Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

I found this on one of my dancer-friend's blogs. It saddens and frightens me.

American citizens have been setting themselves up for a fall like this for years and years. I believe the public schools' attitude of "sit down, shut up, and do it like everybody else" plays a key part in the erosion of democracy in our society. Now nobody can think for themselves.

Thank God I am contrary enough to want my kid out of that mental meat-grinder. Thank God I live in a country where I still have the chance to make that decision for him.

Here is the beginning of the article

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Tuesday April 24, 2007
The Guardian

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. more here

Haunted Strip Clubs

Houses are not the only places that can be haunted. When you think of a what a strip club can be like--all the emotions people express there, frustrated sexuality, unrequited love, happiness, lies, anger, and sometimes even violence that go on there—It would surprise me to mind out that a majority of then were not haunted.

I have worked in 3 small regular strip clubs over the years (as opposed to bars where dancers are just part of the entertainment). Everu single one of them seems to have had a ghost. One was haunted by the ghost of the man who used to own the building. I never saw this ghost, just heard about him form the other girls. He was apparently harmless. The back-stage part of the strip club had once been a large house, and the public front part had been added on later. The former owner is said to have come down the stairs and sat in one of the dressing room chairs. According the girls who did see him, he didn’t seem creepy or weird, just lonely. The girls seemed to think he was really just hanging out for company. They would talk to him. I can vouch for the dressing room being icy cold a lot of the time, but I actually just thought the owner was too cheap to pay for the heat.

Another club I worked in had some raised separate booths on the side of the room opposite the stage. If you were up on the stage, you cold see into these booths. Frequently, I would see people sitting in those spots, and of course I would look over and smile at them. When I looked again, they were gone!

This is my best haunted club story:

The first actual strip club I worked in was this skanky little dump in Indana. The manager and the DJ were both young guys, who were also friends, and who apparently got their ideas of how to run a strip club from watching movies like “Stiptease.” One day the manager and the DJ came in with a box of clothes they said they had gotten hot somewhere and sold them to us. They claimed the things were new, but I and another girl noticed that when we took the things off, they looked like they had been worn more than a few times.

At about the same time, I started thinking I saw somebody by the door coming in, then I would look again to see if it was a staff member or a new customer, and there would be nobody there. Strangely, there always seemed to be an orange cast to the imaginary person, as if they were standing under a neon light. We had no such orange neon lights in the club. I saw this same thing once in the hallway by the VIP rooms.

Another girl had a bizarre experience while entertaining a customer in the VIP section. That club has small curtained booths for a VIP area. They only ever allowed one dancer and one customer to a booth, and there wasn’t room for more than that anyway. This dancer was sitting on the customer’s lap, facing away from him, and for some reason turned her head to the side. She saw ANOTHER GIRL'S FACE just inches from her own! By the time she recovered from the shock, the other girl disappeared.

A couple of weeks later, a girl came back to the club who had been off work for a while having a baby. She saw my gown that I had bought from the manager, and said "Oh my god, where did you get this?" When I told her, she told me that it was a gown the house mom had custom made for her, and that after she had gotten tired of it, she gave it to a new girl named Autumn. Autumn eventually became engaged to and moved in with the DJ. Shortly afterward, she was killed in a car accident on her way home from work!

Strangely, the only ones of us who saw anything unusual were those of us who had unknowingly bought Autumn’s used outfits from the DJ! Neither one of us knew her.

The (haunted) house where I used to live

The first house I shared with my husband was full of spirits. That house was also newly built, but it had been built under contract for somebody who had reneged on the deal at the last minute. That house was built on land that was once a farm. The original farm house was next door to ours, and it had even more problems. The house behind that one and the house next door to ours on the other side all seemed to be affected. In the 8 years my husband lived in that house, those 4 houses saw 3 divorces, the demise of one good friendship between 3 room mates, the financial ruin of one couple, actual psychological illness, spouse abuse, and dozens of knock-down, drag-out fights that frequently spilled out into the yards.

The five years I lived there were the most difficult of my life.

Though I had stayed with Ted on weekends before I was pregnant, I had never noticed anything weird or unusual. I would attribute that to the constant activity—(Besides Ted and me, there was also Ted’s roommate, the roommate’s 12 year old son, all their rowdy friends, and several cats) and my continual state of drunkenness, hung-over-ness, and/or post-coital bliss. Hell, I was lucky if I noticed whether my shoes were on the right feet. When I got preggers, though, we kicked the roommate and her entourage out and started fixing up the house That was the year natural gas prices were so outrageous, so we stayed in my condo and only went down to the house to work on cleaning and decorating it. That was when I began to notice things.

The house was a split-level ranch, with a short stairway in the living room that lead up to a hallway that was open on the living room side. Frequently, when I came around the corner from the kitchen or the bathroom, I would see someone standing there. It was a man, rather short, in a tan jacket and pants, and a wide-brimmed hat. He usually stood with his hand on the newel post, looking down into the living room. He would always fade away as soon as I saw him.

One time, when it was bitter cold, Ted and I went into the house to do a few things. We had to turn up the furnace while we worked (we usually left it set at 50) and left it on when we went for supper. We had planned to do more when we came back, but for some reason we stayed out several hours and decided not to do any more in the house. When we went back to turn down the thermostat, we found it had already been turned down.

When we brought the cats down to live in the house, they went crazy. One stayed under the couch for days and growled. The other ran right to the top of the stares, where the figure of the man always stood, and started to cry. (Not really crying—it’s this desperate-sounding noise she makes when she wants something and we don’t know what it is.) We put the litter box in the basement bathroom, and the older cat would sit on the steps and cry many times when she didn’t want to go down to the litter box. She would stare down the stairs with her ears pointed forward as if she could see something, and meow like somebody was killing her.

When we brought he baby home, things got worse instead of better. When I sat up nights with the baby, I could hear another baby crying. Having worked in an emergency room, I know a baby’s fever cry. Sometimes it was that, and sometimes uncontrollable bawling. I heard cats meowing. Kiddo’s electronic music toys would begin to play spontaneously. Musical instruments, like bells and tambourines, would play. Things got moved to improbably places. Things disappeared all together—especially shoes. Over the years, I threw out several single shoes and slippers, after despairing of ever finding the mates. I sort of expected to find all that stuff when we moved, but no luck.

The sprits got bolder. One time I came home and opened the front door, the find the tan-suited man standing in my living room. As the door swung open, he stared at me in surprise for a moment before fading away.

I began seeing a female form, too. She had a long pink dress. One time, I had taken Kiddo out for a walk in his stroller, and he had fallen asleep there. I simply wheeled the stroller inside and parked it in the kitchen, letting kiddo sleep. I got busy doing some dishes. When I turned away form the sink to check on Kiddo, the woman was bending over him in the stroller. It wasn’t a threatening gesture, just an interested one; the way people usually look at babies in strollers. As I opened my mouth to speak, she disappeared.

As kiddo got old enough to stand and walk, he developed the charming habit of lifting his arms and smiling at whomever he wanted to pick him up. Sometimes he would turn to what seemed to us an empty space, make faces that showed obvious pleasure and recognition, and then lift his arms to be held. He would also babble and wave to people we could not see.

Ted had his experiences, too. He likes to soak in the bath tub with a good book. Frequently while he was doing this, the bathroom door would open and shut, as if someone had passed through. A couple times, the bathroom door flew open forcefully and banged against the wall. Sometimes it didn’t open, but there was still a banging sound, as if somebody were knocking desperately to get in. When in the basement, he could hear footsteps in the empty house above.

The creepiest thing that ever happened to me there was once, while I was standing in the hall, a huge black shape flew from the bedroom at the front of the house, straight down the hall, and out the bathroom window at the back of the house. It was not a bird or a bat—this thing was huge. It was probably about as big as a person, but it seemed shapeless. It passed just inches from me in the narrow hallway and blocked out the light from the bathroom window before it made its escape. Although it was a hot summer day, I felt cold.

