For Lizbeth, a fellow ULB. I've got your back.

Just in time for All Hallows Eve! 

 

Lizbeth Borden, ULB Pioneer

 

I was watching a ghost hunting show the other day and they were in the Borden house (now a B&B – fun vacation!), trying to solve the murders and prove the place was haunted.  The psychic came up with an interesting theory and I thought I’d investigate it myself.

 

We all know this rhyme, right?

“Lizzie Borden took an axe

Gave her mother 40 whacks
When she saw what she had done
Gave her father 41”

I am always intrigued by stories that seem to have an undercurrent – I feel that if you follow the goddamned facts, you will get to the truth even if you cannot prove it in a court of law.  There are no giant leaps of logic.  What did Sherlock Holmes say?  “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.  My theory is more like, when you follow the facts and you remember to employ common sense, you will come closer to the truth than anyone else.  In this case, I wondered what would drive a woman to violently hack, dozens of times, at the heads of her parents?  It's an interesting story, even if my synopsis is a bit long...

(please remember this is ME, I use internet info and much like my Jesus exposés, I began this with absolutely zero knowledge of the crime other than that poem at the top and a ghost story on tv.  I researched the story to my own satisfaction.  You want more info?  Go look for yourself!  It’s a big world, baby.)

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born in 1860.  (she renamed herself ‘Lizbeth’ after the murders, and I am going to respect her choice from here on out in this telling).  Her mother, Sarah, died about 2.5 years later.  Her sister Emma was 9 years older, effectively making her a ‘little mother’ of the baby since the father was working all day, every day.  He routinely worked 14-hour days.  Please notice that Lizbeth’s middle GIVEN name was Andrew.  That is just creepy.

Andrew Jackson Borden, the father, was a wealthy citizen of Fall River, MA.  Andy had no fortune from his own parents – he grew up very poor.  He was a ‘self-made man’ and probably fucking pissed off at the world about that.  He had made his fortune in manufacturing (furniture and caskets) and then in textile mills.  He also owned a lot of commercial properties and was president of two banks.  He had made his gigantic fortune through a cunning combination of ruthless financial practices and maniacal thrift.  At the time of the murders he was retired and had assets estimated to be worth at least five hundred thousand dollars.  Remember this was in 1892 - I think that is close to 10 MILLION DOLLARS by today's standards.  Dude was rich, is what I’m saying.  RICH.  And normally, rich people in that town lived on ‘The Hill’ – which would make sense because a mill town would smell absolutely wretched.  You would want to be on a hill, with the possibility of a breeze, away from the center of all that crap, and honestly, away from the lower-class and homeless (and again, a mill smells worse than 10 dead bodies) that would no doubt plague the city center.  But Andrew kept his smaller home which was near the mill – because he was ‘frugal’.  This smaller home was not a hovel, but it was not great.

 

Borden House.  Two chimneys for the whole place.  brrr.

 

‘Frugal’ in old Andy’s case means he kept his family in absolute tight-fisted miserable poverty.  In their house they used what were politely called ‘excrement buckets’.  There was no indoor plumbing, so not only the poop factor but also bathing, washing dishes, water for food,  washing clothes.  There was also no electricity.  That would be exactly the same as today, when your neighbors and friends have bathrooms and light switches and YOU are still dumping your shit buckets in the back yard.  Makes growing up in elementary school and high school sorta torturous, no?  Plus the added fun of full skirts and corsets.  High necks and long sleeves.  Basically, you have to do all of this heavy manual labor while you are dressed in bindings – these girls had the social restrictions of their class and yet none of its benefits.  AND, this was during the last years of industrial revolution (1760-~1830) and these “miracles of science” were very standard, especially in a prosperous mill town like Fall River.  But not for old Andy.  It would cost money to upgrade the house, and to HELL with his daughters he wasn’t going to spend it.  But I’ll just betcha he demanded his 3-piece suits were clean every day (he wore a black suit every day, winter and summer).  I’m sure he demanded dinner on the table at a certain time and a bath when he wanted it.  This is the same thing as a hoarder – the other side of the same coin.  It’s all about power and control, and the misery of anyone they control is what gives these people satisfaction.  It’s narcissism, plain and simple.  Also – he was a ruthless businessman.  OF COURSE.  He was a complete bastard and the people of the town pretty much hated him.  It wasn’t like he gave money to charity or loans to needy hard working families, or gave raises to the worker-bees or anything.  And imagine what the conditions were like for employees working in a factory in that time.  Yeah.

This may not sound so bad from the outside.  Anyone who hasn’t lived with a narc cannot know the fear, anxiety, and stress that comes with living like that.  Being frugal didn’t mean he wanted to clip coupons or cut corners.  NO - they were eating week-old lamb stew (no refrigeration, remember?) and this was Massachusetts.  Bitter horrible cold in the winter with no heat (who needs coal or blankets and warm coats?  Not a frugal person!) and summers plagued with humidity and bugs and unrelenting heat.  No electricity means no fans, no ice.  This wasn’t being poor – this was intentional abuse from someone who had all the power to make things better.  But he relished the power and control he had, and the misery he created.

The property had originally been constructed to hold two families, with separate entrances.  To get from the upstairs master bedroom to say, Emma’s bedroom, one would have to go downstairs, through a hall, and then back upstairs.  Very private.  While there is no reliable evidence suggesting that Andy was molesting his daughters (but plenty of supposition and theories), I think the murders themselves speak to some pretty grave abuses.

Sarah and Emma.  boy howdy they look happy.

Again, Emma was 9 when Lizbeth was born, and their mother died a little over 2 years later.  So Emma was almost 12 years old by that time.  According to all reports, as an adult and even after the murders she was a quiet person, given to take life as it came.  She had been trained for 11 years to take the abuse (in whatever form) from her father.  Her mother, certainly, had to simply accept his narcissistic rages, and modeled this behavior to her daughter.  Emma, as a little girl, would be especially vulnerable to a bully like Andy.  Once Lizbeth was born, and Emma became her caretaker, we can imagine the HUGE problems that would have gone on.  Baby crying?  Who does Andy hit and yell at?  This is reminding me of Sonny Liston.  And if our friend LOGIC is by our side, this Borden story is almost as horrible.  Even without the sexual abuse angle, but I’m not going to count that out.  The mother died of what they called ‘Uterine Congestion’ with back problems - which sounds fake, but here is a link http://www.pelvicpain.org/news/pdfs/vol4_no2.pdf  which is a pretty thorough explanation.  Here is a quote from that link:  {...number of women describing] post coital ache (65%). Majority of women give a history of emotional disturbance originating in their childhood. ßso it hurt her to have sex with Andy and she was probably molested as a child.  See how this is making more and more sense?  He married her because she was the perfect treat for a narc, needy and mentally unhealthy and easily tormented.  He was probably molesting Emma, since his wife would scream in pain from sex, and she had gone to doctors so it was known around town that she had ‘female problems’.  And a man needs relief, right?  Couldn’t go to a whore because of his social standing.  After his wife died, Andy turned down any offers of help from other family members, including his sister. He instead opted to keep his household his own private domain, thereby establishing the kind of family isolation well documented by incest survivors.  He kept it all in the family.

