05 Friday Oct 2018
I was the happy girl.
The unconditional love girl.
The forgive anything girl.
The bounce-back no matter how hard the punch girl.
The live and let live girl.
The this will not define me girl.
The lover of books girl.
The hug everyone girl.
The cry it out and this too shall pass girl.
The at least my daddy always loved me girl.
And now, I’m the none of those things at all woman.
05 Friday Oct 2018
I was the happy girl.
The unconditional love girl.
The forgive anything girl.
The bounce-back no matter how hard the punch girl.
The live and let live girl.
The this will not define me girl.
The lover of books girl.
The hug everyone girl.
The cry it out and this too shall pass girl.
The at least my daddy always loved me girl.
And now, I’m the none of those things at all woman.
13 Monday Aug 2018
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?
06 Monday Aug 2018
Posted in Abuse, Complex Post Traumatic Disorder, Coping, damage, Fears, Narcissists suck
Tags
They can tell you Because you’re not going to back down You won’t sell your sisters for a side ways glance You won’t burn your bra, you may need it to strangle someone You have the same look All of you The ones with green hair and multiple piercings who say fuck off before you […]
23 Wednesday May 2018
I think often of my dad when I mow the grass. I remember him mowing it on Shuler Avenue when I was little.
I didn’t get to see him much but I remember hating when I was there and he’d have to go mow the grass . I was too little to help and I resented anything that took away even an hour of my precious time with him.
But that would pass the minute he was finished and he’d come back inside, smelling of freshly mown grass and the sticky heat of summer. I couldn’t wait to get him a glass of water or a cold beer from the fridge to help cool him down after the task. I felt so grown up to serve him. Sometimes I’d pretend I was a waitress and take his order when he came in. I couldn’t write yet, so I’d just scribble on paper pretending I could, thinking I was so clever to make my daddy believe I knew how to write!
Mowing grass makes me think of my beloved lawn on my house on Roosevelt. The yard was huge but it was so beautiful, I enjoyed getting it just perfect so my daughters and their friends and I could hang out barefoot in the grass playing or practicing cheerleading stunts. It smelled of lilacs and roses and fresh grass. I took great joy in completing it even though it was almost a full day’s job. I was so proud of our pretty little house, it’s good energy, and it beautiful yard… to finally provide my kids with our very own home we could decorate as we liked rather than all the rentals we’d lived in where I couldn’t paint or landscape the way we all wanted.
Their dad scammed that from us, although he didn’t pay a dime of his own money for that house. He scammed me with lies then later stole it with deceit, to hurt me and just to prove that “he could”. Just because I was trusting enough when my dad said, “you’re paying for that house with his name on the mortgage; make damn sure you get that agreement in writing”. So when I asked Mark for our agreement in writing saying my dad had suggested we just make sure there was never any confusion as to who was paying for this house and who it belonged to, Mark cried. He cried on the phone saying, “I’m so hurt you’d think I’d ever do something so dishonest to you or our girls like take your house!”
And true to narcissistic manipulation, sure enough, I ended up apologizing for even asking that our agreement be put in writing. I apologized for asking.
Three years later, he lied in court and said it was his, claiming he was buying this house 2000 miles away from where he lives as his “summer home” and he lied in court saying that with the sole intent of leaving his daughters and me homeless to “teach us a lesson” . And after threatening my dad that he’d never speak to him again if he let us stay with him after he’d stolen our house.
He rents it out now.
Sometimes I wonder if the people living in it know how many months my dad and children and I searched endlessly for the perfect home for me to buy for my daughters and I to live in forever. The house I pictured getting my children ready for their first prom in, or imagined when I’d watch them pull in the driveway the day they got their driver’s license, or how I’d imagined waiting for them in the front room to come home from their first date to tell me all about it, or how every time I mowed the grass I’d think of summer parties we could throw with all their friends and twinkle lights around the fence. Or how I’d scraped and saved money from nothing just to buy that little above ground pool for them and their friends to enjoy that first summer we lived there and how much fun we had playing in it and how proud I was to have afforded it even while paying for our home. Or how I couldn’t afford a lawnmower so my dad brought his over every weekend so I could keep the yard perfect. Every weekend he lugged that lawnmower over so I could make sure our yard was immaculate and beautiful so my daughters could be proud of our home
It wasn’t a mansion like Mark lived in when he lied and said it was his. It wasn’t some glorious expensive thing, but it was ours.
