Moving Forward

I invited myself to spend tomorrow night at my oldest daughter's(Jessie).  She is babysitting for a few people including her youngest sister's newborn.  I'm so excited.  I don't think my youngest(Maggie) will be too pleased when she finds out.  But she has no choice, she can't find a sitter this late before New Year's.  I haven't seen any of the grandkids since Dec. 5.

My husband wants to go to a house party at his malignant narcissist buddy.  No way, I got out of it. The people here are all MN's I think.  Very money oriented, very baby boomerish, very sickening. I don't think my husband likes them either, and as far as the snowplowing goes, which my husband has been doing for practically free will be all over soon.  The poop is going to hit the fan.  I'm going to spend my time with young people.

The kids are still a little angry with me, but they will get over it.  She is expecting me to come over for the evening and I am bringing my homemade bowtie pasta.  This is the incentive.  There will be a whole bunch of kids there and it will be fun.

I've done some researching on mother's with MN daughter's with children, and there isn't much. It seems that eventually that the grandmother will be tossed out of the family, but I got a few ideas on how this would happen.  I do have an advantage.  If you don't call the triangulation she did as aggressive, then she is not outwardly aggressive towards me.  We can get along essentially, as long as she doesn't turn into an angry MN.  

I won't agree with everything she says to me.  I'll not argue, simple as that.  That should work.  She is young and so it is mild right now.  We have always gotten along.  We were so close.  In her early teens she wanted books that were so horrible, she read "The Child Called It", 3 times.  Then she wanted the sequel.  It was about severe child abuse to the point where the parent basically erased the child's identity as a person.  So similar to what my mother did to me.  But anyways, she was hooked on the books, could she have been feeding?

I told Jessie that and she said that Maggie was compassionate, not MN.  I know what the book was about and I could never pick it up.  Even the movie, "Precious".  I had to walk away from the movie. Maggie watched the movie over and over again, then wanted the book to read.

Maggie knows the whole story about me and she seems to avoid me.  Now she has this baby boy.  I hope and pray I live a very long time, and get to spend lots of time with them.  She has yet to show me her apartment, I have no idea where she lives anymore.  She recently moved with her boyfriend.  He is a kindly fella, hard worker, and she goes to college.  

So yeah, there was a time in her mid teens she punched a wall and broke her hand.  She would not explain to me to talk to me about it.  I still don't know why it happened.  She was a bit of a bully in school.  She never hung around a rough crowd, she had different friends all the time, she had a hard time keeping friends.  

Her father was a MN, my second ex-husband.  The guy I stayed married to for 20 years.  This guy would make you shake your head.  Is he an MN?  He was charming and could make you think he was the most wonderful guy on earth.  Sweet and kind, one time a neighbour had an issue with me, and husband said, "Always take the high road".  So that means we pacify people?  Huh?  "You are such a bitch.  How dare you make people mad at you, you have no social skills, you should learn to get along with people."  Not that I ever fought with the neighbours, but you see I was a target for bullies. This was just a chance for him to get a dig at me.

Then there was the time I bought a small swimming pool for the kids.  He was home all day and thought it would be fun for them.  It was $200.  He filled it up and let only the neighbour kids use it, not our kids.  "Your kids are always to bad for me to let them use the pool, why should we let the neighbour kids suffer?"  It was weeks before I found this out.  Is this not mindbending screwy?

Nowadays, he is constantly in bed.  He works cause he has to eat, but he never sees the kids.  Maggie goes over to see him and begs for his attention.  I told her that she doesn't need to do that, but she wants to and I understand.

So yeah, if you can and if you pray, please pray I live a long time.

The Single Pane Windows

How much cold can I embrace?  Omg, I don't think I'll ever go into menopause with hot flashes, that would be like a dream come true.

The single pane windows, I have got to have a blog title like this sooner or later.  I grew up having to brave the cold or be tormented.  You see, mother had a thing about us not wearing much.  "Scared of someone seeing your body."  But it was freaking cold.  I hated baths, I think that was the worst. Couldn't ever just keep warm with clothes.  The rule was out of the bath then just into your underwear, and you should walk around like that.  Seeing everyone's bare butt was normal.

We had single pane windows, we didn't have central heating, we live in Northern Canada.  And this whole thing about triggering memories hit too close to home this week.

My husband started this conversation with me.  He announced that he was building a shack with an outhouse and he is turning off the electricity.  Omg, I thought I wanted to kill him.  I was almost having spasms.  Ok, long story short.  The year end bill for the electricity came in and wasn't adjusted properly.  He does this, he says these types of things. He goes off on tirades sometimes. Well anyway, we are not getting rid of the warm house and we will not have an outdoor toilet and we will have electricity.

But my, what a way for him to vent.  He has no clue about my upbringing really.  I have told him some stuff, but how does that make sense to someone who grew up in a normal house with a normal family and normal parents.  He has no idea, not really.  So what he said triggered a memory.  It was brave the cold or get accused of all sorts of things, get hurt.  Get made fun of.  Get mother ignoring you for a couple of days till your so hungry you'll do anything to get out of it.

Oh, and I think we are welcome to post Ollie's videos at anytime on our blogs.  I heard that at one time.

Family Problems are not Solved by Triangulation

This is a continuation from the last post "Mother's Legacy."  My oldest daughter finally called.  After more than a week.  I was so unable to comfort myself during that time that I blew a lot of my Christmas duties, I was so focused on fixing this one situation.  I  had to go out and buy pies, I didn't make them from scratch.  The ingredients for the cookies is still in the cupboard.  Most of my Christmas presents are not bought.  I just have a few. Chistmas is tomorrow and I am very unprepared.

She asked if I can come over to spend Christmas with them.  I said I will, but what happened?  Very long story short, I was basically triangulated.  The time I went over to see my son and he didn't answer the door is because the girls told him not to talk to me.  He wouldn't answer the phone either.
I know I did cause a ruckus in my family.  I know it was me.  My daughter told me it is like I'm on steroids with the attacks, I have become a locomotive.  I didn't try to temper myself, but got angry so fast it was like a huge problem for them.

So I told my oldest daughter (Jessie), what did my problem with your sister (Maggie) have to do with you, or your brother?  She said, "Nothing".

I told her, "Why don't you just concern yourself with your children and what you are doing with your life, and not get yourself into the middle of this."

She said, "I'm trying to keep this family together, that is my duty."

I said, "You have nothing to worry about in that regard, I am perfectly fine, yes I did go off on her too much but I still don't see how you got yourself involved in this triangulation.  To me, triangulation is the mark of a sociopath, and it should not happen in any real life situations with real people.'

I went on to discuss with her that her step-father (my husband) has a serious discrepancy with his brother, I didn't know about it for years.  All his family members still talk to him and the brother and although his family members have tried to fix things by talking, life pretty much goes on as normal. He still doesn't talk to his brother, and he told me they will never fix it.

Jessie said, "Well that is wrong, they are not working on it, someone should step in and fix things."

I said, "How?  By using methods of manipulation and triangulation?"  Gaslighting was going on too. I think it was gaslighting that my son did.

"We need to fix things."

I said, "Of course we do, and we shall.  I will not allow this discrepancy like it did with your step-fathers brother that went on for years, happen here.  I said I am working on coping mechanisms.  It is what I do.  I always research and study, you know that.  And yes, I did go overboard with Maggie, as I was taken by surprise in the lie, I ran with it, too far.  For that I am very sorry, but I can't say sorry to her cause she is not the one I'm talking to about it, you want me to say sorry to you?"  Again I was referring to her that this is really none of her business.

I went on to tell her that she can't be judgmental over this.  She hasn't a clue really what I went through growing up.  I am still learning, and that takes making mistakes.  I want the children to be aware of this.  I started by working on authenticity.  She said that might not work in some situations, get over that.

You see, I don't know.  I know my intentions are good.  But I have read on some blogs that good intentions are crap so get over that.  Get over it?  Replace it with what?  I have no idea, that has never been addressed.  I am working on my coping skills here and it is really raw when I get to learn something I perceive as good.  Then to have that very thing taken away at this point with no other thing to replace it.   I still believe in good intentions though and will continue to.  I am a hollowed out husk, what else can I do?

As of right now we are at odds over this.  What I did do was wrong, it was horrible.  Maggie didn't do much that was so severe that day.  Just a lie, just a normal thing she does.  But the fact that she just had a baby drove me into a frenzy.  What I think happened was that my mind was working over time trying to fix this thing right now and forever.  It might take longer than that.

Mother's Legacy

It seems that I'm always talking about fear.  Fear is so real to me that it just takes hold so I can't even think.  Fear makes me react and do things, that I wouldn't do otherwise.

