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. 

I just don't feel like writing right now

I've been staying away from my blog for a while.  Q did a post about the same thing, how it's the opposite of FUN for us to dig into our psyches and present you with the mélange of flavors of abuse from our childhoods.

It's actually exhausting and ugly and we (none of us) like it.  We just have to lance the boil every once in a while, let off the pressure.  I just wanted a break.

The next portion of the story was already written, anyway - here, at this link for The Scapegoat at 13.  I need to insert the SILVER TOOTH incident, but essentially the story is complete so far.

What people don't understand - and you know, I am GLAD people don't understand.  That means they didn't live with the abuse - they have no idea, and really, GOOD.  I'm glad there are families who don't/didn't participate in this bullshit.

But what you don't understand is that what we suffered under was a huge, heave dose of mind control.  The military couldn't have done it better.  Look up the experiments conducted under the name MK Ultra - that's what we got.  We got our brains shattered with fear and uncertainty, and then up turned down and day turned into night and we had to believe in order to survive.  We had to create our own reality to survive.  With the broken mind of a child.  welcome to hell.

We had to de-program ourselves.  It took/takes a lifetime.  Do not think for one minute we are whining and puling about not getting the right gift at Christmas.  We are talking about (for example) seeing a gift.  getting handed the present! eyes light up, heart pounds, it's CHRISTMAS!  Then we are *slammed* in the face with that gift.  While the Nat King Cole record continues to play, the lights twinkling softly in the background, we are getting slapped and slammed with the present.  Then the present is shredded and destroyed in front of our sobbing self, and we are told it was our own fault since our hair wasn't brushed to the correct side of our heads.  The rest of the family goes on with presents and laughing and happy day, while we are left stunned, broken, freaked out, with a destroyed present in front of us.  IT WAS OUR FAULT, we believe it!  but, we don't believe it, because *huh*?  but they said it was, it must be.  Evidently hair brushing is an offense up there with rape and arson. 

Happy Fucking Christmas, assholes.  YES.  we are whining about not getting the right gift.  your understanding of the problem is spot on, as usual.

go away.

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?

Almost raped

I had a memory bubble to the surface in the wee hours this morning.

These memories make me tired - they are more of the same theme.  Yes, my parents were assholes.  Yes, my childhood was a lesson in endurance - enduring time, pain, depression, physical abuse, loneliness, ostracization, etcetera lather rinse repeat.  But bubble they do, and even though each one just piles on the facts of the case, on top of the already loaded fact shelf (so to speak), I need to take them out as they get here, and examine each one.

Because I never know what triggers these memories.  And it is likely something in my present-day life, my under-brain is niggling me to HEY!  pay attention!  this could apply! so maybe if I keep writing I will get there...

{Scooby Doo Flash Back Music}

I was 10-years old in this picture.  I was TINY.  Imagine how small I was at 7.

(p.s. I was clean here, but that's because there was going to be a picture.  I NEVER had my hair brushed or had clean legs, always scuffling around by the railroad tracks and scabby knees - nobody groomed me until picture day.  These were probably new clothes.  Those were my usual Van's tennies, but clean socks.  Where did that barrette come from?)

I was probably 7.  Second grade.  Very Young Indeed.  Saturday afternoon.  I was riding my banana seat bike around, alone.  I was ALWAYS alone, even by 7 this was by choice.  I didn't know how to be around other kids and I was always trying to quiet the scrambling chaotic rats in my brain, from being yelled at/going to get yelled at/was already yelled at. (I'm all kerfuffled even writing about that feeling, it's the same feeling as after a party and I have to go lie down too much sensory overload ugh)

I had ridden aimlessly *deedle dipple doodle la de dah* all the way over to Palmyra elementary school.  (Where my dad had enrolled us the previous summer for softball (go, KITTENS!) but never. ever. went to a practice, they never drove us over - the four youngest sisters had to ride our bikes there every week and we gave zero fucks about sports, I had never held a bat or even SEEN ONE before then.  I hated sports, I was uncoordinated so I was laughed at and the other sisters were on other teams so I was isolated at a school I had never been, with kids I had never seen, with coaches who had never seen me, with equipment that had never occurred to me (a MITT? on my HAND?  wtf?  how do I catch a ball with THAT?  oh, I see, I catch it with MY FACE.  huh.), and nobody on the sidelines who knew who I was, what if I had gotten (seriously) hurt?  what if I had actually caught a ball? - typically awful memory there).  anywhoozle:

THIS Saturday, I had no agenda, just Get Out and Stay Out Of The House like every weekend, so I made my way over to this school, through 1960's suburbia,  to see if I could find it on my own.  (I just google mapped it - it's only 1.5 miles from our house, but it seemed WAY farther.  I'm guessing my size/age had something to do with that).  There I was, on the deserted playground, in the grass on the swings (near the monkey bars!).  Noodling around in my head, just sitting there.