The oddest thing was the way the house or its spirits seemed to affect our relationship. Although our relationship was rocky in those days, we would be fine as long as we were outside the house. As soon as we came home, a fight would start. I’m not joking—sometimes as soon as we were in the door, Ted would say something, and I would take it the wrong way, and off we’d go! They really seemed to thrive on this—the worse the argument, the more activity we’d see for the next few days. Strangely, sex seemed to have a similar effect on them. Many women state in a figurative way that they herd bells and music after hot sex—we really did!

The activity seemed to calm somewhat as Kiddo grew older, but I still hated being in the house. I never felt comfortable there, and I never felt like I was alone. And we still tended to fight whenever we were together in the house.

Thank God Cook County raised their property taxes; because that was the only way I could convince Ted to move. Our new house, a restored school, is super quiet. In almost a year and a half, there has been not one single incident. The nights here are peaceful and quiet. When I sit up at night to read or work, I can relax, instead of always listening for unexplained noises and watching for God-knows-what.

The (haunted) house where I grew up

Ok, Halloween is coming, so let’s talk haunted houses. Not the kind somebody sets up in an old barn or whatever, but real houses people live in that have ghosts.

I have had lots and lots of experiences, from the tine I was a little kid. My Mom’s house is full of spirits, although she refuses to believe it. My Mom and Dad had that house built form scratch, so all the spirits there are somehow related to my family.

My brother died in 1967 at the age of 18. I was born in 1969. The house was full of his presence. I had an area in the basement where I worked on my model horses, which had also been his area for working on civil war soldiers and stuff. He was always flickering the lights and messing with the stereo and banging the pipes when I was down there. At first it scared me, but I began to get used to it. I would talk to him sometimes, and that seemed to calm the noise and lights and so on.

My Dad died when I was 13, after a lengthy illness. The last few months before he died, I could hear someone pacing the hallway between the bedrooms. The pacing would stop when my Dad would get up for any reason, and then resume when he went back to bed. I used to lie awake nights and listen to it. I became convinced that that was my brother, waiting for my Dad to come join him. I may have been right, because after my Dad passed, I never heard that sound in the hallway again.

My anniversary . . . . more mushy stuff.

I had to work Friday, unfortunately. Suck. I dropped Kiddo off at Mom's house, and she took us out to lunch to celebrate the anniversary of "the day we all married together," in Kiddo's words. (Remember, he was 19 months old when we got married.) Then I got my nails done, and had to fight traffic, all of which made me terribly late. To make matters worse, the police had set up a roadblock just half a block north from the bar. Roadblocks are so not good for business!

Well, that was a waste of time. On an impulse, I kept my work dress on under my jeans and sweater when I left. I walked up the street, around the roadblock, and to the discount liquor store, where I spent a quarter of my meager earnings om wine. Then I grabbed a baked potato at Wendy's and raced home. Including the stop at Wendy's, I made it in one hour and 29 minutes, which is a land speed record coming out of Stone Park on Friday night.

When I hit the driveway, I saw that the house was mostly dark, with only a light in the bedroom window. Well, shit. I bet he fell asleep. That would be understandable, really, since Ted gets up at 3 am to get ready for work. But even if his intentions are good, once he nods off, he's never quite the same. Even after he wakes up, he is in this weird disoriented state. So, I resigned myself to a little computer time and looking forward to the morning, when we would both be rested and refreshed.

I grabbed my wine and carried it into the house. The night light in the hall lit up the usual assortment of shoes, backpacks, and hats . . . and a trail of rose petals leading up the stairs. Hmmmm . . . . I dropped off my wine in the wine cooler ( I always wanted to be the kind of person who would have a wine cooler, and I don't mean a fruity little drink in a bottle!) and went to investigate. I followed the trail of petals up the stairs, through the playroom, over several wooden train tracks, past my pole in the exercise room, and into the bedroom. There I found the bedroom cleaned, candles burning, and rose petals strewn over and around the bed. In the middle of the bed were a dozen red roses. My dressing table chair had become a makeshift stand for a bottle of blackberry merlot and two bottles of champagne chilling on ice. In the sitting area, Ted was waiting for me, grinning, surrounded by rose petals and pink-wrapped chocolate pieces that he had scattered over the table also placed in dainty dessert glasses. He stood when I came in and took me in his arms. . . . .

The first thing that happened tome in the morning was that someone dropped a lovely decadent piece of dark chocolate in my mouth.

Along about noon we had to emerge form the bedroom, if only to raid the wine cooler. I made brunch--fried-egg sandwiches on home-made whole grain bread, with sauteed candy onions and green peppers from the garden, sliced garden tomatoes, smoked cheese, soy sausage, mustard and mayo. We washed 'em down with more wine (hey, it's not like we do this every week!) while we watched Showgirls, which Ted had brought home for me the week before. The picture of the girl with the pole on the front of it had caught his eye, and this was a particularly lovely gift set which included the DVD, shot glasses (I collect shot glasses) party games, etc.

Oh, my gawd! what a horrible movie. I had heard it was bad, but I wanted to see it for the dancing and the costumes. It didn't have enough of either, in my opinion. The main character was just . . . . awful. Completely despicable. After the first few minutes, Ted kept wishing more and more horrible fates on her--"I hope she gets hit by that truck!" he would say. "I hope she falls off the stage and breaks her neck!" "I hope Jason gets her!" The movie's only saving grace was, not only was the plot simple enough to follow even when intoxicated, but the more we drank, the more fun we had ripping on it! Hence the shot glasses included in the package.

Only, the more we drank, the more we had to take breaks to go to the bathroom, and the more my attention span wandered and then I'd come in the office and fuck with the Internet, so that the movie, which was too long to begin with, stretched out and devoured our whole day. I had had it in the back of my head to do something outdoors, since it was so nice out. Oh well. We drank some coffee and watched the sunset form our back porch, then got cleaned up and went out for dinner.

Dinner was a big flop. Ted had wanted to go to a Chinese buffet, and he had one in mind that we had never tried before. Won't be trying it again, either. The food was greasy and bland. As a vegetarian, I had a real problem because crab meat was hidden in everything. It wasn't enough crab meat to actually make anything taste like crab, because I took a few bites before I realized something was not quite right. Apparently the only reason they put it there was pure perversity. Oh, well. Live 'n' learn, right?

Last stop of the night was Carlo's in Cedar Lake for karaoke fun. I love it when we go out singing. I have had voice lessons, but I used to be too shy to ever sing in front of other people. Back in the days when we were just buddies, Ted convinced me to do the female part in Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." Singing is easy after you've had a few beers. Anyway, karaoke had been a huge part of our dating life and life as a couple. It is one of the things we most enjoy doing together. So, a bucket o' beers at Carlo's, and we had our entertainment for the rest of the night.

I first sang, "The Search is Over", from Survivor. I adore that song because, not only was it released about the time I met Ted (maybe a couple of years before, I'm not quite sure) but, when I sing it to him, it is absolutely the story of our relationship.

SURVIVOR lyrics

Ted sang Chicago's "Make Me Smile" and Seger's "You'll Accompany Me." Together we did "Sgt. Petter's Lonely Hears Club Band/With a Little Help From My Friends," and "Getting Better All the Time," both of which we perfected as duets 20 years ago or more, singing with a cassette tape in a boom box in Ted's 1966 Mustang convertible.

The DJ packed up his stuff at 1 am, but we were still singing when we left the bar.

The evil bastards at Ted's work scheduled him to work (yet another) Sunday, so that was then end of our fun. Oh well. I still have the roses.

My 5th Wedding anniversary

Here we are 5 years ago yesterday. Wow! Hard to believe that's us!

BTW, I still have the dress, I can still wear the dress, I do still wear the dress, and 2 years ago, I had the dress taken in!

Getting Better All the Time

BEATLES, THE lyrics

Today is my 5th wedding anniversary. Amazing. A-fucking-mazing.


