Tag Archives: dysfunctional families

It’s all about image: the skewed values of narcissistic families

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monopolyguy

Last night I read a blog post by another survivor of narcissistic parents , and was astounded by how similar her parents’ values were to mine.

She writes that her father criticized her for being too idealistic. Now that would normally be a compliment, but because her family valued nothing but money, class and image, it was meant to be an insult. My father (who I don’t think is a narcissist, but has always been a huge narcissist apologist and enabler), said exactly the same thing to me.

We live in a narcissistic and materialistic society, that increasingly values traits that are narcissistic and exalt the individual over the community. In fact, studies have shown that a high percentage of CEOs, top executives, Wall Street tycoons, and others of the “One Percent” have narcissistic personality disorder. It’s a disorder that is very adaptive in modern society and whose traits are rewarded with money and material goods. Especially since the 1980s, with its “Greed is Good” ethos, we reward those who act in their own self interest over those who act in the interests of the community and want to help the less fortunate. There’s even a meme that’s become especially popular with narcissistic Baby Boomers: “I’m spending my children’s inheritance,” as though this is something to be proud of.

inheritance

My family bought right into this ethos. Image was everything to my parents, especially my mother. My parents looked down on our blue-collar neighbors and relatives, and my mother in particular constantly made jokes at their expense and talked about how much better we were because we had nicer things and my father had a better (meaning white collar) job in the city. Appearance mattered, and our clothes had to come from the best department stores, never Sears. We had to live in the most exclusive neighborhoods. To not have a college degree was considered a mortal sin, and even then, it was far better to be successful in the cold-hearted business world than to be a successful teacher, social worker or a nurse. Such things were regarded as jobs for those who couldn’t do anything else, and of course they required a level of idealism that my parents just couldn’t relate to. When my parents split up when I was 14, my extremely image-conscious mother took up public relations as a career, which is all about image. She had so many face-lifts that today her face looks like a mask.

Whenever my parents, my mother in particular, complimented someone else, it was always on their visible, tangible qualities–things like their appearance, home decor, financial status, and taste in clothes. Table manners were of utmost importance, but being a good person was not. I can’t remember a time when my mother ever complimented anyone for qualities such as sweetness, generosity, friendliness and altruism. I do remember her putting down others for having these qualities, calling them “insipid” or accusing them of having no backbone.

My values never matched those of my immediate family, and when I became poor as an adult (because I was never given the tools and self esteem that would have led me to make better choices) I was shunned and rejected by them. I don’t think it’s any accident that when narcissistic parents choose a scapegoat, they usually choose the most sensitive child–the one most likely to be empathetic and have idealistic values. To a narcissist, idealism and empathy are weaknesses. They truly believe that the poor deserve to be poor, and they make no exception for their own child. The child with traits that cause them to become a scapegoat (and who all too often are also bullied at school) would probably become successful if they were raised in a loving, nurturing home, but in a narcissistic home, having these traits is a curse because that child is led to believe they are worthless and this leads to cowardly, “safe” choices that are more likely to lead to poverty. They are constantly told they will fail, that nothing they do is good enough, and then are usually “tossed out to the wolves” at a young age, with no family financial or emotional support to help them get a foothold in the larger world. I have read so many blogs by the scapegoated children of narcissistic families, who were forced to make their own way in the world with no family support, even if their parents could have afforded to help them, and even when other children in the family (who were not scapegoated) did receive support when they entered adulthood.

superiority

What is so ironic about all this is we scapegoats are rejected and hated for the very traits that were instilled in us as children! Scapegoated children are not encouraged to think independently or have ideas of their own. In fact, having a mind of one’s own is reason for punishment and abuse. We were trained to be deferent and obedient–and very much afraid. Deference, obedience and fear are not traits that lead to success in modern life. I think this training is deliberate, in that an evil narcissistic parent needs and wants someone they can use as the family trashcan–someone who can take and absorb all the family pathology and carry its burden. This child is then blamed for everything that goes wrong both within the family and in their own lives. When a scapegoated child becomes an adult, their low self esteem and fear almost inevitably leads to a life of material and financial lack, and this gives the narcissist parents an excuse for rejecting that child and refusing to help–for “violating” their materialistic, self-centered values. I think another reason narcissistic parents train HSP (highly sensitive) children to be scapegoats is because they know an HSP child must be silenced: this is a child who sees through their lies and can use the light of truth to blow the whistle on them. If they are encouraged to think and act independently, they might “out” the narcissistic parent and that is a prospect that terrifies them.

Of course, the best revenge for a scapegoated child is to become successful in spite of their upbringing–and of course there are those who have. Even then, narcissistic parents will find reasons to put that child’s accomplishments down as somehow not “good enough.” The few times in my adult life where I had some legitimate tangible success, I was never praised for it, but given some sort of left-handed compliment or told why it didn’t really count. I was also always compared with my more financially successful older half-siblings, who of course never had been designated the family scapegoat.

Narcissistic parents also don’t care if you have a mental disability. I’m a self-diagnosed Aspie (this was later confirmed by a psychiatrist) and suffer from intermittent major depression, but when I tried to tell my parents these were the reasons why I had so much trouble making the social connections necessary to become financially successful, these diagnoses were dismissed. I was told I was “making excuses.” Both my parents are convinced my poverty is my own fault because of the stupid choices I made. While I don’t deny having made dumb choices, these choices were based on the way I had been raised–to be afraid of taking any risks or challenging myself.

The only way to break the narcissist/scapegoat family dynamic (and it is probably the most toxic parent-child combination imaginable) is by cutting off contact with the abusive parent, because as long as you keep trying to please them, they will continue to attempt to break you down and make you feel insignificant. Nothing will ever please them, even if you dare to become more successful than they are. And if you somehow manage to do this without sacrificing your idealistic and empathetic values, that’s the biggest threat to them of all.

Make no mistake: your narcissistic parent doesn’t love you and never will, but it isn’t your fault. They hate you because they envy those qualities you have–empathy and humanity–that elude them. Be a good parent to yourself. Love yourself. You deserve it.

haters

Narcissists don’t change

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snowwhite

I read a lot of blogs written by ACONs (Adult Children of Narcissists) and without exception, all these survivors yearned (or still yearn) for the parental love they were entitled to but never received.

Narcissists can’t feel love. Sure, they might pretend they love you when others are present (they’re great at wearing masks and keeping up appearances), but their true nature doesn’t even know the meaning of the word love.

For many years into adulthood, I wanted nothing more than for my narcissistic mother to approve of me. Like most narcissists, she was all about appearance and image. When I was young, she was obsessed with my weight and physical appearance, and always insisted on making me into her own image. She herself was vain, and seemed incapable of discussing deep topics or ideas. Narcissists have an uncanny ability to never show any vulnerable side of themselves, and this includes sharing any dreams with you. I’m not talking about the kind you have when you sleep, but the kind of dreams that give us hope for happiness in this life. I can’t remember one time when my mother ever shared a dream with me. She was already perfect–she didn’t need to have a dream. She also never, not once, ever shared a true emotion with me. She was incapable of being vulnerable or showing anyone (especially me) any vulnerability. And in keeping with that, she was incapable of empathy. She could never understand my feelings or hurts, and was usually more than happy to add to my hurts. I remember once, she made fun of me after she said a particularly hurtful thing, and then mocked the sad expression on my face–you know, pouting in an exaggerated way and drawing fake tears down her cheeks.

She was part of the positive thinking tyranny. (For more on how some people misuse the positive thinking movement, see this article.) Many narcissists use the positive thinking movement as a way to shame others for having feelings or to avoid taking responsibility. They’re big fans of positive thinking slogans, such as “your feelings are your own responsibility, not mine” or “you have chosen to be poor because of your negative attitude.” I remember once when I was being treated unfairly at my job (by a narcissistic boss, of course) instead of showing support and offering words of comfort, my N mother made my boss the victim, essentially telling me I probably caused him and my coworkers to dislike me because of my “negative attitude.” This is the sort of “love” you’ll get from a narcissist.

Narcissists also have an odd way of dismissing sentimentality. My mother never kept family photos around the house (because they were too “tacky”) and all the family photos were stashed into albums and boxes and packed away in the attic. A few years ago, I told my mother I would like to have some of the family photos, but she avoided the issue and changed the subject. About a year later, annoyed at being asked about them for the umpteenth time, she told me she had thrown them away. Who throws away family photos?! I was gobsmacked, but at the same time, I thought how typical that was of her. She could have sent them to me if she didn’t want them, but no, that would have made me happy, so throwing them away was better.

Back in those days, I hadn’t gone No Contact yet, and whenever in my mother’s presence, I felt small and belittled. Even when she didn’t actually say anything mean, there was always that condescending, withering look. I always felt nervous before having to see her or talk to her, without quite knowing why.

Now I know why (even though she always told me I was the crazy one who was being paranoid), and I’ve been No Contact now for almost three years. She sends me a birthday card every year, with phony mass produced Hallmark messages of love. When I get these cards, I just toss them in the trash. Coming from her, they mean nothing. She won’t ever change, because narcissists can’t. Trying to please a narcissist won’t work, so don’t waste your time. It will only wind up causing you frustration and hurt. They only want you on their side so they can use you. If they’re nice to you, it means they probably sense you pulling away from them. They can’t have that.

Of course I regret not having a loving parent or extended family. I regret not being able to see my mother (and her various flying monkeys, most of whom are also relatives) on big holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. I regret not ever having had the experience of a real heart to heart talk with my own mother. I can’t help feeling sad when others ask me where I’m going for holidays and have to tell them, “nowhere.” Because you see, my mother turned just about everyone in her extended family against me. Most of them barely know me, but narcissists are usually persuasive people who could sell ice to an Eskimo, and my mother’s “sold” me as a horrible, ungrateful, unsuccessful loser who doesn’t deserve happiness.

