Category Archives: blogs

The narcissism of blogging

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I saw this and just had to reblog it. It’s hilarious because it’s so true!

Internet trolls are psychopaths

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internet-troll

There’s a very interesting website I found called SociopathWorld. Little if no distinction is made there between sociopaths (more likely to have APD and be impulsive) and psychopaths (NPD and more likely to plan out their actions). Most of the activity on the board is by and for the character-disordered, and includes blog posts by psychopaths and sociopaths, both prose and poetry. It’s interesting because it allows the rest of us to have a peek inside their heads. The experience of “getting inside their heads” seems very surreal to those of us who don’t think the way they do. It’s like a visit to another planet.

But even more interesting is the comments. One of the posts was by a non-psychopath talking about her psychopathic child. She was out of her mind with worry and grief over his actions.

Bad place to make a post like that. Almost all the responses either ignored her and kept on bantering about inconsequential things that were already being discussed, or if they addressed the issue she raised, were snarky “inside jokes” about the post or unsympathetic one-line replies.

That got me thinking about Internet trolls and bullies. Forums in particular are swarming with them (I’m not sure why trolls seem so attracted to forums over blogs), and that’s why moderators are needed, to weed out the worst posts and ban them from the forum.

I used to be very active on a political forum, but after several years the moderator quit and was never replaced, and when I went back recently, the forum was overrun by trolls and bullies. Most of the regular posters had left, and the few that stuck around were attacked left and right by the trolls. It’s sad what happened to that site, because at one time it was filled with intelligent and thoughtful people. Obviously most of them were run off a long time ago.

Some websites have a lot more bullies and trolls than others, and a lot of it has to do with the way the forum or site is moderated, and sometimes the subject matter has a lot to do with it too.

There are a few ways you can identify a troll or Internet bully, and I think almost all of these people are psychopaths:

— They rarely post anything original; mostly they just reply to or about someone else’s.
— Their posts are almost always very short.
— Their posts are snarky and filled with “jokes” meant to put a certain poster or their ideas down, or sometimes inside jokes when there is a swarm of bullies present who are on the same page against the non-troll.
— Trying to reason with them never works.
— If they are banned, they may come back under a different handle.
— Never PM or email them your concerns–they can use this against you and suddenly you may find your private message to them posted publicly elsewhere or being made fun of. This has happened to me.
— If you report them, be sure the moderator or admin is not on the side of the bullies; if they allow the presence of the trolls and bullies, that’s a red flag.
— Just like in real life, they will often gang up on a poster who appears to be vulnerable or have a differing opinion.
— They will take offense easily if you criticize them and usually fire back an insult at you.
— They are huge fans of humorous or snarky memes, gifs and photos, and will use these as a distraction away from the topic supposedly being discussed.
— They often go off topic and discuss irrelevant (and usually trivial) things among themselves.
— They gossip openly about past posters.
— They may respond to your comments with a “reaction gif” or meme instead of a real response.
— Some trolls come out of nowhere and make incendiary comments designed to upset the community or individual posters. These trolls are often banned or leave of their own accord.

All these tactics are meant to put the honest posters down, drive them away, or belittle them. Beware of any website where you see these tactics being used. Most of these people are psychopathic or narcissistic.
trolls

“Don’t feed the trolls” is excellent advice, if you must deal with them. Don’t respond to anything they say, or better yet, block them if you have that option.

This is what I was born to do.

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borntodothis

Writing has always been what I’ve excelled at more than anything else, but because of the emotional and mental damage done to me by my psychopaths throughout my life, I never pursued it seriously and always felt I didn’t know what I should be or do. At an early age I started to believe I wasn’t much good at anything anyway.