That we made it this far is really tenement to Ted's amazing strength and patience. Or maybe pig-headed-ness and not knowing when to quit. Whatever, I am profoundly grateful.

We tried to have our wedding before Kiddo was born, but it was too much of a rush. I was also taking some classes (I was pre-med at the time) and working full time. The extra strain of planning a wedding was just too much, and so we gave it up.

The combination of unresolved grief and raging pregnancy hormones, combined with uncertainty in my relationship with Ted and my general emotional baggage, made me a horrible person. There is no other way to say that. I was selfish, emotional, whiny, bitchy, childish, and hateful. I blamed Ted for everything--how miserable I felt physically and emotionally, how I couldn't go on with school, somehow I even managed to blame him for Rick's death. Everything was all his fault.

That Ted didn't leave me during my pregnancy or the year or so after Kiddo was born, is testimony to his patience and steadfastness. He forgave me time and again, until I knew he would never leave me. For some reason, he even still wanted to marry me.

But sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees, and besides sticking around, Ted did little else to hold up his end of the relationship. He was as childish and spoiled as I was, and still wanted to live like a bachelor, in spite of the fact that he had a baby-momma and a child at home. For reasons of his own, Ted replayed some of the worst from my childhood--he objectified me, ignored me, didn't know how to cope with my emotional storms, and escaped into work or hobbies. For the longest time, it seemed like his only interest in me was "What can you do for me? In what way are you of any use? How does whatever happens to you affect me?" (Re-reading this, I recall that Ted's mom passed away when our son was about 6 weeks old. So only now, 6 1/2 years later, have I pulled my head out of my ass enough to see that Ted was grieving. How insensitive have I been? )

Each of us was desperate to get our needs met, and unable to ask like civilized people. We were both so miserable.

For those first few years, I conducted myself like a spoiled child, resorting to tantrums to try and get the attention I needed. I blew things completely out of proportion, for example throwing a screaming and bawling fit because Ted had spilled coffee on my clean floor. Ted would withdraw, or worse, resort to hurling hurtful insults that always seemed to get right to the heart of me. This escalated for a few rounds, until I would resort to hitting to make him stop. Then he would yell some more, and withdraw again.

The last time I hit Ted, I also broke his finger when he tried to restrain me. I turned around and saw Kiddo had seen the whole thing. That was one of many ah-ha moments that brought things around for us.


We've had a lot of those moments in the last 5 years.

Fortunately, we are both stubborn loners. Neither of us was willing to admit failure, and we both knew we had no one else. We were committed to creating a stable, two-parent home for kiddo, even though we disagreed violently about what that meant. So, somehow, we knew we had to hang on to each other. We didn't know how, or even where to start. Several months of marriage counseling didn't seem to have any effect until months after we had given up on it. Now bits and pieces of it still come back to us from time to time.

Love, apparently, can conquer all. Neither of us believed it at the time, but here we are. With the momentum of a speeding glacier, we have changed.

Ted believes the pivotal moment was when we moved out of our old house. To say that the old place had a bad vibe, is like saying The Amityville Horror was a somewhat creepy movie. We both firmly believe the place was haunted. It is an undisputed fact that in the 10 years Ted lived there, in that house and the 3 lots touching it, there were 3 divorces, a ruined friendship between 3 roommates, 2 couples who regularly had knock-down, drag-out fights, and 2 cases of near financial ruin--that we know of. And I can certainly say that moving out to the quiet, low stress, low traffic country has made both of us happier. So yeah, maybe there is something to that.

I like to give us more credit, though. I think, mostly, we simply grew the f* up. I think we both struggled for a long time and finally something gave, and we pulled ourselves together. Ted claims I somehow taught him how to think, which means to question logically the assumptions he grew up with. This means he thinks things through logically and with empathy, rather than just being contrary for the hell of it. He is breaking his bad habit of saying hateful things in arguments. He is more willing to work with me as a team and to accept my leadership when appropriate. He shows he loves me in ways I understand, instead of expecting me to intuitively know it.

For me, trust is the essential issue. Back in high school, Ted was really the only person I trusted. I felt he was the only one who understood me. Through the years, through our separation and all the changes in our lives, I stopped trusting even him. I tested Ted to inhuman limits. He forgave the unforgivable in me, time and again. He sometimes screamed and yelled and threated to leave me, but he never did. After a while, I became able to ask him to promise he's never leave. He had to say the actual words to me, many times over, promising he's always be there for me. And gradually, I started to believe him. I stopped trying so hard to make him go away. Sometimes when I am feeling bad about myself, I will still push him a little bit, but it's not exactly the same. Now I push because I really want him to say, "I love you. Let's make things better."--but I don't always know that is what I need, or I don't know how to ask.

I have had to learn trust in other things, too. I have always had a difficult time trusting anybody with any kind of personal (emotional) information. My instinct has always been, don't tell people anything they can come back at you with later. Never give anybody a weapon to use against you. This made an impossible situation in our marriage because there was no way Ted could avoid hurting me if he didn't know what was going on with me. But I could not tell him for fear he would use the information to hurt me.

About a year ago, I felt or herd a stirring from the un-integrated core personality, the original child who was so damaged. It was in the middle of an argument with Ted. Like so many of our arguments, it started because he had unknowingly stepped on one of my many emotional land mines. In the aftermath of resulting explosion, Ted asked me in exasperation, "How am I supposed to know what hurts you? You won't tell me!" I realized in that moment that he was right. I opened my mouth to speak, then clamped it shut again. A voice inside me screamed, "NO! NO! DON'T TELL! DON'T GIVE ANYTHING AWAY!" And I whispered, " I can't tell you. It's against the rules."

Lately I have had to tell. The pain of constantly getting my feelings trampled on by a good, well-meaning, man who was stumbling in the dark, got the better of me. I saw that the things I had done and the secrets I had kept to protect myself were now more cumbersome than helpful, and that they hurt Ted and Kiddo because I can't be a wife and mother to them when I am wallowing in my emotional pig pen full of shit. I decided that, if I wanted Ted to love, honor, and cherish me for myself, then he had to see my "self" as it really was. I used to accuse him of loving not me, Erin, but one of the alter personalities who had been his buddy in high school. But what I was doing, holding up an idealized, sanitized Erin, put me in essentially the same position. (Like The Wizard of Oz: Pay no mind to the woman behind the curtain!) And look, I can't do that for the rest of my life.

Now it's all out there. Or at least, all of it that I remember and understand. Ted now sees who he has in front of him. He sees the holes in me, and the places where I didn't grow properly, and the scars that are still so full of filth and shit that they will probably never heal right. And it's OK. He still wants me. Amazingly, he understands me. He gave me a beautiful gift the other day--he was angry at my mother for the things she did to me. Nobody has ever been angry on my behalf before.

Five years ago today, we stood in our back yard in front of our guests and promised to love, honor, and cherish each other. That has always been my fairy tale ending--to be loved, honored, and cherished. Like so many people, I looked to my marriage to make up for what I never got in childhood. Ted is a white knight guy--he really does want to save me and give me what I need. We balance each other that way--I so need to be rescued, and Ted needs someone to save.

Most psychologists would say this is not a perfect marriage. I know it's not. But it's honest, and for us that is a big step. It's strong and well-tested. It nurtures both of us and gives us both space and reason to grow. And it gets better all the time.

Free travel brochures

Looking for travel brochures to cut up and make a geography scrapbook.

Here are some sites I am finding:

The best one: Guardian Unlimited Catalink--Almost too many choices. Nice search function.

Wimco (some brochures require you to enter credit card info, even though they are free. I skipped these.)

Teen Freeway-Lots of teen-oriented travel stuff and other freebies. Fill out a short survey to get Sherman Travel Magazine for free.

Best Western Hotel Guide and Road Atlases

French Government Tourist Office Maison de la France Online Brochure Request Site.