I am worried about my children.  No one has called me yet.  My youngest daughter has seemed to win everyone over.  I wrote this letter to my oldest daughter:

I realize this has been laid on your shoulders.  Now I am looking for coping mechanisms in dealing with this.  Its not me laying this on your shoulders, this has been laid on our shoulders.  

I know there is a great deal of difficulty not going into denial. But trust me, I have an Aunt Denial, you could easily be one too.  And if we/you are, then Thomas(my youngest daughter's new baby will spend the rest of his life trying to fix his life and unable to do so and maybe walking up to the truth when he is near 50 years old.

That is, if he is lucky.  Most are not that lucky but have been destroyed or dead.  We must stay in the truth, no matter what. It is not the easy thing to do.

I would do anything to be wrong.  It is near Christmas, I have not gotten to see the baby, nor is anyone calling me.  My youngest daughter is a pathological liar and she gossips.  I don't get anything else from her at this point.  But seriously, triangulation?  I am all too familiar with it.

I was thinking what if you put a narcissist on the rack ie. medieval style?  Then threatened to tear them apart unless they reveal their true self.  Sounds kind of crude I know, but what if we were to try it and then if we were some kind of superhuman that can tell when they told the truth or not, and stopped the racking in that case.  Suppose we have that setup on them.  Do you think the true self would appear?  I don't know.

The true self of a narc seems to be hidden even to themselves.  It might even be dead, who knows. The false self is on automatic, it can't shut itself off.  It is all the narc knows.  To them this is the real person that they are this image loving destructive person.  To this day I'm sure my mother doesn't know what she did was so terrible, I'm sure of it.  Well, she knew when she was doing it that it was terrible then. But after some time has past they don't know that they are evil.  They are above reproach at that point.  So they know what they did what they did was wrong, but after some time has past they are back in the false image.  Its a false image, nothing else.  That's how come they don't feel guilt, its that false image.

To put it much simpler, mother knew what she did was wrong, but she used a mask to protect herself from that truth.  I remember once, a time when she was being abusive to me, and then she would stop herself, only because she didn't like the image of herself.  I would be all silent during those times and it was like this wave of conscience came over her, then it became more of the pushing away of that feeling.  Or maybe it is because she had already had her fill of supply, better keep the food for later and not destroy it.

Or, is it that they are afraid of getting caught.  Suppose the victim were to clue in to them, the narcissist has to strike quick, like a venomous snake.  I don't know.  Or there are the times it went on for hours, like in school.  I remember this, and I think it was because when in a gang or with flying monkeys they don't have to work so quick.  Or when someone appears out of the blue, the narcissist turns into a sweet loving person.  I tend to believe that they can change into a real normal person, they don't really want to.  And that it is this need for supply that fuels the narc, not doing the evil in itself.

Its not like a normal person who might do harm but feel badly about it and feel that intensity of guilt and remorse.  And who lives in reality.

Yeah, they might go into counselling, right after they are in a crisis.  But that is only to get back what they lost, they will enforce their will on the counselor and make them do as told, even after they have destroyed everything.

That is enough pity for the narcs.  My point is to try to figure out this thing in my emotions that tell me when a narc is around.  Emotions have no words.  I think its because emotions were designed way before human language came about.  We would speak in a very primitive way only to express those emotions.  And those emotions would only keep us safe, fed, warm etc. stuff like that.

Around a narc I'm not safe.  I immediately go into hiding.  I fake I like them, I fake I'm ok with them. That's my most immediate response I get from myself.  But they must see something else about me, something that they can feed upon, and that is what I'm trying to figure out here.  I get that need to please them same as I did with mother.  Except I don't do it with my youngest daughter.

I don't get that way with my daughter who is narcissistic as well.  She gossips to me and I tell her to stop it, then she stops.  She has no where to go with that behaviour with me.  I have to try to not keep things hidden with her though.

This is not like an animal behaviour such as my kitten biting my feet right now and I'm telling him to stop it and he won't.  This is an able minded individual who knows right from wrong.  Its just that my daughter's brain is on automatic and won't stop this until I tell her too.  Her first response is to always do wrong until I tell her.  Now its that first response to do wrong is what makes a narcissist, just like a child.  But an adult should know better.

Its like an ingrained behaviour.  Can they stop?  Can they one day decide to change and make themselves like normal people?  Well, they don't have a clue as to what that is.  And you can't even convince them.  They see themselves as normal and we are just their slaves.  That decision to change will never come.  And yet, it could come and they can be like normal.  That could happen if they ever made that choice, they know right from wrong.  I just choose to believe that.  Or that they can't and they don't have a conscience.  So I can't really logic this out, all I can do is talk of my experiences.  I suck trying to use logic here.

I have known many narcs in my time.  I remember my first ex-husband.  I refer to him as an asshole. Yes he was abusive and horrible and mean.  But he wasn't narcissistic in the least.  As a matter of fact, it probably would have been better for himself if he was narcissistic.  I know he felt guilt and empathy and he just hated it.  He was all too familiar with guilt and it would be written all over his face.

My second ex-husband we were married for 20 years.  Now, that was a narcissist.  The first one, I couldn't stay married to for even 5 years.  The second one was much more friendly, easy going, fun to be with and talk to.  He played it so well.  It was a long time before I realized how messed up he made me.

With my first ex-husband, sure he lied but he felt so guilty, it would be so apparent, even when I was young, he was easily caught.  He couldn't gaslight to save his life.  As a matter of fact, he couldn't do anything to me, and at that time I was a constant victim, but not to him.  If he was a narc, then he sucked at it.

Just like my sister.  Now, she knows exactly what mother is like and tries to defend her.  But sister is not a narc, just really in need in mother's money, thus she has a reason for being the way she is, unlike a narc.  But I do tend to forget that narcissism is on a spectrum.  From the nearly nothing to the psychopath.

So I guess what I'm saying is that narcs are hard-wired into that.  That's why I always talk about vulnerability as the way of weeding them out, especially in relationships.  In fact, just let all your walls down and see them come in for the attack, then you will know what they are immediately.

I was reading on the relationship site, a woman asked a question.  Her boyfriend was asking her for a threesome.  She kept telling him no, I don't do that, don't want to do that.  He kept asking her though.You know what the answer was?  The answer is show him how this makes you feel, show your vulnerability, then tell him that it hurts your feelings him bringing it up.  There, that gives him the opportunity for attack or need to take care of her feelings.

He might say, oh your a big baby or frigid.  H E L L O, attack.

He might say, oh I didn't know it made you feel that way, I'm so sorry, I'll never bring it up again.  I just wanted to try something different.

You see just by her telling him she didn't want to wasn't enough for him to realize that this wasn't about her not wanting to try something new this was about hurting her feelings.  Yes, good men can be that dense.  Sorry, I don't want to offend.

Lol, yes I would too be mad at him for even mentioning anything like that.  However, the way the world is these days, who knows what he is thinking.

If we cover up vulnerability it might take many months to discover you are with a narc instead of a good man.  But never show vulnerability to a narc if you know they are a narc.  With me this happens very quickly.  All these body sensations I have and I start acting weird, and I just know.

How to describe a narc.  Well, it rather difficult really.  Do normal people attack, or gaslight or triangulate?  Perhaps they do get mean and gaslight.  I don't think I've seen a normal person triangulate.  To me it seems really hard to do.  Maybe if they are after your job or something like that. In order to meet their physical needs as in food, clothing shelter.  Maybe.  I once even seen a normal person have a love affair.  All these horrible things normal people are capable of.  But they don't need to terrorize for no reason other than to get a fix of narcissistic supply.

I am still upset over what has become of my youngest daughter.  The worst part is, that I know she will never experience real peace.  Not in the truest sense of the word.  And now I have to find some way to deal with her.  She is not my mother.  She is my daughter.  Can I get past my anger?  Can I somehow cultivate the emotional resources to handle her?  I hope so.  But you see in dealing with someone like this, there will always be lies, manipulation and so forth.  It even hurts too much to talk about how she was as a child.  I think what I will do is, know she is like this.  Know what she is like. Not expect too much from her.  Truth is, I do expect a lot from her, I am expecting her to change.

I know this one girl who is a friend with my older daughter.  That girl has two boys with severe autism.  My daughter has one autistic child, so I get autism, but two kids like that?  Oh boy.  Her life must not be easy.  Still she has time to paint her nails and comb her long flowing hair.  And the needs of her boys are always taken care of.  She also appears quite normal despite having this huge responsibility that seems to me to be so crushing.  All the parents of autistic children have to deal with it.  What if I looked at the situation with my daughter like that?