A group of like 5 boys comes into the scene.  Kids always travel in packs (besides the freaks like ME), and this group was 8? 10? years old-ish.  Typical boys, on bikes.  Loud, laughing.  Hang-10 tee shirts, Van's tennis, etc.  We start talking and I go over and hang on the monkey bars and laugh and it was all just fine, a day in the life.  Just fine.  Until it wasn't.

I dunno if I was being too friendly - too chatty.  I had learned some skewed behaviors when I was in Florida, and inappropriate flirting with males was just ONE thing.  Something had made me suddenly REALLY register on the collective radar of that pack.  The change was sudden, at least to me.  And they started circling me.

(no, not excusing THEM with MY behavior.  But it was all very Lord of the Flies - they were very young too.  We had no social clues.  Remember, this was 1968 - the age of Seen and Not Heard.  Kids only learned social behavior of adults at cocktail parties and from our older siblings in basement rec rooms - not a great way to learn respect) - (at least, I hear that's how kids learned about societal norms.  My parents never, ever had people over.  We never had family barbecues.  We NEVER met any of dad's "friends".  I learned in Florida, and then from Charlie Brown cartoons).

They started circling me.  And cat calling.  And talking about sex.  Rubbing my arm.

It was getting ugly quick.  Make no mistake about it - this was going to be a rape, in the dirt, and I knew it.  (I already knew what rape was.  What penis penetration was.  What forced sex was.  Yep, Florida must've been a great place).  These boys - there was something in the air, egging them each on.  Individually?  probably just your average lost-front-tooth 8-year old, getting-sorta-chubby 10-year old.  But as a group?  They practically had war paint on and sticks in their hands.

I was backed up to the swings.  I was on the ground.  I remember fighting VERY HARD with my feet and legs - I was in the dirt under a swing.  I got away.  More like, they let me go.  Probably because I fought so hard - there had been no previous plan to find a 7-year old girl and rape her - I actually even doubt those boys ever formulated the word 'rape' but yeah, once it started the older ones at least knew what was going on.  There were lots of grabby hands and yelling and struggling and scuffling.  Then it was over and I was running to my bike and gone.

I rode my bike home.  It was getting on toward dinner time anyway - the street lights were about to come on and that was the Bat Signal that your ass better be in the house.  I just shrugged it off.  In the time it took me to ride my bike home, I calmed myself down and filed the memory away and just went on with everything.

I never told anyone.  Why on EARTH would I tell my parents?  I had been too far from home.  I had no way of knowing who those boys were - they all looked like Bobby Brady or that kid from 'Flipper' to me.  I never had 'neighborhood boundaries', but I know I would have gotten in deep shit for being so far from home (the irony there, oh it hurts).  It would have been my fault, and I would have gotten in big trouble.

I would have gotten YELLED AT, probably grounded <--(worst punishment ever, meant I had to stay at the house fuck me) and possibly beat.  Even if I HAD gotten raped, I know I wouldn't have told anyone.

I have no idea how I lived through my childhood.

Clutter is not the boss of you - and comments on a comment

Tundra Woman, you made an excellent comment on my last post, which, I mean - ALL of your comments are excellent.  But it prompted a reply from me, and now I want to expound on that a bit.  I realized that the idea of STUFF can be brought around to narcs, because OF COURSE, it always comes back to being raised by assholes.

(My reply to TW follows, but I've edited it for brevity, and bolded for emphasis.  For the original full monty, please go to the linked post and down to the comments.)

It was the feeling that I could only be a 'true grown up' if I had grown up things. Things like a storage closet with extra tile and paint, a bathroom under-sink stuffed with proof of my pampering of myself, book cases full of books, a kitchen stuffed with serving platters I never used.

I always felt that I at least had to have the 'costume' of a grown up, since I so obviously (to myself) (even with a full time job and a child) was NOT a grown up. These days I actually have grown UP in my head, so I'm finally out of the need for the costume.

I've driven the shitty ass cars that wouldn't start unless you climbed under with a screwdriver, and done the 'carry oil just in case' and kept a full change of clothes in my car in case of break down - I've lived in shitty ass apartments where Mike wasn't allowed to play outside with the feral beasts that passed for children. I've eaten expired food and had couches (and beds! and tables!) that I pulled out of dumpsters or off the side of the road.

