Narcissistic Inconvenience

Tags

Domestic Violence by proxy, fear, Mark DeDeaux, Narcissistic Abuse

In 2001, my children were 2 and 4. I had suffered a massive stroke while pregnant with the 2 year old, leaving me extensively and noticeably physically weakened and unstable.

It wasn’t easy having 2 little toddlers to care for alone with such extensive physical handicaps, but I was grateful I had recovered enough to provide them a momma and could still attempt to manage a home for us at all.

We lived in rent-controlled subsidized housing as my only income was $500 per month disability plus whatever temporary jobs I could get that accommodated my disabilities. It was a very nice newer townhouse though and it was in a decent neighborhood where my kids were safe to play outside. My ex, their non-disabled father, was making around $800k or more a year. With his income bracket, I was entitled to a significant amount of child support, but because I feared angering him and I feared him resenting our children if he was forced to pay the several thousand dollars a month support to which we were legally entitled, I gratefully accepted the $200/month he chose to pay and I simply adjusted our lives to live the best I could manage for the 3 of us on the total of $700/month.

He lived about 3 hours away from us at the time and in addition to not taking him to court and demanding enforcement of reasonably appropriate child support, I also drove our children half way to his house for his visits to ease the travel burden on him.

I had an old beat up Honda that my dad had helped me purchase shortly after I’d left my children’s father. My ex had driven my prior car into the automobile graveyard in efforts to preserve his own car from too much wear and tear and when that car of mine died a few months before our first daughter was born, he went out and bought himself a new car, leaving me without a car- not even the old but dependable means of transportation I’d had before we met.

So this little beat up but dependable Honda my dad had helped me obtain was precious to me for our independence. It was how I got to work any jobs I was able for extra money to live on; it was how I, even with severe physical limitations, was able to occasionally safely take my two children under the age of 4 to the park or beach or for an ice cream treat; it was how I helped make their dad’s busy successful career life easier by driving them half way to his house for weekend visits whenever he requested. Sometimes if the fatigue was too great for me physically to safely make this drive with 2 little kids, my dad being a godsend of our lives (and our safety) would not hesitate to make that drive helping their dad out on my behalf.

This had been the practice for as long as I’d been split from my babies’ dad. We didn’t once deny him this extra consideration. We just made it happen every visit he wanted, no matter the burden or inconvenience for us. If I couldn’t do it, my dad did it for me. Period. Zero complaints and zero exceptions.

But once in 2001 when they were 2 and 4, I had serious car trouble. The tie rod on my car was worn bad. I had obtained a repair quote. The price to fix the tie rod was around $500.00! I didn’t have that kind of money obviously. And to make matters worse, the mechanic warned me that it was so close to snapping in half completely that he strongly urged me not to drive the car at all until it was repaired but that if I had to drive it prior to repair to make sure I not drive far, not exceed 35 miles per hour, or drive it on highways. He warned that if the car was going over 35 mph and hit any kind of bump at all, the tie rod would likely snap in half and it could cause an immediate and possibly fatal accident.

My dad helped my children and I so much already, I didn’t want to ask him for this repair money. So, I just didn’t drive with my children in the car around that time unless it was totally unavoidable and I could stay safely under 35 mph. During this time, my dad drove my kids and I mostly to important events. Of course, in this time, my dad did all the half-way to their dad’s house driving with my kids to meet their dad as the route half way to him was over an hour of highway driving.

One week while my dad was out of state on vacation, my ex wanted his weekend visit with the usual additional assistance of being met half way in the middle. He had informed me on a Wednesday that he wanted them that coming Friday for the weekend.

I panicked because my dad would be out of state that weekend. So I immediately went about calling several friends to ask them to drive us if I paid them gas money for the trip or asking if i could borrow their car. On Friday morning, I was still calling friends and acquaintances trying to secure the hour and a half one-way highway ride for my children and me to meet their dad.

Incidentally, their wealthy dad who paid less than one-eighth of the legal child support we were entitled to for his part in providing for our children- money I could have easily used to afford either the car repair I needed or possibly even a newer car altogether- had recently purchased a shiny reliably new SUV for himself.

Around noon on Friday, having been unable to secure any driving assistance for this 3 hour round trip jaunt to make my ex’s life a few hours easier, I called him to explain that I couldn’t meet him half way this time. I explained the tie rod, the mechanic’s warning, the money I didn’t have for the repairs, that my dad was out of town, and my many unsuccessful efforts to get a ride or borrow a safe car.

I’d explained the entire situation to him on the phone struggling to use my face and shoulder to hold the phone and my one hand/arm that still worked since my stroke to fix lunch for our two freshly napped and hungry toddlers. There was a long silent pause when I was finished explaining.

Finally after more than 30 seconds of uncomfortable silence on his part had passed, I simply said, So…. I’m really sorry I can’t meet you half way today. You’ll need to come here to pick them up or we’ll have to reschedule for next weekend when my dad can drive them to meet you half-way….

Still dead silence on the other end of the phone. I was getting frustrated at this continued total silence (an annoying trademark of his) because I had one working hand and could not finish getting my 2 and 4 year old their lunch while on the phone sitting and waiting for him to break this extensive silence in reply to my situation.

So finally after waiting forever again for him to reply and getting absolute silence, I finally spoke again and said, Mark, I’m really sorry I can’t meet you this time. I tried everything I could think of to manage it, but I can’t possibly drive our babies an hour and a half on a highway to meet you today. It’s not safe, but they’re also hungry right now and I need to hang up to finish getting them their lunches, so I really need you to speak and tell me if you want to come pick them up this time or reschedule for next weekend, ok?