In my family, only visible evidence of success and physical attractiveness is acceptable. If you’re fat, unattractive, poor or disabled, you’re a “nothing” or a “nobody,” even if you’re a great person. My mother has actually used those words to discuss a cousin of mine, who is morbidly obese. “Laura’s a nothing.” She overlooks the fact that Laura is an accomplished artist who has won awards in several art shows, and also volunteers at her local food pantry. As for me, I am not rich or successful (because I was never given the tools and the self esteem to become successful as an adult), and so I’m a “nothing” too. She looks down on my poverty, and blames me for it.

I don’t need narcissistic people in my life, and one by one I have been weeding them out. And as I do so, I am growing, finding out what Lucky Otter is really all about. I’m finding out that I’m a pretty great person who is just blooming late in life.

Too bad my N mother won’t ever know the real me. Not that she’d care.

If you have a narcissistic parent, the most loving thing you can do for yourself is to make it impossible for them to hurt you anymore. They aren’t going to change. In fact, they get worse with age. As their looks and health begin to go, they feel extremely threatened by the reality of becoming vulnerable or needy, and rage takes over. They will no longer even pretend to be “nice.” You have to go No Contact, no matter how much it hurts. Rest assured though, you are not hurting them by doing this. They are incapable of feeling hurt. You’ll only hurt yourself if you remain in their thrall.

“We Need to Talk about Kevin”: are psychopaths born or made?

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Eva Khatchadourian (played brilliantly by Tilda Swinton) is a former travel writer who’s ambivalent about her first pregnancy, and doesn’t seem to be able to connect with her newborn son Kevin, an infant who cries constantly and squirms away whenever she tries to hold him. Eva also suffers from postpartum depression and lack of sleep, which doesn’t make it any easier to connect with her ornery child. Eva as a new mother has the look of a concentration camp survivor. She is utterly tormented by her son–and her inability to feel maternal love for him.

As Kevin grows older, it’s apparent there’s something not quite right about him. Even as a very young boy of three or four, he has an unnerving, soul-piercing stare and never smiles or laughs. Though obviously very intelligent, Kevin isn’t out of diapers until he is 6 or 7, and refuses to engage with others, especially with Eva. He becomes disruptive at home and at school, and is always in trouble. Besides seeming to do things deliberately to upset Eva, Kevin bullies other kids at school, and encourages one girl, who has a severe skin disorder, to pick at her scabs. He’s sneaky and devious and shows no remorse for his bad behaviors. He seems to have only two facial expressions: sullen, or self-satisfied sneer when he’s gotten away with something.

There’s one poignant scene when Kevin becomes very sick and this is the only time he shows any vulnerability and allows himself to be mothered like a normal child. Here, while Kevin’s defenses are down and his mask of impending psychopathy is temporarily disabled, we can catch a fleeting glimpse of little-boy innocence and neediness and some emotion that may even resemble love. This scene makes you begin to question whether Kevin was born evil, or if his psychopathy may have been caused by Eva’s failure to bond with him as an infant.

The rest of the time, there’s an disturbing lack of innocence in Kevin. There’s an unsettling scene when Kevin, about age 3, is sitting on the floor while Eva rolls a ball to him. Not only does he fail to roll the ball back, but he fixes her with his unnerving hateful stare, a look you wouldn’t believe such a young child could be capable of.

As Kevin grows into adolescence (adolescent Kevin is played with subtle and chilling power by Ezra Miller), his misdeeds become more serious, and start to endanger not only his fellow students and teachers, but other members of his own family. At one point he does something unspeakable to his younger sister, Celia (a child his mother wanted and who is temperamentally Kevin’s polar opposite–a sweet and empathetic child), and then smoothly lies about it without showing a shred of empathy or remorse. The strain of raising this difficult child eventually destroys Eva’s marriage to Kevin’s father, Franklin (played by John C. Reilly), who disagrees with his wife’s belief that Kevin is disturbed and naively continues to insist he is a normal, loving child but that Eva’s attitude toward him is cold and unmotherly. Eva herself is torn–she seems to try her best to do and say the right things to Kevin, but it’s clear nothing is getting through to him and the strain is destroying her.

Things come to a head when Kevin commits a shocking crime at age 15 followed by another that is even more heinous. The entire film is told in flashbacks, in the form of Eva’s letters to her husband Franklin (who has left Eva and whose whereabouts are a mystery until the end of the film) and conversations between Kevin and Eva while he is in prison.

Eva tries to come to term with what has happened, to deal with the aftermath and ostracization by everyone the family knew, and most of all, what part she may have played in her son’s crimes. One question that runs throughout the film: was Eva a bad mother who caused her child to become bad, or was Kevin just born bad?

In the final scenes between Eva and Kevin while he’s in prison, it’s possible to see how sophisticated and subtle Kevin’s manipulations of Eva have become. Theirs is a complicated relationship: while he obviously hates her, it also becomes evident he has more respect for her than for his father, who always showered him with unconditional love and for whom Kevin has nothing but dismissive, snarling contempt.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” (based on the 2003 book by Lionel Shriver) is one of the most chilling and thought provoking movies about psychopathy I’ve ever seen, and like other great psychological thrillers, it asks more questions about human nature than it answers.

Conversation with a narcissist: part two

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I didn’t blog about it, but this weekend my daughter was admitted to the psychiatric ward due to major depression. I was concerned because she hadn’t gotten out of bed or eaten anything in 4 days. Her father who is a psychopath and a narcissist, seemed concerned as well and met me at the hospital where we waited several hours for her to be admitted. He was actually pleasant for a change, and while I didn’t allow his charm to lure me into giving away too much information or convince me he wasn’t really that bad, I thought maybe…just maybe…he might be changing. After all, he did seem to care about his daughter’s well-being (even if it was to ensure he could continue to manipulate her after she gets out).

Boy, was I wrong.

After that meeting, he won’t stop texting me, and last night it was getting so annoying I finally just stopped answering his constant texts (mostly to ask for things of his he needed that I have in my house–as always, it’s all about him). I guess that pissed him off, because first thing this morning, he texted me again, and these texts quickly turned nasty. Here’s the conversation. I’ll let it speak for itself.

Michael: please when you bring the computer and black backpack, please please bring a tube of BIOFREZE…I have serious strain in my left bicep, it’s killing me. It’s in the cabinet in the bathroom.

Michael: today is one of the only days you can go to work knowing that Molly is safe, and you won’t come home to find her dead. Rejoice!

Me: That’s a shitty thing to say esp first thing in the morning

Michael: Re read it

Me: If a joke that’s pretty fucked up

Michael: you are reading it wrong. Or is English a second language for you?

Me: How the fck am I reading it wrong? I also don’t appreciate the little dig there on my intelligence

Michael: you told me every day you worry u would come home and find her dead [this is true]. well you do not have to worry today cause she is safe. I cannot help it that you are an idiot.

Me: U want me to stop talking to you? Then keep it up. I’m not a fucking idiot.

Michael: Done. no need to talk. I need that puter and biofreze and do not give away my clothes [he is homeless] Let me know what day you get around to it

Me: I cannot do it until the weekend. No money for gas to get downtown to meet you

Michael: do it on the way home

Me: Do not order me around. I said it would be on the weekend. I already told you I won’t forget as long as I find these things. I cannot do it today, sorry

Me: Tell u what. I’ll call if I can bring them sooner. Now drop it please, I need to get ready for work.

Michael: Feeling Bipolar today I see talk to me when you become rational again. have a nice date. [not sure if this was a deliberate misspelling or not]

I was tempted to hurl an insult back but decided to just ignore him after that last dig. He has not changed. He will never change. I’m glad, however, that my daughter is in a safe place for now and cannot hurt herself.

I promise this will be the last of these narcissist conversations. I think everyone probably gets the idea, but this is the way he operates.

Why my parents disowned me.

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disowned

I was going to skip over this post, but I think it’s an important thread in my entire story of psychopathic abuse. I’m going to keep it as short as possible though, just because I really don’t feel like writing too much tonight. But I’m afraid if I don’t write about it now, I might forget.

I have already explained that I’m certain my narcissistic mother never loved me, although she pretended to when it was convenient. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence in a state of “learned helplessness” as a result of their incredible mindfuck–I was expected to achieve (on their own terms) and punished if I did not, yet at the same time I was being psychologically programmed to fail. For more detail, you can read my earlier entries (click on “My Story” in the green header above) which will explain how this mindfuck worked.

To make a long story short, I think I would have been disowned regardless. If I had become a financially successful adult, I would have been a HUGE threat to my NPD mother and she would have cut me off. I have noticed the way she denigrates and says terrible things about any powerful woman she envies (she is very transparent)–my mother always dreamed of being a Martha Stewart-like success story. She always took pride in her homemaking, entertaining, and “gourmet” cooking. And she always admired and envied the rich and powerful, something Martha certainly is. My mother’s achievements don’t hold a candle to Martha’s and she knows it. I remember several years ago my mother ranting over how ugly and gauche she thought Martha Stewart was. I saw right through her hatred–for a narcissist, almost all their hatred is fueled by envy. If I had become more successful than my mother, she would have cut me out faster than a surgeon cuts off a wart. She wouldn’t be able to handle someone outshining her, even her own daughter.

But I digress. As things turned out, I never became what most people would consider successful, at least not in the financial and material sense. I had a few opportunities and false starts, but through either self-sabotage or sabotage by others (described in my earlier entries), anything I started I’d give up quickly or never follow through on. I hope that pattern has finally changed.

In her later years, my mother, dependent on her oldest daughter (the one she abandoned as a child but who has now become her flying monkey and biggest apologist) will not allow me to visit them in their home. My mother and I are No Contact now (my own choice), but a few years ago, after my mother reluctantly moved from New York to Chicago to live with my half-sister, she told me I would not be allowed to come there because “Rebecca doesn’t like you.” WTF?!? Rebecca hadn’t seen me in over 20 years! She barely knew me. I mentioned how outrageous that was but my mother just said, “Well, it’s her house. Those are her rules. You are a very difficult person to get along with, you know.” I was offered no other explanation other than my sister’s “rules” and my horrible personality.

