With Friends Like These...

Hmm. Just got a text message from someone who was a close friend of mine quite a few years ago. She wanted my husband's cell number because she has a question for him.

It's true she was friends with the hubby before I ever knew her. But they haven't been close friends longer than I haven't been close to her.

There are no trust issues for me regarding my husband, so I told him she was asking for his number and asked him if he wanted me to give it to her. He made a snorty noise and sighed, then said he could imagine what she wants.

See, a good pal of hubby's recently (like in the last couple of weeks) just broke up with his girlfriend of more than five years. Part of why I am not close to this friend anymore is that she had expressed a desire to interfere with hubby's friend's relationship, and I liked and respected his girlfriend at that point more than I liked and respected my former friend. Hubby figures this woman heard about the breaking-up and wants to step in and "comfort" his friend.

Niiice. And I can't imagine texting a friend, close or former, and just asking for her husband's phone number. This kind of hot mess used to be my best pal. But, I hadn't got the memo on narcissism then, either.

When My Weakness is Protecting my Strength

As so many bloggers have posted before about how the death of a family member means the N's expect you to draw together, no matter what, I do not consider my case to be anything special. One of NM's brothers passed away this week, and I got the first call from Nmom since...hmmm. It's been awhile.

I didn't answer her call since it was in the middle of the workday and my phone was in a drawer and I didn't hear it. When work was over, I checked the phone to see a text from my sis who asked if NM had called me. Frankly, until I double-checked all my little phone icons, I didn't know she had. So I sucked it up and listened to her message, the first time in about 9 months I have. She told me her brother had passed away and rambled a little about other things that were unclear, then she threw in that she was letting me know in case I was "interested." Also, she left some sort of snark about gee whiz, sorry I didn't get you guys valentines, I haven't been out of the house in a while. The message was left the day before valentine's day, and frankly, I'm a little beyond waiting for valentines in the mail.

Her brother is someone I've seen fewer than 10 times in my life. I didn't hate him, but I didn't love him, because I didn't know him. He and his wife got the hell out of Dodge to get away from his evil mother. This is the only thing I know about him, and I do like that he did that.

After I listened to NM's message, I immediately dialed her number, but she didn't answer. She was probably with other family members, and I left a very brief message that I was truly sorry about her brother and I hoped she was doing okay. I said I'd call her back, but I didn't. I popped a note in the mail instead.

The note didn't hit any of the heavy shit that's been sitting on my chest. I know she's suffering, and grinding my heel in her wounds isn't something I wanted to do. The letter was brief and honest and expressed how sorry I was for her loss and for my uncle's wife's loss. I also wrote that I was writing because it was the healthiest way for me to communicate right now, but I left it at that.

So she tries to call me today. Even though I told her I only felt comfortable communicating in writing right now. I knew her ring the minute the home phone started bleating. It's no surprise that she only wants what she wants and that she blasted past a boundary I tried to be honest about. Kinda drove it home, though, that everything I've known to be true is right.

I know from messages from my sister the family is not doing a memorial service right now. I know NM wanted me to drive several hours and bring my kids so she could show them off like zoo animals in front of her siblings, none of whom I know very well. I don't think any of them could give a fig less if I showed up or not. But I know if I'd talked to her, she would've whined and needled and made it apparent that I was taking a chunk out of her soul by not doing what she wants me to do. I know by not coming up today, there will probably be a big show sometime this afternoon wherein she breaks into tears and makes it all about her that I am not there to support her in her time of need.

I really hate her right now. I feel downright nauseous and dirty, and I didn't even talk to her. Mindfuck, indeed.

It's been a long couple of months since I posted last. I'm a real delayed reaction sort of person, and I'm trying to adjust to my big kid's new living situation and stupid hormonal shit that makes me want to rip my ovaries out and stomp on them. Hot flashes, night sweats, pms that lasts two weeks, nightmares that peel wallpaper off the walls, the whole nine yards. Perimenopause can kiss my ever-broadening ass. I must have been a man in most of my past lives, because my tolerance for this nonsense is veddy, veddy low.

Gratitude

I've gotten started on working alot of shit out with this blog. I am so grateful that this opportunity exists for everyone who, like me, have certain crosses to bear. I have more peace right now than I've had in 37 years. It's cathartic. I'm very grateful to this community for its existence. There's alot to be said for knowing you're not in it alone.

I'm not a religious person, but please accept my wish to you for a peaceful holiday season with fewer fucktards to trample the snot out of a genuine existence.

Thanks, ya'll.

Creaking Onward

Saw the mother at sis's place on Friday. She greeted me with a hug and desperately hissed in my ear, "I love you." It sounds warm and fuzzy on paper, but it seemed very odd - in timing and something else I'm not putting my finger on. When she had the real opportunity to speak to me later in the afternoon, which I somewhat dreaded, though we were surrounded by other people, the only thing she wanted to talk about is how she had to turn the Kirby vacuum salesman in to the BBB. Not, how's my little boy doing in school, or how's my big boy doing because he's moving to his own place next week. Not about real things, important things. Her big important moment in the sun where I really wanted her to prove to me I'm wrong in all my feelings about her, and she just presented this strange nugget. It's about her, and it's negative. Lovely.