Another 2-3 second pause passed. He finally spoke. He didn’t offer to help me with the repair money to fix my car; he didn’t say he’d drive this one time the whole way to pick up our children; and he didn’t say, okay let’s reschedule for next weekend when your dad can meet me.

Nope. When he finally replied, he screamed, JUST PUT THE KIDS IN THAT GODDAMN CAR AND FUCKING MEET ME HALFWAY NOW!!

I’d dealt with his terrifying fury while we had lived together and had literally spent the past 4 years sacrificing and accommodating anything he wanted just to avoid the terror of his anger even while living 3 hours away from him. So when he screamed this, I just started shaking from head to toe.

And after every narcissistic trait he’d shown me from the day I’d met him, I was still beyond shocked he would literally demand I put our two little babies’ lives in actual danger just to save himself a longer than usual drive. He was willing, no demanding, that I risk his 2 and 4 year old children’s lives for no reason at all except his added convenience.

But I feared him. And I constantly feared him holding these things – any little thing he didn’t get his way with- against our kids out of anger toward me. I feared he would resent our sweet little babies these things and their relationship with him might be compromised. I wanted better than that for my babies. I couldn’t stay in a relationship with their dad but I was committed to doing everything in my power to ensure they enjoyed a strong relationship with their dad like I was so grateful to have with my own dad.

So, I did what any well trained narcissistic and domestic violence abuse survivor does, I followed his irate demand and put my two little children in my death trap of a car and drove them the hour and a half to meet him.

It took me just over 3 hours to drive an hour and a half drive going 35 miles per hour all the way. I was a shaking nervous wreck the entire way scared to death of every unforeseeable possible bump in the road.

But I didn’t want my 2 little toddlers to know how terrified and panicked I was on this endless slow drive, so I popped in the Sarah Evans CD they loved so much and we sang at the top of our lungs, while I drove 35 mph on the highway and acted silly in the front seat making them laugh the whole slow ride through hell to make their dad’s life easier that day.

It seemed like forever getting there but I was never more relieved in my entire life than I was that day when we finally got to our destination.

I exchanged the children into their dad’s shiny, safe, brand-spanking-new SUV, and I turned right around and drove 35 mph the entire way for the 3 hour long (hour and a half drive) back home sobbing in enormous relief that I’d gotten them there safely and praying to God my dad would be back home in time on Sunday to meet him half way to pick them back up.

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My Scary Love

Tags

grief, Lexi & Savannah, memories, parental alienation

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. 

I love you Savannah Grace DeDeaux.

Angel vs. Devil / Nature vs. Nurture?

Tags

Cluster B Personality, evil, monsters, narcissistic personality disorder, nature vs nurture, parental alienation, Pathological Liars, senseless cruelty

I read an article that made sense of my specific experience with parental alienation. My children were turned against me at 13 and 15 and while quite vulnerable due to the recent sudden loss of their beloved Papa. I know the level of pathological narcissistic qualities my mother and their father have. I realized while pregnant with my first child that I had indeed gotten into a relationship with the male version of my mother. They are cunning and confusingly efficient narcissists.

I grew up in desperate fear of turning into my mother or of sharing any similar traits as she. For many years I vowed not to even have children when I grew up because the fear inside me of being a mother like she had been was not worth the risk. I would rather die than treat any child the way I had been treated! For many years, I wanted to be a nun, thinking if I devoted my life to serving God, I could never hurt anyone like I’d been destroyed by her. 

I’ve pondered so often if sociopathy is genetic. How much of narcissistic personality disorder is narure versus nurture. When I become unexpectedly pregnant and realized my baby’s father was pathological like my mother, I really worried. I worried that I would have a narcissistic child. I vowed daily that I would love and protect my child at all cost; that my child would know joy and understanding, fun, compassion, kindness, security, self esteem, encouragement, and love, love, LOVE. 

So although the sequence of events was more horrific and painful than I have words to describe even, I have never once blamed my children for their cruelty and lies intent on destroying, demeaning, and tearing every single thing about me to shreds. I know the evil that was pulling them to do such things. I know it personally and I know it well. 

I also know my children after raising them alone for 13 and 15 years. I know their hearts and their souls, their struggles and their loves. Or so I thought…

After the extent to which they have gone to assist in crucifying me, my character, my parenting, my career, and even my own childhood, I’ve had terrible moments when I wondered if I created monsters. Had I loved them too much?!?  Was that even possible?!?? No. I just can’t believe you can love a child too much. You can’t possibly give children too much understanding or compassion. They’re children! Perfect, innocent, loving, amazing children whom are entitled to all the love, compassion, and understanding in the world! 

Maybe the vicious streak was severe parental alienation and narcissistic brainwashing? Maybe it was genetically predisposed for them to be cruel and discompassionate? Maybe all the love in the world wouldn’t have been able to soften their souls when they got old enough to think like their father and grandmother that kindness and emotion are nothing but weaknesses to prey upon? Mere vulnerabilities of “weaker” people who are to be destroyed if possible and perhaps for no other reason than that you can destroy them because if they’re foolish enough to trust and weak enough to love another more than they love themselves, then they get what they deserve when you stomp on them and laugh in their face as they cry in pain? 

That’s how narcissists certainly think. I’ve researched a great deal on nature versus nurture with narcissistic personality disorder, but I’ve come to no definitive answer. I only know my children weren’t abused or ever shown anything but love and compassion and accepting their actions against me has been the bitterest pill I could have fathomed ever having to choke down. I’ve rather believed it was brainwashing and survival mechanisms for them. That they were victims of this abuse exactly as I and maybe worse.

It’s hard to fully accept that when I see that my oldest is possibly a pathological liar with a vicious streak of cruelty that I’ve only seen in her dad and my mother before in my life. A hateful, punishing, extremely selfish nature combined with a quick and easy willingness to lie to get whatever she wants. 