I'm through living like that. While I am still frugal like a tight-fisted bitch, I buy better stuff now. It isn't the STATUS of crap, although I will admit to being enough of a human bean <--! to fall into that once in a while, it is more the feeling that I deserve better. I deserve a safe car, I deserve food that I buy because it sounds good, not because it's expired and almost free. I'm still shopping at Target, but not just the clearance racks anymore, I've moved on UP! (oh I am a dork)

But I also feel like, these days, I deserve to treat myself well. Which means not having crap in my life, having wide open swaths of carpet [that is easily vacuumed] and counter space [that I can wipe clean in seconds, no freaking toasters or blenders on it, just the lone necessary coffee pot.] And not having bills bills bills ruin my sleep (I need my beauty sleep!). No more having something just to have it.

No more keeping something that someone gave me, simply because it is a gift. I am DONE with the responsibility of gifts, they weigh SO heavily on a person. I think of that every time I GIVE a gift now - it's sort of like giving someone a horse. Now they have a horrible responsibility to that gift! I donated the glass head that woman gave me, and I felt guilty doing it. NOT FAIR. A gift shouldn't make the recipient a museum curator for the rest of their lives.

The things I am finding in closets, STILL! including photos, are bringing a lot of the past right up into my face. And this time I'm not bowing down to the memories and letting all of that emotion roil through me. These are OBJECTS. And I get to choose. The memories, good and bad, are NOT the objects.

The objects can be judged on their own merit. Ugly? Stained? Torn? Chipped? Useful? they either ARE or they AREN'T. They are just objects.

And objects are not the boss of ME.

That statement there, that last one, is my Profound Ah Ha Moment.  Maybe it will resonate with you.

Objects either ARE useful and right for you, or they ARE NOT.  Objects have no feelings.  Memories are not dependant on objects.

YOU have the choice.  To keep a thing, or to not keep a thing.  There is no guilt tied to an object unless you allow it.  There is no emotion other than the pleasure it brings you to SEE and USE the object, not just to HAVE the object.  Do you like seeing it?  Do you use it?  Does it bring you pleasure to do both?  You have a keeper.

Does the object bring you joy?  Does it function?  Does it make you happy to SEE it?  If not, it has no place in your life.  NO PLACE.  It is a hindrance.

A lot of the time, the objects we hang on to were given as gifts.  A gift can become an obligation.  I do understand the problem with gifts.  There have been many times I thought I had given the PERFECT gift, but the recipient wasn't as thrilled as I had hoped.  Or the other way around (hello, glass head).  I understand the disapointment.  But I do not agree to take on the responsibility of keeping and storing that item.  I DO NOT AGREE.  I get to pick if I like it and if I am going to keep it.

Once the gift is given, it becomes the recipient's property and they are free to use or dispose of that gift as they see fit.

For ACoNs, if your parents/narc have given you things [and I bring this up because evidently narcs LOVE to give things, my kind of narcs excluded] please remember that narcs do not give GIFTS.  What they give is OBLIGATIONS.  They give 'strings attached'.  They give GUILT.  it doesn't matter if they gave you a bottle of perfume or a lawn mower.  Narcs feel as though the given object should thereafter be displayed with lights and glowing arrows pointing at it, and a placard stating that they gave it to you ["on loan from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Douche Bag"].  It's a control issue, not a gift.  IT'S A WAY TO CONTROL.

And because we have been so well trained by THEM, we assume every single gift ever given comes attached with that obligation.  We assume that every gift from neighbors, every tchotchke purchased while drunk on vacation, everything that our children ever drew on is a forever item, that they are all valuable and full of MEMORIES and guilt and responsibility.  THAT IS BULLSHIT, my friends.

Your home is not a repository for other people's expectations of you.

Newspapers and magazines and unfinished knitting projects are another form of guilt.  It is expectations of OURSELVES.  'Finish what you start!' 'What a waste of money!'  Again, I call bullshit.

If your intentions were to cut out recipes, and you never did it, it's because that activity is NOT IMPORTANT to you.  Throw the papers/magazines out.  You are not a bad person because you don't have time, you are a discerning individual and that project doesn't make the cut of how you want to spend your time.  Same for that ball of yarn or those unused paints.  The money was gone when you spent it.  You didn't waste money so much as you were exploring possibilities.  You found out you don't like that activity.  NOW?  Now all you can do is pass the stuff on to someone who will use it/recycle it, and reclaim that space in your home or your head for things that make you sing.

The guilt.  The expectations.  It's all crap.  You get to choose.  What do you want to look at, to live with?  Don't let other people choose what you live with.