It’s that time again: crisp air, clear blue sunny skies, scents of pumpkin flock the stores next to back-to-school paraphernalia.
Feeling down and lonely with my thoughts all over the goddamn place, I decide to take a jaunt to the nearby Dollar General and treat myself to a seasonally scented candle. Candles are soothing and fill this house with nostalgic smells of impending autumns long past when life made some sort of sense.
Within 3 minutes of browsing the aisles, I realize I’ve overstepped. All the cute Halloween decorations remind me of how thrilled I used to be decorating the house with cute Halloween stuff for my daughters and their friends.
Flashbacks like sporadic scenes from various movies start flipping through my mind…
Brain decides to pretend it’s any year at all prior to 2012: Oh, the girls would really love those sparkly sunflower yard ornaments. Those cute pumpkins would be perfect for the girls’ rooms…
The back-to school stuff reminds me of gathering supplies; browsing the aisles with two absolutely amazing children while discussing all the foreseeable fears, problems, and excitements of heading into 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th grade…. Me, chatting along with them, trying to be totally nonchalant about my fears of having enough money for all the school supplies they need and silently praying I might have enough for at least one thing they each just want.
FUCK! Now, I’m in the goddamn Dollar General crying. Should have stayed home. At least there, no one can see me be pathetic.
I keep my face turned toward and buried in the crowded shelves, away from any customers, mortified with the tears I can’t stop and hiding my facedeeply engrossed in whatever the hell’s displayed on that shelf.
Ah…at last! The candles! Hot tears still streaming down my face, I sniff the Pumpkin Pie, The Pecan Muffin, the Apple Currant… Okay, so I smell all the fucking candles, desperately hoping the movie snippets playing in my head will stop so I can pull myself together enough to select one and face the cashier.
I am GOING TO TREAT MYSELF TO A CANDLE, DAMMIT! Today, this time, I am NOT sneaking right back out the door empty handed and desperate to hide my crybaby face.
NO!
I select the Apple Currant candle since it carries the least agony of nostalgia.
I make it through the check out with what I tell myself are just curious odd looks from the cashier at my tear stained red face, probably scrunched in desperate focus to not start crying again.
I step outside the store with my little plastic yellow bag and suddenly out of nowhere, I smell the very distinct and ancient scent of – of all things – my elementary school cafeteria?
Grainy pink soap and doughy pizza burgers, the scent almost seems speckled with tiny flecks of gold sparkles in the cafeteria’s linoleum floor.
For whatever reason, this olfactory nostalgia sets the ridiculous crybaby in me off again. Now, I’m walking to my car sobbing through the Dollar General parking lot.
Christ almighty, what the hell is wrong with me? I’m a goddamn sloppy pathetic mess of obnoxious tears and inescapable agony.
In my car, I keep my head down, fervently hoping no one sees me pathetically bawling like this, like a pitiful, unstable, insane person The pain tearing through my heart is UNBEARABLE!
I can’t. I just can’t.
Maybe I should go back in and grab a bottle of that cheap wine they sell? Maybe I could go home, light my lovely scented candle and treat myself to a glass or two of a mildly mind-numbing beverage?
No. Then I’d just be plagued with guilt and frantic over whether that means I’m a raging alcoholic like the narcissists and my children accused when my dad died. Wine won’t bring any real moments of relief anyway. Forget it.
Nah, I’ll just bite down on the wooden spoon and hold my breath through this soul ripping agony au naturelle, no choice but to suffer through every damn pinch, stab, punch, and pull as usual.
There is no solution to this pain. There is no fix, not temporary or permanent.
Keep a candle burning in the window til they come home. When they finally arrive home again, they’ll love the comforting smell in the house and remember the truth of all our years together, happy… I can almost see the delighted smiles on their face as they say, Momma, it smells so good in here! as they realize I never really stopped waiting for them.
Once home, I immediately put the candle in the window, like I have since my children betrayed, attacked, and abandoned, and shunned me.
I no longer can remember how it feels to not hurt all the time.
I forget what my face feels like to smile. I can’t remember the sound of my own laugh. I don’t remember what I look like without the deep agony-bearing furrow in between my eyes.