It’s painful to realize the level of this. And it’s been much easier to blame the narcissists that abused me in my past for her ugly behaviors than it is to blame her and allow myself to wonder if she is a sociopath as well. 

I’m just not so sure anymore though. She has embraced cruelty and manipulation and lying at a rapid and efficient rate as to actually be frightening and deeply unsettling to my soul and wrenching in my heart when I picture her the first 15 years of her life… so precious, so kind, so sweet and loving, so easy going and sweet natured that I literally thought of her many times as an actual angel on earth and I couldn’t believe after so much abuse and terror and heartbreak all my life that God had deemed me fit to raise a child so perfect and precious and angelic like this one. And then one day a few weeks after burying my daddy, she was my abuser. 

This beautiful, amazing sweet child of grace and love like I’d never known in my entire life, lies without conscience for no purpose other than to hurt and smear me as a human being, as a mother, and as a daughter. She is cruel and vicious and literally laughs at my pain. She seems to actually think watching me suffer loss as a mother is funny. She has crucified me like Jesus and burned me at the stake like a witch in Salem without a trial or even honest accusations. The more I hurt it’s almost like the more it feeds her fury and cruelty!! I’ve known two people like that in my life… two sociopaths… her father and my mother. 

Then I read this article and suddenly it all became painfully clear. 

http://flyingmonkeysdenied.com/2016/04/26/adult-children-with-cluster-b-personalities-socially-abuse-and-scapegoat-parents/

Shhhhh… just STFU about it!

Tags

child abuse, choking, Domestic violence, emotional abuse, end the silence, financial abuse, narcissistic personality disorder, parental alienation, starvation

Shhhhh….

I am so fucking sick of being told to be quiet… of hearing, just let it go, of advice from ignorant people clueless of Narcissistic  Personality Disorder and Parental Alienation, child abuse, and domestic violence or how far reaching the torture goes no matter how hard you fight to recover, accept responsibility even if it’s not yours to own, forgive, bounce back, heal, let it go, and move on. 

One man today actually compared this to a bad date. You know, when he goes on a bad date with a gold digging bitch, he doesn’t make a fuss. He just takes them to an expensive restaurant and leaves after they order an expensive entree, then just never talks to them again.  It’s that easy. Just be quiet and move on!

Yeah, that’s such an accurate analogy of trying to heal from narcissistic abuse and reclaim and rebuild your life after mass destruction! Just walk away from those people. Just don’t let them in your life . It’s THAT simple! 

You need to just let it go and move on quietly with your life. 

 Meanwhile, I was quiet growing up abused, then I got free and decided to work on myself and my own shortcomings and faults rather than blame Mommie Dearest for how fucked up my head and heart and self esteem was. I quietly moved on. Straight into the arms of another pathological narcissist just like her. You know why? BECAUSE I JUST LET IT GO AND “MOVED ON”… because every fucking stupid mindset I’d learned came full circle back to everything my sociopath mother had spent my life convincing me: I’m unworthy of love. Love is only real if it hurts. But I must have deserved it. I’m only lovable and safe when I’m quiet and don’t complain and accept my due punishments, whatever they are.  I just have to try harder to be better and if I try to be perfect then maybe I’ll have earned a tiny right to be loved and accepted, maybe I’ll get lucky enough even to see a flash of kindness if I’m really super convincingly quiet and accepting…a second of kindness perhaps for my fake persona that I have to wear convincingly in order to be loved at all…even cruelly “loved”.

Why can’t you just let it go?  Ummm… like I let it go when he pinned me down on the floor and spit on me and choked me when I was 3 months pregnant after he came home from being out all night screwing another woman and I dared to ask him where he was because I’d been up all night scared he was injured or dead ? 

Like I let it go when he spit on me and my infant child as she nursed at my breast for asking what a woman’s clothing receipt had been for?  After he had told me months earlier that he “needed me to start holding him accountable for his actions ” if he was ever going to “learn how to be faithful”? 

Like i let it go when he admitted to his sex addiction counselor that he even though he’d told me I was crazy and paranoid for months, that yes, indeed, he had been cheating the entire time and then coming home to abuse and belittle me after he did it?  And confessed that he was so scared we were having a girl because he might be sexually attracted to her or her friends once she was a teenager?

Like I let it go  that I didn’t have food for almost two full weeks when I was 3 months pregnant with our child and that wasn’t his problem because he was in sex addiction rehab and was “dealing with hurtful childhood memories” that had caused him to be an abusive cheater all his life?

Like I let it go that I asked Mommie Dearest to loan me $25 for groceries when I was 3 months pregnant and hadn’t eaten in almost 10 days and she told me, that’s what welfare is for…?

Like I moved on and left him asking for nothing but my child and my freedom to prevent her from seeing a man ever treat a woman with the disdain, disrespect, and cruelty like her dad treated me? 

Like I just moved on and didn’t enforce child support so that he could have an easier time seeing his kids in another state? So that I wouldn’t make him resent and punish his kids for having to pay child support to their mother for them? So I struggled and fought to raise two kids by myself without his physical or financial help while he bragged that the amount of money he made was “obnoxious “… while I was trying to decide if I could splurge on name brand macaroni and cheese for the kids this week? All so his life would be easier and I could convince myself I could keep my kids safe as long as I didn’t rock the boat or upset him or force the issue of responsibility, truth,  or child support? 

Like I just walked away and “moved on” when my mother came to my hospital room in the ICU when I wasn’t able to speak or move on my own after a massive stroke and told me I “deserved what I fucking got”? 4 hours after having a brain blood clot, going without oxygen for an hour, and finding out I was pregnant, all while lying on an emergency room table not even understanding what in the fuck was happening ? 