I thought about that conversation for a long time and finally got it–my mother was embarrassed by me! Always obsessed about her social standing, I had become too “working class.” My lowered social status would certainly offend her fake upper-middle class ideals and pretentions. I actually had to laugh when I found out my mother was no longer able to find any professional-level work and was working part time as a clerk in a department store. But it took a cousin of mine on Facebook to tell me that. My mother would have died before admitting that, especially to me.

I remember a few years ago, burned out by office and retail work, I mentioned to my mother I wanted to start a housecleaning business. It was something I could do without a lot of capital, it was physical (I like to move around when I work), and I was qualified to do it. I thought it might be fun, and I would be able to work alone and set my own hours instead of having to punch a clock and sit in front of a monitor or phone all day. I even had business cards made up. My daughter was interested in getting into it with me–we were going to call it “Two Blondes and a Bucket.” (no matter that I’m not really blonde anymore–I could dye my hair). Here is what my mother said: “I don’t think anyone would want to hire you. You’re a slob and you have a police record.” (she was referring to the pot charge I got when I was married to my Narc husband.)

dontlikeme

When I showed her my novel I wrote back in 2004, she glanced through it and said, “well, you should focus on getting some articles in magazines first before writing a book–you’re not ready.” I may not have been ready to publish a novel, but my point is, she always berated me for “not improving my circumstances,” and yet any time I presented an idea that might lead to a better life, she shot it down. It was the old mind-fuck all over again. She’s good at it.

That’s why I refuse to use Facebook anymore. My mother and her flying monkeys, as well as my father and his current wife who may well be NPD or at best, someone with OCD and a lot of narcissistic traits, have found me there. My stepmother is a control freak and an ultra conservative Republican who can’t stand me “because I’m a failure” and because I allegedly subscribe to “a mindset of dependency” (even though I haven’t asked them for anything in years). My Narc ex has found me there too, and even hacked into my account. He also trashes my character all over his Facebook page (he’s not dead by the way–he was in a psychiatric facility). I might delete my FB page if I figure out how. So much hatred. My family sucks. There, I said it. I’m like fucking Cinderella.

My father is sick with Parkinson’s and my stepmother, who is also his full-time caregiver and mouthpiece, acts as a “gatekeeper” to keep me from “upsetting your father.” If I call their home, I always have to go through her first, and tell her what I want to talk to him about before I’m allowed to speak to him. Hello? It’s my FATHER, you controlling bitch. When I do get to speak to him he is usually very loving (when I can understand him) but he’s completely dominated by his wife, just as he was completely dominated by my mother–only it’s even worse now because he’s physically dependent on his wife too. He’s always been drawn to Narc women and is a huge enabler. I do believe he has love for me though, I always have, even though he was very strict. I was cut out of his will after I allowed my Narc ex to move back in with me. (My father saw his true colors early on, and detests him). I want so much to explain why I did that, to have him read my blog and maybe he would understand the reasons–but his wife would not understand and she’d have to “approve” it first. Because she’s a cold person with very little compassion, I doubt she would.

It makes me sad I can’t have a healthy or loving relationship with my aging parents, who won’t be around too much longer. But it is what it is, and I can’t focus on that or regret we don’t have that kind of loving relationship. All I can work on is me, and finally stop trying to get their approval, because it ain’t ever gonna happen. If I can feel proud of myself, and even help others along the way, I think that’s more than enough. This blog is the beginning of that, and of course my parents will never know about it, if I can help it.

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?

Seven more years of NPD hell.

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Gaslight-2

After Heather tossed Michael to the curb, and Molly returned to our new Section 8 apartment, Michael asked if he could move back in. At first I was resolute and said No (surprisingly he seemed to accept this), but he did have a job and managed to secure a place to stay for a few months–first in a basement room of where he worked (their business was conducted in a huge Victorian house) and later as someone else’s roommate.

Molly was having serious issues at school, and oftentimes didn’t even attend. Several times I was called from my job as a convenience store assistant manager to come pick her up because she was in some sort of trouble again (fighting, stealing a pair of expensive boots, acting “high” at school, etc.) When she was there, she hated it. Since I had to open the store by 6 I had to leave my house before 5 am and there was no way I could remain home to make sure she made the bus. Ethan tried but most of the time couldn’t even get her up (he was very good about getting himself up and to school). The school informed me if I couldn’t get her to school, that I could be charged with neglect and willfully keeping her out of school. It didn’t matter that I had to work and that I had no one else to keep an eye on her. Well, as it turned out, I was fired from my job primarily because of my poor attendance due to disruptions and early leaves caused by Molly, so that sort of solved the problem except she still wouldn’t get up most of the time, even if she was home.

When she was home (which wasn’t often), she was surly and snappish and spent most of her time on MySpace, which was still popular at the time. It was 2007 and she was about 15 by now. For three months she managed to keep her activities a secret from me but eventually I found out she was seeing an older man she met on MySpace (he was 23) who had a jail record for selling drugs. I had given up trying to control what she did. She convinced me not to have him arrested by saying she would kill herself, so I did nothing and prayed for the best. I knew they were doing drugs and kept begging her to stay clean to no avail. She had Medicaid, but refused to see a therapist, although she did agree to go in to be evaluated for medications and that’s when she was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. Countless times the school called meetings to discuss what to do about her attendance and behavior and I begged them to put her into a special program they had for kids with emotional problems but they said she would have to wait until the following school year.

One day Michael showed up at the door and informed me his last roommate had kicked him out again. He told me he’d been drunk and after he was booted out, he tried to kill himself by running his car into a telephone pole. The pole and the car were totalled, but Michael was fine. He started crying when I still said he couldn’t move back in and started the manipulations, convincing me it would be in my benefit to have him there because he would make sure Molly went to school AND he would help me with the bills. Since Molly was more likely to listen to him than to me (and begged me to let him move back in), I conceded, telling him he would have to find another place to live in three months. Well, that three months turned into almost seven years.

At first things seemed fine. Michael stayed sober, was working, and actually did contribute most of his paychecks to household expenses. Molly’s behavior improved a little–at first. She was still with the older guy but was more cooperative when she was home. However I noticed that she was in her room a lot with Michael with the door locked, or sometimes Ben (her boyfriend) was in there with them. If I tried to interrupt them or ask what they were doing, I got screamed at and told to mind my own business. I tried to listen to what was going on in there–it didn’t sound sexual (which worried me) but it did sound suspicious. One day I found a crack pipe on the floor of her room and questioned her about it. She said it was Ben’s and assured me she wasn’t smoking crack or any other hard drugs. Often I smelled pot smoke coming out from the room so I knew they were smoking pot together a lot. I didn’t think pot was so bad, but couldn’t believe her father would be so irresponsible as to smoke it with his under-age daughter.

crackpipe

I tried to talk to Michael about this, but he refused to listen, at first denying they were smoking anything, and then when he couldn’t do that anymore, telling me I had no right to tell him what to do since I had “gotten him the felony” (this was a refrain I would hear over and over again for the next seven years–he always used it as an excuse to do whatever the hell he wanted). So the three of them continued to get high in her room, leaving me out of everything and treating me rudely when they did talk to me. I was being gaslighted and triangulated against again, although this time, Ethan kept to himself and didn’t get involved in our drama. He busied himself on the computer and refused to participate in any arguments. Good for him!

In 2008 Molly broke up with Ben, but her drug problems had become more severe and I was at my wit’s end. One day I was home and Molly was out on the second-floor deck talking on her phone. I had to pick up a few things at the store and let her know I’d be right back. Twenty minutes later, I came home to find an ambulance in our driveway. My heart pounding, I ran into the house and found out Molly had been straddling the deck and had fallen off onto the ground (she was high). She was taken to the ER and it turned out she had fractured one of her lower vertebrae. She wasn’t too seriously injured but she could have been (and she’s had back problems ever since).

It turned out the be a blessing in disguise because finally, after begging for Molly to go to rehab for so long (and the school would do nothing to help), she was court-ordered to go. The one catch was that the only way Medicaid would pay for her treatment (I couldn’t afford health insurance for her through my job), was if I allowed the state to take custody of her. It was a painful decision but she was 16 and almost an adult anyway. It didn’t mean she couldn’t come home to live with me again. What choice did I have?

Molly was irate that I “gave up custody” of her and at first couldn’t understand why I would do such a thing. (Later on she came to understand and told me I saved her life by doing that).

The rehab was a six month live-in program, and Michael and I were allowed to go see her, although it was required a social worker was always present. The visits were awkward and forced, but she did seem to be improving (even though she hated it). She started gaining weight back and didn’t look so pasty anymore. Finally I felt like I didn’t have to worry so much about her.

Without Molly at home, Michael and I started to get along better, until he got fired from his job. At first he seemed to be looking for another one, but soon it became apparent he was spending most of his time in chat rooms and on political websites. I questioned him and he said no one was hiring. I offered to take him around to look but he always found some excuse. He sweet talked me into buying pot for him, even though I couldn’t afford it.

Meanwhile, Molly graduated from her program and went to live in a group home for teen girls with substance abuse issues. She liked the home and made some friends there (she is still friends with two of the girls), but since she wasn’t being supervised as closely, was able to obtain and use drugs. Pain pills were her drug of choice (but anything would do in a pinch, including alcohol), and one day she was so high she was taken to another residential treatment program in Tennessee. She called me crying, and wouldn’t tell me where they were taking her at first, but that she wanted to kill herself. The program turned out to be a sort of boot camp, where the kids lived in a rustic setting where they had to build their own fires for warmth and live in a cabin even in the cold months. But there was hiking and horseback riding. It was supposed to build character. I hoped it would. She hated every minute of it but on her 18th birthday would be allowed to return home.