But I can remember the smell of my elementary school cafeteria.
And I vaguely remember the delight of getting hugs from my children every day and every night.
I distantly…like looking way down a dark underground tunnel…squinting my eyes to see way to the tiny end… remember the security of hearing my dad’s voice on the other end of a phone call.
And, I can remember the sound of giggles and laughter being a part of every single day. Then, I suddenly feel the depth of pain to remember that we didn’t go one full day in 15 years without the sound of carefree laughter floating around our lives.
I remember the sound, but I can’t hear it anymore.
Anywhere.
Keep a candle burning in the window til they come home.
I think it’s now more like, keep a candle burning in the window til I get to go home. Wherever home is, I’m not sure anymore, but it’s GOT to be somewhere — anywhere — that makes this infuriating, unbearable, constant pain stop once and for all.
Now, I’ll keep a candle burning in the window til the day comes when I finally get to go home.
Perhaps a big part of the reason malignant narcissists are so successful in their abuse is that it’s extraordinarily difficult to tell the story of these monsters’ insidious tactics.
Stories of bloody noses, broken bones, overt verbal abuse, and harsh sexual violence are obvious and easy to tell.
Stories of looks that inspire terror, 55 tiny little “harmless” digs a day, subtle financial abuse slowly over time, seemingly innocent manipulations, etc, these are far more difficult to tell and explain the damage they do. And particularly difficult when the average attention span exceeds about 2 inches from any person’s self-involvement.
Who has the care or time to sit and listen to someone explain such subtle and clever intricacies of abuse with multiple layers of impact that build upon one another over time like millions of tiny glass shards. One little glass shard in your skin seems harmless and such a ridiculous thing to cry over. 5 tiny glass shards? Really? Just pull em out, clean the area, and get on with it. 25 tiny glass shards? Well, that’s unfortunate, but again, pull them out, clean the wounds, and get on with it. Shit happens. There’s still just no need to go to a doctor and explain the story of each and every shard, how each individual shard got embedded into your skin, and how painful each one was or wasn’t at the time of entry. A doctor wouldn’t need to hear those minute and lengthy details and it’s unlikely he’d have the time or patience to listen to it all even if each shard’s story was somehow relevant.
You’re not a whiner. You’re not a pity whore or desperate for sympathy. Maybe you even deserved some of those shards? Maybe you even knowingly went back to the scene after the first 15 shards?
Do’t be ridiculous. You just pull them out as best you can, clean the area, and get on with it, obviously determinedly hoping to avoid the shard infested area in the future. You’re not stupid. You’ll simply choose to stay far away from that danger zone. If you can’t clean them all up, you’ll walk around it, even if it takes incredible cautious and care.
You’ll just tip-toe around the shards from now on. And get on with it.
But what happens when you get 10,000 tiny glass shards in your skin? Still, the damage is relatively minimal. Just get to the time consuming task of pulling them out, clean the wound, and get on with it.
You might need to see a doctor at this point, but still you aren’t going to load the doctor down with how each and every shard got in there. It’s senseless. You just say you had an accident, get the care your wounds need, and get on with trying to clean or tip-toe around the avoid the danger zone again. Surely, you’re not stupid enough to intentionally walk carelessly in that same area? Right? Why bother anyone with the boring story of each and every stab, every piercing of your flesh that subtly pinched or stung? It’s irrelevant and it’s just dull.
Take care of it and get on with it.
So, what happens when you get 25,000 tiny slivers of glass embedded in your skin? You dismissed the 5, then the 25, then the 10,000. Now you have 25,000 and more keep coming even as you’re still pulling the last batch out. You don’t understand where they’re even coming from at this point. They just keep coming and now with more speed than you can pull them out. Confusion settles in. You doubt yourself because who could be clumsy or stupid enough to keep inadvertently hitting that danger zone of shattered glass? It seems like a moving target, but you just can’t understand what, how, or why. You just know they sting and they seem to be gaining momentum the harder you try to avoid them.
After a few years of this, with millions of “harmless” shards embedded as well as a few far less subtle, deeper daggers and stabs throughout that time that have done more significant damage. Suddenly, you’re actually damaged and the damage is confusingly extensive. Now, how does one go back to explaining those first 5 shards?
