Now, its like gone. Something we have been worried about for almost a year. And just eradicated. I can't tell you what that feels like. But, yes, I can actually tell you what that feels like.
When mother went no contact with me years ago, I spent 2 years fretting about it. Worried that now she is old, I should suck it up and try to get along with her no matter what. Even though I didn't fight with her the burden was on me to be "compassionate". I didn't try to reach her during that time. I just fretted about it, felt guilty, and that feeling sucked. I took the blame for this insidious monster.
I have to give a big thank you to the whole ACON online community for awakening me to the truth about mother. It was like a big sweep of the knife. Even though I was NC with her, I still had horrible symptoms of abuse, that I was taking the blame for too. No counsellor would take this off my shoulders. I was weird, it was my fault I was weird and that would be something I would have to accept. I don't remember exactly how the awakening got started. All I can remember was mother telling me she loved to see me miserable. For two years, all I thought she meant by that was that it was good for me to be miserable. That is it would "smarten me up" because I was such a loser.
After two years of NC, I started researching just that. It was Anna Valerious' site that I came upon, and I don't remember which topic I was on. But I remember reading, "This person does not mean you well." Then I was reading further, about psychopathy stuff like that. I became hooked on ACON sites. I became a basketcase to the tolerant ACON's in their comment sections.
Then all of a sudden, just like a sweep with the knife that removed the cancer forever, my guilt was gone. Gone forever. I can't even reach the feelings I used to have. I became outraged at everyone in the mental health community for sticking me with pills. Great big psychiatrists and I wasn't the culprit, but they made me feel I was.
Nowadays, I would like to visit mother on her deathbed just so that I can throw on top of her a big strap on stuffed man, in order to make fun of her. That last little bit of life she would have before she visits the torment of hell. But that would be nothing, nothing compared to what she has done to me.
Father-in-law no longer has the cancer. But a portion of his shoulder blade has been removed, and some muscle mass. He will have to live his life with that. I live with scars too. My last posting was a huge scar I live with, always feeling like I'm doing something wrong. And today, my husband told me I am always talking about fishing. He said, "You act as though we will never go fishing again." I don't think I have to explain too much about this to ACON's. We always feel like something good will be taken away. That we won't get to keep something for long. Yet, we always go fishing. Always, and yet I feel compelled to always remind him that summertime is coming, soon its fishing season. I do this, yadda yadda, like a broken record.
He also tells me that I act like a little kid sometimes. About certain things. I keep stupid secrets. He tries to tell me this in kindness, but my feelings are hurt by it. I don't want to talk about it much with him. He doesn't want to know about this stuff I'm blogging on, so he doesn't need to know anything else. He sees my panic, my fears, these are things I have to live with it, but thanks to the ACON online community I no longer believe these things are my fault.
I know some ACON's are more tempered than me, some less so, but we are a community that has to stick together. The mental health community would blame this all on us given a chance. I think its because that system is lead by malignant narcissists that would not accuse its own kind. Besides that, MN's don't innovate, can't create anything new or think, so the last material wrote about mental health, probably from the middle ages remain, only to be repeated and written as new over and over again.
Even those pills that left me so numb. Here I was dealing with mother, and those pills made me more tolerant towards her, and to other predators as well. I was too numb to do anything about it. I couldn't protect myself(not that I ever could), but I had less feelings. I was kicked around, battered, abused more and I wouldn't even try to get away. I couldn't go ahead and make plans with my life because mother was always beckoning me to do what she said. And I did do what she said. Even though mother spent 20 years out of my life, from my early twenties, mother had a good lover and we were never to interfere with that. And that made sense to me. She needed a good screwing daily and I had to go out on my own.
So now everything has changed. I would love to give mother a strap on man on her deathbed, and laugh and say, "I know that is what you want." But, my husband refuses to pay for one. So I'm here asking for donations, (just kidding).
I'm getting carried away here. This post is about no contact. It is like removing a cancer and now we just have to live with the scars. But hopefully, those scars won't grow bigger and worse than the cancer in the first place.
If you are still in contact with your MNparent I feel for you. I know there is nothing I can say in regards to that. Some people feel that the MN must be cared for. Ok, but it is only my opinion now, I think you are making the biggest mistake of your life. You can't go forward and heal, you still have cancer. My father-in-law is in the hospital for a few more days, but he will no longer be dealing with cancer, he'll be dealing with the missing shoulder blade and muscle. But he can live with it. Some adjustments, some therapy and he'll be as good as new.