After Sarah died, Andy (I’m sure the name 'Andy' pisses him off, it makes me giggle) was remarried to a woman (already an old maid at 35 so she was ‘on the shelf’ as they say, and he knew she would be compliant and grateful) in 1865 who was the daughter of a push-cart peddler.  She wanted status, and marrying into this family gave her that.  Andy wanted a housekeeper.  Turns out she wasn’t so compliant and grateful.  The Borden sisters eventually refused to call her ‘mother’ and finally refused to even speak to her.  She was (by accounts) power hungry and money hungry and either she was Andy’s right-hand man or his enabler – or both.  Hey!  A flying monkey enters the story!  Emma was 14 and Llizbeth was 5 when her stepmother came to live with them.  They had been kept in this level of poverty and abuse and isolation and despair for all that time, and another woman steps in and takes over the house.  Emma had probably been running the house for years due to her mother’s illness – this is a bad situation.  Emma had most likely probably been sexually abused by the father for years, which would make her weirdly feeling like HIS WIFE, and then he marries someone else, and hello mind-fuck.  Did I mention they hated their step-mother?   Here is a quote about Lizbeth: 

http://phayemuss.wordpress.com/

When [she was] a young girl, she accompanied her parents to Chicago and was there a member of the Sunday school class and punctual in attendance.  She was, however, a girl with anything but an enthusiastic idea of her own personal attainments.  She thought people were not favorably disposed toward her and that she made a poor impression.  This conduced to the acceptance of this very opinion among church people, and consequently the young woman was to some extent avoided by the young women of the church.  She had horrible self-esteem issues and had no reason to believe that people would like her, so they didn’t.  Sounds VERY familiar to me, achingly familiar.

Andy never (ever) allowed his daughters to date or socialize outside of school or church.  They weren’t allowed the funds for nicer clothes, or to go to parties.  So, here they were because of social constraints, not allowed to work and earn their own money, and their father kept them from having any normal way out – normal being marriage.  He kept them all to himself.  Ominous foreboding, right?  Yeah, it gets worse.  Emma stuck around the house, being the good girl, but Lizbeth managed to join a couple of church groups (religious or not, if that’s where you are allowed to socialize then damn if you aren’t converted).  By all accounts Lizbeth was close to her father.  She gave him a ring on the occasion of her high school graduation, that he was wearing on the day he died.  Some say this isn’t consistent with the theory of sexual abuse – but us ULBs know that is a false assumption.  There can be a trauma bond created that surpasses all logic of anyone outside the abuse ring.  She was his special chosen girl – oh gag.  She was still in the FOG and it was very bad.  These girls were isolated from almost everything outside the house, certainly from any other male/sexual influence.  He had gone from Emma to Lizbeth.  Emma was probably in a horrible place of being glad and guilty and horrified all at once.  The step-mother never had any children – at 35 she was almost but not too old to have children – possibly the marriage wasn’t sexual in nature.  Given that he had Emma and Lizbeth for that.  The brutality of her murder would indicate a personal vendetta against the step-mom.  She (in my opinion) had been abusing and domineering the girls for years, and enabling Andy in HIS abuses.

Emma Borden, War Hero

 

In 1884 (Lizbeth was then 24, Emma was 33) their father gave his wife’s half-sister a house.  GAVE A WOMAN HE DIDN’T REALLY KNOW A HOUSE.  To say that his daughters objected would be calling Hiroshima a small bang.  It was at this point they started calling their step-mother ‘Mrs. Borden’.  Andy tried to make peace by giving his daughters some money and allowing them to rent out one of his other properties.  He – he threw a little money at them and then ALLOWED them to be landlords of a house he owned.  How big of a nuclear bomb must have gone off in that house for Andy to capitulate to ANYTHING.  The girls must have completely gone bat-crap crazy.  They were always mild-mannered outside the house - there are NO stories of craziness or bad behavior about either one of them.  The maid wasn't gonna talk.

This, of course, would not be the only story of financial manipulation.  There are MANY – with the upshot in each case that the girls were deprived while others reaped the benefits of knowing their father.  Sound familiar?  Over, and over, and over – shown how little they are worth, how his opinion and regard for strangers is higher than of them.  They are not good enough, even though they give everything, every last thing, to this man.

In spring of 1892 – there was a pivotal incident.  Lizbeth kept pigeons in a barn loft, I think as pets?  She was 32 years old.  Possibly they also ate these pigeons, but she loved them – the girls were obviously not allowed to have pets (frugal!).  At some point her father got angry and decided that the pigeons were attracting neighborhood boys and he went out to the barn and massacred them all.  Some reports say he did it with a hatchet HA HA OH REALLY?!  Talk about the straw that broke the camel’s back.  These birds were something she doted on, poured her love into – I mean, she was not allowed around any men.  You want to have a hatchet, motherfucker?  I’ll give you a hatchet.  To the face.  (also – the pigeons were attracting boys?  Can’t have THAT.  Maybe she was caught with a guy and told her father ‘he wanted to see the pigeons!’ and that would be all the excuse Andy would need to kill those birds.  Perhaps this was also her 'space' - a place she had carved out to get away from both of them.  Can't have that either).

And so, 3 months later, the two Borden elders are very, very dead.  The rhyme is wrong:  Mrs. Borden received 19 blows to the head.  I think the back of her head.  She (Lizbeth) just wanted the bitch dead and gone.  Andy received 11 blows, chopping his FACE up beyond all recognition.  She hacked his fucking face off.  Sounds like a crime of passion to me.  And that passion would be RAGE, with a side of HATE.

Andrew Borden.  He has a bit of a headache.  A SPLITTING headache, if you will.

 

HA HA bitch is dead with her ass in the air

 

Abby (left) and Andrew Borden - skulls.  Yeeowch.

 

Emma was not home at the time.  Lizbeth and the maid were the only ones home.  Mrs. Borden was the first one killed, in the upstairs bedroom.  Then approximately 90 minutes later Andy came home and fell asleep on a downstairs sofa, and his face was hacked to pieces.  How well planned was this coup that someone could wait an hour and a half for the second murder?  No blood was found at the crime scene (my limited knowledge of science via CSI episodes says this cannot be the case unless the face/body was covered with something).  An axe head was found and the handle had been broken off/pulled out and was thought to be found later, rubbed with dust and with no blood on it.  Emma and the maid both testified and were calm, saying that someone besides Lizbeth must have done it.  The crime is written about in a gabillion places, you can take a look at all of it. 

 

My theory?  It was done with a hatchet, not an axe.  I've tried to lift an axe - they're fucking heavy.  Plus the pigeon episode.  Yeah, I think it was a hatchet.  More lady-sized.  Lizbeth and Emma and the maid were in on it.  The maid had seen the abuse - she was a live-in maid, did I mention, and was most likely abused, verbally and physically, if not sexually - it was an incredibly sick household.  Emma supposedly had left town, and I guess that was a good cover story.  Lizbeth took the heat for a while (she was in prison until the trial concluded, and in 1892 that had to be pretty bad) because she would have been far better able to withstand prison and the stress and ugliness (press) of a trial than Emma would have been.  Part of Lizbeth’s defense was that she was in the barn loft at the time of the murders.  The BARN LOFT, where the pigeons were killed.  Good one Lizbeth, I see what you did there!  A big LOL to you, sister. *21st century fist bump*

She was aquitted.  The girls inherited whatever portion of the estate they were entitled to, which was most of it.  The maid left  town after the trial and went to live in Anaconda, Montana.  Up to the day she died she maintained her story as testified at the trial.  Lizbeth changed her name (from Lizzie, probably her father's pet name for her *shudder*) and started hanging around theatre people - she joined the drama club, y'all!  How much fun were these people?  A LOT of fun, I would bet.  No more sexual constraints, no more social requirements, just FUN.  By many accounts she took a lesbian lover – well, more power to her, and while I don’t think you can ‘turn’ anyone gay, I do think that she wasn’t likely to get involved with any MEN in that lifetime, you know?  She bought a house on ‘The Hill” in the rich section and hired maids and probably took hot baths and had iced lemonade every fucking day of her life.  She and Emma were eventually estranged (the lesbian thing was difficult for Emma) but they never hated each other.