Otherwise, not a bad day.

I've been frantic the last couple weeks trying to get the oldest ready to move into his place. He can't understand my push to get things done ahead of time as much as possible, so I'm trying to take it as easy as I mentally can, but I'm really fucking nervous and overwhelmed. I keep being worried something will fall through and ruin his chance to live at this place, but so far so good. He's his only enemy that I'm aware of, in that he just needs to remember the things he needs to do to be happy and healthy. This place should be great - his own apartment with everything he physically needs, plus staff support. I'm mad at myself for being beside myself with nerves. One of the staff told me this is not unlike what all parents go through when a kid leaves the nest, so maybe this is normal??

Oh, yeah, and the guy that has been telling me since September he's going to get my fucking house painted "this weekend" can suck my big toe. You can't paint now that it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Dick. And I'm the numbnuts who took this long to tell you to get bent. So, yay me.

The holiday tree is up and the cats are chewing ornaments off the tree and the hubs is watching some rich fuckers play golf in Dubai in HD. The kids are upstairs farting around. And I'm really fighting myself not to go hit the vodka, but I know I've got lots of other shit to do that's more important. I just need to keep thinking about that.

Holiday Trigger

I don't remember a year when I didn't dread the holidays. The thought of seeing my mother over the holidays is freaking me the fuck out. I am utterly overwhelmed. What am I going to do?

On Tyranny

Reading back through some of the postings in Anna Valerious' blog and I came across her entry entitled "The Family Tyrant." In this post, she talks about how narcissists try to keep "outsiders" away. In my family, the outsiders were the healthy people in the family. After my NF's parents died, NF told his (normal) brother and sisters that now that his parents were gone, he was done with them. That fucking coward knew that his parents wouldn't put up with that behavior, and they were the bright, shining spot in my sisters and my youth, so he waited until they were dead and couldn't stand up for us, and then BAM.

After that period of time, the only contact I remember having with my favorite aunt, NF's sister, is when my mother would take us to see her a couple of towns away. This was invariably when dad was out of town for work.

Dad would think nothing at all of inviting the skeeviest fucks to our house to eat dinner (and criticize mom's cooking) and spend the night in the room next to mine, but we couldn't have contact with the only normal members of our family. I could fall asleep at night with a steak knife I horked out of the silverware drawer because I didn't have a lock on my door, which didn't even shut properly anyway, and the only thing separating me from a creep would be a wall while my sister and parents' bedrooms were at the other end of the house. We could still go visit my mother's crazy fucking mom, and we did, almost every weekend - hours and hours of sitting in a dark house while she commandeered games of dominoes and talked smack, sometimes about me in front of me, without my mom or dad standing up for me. God forbid we got to communicate with healthy people who could really see what was going on.

I will never forgive my father for trying cutting us off from the only healthy family members we had. I can't forgive my mother for allowing all his stupidity and allowing her N-mother to treat us the way she did.

Fuck them.

Now I can talk to my favorite aunt at my own leisure, but without having in essence known her from the age of 8ish until I was an adult, I feel awkward. She's always so good and kind to me and my kids. I was cheated. My sister was cheated.

Again, fuck them.

It's getting on toward the holidays, and I think the time will come when I'll have to be see mom again at a family function. I can feel the poison now. Now that I've had space, I can really see how wound up and angry I get just at the thought of seeing her and her doing her "What???" routine. "God forgives me, why can't my girls?" Your god didn't save me from you and him, mother.

My belief system operates on a different set of rules, the primary of which is protecting and nurturing my kids. I will never allow them to be in danger when I can prevent it. I will only surround them with healthy people. I never want them to know the helpless, sick feeling.

Anna's Blog Entry: http://narcissists-suck.blogspot.com/2007/05/family-tyrant.html

Whew.

The end of a long-ass week and the beginning of a tall cold drink.

I'm getting really dissatisfied dealing with the snot on the sleeve of society.

Where's the positive change I wanted to make? It can't be naivete to want this. The highlight of my career is when I get to put on the bunny costume at Easter and get driven place to place by deputies to make little kids smile.

I've got a job I do well. I know how lucky I really am. But it doesn't stop me from wanting to effect positive change.

I can only hope that somewhere along the way I'm the person who the little kid with the cracked-out parents fondly remembers, or that I am maybe setting a positive example.

I was born into a family of weirdos. The whole town of 300 we lived in knew how fucked up my family was, which added embarassment to the richness of turmoil. Kids wrote graffiti on the metal culvert at the end of my street that the man up the hill was a bastard. I tried to tell myself they meant the other old bastard on our street, but I knew better.

I started not getting along with other people in school in about 3rd grade and I was having behavioral problems. By 8th grade, I was mean. I decided I'd rather be respected than liked, but I was confusing respect with frightening people into silence. My angst was equalled only by the amount of eyeliner I used.