When Ethan was nearly 18 he told me he was gay. I assured him I wasn’t upset and kind of suspected out that he was. He started to show more confidence and become more social. But at home he was testy and impatient with both Michael and myself. He hated all the arguing and was out more often. He made friends with a female police officer who worked at his school. He couldn’t take being in the house anymore with all the drama, and moved in with the policewoman for a few more months until he could find another place to live.

leavinghome

Ethan came back home after his 18th birthday but not for long. In mid-2010 he told me he had met someone online and would be moving to Illinois to stay with him. The guy he met turned out to be a supportive and mature person and they are still good friends today although they’re not together anymore. Of course I worried at first but there was nothing I could do. He was 18 and could do what he wanted, but it was actually the best thing for him.

In early 2011, it came to the attention of the landlord Michael was living with me, and he informed Section 8. I was told to move out by the end of the month. We had very little money and had to move into a trailer in a crappy trailer park that was rife with drug and gang activity (two years ago, someone was found shot to death outside one of the trailers). The toilet in one of the bathrooms was literally falling through the floor and the tub in the other bathroom didn’t work. The rooms were tiny and the walls paper thin. The kitchen wasn’t too bad though and even had a dishwasher, although it broke shortly after we moved in. I sold most of my belongings at a huge yard sale to raise funds for the move.

It was becoming apparent Michael was no longer going to work. He had developed diabetes and complained about the food I bought–I got food stamps, but I still couldn’t afford to buy much red meat and he said he needed it to control his diabetes. He became insulin dependent but had no medical insurance so he had to go to the free clinic to get his doses. He also saw a psychiatrist who had diagnosed him with Bipolar and PTSD (!?!) and prescribed him medication, including Klonopin, which he started to sell for cash. At the end of 2011 he applied for Disability (SSI) and so now had a handy excuse not to look for a job–since he was disabled, he wouldn’t get SSI if he was working (this turned out to be false if he worked part time but I didn’t know that).

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In April 2011 Molly turned 18 and returned home. For awhile she seemed a lot better. Even though altogether Molly had probably only finished one and a half years of high school, she managed to get a GED in just one month because she is very intelligent. She started looking for a job and was hired almost right away, but she never seemed to be able to keep a job for long after that, even though she always found one quickly. She refused to attend college, even though if she had, she would have been able to get government benefits for housing and school until she was 26, as well as continued Medicaid. But she hated all the jobs she had and almost always wound up being fired for getting too involved in interpersonal drama. She told me the more I talked to her about college, the more she didn’t want to go. I left her alone after that.

She had a string of boyfriends who were no good for her, although none were as bad as Ben had been, and the most recent one was clean and sober although his future prospects weren’t that good because he only had a high school education and no ambition. He worked as an auto mechanic but only doing oil changes and inspections and didn’t seem to interested in advancing. When they were together he spent most of their time playing video games, with Molly watching.

At the end of 2012, we moved again, this time to a real house. We lucked out–it was another duplex with two bedrooms and in a nice neighborhood. It was an older house with a lot of character and the original Arts and Crafts windows, and I had fun decorating it and painting it (although I never had much furniture). Michael slept in the living room; Molly and I took the two bedrooms. Michael was becoming unbearably annoying, constantly whining about how sick he was because I wouldn’t buy decent food for him, and watching political shows on TV and whining about how much he hated Republicans (I didn’t care for them much either but his constant bellyaching was irritating and he did nothing to help himself). I told him if he wanted better food he would have to get a job. Of course he refused (“but I’m disabled!”) and every day I’d come home after a long day at work to find him passed out on the couch or ranting about politics on Huffington Post. He never bothered to pick anything up and smoked like a chimney–both pot and tobacco. The living room was a mess, and Molly and I always wound up having to clean it. He never washed the many dishes he used, and they’d be all over the place. Living with him was almost unbearable and I was starting to really hate him. When he was high he acted stupid and oblivious to everything (and was loud); when he wasn’t high he was mean and sarcastic, calling both me and his daughter horrible names. He was so ungrateful, never apologized for anything, and just did whatever the hell he wanted. He made Molly or me go pick up his pot for him (I refused to do it after awhile) and complained about everything. He bought lottery tickets or pot from the money he got from the illegal sale of his psychiatric meds (lottery tickets were another thing I refused to foot the bill for). He ordered us around and stole money from me several times, although he never would admit it and tell me I (or Molly) was imagining things. He acted so entitled. Even Molly was becoming sick of him and we started to become closer.

In early 2013, Michael decided he wanted a dog. We already had one (and also 4 cats), and had said I absolutely could not afford another pet nor did we have the space. But telling Michael no about anything was futile. He always had to have his way. So one day I came home to find him holding a puppy. I told him to get rid of it and he refused, resorting to his old “you’re just an animal hater” guilt tactic. He said if I got rid of the dog, he would kill himself. I let him keep the dog.

I love dogs, but I couldn’t stand this dog. He was a jack russel/Beagle mix, cute but the most hyper dog I ever met. Michael refused to control him or discipline him and the dog pooped and peed all over the rugs, chewed on the furniture and everything else he could, and constantly ran off and would bark uncontrollably. When I complained to Michael about it, he would make excuses like “but he’s just a puppy!” He’d say this even though when the dog was over a year old. Molly and I had no luck training him, but her most current boyfriend was able to get him to stop pooping in the house. However, he continued to run off, and many nights I’d hear him barking somewhere in the neighborhood. Three times neighbors called animal control and the third time, I told them to please just take him away. If it happened again, I would have been fined. Normally I would have felt terrible having a dog taken to the pound (because I have always loved animals) but with this dog I didn’t feel at all guilty. It’s not like I had ever agreed to adopt the dog in the first place.

destroyinghouse

Michael was livid and wouldn’t speak to me for days. He was becoming angrier and more unpleasant and sometimes he just acted downright insane. I think some of the “insanity” was fabricated so he could continue to get all the free meds and also it would help him get his SSI sooner, or so he thought. Just about everything out of his mouth was sarcastic, angry and intended to offend. Half the time he made no sense. He seemed to hate everyone and everything, especially his daughter and ex-wife who were keeping him from being homeless and sacrificing so much for him. He kept saying I needed to be more patient because he was sick with diabetes and had mental problems. He never, ever apologized. I’ve never been a mean person but I didn’t like the person I was becoming around him. I was turning into the bitch he always said I was. I no longer even tried to be nice, and tried to be away from the house as much as possible. When I was home I went in my room and locked the door to get away from him. I had no idea how to get rid of him because he threatened suicide every time I did and I knew if he killed himself my daughter would be devastated. I was afraid how it would affect her. Michael always reminded me of this too, and even threatened to kill himself in her room and warned me how that would really fuck her up. Oh, he was evil alright. He never thought of anyone but himself.

One day in February 2014 I got a phone call at work from Molly telling me to meet her and her boyfriend at the police station. She explained that Michael had lost his temper and beat her up. That was the last straw for me. I no longer cared about his excuses, I wanted him out. The police officer there told us to go to the magistrate’s office if I wanted to press charges and file a restraining order. I did but Molly started feeling bad for him (even though she had her eye blacked and had other bruises on her) and refused to press charges herself.

We arranged to go home and pretend we had all gone to the mall. Later that evening, the police came and took Michael off in handcuffs. He was released the next day but didn’t dare come back. Finally I was free! But I had a lot of work ahead of me.

I’ll write a post later (it won’t be anywhere near as long as this one!) describing what the aftermath of his abuse has been like, and the steps I’m trying to take to recover from years of being under his control.

Held hostage: living with the enemy

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trapped

Finally, I’m getting around to posting this last part of my story. It will be in two parts, because it’s going to be so long.

After Michael kicked me out of our home in 2003 (which by that time was in foreclosure), I had no job, no place to go, and no friends or family who would take me in. Michael told me I couldn’t take the children with me, and since I had no place to go, it was obvious that for the time being they would have to stay with him.

I had just been released from the psychiatric center for Major Depression and severe PTSD, and I still wasn’t all there. I was medicated too, so that numbed my emotions even more. So I didn’t try to fight his demands, even though I could have. I could have gone to the local chapter of Helpmate, an organization that helps battered women. Even though I wasn’t battered physically (usually, unless he was drunk), the type of abuse I had just suffered was even worse because it was so insidious and soul destroying.

As for the children, I didn’t think there was anything I could do. I had no place to go, and couldn’t them with me to wherever I’d have to stay.

I had 30 days to leave. I wanted to leave right then and there, but my daughter’s 10th birthday was coming up so I wanted to stay around for that. But the next two weeks were torture. Michael and his flying monkey Rachel amped up the volume to full blast on their mind games and gaslighting, and the shitty car I had access to was taken away from me so I couldn’t leave until they wanted me to. Rachel took away my car keys. If I needed something, I had to ask for it. I was a prisoner in my own home. I’m convinced they wanted to keep me around just to torment me.

My daughter’s birthday was miserable. Molly was depressed. Michael and Rachel used her to triangulate against me and my son, who was also treated horribly. I think a part of Molly hated being in this role, but she knew she didn’t have a choice if she didn’t want to become a target herself. It was an awful thing to do to a child.

I left the next day. I had $1,000 in my pocket and the old car. Michael and Rachel didn’t say goodbye. Ethan wept quietly in his room. Molly said goodbye but didn’t hug me. Paul was the nicest. He came over to the car window as I was pulling out of the driveway and whispered “you don’t deserve this.” I don’t know if I was imagining things or not, but I thought he had tears in his eyes. Paul was a nice guy, but was very weak willed and as much under Rachel’s control as I was. The only difference was he wasn’t a target. He had pretty much kept to himself the whole time they lived with us, staying out of the hate campaign but not fighting against it either.

