Standing Ground (with tired feet)

I had a busy comment day; not something that I can normally keep up to pace on, but I had a little break today and spent more time hanging out here in the ACoN Healing Garden than I'd normally be able to.  In that back and forth, my dialogue with the lovely mulderfan reminded me of a situation - an 'incident' if you like - that occurred about two months ago.

I took my youngest DD to her high school orientation; a poorly planned and abso-freekin'-lutely excruciating event that the school thought would best be held on a Monday night.  After work.  Two hundred fourteen year olds plus their parents, all tired, all hungry, all ready to just get this shit over with already, packed into half a gym.  The smell alone would make an NFL player want to cry.  There's only one reason to go to these things: to get the child's schedule for the upcoming school year.  And the administrator's know this and are completely willing to use that as the carrot on the stick to allow them to keep you as a captive audience to force you to listen to why the upcoming levy vote is so important and to reassure you that they care about your child's test scores almost as much as your vote.  (Also to let you know that should you vote no, your child's favorite extra-curricular activity or elective class or sport, whatever that may be, will likely be cut, just saying.)  But it's the only window they'll allow for your child to get their schedule before school starts, and who's in what class is a terribly important thing for fourteen year olds to know.

After enduring the torturous, long, boring, inane speeches from everyone who apparently means something in the land of middle-of-the-road academia, we were released from the sardine-packed bleachers.  We had high hopes, yes we did, of getting through with this thing at a decent hour.  We were op-to-mis-tic.  We were naive.

After standing in the world's longest line outside of DisneyLand, we were given the schedule.  Then we had to stand in line to pay fees for classes on the schedule.  Then we had to stand in line to be let into the hallways so that the children could find the classrooms on the schedule.  Then we had to stand in line to find out why the child had a blank period on her schedule.  Then we had to stand in line to have a photo taken for the ASB card, which we'd already paid for after standing in line at the ASB table.  Then we had to stand in line in order for the child to get a locker.

I mean, it was my version of hell; the only thing missing was the Kenny G muzak.  Chaotic, foot and hormone smelling hell.  And that's before we even stood in line to go to the damn bathroom.

One of the longest lines was the line for photos, who knows why.  We kept walking by it between standing in this line and that, and I thought that surely if we waited, that line would have to grow shorter, right?  Simple mathematics.

TWO HOURS LATER, after we'd make it through every other line and jumped through ever other hoop, the photo line was just as long, but it was the only one that we had left.  C'est la vie, thought me.  We got in line.

My DD happened to know the two girls who came to the line right behind us, so we turned and began to chat, keeping always an eye on the movement of the line ahead of us so as to keep shuffling forward like so many tired, sweaty cattle.

You know when you're standing in a line or stuck in a lane of traffic, and you're just inching forward one painful millimeter at a time and you've all but resigned yourself to the snail's pace that you're moving at, and then someone up ahead makes a sudden exit?  Suddenly you can move forward inches at a time, feet even, sometimes - gasp! - yards and meters!  Hooray!  It's sad to be reduced to that level of exultation, but I was there.

The group of people in front of us suddenly gave up and left.  We could move forward to the tune of  a space previously occupied by six bodies!  And there he was.

I haven't seen my Golden Child Younger Brother in a long time, but he looks just the same.  And there he suddenly was, six inches in front of me with a child that I assume is is stepson.  I know he was married a couple of years ago, to a woman that I've never met.  Needless to say, I didn't receive an invitation to the event.  But this place that I live is a small town, and I do keep my ear close to the ground in order to have the earliest notice possible of approaching Narc stampedes and ambushes.  So I knew about his new ready made family, without really knowing anything about them.

And here's the meat of this post - or the main veggie course if you swing that way.

I used to be terrified of running into my Former Family Members.  Seriously, I'd be in the grocery store and see someone who looked like one of them and I'd turn on a dime to head a different direction.  I reacted to even the thought of running into them viscerally.  Nausea, headache, cold chills, hot flashes, muscle weakness, shakes; basically all of the terror reactions rolled up nice and neat into a gut bomb and dropped on me.