These are the lies and half lies that were told about and to me by the various psychopaths who got to control me (some are based on half truths):
1. Suzanne is smart, but will never excel at anything because she doesn’t apply herself (true, but I didn’t apply myself because I was told I couldn’t do anything).
2. She is too sensitive to make it in this world (you can be sensitive and be successful).
3. She doesn’t make friends easily because she has a terrible personality (I am shy and not very social but I do not have a terrible personality).
4. She’s negative and lives on the pity pot so she will never achieve anything (this has been true at times).
5. She’s lazy and unmotivated and always gives up (see # 1).
6. She doesn’t stick with anything long enough to get really good at anything (see #1).
7. No one wants to be around Suzanne because she’s such a Debbie downer (depression and PTSD caused by being abused by psychopaths).
8. She isn’t any good at office politics (This is true).
9. She should have become a nurse or a teacher because then she’d always have a good job. (I am totally unsuited for nursing and teaching).
10. If Suzanne was thinner she would be more successful and get better jobs (I have never been seriously overweight so this is a lie).
11. If Suzanne smiled more people would like her better (probably true, but smiling doesn’t come second nature to me–I am working on that).
12. She’s stupid and has no common sense (I am not stupid but it’s true I can be a bit of the “absentminded professor”)
13. She’s insane (insanity implies someone who isn’t aware of their own actions or motives or is deluded–I suffer and have suffered from major depression, C-PTSD, autism and avoidant personality disorder. These are not “insane” diagnoses).

You get the idea.

yousuck

The closest I ever came to having a writing career were my two jobs as an editor–I was a technical writer and editor back in the late 1980s, then became a copy editor and later associate editor for a medical journal from 1989-1991. My job included writing a one page regular column, and I also used to write freelance reviews for self help and pop psychology books. These were all good jobs but none paid well. But honestly, I didn’t really like what I was doing (except for writing the book reviews). It was a very corporate environment and there was a lot of office politics so I was never 100% comfortable there.

After moving to North Carolina in 1993 after my second child was born, I never again had a job even remotely related to publishing or writing, and I thought I never would again.

I wrote a novel in 2003 but it was rejected by several publishers (and my narcissist mother said she hated it and I wasn’t ready to write a novel) so I put it in a box in the back of my closet and never looked at it again. It embarrassed me. So from then on I limited my writing to posts on forums or comments on other people’s blogs. I believed I had forgotten how to write, and even worse, I thought I lost my creativity. I never seemed to be able to come up with ideas anymore. What was really happening was I was so terrified of failure (and so brainwashed by my abusers that I always would fail) that it was just safer to never try anything new or take any risks. If I never tried anything, then I couldn’t really fail, could I? Why have ideas if you’re never going to act on them?

That’s faulty logic though, because if you never try anything new, accept a challenge, or take a risk, you may not fail at any activity but you will fail at life, and that’s a lot worse.

One of the benefits of freeing myself from the psychopaths in my life is occasional unexpected bursts of inspiration, and that’s how this blog came to be. Now that I write something every day, my creative muscle is strengthening and I feel like new ideas pop into my head several times a day now. I thought I’d have trouble even coming up with one post a day, but most days I have ideas for two or three. Blogging is something I should have started years ago; it might have led to something bigger and maybe even become a career.

But you know what? There’s no reason why it still can’t. I feel like I finally found my purpose after so many years of feeling like a lost ship without a rudder. I have a good feeling about it.

writer

Blogging drunk

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drunkwriter

I’ve had almost three glasses of Merlot and I feel like the buzz just got vacuum-suctioned from my brain. See, I had almost finished a writing this post but in my half drunken state I hit some key I shouldn’t have and the whole thing was deleted, and the nice buzz I’d been working on was gone. I wanted to ram my laptop through the wall. I couldn’t get my post back so now I have to start over. I want to kick a puppy right now. And now I can barely type because although my mind is suddenly clear, my body is apparently still drunk.

I’m pouring a little more wine into my glass now and taking a sip. Aaaahhhhh! I must rewrite that post, but it won’t be as good as the first one, which was awesome. Arrrrghhhh!

So today I decided to get drunk. Now, I’m not a big drinker at all, and in fact don’t even like alcohol too much. It makes me feel sick and doesn’t give me the same pleasant buzz it did when I was in my 20s. Today, in my 50s, I can have just one or two drinks and stop. I drink very rarely and when I do I don’t care for it much. Back in my prime I spent a lot of time drunk and didn’t know when to stop. I even joined AA (and met Michael, my psychopathic sperm donor there) but evidently I was just a problem drinker and hadn’t crossed the line to alcoholism because according to their beliefs, a true alcoholic can never ever drink again because if they do, they will fall off the side of the sobriety ship, get abducted by Jack Daniels, whose goons will waterboard you with booze for all eternity. Well, anyway, that didn’t happened to me. The last time I got this drunk was on New Years Eve almost two years ago.