So I drove 11 hours to New Jersey, where an old friend was letting me stay with her for a week. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, I became fatigued and had to find a motel to stay in for the night. In my room, I thought about the gravity of what had just happened. I thought about my children and wondered if I’d ever see them again. I thought about how emotionally damaged they both were by Michael’s mindgames. I thought about Ethan’s love of Twix bars and his silly grin and hair that stood straight up when he got up in the morning. I thought about how sweet Molly could sometimes be and the way she still slept with her threadbare puppy at night. I thought about the way they both ate cereal straight out of the box. And for the first time in many months, I cried.

car

But I had to keep going, somehow. The next day I met my friend in New Jersey and accompanied her on her pet sitting job. I helped her with the animals. The animals were therapeutic for me, and I felt almost happy when I watched them or stroked their fur. I felt like they understood me and what I was going through. I would have liked to stay with my friend longer, but it wasn’t possible, and after a week I drove back to North Carolina, and crashed with another old friend for about a month. Things didn’t work out too well and the friend resented my having so much “stuff” (I had only brought 4 bags out of the car) and finally told me it was too crowded (it was a one bedroom apartment) and I would have to go.

I was almost out of money. In the nick of time, I found a job in a gas station and moved into the local women’s homeless shelter. The shelter actually wasn’t too bad. It was midsummer and there was no air conditioning (and I had a sore tooth that later had to be pulled but the pain kept me up at night), but the rooms were okay, and I only had to share my room with one other woman, a crackhead in her 60s. We didn’t get along. So I stayed out most of the time, if not working, then just going to the library, walking around the mall, or driving around. A few times I went to church to pray. I didn’t have the money or energy to do anything else. There was no room in the room for any of my stuff, so I kept everything in the car. I had to bring up my change of clothes from the car every night and lay it on the bed for the next day.

During this time I had several conversations with my parents. My mother feigned sympathy but offered no help. She kept asking me “what are you going to do about the children?” or saying things like “A good mother would keep her children with her.” Oh, the hypocrisy was stunning–these words coming from a woman who had given up her own two daughters for a man. She knew I could do nothing and had no place to take them. I think she was deliberately taunting me by bringing it up all the time and making me feel like a horrible mother.

It was my father who finally came through. In spite of his drunkenness and physical punishments of me as a child, I don’t think he was psychopathic. Under all that anger, I think he cared about me and the children. But he was deep down a weak man who always allowed himself to be manipulated by narcissistic women. The first time I had asked for his help, his wife (a narcissist who controls all their funds) said no. She told me I was an adult and had to pull myself up by my bootstraps and shouldn’t be asking them for help. I never felt so unsupported. No one cared!

As a requirement for staying in the shelter, I was seeing a counselor, who asked me if my parents would help me pay for a small place I could take the kids. I told her they would not, but she took it upon herself to call my father anyway. Somehow hearing a professional voice instead of mine convinced him, and his wife grudgingly agreed to help me pay for an apartment on a month to month basis.

So I moved into a cute one bedroom. During this time, the kids had been living with Michael, and because our home had been foreclosed on, they had all moved to a rented house in town. I found out my poor son Ethan was required to do all the work and made to sleep in the basement. He didn’t get one of the bedrooms, though everyone else did (even though the two girls had to share). Ethan was constantly taunted about being gay (even though he was years from coming out). When he fell down on his bike one day, Rachel just stood and laughed at him. This shattered my heart.

The kids moved in with me. Ethan was thrilled, even though he had to sleep in the living room (Molly and I shared the only bedroom). At nearly 14, he was developing a love of computers and spent hours playing with the boxy old desktop I had picked up at Goodwill. We had no Internet (I couldn’t afford it, or cable either) but he had loads of games he would play and he opened up Word to write poetry and song lyrics. He was a quiet and well behaved kid, who also loved to ride his bike and sit outside on the tiny deck, watching nature. He was fascinated by weather, and set up a little homemade weather station outside he had put together with a kit.

computergeek

Molly was sullen and clearly didn’t like being with me anymore. She thought I was boring. Molly was then and still is addicted to chaos and all too often, the wrong kind of excitement. She can be a drama queen. She may be borderline or God forbid, even narcissistic, but she, like me, has been diagnosed with severe PTSD.

It was 2004 and Molly was 11, turning into a physically beautiful girl, but preteen angst mixed in with hatred for me, fueled by the brainwashing she had received. Our time together was awkward and forced. When I’d tell her to do something, she’d refuse or make a sarcastic remark, usually repeating something Michael and Rachel had said about me. Most of these things were lies. The worst was when she told me Michael and Rachel had told her the reason I left was because “your mother is selfish and doesn’t love you anymore.” I was stunned by this incredible lie. I told Molly it wasn’t true at all, and I loved her very much and she shouldn’t listen to them, but I don’t think she was convinced. To this day, there’s a rift in our relationship due to their gaslighting and triangulation that made her believe I didn’t love her. It’s gotten better and she does realize now she was lied to and manipulated. But the wounds haven’t completely healed and it’s still having repercussions in our relationship and her behavior today. She is also showing disturbing early signs of being narcissistic. But more on that later.

I wasn’t thinking straight and was making terrible choices. I got back together with the man who had gotten Michael and I in trouble for the marijuana 3 years earlier. This was a huge mistake, as he tried to take over and criticized how I was raising my children, who he thought were spoiled. They both couldn’t stand him, and after a few months, I decided I couldn’t either, and gave him the leave ho. He continued to call me for a couple of years after that, but after a while, I just started hanging up on him. Finally he gave up.

In the meantime, Michael was trying to worm his way back into our lives. Rachel and Paul had thrown HIM out of the house, and he started love bombing me and the kids, acting all simpering and apologetic, even saying he was sorry for everything he put me through. He bribed me to let him live in our tiny one bedroom by promising to be a better dad, and cooking dinner every night. He also had a job and offered to help me pay the bills. Mainly because Molly did seem much happier with him around (and I believed his empty promises) I stupidly conceded.

Michael didn’t become abusive this time, but he became loud. He was never a quiet person, but he was smoking pot constantly and when he was high, his voice became loud and he blasted his horrible music. The downstairs neighbors, who were elderly, complained the the landlord several times, and we were finally asked to leave.

Luckily I had a better place to go with the children, and the timing was perfect. The apartment we were living in had been a month to month arrangement, and my father had told me he could no longer afford the rent payments (actually his wife just didn’t want to foot the bill anymore). I didn’t earn enough at my job at the gas station to pay the whole rent, so we had to leave anyway.

I had been working with an organization called Interlace, which works with single mothers and children who have been victims of abuse. They’re a fantastic organization, and they provide free housing on an 18 month basis. The only thing they required was covering the utility bill, being available for weekly home visits and attending monthly group meetings. The group meetings were fun. Dinner was always served, and after the meeting, there was usually some group activity, usually involving arts and crafts, that both mothers and their kids participated in. They also sponsored group picnics and other events.

So we moved into a clean, well kept 3 bedroom/2 bathroom apartment with more storage space than I’d ever had in my life. There were two levels and there was even a tiny room (really an oversized closet) under the stairs that the kids had a lot of fun redecorating into a little private domain complete with large pillows, stuffed animals (both kids still loved their fluffies) and an old black and white TV that actually worked.

There were rules too. The most important one was no overnight visitors, even family members. That didn’t stop Michael from trying to manipulate and sweet talk his way in. He convinced the kids (even Ethan) that we were better together as a real family and they needed a dad. I told him it wasn’t allowed but he promised to be quiet and never answer the phone or the door. I was so broken down and afraid of him I broke the rules and said yes. Every day I was terrified we’d be discovered (we could have been thrown out), but we never were. Fortunately the weekly home visits were scheduled ahead of time, so I always made sure he was out when the counselor came over. No one suspected a thing, and the neighbors didn’t care.

But Michael didn’t stay long. After a few months, he started acting cranky again, and he was out a lot more. I didn’t mind his absence, but Molly did. She was still sullen and snippy and her grades dropped from A’s to mostly C’s and D’s. She acted like she didn’t care about anything.

It turned out he had a girlfriend. She had her own apartment and asked Michael to move in with him. Strangely, I was jealous. Or maybe just resentful because I felt I’d been duped and used. After all the hell he put me through, he actually dared to leave me? But overall, I was relieved–until one day Molly told me she wanted to live with him and not me.

Molly had been spending a lot of time with Michael and his new girlfriend (I’ll call her Heather) and always seemed in a much better mood after she had been with them. She spent less and less time at home, and there came a point where I hardly ever saw her anymore. Michael and Molly both told me Heather was a much happier and more positive person than I was, and they both preferred her company to mine. Later it turned out she was a drug addict; that probably explains the “happiness.”

Molly said if I didn’t allow her to live with them, she would hate me forever. Oh, she was good at manipulating her mom–she had learned from the best. She actually cried and said if I made her stay she’d be so miserable she might kill herself. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I allowed it.

punkgirl

Finally, in early 2006, the divorce came through. I had agreed to joint custody, not wanting to anger Michael and fearing what he might do if I “took his kids away from him.” I also didn’t want Molly to hate me by not allowing at least partial custody. So although technically we both had joint custody, the kids were allowed to choose. Ethan remained with me and occasionally visited Michael and Heather (when they wanted him around, which wasn’t often–he got on their nerves), and Molly of course got to live with them.

If I had any idea of what was actually going on in their home (I was so naive and trusting back then), I would have grabbed my daughter and ran.

Michael was regularly drinking again, and now mixing alcohol with pot AND pain pills. Heather turned out to be a pill addict and also a heavy drinker, and a number of times Molly couldn’t get to school because no one was sober enough to drive her (and there were no buses in the rural area they lived in). There were parties every weekend, where Heather’s friends, a motley crew of crackheads, meth addicts, drunks and assorted addict, came over to the house. Molly was only 12 going on 13. But that didn’t stop Heather from letting my daughter try “just one pill”or have a drink or two.