ETBrochures Australia is a free consumer travel brochure service with information, resources and holiday ideas for unique getaways, including some of the best family tour operators.

Getting Better All the Time

BEATLES, THE lyrics

Things happened fast again after Rick died. I should mention that, about the time my fiance Rick got sick, my best friend from high school tracked me down. Ted was the only really good thing about high school. We worked at Wendy's together and he sat behind me in one class. After school we were always together. After school he helped me with my paper route, and then we went to work or went out to see my horse or just went for a drive. Ted had a 1966 Mustang Convertible. We always took a "boom box" and plenty of cassette tapes with us--especially the Beatles and Led Zepplin. It was 1986. We had so much fun together.

Ted was also the only stable thing in my life at the time. After horrible fights with my mother or various boyfriends, Ted was the only person who could calm me. I would occasionally call him, crying, and beg him to talk me down. Nobody else could.

Ted stood up in my wedding to my first husband. We remained friends until I went into the Army, and then lost touch. When Ted finally called me, he had gotten married and was now about to get divorced. I had gotten engaged, and my fiance was dying of cancer. Our lives were falling apart, and we leaned on each other.

Ted's divorce became final in July 1999. Rick passed on August 19, 1999. Ted shares my interests in food, alcohol, music, and sex, so we spent the next 11 months dealing with our respective losses. We worked out a terrific formula: work hard, play hard. This involved as much over time as we could each arrange, up to 60 hour weeks, and weekends spent in restaurants, in a karaoke bar, and in bed.

The drunken weekends were fun while they lasted, and they gave me enough of a break from my crushing grief to go out and last another week. On the surface tings were looking better. Ted and I were rarely apart. Truth be known, I hated being separated from him like a shipwreck victim would hate being separated from a life raft. One drunken night he revealed he had been ring shopping and put down a deposit on an emerald for me. We dropped hints that there might be a wedding in the future.

On New Years Eve 1999/2000, we toasted the end of troubles and the beginning of a new life together.

But my grief was still catching up with me. I was still afraid to sleep. Many times, while I was sleeping I would forget that Rick was gone, and when I woke up, I would remember again with shock and surprise. On mornings when I woke up alone, I was still disappointed and disgusted to open my eyes and find I was still breathing. I wanted to be free of the pain. I worked in an Emergency room at the time, and knew some lethal combinations of over-the-counter drugs. As the summer progressed, I started passing the depressing "last time" anniversaries. Third week in June--the last time we had gone on vacation together. July fourth--last picnic at my Mom's. July 11- the day he went into the hospital for the last time. And so on. I began daydreaming about an elaborate suicide gesture: I would put on the wedding gown I had bought, take a lethal combination of drugs, wash it down with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and lie down on his grave to die.

Fortunately I didn't get too far with this line of thinking. Three hundred and thirty-three days after I lost my fiance, I missed my period and found I had gained Ted's baby. July 17, 2000 marked the beginning of the rest of our lives.

She's Leaving Home

BEATLES lyrics

Well, obviously I got out. When I was in my late teens, I had this delusion I wanted to be a model. I answered a job ad for "lingerie models" which turned out to be actually selling raffle tickets in bars, dressed in lingerie. It paid decent money, if you could hide enough of your earnings form the home office, and I moved in with one of the other models. A few months later, I moved in with my then-boyfriend, a boy named Pete, who I knew from high school. In May, the year I turned 19, I married him.

That sucked. Pete was an asshole of the highest order. I wish I could say I hadn't known that before I married him, but I did. He gave me ample warning. Anyway, I spent two years trying to make things work. Then I sort of worked myself out backward.

I had wanted to go back to school and get a college degree so I could get a decent job. Lacking much in the way of resources, I joined the National Guard. (In Illinois, they will pay for 4 years of college at a state school.) Basic training was challenging for me, not just because it was supposed to be, but also because I had that attitude of "I can't" so firmly embedded. I really made it harder for myself until I figured out that it was easier to just do whatever it was I was supposed to do, than to try to get out of it. On the other hand, I was totally immune to the "You can't do anything right, dirtbag" aspect of Basic that you see in the movies. Hell, I already knew that!

After Basic Training, everybody in the Army goes to career school, called properly Advanced Individual Training, or AIT. AIT was where things really started to happen for me. That was where the alter personality named Erin was "born." Yep, folks, that's me.

I was different form anything that had come before, and it was just what was needed. In the first place, I was connected to my physical self. I loved food. And alcohol. And dancing. and SEX. I really loved, loved, LOVED sex. I met a boy who shared my interests and we spent every weekend eating, having fun, and enjoying a lot of drunken sex. In fact, we didn't limit ourselves to the weekend. We even found an all-night mess hall with better food than the one we were supposed to use, so we would skip dinner and then sneak out at midnight to eat and fuck.

I hated being told what to do. It was OK being told by the Army; I understood why they did it. It was NOT OK being told by this odd voice in my head (I didn't know what it was yet) that I could not do this, was not capable of that. I said, fuck that voice. I'll do it if I want to.

I got a tattoo.

Took the Grayhound home to meet my husband. After a 5 months separation, he left me waiting in the Grayhound station for several hours before he could be bothered to come get me. One of the very strangest moments of my existence was the realization that I didn't know what my husband looked like. I didn't have a picture, and I, as Erin, had not met him and could not access the memory of his face. The alter who had married him thought he looked like James Dean. When I did see him, I only knew who he was because he called out to me. Short, homely, with mean, small eyes. "That's it? " I thought. I wanted to turn and run. I should have.

Pete had been in the Navy, but after his enlistment ended he found a small apartment in his home town, and that is where we went to live. Within two months, what was left of my marriage fell apart. I didn't like Pete in the first place. He was not fun to be around on a good day, and downright mean on a bad one. Passive aggressive, bullying, spiteful. Hateful. I had an attitude of "I don't need this. I have survived worse than you! I could blow you up if I so chose!" (I could, too.) His verbal and abuse failed to have any real effect on me. He might have been able to make me cower one minute, but the next, I would be back about my business as if nothing had happened. The abuse escalated to physical dimensions. A treacherous friend told him about my affair with the boy in AIT. I came home from an exercise class and found all my belongings on the sidewalk, many smashed. Pete and the "friend," who apparently had been sleeping with him, were inside the apartment with the door locked from the inside.

I drove to my mom's house. Started therapy and divorce proceedings. The first boyfriend was still living there, now in my old room. I felt completely displaced, staying in a make shift room that had once been the den.

That is when I found my alters (alter personalities) and the world started to make sense to me. I began to understand that my particular role in the Sisterhood, as we called ourselves, was to be a healer. I took an extreme geographical cure and joined the regular Army. I arranged to be stationed in Germany.

Make no mistake. I went into the Army a spoiled, damaged, frightened kid, and came out a woman. In 4 years made I friends, got therapy, had amazing sex (and enough not-so-great sex to know the difference), discovered the food and wine and scenery of 7 countries, got my bachelors degree, and learned how to ride a motorcycle. I did things I never dreamed I could do. Blowing off sexual harassment, navigating impossible work situations, and going days without sleep are do not figure prominently in recruiting commercials, but those were the kinds of obstacles I faced and conquered. I also bought a computer and enough furniture and housewares to fill my first apartment, and then some. I had a fantastic love affair, terminated a couple of stateside things that just were not working out, and came home with a real job already lined up.

I spent about two years not talking to my mother AT ALL. I felt better that way. I only started talking to her again because my grandma begged me to.

The alters, having healed sufficiently during this separation, began to merge into me, giving me their memories and some of their talents. I filled out and became a more complete person. Multi-faceted, but whole. By the time I came Stateside, there was only one alter left, a protectress named Storm. In her usual stubborn, protective way, she relaxed into me only when she judged I was capable of watching my own back. I had known it when the others merged. I had felt it when the babies had snuggled in and sort of melted into me. The older girls and women held a little ceremony one night. In the rich theater of our own mind, each came to me, told her memories and her talents, and then gave me a hug and stepped into me. Years later, when I had lived in Chicago for several years without getting myself killed, and was engaged to be married, she let go. She eased into me so gradually, so gently, that I never noticed. One day I recalled, in the first person, something that had been her memory to hold. That was when I knew the last boundary had dissolved.