Like I let it go and just moved on that when I was hospitalized for three full months unable to walk or feed myself or sit up in bed on my own, neither my children’s father or my mother (who love these kids sooooooo much) stepped up to help with my 18 month old baby at home? That my 60ish dad had to take care of my baby himself alone? Plus take care of me too, like an infant when I was released 3 months later?  That no one but my dad stepped up to help during a severe physical trauma while I was pregnant  and the years of physical rehabilitation it required afterward just to develop the skills movement and brain cells to reconnect in order to just be able to pick up my child and hold her in my arms? 

Like I just walked away and “moved on”  to find another place to live after my children’s father deceived me into trusting him and then deceitfully stole my house that was never his and that he hadn’t paid for at all?  Like I just replaced everything we’d ever owned after he told me I had “30 days to get the kids and me back to our home, forcing me to choose between everything we’d ever owned and the home we loved so much … just to go ahead and take our home anyway when we arrived 3 days later in plenty of time of his threat? So then my children and I forfeited everything we owned in the world and still he scammed our house from us anyway because I’d trusted him earlier to have his name on the deed even though we weren’t together? Because I’d stupidly trusted that he cared if his children had a roof over their heads more than his fury to punish us for not doing what he wanted us to do? Which was allow the very abuse I had left years earlier to protect our children? 

How many times are you supposed to walk away and just “move on” from the horrific abuse and terror and devastation these people go out of their way to inflict upon you, your life, and everything you love…. EVEN WHILE YOU’RE QUIETLY JUST “MOVING ON”? 

The abuse never stops. Somehow they find a way to keep hurting you as long as you live and you’re quietly trying to just stay out of their radar of torture and cruelty? 

But for fucks sake, start talking about it and it’s not 5 FUCKING minutes before I’m defending MYSELF for perpetuating the “drama” by not just shutting the fuck up about it and moving on…Again .. and again… and again… from their destruction, lies, and abuse. 

Mean, Mean Mac n Cheese

Tags

abuse, cheating, children, Cruelty, Domestic violence, Domestic Violence by proxy, parental alienation

Last night, I made macaroni and cheese.   I’m not telling you this because anyone on earth cares what I had for dinner.  I’m writing of macaroni and cheese because it should contain a warning. That’s right.  Macaroni and cheese provokes some serious emotional baggage, I’m telling you.    That deliciously rich silvery packet full of golden cheese viciously smited me; locked me smack in the old memory bank  I strive daily to keep myself locked out of.

I live alone now and I have little interest in grocery shopping these days.  Cooking (the way I love to cook) for one just seems superfluous, so I scoured through my pantry for something on hand that would be quick and filling with minimal cleanup required. Lo and behold: a lonesome rectangular box of mac n cheese! I love mac n cheese and I’ve not had any in years.  Literally, years. So….. ummm…. Yay!

Clueless as to what this sneaky little pre-packaged solitary supper in a box was capable of, I  put the water on to boil.    Innocently, I tore open the box  still filled with eager delight that I had the little forgotten treasure on hand. I struggle with opening boxes, but that’s another story and nothing could burst my mac n cheese bubble of gratitude I was floating in at this moment.  I managed to open the box and then – only then – did it hit me.

…a f**king tsunami of long held back memories flooded my eyes instantaneously with tears when I caught that first glimpse of the shiny silver packet of cheese inside peeking out at me among the flecks of pasta shells trying to bury it as though to protect me from the acute pain this cheesy treasure would bring. I’m immediately blurry eyed from bushels of salt stinging my eyeballs and instant asphalt-hot tears streaming like two waterfalls down my face. My hands shaking, I carefully pulled out the silver demon of painful nostalgia, regret, and furious anger all tossed together in this silly little cheesy packet. At this point, I’m still fairly confused about the spontaneous cry baby tsunami hitting me.  Fuck, I just wanted to whip up some mac n cheese, for the love of God!

But my brain…or was it my heart?  My soul?? my spirit???!?  I can’t even know, I just know I’m overwhelmed so much that I couldn’t even catch hold of one individual thought/memory/feeling long enough to fathom what shard of my brokenness was cutting the deepest.  They all started to cut and dig and the salt in my tears seemed to be scattered instantly inside a billion winds of unidentified mac n cheese puncture wounds.

It was all too brief visits to Daddy’s safe haven where I was so very little and so very safe and happy, gloriously excited for daddy to set that plate down in front of me.  I’m only 4 and mac n cheese is my favorite and Daddy actually made it!  I never get this at “home”…  I’m sitting right next to him on the nubby red loveseat with tv trays in front of us that I can barely reach from sitting, but I wanna be like Daddy and we are watching re-runs of Hogan’s Heroes while we eat.  And it’s my favorite because Daddy laughs at the tv so much that I laugh too, even though I don’t even understand what’s funny.  I just know I love that sound and I want to hide right there inside those notes of laughter forever.  this is the only address for joy and laughter i know.  It’s the only residence of the safety to feel at all, much less to allow my very own  laughter to bubble up and explode from my belly in uncontrollable giggles.  It’s safe to be happy here.  It’s safe to be silly.  Laughter echoes on these walls long after the literal sound has stopped.  Macaroni and cheese is visits to Daddy’s. It’s safety.  It’s laughter.  It is the home of momentary  security and still being young enough that all there was was then, was right NOW. So in those moments, although just flashes, thoughts of sadness and fear and the knowledge that this was only a flash in time before I’d have to return to the real world could not co-exist.  When you’re that little, now is all there can be and now is strong enough that all the fears and hurts and worries your 3 year old self normally carry are literally flushed away…in that moment.  That moment is all there was…while a 3 year old is in it. And sometimes there was Mac n cheese in it too. 