But my youngest daughter can function normally and I don't have to worry about that.  Just that she is evil?  Soooo hard to accept.  But I just can't bury my head in the sand about it.  Can you imagine if that girl with the autistic boys did that?  What if she treated her kids as normal?  She can't that wouldn't work.

I know I'm being horrible here, it sounds like I'm comparing autism to narcissism, but I'm not.  I'm trying to see the parallel of how coping mechanisms will work.  I mean, afterall my daughter is not speaking to me now, because obviously I haven't been coping too well.  Well, its not working right now.  She seems to want to avoid me because she can't be a narcissist around me.  I keep calling her on it.  It is time for me to accept it.

And its a bad example comparing the two situations.  Besides which, this girl can look at her two boys and they will light up her life.  She can smile, she can access all sorts of information about autism on a whim.

We want our families all intact.  So does that girl, so does my oldest daughter, and the best way to do that is accepting the truth.  And finding emotional resources and coping mechanisms.  There are no pills to erase the autism in her boys, just as there are no pills for narcissism.

Or maybe that is just stupid positive thinking.  I'm grieving right now, and maybe that is the best thing.  I asked my stepdaughter to facebook her last night, I'm trying to reach out and talk to her.  I grieve for my daughter, and its so hard.  When bad things happen and you're an ACON everything feels so much worse.  The problem is, I can't self soothe.  I know logically that she will contact me but I somehow can't be at peace with that.  It feels like I'm falling apart.

What I did was wrong.  Blaming her, trying to make her feel guilty for lying.  Well, she should feel guilty, no doubt about that, but that is not helping.  I have to find what works.

In a Tough Spot

It has taken me a long time to admit on my public domain that my youngest daughter is a narcissist. Whether MN or N remains to be seen.  I know the difference and evidence has not come my way. She is young and in her twenties I can hope and pray for change, or I can choose to live in reality that she is grown up now, past the age of narcissism being normal in a child.

I was afraid to admit it because, well, someone might think I caused her to be that way.  I have already told you I had the most deplorable men in my life.  I have tried to figure that out and I have, but too late to make the real change for my children.

And she just had a baby.  It is hard for her to be around me.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe, I am too hard on her, I caught her in a lie, I won't let her manipulate me.  I am here to be a mom, and I believe that it is my job to present her with the truth.  It would be so much easier to bury my head in the sand.

Yes, bury my head in the sand.  Let's forget the truth, that they cannot change and just believe she will change.  I can just go about planting my flowers, moving on with life and pretending that everything will be ok.  And I can forget about that baby boy she just had.

But I will still worry, because she is in college and I worry about her finding employment.  That is on top of everything else I worry about.

I have made a mistake with her.  With all my trying, the only thing I am accomplishing is trying to force my will on her.  It is not working.  She has yet to contact me.  On my last post I said I was going over to see her and just sit on her doorstep until she comes around.  Now I feel that is a huge error to make.  It will only invade her boundaries.  I am a firm believer in boundaries.  I want this to get better and I won't do that by going all narcissistic or panicky or go crazy.  There has to be a better way.

This argument was caused by only one lie.  And I felt I had it with that because she lies all the time, so it wasn't just that one lie.  Can I take this just one lie at a time?  And hope to God that I can keep my senses about me?  I can only live one day at a time.  It is by my ACONness that I am so angry. Trusting in her is not going to work.  Trusting that she knows best is not going to work.

We live one day at a time.  I have already decided that I can't go NC with her.  So much about reading and learning on the blogs and I can't figure out the complicated stuff.  It is a mother's job to worry and pray.  That is what we do.  A normal mother that is.

She will contact me at some point.  I have the other two kids on it.  They are aware of all this stuff, and know that she does lie.  Does constant lying make a narcissist?  I'm not sure, but she was diagnosed with it, and she told me that, so I go by the hope that I can keep everything open at least.

This is life.  So my next goal, when she contacts me, is to stop myself from going ballistic.  This is hard and this is what I have to do.

I'm Worried About My Daughter

I think the best part of having a blog is to have a sounding post.  My youngest daughter has been diagnosed with narcissism, as I suspected for quite some time.  Maybe not the malignant type, she doesn't appear to be a feeder, as she doesn't do it to me.  But she just had a baby Wednesday night, a little boy, 8 lbs and 6 oz.  We had a huge fight Wednesday night right after she had the baby, as I caught her lying to me.

The lie was in the purchase of a crib, she said she had bought.  Long story.  I don't mind she didn't buy the crib, I minded her lying about it.  I told her to tell the truth, as it is better than lies and I don't mind it if she didn't buy the crib, we would figure it out.  I have money to buy the crib and would have done it, but she lied.  She said the crib was ordered and on back order now and I don't believe her.

I told her I'll always respect the truth, there is nothing wrong with not being able to buy the crib.  I'm so upset and even told her that I would take the baby if she keeps this up.

Her older sister told me why don't I just believe her?  I don't know.  We all believed the crib would be here by now, and this is another crisis we have to deal with regarding her.  With her, there is always a crisis, I told her, and if she just said the truth, all will be well.

Ok, I know I didn't explain that well.  My husband paid for the baby shower, and what she didn't receive at the shower, we got for her.  Her boyfriend bought things too.  She is in college right now and has limited money, I get that, but we must make do with little money.  I worry about when she graduates, I worry about a job for her, I worry, I worry.

Her boyfriend is very wonderful to her, doesn't take any of her crap.  He works all the time, and really tries hard.  I think he might be an ACON.  He has no family, so I uphold him in handling her.  He's really a big grown up man.  We all think she has really lucked out with him.  And, I'll do all I can to help, and educate him.  I plan on having that type of family.

But now I can't reach her.  Not by phone, and I tried to visit with her yesterday and she wasn't around, I don't have her boyfriend's cell phone number and I will get it next time.  I just want to reach her and apologize for that fight.  I'm going to take the hour drive again and go knock on the door and stay right there till I'm answered.  I'm so upset.  I can help her with the baby.  It's because I threatened to take him.

I'm never going to have sympathy for narcs, no way.  I will continue to take a hard line with them. I feel I just argued with another ACON on another board about it.  As that ACON is bordering on narcissist sympathy is my feeling.

But I'm confused, I have a family, and I'm not sure what to do.  I pressure her for the truth and its goes hard with us.  Her father was a narcissist, so that might be where she gets it from.  Some days I just want to hold her in my arms forever, somedays, well just shake her.  And these are emotional times, given what I had awoken from, my own malignant narcissist mother.

I blame my mother for this and my ex-husband.  But what's the point of blame, it doesn't fix things.  I think I'll just have to work with her as is.  I'll tell you secretly, I will take the baby if I have to, my husband and I have already decided.  But I'm scared.  I know she and her boyfriend have limited money and live on their own.  I wish I could help out more, but I can't hold down a job, and its not fair for me to ask my husband to always help out here.  Her own father is sleeping all the time and doesn't work either.  What a mess this is.

My husband has a daughter of his own, she is single with 2 kids and desperately needs a deep freezer. They are very expensive, and he will give her one at Christmas time I think.

So yeah, I think this is the first time I talked of my youngest daughter on here.  Hope this makes sense.  And as they say, the show must go on.

Narcissism in the Mentally Disabled

I have heard that all malignant narcissists are very intelligent.  I suppose you have heard that too. Afterall it seems like it would take a lot of brains to pull of the crap that they do.  I mean, yeah, you would think so.  Right?

Well Joan is here to tell you that I have seen them in very mentally handicapped people.  Yep.  The smirky, half crazed looks.  The triangulation etc..  Even an intelligent MN teaming up with me with a mentally disabled MN.  Seems kind of strange, but I'll explain.  I have seen them among the religious, able to quote the bible at any time. (That I hope to get to someday).

I worked with Bindy once when I did a short term job for the mentally handicapped.  She was not what you would call nice at all.  But everyone else talked highly of her regardless.  Of how she was so precious.  Absolutely the worst word I have ever heard.  To this day when I hear of someone being so precious I am on the lookout for an MN.  And I, my gosh, and I did feel guilty for it, I literally hated her.  She kept complaining about me to the boss.  Told them I was outright nasty to her.  Even with people in the room she would confront me about something I would say, and everyone would agree with her (they lied).  Now my mind at the time was not awake and aware of narcs.  I was still confused too, even believing the lies told by Bindy about what I did.  This was a very insidious abuse.  Of course she will be believed and trusted by people, and I will be tossed under the bus.  This whole situation felt horrible.  How the heck was I supposed to defend myself here?  I couldn't battle this even if I wasn't an ACON.