But today I decided I wanted to not only drink, but get drunk. I didn’t wake up wanting to do that though. There were important things to take care of.

I guess I need to provide a little background as to what motivated me to want to get sloshed. My 21 year old daughter Molly has had her share of issues. She was a rebellious teenager and her rebellion and rash, impulsive behavior hasn’t let up much since she was 15. I blame a lot of this on her dad and his ex-girlfriend, who took my then 12-year old daughter to drug parties where my girl developed a taste for the illicit and mind-bending.

I just finished my third glass of Merlot (the one I was refilling a few minutes ago) and just took a couple of hits of weed too, another thing I don’t indulge in much. I like to be clearheaded most of the time but today? Honestly, IDGAF.

Molly’s had a few run ins with the law–petty charges like shoplifing and a DWI. Back in April, when she turned 21, she received an inheritance from my father for $20K. My son received the same, but has spent his wisely on his education and camera and computer equipment so he can keep making films which he hopes get him into that industry (I never got any inheritance from my father but that’s irrelevant right now and I’ve talked about that before anyway). Within two months, the money was gone. Neither she nor I have any idea what happened to it, but she did help me pay a few bills and bought herself a used dark blue Honda Acura. The car is fine but needs a little work. Because Molly had a DWI the car was put in my name, and I would have to put it on my insurance and not allow her to drive it until she finished her probation requirements and her license was reinstated.

I’m not typing very well and spellcheck is sure getting a workout too because my fat drunk fingers are flapping around the keyboard like dead baby flounders. Please, dear God, don’t let me hit the delete key or whatever it was by accident again. >< (Does that smilie exist? It's supposed to be that face you make when you're frustrated beyond all reason and you squint your eyes real tight.) Yep, I'm feeling it.

So anyway back in July, about a week before her probation was up, Molly decided to break up with her boyfriend. It was her idea but she went batshit for about a month, laying in bed and not eating for a week (she is bipolar and has BPD), and then suddenly leaving–in the car she isn't supposed to be driving–and not returning for almost a week. Her psychopathic sperm donor texted me and told me she was hanging with a group of junkies and pushers and was shooting heroin herself and I had better do something abou tit. about it.

He was lying through his teeth. It was just him trying to start drama again in his psychopathic, sadistic way, but the situation with Molly was still concerning at the very least. That night she brought home a group of the kind of boys we call "skells" around these parts–according to the Urban Dictionary, a skell is basically a lowlife or redneck type of guy who sells drugs because they're really not otherwise employable. (I just had to go back and correct "employable" three times and twice on this quoted one). My daughter is very intelligent, far too intelligent for the type of company she keeps. So it turned out the guys were really only into weed and Molly had no tracks or marks on her arms and she looked okay. She said they were taking good care of her. I wanted to believe her, but of course I'm not stupid and I know they were very bad for her. But she's 21 and can do whatever she wants. I have no control over what she does. She seems to have no interests in a career or a future, but maybe she's not ready yet. I have to remember I was much the same way at her age (which has a lot to do with why I'm a 50ish unpaid blogger and former medical editor recovering from a bad marriage and currently obliged to clean houses for a living). God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

But then she disappeared again, with the car. And I didn’t see her for three more days.

I’m pouring a 4th glass. Would you like some? Am I still coherent? Soon I won’t be able to type at all.

Instead of going into my usual panic of biblical proportions and imagining she had been abducted and taken into an abandoned field to be gang raped and strangled and left lying in a bed of tall weeds, I felt…angry. dducted bductedd (That was me trying to type abdduted abducted. (spellcheck said that was right). I decided to leave it there.

The car Molly was driving was in my name, under my insurance, and she was driving it illegally and not very responsibly. She was transporting God knows what sort of lowlifes in it. If anything happened I would be responsible and the car impounded, not to mention that I’d never be able to live with myself if something happened to her in it and I hadn’t at least made an effort to put a stop to it. So I went to the magistrate and filed a charge against her for a stolen vehicle. I hated doing this but I felt like if I didn’t something terrible might happen.