It was a brief flash of college years and making it for my entire meal just  because  I could… And the childhood memories of comfort it brought back even then while far away from home’and having no friends and no daddy anywhere near.  Reminiscing on the flashes of Mac n cheese laughter that thankfully spotted the otherwise chronic pain and confusion of my childhood as spurts of temporary relief from the excruciating loneliness of my reality back then. Reminiscing about those little breaks from the tortures of the cruel prison of childhood and still young enough to almost believe your daddy will live forever, just because he just must. 

Mac n cheese was raising two beautiful little toddlers all alone with a physical disability in subsidized housing. It was stretching the pennies of a fixed income to afford to try to feed them the stuff they liked.  It was the excitement I felt on the rare days when I splurged to afford the “good brand” for $2.69 rather than the powdery generic .34 cents kind I usually had to buy while their  perfectly physically-abled,  healthy father made $800k+ a year, lived alone in a gigantic house, drove fancy new cars, enjoying the fortune of freedom and good jobs, and the fun party life of a healthy single man who took his kids for weekends and vacations whenever it suited his fancy or his work and personal schedule.

Mac and cheese is the pang in your gut at the grocery store of the life a traumatic brain injury resorts you to when you’re affected at 26 years old. It’s not having the strength, coordination, or balance  to play normally with your little children who so desperately want you to play with them, or bathe them without help from your dad, or run with them on the playground,  or brush the tangles out of their hair using both hands to make it easier for their tender scalps.  

Mac and cheese is the cheap stuff you feel guilty for serving your children when you know their perfect little grins and glorious giggles, hugs and tiny “I love you Momma’s” so deserve the rich, creamy, delicious kind. The guilt of not having the  physical strength to raise them the way you’d always dreamed and work a regular full time job.  its not having the strength to pick them up when they reach their tiny arms out and say “hold me momma!”. It’s having the strength to pick them up on good days and fearing you’ll lose your balance and fall with them in your arms, and maybe scar their sense of security or faith in you as a momma,  thus creating  trust issues you swore your children would never have to battle  It’s your words slurring with fatigue on the second bedtime reading of Winnie the Pooh because your brain is unable to formulate words well after a long day… and you can’t hold them both at the same time like they deserve and hold a book too, but they so deserve to hear it a second time.. And they also deserve to be held tightly with two strong arms until  they drift of to sleep feeling adored, loved, secure, and safe, the way you never did as a child … Except during the rare Mac n cheese visits at your daddy’s house. 

This Mac n cheese was the childhood  my children deserved rather than the one I was able to give them.. The one I’d  always dreamed of giving them when i had played with dolls as a child and fantasized about what kind of momma I could be someday, promising myself I would you’d be everything my mother never was.  My children would not know fear or insecurity. They would not know the desperate longing for a momma that played with them every day and read to them and laughed with them and chased away their bad dreams and allowed them to know security in their environment and security of faith and love in and outside of themselves. 

This Mac n cheese was the regret of feeding my children cheap shit so that I’d never have to depend on their dad for money to survive. Not caring about child support rights or entitlement or all the money in the world if it meant having to raise my daughters watching their dad cheat, lie, and abuse me. It meant going without just to not even risk fighting legally or otherwise  with him about custody when I knew I didn’t have the money for the battle because he had all the time, freedom, and money while all I ever wanted to have was my children and the ability to raise them with love and understanding, peace and security…and joy. It was choosing to encourage their relationship with the man who abused me after I left him and he had destroyed my dreams and who didn’t care about much other than sex with “strange”, job power, and making money to buy nice things for himself. It was passing on child support for 15 years no matter my disability or how much money he was free to go out and make because love and peace for my kids’ home life seemed more important than buying the good kind of Mac n cheese for them. 

Mac n cheese was the ache of remembering when my children  loved me in spite of my disability. The excruciating torment of recalling countless nights of guilt at being poor, being disabled, being single, and being afraid of not ever being even close to everything I had always dreamed of being for them… Of the hurt at wanting to give them so much more but literally not being able to. It was The indescribably deep wound that comes from unexpectedly losing the only parent who had loved and wanted me as a child or as an adult. 

Mac n cheese is the endless sting of betrayal that my children turned against me, lied about me, negate me as ever being their mother even, crucifying my every flaw and every life hardship, magnifying every mistake big or small, denying any good I brought to their lives. All on top of the years of guilt at already not being enough, not being worthy, not being anything but a disappointment to every one … To Everyone except my dead daddy who has abandoned me once again and finally for forever. 

I will never make or eat macaroni and cheese again. That stuff is just vicious. 

 

 

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?

Outrageous audacity and gratitude lists

Tags

adapting, Audacity, black sheep, children, DENIAL, depression, desperation, Disability, dysfunctional family, estranged, fear, frustration, Gratitude, grief, history, life, loss, loveless, manipulation, mean mothers, nostalgia, parent issues, sadness, the ex, Tragedy, trust, unacceptable, unforgivable