The no contact has been a world of salvation for me. I know I have these problems but I also know why now. It kind of takes the severity off the situation for me. Ok, I know I bug like crazy about fishing, but I get why now, and I can do something to remedy the situation. Before, I didn't know why I was annoying him, and why he would complain about something I didn't do. But I catch myself now.
It's funny how quick Narcs recover from imminent death once they know no one cares anymore and refuse to be held emotional hostage.
ReplyDeleteI won't be emotionally held hostage at my mother's deathbed. I still want to go there and make fun of her, but she might turn the tables on me, who knows.
ReplyDeleteBut I've not seen a narc not surrounded by "love" at the scene of a death.
I wonder what it was really like when my mother "checked out" She had signed everything over to my ex wife who kept the news of her death from us for almost 4 months. She told my mothers neighbors that we were informed of her passing on the day it happened, but it was a lie. She then buried my mother without a funeral. So it sounds like my ex didn't think much of my mother outside of the money she could con out of her.
ReplyDeleteWell I heard that they are not any nicer upon their deathbeds. Perhaps that's why your ex didn't give her the funeral. I always found it weird how your ex and mother got along so well. My mother doesn't like my brother's wife and I can't tell who's the worst. Mother is no contact with them as well. Mother even called brother's wife cruel once, and that was strange.
ReplyDeleteAt least you can thank your ex for leaving you out of it, maybe it was better that way. Too bad she left her everything though. I will get nothing when my mother dies, my sister told me that. Ollie Mathews has a great video on narcissists and wills. Even though we are left out it is better.
And I don't think that narcs can like anyone, it is all a con. They don't have ethics or connections to anyone. I had a MN friend for 20 years, she won't talk to me ever again. The last time I called to talk to her on the phone, she was yawning and pretending she was too tired to talk. Mature eh? We are better off to walk away from these scum.
I never have seen two women talk more trash about each other since those two. The price of admission to be in their club was an intense hatred of me. If someone didn't like me and my mother knew about it she would immediately start grooming them and pumping information from them. That's a lot of why I stay confused about her. In a world where mothers defend sons even ones that turn out to be serial killers my mother hated me just because. Early on when I was divorcing my first wife one of them would say something I had the other in confidence and it was so out of place I just blew it off. The thing is I never did anything to either of them that was that bad. I divorced my ex because she was screwing the neighbors. After that she felt it was her duty to hide all our assets and steal them during the proceedings. I just don't have the chutzpah to do things like that because I never get away with it. That and I am not a thief. My ex used the fact that I would receive proceeds from the family farm to get me to give her things. Like I should give her the house free and clear because in the big scheme of things I would eventually get this money from the land we owned. So her saddling up with my mother meant my ex took every cent. She got all the assets we accumulated in the marriage and she got all of the inheritance. She can take a seat on the bus to hell cuz it's got to catch up with her one day.
ReplyDeleteYes they definitely hated us. It is important for us to believe that and take the blame off ourselves for never having their love. They never had it to give. This is their doing and they did it. We need not ever forgive them. We can be angry at them. I read on some other boards where the ACON's pity the parents. I don't understand this type of pity. Why would I pity them? Do you pity someone for evil? Pity doesn't work that way. This is an emotional resource to give...anyway long story.
ReplyDeleteOk, I would pity you if you lost your dog or if you lost someone really close to you or something like that. But to pity someone cause they are evil? I don't get that. But I hear that one all the time, "oh, your bad so I forgive you and I pity you." I have never heard of anything so inauthentic in my life. Are they lying? Is this a coping mechanism.
Sorry, just venting. But I don't blame these Acon's, it is not their fault. Maybe it is all they know for now.
So your mother and your ex was a team against you, that I can feel sorry for. That must have been horrible.
I didn't realize my ex was as bad as she is until after we broke up. After that her and my mother morphed into one monster with two heads
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to forgive anybody that you want to forgive for any reason. It's all up to you. My mother and ex hated my guts and for no reason that I can see. But you know what they say about there being a thin line between love and hate. And I terminated both relationships on my terms. That may be cold comfort, but I sleep well at night. I never sold myself out to please them in any shape form or fashion(at least not in the end), so my conscience is clear.