I’d scrimped and scraped just to have it; just so my children could have a permanent forever home of their own to be proud of.
To be our home base forever. It was always all ours.
Right up until the day their dad lied in court to say it wasn’t ours.
…Just because he “could”. Just because I had been stupid enough to trust a lying cheating, abusive pathological narcissist.
Trusted a pathetic excuse of a human being who had CRIED at the “insult” to his honor that I’d even ask for our agreement in writing. CRIED that I’d ever even imagine he’d do something so deceitful and hurtful as to take a home he knew wasn’t his… and never had been his…
our home.
15 Tuesday May 2018
Tags
Some pain is infinite
no edges to jump off
No light penetrates
As labor pains contact and contort your soul
You catch your breath between its
fierce clutches
Hot invisible grips around your heart
throat choking
fire breathing memories
Left alive with only the
ashes of death
15 Tuesday May 2018
Everything was fine
Until he clawed open her soul
Just to feel the sunshine
18 Sunday Mar 2018
Nightmares by Raquel Kortizo
They’ve come for me again.
A prison camp by day
A torture chamber by night
hovering over my existence,
infiltrating my thoughts,
piercing my heart with raw fingers
clawing
tearing at the pieces of my brain
pulling and stretching the parameters of pain
infinite…endless…torture…
As if I’m not helpless enough to stop the pain and misery during waking hours.
As if I’m not worthy of any peace whatsoever..
ever.
They broaden the definition of relentless.
Even felons of horrible crimes can serve their time and be released. Yet, I who committed no crime nor have ever once inflicted any intentional or knowing injury upon any other creature. Any. Other. Creature. Ever.
I, whose only method of fighting back my entire life was to walk away. Incapable of actual battle, I walked away from every assault without raising a single fist. Jesus, I rarely even raised my arms to protect myself from the blows. My typical response to any type of assault was duck and cover-too scared to even lift my arms to ward off the blows, knowing if I didn’t just accept whatever came my way, it would only come back worse later.
Okay, so maybe the worst I ever did was run. Yes, a few times I didn’t walk away. I ran…. duck, cover, then walk or at worst, run…but I never fought back. I never engaged in the warfare or returned assault or injury. My worst return-fire was to run.
Regardless, I was sentenced to life. And I can’t help in hindsight but to suppose the sentence was the harshest because I never fought back. Perpetrators typically size up their victims first and choose the most defenseless – the one least likely to fight back- the most powerless of victims. They’re irresistibly easy to conquer then destroy.
And once they’ve assessed that you’re too weak, scared, naive, ignorant, or insecure to even fight back, their power is truly limitless. They know you’re too harmlessly pathetic to even defend yourself.
Yes, pathetic. Even most animals will attempt to fight back when backed in a corner and assaulted. Not me. Nope. I crouch down, hang my head, squeeze my eyes shut tight, and wait for the fury to cease long enough to maybe try to run. But still too stupid to run if they’ve first convinced me it’s my fault and my just dessert too. Then, I just crouch down, take all the blows, wait for my punishment to be over…then apologize, beg forgiveness, and try even harder to be earn their love and try to be better enough to deserve a lighter punishment next time…knowing I’ll never attain perfection enough for the punishments to ever stop altogether…knowing I’ll always make another mistake somehow, but hoping I learned my lesson enough that time to figure out a way to be better each time.
A sentence thrust upon me without cause, without law, without a judge or jury, save my perpetrators themselves. Hell, I didn’t even know I was on trial until after all was said and done.
Like a rapist being his own judge, witness, and jury of his own trial against his victim.
They sentenced me to life in hell, not even merciful enough to execute me outright, just a life term of endless, inescapable torture.
Betrayal from all angles, in every imaginable manner of betrayal.
They broaden the definition of betrayal.
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Like hunting caged animals.