 

On her death Lizbeth left a good portion of her estate to an animal shelter place.  Still feeling guilty for the pigeons, probably, and for no good reason ANDY.

Listen up narcs.  Ye reap what ye sow, you fucking bastards.  If I was to re-write that poem: 

Lizbeth Borden took an axe

Put it to the skulls of both those whacks
Who tortured her, & her sister too
If it was me I’d have done it too.

Well played, Lizbeth Borden.  Rock on.  RIP.

 

♫ To die by your side, well the pleasure - the privilege is mine ♪

So, enough about you, let's talk more about ME.

I have a dark sense of humor.  I prefer my ghoulish humor on the macabre side, thanks very much.  Like this lovely alphabet book by Edward Gorey:

The first one is A is for Avery who fell down the stairs.  It's horrible and funny - as if you would read that to a child for sleepy-time?  Well, Mike would have liked it...

Gorey is gory.  And FUNNY.  I giggle.

The title of this post is from The Smiths, a sort of punk/new age band from the 80's.  The rest of that verse goes like this:

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine

That right there is funny.  Gloomy, yes, but funny.  I told Mike if he went all depressed and emo in High School the only way I could bear it is if he listened to The Smiths.  Then I played the CD for him and he stole it.  Hmph.

ANYWHOZLE.  All of that, to get to this:

Weaning off of Wellbutrin: <--ominous sounds of crashing Phantom of the Opera chords...

I know I've mentioned about my anti depressants before, but a quick run through - Wellbutrin is an NDRI, which means Norepinephrine-Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitor.  Most anti depressants are SSRIs.  So this is different.  I've explained about reuptake inhibitors, that is a chemical that allows my brain to use the drug.  It's like my brain couldn't find its (dopamine) ass with both hands and a flashlight all on its own, so I need this stuff.

I had thought (ominous warning) that since I A: lost 33 pounds *golf clap* and B: I exercise all the time, and C: I gave up all grains and sugar, that possibly this would be a good time to get off the Wellbutrin and let my brain do all the work on its own.  Surely (Shirley) I had moved mountains, fixed my poor broken brain?  Not to ruin the story for you, but NO.  No, I had not.

The day you write about imagining kicking a homeless person in the head MIGHT also be the day you realize things have slightly gotten off track.  Slipped a bit into the Pit Of Despair, if you will.  So, to sum up:  Thinking Edward Gorey is funny?  That's A-ok.  Actually wanting to watch the bears eat that child?  NOT OK. 

Yes, as everyone reassured me, we (us ULBs) (and our children maybe) have learned to get a kick out of the dark side of life.  If not, our morbid thoughts might turn us inside out.  But I am not a mean person.  I will rescue any animal, talk to any goopy toddler, smile at anybody in the veggie aisle...So while my giggling at Gary Larson comics is normal,

the rest was decidedly NOT normal.  But it felt familiar...

Depression, as I have said, is a hideous insidious beast.  It isn't sadness.  It's NOTHINGNESS.  Its colorless and tasteless (and odorless!  Iocaine powder anyone?).  It's the absence of all feeling.  except maybe irritation and unreasoning anger.  You know how motel rooms have those 2 layer curtains, first the filmy one that still lets light through, and then another one that blocks all light as if there was a reenactment of the London Blitz going on in the sky? Well, think of that bright window with several layers of only those gauzy curtains.  It felt daily as if one more layer was being closed.  I didn't notice the room was getting darker and darker until *blink* huh - I can't see.

After I wrote that last post and read all your wonderful replies (I love our community out here, I sort of feel ok to let my freak flag fly with all y'all) I started wondering why I felt so murderous.  Why the dogs, coming to me with cute eyes and paws

asking me to go outside and GO PEE, for chrissakes, was making me want to scream.  Why I didn't want to go outside or walk and the thought of taking a shower just seemed POINTLESS.  And then I said oh hey, I remember feeling like this FOR 5 YEARS and no.  NO, no no no. 

So yesterday I started taking the Wellbutrin again. 

Luckily, it is the kind of drug that you can stop and start without losing it's efficacy.  I'm bummed - I really wanted to 'cure' myself with nutrition and exercise and all that - but I'm also sanguine about the whole thing.  Taking this drug has CHANGED MY LIFE.  If I have to take it forever and ever, world without end - then whatever.  I will.

My brain IS broken.  I need, desperately it turns out, the help that this medication offers.  I'm certain that the healthy things I have accomplished in my life are making it easier for this drug to help me.  Absolutely.  But I can't be without it.

If anybody has gotten to this post researching 'Withdrawal from Wellbutrin" please know - as far as I can tell there are no serious psychotic side effects, and the drug doesn't become less effective for you.  But RESEARCH THAT.  What I want to tell you, keep track of how you're feeling.  Journal what you did each day.  Get a trusted someone to tell you if you're slipping back into your black hoodie and dark eyeliner phase.  Just be aware of YOU. 

I want to go back to feeling like I did in this post:  http://mypostcardsfrompurgatory.blogspot.com/2013/09/3-month-report-yes-more-diet-crap-shut.html  And that is where I'm going to stay.  No more experiments - jeebus I'm like Dr. Frankenstein using my own body.  no more.

Sorry for that last morose post everyone.  Welcome to my brain.  Pay as you exit.

Navel gazing

I've been dwelling.

Not in the 'living in an abode' kind of dwelling.  I mean ruminating. 

I've gone through so much in the last year regarding cleaning up my brain.  I've FACED and dealt with the facts of my abusive childhood and I feel as though I've - if not filed and organized, I've straightened and swept that area of my head.  It's better in there than it's ever been.

My broken brain is acknowledged and petted every fucking day.  I just say to myself 'THEY broke your brain, bunny - let's just move along here, not your fault' - this when my thoughts get stuck in either some maudlin pity party or else go all Dexter on me.  [do any of you do this, btw?  do you look at say, a homeless guy sleeping along a river bed and wonder what he would do if you ran up and kicked him in the face *hard*?  Now I've made myself sound like a sociopath and I'm telling you I'd never follow through with anything like that - I give food and shoes and clean underpants to the homeless! but why in the hell does my brain GO to that place?  Even unto myself, like when driving across a bridge and I worry I might suddenly decide to DRIVE OFF THE SIDE.  I am not a thrill seeker and no longer feel the need to go to sleep and not wake up, so WTF?  It's like my brain has this side that is all dark and twisted and icky]

I actually sometimes have worser thoughts pop into my head than the above examples.  I think it is because I was exposed to some horrific stuff, possibly sexual abuse stuff, as a little child and so my brain is broken in that regard.  But as I said, I pat myself on the brain-pan and move myself along to greener pastures.  It's all I can do, I have to just re-direct and move along.

[I hate feeling like I'm crazier than anyone else but sometimes the proof is in the pudding.]