What about after 48 years of it?
How do you expect anyone at this point, even a doctor or friend or therapist, to bother with the time, effort, and extensive bother of listening to the details of every embedded shard, the maddening impossibility of avoiding the danger zone despite constant exhausting effort to locate, repair, and clean up the site? Really, it’s too far gone to repair or resolve now anyway, so why burden others with that weight?
Who would care enough to be burdened anyway?
You can tell the story of the first 5 shards or maybe the last 20 shards, or maybe you just selectively choose to explain only those random shards that were not so subtle in their damage? Only tell the worst of the billions?
No one can be burdened with the whole senseless lifelong story of every ridiculous shard you now have piercing your skin. But there’s too many to ever remove now. And a handful of 15 minute selective explanations could never even begin to adequately describe the depth of damage or the permanent pain of all the deeply embedded ancient shards still ripping your skin…underneath the surface. Stabbing you relentlessly, always ripping through your flesh, under the surface…. unseen to the naked eye.
And yet, how would you ever explain the amount of damage without that burden? How do you ever get to them all to remove them and clean and repair the wounds without that ridiculous burden?
It’s a special kind of living hell when your most horrific nightmares are about your children and you’re too terrified to tell anyone about them for fear if you speak the horrors aloud, it might breathe life into them.
Too petrified to even whisper, Help!
It’s bizarre how mere silence compounds pain and intensifies terror.
(Ironically, silence is a key element in perpetuating narcissistic abuse,
as well as domestic violence
and rape.)
So those pictures and events in recurrent night horrors become so stamped into your brain that they play over and over and over in your waking hours and you can’t bring yourself to speak a single word of them…to anyone.
Fooling yourself…
Gifting yourself flashes and moments where you simply refuse to accept
that your every worst lifelong nightmare is already pulsating, breathing, living, happening now.
The love of my life called me this morning (10/2/17).
I was afraid to answer. Scared of possible cruelty of which any more I just can’t handle…scared of more pain at her cruelty… yet scared something was wrong or worried she might actually need her momma like she had so many times before this nightmare started.?
Terrified to answer. Petrified to not answer.
My breath stopped somewhere in my body when I saw her beautiful face show up on my phone screen, almost as though my brain had momentarily forgotten how to tell my lungs to breathe.
Like the day she was born…
…Like a million days between December 23,1998 and the spring of 2012 when I’d just look at her and feel as if my heart might stop beating from the sudden surge of so much love and adoration.
And her voice… her laugh… her words.. her imagination…her sense of humor… her intelligence …
All continued to stun me for the first 13 years of her life.
She may deny I’m her momma now, but once upon a time, for 13 straight years, I had the most utterly incredible daughter who’s ever existed and being the best momma I possibly could to her and her sister was my entire world.
You would have turned 81 today and I would give almost anything to be sharing this day with you…
I’ve contemplated so much about your life, your character, your loves, and your death over the past five years.
I didn’t only lose the greatest dad ever on the day you died. I lost my entire family. I lost my faith in the world. I lost the only safe haven I’d ever had or ever known. I lost my best friend. I lost my only life advocate. I lost my only support system. I lost my heart. My spirit withered and my soul grew bleak. I lost my children. I lost the last shred of innocence I had clung desperately to for so long, in spite of so much.
And far worse than any of that, in the midst of that mass pain and confusion, my children lost their truth.
Evil disguised as “family” stepped in and wreaked utter chaos on what was left of my life after you died. Ripped our little family…shredded our truth…stole my spirit and stomped on my heart.
It aches inside my chest that our last face-to-face conversation was you apologizing to me. You owning the mistakes you made talking behind my back, exaggerating things that bothered you. No apology was necessary. I know you truly were just concerned and scared for me. You…you, who had seen first hand my struggles. You, who had watched me fight to overcome more adversity and abuse than anyone should ever have to face in one lifetime. You, my last touchstone of truth and its irrefutable proof.
You overreacted and you grossly exaggerated, but I knew it was only because you sincerely cared. I knew it stemmed from genuine concern and a deep desire to protect me from myself and the inner battles which still raged on inside me long after I escaped the actual abuse.