Then I had a couple of close calls, fast moving brushes of the shoulder type of deals.  I'd get out of the public place I was and slide in my car and then think, "Hey, wasn't that....?"  I wasn't given time to react until after the fact in those situations, and I noticed that I did feel the horror reaction, but to a lesser extent.  Then I realized one day that GCYB and my nephew were right behind me in line at the convenience store of all places and I just didn't give a crap.  You can read about that here.

I saw the progression of my evolving reaction and interpretation of these events as a plus, a sign of healing, and I was grateful for that.  To feel nothing, to detach, is really the only option I have when it comes to these people.  There won't ever be any relationships there, and my acceptance of that fact as a matter of small steps has been crucial to my journey to get well.

But this was different.  It felt a bit like the brass ring.  My 'reaction' wasn't really that at all.  I didn't get nauseous or scared.  I didn't have to ponder or contemplate what I should do.  I didn't have to run away.

My thoughts went something like this: "I'm not going anywhere.  I've been waiting in lines for two hours, this is the last one and I'm not wasting one more damn minute in this place than I have to.  I haven't done anything wrong, I shouldn't have to leave, and I won't.  If I make him uncomfortable, he can leave and go to the back of the line."

I didn't doubt this course of action for a second, even when he - in a grand show of the maturity level of fledgling Narcs and Golden Children - kept turning around to make sad "oh-I-miss-you-so-much-and-if-your-mom-wasn't-such-a-bitch/devil-we-could-all-be-together" googly eyes at DD.  I just made sure to look straight at him when he tried this and he broke off contact every single time.  Gawd forbid we have a conversation.  It's better to just try to make the child feel guilty, right?

The last time I spoke to him, five-ish years ago, he told me that he "couldn't forgive me" and "couldn't talk to me without feeling too much rage to handle."  This kid held a knife at my throat when I was 16 and he was 14 because he thought my boyfriend at the time (whom we'd known for years as a family friend,) should be only his friend.  Threaten much?

Eventually, millenia later, as we began to approach the halfway point of the line, he went off to sit in some of the auditorium seats far away from us, where I could see him furiously texting away on his cell phone.  Hmmmm, I wonder what he was talking about?  I actually did laugh out loud when I saw that.  "Quick, send flying monkeys!  I need backup!"

DD and I talked about it later, and she was saddened by it, "He looked so sad!" she said.  And I calmly explained that if he were a good person, he wouldn't have cut us out of his life and then expected that she, as a child, should bare the burden of that absence by making sad faces at her, as if she had any control over it.  If he was a good person, he would have tried - as I did with him, to no avail - to build a relationship outside of the Crazymaker Clan.  (A small note:  he and his new wife and her two sons - 14 and 18- all ALSO live at the NParent's house.  It's like a fucking commune of crazy out there.)

But my point is this.  I used to be terrified of them.  Then I was scared.  Then I was sort of indifferent.  And now, as I was reminded earlier today of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut line ever, "You (they) can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut!  You (they) can take a flying fuck at the MOOOOOOOON!"

I think it applies, and I hope they have a pleasant journey.  I'm not going anywhere.

Love,
Vanci

Narc Denial in Action ... continued

"Well, I know you won't believe me, but I just don't remember any of that."

This statement from NM really could stand on its own as a clear definition of the narcissist's ability to completely re-write any situation in order to suit her needs.

A normal person remembers the turning points in their loved ones lives, and those revelations were a turning point for everyone in our FOO.  That series of events when I was thirteen years old revealed the true character of everyone in the FOO and pointed each member in the directions that we would head in for several years. 