The outrageous audacity of some just sets my throat into gag-mode and it’s no exaggeration to say, I’ve just thrown up a little in my mouth.
And when a person or event has successfully forced bile to rise in my throat, well, it’s goodbye Grace. I simply can’t balance grace with horrifically disgusting audacity. I just can’t. Or perhaps I just won’t. Who knows? At any rate, Grace who prefers not to pass judgment; Grace who wants to spread peace and love around with tiny bubble decanters to provoke joyous giggles in others; Grace who smiles through her pain and has become an expert in never letting the depth of her pain show; Grace who feels her mission on earth is to practices radical kindness and unconditional acceptance…Grace jumps out the window tossing maniacal laughter out as she flies, and bellows, FUCK YOU!
Narcissistic sociopaths should be burned like witches from the Salem era. First though, they must be strung up by meat hooks, whipped and taunted while their long line of soundproof ear-plug wearing victims take precious spray bottles filled with rubbing alcohol and lightly mist their wounds. La-dee-da-dee-daaaa…. Frolicking nonchalantly among the hanging perpetrators of gross injustice and catastrophic cruelty…mist…mist…tsk…tsk…absolutely unaware of the piercing shrieks of pain they’re inducing. What was that I heard? Ahhh…sweet would be the blissful silence among the filthy bastards as they take a spoonful or two of their own cruel and inhumane medicine.
This would be akin to the depth of absolute uncaring, unconcerned, audacity these mother fuckers maintain as they rip your world into tiny pieces, piss on those pieces, set them on fire, and then go bitch about how ungrateful their victim is…what an incessant whiner their little sacrificial lamb is. For God’s sake, why can’t their victims suck it up, burn alive and be grateful for the experience. WHY? After all, this experience couldn’t possibly be any worse than the irritating hangnail the Narc had just last week! Right?! The betrayal and emotional torture the Narc has imposed upon their victim(s) was nothing near the depth of hut the narc felt that one time he was 6 and got vanilla frosting on his surprise birthday cake rather than the chocolate he’d preferred. Now, that was pain….pain to cry about for years to come; pain great enough to hold the blame for every slander of reputation, slice of innocence, and pound of flesh he took from others over his next 40 years. No one else’s “pain” could possibly compare to these delicate infractions the Narc was put through all his life. No, the only acceptable complaining or whining is the Narc’s. After all, his pain is just so much more intense and unbearable than anything any one else has endured…ever…ever before or ever since. In fact, I suppose a Narc can’t even comprehend that other’s feel pain at all since they can’t grasp existence outside of himself. And a sociopath might have the emotional intelligence to understand others do in fact feel pain, but hasn’t the conscience or soul to care one whit. The Soc is way too busy frantically feeding off power he gets from inflicting pain on another against their will.
Oh yeah….bile in the mouth. I got sidetracked for a moment there trying to wrap an adequate description around these two earth roaming, life demolishing monsters.
Can you imagine for a moment this scenario:
Your dear, dear long distance partner/significant other has been involved in a tragic accident. Due to no fault of their own, he or she has abruptly and absolutely lost the ability to walk, talk, feed themselves, go to the bathroom alone or wipe their ass. He/she is alive though, and is successfully regaining the ability to talk and breathe again without outside help. It’s slow going, but it’s going. The prognosis is long term paralysis and a high unlikelihood that they’ll ever live independently again. Your friend also is the single parent of a 20 month old child and has another child on the way.
In addition, this dear friend of yours, has a sociopathic narcissistic mother who flew several states in “grave concern” to arrive at the hospital just shortly after being moved from the ER into a private room. This delightful, loving mother arrives as you are holding your SO’s hand…maybe you’re grateful they are alive, maybe you’re feigning concern, maybe you’re grateful that you get to leave this antiseptic hospital after you’ve done your duty and get back to your life, having others to take care of your 20 month old as you continue frolicking through your own life, just as before…I don’t know why you’re holding their hand, but you are.
Arrive Sociopathic mother on the scene, who coldly says to you, I’d like a few moments alone with my child. You happen to know your SO has a strained, at best, somewhat abusive relationship with this woman, but you’re just grateful you get an excuse to get out of this duty-filled environment for a moment. You release the hand and exit the room.
Sociopathic mother then sets her handbag down on the hospital bed, and leans in somewhat close to whisper in a satanic tone of voice, “You deserve what you fucking get”, grabs her bag, looks to her third husband sitting in the corner chair and says, “Let’s go”.
Fast forward a few weeks later. You’ve made the three hour drive to visit again. It’s perfect in that it’s close enough that you can do this duty on your day off from your job and not have to inconvenience your schedule much at all. This time, you know your SO is struggling with depression, fear, anger, and frustration. You know this. So, you thoughtfully decide to set about helping them with a gratitude exercise. Yeah, they’re still struggling a little with their ability to speak, but this is still an appropriate exercise, right? I mean really, it’s a thoughtful and kind thing to do!
You enter after driving your car, from your house, and off for a day from your job. After you leave here today, you’ll go visit your 20 month old daughter, hold her, maybe play with her a bit…you know, those things you might do with your very young child when you only see her a few weeks a months…
Your SO is painfully aware that they may not ever drive a car again, work a job again, live independently again, or God forbid, even play normally with or care for their daughter ever again. But, you’ve got this covered. You’re going to take these precious moments hereto assist with a gratitude list! That’s exactly what they need…to count their blessings and remember to be grateful! And gosh, aren’t you, in all your health and problem-free normal life, just the person to remind them of this blessings, no matter how disguised or buried…?!
And you are just pissed off to no end to find that this cranky, angry, partner of yours is pissed off and has no interest at this time in doing a gratitude list. Ahhh the nerve of such ingrates! This is, in fact, such an outrageous travesty of character, that 13 years later, you’re still telling the story to your new “significant other(s)” about the audacious ingratitude of your former SO.
There’s just nothing at all wrong with this little scenario, is there? Well, except for that ungrateful bastard.

Futile thoughts & senseless prayers

Tags

adapting, children, Daddy, DENIAL, depression, desperation, dysfunctional family, estranged, fear, frustration, grief, hopes, life, loss, loveless, manipulation, nostalgia, parent issues, sociopath, trust, unacceptable, unforgivable

April, 14, 2013

Hi Mark,

I’m really missing my dad today. At church this morning, I prayed so hard for him to communicate my love to him and to feel his for me and I remembered when my church did a huge renovation in 2010/2011 right after the girls and I came home from Nevada. When the floor was stripped, they invited people up during the service to take a marker and write the name of a person you wanted to bless and wrap in the grace and love of God. I debated and prayed for a while on whose name I most wanted to write since there wouldn’t be time to include my entire list…and I wrote your name. I was so hurt and angry at you during that time in our lives, watching my girls hurt so badly over the choices you’d recently made, but I knew those were choices you made from your own hurt…so I forgave you and gave you entirely to God. Your name is still written on that huge devotion of blessings to hundreds, maybe thousands of people. I hope that might bring you some comfort and peace.