A year of so later, my fiance died of cancer. I had never felt so alone in my life.

Telling: My Mind is not my Own

If telling the body part of my story was weird, this is going to be even weirder. I always like to have facts to back up my ideas. I think this is partly because in college I was a literature minor, and I had to write so many essays and papers along the lines of "This is what I think of this book, and this is why." And I think it is partly a defense against the unfounded opinions and statements inflicted on my by guess who.

But anyway, explaining the mental mind-fuck that pretty much defined my growing up years is going to suck because it is so hard to think of actual examples of things that happened and were said to me. I know the impression I was left with, but I can't always state why.

Fuck this. I'm just going to dive in. Maybe something will come to me.

These are the messages I lived with growing up:

You are not capable. This was a serious one. My mother really does not believe she is capable of much, or at least she is always saying she is not capable. I totally internalized that. I grew up believing I was incapable of doing math (I got through trigonometry in college, before I got pregnant and took a break), cooking (I'm quite good at it now), drawing (ditto), singing (I get standing ovations at karaoke), sports, and so on.

My mother sabotaged me quite a bit in this direction, too. She set me up to fail, so to speak. The whole math issue makes a great example. It played out like this:

I was always a little slow in processing math problems. The root issue was that I had never truly memorized my facts (1+1=2, 2+2=4, etc.) and then it took me forever to do more complicated problems. My mother gave me a few conflicting messages here: 1. You don't need much math for real life, so just do what you have to to get through this. 2. You have to get good grades (in grade school) if you want to get into a good college. 3. These math problems you were given are too hard. 4. You must please the nuns, so you must do all these problems.

Mom's idea of helping me with my homework was, after supper and after all the kitchen was meticulously cleaned and immaculate, (about 8: 30 at night) she would sit down with me and a ditto-copied sheet of homework problems. Say the first problem was 736 x 592. So we would begin the painstaking process of, "Julie, what is 6 x 2? Yes, 12. Now write the two and carry the one. OK, now what is 2 x 3?" and so on. There were probably 30 problems on a page. This took hours. So it was no wonder I hated math and began to see it as a boring, painful process. (Now that I have had this epiphany, I think I would like to go back to school and take calculus. Just because I can!)

It didn't take that much effort to mess me over on most things. If it had, life might have been easier for me. But is some cases, it was enough to be told, "Quit singing! You are annoying! Your singing voice is terrible!" And in the case of sports, I really wasn't very athletic, so a simple "I told you so." worked wonders.

Add to that, I picked up her habit of saying "I can't" when I meant "I don't want to" or "I don't feel like it." And then I began to believe it. Oh, what a mess.

You are not lovable and You have worth only as much as you can be useful to other people. This was partly tied to my weight. as in "No boy is going to want you if you are fat." (Since she didn't want me having sex anyway, I don't see why it mattered.) But then: "Boys only want one thing." (NOT my fascinating company, if you know what I mean!) Romance and friendships were not something that happen naturally, they had to be cultivated. I was told "You should get on so-and-so's good side because she has _________." To this day, I have no idea how to make friends (and therefore no friends) . I never reach out to anyone because I really don't feel that I have anything to offer. Conversely, I don't want to be perceived as having an ulterior motive for friendship. Therefore I do nothing.

The world is a dangerous place. Be afraid, be very afraid. Let you fear smother you like a blanket, and don't ever imagine you can protect yourself. The only safe place is inside this little cocoon that I want you to stay in. And if you don't heed this advice, you won't get any help from me because:

You are not worth defending and protecting. Bullies, child molesters, and anybody else had free rein with me. My childhood and teen years were a long parade of perverts, schoolyard bullies, abusive teachers, ass-grabbing employers, deadbeat paper-route customers, and a whole bunch of people who wanted to take advantage of me or hurt me in large and small ways. I was never allowed to defend myself and my mother never, ever, even once went to bat for me on any issue. Her advice was to laugh off insults, not get too close to sexual predators (because of course, if they were family, we still had to see them), and never, ever make a scene. Anybody and everybody was apparently allowed to speak to me, humiliate me, and touch my body in whatever way they saw fit--to release anger, frustration, and sexual tension. It didn't matter how I felt about the matter--I was not to fight back and not to make a scene. Apparently the only person she didn't didn't think should be able to fuck me (literally or figuratively) was the one person I wanted to--my boyfriend. Although once consensual sex turned into coerced quasi-rape, then that was OK.


You cannot think for yourself. You do not have an original thought in your head. Your opinions, tastes, and ideas are not valid. If I ever disagreed with her, it was considered a personal attack. My fashion sense was always in question. Her favorite phrase was "Who told you?" as in, "Who told you leg warmers are in style? Who told you polyester pants are ugly? Who told you nobody wears socks with boat shoes?" As if, I couldn't see for myself.

Your feelings are not important. You are over dramatic. You make mountains out of molehills. Didn't matter what the issue was. Unfair teachers? Treacherous girlfriends? Get over it. It's not that big a deal anyway.

Your feelings are not important. Your anger is unacceptable. More important, it's un-lady-like. Ladies don't get mad, they get walked on. Even when one of my deranged newspaper route customers turned his dogs loose on me, I was the one who got in trouble for filing a police report, because, What will the neighbors think?

You do not deserve privacy. I learned not to keep a diary. Enough said.

OK, I have had enough of this. I am starting to sound like a narcissistic whiner myself. I guess that means that the catharsis portion of this program is now concluded, and I can move on to better things.

Telling: My body was not my own.

I have been awake since 3 am. I have to tell some of this.

The funny thing with survivors is that the story changes sometimes. Sometimes the memories change, like shifting sand. The memory you remembered yesterday with photographic recall and gospel certainty can drift and morph into something very different over night. Sometimes it feels like all your memories together are no more than one long fever-dream, and you are going to wake any moment into a world that makes sense.

What makes it harder for survivors is that the people around you--perpetrators, other victims, and even random bystanders--will tell that you are crazy. You remembered it wrong, misinterpreted, are lying, are deranged. You already feel bad, evil, dirty, and ashamed for what is happening to you, and then all these other people, for reasons of their own, tell you your memories are just not valid.

The reason all this is coming right now, or at least part of the reason, is my recent reading about Narcissistic Personality Disorder. One of the things I read, is that NPD people will constantly attempt to re-write history and re-frame the world in order to support their own twisted reality. That right there was an ah-ha moment for me. It made sense of so much.

And one more thing--the really important thing--I never, ever felt that I actually mattered to my mother. Even today, in my fights with Ted, the thing I blurt out most often is--LOVE ME, PAY ATTENTION TO ME. ACT LIKE I MATTER TO YOU. If she doesn't truly have NPD, then whatever is wrong with her is damn close to it. Because I am telling you, I never fucking figured out how somebody could adopt a child and then abuse it. How they could not care about it. Now I guess I know.

My story from here on out is not really a narrative, it' s more like the changing and repeating images in a music video. Lots of things happened at once, or more to the point, at the same times in my life. Things overlapped, and changed gradually as I got older, as my father got sicker and died, and in general as our lives changed.

My body was never really my own. That seems so weird because, what could belong to a person more than their own body? This is how it was: I was not allowed to bathe alone until I was more than 5 years old, and my mother and I could no longer fit in the bath tub together. (Supposedly we were saving on the water bill. I was amazed when I had my first house and found out how little water costs.) Bathing was painful and humiliating. I had to stand in the tub and have my genitals scrubbed with soap and a wet, rough cloth. No bodily orifice was safe: After I got out of the tub, my ears and nose were invaded with cotton swabs. My nails were cleaned with a metal file jammed under them. Looking back it's a wonder that I now perform any personal hygiene at all. Strangely, the worst horror for me was that every bloody time we took a bath, my mother would bend from the waist with her back to me (I guess to pick up a towel or something?) and give me a perfect view of her genitals. Sometimes I think this was half-intentional, and sometimes I think she just had her head up her ass. Either way, it was horrifying for me. I always had to look and see if she was going to do it again, much in the same way people stare at gory road accidents.