Once she got everyone stirred up about me, she would be very calm and nice with me.  I used to think it was because of her handicap.  Now I know better.  She was an MN.  She said this and that about me, literally making up stories, and such outrageous stories that to this day I can't remember them.  I couldn't do anything right in that place.  If I moved a piece of paper, she would be so offended.  And she watched me constantly.  When she was about to make a usual complaint about me, she would actually taunt me about it first for maximum supply.  She was believed by everyone because she was handicapped.  I still remembered the times she said she was reporting me.  Just this solemn expression on her face.

I swear I never insulted or demeaned her.  It was ridiculous.  The whole place was.  It seemed like it was a place that was essential yes, but not healthy.  If I suggested a change I got into trouble.  I was always asked to do something, but I could never get it right.  I think now it was all gaslighting pulled off efficiently by an MN boss.  He was a criminal MN.

The boss would make me apologize to Bindy as she was a client.  Now don't ever do that.  Don't apologize for something you didn't do.  Never.  But I did apologize, cause well, I needed the job so MN husband could sleep all day.  I know now that I should have walked off the job.  The boss was an MN himself, got his education in jail.  I reserve judgement on that, but I have to say his jail term was severe (he committed murder).  Now he was working with handicapped people.  He loved to torment me too, and even told me that I was a freak.

But yeah, don't ever let anyone get to your head when they are an MN, mentally handicapped or not. I worked in that clinic for a bit, so I got to see lots of beautiful, wonderful mentally handicapped people.  If you helped them with something, they would turn to look at you with appreciation, even if they can't really come up with the words.  The human look on their face says it all.

But not Bindy. If you helped her with something, she would never even acknowledge it.  She is afterall god and it is your extreme privilege to do something for her.  She uses her disability as a mask to hide the horrible crap she is.

Last time I saw her I was at a mall.  She was so excited, dropped her bag and I almost thought I saw a regular mentally handicapped person.  But I knew better.  I told her I had to go someone was waiting for me and I left.  I was not aware of narcs then, but she was a creep, I knew it.  Another disgusting pile of rubbish disguised as humanity.

I've been chewed up and spit out by many narcs in my time.  I know what I know, they come in all mental capacities.

A Little Bit of Fear Gone

First of all, I have to  say what I'm about to talk about may be taboo.  I'm not sure if it is as I don't seem to have the social skills to decide if it is or not, but I have to talk about it.  For my sake.  If it is wrong then so be it.

I watched the movie, "Jodi Arias-Dirty Little Secret", on the lifetime channel.  Scary, then I had a strange dream about it.  I dreamt that I went over to see Jodi to give her relationship advice.  I guess its because it looked like in the movie that she needed it.  Yep, in my dreams I can go anywhere at any place and at any time.  While I was talking to her she agreed with me and said she would take my advice but then something dawned on me.  She was going to kill Travis Alexander and I was right with them just before it was going to happen.  Forget the relationship advice.  She wasn't a woman in love and didn't know how to be authentic with a man.  She was a narcissist that couldn't take being rejected.  I was trying to get out of there, I had no idea how, then I tried to talk to Travis about what was going to happen but he wouldn't listen to me.  How could he?  Who would expect that?  I was trying to tell him and he wouldn't listen and I'm stammering, and I looked crazy.  At that point I woke up.

I've a had a plan to call my family to take the sting out of this secret I've been keeping from them.  If I can verbally express to family members that mother was MN then surely I can go a little more in depth about mother here in this blog.  I've been wanting to make an exact description as to how mother was really like. She was rather different than most of the narcs that I read about online.  For my purposes I need to go into that.  I've been a little afraid to, as someone from my FOO will recognize it and come on here, but I am prepared for that, maybe.  I have been thinking about that too, along with all the secrets that I tend to keep.  I always feel like I'm hiding something.  And the longer I hide it the worse it gets.  I decided to open pandora's box.  I wanted to take the sting out of this being a secret.  Get it out into words of speech.  Then if they find my blog then they won't be surprised.  Maybe?  Oh, well.  Basically, what I am saying that bringing it out into the open made this less "secretive" and hopefully I could feel better.

I made a couple of phone calls.  I called my aunt first (mother's sister).  She been helping mother to doctor's appointments and stuff from the last time we talked, and so I told her that mother told me that she liked to see me miserable.  I told her some other things too that mother did to me while I was taking care of her.  The abusive behaviour and that mother has been calling me a whore since childhood.  Of course, I was expecting denial.    What else could I expect?  "We were abused as children ourselves, your mother doesn't mean it."  And the one I was expecting the most of all, "She is not educated."  Of course that one would come.  I was prepared with counter claims because I have educated myself and have some very good insights now.  I did not waver one bit.  I even said I will not be accepting any excuses anymore.  I lost it all taking care of mother and the truth has got to come out now.  I want everyone to pull away from mother.  That no one should be taking care of her, she is toxic to everyone around her and must go back to her doctor and tell him she has burned all her bridges.  Maybe he can help.

Yep, I said that.  I didn't feel uncomfortable doing so either.  It was ok.  It was by this little bit of exposure I was able to continue.  Truth was on my side here.  I learned to depend on that more than anything.

My aunt said my mother has always been nasty, even to her.  My aunt is not an MN, and yes she told me mother has been abusive to her as well.  We talked about her and mother as they were growing up.  And yes, their childhood was indeed abusive.  She even told me mother may have disappeared permanently into psychopathy in order to cope.  That is going over the edge.  No one can come back from.  I started to feel a bit sorry for mother.  How can my claims of abusive be any more different?  I started to think about this.  While all that stuff is true, they were abused, then it was up to her and mother to find a way to cope and not allow the abuse to continue to the next generation.  Mother has found many ways to survive through life and none had included caring for her children.  In fact we were punished for something we had no control over.  She was abused, fine I get that, but this is planet earth.  This place can be hell sometimes.  Find a way to cope with it properly is all I can say.

My aunt said, she doesn't see mother too often.  My sister and her daughter is taking care of mother, as mother bought them a car.  Mother is too hard to be around and I can see how the desire for my aunt to escape mother was too hard for her to hide.  See how denial goes?  It is all a big lie to not accept the truth and truth is what you have already accepted so you try to swindle yourself into believing crap.  It is crazy.

I also talked about my brothers wife about her being MN as well.  "No kidding.  She is horrible".  My aunt said.  She didn't even dismiss my claims that my brothers wife is a complete psychopath.  "That is why your mother doesn't get along with her, they are the same."  Continuing along this vein, my aunt was getting a little peeved at the both of them, and I know how emotions can go.  Maybe I would get the truth this time?

Unfortunately, the conversation fell apart.  She was in denial, oh yeah, but she was not dismissing my claims at the same time.  I think I surprised her with my phone call, which was good, that way I could get at the truth.  She had no time to think of a lie.  Not that she is a lier but this is a coping mechanism for people in MN fog.  She did promise not to tell anyone about this phone call, and I told her I will never be speaking to mother again.

Next I called my sister.  I told sister what mother had said to me on my last visit with her.  My sister was shocked.  But not disbelieving me she said she could not stop taking care of mother.  My sister was a very calm person before.  Now she is hyper over the top.  Not like her really.

This is not the first time of NC with mother.  We all got a break for 20 years.  During this time mother had a boyfriend that didn't want us kids around.  We all went peaceably through life for that time and somehow we were able to live a normal life.  Even with our claws missing and souls torn out, life was good without mother.  Well better than her in it.  I still felt bullied and had a hard time. But it was better with no mother.

Mother's boyfriend dumped her then, then laid all her care unto us.  And mother won't have anything to do with my last remaining brother that is still alive.  Its because of his wife.  She is a malignant narcissist as well.  I have heard MN's get along well together, but doesn't seem to be the case with my family.

So what does mother's abusive childhood have to do with becoming a psycho?  Being cruel and mean and spiteful?  I can only see them becoming more compassionate really.  And how does this poor illiterate woman become an expert at triangulation and gaslighting?  Seems to me this would be impossible.  Maybe I'm thinking of this too simplistically, but I really don't care.

My sister and I talked endlessly.  She was aware of my mental state and is glad that I am doing better. But mother needs care.  She didn't throw me under the bus however.  It seems weird that these two phonecalls didn't deny my claims, just said mother can't help it.  I worry about my sister though.  She is not the same at all.  But see how they can't lie when they are taken by a surprise phonecall?

I stood my ground and it wasn't hard.  I suppose the next time it won't be so easy as they will be prepared and I may have to dig my heels in deeper.

My sister called me back yesterday.  She asked if I will be willing to see mother now.  I told her no, didn't she hear me the night before?  She said, yes but was hoping I would change my mind.  And she said, "Since you said you were feeling better you should see mother now."  I told her we had no mother, never.  She then told me she is done with me.  Goodbye.