Now Molly’s basically a good kid, but she was veyr very angry with me, understandably. I finally agreed to drop the charges on her not because of her anger, but because she was almost done with her probation requirements (and she had been very good about paying her fines and doing whatever else they told her to) and I didn’t want her record to be further sullied. I made an arrangement to have someone else I trusted hold onto the car temporarily and agreed to drop the charges. In order to do that, I had to be back in court with her this morning.

Sometime last month the friend who was holding the car moved so had to return it, which means Molly has acces to it. I’ve given up trying to hide the keys. She’s returning it every night in pristine condition and seems more responsible but I keep warning her she is driving it illegally. Apparently she’s willing to take that risk. I didn’t change my mind about dropping the charges.

To make a long story short, she was supposed to be home this morning so we could go to court together without her having to drive–but guess what. When I woke up this morning she wasn’t here. I couldn’t call her either because she lost her phone (again). We were due in court at 9, and by 8:45 she still hadn’t shown up and it takes forever just to find parking at the courthouse. So I went there myself, stood in line, and told the person at the desk who I was and that I wanted to drop charges on my daughter. The officious lady at the desk said that would be fine as long as my daughter showed up but she was nowhere to be seen. And I had taken a day off work to help her out in court, and that’s not exactly something I can afford to do in the financial straits I’m in.

I drove home in a self righteous fury and that’s when I decided I wanted to drink today. I thought rationalized mused to myself, “we’re all entitled to indulge in some excess on occasion, and after all, I spend so much time and energy trying to always be good and having so little to show for it. Fuck that shit.”

I pulled into an Ingles supermarket and bought a jug of Merlot. Livingston Merlot, to be exact. It’s cheap and doesn’t taste too bad. It does the job, which is to get me pleasantly tipsy. Expensive wines drive me insane because of those goddamn corks which I always wind up mangling in my pitiful efforts to pry them out with a corkscrew or a damn fork if a corkscrew isn’t at hand. And then in my enraged defeat, I wind up pushing the entire mutilated cork down into the wine itself and then have to drink good wine peppered with stuff that tastes like sawdust (though I bet cork does add healthy fiber to your diet).

I picked up some of their delicious homemade chicken salad to go with the wine, because I knew if I didn’t eat anything I’d get sick, and I just wanted to get drunk, not sick.

Today may be the last day I have Internet service (though I will have it set up again soon and in the meantime I can always use the WiFi at the hipster coffee place, the library, or even freaking McDonalds or Bojangles) so I was cheered up a little when I got home from my useless morning in court and found the Interwebs still working.

I decided to blog about how furious I was at my daughter and get drunk while doing it. I could retreat into my own private little alcohol infused world in the comfort of my postage stamp living room and pretend to be fucking Dorothy Parker.

I’m almost finished with the Merlot jug and that’s it for me. I can’t type anymore (this sentence took & 9 8 tries to get right) and my thinking is getting fuzzy.

Molly just got home and she said she was late to court because she overslept and had to go strauight there instread of coming home (spelling mistakes left intact) and then opn the way she ran out of gas (again! she is such a blonde!) but made it to court just after I left and the charges for unathorized use are now dropped.

She just noticed the wine and is now rolling on the floor in hysterics because of the face I just made at her that was supposed to look angry but just looked drunk and goofy.

Can you still understand what I’m writing?

Thank God she didn’t have her camera phone with her. If it was my son Ethan, he’d be filming my reaction and putting init it up on Youtube. And with my luck, it would go viral. “My crazy drunk mom trying to look angry”–43,864,301 views. I’m in that weird part of Youtube my brain again.

I’m so relieved my post is still here and my daughter is still okay. I’m so relieved I’m going to take a hot bath and then a nap and then wake up sober and eat a good meal.
Today wasn’t a disaster. I’m just an overstressed nutcase. I don’t have to drive anywhere today. It’s all good.