You knew it all. The lies couldn’t have worked their total destruction on my children and the life we’d built as long as you were alive. Evil saw its opportunity and pounced- destroying me and taking our beloveds prisoner.
I owe you an apology. A million apologies.
I’m sorry I allowed them to lie and deny you the veteran’s burial you deserved. I’m sorry I let my guard down and fell so totally apart that their evil was able to destroy what meant everything to you in your lifetime- our little family network. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stop them. I’m sorry my children can’t acknowledge truth anymore. I’m sorry I allowed the family built on the strength of your back and good character to be demolished by greed and evil.
You deserved a veteran’s burial. The Air Force was so important to you. Your time serving this country meant so much to you and shaped you into exactly you – the man who would some day become father and best friend to his youngest child. I can only surmise they lied to me about that because it was more expensive. Ironically, I paid personally for your entire burial and funeral and wouldn’t have cared the extra cost, had I known they were lying. I wanted so much to give you the exact burial you always told me you’d wanted.
I just couldn’t fathom they’d lie…even then.
I’m sorry I didn’t have the sense to fact check their claims regarding the circumstances of your death or the details of your funeral. I’m sorry I believed their lies and false claims of love for you (and me) and allowed them to compromise you having the burial you always wanted.
Daddy, they lied to me about where you died. They lied about what time you died. They lied about the veteran’s service information. They lied about the estate laws. I’m sure I haven’t scratched the surface of all the lies they told me after you were gone…
Literally from the minute they called to inform me you’d died, their lies began. In hindsight, I imagine that’s why they waited 5 hours to even tell me you’d died. It must have been a race for them to prepare their stories and agree on what lies to tell me and why.
Then, in my shock, they started using my grief and confused state to start lying to my children- your grandchildren…
You deserved me to hold myself together at least enough that I could have combatted their evil, using the strength you’d shown me all my life. I should have known to fact check every word they said.
I should’ve known better than to trust them alone with the children we’d spent 15 years protecting and loving and teaching to be good people.
I’m sorry your grandchildren chose to believe lies, chose to tell lies, and were pawns and victims of such unmitigated evil. I’m sorry that I’ll never be able to share all the truths of how deep those lies went over my life…and over your entire life even.
Everything you did for me and for my children in your lifetime, you certainly deserved better…so very much better.
Daddy with his beloved grandbabies
It’s your birthday. I miss you.
I’ll never stop wishing the truth mattered or still stood even a chance. You were the one who kept me believing that integrity and truth was important no matter what choices others make when I was surrounded by liars and abusers.
I know if you can see what’s happened and is still happening every day, that your happy heart is broken; that your easy smile has vanished. I know you cry at what they’ve done and your unwitting part in it.
I forgave you before you ever apologized. You were a pawn in it all too. This became more apparent after you were gone, that they’d played you too…and I know you must regret that more than anything, if you can see what’s happened from beyond this realm.
And I have to believe you can see.
I’m sorry I allowed them to break your heart and my life even after yours had ceased beating. . I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger when you died. I’m sorry I, as usual, expected to be safe with the very people who’d already shown you and I repeatedly who and what they really were. You always warned me to watch my back after they’d shown their true faces, but I never wanted to fully believe such depth of evil could exist on top of the evil they’d shown me all my life…. not during a crisis like your sudden and unexpected death.
I couldn’t have imagined their evil would extend that far. Not then. Not at that horrific time for your grandchildren and me.
I should’ve understood that they would see your death and my vulnerability as nothings but an opportunity to advance their hateful ulterior motives.
I should have known they’d not suddenly have a heart or conscience or genuine compassion even then…
I don’t know what happens to us after we leave this life. I only hope you’re able to some day get the truth that matters delivered into the hearts of the two girls who mattered to us the most.
I’m playing your music all day and honoring your memory.
You call this “love” but I can’t. Whatever this is feels like being wheeled into the operating room after years of waiting for surgery, where I’m not entirely convinced that this operation will work but I’m willing to try. It’s the final hope, the last resort after exhausting all other options and, though I am […]