So we were at NC and now we are NC.  Ok, I hope mother is proud.  None of us can talk to eachother.  I made an effort to try to reach out to a sibling, and it was for nothing.  I recommend to anyone like me, if you are at NC then don't make any attempt to try to change that.  I was a scapegoat, and while everyone in my family was abused, I was not allowed any boundaries, and basically told to see mother or sister won't have anything to do with me.  But my goal here was not to try to repair things in my FOO.  My intended goal was to escape the secret.

It's frustrating.  My children don't act like that.  They are close to eachother and I'm sure that will never change for any reason.  Even if I became a psycho tomorrow my children will be NC with me and they will stick together on it.

But my aunt wants me to call back sometime.  I think she gets the idea.  But everyone is on mother's side and feels sorry for her.  Mother is a horrible person and no one disagreed with me.  But that is the way it is.  I think I may call my aunt sometime.  But I am piling lots of education on myself.  Own my recovery and try to just be me without any secrets.  All my life I felt like I couldn't talk about things, and this sucks.  I hate that feeling, just hate it.

So my sister says mother is horrible but she can handle her?  And I couldn't?  So I must risk myself by putting myself under the gun again or I get ignored.  Not that I'm blaming my sister.  We have all been persecuted by mother, and in no way can my sister handle mother.  Her daughter (my niece) will have to be on call regularly with that car and be hated if she isn't.  That's the way it is.  That car is mother's property and so is my niece now.  I might intervene sometime in the future, I don't know.

I felt that way during the dream I had of Jodi Arias.  Trying to tell Travis the truth and he wouldn't listen while I was sure as sure can be he would be killed that night.  This may be taboo to talk about, but this is how my mind works, and its nothing against Travis.  I am not trying to use his tragedy to promote myself here.  That is not my intent.  My intent was that the dream was about me saying the truth, even though it is not accepted.  To not accept another version of the truth.  To live in truth and stay there.

I guess I found my way through.  I don't have to try to face the panic and the fear.  I just accept them like I do my eyes and nose.  They are all part of me.  I can now post anything I want to on here and I'm not afraid of the consequences of anyone finding out about it.  Parts that are even very specific such as when I cut my foot with an axe when I was thirteen years old and no one even seemed to notice.  That used to bother me talking about that.  That's too specific  But I'm ok with it all now.

I guess I had to pay the price to call.  Now I am more ostracisized from the family but I can be open here like I haven't been able to.  Not that I told anyone about the blog, but now that they know how I feel that I'm no longer in the darkness, somehow made me feel better about writing.

Also too, I just learned that it is better to try than not to try.  I am always so afraid of something.  I don't think its the fear that's the problem, its making decisions from a place of fear is the culprit.  So I make the fear ok along with all parts of me, its ok.  We all have "warts" so to speak.

I learned this from my favorite relationship site.  The one I have been going to, to free me from abusive relationships.  "Face your Fear"?  I have no idea what that even means and therapists have been telling me that.  But I can stop before I make a decision from a place of fear. Make the fear ok, it is there to protect us.  It is not the enemy.  But decisions were not designed to be made from fear. Fear is there as a warning, heed that warning, listen to it.  Accept it.  Then it has less power to force you to make a decision from it.  It has cleared my thinking.  Once I accepted it it left me.  Then I was able to make the decision.  "Face your Fear"?  Nah.  Just accept it instead.  Facing my fear has only served to compound the fear, treating it like the enemy, instead of the enemy I was trying to fight, I was fighting myself essentially.

Everyone is Out to Get Me

Got my taxes done today.  It was due early on in the year, but I procrastinated on it.  But this was actually tough.  Any paperwork pertaining to me and I'm a wreck.  It feels that after the person does my paperwork, knows so much about me now, they must now be put to death.  Because I feel like I was put to death.

When mother used to come and visit me at my apartment years ago, she would go through my paperwork.  The woman can't read or write, but was able to tell if a bill was overdue or not.  Then she would broadcast it to the world.  At the time I was dating right before I met my current husband, she told everyone in the building I was out whoring around.  But everyone says mother has a big heart, you just can't see it.

At that time I was earning $40 an hour.  Had a substantial savings account, but couldn't even look at my bills.  I went to a therapist and she helped me organize a way to pay my bills online.  And the rest automatically taken out.  My job was almost gone, as I was going bat crap crazy, and couldn't keep my place in this world.  Soon I couldn't pay anymore bills.  Apply for unemployment, again.

I hated losing it all.  Couldn't function normally either and mother now expected me to keep a super clean apartment because I was home all day now.  Even when I was working with 3 kids at home, she felt it was necessary I wash all my floors everyday, and screamed at me over it.  When I had no money mother yelled at me over some rust growing on the car, but this was mother's game.  A malignant narcissist is out for soul murder. Don't forget that one.

One time I sat in a crisis line for mental health at the hospital.  There were six chairs in the office, three on each side. There was a man brought in by two police officers.  There was one chair on one side and two beside me, the only chairs not occupied.  The man sat on the other side and the two police men sat on either side of me.  People were walking by and I was sure I was stared at with these two big police officers on either side of me.  They were tactical officers with the whole gamut of weapons and protective gear.  On either side of me!  Of course this would happen, I was just wondering when a big smelly man was going to make his appearance and sit on my lap.  My life was like a sitcom.  Heck, I should have been getting paid to just live.

This was not planned but unfortunate incidents plagued me and I could expect them.

Even now it feels like I'm highjacking every ACON site imaginable, and I feel like they are telling eachother to run when they see my name in the comment section.  And they are not putting eachother on their lists in case I find them.  It feels like people are trying to hide from me.  And I also feel like some have left because of me.

My mother liked my last ex, she thought he was a good man.  He sleeps all day but he is a good man. My current husband got rid of mother.  She won't talk to me for years now because of him.  So I can't be preaching about NC when I didn't do it, mother did.  I call it "Locked in her Own Scheme".  She won't talk to me till I get rid of him.  Her words.  I was worried as mother is sick and elderly and I would certainly have to apologize or something.  I only have so much time left with mother.  I procrastinated on that then I awakened to the truth and found the blogging world of ACON's.  Now I don't care to ever see her again.  But I thought she did love me in her own way.  How anyone would recover without the internet I have no idea.

Lately, I feel like I have been overtaking the boards and in one blog even told the person to shove the narcissist outside the door.  I believe in being present with people and found a nasty side to me, and its not helpful.  That wasn't what that person needed and I failed to be present with them.  Oh, I am aware narcs are not good to have around.  Not even for 5 minutes.  Its better to sleep with a rattlesnake.  I know that person doesn't believe narcs are good to have around either, but in the present moment her situation was different.  I'm not really like that either, I actually cower to other people and feel strange to be lashing out.  This thing about narcs gets to me.  I don't even feel like they should be out volunteering or donating food at the food bank where I volunteer.  It seems to me that a poisoning event will capture an amazing amount of narcissistic supply, so we shouldn't be risking it.  Everyone should be tested for narcissism just in case.  They can effect a whole society.

These feelings that I have don't envelope all real life issues, so I should be more supportive.  Not go on my own tirade.  That blog owner told me to not censor my feelings about things so its ok.  I understand that, and I realize we have all been hurt.

I don't want to be blamed anymore for the crazy person I have become.  But I do know that doesn't allow my crazy behaviour to hurt other people, so I have to be a little more careful.  Surely, I can vent those feelings much more effectively rather than taking it out on others.  Its not what I want to be like even in the aftermath of this terrible war.

Lies vs Necessary Secrets

I have so much on the go, in my head and in my household and today I'm supposed to be handing in my quilting blocks.  I'm learning to quilt, its amazing, I love it.  I'm learning it.  Lots of fun.

It just seems like my life right now is not about sitting at my quilting class when I got caught lying to my husband over hiding some money.  I seem to have this policy to, "When in doubt keep it a secret". Its not like he's really mad at me.  He just said he can't really trust me.  And now with not handing in my quilting blocks I feel like a crappy person.  Just so much going on I can't seem to fulfill these obligations.

My husband thinks life can be so easy.  I can't get my head around that.  He thinks lies are for manipulation and control and he sees me as a horrendous person.  When I look at the situation I can see what I'm doing.  I just can't get those words out of my body.  I know that truth just sometimes can not serve my purposes.  I learned this lesson and it was a lesson I can't seem to get out of.

And now I can't hand in my quilting blocks.  I'm just not able to sit in my quilting class and work on them.  I'm really behind and right now my mind is on other things.  I've been feeling disconnected too.  All this stuff going on, and I can't sit and just talk about tea parties and superfluous things.  I'm a basketcase.