Dilemma

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I need your opinions. Since this is supposed to be a blog about narcissism and other mental health issues, I wonder if I should start a second blog and move all my off topic articles onto that blog.

Would it be better to have off topic articles on a general topic blog separate from this one, or does the presence of off topic articles on this blog a welcome respite and should they stay here?

The only problem is that even most of my off topic articles reference narcissism or psychopathy in some way and I would have to change a lot of the terminology since people reading the general topic blog may not know what some of the psychological slang terms are referring to. Maybe I can just leave those articles here and put future off topic articles on a second blog. What does everyone think?

Furries revisited.

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furriesposter

I read my stats every day, and by far my most popular article was “My son is furry–got a problem with that?” I have a few theories as to why this is so.

1. It tells a story that promises to be a bit unusual and maybe controversial (a mom who actually approves of her son’s furriness).
2. Furry is controversial in and of itself — lots of people hate them or misunderstand what they’re about.
3. Furry is trendy and cool, especially among young people.
4. The title, I must admit, is great–it’s one of my best titles ever. It’s grabby and sassy and promises to be a little controversial and a little personal and maybe even a little juicy; and there’s also an implied challenge there too for those who dislike furries (got a problem with that?)
5. It includes a video and a cool original photo.
6. Furries are adorkable. (I love ’em).
7. The article is neither too short nor too long.

Now, all that being said, there’s another reason why that article got so many hits. I have a Twitter account which I use primarily to talk to my son, who spends a lot of time there. My son has close to 2000 followers, and most of them are furries, so when I posted the link to Twitter (I link all my articles to Twitter) a ton of his fur-riends wanted to see what I had to say about their friend and also what his mom thinks of him being a fur. It’s a built in audience. If you look at the Twitter button under the article you can see it was linked to Twitter again about 28 times by an army of furries clicking on the Twitter link so it has a huge presence there. It was also linked to various Facebook accounts a number of times too. My son is a little embarrassed by this endlessly circulating article but also seems tickled pink that he’s getting so much attention and has achieved a level of Twitter “fame,” at least among other furries. It gives him a presence in the fandom, and his dance comp video has received many more views now too.

Outside of that, my most popular articles are the ones about narcissists and psychopaths. That’s understandable, given that’s the focus of my blog, and most of my followers are people coming out of abusive relationships with narcs and psychopaths, or just people interested in the ugly and soulless side of human behavior.

But the only other article that received anywhere near the amount of attention my furry article did was my “I’m Frustrated” noobie manifesto which OM was kind enough to reblog and as a result I was so busy with likes, new followers, and comments that day I could barely find time to go to the bathroom! Things have died down a bit, but due to his kindness I never again have logged on in the morning after posting a new article only to find nothing but crickets and tumbleweeds.

Third in popularity was my rant, “Don’t judge me because I’m poor.” Now, I’ll be honest–I didn’t expect that to be a popular article. It’s a depressing topic and I used a sad picture. But I guess a lot of bloggers can relate and poverty, like narcissism and furries, is a hot topic these days I guess. And it has a sassy title that contains a challenge.

The biggest lesson from all this I’ve learned is that titles do matter. A title that is short, a little sassy, a little controversial, and promises a personal confession of some sort seem to get the most hits and likes.
It helps if the article lives up to its grabby title too.

I also have to admit I’m hoping the reference here to furries gives me another little Twitter boost.

How writing every day has changed me

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journaling

Before I started to blog, I was stuck in a quagmire of self pity and resentment. Most of you know I’m a survivor of abuse and hence suffer from depression and PTSD as a result of my abusers’ mental and emotional shenanigans and mindgames.

Even though I disconnected from my abusive ex-husband almost a year ago, my negative thinking patterns remained. Every day was the same as the one before; I was bored with my life and bored with myself, and felt like there was nothing else to look forward to, ever. I felt like I had lost my writing ability, creative vision and intelligence. I tried praying and it wasn’t helping very much–because the faith in myself and my future wasn’t there. It just seemed like a waste of time.