Once I outgrew the bath tub sharing, things got stranger. No doubt I was a chubby kid. I have the pictures to prove it. But looking at those pictures now, I see a little girl who was going to grow up with a youthful face and feminine curves. My mother saw something quite different. I know she was very concerned about my weight because she told everyone who would listen "Oh, Julie (my given name) just has a little baby fat. The doctor says she'll grow out of it." When I finally gained the right to bathe by my self, I spent some of the time lying in the tub, looking at the mound my round belly made sticking up out of the water, and loathing myself. I was 5.

I took ballet lessons for two years. When, like most little girls, I proclaimed that I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up, I was laughed at. Not in a "Oh, isn't that cute" kind of way, more like a "Don't be ridiculous" kind of way. Didn't I know, ballerinas had to be thin? The next year, I got changed to tap dance, which I hated. The year after that, and for may years after, it was swimming, which I hated even more. This strikes me as so ridiculous now. I had a physical activity which I loved, enough to contemplate doing a whole lot of it when I grew up. If my mother wanted me to get exercise, which I guess was supposed to be the main point, why didn't she just leave me where I was? I used to put on my tutu and dance all around the house, burning off all kinds of energy. Why fuck with me? (Is dancing for a living now my subtle revenge? Oh, yes.)

I was the target of two bullies in grade school. Starting in the first grade, this little brat whose last name started with the same letter as mine (so we were ALWAYS next to each other) started punching me without provocation. I would punch him back, and always get caught. Nobody ever seemed to believe I had not started it. I tried to tell my mom, "but he hit me first!" "That's OK, dear. It means he likes you." WTF?

The diets started in 6th grade. (The year I got my period.) First it was Diet Workshop, with a 750 calorie diet. (For a 12-year old--yikes!) and then some of my dad's diabetic diets. None of this worked because 1) I didn't really need it and 2) I rebelled by secretly binge eating whenever I could. Even today, I hide food occasionally. We have foods that are not kept in the house, because I can't leave them alone.

By the time I was in high school, and my father had passed away, my weight became a huge concern for my mother. It was so important, in fact, that my sophomore-year Christmas present was a Nutra-system program. (That was the year I had my first steady boyfriend, BTW.) Nutra-system makes you buy and eat all their own (horrible, bland, tiny portions) of food. I passed my birthday and my first "real" Valentine's Day (with a boyfriend) munching on freeze-dried food. I couldn't get to my goal weight (because it was too low--duh!) and resorted to a 600-calorie a day fast program. I was under a doctor's supervision and had a note excusing me from PE. I finally made it to 133 lbs, and started the maintainence program.

By that time I had my own horse, the support of which required 3 paper routes and a part-time job. On Easter morning that year, I was getting ready to take off with a heavy sack of Sunday papers. As I was getting ready to leave, Mom suggested I stop at the bakery on the way back and get a sack of pastries. Since we were supposed to go to somewhere for Easter dinner, I had planned to eat a light breakfast, maybe an egg and toast or something like that, when I got back. When I told my mother this, she flew into rage. I still remember her screaming at me, "WHY CAN'T YOU EAT LIKE A NORMAL PERSON?" (I should probably mention that my mother is grossly unqualified to discuss what normal people eat. I know this, now.) I crumbled. I ate the pastry. I gave up. Months and months of dieting and who knows how much money went out the window that day. Within months, my new "skinny" wardrobe had to be replaced, and my nice new riding habit no longer fit. My last few years of life at home alternated between her nagging me about my weight, my attempting to loose weight, and binge eating, both by myself and with my mother's help.

Did you catch that? My mother wanted me to lose weight in the first place. Then she went to ridiculous and expensive lengths to get the weight gone. THEN she manipulated me into breaking the very diet that had cost her so much money and me so much misery. Ted now regards this story as proof that no matter what I do, I will never make my mother happy. I think he must be right.

Not only my weight, but every aspect of my body was my mother's business. She was and always has been fascinated with my urinary habits. I had continuous bladder infections as a child until the problem was surgically corrected when I was 4. She tells everyone she meets about my potty training. (Next time she does it in front of me, I intend to say something.) She is forever asking me (and now my son) if we have to go to the bathroom. (In reaction to this, I learned to hold it a loooooooooong time. I'm sure I will pay for that someday.)

I had beautiful long hair when I was a kid. Until my mother manipulated me into getting it all cut off when I was 5, because she said it was too much work for her. The truth is, all that long pretty red hair used to get me tons of attention, which embarrassed me and probably annoyed her. My hair is my best (perhaps only good) feature, and it looks much better long. Keeping my hair long was a constant battle, because my mother was always trying to get me to cut it off. Since I moved out of her house, I have had my hair cut short only once--when a terrible perm fried it completely and there was nothing to do but start over.

Like most teenagers, I experimented with clothes, makeup, nail polish, and so on.
We fought bloody battles over every little aspect of my appearance--even stuff that didn't matter, like nail polish. I once got grounded because I painted stripes down my nails. It seems like a little thing, but it still pisses me off.

Once I started working, I learned how to shop carefully and put together a nice wardrobe. The funny thing was, I didn't especially want to look slutty, just fashionable. It was the mid-80's. I preferred the preppy look for school, and the Madonna Lucky-Star look for going out. My mother would frequently go into my room on the pretext of cleaning (she was actually snooping) and get all my clothes, and wash them in HOT water. She boiled my clothes to death.

I stayed a virgin until I was 18. When I did have sex, it was with my boyfriend of 2 1/2 years. We were planning to get married at the time. I used condoms until I went to the county health clinic and got myself on the pill. I figured out everything I needed to know by myself--long before we had internet research. I was probably the most careful and responsible teenager I knew. I can't remember how my mother found out, but I do remember her bizarre response.

"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?" I never understood that. Here I was, being responsible and making sure not to get pregnant. It was my body and I was taking care of it.

The boyfriend was living with us at the time, and for a number of reasons, the relationship soured a few months later. He began to force his attentions on me in a stalker-ish kind of way. Sex at that time didn't seem exactly like rape as I imagined it, but saying no was not an option. Life became hell. I told my mom that the boyfriend would have to go. Her response was that she could not abandon him and that by having sex with him in the first place, I had given up my right not to have sex with him now. In other words, the fact that I was now being coerced into sex was all my own fault.

It wasn't long after that I moved in with a new boyfriend and got the hell out of there. I only exchanged one hell for another, but that is a different story.

It's time to tell

This is it. It's time to tell. I used to be a multiple personality system. The last alter personalty integrated 8 or 9 years ago. So that part of my life is now sealed. We, the personalities of the Sisterhood, told our collective story once, long ago. But now, there is just me, Erin, who came to the Sisterhood in adulthood, springing forth fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' forehead.

So now this is MY story. In the end, all the other personalities except the original, damaged core, merged into me. Their stories wove together and became my story.

And now it is time to tell.

I was born in February 1969 and adopted immediately by a salesman and his wife, who had lost their 18 year old son 20 months before. I was once told the adoption process had taken 4 months. Another time I was told 4 years. My mother quit work to raise me.

We were alone together quite bit. My Dad was a traveling salesman, who could be gone up to 5 days at a time. He was also a serious amateur athlete, a grade school boys' football and basketball coach, head of the school athletic association, member of the parish council, CYO umpire/referee, 16-inch softball umpire, Knight of Columbus, and (I think) American Legionier. Like many sales professionals, he was gregarious in public, and quiet at home. He loved TV sit-coms and movies about Nazi's and gangsters. He would watch any type of sport or competition on TV.