This feels like a crisis.  I went to my favorite site that helps me at times like this.  I saw this posting about, "Stop trying to do the right thing".  Also, "Don't try to be the woman who fits in."  It sounds silly I know and this has really been helping me.  I thought I would focus on the day, and maybe just try to do the dishes.  I know my intentions are to make my life better, but some days I do fall on my butt.  I can't focus on those blocks right now, if I do my head will explode.

Truth is, I keep lots of secrets.  I'm tightfisted with money.  I'll put it away, and if it's needed too bad. I once ate in a charity soup kitchen with thousands in the bank.  People think that's crazy.  Ok, maybe I am crazy, but I think that that makes sense.  Truth doesn't always help you.  Truth can be a killer and if you are not careful it can come back and bite you in the butt.  I can't imagine having no money, it makes me feel too vulnerable.  Yes, I have been poor, still I manage to save it.  I don't really know how I save it, I just do.

When he came back to me and asks me what other secrets I've been keeping from him, I tell him I just can't talk about it right now.  He's been acting like I've been having some kind of love affair, I assured him I'm on the up and up, just habits I have.  I can't seem to not have secrets.

I told him, "If you think lying is only for manipulators, then you are in a fancy pansy world."  We've often heard that there is no excuse for lying.  Lying is bad, watch out for liers.

So I'm having trouble coping with everyday stuff until we get this sorted out.  All I know is that I can't be blamed anymore, I'm really just coping.

Just Really Random

I woke up this morning with this feeling I'm disconnected again so I got online to read the blogs.  I read about recovery and how they are feeling and the relief I felt doing so was horrible.  I hate that I feel that way.  Did someone else have to suffer for me to have the opportunity to have people I can connect with?

I have been having this vision lately.  I see this little boy, he is sitting in a classroom his head so caked up with dandruff that it was falling on his shoulders.  He was staring straight down, and the other kids were making fun of him.  He was not defending himself.  The adults around him couldn't figure out what was going on with this little boy.  He was so quiet and didn't even seem to be aware of what was going on around him.  He was in his own world.  This was where he stayed.

None of the adults can figure it out.  I know!  I know what's going on with him.  He has retreated, that makes him safe.  It is not the dandruff that bothers him, for he barely notices it.  I know that!  He has no safe place to go ever, even at home, which he is tricked into believing it is safe there.  His mom makes homemade bread.

My mom used to make homemade bread.  The smell would be even permeating through the front door of the house.  I would go home ready to dive into that bread.  I would sit down at the table with my bread.  Mother would be all nurturing, then suddenly she would mutter something to me, barely audible, "You are selfish".

She acted so bipolar, that shortly after I started to believe she was.  It wasn't long I realized after a lifetime of counselling sessions and being out in the world of trying to figure out what was going on with me, I met some actual bipolar people.  It was different.  I don't know, I could just tell.  I know narcs are tricky, and something that feels like my spidey senses tell me when a person is evil.  I don't know.

That little boy I want to take him home with me, and maybe just give him a big bunch of acceptance.

That's all.  I won't push the boundaries, as I know he needs them.  Just a whole pile of acceptance.  I wouldn't be trying to figure out anything.

I went to see my optometrist the other day, and you know what he told me?  Well, sorry have to back that one up a little.  He put these drops in my eyes and sat me down in the waiting room and said I would have to wait 20 minutes.  He came back in 20 minutes and saw me reading a magazine.  He asked, "You can see that?"

I said, "Yes, but it is really blurry."

"You can read through the blur?"

He brought me back to the examining room and he told me that my ability to see through blur is "uncanny'.  Those were his exact words.  He continued the examination.  He said the inner workings of my eyes were perfect.  The optic nerve and everything.  I started to see him better in a few minutes and the look on his face was one of shock, I believe.  Maybe its good genetics or did I develop uncanny eyes for survival purposes?  Like a horror movie?  Who knows.  I'm no spring chicken so I get the feeling that my eyes should be aging by now.

Back to the little boy.  Yep, just a whole pile of acceptance.  He is out there and I want to go find him, but I'm not there yet.  I want to help people so badly, especially the children.  Take him home, give him love.  I might be loony for saying this, but oh well.  I love that little boy already.

I'm not a man, so how am I seeing a boy?  I don't know.

ACON's and Serial Abusive Relationships

Before I get too far, I must say that because I have been in many abusive relationships, I was told by professional and layman alike that I was setting myself up that way because I liked being a victim, or that I liked being abused.  Even though I said I didn't like it, they said I did and just didn't want to admit it.  No one ever sat down to discuss it with me.  No one cared.  I was a masochist?  Really?  I just liked to complain for nothing?

I would like to give a heap of non-appreciation for their laziness and/or self-absorbed existences. Lazy cause they didn't want to explore something that I needed and self-absorbed because they got some kind of sick pleasure for being so sure of themselves at my expense!  They took advantage of a traumatized woman who couldn't help herself and traumatized her further.  It validated their existences I guess. Would it have killed them to actually help me with this?  I guess so.

And no, I'm not being too harsh with them.  I can read a textbook.  Getting information is one thing, taking time to process it is another.  I was hurting, and no one could see that?  I could have died from abusive men, would they have said it was my fault then?  It occurs to me that many people read, but not learn.  Besides, if they didn't know anything, would the sensible thing to do would be to keep their big mouths shut?  Why did they use this as an opportunity to stick the knife in further?

What I wanted to write about today is that I think I found the answer.  It was always there, just no one to help me with it.  I hope this gives hope for women who get into abusive relationships over and over, with no one around to sit down with you over it.  We don't get into abusive relationships to try to find way to cope with life.  I am telling you its because its all we know.  It is kind of tied to Stockholm's Syndrome.  You can google that if you want, but many know what that is.  Sympathy for my abuser?  lol  In the case for serial abusive relationships there is this compelling need to stay alive, even believing non-truths.  Afterall what good is truth if it doesn't keep you alive or even safe?  I just wanted to talk this to the bone, and I never found anyone to do that with.

Ok, so we follow into patterns of old.  ??????  Self-Esteem??????   Self-Confidence??????

A few years ago someone sat down with me over it, so to speak.  I found something that saved my life.  I applied the knowledge but found it hard to do as an ACON (which I didn't know about at the time).  I used the stuff I had read and it ripped me to the core.  I ended up having to try the stuff for an hour at a time, and over and over again, that is how hard it is.  I now know it would have been next to impossible for me to be in a normal relationship, with my upbringing.  I was wired to do and say what was necessary to stay alive.  Not only that, being made that way from my formative years, it was impossible to know anything.  Ok, I can know things, but it still doesn't make any sense to me, I'll still continue to behave in old patterns taught to me in childhood.  I really found acting normal was impossible.  The parasite took a lot of what was necessary to live without her and I couldn't do it.  The parasite takes away yourself.  It wanted me to be a mirror.  I'm very happy to know some ACON's have somehow escaped the abusive relationships trap, and that is wonderful.

There is some stuff you can say is great about my mother, as I went into my awakening believing I had the best mom.  Sometimes she did make sense and gave me some sense of humanity.  But this was the most deadly part of the parasite.  If all she did was bad to me, I probably wouldn't be so carved out.

Now to the rest of the world, I appear crazy.  No one wants me to work for them for long as they tend to misunderstand me and that always gets me into trouble.  I'm not in line with the rest of the world.  But I know that I'm very smart and can sit down at a computer and make sense of something that has been such a huge part of my recovery process.  And I know my intent is good (most times).  I know one thing I like about myself, and that is I like to think for myself.  Mosttimes.  That is, when I'm not second guessing myself or putting up barriers for protection, it is always there, I think for myself.  I think it is this one part of me that caused me the most suffering growing up, the parasite tried to remove it.  So I suffered great pains to even have it, might as well use it.

I like to take the things I read and try to gain a perspective from it.  I always have.  Now, there is no lessons on relationship abuse.  Nothing I can find anyway for someone like me.  Yes, you could have told me that I was in abusive relationships because I didn't know better and tell me why.  Still no knowledge to that. I would have still been behaving the same way.  So call me stupid or unwilling to take advice but someone like me would need more.  For a lot of people this is a pain in the butt, and I get that, that they don't get what a carved out husk is about.  But, please try to realize it is sometimes hard to reach me.  This will require some work.

Take for instance this friend I used to have.  And while I'm at it, I would like to give a big kudos to the mental health department in my area for weeding out this social worker who is a malignant narcissist.  But anyway, while she was in university, I can see it all now.  She seemed to love to throw out these "opinions" she had learned in the books.  I know university is not intended that the student just parrots out knowledge like that.  These are to be pondered and use your own mind.