For a long time I had wanted to blog, but several things were stopping me: first, I was terrified to find out I may have forgotten how to write (since I hadn’t written anything besides a forum post in years). Second, blogging seemed like something you had to have computer or technical savvy to do. People told me WordPress and Blogger were hard to use, and I assumed they were right and that I was too stupid to learn (because I really truly believed I lost my ability to learn anything new). Finally, I couldn’t seem to get motivated. I was stuck in a rut and wanted out of it badly, yet couldn’t seem to pull myself out of the murky quicksand of my own ennui.

I really thought there was no place for me in this world and that I was simply too old, too tired, too dumb, and too boring to make any sort of meaningful impact on the world or even on just a few people. Actually it turned out I wasn’t any of those things–people with depression and PTSD often feel this way about themselves.

I thought about suicide because the prospect of just getting up every morning, going to my boring, low paying job, coming home, spending a couple of hours on other people’s websites before turning into bed, then having to repeat the same thing the next day and the next day and every day for the rest of my life until the pain of illness and old age finally took over was something I just didn’t want to face. But as depressed as I’ve been, I’ve never seriously entertained the idea of suicide because, well, I’m just too scared of it. Death scares the shit out of me. Not so much the state of death itself, but the process of dying.

But guess what? I was already dying. I was walking around like a dead person, spiritually and emotionally numb.

But writing has changed all that.

One day about a month ago, some spark of motivation came out of nowhere and momentarily penetrated the stagnant murk inside my brain. I don’t know if it was God, or the better part of myself doing it but it doesn’t matter because there it was like the beam from a lighthouse first seen in a stormy sea. Rather than ignore it or tell myself I’d act on it later, I didn’t even think about it, I just obeyed it. I opened up my laptop, found WordPress, and immediately set up my blog. It was much easier than I’d been led to believe, and by my third article I felt like I knew what I was doing.

There’s been no turning back, and I feel so much more alive and optimistic about my future and what I can contribute to the world. Blogging is certainly helping me, but maybe I can even help others too. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a purpose, a place in this world, and that I’m here for a better reason than just marking time until death and have more to offer than just providing an example to others of how not to live their lives (which is something I used to really believe).

But writing is a discipline, and sometimes I have to talk myself into it. It was hard at first to commit to writing one post a day. But for the most part I’ve not only managed to write a post a day, but sometimes two or three a day. I find that rather than being a chore(as I had feared), the more I write the more I want to write, and the ideas just keep coming. I thought I had no ideas. I was so wrong.

Important announcement to my readers

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To my readers:

Here’s an update. I am losing my Internet access either tonight or tomorrow. If I’m lucky I *might* have access through the weekend. I’m testing WiFi at Bojangles–it seems to be working. I have to find another internet provider that costs less–but it seems there is some sort of law if you were a previous Charter customer, then other companies cannot work with you, which I find really strange.

What really sucks balls is my daughter went off last night God only knows where and took my phone–which other than this Bojangles internet access, is my only contact with the outside world, and now she cannot be reached anywhere, nor do I have any idea where she is, or where my phone is. No one has been able to track her down or contact her. It’s times like this I think she might be a Narc–she had lost her phone so she thought it perfectly fine to take mine, even though all my contacts are on it and I need the phone for work. If there’s an emergency, I don’t even have a means to dial 911. I cannot afford a new phone at the moment.

But that’s not anyone’s problem. Of course donations are accepted and will be more than appreciated if anyone can help. Until I figure out what to do about Internet access, I will be using the WiFi at Bojangles which means I will have to write from my car at the restaurant and won’t have as much time to post or read. At least there’s that and it’s better than nothing. I won’t just disappear. Hey, I NEED this!

I was going to post something tonight about how to distinguish someone with NPD from other people, but I’m just so tired, angry and upset all I want to do is go to bed.

If anyone can make a donation to help me procure a new phone and/or help me pay for Internet access so I can continue my blog from the comfort of my home, please click on the “Donate” button in the green bar above and follow the instructions. Thanks so much my fellow Bloggers! I appreciate all my readers and all the encouraging and supportive comments I have received. 🙂

I’m just pretty bummed out right now, so I’m signing off for the evening. I’ll probably just go to sleep soon.