ReplyDeleteI pity a dog that gets run over by a car but I don't reach up under the porch and try to pet him.
ReplyDeleteIt's this whole thing about pity. I can do a whole posting about it sometime. But when someone tells me they pity a monster I feel like I hit a brick wall. The parroting, the insincere, they just have so much to learn.
ReplyDeleteI can't ever forgive mother. My life has always been in torment. I saw abuse as love and took it. When my awakening happened I couldn't believe it. I still remember Lizette's House of Mirrors and that picture of the wolf drawing in the prey with food, and with a knife in his other hand. That is exactly what it was like for me. I hurt daily while growing up. I'm surprised mother didn't make me go to school in diapers just so I could be made fun of. Maybe if she thought of it she would have done it.
And all you had to do as a man was show up at the house with a bottle of beer and she would play kissy face with him then they would be off to the bedroom. I had perfectly manicured hands which I became skilled at at an early age. This made me a whore.
She left telephone messages here calling me trash. Projecting I think they call it.
I haven't written about this on my blog, maybe I will tomorrow, but I did not go to my grandmother's funeral. I knew inside I could not deal with it. I believe she was a narc too and two months before she died, she told me a cousin was her favorite grandchild and I wish I had asked and "what am I chopped liver?"
ReplyDeleteSupposedly there was a whole huge emotional death-bed scene, and being as sick as I was and husband laid off from his job, I knew if I went I was going to crack up or die myself. I don't feel pity and yes I had to fight the guilt. Maybe because of my life of illness and almost facing death myself with the narcs nowhere to be seen, my "pity" when it comes to them or the very idea of rushing to their death beds, disappeared. After all I laid in the hospital and was almost dead, and none of them came around nor cared. [Severe asthma attack in my 20s, my severe cellulitis infection in 2001, etc] Three sentences are coming up in my head lately, "you don't owe them anything". "They never liked you and now the feeling is mutual" and the third is, "I never want to see these people again as long as I live." A few people even bugged me saying, "Don't you love your mother, sister and family?" I did for a very long time, even in recent years as I knocked on doors slammed shut in my face, but even love can turn off, when it is not reciprocated and mine did.
I hope this doesn't sound cold, but my love/pity died, two years in, the guilt has faded, some memories have returned and I wish I had gotten away far sooner.
It doesn't sound cold at all Peeps. Pity is a valuable emotional human resource that is about kindness and love. And it requires presence and how can we be present with them. I once offered to stay with my MN friend after she came home from surgery because she had driven everyone else away in her life. I told her I would sleep on the couch because the cot she had had a wire sticking out of it. She called me a big baby.
ReplyDeleteYou can't even give anything to them. They will do what they want. And they don't care. And what is there to love about them? Anna Valerious covered that topic some time ago, there has to be something to them, some substance that is lovable.
I won't be going to funerals or deathbeds, and it is not worth it, they don't care. And we need to move on from this. We can't be locked in this thinking where somewhere in their minds they do care about us, they don't. And that to me, is very healing.
Oops, when I say "we" I mean "me", sorry I'm not bossy. But it helps me better to see it in third person.
DeleteThanks for telling me that is not cold. I sometimes worry about myself. I don't want my heart to become hard and brittle from all of this. I am having a weird emotion that centers around being alone and abandoned in this world [yes I do have my husband] but I am realizing there is a reason for that emotion. I hope I can find the emotional words to even do justice to that one, sometimes that is harder for an Aspie. Yes Pity comes with kindness and love and if those are lacking then it would only be feigned anyway. They never had a minute of pity for any health troubles I faced. For me there was nothing but hardness.
DeleteI am glad you offered to stay with the friend but yes that sounds like a narc reaction. Never question them. You go a mile and they can't even give an inch such as allowing you comfortable sleeping arrangements.
Interesting when you say you can't give anything to them. Nope. That falls flat. You show them love or care and it means nothing. Reminds me of when I spent hours on a paper card with three-D flowers I made for my mother in 2011 and there was no response. I asked her if she got the card after hearing nothing and she said "oh that". You can't even give love to these sorts because they have none.
I won't be going to funerals or deathbeds either. I see no use in it. That reminds me I was going to write about grandmother's death and how I did not go to her funeral. I think that was one time I had to protect myself at all costs.