The minute I turned 16, I got a job working as a waitress in a nearby town. It was great training in people-pleasing, and I got decent tips. My parents didn't want me to have a social life, but they certainly didn't mind that I would go to school on Friday, work graveyard shift Friday and Saturday nights, and go back to school on Monday exhausted. If I was making money so I wasn't a burden on 'em, that was great. If I had a date, I had to be home by midnight. Always burned my ass, because I could be out all night making a buck and that was ok, but I damned well better not be having fun. I remember dad telling me he was going to charge me rent when I was 16. I told him if I was going to pay rent I was going to fucking move out and pay rent. Then he backtracked and tried to say all the rent I paid he was going to save and give to me for a graduation present, but if I really didn't want that...aww, how sweet. He was going to gift me my own money. He dropped it. I didn't pay rent. I should have moved out. I really hated my life. I daydreamed of suicide. When I finally worked up the guts to tell my mom I needed help, she told me they certainly didn't have the money for that kind of thing. Later that night she came to me crying and bawling, saying, "You're not really going to kill yourself, are you?" I told her what she wanted to hear. I was anointed her best friend, but she wouldn't help me seek help. I couldn't count on her. I didn't try to tell anyone else my problems. I would just embarass the family. Like they needed any help.

Later in my 16th year, after a string of boyfriends who have long since become felons (one went to prison for attempting to murder a prostitute - true story), I met the coolest bad guy. He was 22 and drove a '77 TransAm (just like the Bandit but without a T-top). He was a great mix of sweet and pissy and I was a complete fool for this guy. I got knocked up about a year later, at the beginning of my senior year, about the time I was wondering if this is where my life should be taking me, but I sure as shit wasn't responsible enough to prevent getting knocked up, so I figured this was my path. By that time, I could see the chinks in the knight's shining armor.

My father's reaction to my getting knocked up was so fucking weird. I expected to get clubbed upside the head or kicked out. He said, "I'm proud of you." Wow, proud of me for having sex and getting knocked up? WTF. I have no idea what he was thinking. He did say, "You thought daddy was going to yell at you, didn't you." Well, yeah. Most parents who gave a shit would. But whatever.

I stayed in school long enough so I didn't screw up the speech thing for the other seniors in group speech on my team. Right after we got I's at district but learned we hadn't been chosen for state, I arranged with my principal to take my last credits at home. I moved out of my parents' house that same day and into the boyfriend's apartment a few towns away. My parents pretended they wanted what was best for me, but they were for me to go. My sister was a well-liked cheerleader and they had hope for her. She was a credit to them.

The next few years are a haze of searching for reasons why my life wasn't working out, but I forced myself into denial. I worked full time and struggled to find good daycare for my son. The only doctor I could afford in town told me my son's behavioral problems were because I let him walk all over me, and also, boys will be boys. I tried to leave the boyfriend and went back to my parents' house one day. My mother burst into tears because she was so unhappy I was back. It turned out, I had foiled a tryst with her then-boyfriend. I went back to my boyfriend the next day. It was obvious my mother didn't want me to come back. My boyfriend had developed a meth addiction and was spending all the money he made, so I didn't have any cash to make arrangements to live somewhere else because I was paying for my house and I couldn't get him out. In the end, the only way to get rid of him was to change the locks on the doors of the house I had bought with every last penny I had saved because my parents told me to and he told me to. I hated that fucking house. But I made so many excuses and forced myself to be "loyal" and I woke up every goddamned morning and thought, "If there was a god, I'd be dead right now."

The year following the lock-changing, on a day when I was supposed to drive to my parents' house and go with them so they could take my collegiate sister out to eat for her birthday, my mother calmly sprung on me before we went that she had been having an affair. In fact, several affairs. Dad had decided to forgive her. Now, that's all said and done. Let's go out to eat.

We went to play happy-happy family at the sis's house and my parents didn't say anything to her, but she could tell shit was up. On the ride back to her house from lunch, I told her what I had been told. I look back and feel guilty about it. It was her birthday for christsakes. But I was so sick of their fucking secrets and pretending. That whole year afterward mom spent into a nervous breakdown spiral. She came to my house and announced that she was Satan. When I took her to the mental health center, she completely pretended nothing was wrong and refused to talk about why I brought her there. I was crying and shaking. She was calm as a cucumber. They probably thought I needed evaluation. There was nothing they could do. We left and I decided I was never going to try to intervene for her again. I quit letting my son be with her without me there. I started to try to break the chain.

She and dad got a divorce, mostly because dad couldn't handle her mental health issues. I think he really wanted her to stay with him so he could hold her infidelities over her head for perceived power. She went to live with her brother and in short order ended up hospitalized and subsequently had a stroke. Apparently her mental issues were a result of blood clots in her brain. I used to feel guilty for being mad at her because she couldn't help some of her crap, technically. But she got to forget all the shit years and I can't even work through anything with her if I wanted to.

Yeah, that's enough for now. It was time to start, though.