Anywhozle.  As I was saying, I've dealt with so much stuff and now the dust is sort of settling and it leaves me thinking of what an unmitigated ASS I have been in my life.  I've touched on this before, but my GOD I made some completely bone-headed self-serving selfish decisions.  I owe apologies to SO MANY people and one of the most important people I owe an apology to is DEAD for chrissakes (Byron) and so while I assume he knows my heart and soul, I do wish I hadn't done what I did.

All of this stuff - I was constantly making decisions NO.  NO I didn't make decisions.  I let the wind and my varying emotional winds and hormones and fears rule me and I just kept leaping from lily pad to lily pad without ever even knowing I could have taken the time to look for the edge of the pond.  I was panicked and running LONG past the time there were any monsters (my dad) chasing me.  I paid all my bills, but you know, sometimes on the last day at the last minute with change from my ashtray.  There was never any forethought.  No plan of action or 'what next' critical thinking.  No idea that tomorrow I might really regret this decision or that leap.

In no particular order, here are a few of my asinine idiotic life decisions.  I hate myself sometimes.

1.  I was working with a friend (turned out to be a narc *surprise!*) we worked for two attorneys.  There was an auxiliary female attorney attached to the same office and she was married to a guy named Greg.  I started having an affair with this Greg guy.  He was a cop!  yeah.  Jeopardized my job which was always precarious at best.  She found out and hilarity ensued.  It was fucked.  I was scared.  This same guy tried to break my arm and little 3-year old Mike got into the fray.

2.  Met a guy via telephone while I was working for an escrow company.  We enjoyed a long and satisfying long-distance flirt.  He drove up to meet me finally and he turned out to be amazingly great, 5 years older than me and had his shit together.  He ran his own business and was just this amazing older MAN.  He thought I was funny(!) and sexy(!!) and smart(!!!) and really, he thought I was the greatest thing since pockets.  He also turned out to be married.  I kept up with that affair in one way or another (meaning it wasn't always sexy-time but it could have been) until I moved to Maryland 2 years ago.  YEAH.

3.  Was sort of but not really dating Byron.  We had been friends since 5th grade and all through high school we flirted (we were in band together!  geeks!) and after high school we started hanging out and he had this HUGE group of guy friends and I was this levi wearing girl who hung out and they treated me like a sister except Byron and I had this *thing* and it was all VERY cute, and very sweet.  This lasted for years.  But we were always dating other people and keep our liaisons quiet.  Then with one thing and another (alcohol, close proximity, horribly non-existent boundaries) I started flirting with HIS YOUNGER BROTHER and thus began the shameful-est part of my life.  SEX WITH BROTHERS.  ("not at the same time in the same bed! but during the same time period!" she hurries to clarify, making her less whore-like, right?) The one (John) knowing and the other, who I really really liked but couldn't really have (Byron) not knowing and then Byron died and I never could understand why all of our friends immediately hated me and it has come to my (much clearer) way of thinking that John told all his (our) friends what a whore I was and so of COURSE they all wouldn't talk to me and oh, this is one thing if I could go back but would have to live through my 20's again, I am thinking I would go back and change this shameful stupid thing.  Also I have learned to HATE John, he didn't have to be a dick.  His brother dying fucked him up but why take it out on me?  He had told me that he loved me, so hell hath no fury like that I guess.

4.  I manipulated the fucking crap out of people in order to get what I needed.  Which sounds so New York but I am talking about couches (used) or rides somewhere or tickets to a concert.  I traded sex for car repairs (not like, on a street corner but by magically dating boys who worked on cars AND who had things like dirt bikes).  I guess I thought I was clever and uh, yeah, I guess that is so.  Women have traded their bodies down through the ages but until recently I never thought of it from that angle.  I just thought I was magically dating car guys.

This is another part of growing up around narcs that we don't talk about much.  they fucked us up as kids and also we have no boundaries, no decision making skills.  I have no passions (except I guess I used to have a passion for married men.  That's not what I'm talking about here tho...) I have no talents besides a small skill at putting my stories out on the webz. 

Picture if you will, a really hopeless Tarzan.  Let's say, Mr. Limpet meets Tarzan.  He flings himself out on a vine, LEAPS to the next one and clutches it with eyes closed, heart PoUnDiNg, and sweaty grip until he's sure he isn't going to fall.  Heart still pounding he LEAPS to the next vine.  And lather, rinse, repeat.  THIS WAS ME.  I could have let go of the fucking vine and slid down.  There was nothing down there.

I could have stopped and built myself a tree house.  I could have just STOPPED MOVING.  Fucking crap. 

Round about the time I met Married Man Via Telephone I was drinking like a fish.  I had just lost all my friends (JOHN) and I was alone and sad and exhausted and tired of dancing.  I met Mike's dad and got pregnant, and while that wasn't the stupidest thing I've ever done as I like Mike's dad and have you met my son?  He's pretty great, it was another in a long line of leaping grasping clutching vine-jumping.

When I turned 39? Mike and I had moved into our last apartment, there in Garden Grove ca.  I stopped dating.  I had realized that the only common denominator in all of my bad decisions was, uh, ME.  So I quit.  I spent almost 2 years single and figuring stuff out.  It was at that time I decided to stop belittling my child abuse and stopped pretending it hadn't happened.  It would take me 10 years to really get it all cleared.

Finding you all helped so much.  I've said it before, but I thought it was just me.  I guess we have all said that, that we thought it was just OUR childhood.  To find out about all of us ULBs... 

I don't really have a point.  I am avoiding looking at or talking about my abusive childhood because I have dug down to the point that I realize some really REALLY shitty things happened to me in Florida.  And some of it makes me sound like a conspiracy theory LOON.  And I just don't want to walk through that right now.

Remember that movie 'Erin Brockovich' and there was this one scene where Erin was trying to get a water sample from a drainage ditch but she absolutely didn't want the water on her - she pulled a dead frog out by the toe and UGH that's how I feel.  If I could research this crap without getting any on me...

But reading about child abuse and thinking about child abuse and writing about child abuse - sometimes I feel like I walked through a giant spider web that was covered in dog crap.  It just gets ALL OVER me, you know?  And I need, recently, to take a (mental, metaphoric) shower and then not get any more on me.

Besides.  I spent all this time (rightfully) blaming all sets of parents in my life for the things that fucked me up.  But recently it has been important for me to acknowledge the ways I screwed up my own self and could have prevented it.

I don't know if it's worth it to contact anybody to apologize in person.  None of the above examples!  Those people can rot in hell - but there are girlfriends from long ago that I feel I owe an apology to, or a thank you to.  But it is SO long ago.  And I don't want to renew a friendship with those people - they were broken too, you know?  I want to acknowledge my own part in my past, and maybe that is enough.

No sense stirring anybody else's life-mud to the top. 

Narcs and life insurance

This.

http://tetanusburger.blogspot.com/2013/08/why.html

[quoted from the above blog] "Walking out I realized it never even occurred to me that my father would have taken out a life insurance policy. After all, what is life insurance? It's something you pay money for that will only benefit your family. You know, people that aren't you. Or in my father's case, not him. Why on Earth would he ever spend money on something like that?"

My own narc dad left my mother NOTHING.  I mean, she had the building (our house was a 4-plex) but no.  Not life insurance.

It had no benefit to him.  Why, indeed.

Living in fear and stress as an ACoN

The way I grew up - at the bottom of the food chain, and decidedly outside the circle, had an impact on me that has never really faded.  Even in Florida, when I was just a baby up to 5 or 6 years old, all of my memories have me being on the outside, observing things.  I was never in the middle of the action, or rarely so.  Things weren't happening AROUND me, noise and fun surrounding me, I was observing them from the side.  Outside looking in.  Muted sounds.  Like a scientist taking notes on another species.  I've written about some of it here.

