begging all my life. Begging for love, begging to be heard, begging to matter, begging for forgiveness, begging for mercy, begging for support, begging to understand, begging for kindness, begging for acceptance, begging for even just one reason, begging for just one mother fucking joy in my life, begging for just one god damned person who would give a fuck if I wasn’t here, begged.
I have failed even as a beggar.

If You Could Read My Mind

If You Could Read My Mind

If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old-time movie
‘Bout a ghost from a wishin’ well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I’m a ghost that you can’t see

If I could read your mind, love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind the drugstores sell
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won’t read that book again
Because the ending’s just too hard to take

I’d walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three-way script
Enter number two
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me
But for now love, let’s be real
I never thought I could act this way
And I’ve got to say that I just don’t get it
I don’t know where we went wrong
But the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back

If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old-time movie
‘Bout a ghost from a wishin’ well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
But stories always end
And if you read between the lines
You’ll know that I’m just tryin’ to understand
The feelings that you lack
I never thought I could feel this way
And I’ve got to say that I just don’t get it
I don’t know where we went wrong
But the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back