The police were called on a couple of occasions because of the fighting. Michael and Heather got into violent arguments. Unlike me though, she wasn’t afraid of Michael. She finally reached her limit and one night tossed him out, along with all his belongings. Molly had to come back home with me, but by now she had developed a taste for both drugs and alcohol, thanks to Heather’s “education,” and became worse than ever.

pills

Michael disappeared after that. I had no idea where he was and none of us, not even Molly, heard from him. Molly hated this and missed her father, but I was relieved and secretly hoped he was dead.

At the gas station, I was promoted to assistant manager, and although were were still pretty poor, I could afford a few nice things now and a new car. Our 18 months in the Interlace apartment were up, and just in the nick of time, our Section 8 came through. We moved into a charming Craftsman style two family house. We rented a three bedroom apartment on the ground floor with a front porch and a deck in the back. Section 8 paid half of the rent. And we were finally allowed to have a pet–one dog only, but that was fine. Daisy, our dog who had been a gift for Molly’s 6th birthday, been living with Heather and Rod (and various friends before that), but she was growing older and was a little arthritic, so she came home to live with us. Daisy was so happy to be home.

Molly’s drug problems were beginning to affect her at school, and her behavior at home was becoming frightening. She started wearing long sleeves all the time and when I asked why, she changed the subject. But one night I saw red marks on her wrists and forearms. She was cutting herself. When she was in 8th grade, she was caught at school with several Klonopins (she said she had gotten from her dad), which she was sharing with her friends. She was caught, and suspended for two weeks. It was at the end of the school year, so even though she got her diploma, she wasn’t allowed to attend her own graduation ceremony.

I was slowly becoming fat. I smoked too much. I was stressed and miserable, and other than work, I had no interests except eating, reading crappy novels, and watching court shows and sometimes movies on TV. I was becoming the “slovenly” mother Rachel had accused me of being several years before. I was emotionally numb, yet also prone to to occasional fits of anger that at times became violent. Either nothing affected me, or it affected me too much and I overreacted. Most of the time I felt like I was an autopilot, just going through the motions of life. There was no beauty or joy in my world, and all I could see ahead was a vast emptiness that stretched out until death. But I plodded along like an ailing cow, accepting that this state of affairs was normal. In fact, I was showing symptoms of unresolved PTSD.

My only ray of hope anymore was my dog Daisy, and my son Ethan, who was becoming a sort of guardian angel to me. By default, he was now the man of the house, and became a responsible teenager, getting himself up for school and always at the school bus on time, and always doing his homework. He had always been a B and C student, but he began to apply himself more and started getting A’s and even on the honor roll. When he was home, he was quiet and spent most of his times on the computer playing video games, posting on entertainment and racing forums, and setting up his own car racing forum. He also started making short films with his beloved new digital camera my father had bought for him. From the get go, it was evident he was talented. Soon he transferred from the regular public school to an adjunct school that specialized in computers and technology.

The more mature Ethan became, the worse his sister got. She was addicted to MySpace (we’re up to 2007 now, and that was still the most popular social network of the time) and without my knowledge, met a man online 7 years older than herself. Ben had been in prison for fraud, but passed himself off as a “good guy.” He wasn’t.

I need to take a break and eat something, so I’ll post the next part of this story in a little bit.

My son is “furry”–got a problem with that?

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mexnyman

So far my blog has been pretty inoffensive. Well, I like to think so anyway. But I knew the time would come where I’d have to post about something controversial and now is that time.

My son is a furry. And not only do I not have a problem with it, I’m damned proud of him. Yes, I really did just say that.

I know what some of you are probably thinking.

“What kind of a ‘parent” are you?”
“Furries are a bunch of perverts! How can you accept your own CHILD being one?”
“You are depraved to be writing bragging about that.”
“Ewwwwwwwww!!!”
“You are going to hell and so is he.”
“You are SICK!!!ELEVENTY!!111!!
*puking sounds*
“MAKE HIM STOP!!!”

Let me explain. My son, now almost 23, was, along with me, his father’s scapegoat during most of his childhood and teen years. Like me, he’s a HSP (highly sensitive person) and HSPs and psychopaths as parents do NOT mix.

His father, Michael (not his real name), nearly destroyed my son’s self esteem. As a child, he was easily hurt, withdrawn to the point I thought he was autistic (he isn’t though your truly is), and was told (and began to believe) he couldn’t do anything right. Michael called him stupid, sissy, a wuss, and constantly told him he’d amount to nothing. Like me, my son had few friends in grade and middle school. He was bullied. I identified with him (and tried to protect him from Michael’s narcissistic rages) because well, he was so much like me.

I already told you earlier how Michael’s flying monkeys bullied him just prior to the divorce. Ethan (not his real name) was about 12 during this time and that’s a vulnerable age for even the strongest, most confident kid.

Fortunately, Ethan decided to live with me instead of his father after the divorce (my daughter chose her dad, and that’s another story I’ll get into in my next post). I don’t like to toot my own horn and I certainly wouldn’t have qualified as “Mother of the Year” but I like to think I did a pretty good job as Ethan’s mom, and some of the damage that Michael and his team of flying monkeys had done on my son was repaired. Or at least kept him from becoming one of those hardcore emo kids who writes freeverse poetry about suicide, rain and darkness and may even attempt the ultimate self destructive act. Or kept him away from drugs and early drinking. Or becoming a Narcissist himself. He never became any of those things, and in fact was always pretty straight edge. He told me (and I believe him) he never tasted alcohol until he was of legal age. He never liked pot and certainly never touched anything harder. He always did his homework. In high school he was one of those computer geeks and found he had a fascination with photography and art, something I also was involved with when I was his age.

Ethan wasn’t popular and seemed to have no interest in girls. He had a few friends he hung out with to play Age of Empires,” “Legend of Zelda” “Black and White,” and other video games. He was really good at the games and started his own forum about auto racing (something he’s still passionate about). But he was still painfully shy and lacking in confidence.

Two things helped to improve Ethan’s self esteem: Outward Bound and Kung Fu. His 8th grade graduation trip, instead of the usual “fun” trip to New York City or Washington DC, was a physically and mentally challenging 4 day Outward Bound expedition to the mountainous wildnerness right here in western North Carolina. I won’t get into detail about his trip (that’s a story he can tell), but he came back a little different, a little more mature, a bit more confident. When I asked him if he had fun, he said not really, but it was a trip he would never forget and that taught him a lot of things about himself.

When Ethan was 15, he decided to take Kung Fu classes. He was pretty good, and stuck with that for 3 years, advancing to Green Belt, which is more than halfway to Black Belt.

Ethan was keeping some secrets though, and admitted later on he was still deeply unhappy. I didn’t know this at the time, but I did know there was something he wasn’t telling me, and I could have guessed what it was. But I had to wait for him to say it.

At age 17, Ethan came out as gay. He was afraid to tell me, but I told him I had known for a long time but was waiting for him to say it. Ethan was relieved, and now that he was “out,” his confidence level went up a little more, and suddenly at school he was considered “cool,” something he had never been.

It’s so funny how kids will bully another kid they suspect of being gay but who isn’t “out” (and he was definitely bullied about that), but as soon as they’re “out,” they become accepted and cool. It’s a paradox, but it really isn’t–because it’s really not about gay vs. non-gay, it’s about self esteem. Bullied kids are kids who are too outwardly sensitive and have little self confidence. A kid with confidence, even if different from the other kids, is accepted, or at least respected. And I think that’s what happened with Ethan when he came out as gay.

After Ethan graduated from high school in 2010, he came out as “furry.” At first I didn’t even know what that meant, and Ethan didn’t want to explain it to me so I had to go online and do some research myself.

There’s been a lot of negative publicity about “furries,” especially since an infamous episode of the TV show CSI, in which a serial murderer was a furry who liked to kill wearing an animal costume. But this negativity isn’t deserved or even valid. Most of the criticism of furries is related to their alleged depravity–furry detractors insist furries engage in bestiality, or at best, have a fetish about having sex dressed up as animals.

While I won’t deny there is a subset of the furry community that may have a sexual “fursuit” fetish, it’s a small subset from what I’ve seen (and I know a lot about furries now) and the idea that they’re into bestiality is a ridiculous claim with nothing to back it up.

My intention here isn’t to give you a history of the furry fandom (there’s plenty of other places to read up on that). But a little background is required. The furry fandom grew out of the science fiction community back in the early 1980s. Most furries are geeks–comic book geeks, computer geeks, sci-fi geeks, Dragoncon geeks, art geeks, and among Millennials, animated cartoon geeks. Millennials grew up inundated with a huge array of the best made animated films and shows Disney had to offer; and because their stressed out parents were often working or busy with other things, cartoon animals like Mufasa, Timon and Pumba from “The Lion King,” CatDog, Bolt, and the Animaniacs were often left in charge as surrogate babysitters to entertain them.

Naturally a lot of Millennials developed a special affection for these cartoon critters who gave them so much laughter and comfort as children, and some of them continued this fascination into adulthood.

Enter the furries. The vast majority of them are Millennials (born from 1982 to 2000 or so) and there are a surprising number of female furries and heterosexual furries, and many of them are married. There are furry conventions that are becoming more popular every year, the most famous one being Anthrocon, which is held in Pittsburgh every year. Most furries are involved in art–either visual or performing art. I’ve talked to furries, and as a whole they’re a creative bunch. Furry isn’t a perversion; it’s a hobby, no different than someone who attends Star Trek or comic book conventions.

Being a furry has helped Ethan find his creative outlets. Ethan is naturally rather shy and reserved. Dressing up as “Mex” and his other “fursona” has allowed him to discover his outgoing and sociable side and that he has a love of performing (dancing and acting), which is something he might not have explored had it not been for the costume where he feels more comfortable experimenting with that side of himself.