It is healing for me to tell myself they do not care. I am telling myself, and I know this sounds odd, but it is to train myself to hold firm, "The people you want to be there, are not there, these people do not love or care about you. These people never have even liked you"
Maybe those are harsh statements but I am one ACON that needs to just face and accept reality. It's hard but it is what it is. We can heal after escaping the imagined families and myths told about families.
While I was married to first one wife and then the other my mother told them each that they were like like the "daughter she never had" .........forget the fact that my sister IS her true daughter. I can't tell you if she meant the daughter she WISHES she had but didn't. I would ask her to clarify but there is way too much dirt piled over her grave to hear her answer.
ReplyDeleteMine said those things to people all the time, even in front of me. In fact one of my sister's best friends when I was in my teens and twenties was called "a favorite daughter" right in front of my face. Both parents called this friend of my sister, "their daughter" and she called them Mom and Dad. My mother would compare me to her, Look how sunny and happy B*** is!" "She has a good job, that pays well", etc. Once my father told me he wishes that she was his other daughter and not me. I have had some weird memories come back. I think of the daily chipping away and am sickened. I feel for your sister because I know how much that can hurt.
DeleteYour mother said that probably to hurt your sister. That's what they do, they all do. We didn't have parents, but we were born unto people who see us as supply, and they need us to nurture their supply. I sure feel for your sister, is she around here somewhere? Blogging perhaps? I don't know if its appropriate to ask that question, so don't answer me if it isn't, but I still want to ask.
ReplyDeleteNo, my sister stays off the blogs. She used to comment on my blog some but there got to be too many trolls hanging out there. My mother saying that sort of reflects Jonsi's latest entry that psychopaths have the emotional depth of a thimble She would say outrageous things to whoever was there and not butter up those that weren't. By the time she was old she didn't bother to keep up with her lies. Like the time she told my wife to tell me I could go to her house with other women and she wouldn't tell my wife about it. (you read that right) This is my favorite attempt at her muckraking. She just gave a message to give to the one person who shouldn't hear it just to start a fight. I wonder if she ever stopped to think that all she would do was end up looking like an idiot. It was her way to get me in trouble for cheating and not have to worry about the pesky facts........like me not cheating. Why let reality ruin a chance for her to start an argument.
ReplyDeleteI've head when they get old and senile they get far worse. I had an odd premonition and feeling one day [I don't seek after psychic stuff or knowing the future, but I had this thought that mine is supposed to go senile and will create havoc. It could be intuition who knows. The Mini-Me kept complaining Queen Spider couldn't hear worth a darn in the few years before I went NC. She could be too proud to get hearing aids even with thousands of dollars for top brand ones, but I had the thought maybe she is just going senile and can't keep up anymore. The Mini-Me seem genuinely aggravated. I found this whole exchange odder then hell, because I am far more hearing impaired then my mother could dream of being, and my sister basically "forgot" I was. When I could not hear them in mixed company no one cared, even when I said speak louder or I have to read your lips. So I wondered about oncoming senility. I would think some of their lies and keeping track of things have to get all bogged up, I mean that stuff takes energy and as you age you have less of that. She probably just started making crap up out of the air instead of more subtle manipulations. I don't want to know the lies being told about me now. I discovered some of the lies, she lied to relatives that I am a bum on disability and don't really have COPD etc. I wish someone had told my darn lungs.
DeleteSome of my favorite stories about my mother have me wondering the same thing about my mother, peep. That one about her telling my wife to tell me I could bring women to her house and she wouldn't tell my wife about it is the first thing that comes to mind. That's sloppy even for her. She either was going senile or just didn't care how she looked anymore. She was always more covert than that.
DeleteYes that sounds like senility. Mine could be going senile, as the GC complained about her hearing problems to me as I was going out the door. It sounded like far worse then hearing problems to me as I am hard of hearing and not having those type of difficulties.
DeleteYour mother sounds like how my mother talks. How they twist and turn things to start trouble. I can't think of one single incident right now, but it sounds like you are describing my mother.
ReplyDeleteThey always want to start trouble. It is what they live for. Normal life holds no appeal for them, until they can rake someone over the coals. My mother was always starting trouble somewhere.
Mine was always starting trouble too. With both of them, there never could be a moments peace when I was young. Now I realized they lived for the screaming the crying, the controlling and chaos.
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