It's crazy.  We discussed one time how when an abused woman hits back.  She said it was wrong and the police will arrest both the men and the woman in these situations.  Parrot.  I said, "Hold on, I remember in the 90's, when I was getting hit by my ex I was supposed to hit back, that was a conversation I held with my brother back then and everyone seemed to feel like I was a wimp for not fighting back."

My friend parroted something she read out of textbook and said, "Well, you will get arrested then, when you hit back."   Oh my gosh, it was like she didn't even hear me.  And now I know that textbooks make people stupid sometimes.  I didn't say I wanted to hit back, I just wanted to discuss this, it was my favorite topic.  I felt so emotional then and she just up and left because she said I arguing this very valid point with her. I was just trying to open up a discussion, and she had to go on a tirade. Now I know, never argue with a narcissist, there is no point really.

She is afterall at the emotional level of a 3-year-old.  She started to talk about something and I was actually wanting to talk about it further, this topic always interested me.  But she couldn't.  She can't. She has no sense of reason, only that she was having a narcissistic rage episode.  She retreated because she "felt" I was arguing with her about some knowledge she "felt" was her own.

Many years and lots of pain later, and we became grandmothers.  She has this lovely granddaughter who she paid a visit to and got to babysit for a weekend.  About a week after that the little girl seemed to be experience some distress that her parents had to take her in to the doctor.  Then she had to undergo some tests.  My MN friend was indeed upset about these findings, however, it went beyond that into the very weird.  It seemed to be beyond her capabilities to understand that this was not about her.  I can understand her being upset.  I have an autistic granddaughter and this was upsetting, but the realization that we would have to learn and cope came first.  And it wasn't like there was something wrong with her granddaughter, nothing had been proven yet.  Tests were still to be done.

What I can say is that my MN friend was looking for compassion for herself, not about the little girl. I don't know if I am explaining that well.  But somewhere inside this hollow shell that I am felt she was not acting normal, although I lived a lifetime of that stuff being normal.

I don't know if she had done something to her granddaughter that made her distressed during that weekend of babysitting, I don't know.  She might have done something that hurt the little girl and that is why she is upset, the doctor might figure that out.  I know my friend loved children (so she said), almost in a crazy way.  Even to the point of having her schizophrenic daughter bring her children that the daughter was babysitting.

It was a few years ago (before my awakening) I decided to do some research about love and relationships.  I have been in so many abusive relationships, with everyone telling me, "Oh you must like it that way", that it was pissing me right off.  Seriously?  How am I supposed to like it?  I liked to be bashed in the face?  Ok, not to condemn people who do like it, but that wasn't me.  It hurt like hell. And even though I was a carved out husk, I still knew that pain wasn't for me.  So I decided to learn everything I could about it.

But what I knew about human behavior was next to zilch.  I was raised by an engulfing mother, I could never even leave her side, so I never got to learn and grow in life.  Top that off that mother was giving me a convoluted version of what love was.  I had no idea what I was doing in the world.

So I went all over, the internet and counselling sessions.  I was bound and determined to learn about serial abusive relationships, to crack the thing open.  Lots of crap I had to go through.  Just because it said it in a textbook didn't mean I was going to take it to heart.  That I was determined not to do.  But even that was a challenge.  But I always did like to think for myself.  Then I found a website that had so much power to me because the woman who wrote it never went with the norm.  She was trying to do what was best.  I could actually see her good intent in all this.  I read her website, bought the program, and just really started to learn.  Now I know everything about relationships, just ask (just kidding).  But really, I have been able to navigate myself really well through my relationship and my children's relationships and their friends relationships and so on.

She never really wrote about abusive relationships, she talked about it here and there, but that is not her mission.  I had to read her teachings and apply some knowledge and understanding for myself. She goes into anthropology and psychology, she gathers knowledge.  She puts it all together and it all makes sense.  Basically, we as human beings do things for our own reasons and our own well being, never for nothing, there is always a personal reason.  Maybe that's why no one would help me with my problem, they didn't care it didn't apply to them.  Then they take what I say and used it against me to hurt me, because it benefits them.  And all the ACON's like me were too carved out by a parasite and its way too hard.  Now I get this, it's written in our genetics to behave that way. Even myself, by writing this I want to produce something of value, because I lived far too long this way and I need to tell the world for my reasons.  For my own validation.  Mostly, we do things to benefit ourselves to help others and this in turn helps us out too.  Only a narc does otherwise.

I am now distressed to know how I could have handled my life a lot better.  But I didn't know it at the time.  Her programs actually caused me to awaken to the truth about my MN mother.  All I was doing was trying to understand men better and why I was always getting beaten up, but I learned about myself.

Her program is based on authenticity.  Basically, what she teaches is to get out of his head.  Stop trying to please him.  Now, I can't make her whole program and teachings into a single blog posting of mine.  I will only talk about what it did for me and what I had taken from it.

The point is to stop looking for things from him.  Know that I am enough.  What does that mean?  I was never enough, surely MN mother didn't see me as a person, there was nothing to me.  Like I said, I could only take this an hour at a time, it was hard, and it all came with baby steps.  Know that I'm enough.  These are not hard words to understand.  I did have fleeting moments throughout my life when I did fell so good about myself that I could at least try this out.  And when I didn't feel so well, I could remember what feeling well meant. Know that I'm enough. These are not hard words  like self-esteem or self-confidence.

Here is Where I Started

I go lay down on the couch.  If he was in the room, I would come up with excuses about why I had to lie on the couch.  I used to say "I'm laying on the couch, I have a headache, my back hurts.  I had to tell him why I was doing it in order to feel safe.

Now with what I've learned:  I say nothing, I just go lay down on the couch.  If he asks why I'm laying down?  I say I just want to.  Truth is, I may not know why I am laying down on the couch, maybe I do have a headache but I don't just say it for an excuse I would be lying and seeking approval.  Am I looking for his approval to lay on the couch?  Or am I just making that statement to get him off my back?

You see, he might be worried I am sick and want to ask me why I'm lying down, so I just say, "Thanks for your concern, I just need to lay down for awhile."  I might tell him why I'm laying down but that is a whole other realm.  A different motive.  I hope this makes sense.

Now I'm not saying this old behaviour of mine caused the abusive men but I'll tell you one thing. Lately, I've been on a learning curve about ACON's that I have retreated back into some old behaviours.  I have been using excuses for things lately and it's caused a lot of grief in my relationship.  For instance, "I didn't do the dishes, my head hurt."  Ok whatever.  He didn't even ask me about the dishes and I chimed in with why this and why that.  He was just walking into the door and was faced with this annoying crap.  He started to get irritated with me and no way was he the same and I couldn't figure out what was going on.  I was chasing him around trying to explain myself to him.  He would start to walk out the door saying, "You are pissing me off!"

This kind of behaviour might make him mad.  Only because he might feel blamed or he doensn't know how to respond to such behaviour.  It is like co-dependence.  That statement I never understood yet I read a ton about it in the 90's.  Nothing was cluing in for me until I found this wonderful site that blew me away.  Men want freedom and I was taking that away.  Like I said earlier, People do things for their own reasons.

I didn't know what was happening, but what I needed to do was get back into my emotions and work from there.  I knew then that I was looking for approval again.  Stop it.

So I got back to myself.  It doens't matter what I do or say, don't matter at all.  I'll just be enough and just be.  Just understand that he wants me for me, feel that down to my emotions.  One hour at a time. It wasn't any easier when he wasn't around for I had to practice this mindset and just be enough.

This caused my awakening to my engulfing mother.  Because being just me was hard to do.  I wasn't even supposed to exist, or have any kind of identity, mother wanted to root out anything that was me. Feeling for the first time, I realized I was a hollowed out shell.  Can I be enough?  It hurt, I felt it physically in my body.

MN mother loved to see me miserable.  This was one of her last statements to me.  This came to me like a ton of bricks.

And I'll tell you this, if you aren't yourself and realize that you aren't enough and go around looking for approval everywhere. you will attract the most selfish evil men to you.  Simple as that.  How do I know that?   Well, the programs teach you that none of this stuff that you do to improve your relationship works with a psychopath.  A psycho will knock you off the couch and tell you to do the dishes.  Not because he wants the dishes done, but because he wants to control you. The second you are feeling you are enough, you will know that man is narcissistic or evil.  And if you are you you will get your butt the hell out of there.

I knew a woman once who put up with the most deplorable men.  That woman was me.  She would get hurt and she would retreat, disappear, thinking that she was improving the situation for herself, but what she was doing was bringing more of the bad men to her.

I couldn't even argue well.  My arguments were needy and graspy and no good man would stand for that. Normal men has a mission to accomplish, he needs someone who can be herself.  It's not that he doesn't care if I had a headache, he feels blamed for it.  I had to look for excuses for everything and he had to listen to it.  All he wants is to feel safe.  Safe to do all the things he needs to do in life. Because he is a good man, he don't want to pound her into the ground.  A good man wants to be certain that she isn't about playing games.