Most of my memoires of my Dad are pleasent and happy ones. We went camping several times a year in a Starcraft pop-up. I remember those as peaceful and happy times. My Dad taught me a lot of things: how to do embroidery and needlework, how to build things, how to play gin rummy and blackjack, and a little about sales. I never did catch on to team sports, poker, or some of the other stuff he tried to show me. When I was about 9 or 10, I started going with him on short sales trips to southern Illinois, Indiana, and maybe Iowa. He took me to Amish country the first time. He never recognised my horseback riding as a sport as he understood sports, but he did go to some of my shows and helped me earn money to pay for horse-related expenses. I think he wished he could afford to buy me a horse, if only to stop my constant pestering for one. ( I leased horses from my 4-H leader for several years.) I was seriously involved in a horse-knowledge competition through 4-H called Horse Bowl (like College Bowl) and the last year of his life, he helped coach my team. I won state champion that year, and it was the last thing I did that made him proud. He died a week later. I was 13.

Not to make my dad out as a saint or anything, I will say that he had a horrible, explosive temper. I don't believe he ever abused me, but I did get the belt a couple of times. He was mostly a yeller--a big man with a big voice that made the dog hide under the kitchen table. Then he would have whatever it was off his chest and move on. I must confess this is my own style and I battle it constantly with my son. I have now toned it down from big-time yelling to impatient snarky-ness, most of the time. Although it is possible, I don't believe my father was one of my sexual predators, either. I am pretty sure this is a fairly objective assessment. It just does not fit with the way I remember him.

So, with my Dad absent a lot of the time until he died, I was let pretty much alone with my mother. She spent quite a bit of time with her parents, and I was quite close to my grandma. She had also been in sales, a retail manager for Spiegel's when they still had brick-and-mortar stores, and quite successful. She loved horses, and everyone in the family believed that was where I "got it from." She was a gifted artist and crafter, who could sew, quilt, cook, bake, draw paint, quilt, knit . . . . you get the picture. We spent hours together making things and talking horses. She died when I was 28 or so, and I miss her to this day.

My grandfather was another story entirely. A retired history teacher, he seemed to me distant and forbidding. I feared him. He died when I was 21. I quit therapy before I could "see" my abusers' faces in my memory, but I have good reason to believe he abused both of his daughters and me as well. What I do know for sure is that my aunt sent a letter (a hateful, terrible letter full of lies, according to my mother and grandmother) to my grandfather and a copy of it to my mother and who knows who else. That was the last time my immediate family had any contact with her. The only other thing I ever heard about it was that my aunts daughter once told my grandmother, "It's not you, it's Granddaddy." Extremely circumstantial evidence, but it fits with the rest of my life.

This now brings me to the last important person in my early life, and the only one still alive today. My mother. My mother is also the only major abuser I know for sure. My mother fucked with me mentally and emotionally. She sexually molested me. She tried to control my food, my weight, my personality, my speech, and my thoughts. She spied on me. She raided my room and read my diaries. She flirted with my boyfriends. She filled me with her fears, her self-hatred, her distorted body image, and all her other problems. She told me what I should like, do, think, and feel. She denied that I ever had any boundaries, physical or otherwise, that separated me from her in even the most obvious and essential ways. In short, I was never allowed to "be myself;" I was just supposed to be what she wanted me to be.

Now I am going to tell all about it.

Only one question

I have been reading until my eyes are ready to bleed, and I have only one question. It came to me while I was at church today. I want to keep my mom part of my and more importantly my son's life. Kiddo seems to adore his grandma, which apparently is exactly what she needs. My MIL passed away when he was only 6 weeks old, so he has no other grandmothers left. I really, really, really hate to break up that relationship. I am not entirely convinced I have to break it off completely.

So here is the question:

How can I be kind to my mother, while protecting my son and myself?

Anybody?

Today's Reading

Yep. More of the same. Still on this arrogant dude's site.

The slightest criticism, disagreement, shades of opinion – are interpreted by the narcissist as an all out assault against his very existence. (more)

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The narcissist is pathologically envious of people – and projects his feelings unto them. He is always over-suspicious, on guard, ready to fend off an imminent attack. A punishment to the narcissist is a major surprise and a nuisance but it also proves to him and validates what he suspected all the time: that he is being persecuted. Strong forces are poised against him . . . . (more)

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The narcissistic parent seems to employ a myriad of primitive defences in his dealings with his children. Splitting – idealising the child and devaluing him in cycles, which reflect the internal dynamics of the parent rather than anything the child does. Projective Identification – forcing the child into behaviours and traits, which reflect the parents' fears regarding himself or herself, his or her self-image and his or her self-worth. This is a particularly powerful and pernicious mechanism. If the narcissist parent fears his own deficiencies ("defects"), vulnerability, perceived weaknesses, susceptibility, gullibility, or emotions – he is likely to force the child to "feel" these rejected and (to him) repulsive emotions, to behave in ways strongly abhorred by the parent, to exhibit character traits the parent strongly rejects in himself.

The child, in a way, becomes the "trash bin" of the parents' inhibitions, fears, self-loathing, self-contempt, perceived lack of self-worth, sense of inadequacy, rejected traits, repressed emotions, failures and emotional reticence. Coupled with the parent's treatment of the child as the parent's extension, it serves to totally inhibit the psychological growth and emotional maturation of the child. The child becomes a reflection of the parent – a vessel through which the parent experiences and realises himself for better (hopes, aspirations, ambition, life goals) and for worse (weaknesses, "undesirable" emotions, "negative" traits). A host of other, simpler, defence mechanisms employed by the parent are likely to obscure the predominant use of projective identification: projection, displacement, intellectualisation, depersonalisation. Relationships between such parents and their progeny easily deteriorate to sexual or other modes of abuse because there are no functioning boundaries between them. (more)

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Narcissists should be held accountable for most of what they do because they can tell wrong from right AND they can refrain from acting as they do. They simply don't care enough about others to put to good use these twin abilities. Others are not sufficiently important to dent the narcissist's indifference. (more)

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The narcissist perceives every disagreement – let alone criticism – as nothing short of a THREAT. He reacts defensively. He becomes indignant, aggressive and cold. He detaches emotionally for fear of yet another (narcissistic) injury. He devalues the person who made the disparaging remark. By holding the critic in contempt, by diminishing the stature of the discordant conversant – he minimises the impact on himself of the disagreement or criticism. Like a trapped animal, the narcissist is forever on the lookout: was this remark meant to demean him? Was this sentence a deliberate attack? Gradually, his mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference until he loses touch with reality and retreats to his own world of fantasised grandiosity. . . . .

Take, for example, the narcissist’s family. Narcissists often instruct, order, or threaten their children into hiding the truth of abuse, malfunction, maladaptation, fear, pervasive sadness, violence, mutual hatred and mutual repulsion which are the hallmarks of the narcissistic family. "Not to launder the dirty laundry outside" is a common sentence. The whole family conforms to the fantastic, grandiose, perfect and superior narrative invented by the narcissist. The family becomes an extension of the False Self. This is an integral function of the Sources of Secondary Narcissistic Supply. Criticising, disagreeing, or exposing the fiction and lies, penetrating the family's facade – are considered to be mortal sins. The sinner is immediately subjected to severe and constant emotional harassment, guilt and blame – and to abuse, including physical abuse. This state of things is especially typical of families with a case of sexual abuse. . . . .

An amusing by-product of this atmosphere of concealment and falsity is mutiny.(more)

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Humans are interchangeable and the narcissist anyhow does not distinguish one individual from another. . . .