Waking up from the nightmare

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Woman Looking at Reflection

So after 28 years of narcissistic abuse I finally felt free. Before, even though there were periods where we hadn’t lived together, I never felt completely free of Michael’s toxic influence. But my daughter Molly and I were quite literally survivors and both of us had psychic wounds that ran deep and would take years to heal, if they could ever be healed at all.

My job (which I still have) doesn’t provide health insurance so I couldn’t afford to pay for a trauma therapist, but I started reading everything I could about NPD and PTSD/C-PTSD (the type of PTSD that’s associated with abuse). Molly still didn’t want to go to therapy but was still getting her meds for Bipolar and she was in a fairly stable relationship and was no longer getting into trouble the way she used to. She was also beginning to understand why I did some of the things I did and acted the way I had, and I learned she too had a lot of anger toward Michael.

But things were not perfect between us either and we did continue to argue from time to time, and when she was angry, she liked to bring up the fact I had given up custody of her to DSS even though at other times she says she understood it was the only thing I could do at the time and it did save her life. So I don’t let those occasional attacks bother me too much. I know it’s manipulation. Sometimes I think she may have NPD herself, but she does have a conscience and empathy so more likely she just has narcissistic traits which are common people with Borderline PD.

So in March I had to go to court and testify against Michael in order to obtain a permanent restraining order (the one that was issued at the magistrate was good for only 1 month). I was working with an organization that helps abused women and their families, and they counseled me on what to say in court. It was ridiculous I had to jump through all these hoops just to obtain a piece of paper to keep a man I wasn’t married to anyway away from me and my property, but it was what it was.

I knew I had a good case and no reason to be worried but I was still terrified of having to face him in court. Michael is very glib and has a lot of charm when he wants something. He can make himself sound like a victim and make the other person sound like the devil himself. He managed to be surviving pretty well in the men’s shelter, although he told Molly when he saw her how much he hated it and wanted to come back. He also made her go buy him things, which she would do. She felt guilty and caught in the middle between the two of us. It wasn’t fair to her.

Ethan came to visit in early March (on his way from Illinois to his new apartment in Florida–he graduated college in January and is is seeking work in film editing or something related). He wanted to make sure Michael was not going to show up. I assured him he wouldn’t. We had a fantastic time, but he said when he tried to call his father, Michael didn’t want to see him. For some reason he thinks Ethan was the one who convince me to kick him out of the house. No matter how much he’s told Ethan had nothing to do with it, he still blames him for brainwashing me. Huh? Talk about blame-shifting.

I had to write everything I wanted to say in court because I knew my mind would go blank when I had to get up at the stand and talk about why the restraining order should be extended. The big day was in mid-March. Several other cases were heard first and I avoided looking behind me because I knew he was there. I could feel his eyes burning holes into my neck. Finally I was called to the stand and presented my case. I didn’t cry (because it’s really hard for me to cry anymore) but I was trembling and my voice was shaking from fear. The judge had to keep asking me to speak up. I studied her expression but it gave nothing away.

writing

Michael was called up after me and gave a ridiculous story about how Molly had hit him first and he gave her a black eye in self defense (which is total BS because he didn’t have one mark on him). He gave some other lame
“reasons” why he needed to move back but since he really didn’t have a good reason, they didn’t fly with the judge. In fact, he was almost laughable and seeing the manipulation from more of a distance now, he seemed so transparent. Although I hated him, I almost felt sorry for him.

I won my case and the restraining order was extended for one year. The counselor from the women’s organization that had been working with me gave me a validating hug. I went home feeling lighter than I had in a long, long time.

Michael wasn’t done with me yet, but since I was no longer supplying his narcissistic goodies, his attempts at revenge were rather lame. He did things like trashing me on Facebook, saying what a horrible wife and mother I was and how he wished he never met me. He threatened suicide over and over again. I was kind of embarrassed for him, but because of it I stopped using Facebook, which I wasn’t using much anymore anyway because my mother and other family members had found me there (even though I had changed my first name a little to throw them off).

I had to adjust to my new life. For several months I just tried to take things easy, not get involved in too many new things. I read a lot of books, mostly about NPD, malignant narcissism and personality disorders in general. I read a lot of other books too, and started researching all these disorders online and reading a lot of blogs and forums.