He showed interest in photography and art at an early age, but has developed these abilities, and is now a fledgling filmmaker with a professional eye. He took up filmmaking in college and now has a degree. He makes his own music videos and has posted many of these on Youtube. Not all are about furries. Although none have gone “viral,” several of his films have received thousands of hits. He also is a competent artist, and draws well, although I think he’s more naturally talented at photography and filmmaking.

Here’s one of his videos from his music channel, Radio Recall.

What he’s proudest of is his dancing. He’s been training himself in street-dancing for two years. At the past two conventions he’s attended, he entered the fursuit dance competition. At the most recent one, he was one of the finalists, and he told me being accepted as a finalist was the happiest, most validating moment of his life and the high from it lasted for days. Now he’s working hard at getting even better so he can possibly win one of the Top 3 awards the conventions give out to the winners.

Here’s a video of his performance in the dance competition at a convention in Florida.

Ethan has shown me what can happen to a highly sensitive person who is able to escape from psychopathic abuse when still young, and then is given validation and encouraged to follow their own path, even if it’s not a path most of us would take. He’s shown me what I could have become had I been given such an opportunity (or taken advantage of it) when I was young. Not a furry or dancer or filmmaker, but someone who chased my dreams and never looked back. Ethan has shown me that none of us is a hopeless cause, and it really is possible to free yourself from the barbed wire prison of family psychopathy. Instead of being attacked by the flying monkeys and having your wings clipped, you can learn how to fly.

And that is why I’m proud my son is a furry.

Sleeping with the devil: my marriage to a psychopath

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rottencard

The above e-card pretty much describes my ex to a tee (except maybe the commitment issues)–and for the purposes of this blog, I have named him Michael (not his real name).

Another blogger and survivor of narcissistic abuse described living with a psychopath as analogous to the frog in boiling water–a frog if dropped in a pot of boiling water, will jump out, but if the water is slowly heated with the frog in the pot, the frog won’t notice the increase in temperature until it’s cooked to death. That’s what life with a psychopath is like. The relationship always begins great (though there may be red flags we choose to ignore) and slowly, like the boiling frog, becomes abusive. As the victims, we may even mirror the abuser’s psychopathic behavior, doing things and acting in ways we’d never dream of if we were not in that relationship. Another blogger describes this phenomenon very well here in this blog post about mirroring.

So to get to my story.

For the first year or two after we got engaged, Michael and I seemed like the perfect couple. Michael doted on me, bought me gifts and flowers, constantly told me how much he loved me, and continued being very romantic and attentive even after the wedding. We took a couple of short vacations (because we both worked full time) and had a wonderful, romantic time. The fact Michael acted like a bit of a know it all seemed a minor annoyance–it was just one of those little foibles all married people have to deal with in their spouses.

There were a few red flags though, but at the time they didn’t seem serious so I blew them off. One red flag was the way he was about money. At the time we met until shortly after we married, he made little money, but somehow had a lot of credit cards. He charged all the gifts and dinners to plastic, and then couldn’t pay the bills later, so he’d ask me to loan him the money since at the time I made more than he did. It occurred to me I was essentially buying my own gifts, and that included our wedding rings. Soon we were deep in debt and all the credit cards maxed out. The monthly fees exceeded what we were able to pay each month, so we had to juggle a lot of other bills and use other credit cards to pay the ones we were maxed out on. It was almost impossible to keep up–the credit cards weren’t even usable by this point since all we could pay was the interest. We were able to save nothing.

pastdue

Another red flag was his meanspirited sense of humor. He loved to play practical jokes on me, and sometimes this meant “playful” physical abuse, and I don’t mean consensual S&M or bondage during sex play. I’ll give an example. One winter night after a snowstorm we were walking home from the local bowling alley (we didn’t have a car and since it was an urban area, we didn’t need one) and suddenly for no reason, Michael pushed me into a snowbank, and when I tried to get up, he was laughing hysterically and did it again. At first I laughed with him, but I really didn’t like it–and then he did it a third and fourth time. Now I was getting mad, and he just kept laughing and telling me I looked cute when I was angry. Then he smushed snow in my face, and continued even after I told him to stop. There wasn’t any anger in this “play,” but I realized later on this was really a form of bullying disguised as “humor.” Although his sadistic sense of humor wasn’t usually physical, Michael thought he was extremely funny and through our entire marriage would deliberately do things he knew would irritate me and didn’t know when to stop. He had absolutely no respect for boundaries. As a person with autism, I hate loud sudden noises, so he’d deliberately make them. Or keep clicking a pen. Or play his music (most of which I disliked) at the highest volume just to annoy me. Telling him to stop was useless–he’d just play it louder or continue whatever he was doing that set me off. I remember once, several years into the marriage, I finally told him he just wasn’t that funny, and he flew into a narcissistic rage and screamed that there was something wrong with me because “everyone else” found him hilarious, and I just had no sense of humor. Oh, the gaslighting was off the charts with him. But it would get worse. Much worse.

Three years after we married, Michael started drinking again. We had met in an AA meeting (something that’s not recommended) and he’d completely abandoned it (I don’t think he was serious to begin with). And he was a mean drunk too; when he drank any pretense of kindness or civility disappeared and he became a raging maniac. At first his drunken rages didn’t include hitting me, but he’d break things and scream and call me every obscene name you can think of. Neighbors had to call the police on two occasions, and both times I told them it was nothing; everything was fine, and they left. After these drunken rages, he’d usually fall into a drunken stupor and sleep it off. In the morning, he always love bombed me, apologizing profusely and begging me to forgive him. I know his “remorse” was a pretense, but at the time I believed his lies. We’d make up and be all lovey dovey again for a few days.

I was doing fairly well as a medical editor and book reviewer in those days, but the company I worked for folded in early 1991. The timing couldn’t have been better because just before the lay off was announced, I had found out I was pregnant. I was thrilled–unlike some survivors who never want to have children of their own, I wanted them badly, and a big reason I did was because I wanted to give a child the love I never had growing up in a narcissistic home. So anyway, the layoff worked for me because Michael by this time had been promoted and was making a very good income (though we certainly weren’t rich), AND the publishing company I had worked for was owned by a much larger firm that was generous and gave me severance pay for an entire year, as well as maternity leave. This perfect storm of events meant that I’d be able to be a stay at home mom and not have to put my child in the hands of strangers while I worked.

The pregnancy went smoothly, and Michael surprised me because once he got used to the idea of a baby coming, he acted very attentive and supportive, even going to lamaze classes with me. Earlier he had said he wasn’t interested in having children any time soon, but the prospect of a baby as a reality seemed to change his attitude.

My son was born in October 1991. Michael was great with him, and he had stopped drinking again. So for a time, maybe for a year, it looked like our marriage might make it and we might be happy together. Michael still liked to play his sadistic jokes and annoy me to amuse himself, but I shrugged it off as something I’d just have to accept as part of who he was.

At first, Michael was a great father to our son. When Ethan was not even a year old, Michael surprised me by suggesting we have another baby. “A girl this time, Ethan needs a little sister,” he said.
I always wondered what he would have done if our second child had been a boy instead of a girl.

Molly was a more difficult baby than Ethan and more prone to illness, and by this time, our financial problems had gotten really dire. Without my job and with my severance pay long gone (I was doing some freelance editing and proofreading but it hardly paid anything) and with two young children to support, we couldn’t make our credit card premiums any more and had saved absolutely nothing. When it came to money, Michael was always extremely irresponsible, always thinking of what he must have RIGHT NOW instead of saving for the future. So we were forced to file bankruptcy which meant no more living on credit, which made Michael cranky. I was very stressed out and with a new baby who seemed to have all kinds of health problems (none severe, but Molly had terrible allergies like I had as a child, mild asthma, and a tendency to get high fevers) and a son who was late talking and made me worry he might have a hearing or speech problem (he didn’t), and a husband who snapped at me and our son constantly, we fought often. We were also in the process of moving from New York to North Carolina, which created its own set of problems.

unhappyfamily

Michael was dishonest and a thief but managed to get me to collude with him on some of his capers. Before the move, we had been renting the downstairs apartment in the duplex Michael’s mother owned. She lived upstairs and Michael had a key to her apartment. Whenever she’d go out, he’d go upstairs and search for any cash she had laying around. When I questioned him about it, he said she was too oblivious and stupid to even know it would be missing. I should have taken this as a red flag because eventually he’d do the same to me and our kids but instead I cooperated with him. My reasoning was that we were so broke it was okay and besides, it was his mother so it wasn’t really stealing. Oh, he had me so brainwashed. His mother (a narcissist herself) never noticed anything missing but her ugly behavior made the thievery justifiable to us.

Ethan, just two and a half, wasn’t speaking yet and as we moved from one state to another, he began to act very strange (my mother would have called it “spooky” behavior)–parroting “mama” over and over but not saying anything else, his face always pale and sad looking, and his eyes huge and dark. He looked so pitiful it broke my heart. His doctor said he was fine, but I knew something was wrong. Later on, I figured out what it was. In the process of moving, we had to save money by making several trips to North Carolina by U-Haul and car because we couldn’t afford a moving van to do it in one trip. Ethan saw our old house become emptier every week as things disappeared and it hit me like a ton of bricks one day after the move that he was too young to understand why everything was disappearing and he was afraid I might disappear too. In fact, years later, he told me he remembers this and that was exactly the reason why he acted the way he did.

Michael was becoming less and less patient with our son, but he showered attention on our daughter. It was apparent that Ethan was an extremely sensitive child just as I had been, and narcissist psychopaths like Michael couldn’t stand sensitivity. Ethan being male didn’t help either. Michael went from being a seemingly loving father to turning Ethan into his scapegoat. He made fun of him and put him down in front of others, calling him “stupid,” “little shithead” “crybaby” and other degrading names. He broke all Ethan’s beloved toy cars in a drunken rage one day and never apologized. I loved my son and hated seeing him being treated this way. It was exactly the same way my own parents had treated me! So I tried to defend Ethan from Michael’s rage and this led to some of the worst fights we ever had, where Michael tried to shift the blame to me for turning our son into a “wussy” and that he was just acting the way he did to toughen him up.