Now I know this sounds simple and harder to do.  I've made mistakes over and over.  The program teaches you that mistakes are good, mistakes are learning, mistakes need to be made fast.  Perfection is one of the many masks we wear for fear.  Never pleasing, I watch what I say.  Are my words oblivious to what I am feeling inside?  Do I need approval?  Find out why.

This also relates to a lot of other stuff.  It really is authenticity and are my words oblivious to what I'm feeling inside.  Do I feel I want to give excuses for every little thing I do?  Of course not!  But this really was a survival technique I learned in childhood.  Those emotions that are real will take you back to a place to who you are despite what happened during your formative years.

Of course this thing I do to attract the hellish men will repel the good men.  We want to repel these bad guys, let them go.  Just like my behaviour kept MN mother happy.  There were no boundaries so she would inspect and cause me to have fear.

I have heard that self-confidence is essential in relationships.  Just no one ever got into the heart of the issue and I didn't even understand what self-confidence was.  I thought I did all the right things and was confident.  I knew this stuff, and I heard of this stuff before, but she takes things much more intrinsically so that I and everyone else can get it.  But this woman (my angel), decided to write about it and the rest is history.

So, that is what is working for me.  I feel that with me being enough corrects my old patterns.  Why didn't anyone tell me that before?  I can actually take my old patterns and change them into things I would do when I'm enough.  How to feel like you are enough?  This is baby steps and that simple statement works for me.  It clicks in with where I am, for I did have those moments when I did feel enough, but it didn't last.  So I just remember those times.  There are those fleeting moments that come naturally, the trick is to extract from those.  Then its actually remembering those times, then I am enough.

This is the first step.  You can discover ways you have been hiding in not being enough and extract those.  I showed you where I started.  But it is a journey, one that will take awhile.  I hope I explained this well.

I Am Appearing Dangerous

There has been lots of pain lately.  Sometimes I am taking it out on other people.  I talked to a friend yesterday, and although I have been really able to talk to her, something inside me blew up.  I felt like I was demanding her complete understanding in the whole matter and was really not there.  She was talking and I got scared and defenseless as usual and I was running around inside my mind.  I think what appeared to her, what I think she saw, was anger coming from me.

Now I don't doubt that an abused puppy grown up can be dangerous, but I'm not an animal, I'm human and I am prideful in my ability to contain myself.  My friend is a Christian sister, who has had quite a bit of life experience herself, but I was treating her like she don't know anything.  She has experienced a cheating husband for years he cheated on her and she prayed through it and he came to be a Christian too, and now is a good man and they are together.  She has survived a horrible battle with cancer which she has survived and is in the clear.  She has also told me her daughter-in-law's mother shot herself dead after a lifetime of being an aloholic.  She has stepped in to be the mother of this woman, being supportive and loving to her daughter-in-law.

I'm in pain.  There is no one, nadda, that can understand me.  There is the online ACON community of course and God, but not to sound insulting, I would like someone with a little skin on them.  I know ACON's all suffer through this and somehow we have been getting through it.  Slowly, day by day.

I want to call my friend and apologize, but this may come off as hollow.  Maybe my intent is not that I'm sorry, but that I feel foolish and I am looking for her approval.  If I was authentic I would be calling her to tell her that I'm feeling like a fool right now and I need you to make me feel better. Make me feel normal again.  That sucks,  Imagine me calling her and telling her that.  Oh, and if I was really, really authentic I'd be here dipping strawberries into chocolate and pouting my head off.

Did I ever tell you I had an MN friend growing up?  I heard all children are narcissistic, but this one takes the cake.  It would be too long and drawn out to explain why she is MN right now, and I really don't care to anyway, I know what I know.  Anyway, one day we were about 10, something she had done offended me and she accused me of pouting.  I was giving her the silent treatment (appeared to) but authentically I was just feeling my feelings which felt so normal at the time.  Nowadays, just feeling my feelings is hard work, but I am getting there.

I wish that that childhood friend would not have tried to prop me up out of my feelings and let me alone.  It would have been better.

So now I have to cope with untying this knot in my chest, feel what is going on and try to be the human I want to be.  I don't want to be the dangerous grown up puppy, I have so much to give and I'm not giving it, and I'm not trusted by others to give anyway.

I don't feel my husband trusts me that much either because I am dangerous.  I'm sure even if ACON's were to meet me face to face, they'd be scared too.  I put off other people, I've become nasty.  But when I try to tell my husband that my mind is playing tricks on me or I feel bad about something, he sloughs it off.  That is making me angry.  I go to pout again.

I think I need to be that child again, the one who wanted to pout alone, and not try to take things from other people (their approval, or any emotional resources).  Authentically, I want to bite anyone's head off, because I'm blaming everyone for what has happened to me.  In one way or another they have all screwed me over, because they would not have ever stood up for me.  There was never anyone to stand up to the bullies for me not even this precious woman who I call my friend.  If she had her choice she would have walked away from me when someone was hurting me.

I know this sounds horribly confusing, and I hope it brings some kind of value to the community. Even though I have never been able to defend myself, I seem to have taken the other side of the spectrum.

My Perfectly Organized Life, Not

So I was doing very very good.  All organized and doing this and that, visiting people.  Blogging, sharing.  Then it happened just when I least expected.  My stepdaughter came for a weekend visit sometime before Halloween with her two children and destroyed the house.  Ok, please here me out here.  I've always hated stepmoms who bashed their stepchildren all the while holding their own bio kids on a pedestal because they can do no wrong.  I hated that.  Now, I am one of "those".  

The house got messed up and not only that she baked a cake that was supposed to be for a wedding shower that would look like it had blood spattered all over it.  For Halloween.  The red icing "spatters" was spattered all over the walls, floors, you name it.  The rest of the house was destroyed by the two kids.  

My daughter, well, has three children and one of them is severely autistic.   As luck would have it (I say luck because she was never taught this by me), when she has her visits the house is more spotless than when she wasn't here.  My son, not so clean but then again he doesn't make cakes and has no kids.  My youngest daughter, again no kids, but has a habit of dropping things, but a word from me and she helps.

Maybe I shouldn't add that part about my own kids, comparing and I'm not sure why I am so yeah, I'm one of those bad stepmoms.  But I am struggling here now even weeks later.  Her dad helped me clean up the icing and that took a whole day, but the rest of the house he is either blind to or chooses to be blind to.

Everyday I am expecting to clean up the mess but I get "busy".  I do have a social life but I do stay at home full-time.  Before the wrecking crew arrived I managed to keep the house very nice and it wasn't hard to do.  Now I'm waking up every day and I'm overwhelmed of where to start.  That's my problem - getting started.  Where to start, how to start etc..

I have always struggled with this.  I told my husband that if I was this strong I would be in the wilderness of Africa milking snakes for antivenom.  He still thinks I'm normal.  So still I struggle.  

This morning I woke up and decided to just start somewhere.  The dishes.  Just concentrate on that till it was done and don't worry about the next thing.  Next was the laundry, concentrate on that and nothing else.  On and on this went until I got caught up.  The housework is almost done and all I have to do is wash all the floors.  Still a big task but it is a single task.  One thing left to do.  How weird is that.  As long as I don't feel overwhelmed with multiple tasks I'm ok.

I learned something from all this.  If I just focus on the now all will be ok.  So other ACON's go through this?  I like advice and it is appreciated, however, one clue is that I feel blamed and stupid all the time, it is a battle not to feel that way.  Do other ACON's go through this too?  

I like advice when it is present with what I'm going through.  Lots of people give advice and the timing is just off.  Like if a woman just broke up with a guy she gets told by her girlfriends, "Don't worry about it he is an ass anyway."  Do you call that advice?  I don't.  The poor lady is hurting.  I would prefer to tell her, "Oh my, that really sucks."  Just go there and be there with her in her problem.  

Now it would be easy for anyone to tell me that I should just smarten up clean the house or get the daughter to do it.  It's not that easy.  I know, reaching out to someone and being present is hard work. Relationships are hard.  Try being there for your spouse when he is going on and on about his job and not giving him advice.  I've been there.  It sucks but it is what he needs.  

I think, for me, that is what blogging is about.  I'm terrified someone is going to call me a complainer because I feel that is all I do.  So I try and talk about something "positive".  Not bad but its not real and present.  I hurt and that is why I come here.  But I am aware of not repeating old patterns.  So I pick myself up and keep trying.  Hey, the house is near cleaned up and I am telling you and I am telling you of the struggle I had to go through to get there.