NM took the narc reigns firmly in grasp because of those events and cemented her place as El Victim Supremo.  EF gave up his job as a minister because of those events, and began the kowtowing to NM lifestyle that he still lives today because of those events.  OS blamed me (faulting the victim for bringing it up rather than the abuser for commiting the crimes) and launched her massive campaign of denigrating Vanci and learning how to be a bigger Narc than either NM or EF ever had been.  And YB learned that no matter the situation, he was the Golden Child and therefore got a pass. I became so numb due to the pain those events caused me that I began to seek anything, and I do mean anything, that might make me feel... something.

We're talking about a life-changing, seismic shift  in the character, behaviors, roles, hopes and actions of every single person in the FOO (and really in the world, if we consider how isolated the Crazy NP's kept us.)  Everything changed, absolutely, positively everything.

And she really can't remember it. 

Holy fucking hell, what a frustrating moment.

There is no appropriate response to this outright denial of a true, actual event, that I'm aware of.  Any attempt to refute such a claim seems pointless and reminds me of a saying:  Never argue with the village idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with their experience.  I simply said nothing. 

Of course, NM needed to fill that uncomfortable silence.  Now, with a little time and distance from the conversation, I like to envision that I could hear air raid sirens at this point in the meeting.  Danger!  Danger!  Take cover!  It's about to get worse!

"You have to understand, Vanci, that I was in shock.  I mean, you'd known about what you'd been through for years but it was news to me.  I probably didn't react exactly right, but I was truly in shock."

Oh.  My.  God.  Here's a little snippet of the jumbled thoughts running through my mind at that point.  I don't have to understand anything about you... of course it's about you and your shock.  Did you really just tell me that I was better prepared at thirteen to deal with my father's sexual abuse of me than you were as my parent because I'd had to carry that sick knowledge for years and you hadn't?  Did you really just demean the fact that my minister father sexually abused me repeatedly by referring to it as 'what I'd been through,' rather than it what it really was - exploitative, horrendous, abominimal, outright abuse committed by a 'trusted' adult against an innocent child?  Probably didn't react exactly right?  There's no probably or right about asking me to lie to cover the abuser's ass so that you didn't have to give up any comforts.  Holy hell.  You did.  Holy hell.

Here's what I said, "I was THIRTEEN!"

Here's what she said,
"You seem to think that we should all be perfect, like you think you are."

"NM, I don't think I'm perfect.  And I certainly haven't handled the situation with you perfectly, and I do have regrets, but most of them are of the fact that I didn't cut off contact sooner." 

And... that was pretty much the end of the session, at least in my mind.  There were a few more salient moments, such as when NM tried to tell me that I've always been 'stubborn,' but really none of them mattered to me.  We ended the session with NM saying, "I don't feel like we've solved anything!  How do we move forward?"  My counselor wisely suggested that I would need some more time to think about the answer to that question. 

And now I know the answer.  It's simple; we don't.  There's nothing real or true in that relationship; there's no love, no empathy, no concern, no care.  There's an evil, toxic woman approaching the end of her life and looking to use any illness that she can manufacture to force enough sympathy for her to get everyone right where she wants them.  At one point she said, "You know, Vanci, with all my medical problems I just want to see things right before I die.  And now I have Parkinson's hanging over my head as a possibility, too..."

One of my DD's has a chronic disease that was a long time in diagnosis.  I've done a ton of research on various auto-immune and terminal diseases as a result of this, so I know a little about Parkinson's.  Enough to know that Parkinson's is an incurable, terminal disease and that we don't really understand who gets it and who doesn't until a person is diagnosed with it.  So, really, don't we all have Parkinson's hanging over our heads as a possibility?  LOL. 

What a sad, sad waste of an otherwise healthy life.  What a shame that she had to try to bring so many other people down into her pit of despair with her. 

What a blessing that I don't have to take that journey with her, ever again.  What a good thing it is to be free of her chains. 
In the words of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut Jr., she can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut!  She can take a flying fuck at the Mooooon!