I do not remember being held, or cuddled, or read to.  I remember my father getting VERY angry at me one Christmas because I asked 'is that all' when presents were over.  I was 3?  4?  He angrily dumped the parts of a metal scooter out of a box held high above me - they did not land on me but the LOUD *clanking* scared the crap out of me.  He didn't like me even then.  He had a horrible face that day.  I didn't know who he was.  I guess he was back for an Xmas morning?  Need to ask about that.  But see, it was my fault - I had been GREEDY.  And UNGRATEFUL.  I was the dirty ugly child, the one who ruined everything.

Once in California, pulled from Florida and the life I had led since birth, I was absolutely cut from the new herd.  I didn't know ANYBODY, all of these people were strange to me and I had never even heard of them.  I was alone, isolated, degraded, made fun of, yelled at, punished, teased - it never ended.  I lived in a state of constant fear and stress.  I was 6.  I thought about killing myself a lot.

I never, ever questioned my existence or the changes.  I just accepted that my body was now in THIS weird place, with these new people.  It was so easy for me to let go of Florida.  Like I was used to being 'beamed' from one location to another with no context, no knowledge.  *shrug* I'm here now.  very fucking weird for a kid.

People talk about the fight-or-flight thing.  But there is another option.  FREEZE.  Like the rabbits in the book Watership Down, one can also go 'tharn' - you just freeze and your brain loses all input.  Goes blank.  Like the Blue Screen of Death.  For me, it was a static noise and an inability to move my limbs.  I could not think.  I could not talk.  When confronted in a stressful situation, I went elsewhere in my head.  There are huge chunks of memories gone, incomplete scenes (like that camping bathroom episode, I cannot remember what happened once I was dragged back to the camper).  Somewhere, somehow, I learned to shut the fuck down and all systems went on some kind of disassociation vacation.  I never un-learned this defense mechanism.  It went on to own me.

Things that got yelled at me with exhausting regularity:

"you're a liar!"
"You're a sneak"
"You're so lazy!"
"We could get a monkey to do what you do around here!"

I was whipped on the back of the legs with my dad's belts.  I was the only one who ever got hit.  I got thrown out of bed and into the closet doors in the middle of the night from a dead sleep.  I got my face mashed down into my food at the table because I wasn't eating fast enough.  I had to eat at the counter, isolated away from the rest of the family because I didn't do it right.  On every vacation I got in trouble and grounded so that I was isolated from fun outings and had to stand behind a fence or off to the side and watch the others.  I lived in a constant state of fear and stress.  My sensors were on overload, an attack could come at any time.  You're 6, 8, and you had better be ready.  Going in your room was no solace, there was no place to hide.  Hearing anybody yell anything remotely similar to my name causes my stomach to clench and my head to start shutting down.  STILL.  At 52 years old.  If I hear a dad, a random dad, yelling at his kid named Tracy or Stacy because that rhymes with Casey - I am immediately back to that house, my childhood, and terror.

The smell of cigar smoke can send me to the same place.

I have learned to calm myself quickly, in these cases, and my heart ratchets back down in a matter of seconds.  But it still happens.  I WAS TRAINED.  Mind-control is a very easy thing to accomplish for a narc.  We are mind-fucked and believe what they tell us either in words or actions.  I WAS AN UGLY WORTHLESS STUPID INCOMPETENT CHILD.  I believed those words for the next 45 years. 

And the other sisters?  There was no way to save me.  they were saving themselves.  See, dad would use the excuse of my (made the fuck up) transgressions as a reason he was angry and why the family was having a bad time.  The sisters couldn't understand why I just didn't get in trouble, stop doing those things!  But what they didn't see, in keeping their own heads down, was that I had done nothing.  I had been set up, every time.  Even if they had done the exact same thing, the reaction would have been NOT angry.  They couldn't understand why I always got in trouble.  Neither could I.  That is what is known as MIND CONTROL and Mind Fuckery and it. was. effective.  I had already realized that I got in trouble because I was a horrible, ugly, worthless, idiot of a kid who didn't deserve to be with the family.  I was a shit stain, and no wonder I was an outcast.  SEE HOW THAT WORKS?

I would sit for hours in my bed and I don't remember doing anything.  Maybe reading, once I learned to read.  Alice in Wonderland over and over and over.  It terrified me, it was strange, I liked it.

It never occurred to me to like, clean my room.  I simply didn't see it, didn't notice it.  I shut down.  There is nothing beyond this disassociated bubble I have created, like the 'nothing' in The Neverending Story (yes, I relate to stories quite a lot.  They saved me as a child.)  Why clean my room when I want to be dead.  And I want my parents dead.  I did have chores to do each day - and I will tell the truth here.  I usually forgot to do them.  I was always saying 'I forgot!'.  I know how frustrating that is as a parent, Mike went through that stage.  I can't tell you why I forgot so much.  They were the same chores every week, like sweep the patio on Thursday, bathroom on Tuesday, etc.  I just forgot.  I was living with my head inside a ringing bell all the time.  I escaped into my fantasy world, my own private world - and I didn't see or remember the chores.  I guess I really was stupid.  I guess they really COULD have gotten a donkey to do what I did around the house.  See how that goes?

By the time I went to school I was so used to being on the outside that I automatically put myself there.  I was the only kid who could read in 1st grade, but I also got in trouble for hiding under my sweater at my desk a lot.  I have no idea if I played at recess, I probably did.  The teacher thought I was strange and singled me out for it.  I wasn't allowed (by my parents) to bring Valentines to school unless I made them.  BY MYSELF.  They refused to buy store-bought valentines for me to sign.  So I tried making some.  And I saw how awful they looked so I threw it all away (I mean, 30 kids!  I was fucking 6 with glue and paper, and no help.  I mean, the 'parents' were in another room for the evening - 'here's the crap you need, go for it' I didn't know how big to make them, how to cut a heart, just one took me an hour, so then the whole pile turned into punishment, something so far from fun...  so I showed up at school with nothing, with my head down in shame.  The fact that the other kids still gave ME valentines made my head spin.  I figured I was going to be sitting this party out.  And it made me so grateful for the attention.  And do you see?  That overly anxious GRATEFUL WAGGY TAIL singled me out as weird even further.  And that became another issue for me, inappropriate gratitude for the smallest action from someone else.  It marked me as subservient and a victim for bullying.  And then I don't remember anything until 4th grade. 

My point here is that I was so stressed, so freaked out all the time, I was learning to live in panic mode.  The red button was always pushed, the sirens and alarms were always going off in my head, and unless I was ALONE (like walking home from school) I was on guard.  And I didn't do it right, I always got blindsided, I got in trouble anyway.  Praying for my parents to die in a car crash didn't seem to come true. 

Me, 6-years old.  (my grandmother from Iowa is hugging me, my step-mother's mom, another person who could have been the queen of England for all I knew) Notice my clothes - thrashed, and bought in the boys department.  Notice my fucked up hair.  Boys jeans and shoes.  But oh hey!  a barette.  Those things sure do come popping out when there is a camera nearby.  Other than the barette, this is what I looked like all the time.  My hair stuck out to the sides like that in a thin-hair-dry-frizzy way, the other kids called me 'roof-head'.  Among other things.