The strangest thing came to me immediately after my prayer and the subsequent memory of that Sunday morning at church with my dad and the girls and I all taking our turn writing on that space… I suddenly knew what my dad would say to me. So, I lighted a candle of blessing and healing for you. I’ve kept you in my prayers for years, as did my dad and we often prayed together for your well-being. I know he was grinning at me as I blessed you. I know God was smiling at me as well. It was a powerful moment and I hope you sensed the love and grace I sent your way.

I know maybe more than anyone how you struggle with your own demons. I’ve always tried to give you my full support and compassion in that fight. I suppose that’s why it hurts so much more to have you so cruelly and unmercifully engage in this vicious attack on me in my weakest point and at my most vulnerable time ever. No matter how painful your choices sometimes were or how deeply they hurt me, I never used your personal pain or personal challenges to hurt you in vulnerable moments. It seems like another lifetime ago when I felt any kind of personal love for you as a man, but I’ve never once stopped caring deeply about the man who is the father of my children; or praying for you in your endeavors to become the man of integrity you once told me you wanted to be. You may have hurt me in a billion ways when I was still quite young and naïve and directed my life far from the path I desired and dreamed of…but I always redirected my perspective to the human being you were when you were doing everything in your power to overcome your painful challenges and prepare yourself to be a father to our children and a good partner for me.

I was young and naïve of many things you and I went through together while we were going through it all, but I know I truly did everything in my heart to love and support you through the pain of all that you carried around with you from your life, even when you hurt me personally. Not one of the choices I have made even once since that fateful day you first asked me out were ever with the intention of hurting you or causing you any additional sadness.

Although I am absolutely devastated at your choices over the past few years and how deeply they’ve damaged my life and the lives of the people who mean the most to me, I still pray for your personal struggles and maintain hope that you’ll someday be free from the pain those things bring to your life.

Anyway, today is nostalgic for me… and within that, along with these thoughts and memories, I recalled that tape I made for you when I was pregnant with Savannah and how you called me when you listened to it and we were laughing because I had included that song by Paul Anka, “Having My Baby”. Also the night before Savannah was born when you got here around midnight and I couldn’t sleep because I was so deathly afraid for her safety during the birth…and you rubbed lotion on my huge belly because it was so sore and ugly covered entirely with bruises on top of bruises from all those months of injections I had to give myself to keep her safe…and afterward, you just lied next to me with your hand on my head until I fell asleep.

Those have been valuable memories of you and glimpses of why I believed in you in the first place and they are precious moments for me from our relationship. Thank you for those.

I’ve considered you along with our children as my primary family for many years now. Although the hurt I feel right now is far worse than any pain I could have ever imagined I could survive, I remembered you today when I prayed for those who have meant the most to me throughout my life, and I wanted you to know that you were still one of the first to come to mind. No matter how much you hurt or attack me, I will still always care about your personal struggles and continue to pray for peace in your soul and healing for your heart.

God bless you,

~chloe

Letter to the father of my children

Tags

adapting, children, Daddy, dysfunctional family, estranged, fear, frustration, gossip, grief, history, integrity, life, loss, manipulation, Mark D, Mother, nightmares, nostalgia, sociopath, the ex, trust, unacceptable, unforgivable

Mark,

I can’t imagine or even fathom what is going on right now. It’s like the moment when I became conscious, was told I’d suffered a massive stroke, realized I was paralyzed, and then it slowly dawned on me that it wasn’t just a nightmare. This situation is so similar in that this feels like a nightmare I can’t wake up from. I rise each day, think about my children, start to go to wake them and tell them what a horrible dream I’ve just had… and then as it dawns on me all over again fresh, with all the betrayals, hurts, and ugliness, I have to reflect for a few minutes to convince myself this is actually the reality.

I’m up praying my morning prayers as I’ve done for years, and of course, I include you in them as I’ve done for just as many years. As I speak to God about my gratitudes, hurts, struggles, and blessings from past and present, I can’t help but to reflect on my dad and other life-transforming factors of my 40-some years of existence.

I have never been one to blame others for long for my individual hardships and life challenges. I’ve found over the years that doing so simply held me in that difficult place. So, rather than stay there stuck, I’ve learned the practice of deeply reflecting on such issues, discussing them intimately with God and asking Him what my part and responsibility is in whatever matter. I do this in order to effect change within myself – the only place I know with certainty that I have the power to effect change at all. I’ve learned that for me, it’s much easier to always blame myself rather than others because if I can find my fault in the issue, I can attempt a repair. If it’s truly another’s “fault” entirely, then I’m powerless to actually fix anything about it at all. Thus, I actually tend to prefer to take blame on myself, both from within and without.

I think this is an excellent practice. However, I also have learned that my willingness to do this is a dangerous setting within relationships involving others who are still stuck in the blame-others game. Somehow from their perspective, I’m an easy scapegoat because I’m so willing to take on the blame and do the work required to change the situation. I’ve learned to discern these particular relationships as those which stay stagnant within those negativities. After all, if I’ve accepted the blame and then done the work to change and the issues remain the same over time, then the logical explanation is that it was not actually my issue after all. As again, the only person and situation I have the power to effect true change at all is within me; thus, my efforts are truly futile…and I’m simply spinning my wheels attempting to change that which I can’t – others. This wisdom of discernment has proven very accurate and powerful over a lifetime through which I’ve regularly found myself involved with people who sit on the other side of this change-fence; those whom prefer to blame others rather than take responsibility for the change required to affect the situation.