Michael was drinking again, much more heavily than before, and his temper had become violent, especially when he was drunk. And he didn’t apologize the next day anymore like he used to. His annoying habits escalated to the point he was unbearable to be around and he also started to talk in a very hostile way about everything and anyone, even when sober. This got worse over time. He was so full of hate, but I now know he always was full of hate. The earlier Michael hadn’t really been him at all. It was all an act.

Michael’s eyes now looked very cold, devoid of warmth or humanity. When he was drunk his face terrified me. In my earlier post I talked about my mother’s face as I saw it in one of my nightmares–a demon’s face with those solid black eyes. One night while he was slamming me into a wall I saw the same eyes and the same sneer. He looked positively demonic. I was beaten so badly I was taken to the hospital and then stayed in a battered womens’ shelter for a week along with the kids. I still loved Michael though, and one day picked up with the kids and went home in spite of the counselor’s pleas to get away from him.

blackeyes

The second time it happened I called the police and he went to jail for three months. It was very stressful trying to do everything myself including having to learn how to drive a stick shift, and since there was no money coming in with him in jail and we had no savings, the kids and I sank into poverty. I thought about getting a job, but then I’d have to pay a babysitter out of that, and the jobs in the area that were available weren’t very promising.

One day we got a phone call from Helen’s (Michael’s mother) neighbor, who told us she had fallen down the stairs at her house and broken her hip. She was in her mid 70s and needed someone to look after her. So Michael agreed to move her down with us so we could keep an eye on her, but not without swindling her out of all her money first. Using the charming demeanor I saw so little of anymore, he sweet-talked her into giving him power of attorney over the sale of her house, which wound up bringing in about $160K. Again, I colluded with him on this and didn’t tell him it was wrong what he was doing, even though I always felt deep down it really was. Michael even bragged to my father about how he “outsmarted” Helen, and that was the time my father said he began to realize how evil Michael really was.

So we weren’t poor anymore, but things got a lot worse. In fact, the money became the catalyst that really accelerated things. What was weird before became straight up surreal. Everything fell apart. And I began to lose my mind.

I made suggestions to Michael that we should pay off our house and all our debts, but Michael wouldn’t listen, saying because it was HIS money, I had no say in how it got spent. What he didn’t say was what he was really doing with it. We made a few home improvements, and purchased some medical equipment for his mother whose health was deteriorating and could barely walk anymore. We took a family vacation for two weeks to the beach. For a short time things seemed to get better.

One day I found an envelope on the floor of his closet that must have fallen out of one of his pants pockets. It was a bank statement. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw there was only 8K left–only SIX MONTHS after his shady windfall. I confronted him about this when he got home, and he admitted he’d been playing the stock market. He knew nothing about how the stock market works but he pretended he did. I remembered he’d started talking about stocks and bonds several months earlier, and a couple of times I saw financial web pages on the computer screen. Once when I asked him if he was playing the stock market he swore he wasn’t and assured me I shouldn’t worry. But he lied, and now most of the money was gone. None of our debts were paid and on our current income it looked like we’d lose the house too. He no longer had a job because he had quit when the money came in, assuming he’d get rich investing. He was so deluded and so was I, believing him. He spent the remaining 8K on lottery tickets, pot, and baseball cards. I kid you not.

Michael was back in AA now, but decided he could be in AA and smoke pot. He grew pot in our outbuilding and recruited my 8 year old daughter (who he used as his mini flying monkey and slave) to water the plants when I wasn’t around to do it (and of course I was completely clueless he was using our daughter this way). He continued to berate Ethan and never had anything nice to say to him. Michael had Molly wrapped around his finger (she was his Golden Child), and she was old enough that he began to use her to triangulate against me, and told her what a horrible wife and mother I was, undermining any authority I had. Soon Molly began to turn against me too. When I tried to discipline her, Michael would step in and say I was being mean and unreasonable, and sometimes even blamed me for not loving her enough. Talk about gaslighting!

Michael decided he wanted a dog (we already had one). I objected to this, because of all the work I already had to do, but Michael wouldn’t listen and brought the dog in anyway. He refused to discipline him, or housetrain him, and I was constantly cleaning up dog messes. When I complained he told me I was just an “animal hater” even though that was an absolute lie. My “animal hating” over pets he brought home without discussing with me first was a theme that would be repeated on several other occasions.

Helen was becoming sicker and Michael had another job (one that paid far less than the ones he’d had before); a nurse came in once a day to check up on her vitals but her daily care fell on me. She was a difficult woman and a narcissist herself, but she had Alzheimer’s and her mind was going. She could no longer walk without a walker and also had diabetes. Getting her to eat was frustrating to say the least. I was overwhelmed with my duties and dreamed of escape. But I was never mean to her the way Michael was. She frustrated me but Michael’s hatred and anger was off the charts. In front of the children he’d hit her and call her names, He didn’t care that they saw this; he said it was okay because “she was a horrible bitch.” It occurred to me that the fact he treated his mother like this meant he might someday treat me this way too (in fact he already did) but as always I believed (or wanted to believe) his lies. Eventually she entered a nursing home and Michael rarely went to visit her or let the kids see her. She died in 2002.

Neither of us were faithful anymore. There was no marriage to speak of left. I’m ashamed to talk about this, but I’m leaving nothing out of this story. Anyway, one day when I was drunk and the kids were sleeping over at friends’ houses I had my boyfriend come over. He was a sneaky man and also turned out to be a psychopath (but I won’t get into that here). Somehow he found out about the pot plants in the outbuilding. A few weeks later I broke up with him because I felt guilty about cheating (and because he was as intolerable as Michael). To spite me he told the police about the pot plants. I was home alone when the cops came, and we were both charged with felonies due to the amount of pot found, even though I had never approved of the plants being there in the first place. In court my felony was dropped to a misdemeanor but Michael was stuck with a felony. When he found out it had been my lover who tipped the police, he went ballistic. I understood his anger, but he’s a world class grudge holder and to this day blames me for “giving him a felony” even though it was HIS idea to grow the plants and on many occasions I’d begged him to get rid of them.

In 2003 Michael brought in the flying monkeys. A couple at his job who had a daughter Molly’s age had been evicted and without talking to me first he invited them to move in, which meant Ethan had to move out of his room and sleep in the master bedroom and Michael and I slept on the couch (we had a three bedroom house). It was a huge upheaval and very crowded, but that doesn’t even begin to explain the horror about to ensue.

At first Rachel and Paul seemed very nice (actually Paul was, but he was an enabler and very weak). But soon Rachel took over the house, cleaning it top to bottom and redecorating it to her liking. She disapproved of the way I was raising my children and didn’t like the foods I bought for them (I didn’t feed them junk food, but it wasn’t “organic”). She threw away all the food I had and brought in all organic foods and would not allow her daughter or my children to eat meat or sugar anymore. Soon I found out she was colluding with Michael, who had “converted” to her way of thinking and several times I heard them talking about what a slovenly and careless mother I was. Rachel was hateful to Ethan, as was Michael. They bullied him incessantly. Ethan’s grades slipped and he became depressed and sullen. She called him gay and a sissy. She was alright to Molly, but I could see she was an extremely controlling mother to her own daughter who seemed terrified of her.

scream

I became severely depressed and once I stupidly told Rachel I wanted to kill myself. I hated her, but there was no one else I could talk to and I didn’t dare talk to Paul because I knew I’d be blamed for flirting with him. Rachel smiled at me in a very strange way with a weird gleam in her eyes and said “after what you did to Michael, killing yourself would probably be a very good idea.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She also blamed me for “coming on” to her husband Paul, even though I had barely spoken a word to him. Michael and her both called me a “whore who can’t keep her legs together” RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CHILDREN. It’s not as if he’d been faithful himself.

I was almost suicidal and beginning to dissociate. Most days I’d sleep all day on the couch and only venture out if I had to. I was sick all the time and barely ate. I started to drink a lot and take pain pills. Rachel and Michael’s gaslighting and triangulating was unbelievably crazymaking and was finally taking its toll on my sanity, and of course they laughed and said I was just paranoid and crazy. I really don’t know how I survived this insanity.

One day I went out I drove at 90 mph not even realizing I was driving that fast, and by some miracle didn’t wreck. I got home and hid in the bedroom closet and stayed there for hours in a kind of catatonic trance. It’s hard to explain now, but I was so profoundly depressed I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I felt dead, like I had no soul. In fact I was living with an emotional vampire who was sucking all the life out of me. I was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the hospital and was there for a month, then continued as an outpatient for another two. They diagnosed me with Major Depression, PTSD, and Borderline personality disorder (this was later changed to Avoidant PD). To this day, Michael complains about “everything I put him through” by becoming ill and requiring hospitalization and that it was all just done to get his attention because I’m such a “drama queen.”

When I came home, Michael sat me down and almost immediately started crying. This surprised me because I hadn’t seen him cry in years. Then he dropped the bomb–Rachel and him decided I was “too sick” to live there anymore and a bad influence on the children, and I had to be out of the house in 30 days. Of course he said he didn’t want to do this but I was just too unstable (and selfish!) to be around children and oh, this broke his heart so much, boohoo. In my weakened mental and emotional state I went along with this and didn’t even bother to argue–even though I also wouldn’t be allowed to take the children. I was offered no financial help but he did say I could take one of the two cars. The crappy one. I left two weeks later. I didn’t want to miss my daughter’s birthday. My father paid for an attorney so I could file for divorce. With nowhere to go and no money, no job, and no friends or family willing to help me out, I was forced to move into a homeless shelter. So that was the end of the marriage. But my story’s not over yet.

I know this has been VERY long. I’ll stop here for tonight. I’m exhausted.