I changed schools in 5th grade because I tested high enough on an IQ test to go to the accelerated school.  New school, new kids, who had been together all year, I'm new and outside even more.  I have no social skills.  These are 5th graders.  Kids have personalities now - they have groups and strengths and clothing preferences.  I had none of that.  I didn't know where the bathrooms were, the classrooms could be opened wide for two teachers to teach at a time - it was brand new and very progressive and WAY out of my league.  I may have been 'smart' but I was a terrified bunny - no social skills whatsoever.

I think telling you I was ignored by my family is maybe like saying the grand canyon is deep.  You cannot know.  I had had no voice for so long I didn't know how to express my opinion, and even doing so would merit abuse of some kind.  My hair.  My clothes.  I was WEIRD and marked from it.  It was inside me, what with the fear and stress, and with no social skills - I didn't know how to talk to anyone, how to have a friend or be a friend.  Or how to speak to teachers.  I was smart and read books WAY past my age level and even though I understood the words, I had no way to grasp the adult concepts, nowhere to file them - I had a vocabulary and comprehension of ideas but I couldn't talk about lunch boxes (weren't allowed to have one) or Twinkies (weren't allowed to eat them) I was dirty and not dressed right (the days when girls had their hair braided before school!  boys wore tucked in shirts!) and I had to bring SOUP to school for lunch, not a PBJ - I was practically a walking Asperger's child before anyone knew what that was.  Anyone remember Boo Radley from 'To Kill A Mockingbird?  Lisa Loopner from 'Saturday Night Live'?  Yeah, but without Todd.   

Lisa Loopner (Gilda Radner), social outcast

I was wretched and fumbling and scared and home was where the abuse was, school was an endurance test and I didn't understand any of it, except the parts where they read to us the series of 'The Black Caldron', that was pretty awesome.  Health class?  teaching us to wash?  wha...?  I didn't even tell my family I almost got RAPED.  Why would I ask them about washing my face?  There were friends, a couple of kids who SAW me and one of whom I am still friends with to this day (a reconnect thanks to FB).  Her parents, god love them, they saw what a basket case I was.  They invited me over anyway.  There was a boy.  Byron Kemper.  We knew each other through high school and beyond.  We became lovers and best friends.  HE DIED when we were 25, the rat bastard. 

The principal of that school met with my parents and they all decided to hold me back a grade, because my social skills were so far behind.  I got held back in 5th grade.

All the people I had been in school with, who already thought I was so weird, were now 6th graders ahead of me.  I had ALL NEW KIDS again to get to know, and I knew they were younger than me and oh my jesus, that was the kick in the teeth to my feeling like I was outside.  I never, ever, regained any ground in being an outcast.  I was pointed at.  I was so. fucking. miserable.  Those ow 6th graders who had been my classmates went on through Jr. Hi and High School knowing me as The Weird Girl Who Failed 5th Grade.  I mean, I didn't fail, but why else do people think you got held back?

Look how comfortable I look.  "Please let me die."

My 'parents' never asked how it was going.  If they had, I would have replied 'fine'.  Because, what?  what else is there but to go to school, the place where ALL YOUR PEER TIME IS, and put on the yoke of the Weird Wagon and just pull it all day, every day.  I played by myself.  I made up games.  I told inappropriate jokes I had heard at the dinner table.  I didn't do my homework because I didn't understand it and I wasn't going to ask for help, we were expected to work in our bedrooms alone on our own time schedule, it was our responsibility don't EVER ask questions.  I knew answers to odd questions and could talk to grown ups about say, going to the opera, but I couldn't talk about normal kids stuff because what in the fuck is normal kid stuff?  Oh man.  A sit-com couldn't have this much weirdness in it.

Do any of you know a comedian named Christopher Titus?  Mike loves him.  I cannot listen to him, it makes me a sobbing, crying mess.  His humor comes from his child abuse.  NO.

And I haven't even gotten to Jr. Hi yet.  Fuck me.

Who said you have to wear that shirt?

From http://www.potsc.com

Who gave you your label?  Which narcissist told you that you were the fat one.  Or the good one.  Too stupid to learn, too ugly for boys?  Who told you what you like, what you don't like, who dared to tell you who you are?  Those bastards with their pointing fingers, their blame - they told you.  They gave it to you.  They shoved you into that shirt.

Did you choose your label?  Oh hell no, not a chance, not in a narcissist's world.  The narc chooses which role you will play in their world, and it has nothing to do with your skillset.  It has everything to do with what the narc needs.  It has to do with how much bending you were willing to do to become that actor.  How far they can push you to fit into what they need you to be.  You weren't asked for your preference - that is the antithesis of being a narcissist.  They only choose things that hurt you.  It is better for them if you DON'T want it, because then they get the pleasure of forcing you.  Of watching your shame and suffering.  That is the whole point.

We were babies.  We did what we were told.  We played the role we were given so that we could be part of the family.  There were no options.  There was only subservience.  Acquiescence.  Malleability.  Fear.  There was only fear.  Because they rule with absolute power, unpredictability, fear.  Keeping you off balance.  Never secure - we always had to look to them for the answers.  And the answer was always the same - fear.  And we carry that pain with us every day.  The words of scorn and blame never leave, they rattle like echoes in your head.  A never-ending tape of ridicule and self-loathing.  And the narcissists know it - they still see it in your eyes.  They love it and they still need to see it, still need you to stay in your role and perform for them, still need your anguish and tears and fear.

It's all they want.  All they see - the only thing that makes them hum.  Fear.  Well, that and adoration, but they despise anyone who adores them - it's a stiletto knife in your heart with a smile.

Do you like that shirt you're wearing?  Are you sick and tired of playing the part?  You must be.  You're here, reading this.  You're looking for a way out.  You are tired, and worn out.  Sick with stress and sick of being an adult and still being afraid.  That shirt that they picked out for you, your disgusting narcissistic abusive parents - it doesn't fit - it never did. 

YOU CAN TAKE IT OFF.

You can say 'no'.  That's what we all talk about, the boundaries we are always going on about out here in ACoN land.  Finally taking off the costume they have forced you to wear.  That costume of shame and guilt and fear.  The shirt with DOORMAT printed on both sides.  You are an adult.  You have power over your own life.  You can choose who you are, and who you become.  You can choose what you like, what you prefer.  How you spend your time.  When you are available and when you are not.  How strange that sounds, that your time, your SELF, is your own.  You can say 'NO'.

What a relief it will be when you stop dancing.  Get away from them.  Stop living in fear.  Stop living in shame.  You get to choose.

If you had a puppy, and the kibble you were feeding your puppy made him sick - vomit, diarrhea, pain - wouldn't you throw out that kibble and buy new?  Find the one that made him happy and healthy?  you wouldn't force your dog to starve or eat the poisonous kibble.  You wouldn't force misery on your dog.

Why are you forcing it on yourself?

Updated

The name has changed, but the game is still the same.

I've updated my blog.  Weeded out extraneous posts.  I'm going to be editing and fine-tuning some of my posts, because while I like what I wrote, there is always room for improvement.  As I write I am finding my voice.

And I would like my voice to be a little clearer, is all.

I have always LOVED writing.  I am now finding it to be a passion.  And it feels like home.

Isolation: Pictured

I don't know if they even knew they were doing it.  Maybe I simply felt so out of place that I just moved over by myself.  That was dad over there on the right - far enough away from his kids as to get some 'peace'.  Or maybe we all moved over that way to get away from him.

I have no context for this picture, and no memory.  This was the same trip as the 'campground bathroom episode'.