The narcissist equates emotions with weakness. He regards the sentimental and the emotional with contempt. He looks down on the sensitive and the vulnerable. He derides and despises the dependent and the loving. He mocks expressions of compassion and passion. He is devoid of empathy.(more)

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The narcissist feels that he controls his human environment mostly by manipulation and mainly by emotional extortion and distortion. This is not far from reality. He suppresses any sign of emotional autonomy. He feels threatened and belittled by an emotion not fostered by him or by his actions directly or indirectly. Counteracting someone else's happiness is the narcissist's way of reminding everyone: I am here, I am omnipotent, you are at my mercy and you will feel happy only when I tell you to. . . .

It is impossible to have a relationship with a narcissist that is meaningful to the narcissist.(more)

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Money stands for love in the narcissist's emotional vocabulary. Having been deprived of love early on in his childhood, the narcissist constantly seeks for love substitutes. To him, money is THE love substitute. (more)

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Deploying money to control others IS narcissistic. (more)

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3. Living with a Narcissist

You cannot change people, not in the real, profound, deep sense. You can only adapt to them and adapt them to you. If you do find her rewarding at times - you should do two things, in my opinion:

1. Determine your limits and boundaries. How much and in which ways can you adapt to her (=accept her AS SHE IS) AND to which extent and in which ways would you like her to adapt to you (=accept you as you are). Act accordingly. Accept what you have decided to accept and reject the rest.
   Change in you what you are willing and able to change - and ignore the rest.
   It is sort of an unwritten contract of co-existence (could well be a written one, if you are more formally inclined).

2. Try to maximize the number of times that "...her walls are down", that you "..find her totally fascinating and everything I desire." What makes her behave this way? Is it something that YOU say or do? Is it preceded by events of a specific nature? Is there anything you can do to make her behave this way more often? (more)
   

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To be raised as the centre of attention and as the "special one" is to be abused.

The burden of expectations, being taken for granted, the fear to disappoint, the feeling that one is merely an object (of adulation, in this case), an instrument to fulfil other people's dreams, an extension of one's parents - this is the highest, most subtly refined, stealthily pernicious form of abuse. (more)

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Narcissists know the difference between right and wrong and to a large extent they do CHOOSE to do the things they do. They are lazy and have no empathy. To be considerate and understanding one has to invest effort and thought and to empathize. (more)

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A good feeling is also a kind of narcissist supply. . . .I do good things but I am not a good person in the sense that, to me, people are bi-dimensional, instruments for my satisfaction, the fountains of my narcissistic supply, objects. (more)
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Narcissists HATE happiness and joy and ebullience and vivaciousness and, in short, life itself. . . . But there is nothing which reminds narcissists of the totality of their envious experiences than happiness. They lash out at happy people out of their own deprivation. . . . Counteracting someone else's happiness is the narcissist's way of reminding everyone: I am here, I am omnipotent, you are at my mercy, and you will feel happy only when I tell you to. (more)

More in the same vein

From Narcissistic Personality Disorder, on the page about Traits of NPD:

Narcissists are grandiose. They live in an artificial self invented from fantasies of absolute or perfect power, genius, beauty, etc. . . . Grandiosity can take various forms -- a narcissistic woman may believe herself to be the very model of perfect womanhood, the standard by which all others are measured, and she will try to force her daughters to be just like her, she will not be able to cope with daughters who are taller or shorter than she is, fatter or thinner, who have bigger or smaller feet, breasts, teeth, who have different favorite colors than hers, etc.

Or daughters with different opinions, tastes, ambitions, boundaries, etc. God forbid I should think for myself or make any parenting decision different from what she did.

And they criticize, gripe, and complain about almost everything and almost everyone almost all the time. . . . Narcissists are noted for their negative, pessimistic, cynical, or gloomy outlook on life. Sarcasm seems to be a narcissistic specialty, not to mention spite. Lacking love and pleasure, they don't have a good reason for anything they do and they think everyone else is just like them, except they're honest and the rest of us are hypocrites. Nothing real is ever perfect enough to satisfy them, so are they are constantly complaining and criticizing -- to the point of verbal abuse and insult.

See my posts about vacation.

There are usually a favored few whom narcissists regard as absolutely above reproach, even for egregious misconduct or actual crime, and about whom they won't brook the slightest criticism. These are people the narcissists are terrified of, (emphasis mine) though they'll tell you that what they feel is love and respect; apparently they don't know the difference between fear and love.

This makes me wonder about my father, step-father, and grandparents. I have always had suspicians about what my grandfather did to his two daughters and to me. Not that this is proof of anything, it just gives me pause.

Narcissists are very disappointing as gift-givers. This is not a trivial consideration in personal relationships. I've seen narcissistic people sweetly solicit someone's preferences ("Go ahead -- tell me what you really want"), make a show of paying attention to the answer ("Don't you think I'm nice?"), and then deliver something other than what was asked for -- and feel abused and unappreciated when someone else gets gratitude for fulfilling the very request that the narcissist evoked in the first place.

This is an exact picture of my mom. She asks what we want, buys what she pleases (Identical, really cheap, gifts for me and SIL, and for Ted and my foster brother--although I could not be more different from Sue, nor Ted from Mike) and then does the hurt routine if we are not absolutely thrilled.


Boy, oh boy. Now that gives me some stuff to think about. The most depressing part is this:

Now, it is possible to have a relatively smooth relationship with a narcissist, and it's possible to maintain it for a long time. The first requirement for this, though, is distance: this simply cannot be done with a narcissist you live with. Given distance, or only transient and intermittent contact, you can get along with narcissists by treating them as infants: you give them whatever they want or need whenever they ask and do not expect any reciprocation at all, do not expect them to show the slightest interest in you or your life (or even in why you're bothering with them at all), do not expect them to be able to do anything that you need or want, do not expect them to apologize or make amends or show any consideration for your feelings, do not expect them to take ordinary responsibility in any way . . . .It is also essential that you keep emotional distance from narcissists. . . . Once they know you are emotionally attached to them, they expect to be able to use you like an appliance and shove you around like a piece of furniture. If you object, then they'll say that obviously you don't really love them or else you'd let them do whatever they want with you. If you should be so uppity as to express a mind and heart of your own, then they will cut you off . . . .

Or retreat like a turtle into a shell.

How sad. How sad for me, for my son, and for my mom. I know, intuitively, that there is potential for a much richer emotional life than what we have now or ever will have. I have read over this web site twice now, trying to take it all in. I have always known that my mom was a pathetic, empty shell without an original thought in her head. Now I see why I have never felt I really mattered to her. I see why none of our conversations make sense.

What I don't see is, how am I going to deal with the relationship between my son, and the grandmother he adores?

This explains a lot.

My girl Katherine at Our Report Card posted a link to a terrific page about Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This particular quotation is as apt a description of my childhood as I have ever seen:

Having a narcissist for a mother is a lot like living under the supervision of a six-year-old. Narcissists are always pretending, and with a narcissistic mother it's a lot like, "Let's play house. I'll pretend to be the mother and you pretend to be the baby," though, as the baby, you'll be expected to act like a doll (keep smiling, no matter what) and you'll be treated like a doll -- as an inanimate object, as a toy to be manipulated, dressed and undressed, walked around and have words put in your mouth; something that can be broken but not hurt, something that will be dropped and forgotten when when something more interesting comes along. With narcissists, there's also usually a fair element of "playing doctor," as well -- of childish sexual curiosity that may find expression in "seductive" behavior towards the child, such as inappropriate touching of the genitals . . . . (more)

I also especially liked this part:

The most telling thing that narcissists do is contradict themselves. They will do this virtually in the same sentence, without even stopping to take a breath. It can be trivial (e.g., about what they want for lunch) or it can be serious (e.g., about whether or not they love you). When you ask them which one they mean, they'll deny ever saying the first one, though it may literally have been only seconds since they said it -- really, how could you think they'd ever have said that? You need to have your head examined! They will contradict FACTS. They will lie to you about things that you did together. They will misquote you to yourself. If you disagree with them, they'll say you're lying, making stuff up, or are crazy. (more)

I can't add much right now, as my keyboard is still f*d up. Let it suffice to say, suddenly whole chunks of my life make more sense.