Like waging a war of morality and then bringing bombs and armies, knowing your opponent is only one person and will arrive armed only with words and truth…a clear conscience, an ignorance of the depth of your hatred, naive after everything to the extent of your evil. All while your chosen “opponent” is totally unaware there even is a war at all.
Like pretending to love a wounded animal and giving it just enough time and space to believe for a moment it’s safe, just to make skinning and devouring it easier.
I say they’ve returned.
Returned…
As if they ever left at all.
The nightmares never leave now. Hell is my life now.
Hope is the only thing that still returns briefly…
just to mock me, then leave again.
22 Wednesday Nov 2017
Note from 2/28/17
She took my childhood. Imprisoned me, controlled me, beat me, and diminished me to nothing.
Stomped my backbone from birth, shredded my voice, mocked my existence
Then tossed me away
Daddy picked up the pieces
And loved them …every sad fragment
But something was still broken
The first boy who was nice to me,
I settled in. I basked in that innocent childish love, let it wash my 17 years of aching tender wounds
Until he started tearing at those wounds with angry fists and kicks of rage.
And love was suddenly more familiar with bruises and breaks and bloody noses
So I just loved him harder like I had mother
And he beat me harder and harder – just like mother had
the harder I loved.
Daddy didn’t help because this was “such a good guy”.
The police didn’t help because they “knew my boyfriend’s big important daddy”.
Then he put a gun to my head and I begged mother for a place to hide where he couldn’t find me.
Mother refused to help me because she said I “must have liked it to stay so long with all the beatings”. She said, Call me in a year and maybe you can hide here.
I was desperate – scared literally for my life, not just another beating, – my life. So I went to my aunt.
And then mother was REALLY FURIOUSLY pissed off because I’d asked my aunt for refuge, who happily provided me a place to hide and start a new life and to help me till I got independent. I was 19.
But I pushed on, hoping once I made a better life for myself – away from the domestic violence of my boyfriend – and on my own, mother might be proud of me… And maybe even love me…?
I got my own job, my own apartment, I had no help from anyone. I was fiercely determined to earn mother’s love.
Working at a massive corporate law firm in downtown Cincinnati with over 500 attorneys. Several of the partners got to know me, believed I was far too intelligent to stay a legal secretary, and encouraged me to go to college and to consider law school. I was invigorated by the encouragement.
I decided for college one day and excitedly called mother to tell her so excited that she’d be proud I was going. Mother mocked, snidely laughed and told me I could never succeed in college and
I believed her.
I always believed her.
But my bosses seemed so sure I could. They seemed so impressed with my abilities and my intelligence. So I told my dad what the law partners were saying and daddy said I could live with him and go to school and get student loans… He’d do everything he could to help … and my best friend back home, George, was always saying how much he loved me.
So I did.
Even while self sufficient I begged for her love, but I moved forward in my life without it and just hoping… someday
And I did it.
I made honors in community college until I got a partial scholarship and loans to attend a university.
All on my own.
20 Monday Nov 2017
Tags
https://eliskanapino.deviantart.com/art/drowning-woman-385874647
I am mostly quiet now.
Yet what happens in my life writes a story in my flesh.
Pain is never silent. Suffering is never quiet.
I am mostly quiet now though.
My body and brain scream in agony while
I’ve been well trained in the utter futility of making any sound
So….
I must beg your forgiveness for
the extra wrinkles aging me at the speed of five years of heartbreak,
unending lies,
absurd accusations,
and a lifetime of accepting
my expendability
(I am mostly quiet now, though)
The permanently furrowed brow
The way my skin almost shrieks aloud now when touched
The dead weight behind my eyes
The way my once-smiling mouth pulls further down at the edges each day
(But I am mostly quiet now.)
For the way my brain screams at too much noise
Yet weeps at the unending unnatural shrieks of silence…
Resounding with pathetic pleas to matter
I plead daily for mercy for the weight of my existence, the curse of my birth.
I know only these things:
No one should have to spend a lifetime begging for love, desperate for mercy, pathetic for humanity.
No one!
Not even one…
and I am mostly quiet now.