I was 6.  I had just been taken from my mother in Florida.  Everyone and everything was strange to me. 

I dunno.  I just know this picture makes me look already separated from the herd.

Children with Wine

3 different dinners.  Within the span of a year, I would guess - but months apart.

Notice the glasses of wine in front of the children - not me, I hated the taste of it.  We were not allowed to have milk.  Or water.  But a glass of cabernet sauvignon was perfectly fine.  I was 6 that first year.  that makes the sisters a few years older each.  so 8, 10, 12.

(also, wallpaper.  jeebus.)

I am so goddamned little in this picture I break my own heart.

My estrangement email. It always comes to this, doesn't it?

**So, I sent an email to Georgia (at the bottom) explaining one facet of why I was so upset after my visit.  Scroll down and read that one first.  Then this is the rest of the story**

Dear 3 sisters:

I am sending you the below email I sent to Georgia, just so you are all clear on part of what I was so screaming angry about after my visit with mom.  I am not sending this email to Georgia and Leslie - for obvious reasons.  This email is not a secret.  But I am not out to hurt feelings. 

(The 'obvious reason' wasn't so clear.  I didn't want to add to the burden of anyone who was trying to repair their relationship with my mom.  There was no reason to hand someone a steaming plate of my angst when they are dealing with their own.  I didn't want to put anyone in the position of feeling the need to defend my mom - that is not constructive.  I was not keeping secrets.  I clarified this with the sisters after I sent this email.)

Regarding my visit:

Aside from trapping Mike and attacking him about his weight (see below email), she also got in my face (very much in my personal space) and began mocking me after she asked me a random question about why I was so tan - I had hesitated in my answer (thinking 'wtf is she going for here, it's summer, I'm not that tan, this is a trap, wha...') and she got very close to my face, staring intently into my eyes, saying "urm um hmm um" <--as if that was what I was saying out loud, because I was hesitating.  Hard to explain.  She was just - well, mean and hard looking, hoping for some response - embarrassment?  This is not normal social behavior.  Made all the more weird because she is so nice right before and right after one of these incidents - like always.  Mike was also a close-up witness to that attack, and was as stunned as I was.  She is vicious in a hundred little ways.  She has done this exact thing before, this is not new.

I've had some time to process this last visit (it always takes me some time to process visits with her.  Since childhood I shut down and disassociate while I'm in her presence, and I think that is a huge deal as well), and these two examples are only two out of a dozen or so that happened in those two days I saw her.  These things happen EVERY TIME I see her.  This is exactly the way she has treated Alexis and Anne, and Jude I'm assuming this has happened to you as well.

My epiphany is that I am not willing to spend any more of my time around a snake that bites me every time I'm near it.  I think it's awful that it took me so long to just be done trying to pet a snake. Being old doesn't preclude her from being polite.  Just because I have known her for 46 years doesn't imply that we have any kind of relationship.  She has done this sort of thing to me since I was 6-years old.  There is no excuse for this behavior, and no excuse for why I have allowed this person in my life for so long.

I have long assumed it was something I could control.  If I just tried harder - if I wasn't so weird, so on the outside - you know, if I just changed it would be better.  But I realized last week that this has nothing to do with ME.  She is just a mean, vicious person.  She always has been, this is NOT new behavior.  I have never been so mentally healthy and centered, and this happened anyway.  The fact that I am now done with her is proof (to me) that I am mentally healthier - I'm aware that she is poison and I am not willing to expose myself to that poison anymore.  The fact that it only took me 24-hours to process this visit is a very big deal to me. 

I am done with her.  But I WILL NOT LOSE YOU THREE.  I will not allow her to come between the relationship I have with my sisters.  There will be no big declaration - there was no fight.  It was just another little straw, like all the other little straws before it.  The camel's back has been broken.  She would likely be surprised at all of this fuss from me - there was no indication at the time that her actions had any affect at all.  (because it takes me time to process her).  The catalyst for my decision is that she is beginning to corner and slyly attack my son.  and, NO.  just no.  No more.  The cycle will not continue.  I'm done.

Perhaps your particular perspective is different.  Maybe you feel your relationship with her is worth more of your time.  I respect your decision.  Please respect mine.  I am not leaving in a huff.  This has been coming for 46 years.  She has made her bed with me, time and again.  I do not forgive her for the abuses she inflicted on me as a child, and I will not condone her behavior now.

Mike is still going to help her move - he will drive the U-Haul - he is a grown man and my relationship with mom is not HIS.  He and I are not in the same place with regards to this crap.  And rightly so.  He believes so strongly in FAMILY that he will do this gladly, to help out.  He is in communication with mom on his own, and will communicate with all the sisters when there is a time and date for moving.  Judith, he may need a place to stay overnight after the move, and I'm going to have him talk to you about crashing on your floor, hope that's fine.

I don't want to make a huge deal out of this.  I'm not going to boycott family gatherings if she is there.  I will however, choose when and where and if I am around her again.  I have reached max capacity for her particular brand of bullshit.  I just wanted you three to know. 

Casey

******************************************************
From: Casey
To: Georgia
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 7:47 AM
Subject: Re: Visit with Mom this week

Thanks for not mentioning my second (screaming stressed out) email.

 

I had fun seeing you guys.  Mom drives me crazy, but that happens to all of us.  At one point she cornered Mike and was insistent about asking him about his weight - her opinion being that he is too fat.  I turned into a mama bear and lost my mind after the visit.  She can be very cruel and cutting.  He doesn't understand her obsessions about being thin and her comments really hurt his feelings - especially since he was there working so hard to help her.  So I was a bit uh, ticked off.

 

Anywhozle, love to all y'all there.  (and etc, other closing remarks)

Estrangement from My Mother *Part 2*

Rabbit Fish.  This will make sense later on.

 

Maybe this chart will help clarify the fambly for you:

dad	Alexis
	Anne
	Judith
	Casey
mom	Leslie
	Georgia

 So you can see where the sisters fall on the 'who has what DNA' chart.  Keep in mind that all of these people were a unit before I joined up at age 6.  I understand that I had actually been around my blood sisters previously, but it must've been age 0 through 3? and I have no real bonding memories of that time.

So we left off after the beach lunch debacle.  Read part one here.  the next day:

•  Mike and I went to Anne's house to hang out with her family for a while before heading over to mom's.  The niece who didn't know I was blood family was there, as was her father, Bill, my brother-in-law (Judith's husband).  He was in town on business, and was driving back right then with Mia (niece).  We hugged hello and goodbye and they took off.  An hour or so later Georgia (sister staying with mom for a few days to help pack) called me to tell me that any time was a good time to come over, as they had just gotten back from lunch with Bill and Mia.  This made me tilt my head again, and when I hung up I asked Anne if she had known about this lunch - because remember, Bill had just left Anne's house and was in a hurry to drive back to Sonoma and get a start on the drive, and nothing was said about lunch with mom, but we both just sorta said 'huh' and let it go.  I left with Mike for mom's house.
• We arrive at the house and Bill and Mia are still there talking to mom.  I smile at Bill and say 'I didn't know you were gonna be here!' because that is the natural thing to say, right?  AND I don't care that he went to lunch, small groups are better, whatever.  He says 'well, I just didn't want to make a big deal out of it at Anne's house' TRIANGULATION NATION.  I only shrugged and hugged them both goodbye again and filed that away and la de dah.
• There are boxes already packed and taped shut with Georgia's name on them in the dining room.  I instantly think 'wonder what that crap is', and then I mentally shrugged again because I do not want anything in that house anyway, and maybe she was just getting stuff ready to go, but it seemed secretive to me.  Whether or not anything in those boxes was a secret, it triggered me more and thus it was a useful event.  I'm certain, actually, that there was nothing nefarious in those boxes.  It is a useful event because it made me face all of this stuff at the same time.  SECRETS.  I'm not a fan.
• Mike was busting his ass moving furniture into Georgia's truck and hauling boxes and stuff, and when he sat down to rest mom started in asking him about his weight.  I didn't hear the whole conversation, and he was fine by himself (and too much of a grown man to need or want my help) but I wanted to fucking kill her, she is so weird about weight and everyone should be anorexic like her.
• We were in the spare room and Mike was sitting there, and mom asked me where I lie out to get so tan.  (she is standing too close to me at this point, really looking at my face) this triggers me and in my head I am saying 'this is a trap.  What in the fuck is she really asking.  I lie out by the pool sometimes but I told her I walk 3 or more miles a day.  Where is this going.) you know, like a normal child of a narc, sensing a trap.  SHE senses my hesitation and gets all up in my face, like SERIOUSLY up in my face!  and starts going 'um hem urm hem um' as if those were the noises I was making.  Hard to describe but she was MOCKING ME for my hesitation.  I *bleeped* past it (in retrospect I do that to avoid conflict, learned defense) and I said blah blah "plus I'm 1/4 full blood Mexican, I tan easily".  She immediately interrupted me (I KNEW THAT WOULD PISS HER OFF - back in the day being Mexican was seen as being derogatory, prejudice has no logic) and said 'not to correct you, but your grandmother [dad's mother] was SPANISH.  <--this had long been dad's contention.  HOWEVER she was Mexican, my grandfather met and married her in Arizona, on the border of Mexico ANYWHOZLE I told her no, the woman was Mexican.  I have her records from Ancestry.com.  "Well, do you know her maiden name??" <--snotty voice "yes, it was Ramirez.  Jesusita Ramirez Henderson."  "well, your dad just always liked that link to Spain" BECAUSE HE REWROTE HIS HISTORY FUCKING CHRIST.  And that was her best argument?  But it was the mocking thing, right in my face, with her eyes just examining my face minutely for any lie, or chink in my armor...  I still don't know what her point was in my being tan but I successfully deflected all that with the remark about Mexican vs Spanish.
• That night at dinner I was sitting between Anne and Georgia, and Georgia started talking about getting very emotional that our childhood home was being sold.  Anne and I were again like that dog
  
• wha da fuq you sayin?
• I started to say "I don't have the same emotional attachment to that place" (again trying to talk to fish at the aquarium) but I remembered in time and just started saying 'uh huh uh huh' and let it go.  (Anne and I have discussed contacting the new owners and telling them to burn sage and pour salt around the house, lol)
• I let Anne know what Bill had said - the "I just didn't want to make a big deal of it at Anne's house" and we both just boggled at that.  This is a big issue which I'm sure you can guess, but it may have actually been THE last straw.
• Georgia pointed out a small box of percussion instruments - maracas, a bongo drum, some other clackity musical things, and asked me if I wanted them.  I said no, perhaps little Ericson (my grand nephew, 3 yrs old) would like them?  Georgia looked askance and said 'don't you think he'll just break them?!' and I started to talk to the aquarium, I admit it - I said something about how 'you were going to donate them to a thrift store, da fuq?' but I stopped myself and just pushed the box over to the donate area and moved along.
• I had driven up to OC and paid for a hotel room in order to go to mom's house and speak to her about movers vs. renting a U-Haul.  When I got there mom informed me she had already had two companies out and had their quotes.  So my involvement was unnecessary.  I would think that someone other than mom knew this was going down.  Mom would have told Georgia or Leslie or even Judith that she had had movers out to estimate stuff - and everyone has been on emails where we all know who is doing what, that I was going to lead the moving portion.  Why wasn't I informed?  Did whoever it was think that I was going to drop the ball (that old thinking of me as the scapegoat again!) - is that why Bill was over there?  I don't give a fuck about helping, the point is SECRETS.

These are a few examples of narc stuff, and of Different Species stuff.  All of this took me over 24 hours to process.  I had a crying jag on my patio on Sunday, just getting to the root of all of it.  Tears of final frustration with it - not sadness.

I can no longer make any effort to be around some of my family.  It's as if I have been PULLING and tugging a barge up a stream, and I was responsible for making it move.  I just realized the rope was actually attached to a solid wall, no movement possible.

I let go of the rope.

I am now estranged from my mom.  I am not sending a letter I changed my mind.  See the next post.  I sent a letter outlining why I am done with my mother, but I left out all the other crap - one thing at a time, I am not leaving in a huff, there will be no statements or whatever.  I just realized that my mom is, as y'all know, a narc.  Plain and simple.  I have decided that even for a relationship with my sisters, being around her is not possible for me.  Anybody who triggers *that* feeling in my head and my gut is not going to be around me.  This is more of a quiet decision, than anything angry or emotional at all.  One doesn't willingly hold a poisonous snake.  I don't want to visit them behind glass at a zoo, either.  They can live somewhere else, I am not interested in snakes, not even as blog material.  She is moving into that home, and I am no longer helping.  She has the movers handled and does not need me.  I can slip away quietly into the night and leave them, as Jonsi said on her blog, like a dark cloud behind me, getting ever smaller and wispier.

When I sent the email summing up the visit out to all the sisters, I did do some passive-aggressive shit of my own, because *GRIN* why not?  I said that Bill had been there having lunch with mom, did he have any input??  Shouting to everyone the little secret they were trying to keep to themselves.  Cracks me up to think of that.  I also mentioned that mom had already had movers out there, and that my efforts were redundant and isn't she being so proactive?  I also mentioned that Mike had helped Georgia load a bunch of boxes of stuff into her truck.  Lol - I just threw light on everything, all the mold in the dark places.

There has been talk of everyone getting together for mom's 80th birthday in November, where can we all go, etc.  I am not going.  I've already told Anne.  It exhausts me to think of being in a room with some of them.  I'm no longer willing to make an effort to talk to the aquarium.  It bores me.  I'm just DONE.  Anybody who makes me feel *that* feeling of anxiety and stress?  not going to be around them.  Sure, there is the family association crap, but I have met other people who freak me out and I don't hang with them anymore - You get to pick.  you get to pick who is worth your time - and family doesn't automatically make the cut just because you've known them a long time.  YOU GET TO PICK.

And I am in the process of un-picking people.  Culled from my herd, as it were.

I did talk at length to Anne.  She is crazy too, yes, she is broken too - we all are.  But she has always been real with me, even when it isn't you know, pleasant.  Anyway, I told her that if I have ever EVER said anything asshole-ish to her, or her kids (because that is very possible as I have been very broken for a long time) that I AM SO SORRY.  Not one of those stupid apologies but seriously.  I do not want to lose people who DO speak my language, who ARE of the same species.  You know what she said?  this is huge.

(paraphrasing) "anything we said before we got mentally healthy in the last few years is bullshit.  We said it because we were taught to be assholes and be defensive and those were the only tools we had.  That stuff has to be forgiven and forgotten because it wasn't real.  We had to un-learn all that bullshit crap and learn how to be real, learn how to be human.  that's what matters."

I am so. very. healthy now.  And all the pieces are falling into place.