I started making glass, mirror and ceramic suncatchers on weekends and have tried to sell some of them. Mostly I just make them for pleasure though. They also make great gifts. I have several of them on my porch and I love watching the way they catch the light and send colored prisms everywhere.

suncatcher10

But writing has always been the one thing I know I’m best at, yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to write anything beyond a forum post. It just seemed like too much work, and I was afraid I’d forgotten how. I feared I was no longer as smart as I used to be. I didn’t realize at first these numb and dumb feelings were symptomatic of C-PTSD. I knew if I ever did write again it would be to tell my story, but I had no idea where to begin. It all just seemed overwhelming. I thought about blogging but I was afraid it would be complicated and technical, and I still didn’t know what to write about or where to begin.

I re-read M. Scott Peck’s book “People of the Lie,” which I have reviewed in this blog, and realized Michael was not just narcissistic, but was truly evil. Despite it’s medieval connotations, I believe evil and evil people really do exist, and I was very lucky that I survived and both children survived. While most evil people don’t usually murder (they want to maintain their benign appearance), they are murderous and often drive others to suicide or self-destruction. They lie about everything.

I joined a gym and got back in shape. My job is also physical and that keeps me in shape too. I started liking what I saw in the mirror again. I also started meditating, something I started back in the ’90s and then stopped.

About a month ago I revisited the idea of blogging, inspired by some blogs I had seen by other survivors through my readings. On a whim I decided to start one. There’s been no looking back. At first it was meant to be self-therapy, a sort of online journaling, but now it’s turning into so much more and a few people have even said they feel inspired and it’s helping them too. And that makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I still have a purpose in this world and am not just marking time until I die. I want to think that everything that happened to me happened for a reason and that something good can come out of this.

I still have a long way to go, and as soon as I can I want to start seeing a trauma therapist. In the meantime life isn’t unbearable anymore. It’s getting better.

About a month ago Michael was kicked out of the apartment an organization called OctoberRoad was providing for its mental patients. My daughter allowed him to live in her car. He left the windows open during a rainstorm one night and the car was nearly destroyed. She took the car keys away and she hasn’t heard from Michael since, which is very odd, since he would call her up to 10 times a day to demand things.

She has no idea where he is. We think he may have killed himself. She wouldn’t have been notified because she had his wallet in her car and there’d be no way anyone could identify him.

Michael was having his mail sent to the house, which I did allow. After three previous rejections, Michael’s SSI finally came through — and that includes several years of back payments, so he is getting a check for about $30K.

If he is dead, how ironic that it happened just as he finally had a means to be independent and no longer had anyone he could use and abuse. Maybe that was the only reason he stuck around so long–as long as he could use up and destroy others. With that opportunity taken away, and with no real self to fall back on, there was no longer any reason for him to live. Or maybe he was finally forced to look in the mirror and all he could see was an endless black void, and that was just too much to handle. What he has been reduced to is just a shell of what he used to be, but was there ever really anything there?

The coolest. thing. ever.

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world

I’m a stats junkie, and WordPress gives its bloggers an amazingly detailed statistics page, which is awesome. I love studying the numbers, and have found out through studying my stats page, which of my articles, tags and categories are the most popular, and that’s very helpful to me as a new blogger who wants to increase readership. My recent post about my son being “furry” is my top rated post, closely followed by my n00blogger rant, “I’m Frustrated.” I think the titles have a lot to do with how popular an article gets: it has to be grabby. I’m finding out that catchy, short titles that make some sort of statement about yourself get the most attention. If that statement hints at controversy, that’s even better. It’s good to know this. But I digress.

The coolest thing about the stats page is the map and countries list. Realizing that my posts (and yours, too) are being seen all over the world the moment we press “publish” is pretty incredible.

I keep going back to study the map and all the countries that have seen my posts and it blows me away every time. So far 29 countries have seen my posts, including a few far flung ones like Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, Malaysia, and New Zealand. It’s hard to wrap my brain around the idea that the thoughts, feelings and opinions that were just inside my head can be known by someone on the other side of the planet almost as soon as I type them out. And that is so, so, so cool.