I was beyond fortunate to have had a father like I did. Since he passed a year ago, I’ve noticed something recurring. When I talk of him I’ll occasionally have someone remind me that no matter how wonderful my father was, there’s no way he was as “perfect” as I remember. You know, that’s absolutely true. He was not perfect. He was amazing, wonderful, and maintained an integrity to which I aspire, but he certainly was not perfect. And in this time, I’ve come to realize something about why some people tend to think I’m describing my dad as “perfect” when I’m simply speaking the truth of him, my dad was perfect. He was absolutely perfect in his willingness to admit his imperfections and perfect in his motivation and ability to accept responsibility for those things and effect the changes he needed to correct whatever situation which brought the issue to light.

One of my favorite earlier, “grown-up” moments from childhood was once when my dad, whom I saw infrequently, made a poor choice while my sister and I were with him. I think I was only around 8 or 9 and my dad was my ultimate hero. This made his poor choice (the first I recall him making ever that I was old enough to have some understanding or awareness of) that much more horrific and confusing to me being that I was so young and had a pristine, impeccable vision of my dad. However, that frightening incident turned into one of my earliest favorite memories and lessons from my dad. Upon fully realizing his poor choice, my dad took my sister and I aside, sat us down, and apologized. He made no excuses for himself, although I’m sure he could have made many and we being so young wouldn’t have doubted his excuse for even a moment. He made none. He simply apologized sincerely and that was that. He didn’t fall all over himself apologizing and begging for forgiveness as I tend to do when I know I’ve made a mistake. He didn’t blame anyone else or simply refuse to admit he’d even made a mistake like my mother chooses in such situations. No, he just apologized one time from his heart. This instantly restored my vision of him as my hero. Do you know how I know he meant it? It never happened again.

It’s truly ironic that one of the last conversations I ever had with my dad was something similar. We sat in his car on my morning break at work. I was a little hurt and disappointed over a choice he had made just the day prior, but I wasn’t talking of it. And he said to me, “Chloe, I’m sorry. I want you to know and you to tell those babies that they’re going to see a change in Papa.” I almost cried, Mark. My dad didn’t even really owe me an apology. What he had “done” was so minimal and unintentional, it’s not as though I could have ever been angry with him over it. My dad was then 75 years old and still maintained the well-deserved acknowledgment as my biggest and greatest hero.

Another huge lesson in integrity I learned from my dad, in spite of the fact that my mother practiced the literal opposite, was his absolute unwillingness to speak down about or to others. In all the years between you and me, all the struggles and hurts we’ve experienced together and the heartbreaks my dad watched some of that create in his daughter and his two grandchildren, he never once spoke an unkind word about you. And beyond that, in spite of the horribly hurtful and life-altering behaviors my mother did to my dad, no matter the heartbreak she caused, or the depth of disappointment he felt from it, I never once heard him in 42 years say one unkind thing about my mother either. And as an adult, I realize there must have been more than a few times when his heart just ached from her choices; still, not one unkind word or hateful gesture in return. Not one. Not ever. This truth means so much more to me when I think of the horrible things my mother told me as a child about my dad. Things I doubt were true, but strangely enough, even if they were at all true, they’ve never once changed my perspective of my dad.

I believe these two points of character he chronically demonstrated over the span of my lifetime are the very reasons there’s just not much anyone could say negative about my dad, true or otherwise, which would be reason enough to see him as less than the wonderful example of a man, father, and human being that he was.

I may never fully understand your choices or this vendetta you seem to have waged against me as a woman and as the mother of two of your children. And you might even delight in knowing that although I’ve felt no romantic love for you in a very long time; your choices in this situation have broken my heart beyond any kind of heartbreak I could have fathomed possible. I truly thought I’d experienced the harshest of heartbreaks before, then I realized what the true depth of what heartbreak could be when my dad passed last year, and still, you’ve effectively exceeded any threshold of pain I’ve experienced prior. I don’t know what kind of man you are anymore Mark and I wouldn’t presume to know much about your character for certain these days, so I can’t know if sharing that truth brings you some sense of peace, joy, or closure which you may have been seeking or not. Truth is, I’m no longer affected on any level by what drives you to do what you do. I simply know that what’s true and real is true and real.

In all this, as heinous as it’s been and remains today, I willingly accept my responsibility in naively presenting to you the ripe opportunity to induce this level of life-shattering pain you’ve inflicted and I’m not sarcastic when I say, I do hope you’ve at least received the satisfaction you were seeking with the “pounds of flesh” you’ve attained with it.

I’m deeply sorry you feel the need to spread untruths about me and speak so ugly of my character in general. Over the past 16 years, I can honestly tell you, I’ve always diligently attempted to avoid that choice. Regardless of your choices, how confusing or painful they’ve been… regardless of the efforts it required to find excuses or veils adequate enough to cover the transgressions and their effects on my life, I have strived to hold onto the basic respect I felt you were entitled as the co-parent of my most valued treasures God chose to bless me with – my children. I realize over the years of our association, I’ve probably disappointed and perhaps even hurt you at times as well. I can honestly say that it was never my intention either to do so or to gain any personal satisfaction or gain from it. If I’ve ever caused you a fraction of the pain and depth of destruction you’ve created in me with all of this, “deserved” or otherwise, I offer you my sincerest apology.

And finally, regardless of how this situation plays out, I will always strive to maintain the integrity my dad demonstrated throughout my lifetime. I will continue to attempt to find his kind of perfection within my many imperfections.

God bless you in your own struggles and life-challenges past, present, and future,

~C