Good riddance.
Love,
Vanci

Narc Denial in Action

I've been thinking about my last - and it will be the last - interaction with NM several weeks ago in my counselor's office.  I wouldn't say I'm dwelling on it, but I'm approaching it with the same theory that I've used to stay sober.

We say in recovery, and I believe, that the best way to avoid the next drunk is to vividly remember the last one.  At first, when I was newly sober, I couldn't understand this.  So close to an alcoholic bottom, why would anyone want to remember that incomprehensible demoralization?  I wanted to run as far and fast from it as I could!
Eventually I came to understand the concept, though, that if I could keep in mind exactly how I'd gotten to that painful end, it would be easier to pick up the tools that would keep me from that path again.  Fear can be an excellent motivator, after all, and fear of the hell that I'd ended up in has at times served to keep me on the right path when my more intellectual tools have failed.  It's a temporary jolt, for sure, that doesn't create any real growth, but it zaps me back onto the path of the right direction in a hurry.

So, replaying some of that last conversation has been part of my work for the past couple of weeks as I firm up my plan of action.  With a little bit of research and a bit of reflection, it's amazing how transparent some of NM's manipulations are.  How could I ever have trusted her? I think.  But the answer, of course, is that I was trained from day one to do just that.  I was fed healthy doses of bullshit instead of the mother's milk that I didn't get, and it's natural that it's taken me years of re-learning to flush all that life-sucking, confusion-making crap from my system. 

I present here for your reading pleasure some of the more glaring highlights of Narc-y Crazymaking from that session, in loose chronological order.

She talked for the first ten minutes without stop about what she wanted.  "A normal relationship," she said.  "It just means so much to me that you came to see me in the hospital, and to know that you still loved me.  I almost died, and that's given me some perspective." 
So, again, it's all about NM.  Her addictions and attention-seeking landed her in ICU with failing kidneys and double pneumonia, which she'd allowed to go untreated for too long, so had to have a breathing tube inserted.  Add to this the fact that - without her primary doc handing her hydrocodone and methadone like candy - she was in physical withdrawal and detox from the heavy narcotic doses she's been bellied up to for almost fourteen years. The truth is that she almost ended her own life with her choices, but in NMLand, this means that she 'almost died.'  And it's given her 'perspective.'  
On what, exactly, I wonder?  Is that like, oh my, I almost lost the battle for Vanci's soul before Satan welcomed me home?  Or is it like, hmmm, if I die without Vanci and her DD's at my side, everyone I know will know that I wasn't a good mother or grandmother?  
I can't believe that it was true life-changing, mindset-altering perspective, and here's why: 
"I just want a normal relationship." 

Huh, normal.  This from the woman who defined normal as allowing all three of her children to be bent over a couch, bare-assed, and whipped with a leather belt up to thirty smacks because one of her children had chosen to crawl under the table to get out of the booth at a rare restaurant dinner rather than ask to be excused.  Yes, really.  YB was three at the time and still a pretty 'normal' little boy.  He crawled under the table.  We had our food packed up to go and endured the rage of EF all the way home (fully supported by NM's silence,) where we were then lined up for a major 'whipping.'  We were around three, five and nine years old at the time, and even thtough the punishment didn't fit the 'crime,' and all three of us were subjected to an abusive tirade and physical violence when only one of us had done anything even remotely wrong (which still wouldn't have deserved that type of treatment anyway,) we were told by both EF (when he finally lowered the belt) and NM (when she finally said anything,) that it 'was for our own good.'  Normal?  I think not.  

Our 'normal' relationship prior to the Vanci Revolution went like this: she got what she wanted from me, when she wanted it, without question from or compensation to me.  I got whatever she felt like giving me, which was little if nothing on a good day, and I was supposed to be grateful for that.  No matter how well I followed her rules, even then, I was still unacceptable; I was 'difficult.'

So what she really meant by 'normal' was this; it was high time for me to re-enter the relationship she wanted, because she was running low on Narc Supply.

Evidence:  "...you still loved me."  Ah, I get it!  So you think that since I showed up and told you I loved you, you're back in control.  The Victim Supreme rides again!  Despite the fact that I never claimed not to love her, the statement just places the focus back on target where she wants it to be.  It dismisses the fact that our estrangement was caused by her choices and actions, and makes the entire fight for survival that I've had to wage my entire life a question of whether I love her or not.  What ego!  What classic Narc self-centeredness!

She eventually said this, "I just remember that you and I were really close and we had a lot of good times together... I know it wasn't perfect, but I thought we got along really well."

After I picked myself up off the floor by this outright lie about our history together, I responded in a way that I thought was mature and honest, "NM, I do have some good memories, but I have to be honest.  Most of my memories and experiences center around my having to take care of everyone in the family, whether I wanted to or not.  I have memories of being abused and taken advantage of, of being screamed at and told it was my fault, of being forced to lie to protect the Family at my own cost, of the $15,000 YB borrowed and hasn't ever paid back, of supporting OS financially and emotionally and having her call to scream at me in the middle of the night in return, of being used for my truck and other possessions and of being made the scapegoat in the family.  Most of my memories are about me being used."

"Well, I can't be responsible for anyone else's actions!  And all YB has ever said about the money is that he wants to pay  you back!  And with OS, well, you know some people in our family are more forgiving than others!"  Here she's doing some swift blame-shifting.  She ignores that fact that she has been the primary user of Vanci, and has no compunction about throwing the other (non-present) members of the FOO under the bus.  She's also in complete denial of the fact that she, on many occasions, sicked the Minions and FOO on me; when they attacked, much of the time, they were simply doing her bidding.  She's exonorating GC YB, because it's perfectly acceptable for him to have owed me this money for the last six years without paying back a dime, don'tcha know, because he wants to pay it back. 

And then, classic and true to form, the blame shifts back to me - it's about forgiving me.  Wow.

I cut her off at this point and said, "I need to stop you and tell you that I completely stand by the decisions that I have made to limit and cut off contact with you all.  I made a good decision with my husband to create safety from you for myself and my children, and I have ABSOLUTELY no interest in seeking your forgiveness.  I haven't done anything that requires it."

This stopped her for a minute.  Scapegoat Vanci never would have been so clear and direct with her statement of non-guilt.  Scapegoat Vanci would have been looking for forgiveness.  I wasn't Scapegoat Vanci anymore though, and this direct refutation of a manipulation threw NM for a serious loop.  It took her a minute to come up with this;
"Well, maybe forgiveness isn't the right word." 

Bwahahahahahahaha!  Yeah, 'maybe' it isn't!

She chose thismoment to bring up 'what a difficult child I was,' by saying, "Well, you know, Vanci, you haven't just been used.  We've had to bail you out plenty of times." 

I stopped her again and asked, "Are you talking about when I was a teenager?  Or when I was going through my divorce of the man you pushed me to marry who was abusive in every way possible?  Are those the bailouts you're talking about?"

"Because if we're going to talk about that, NM, then we're going to talk about why I got in the trouble that I did."  I proceeded to bring up my revelation of sexual abuse by EF when I was thirteen and her absolute botch of a job in helping me to deal with it.  (Actually, it wasn't a botched job, it was a carefully executed manipulation to kill my soul while keeping up appearances and guaranteeing her that her life wouldn't change.) 

"We're going to have to talk about the fact that I went from a straight A student who'd skipped the 8th grade to that scared little girl who asked you to protect her.  And we're going to have to talk about the fact that when you failed to protect me to save your own ass, it took three months for me to find drugs, alcohol and sex.  That slippery slope is one that you put me on, NM, and gave me a shove down." 

"Well, I know you won't believe me, but I  just don't remember any of that."

Wow. 
How does a mother not remember throwing her daughter to the wolves?

To be continued...

Love,
Vanci