I guess I did improve with each child and each year as they added on, but this poor guy got the brunt of all of the fear and emotional abuse that I'd absorbed for the first 25 years of my life.
It took the next 25 years of my life and my kids' lives for me to conquer both my fear and the monster who worked so diligently to give it to me. She made sure to reinforce the fresh layers as she slapped them on with every single interaction.
The biggest and deepest fear was that of her being able to take away from me my father's love. Oh, how she worked at that one. She, my Narcissistic/Psychopathic mother, came as close as one possibly could to doing just that at one point, when this boy was still a baby.
She was so happy that day. The day my daddy proclaimed that all of his children weren't worth having - including me. She was the happiest I ever saw her at the very moment his words fell on my disbelieving ears and my face was falling to the floor. She smiled, giggled, and finally laughed like a demonic temptress. My own mother - a demon - the dreamer of infanticide - the happy murderess - the soul crusher - the mind trap and gatekeeper.
There she sat in her chair at the kitchen table with the fan facing only to her as always. With his calm proclamation, she lit up like a Christmas tree and did a little bounce in her chair, simultaneously slapping the table with her chubby, heavy right hand. Her arms blubbed in response, and her eyes twinkled as the cool breeze dried the beads of sweat pulling from her hairline. Happy as a pig in a poke, I thought.
Since this was during just a regular conversation - there was no upset at all - my dad's statement came off as confusing and mean - a hit upside the head for nothing - that's what the NM loved best. The equation goes like this: NM lies plus BPD Paranoid father instantly believes = wicked attraction. They exchanged agreeable nods - all but the high fives, while I played right into her hand, groveling and crying, as I continued making the bottle at the kitchen counter for the baby.
Turns out before I arrived, she wound him up with a pack of lies - always the same kind. Your kids don't love you. You are dreaming if you think they care about you. Then she would add "us". She loved to trick him into thinking that it was he and her against the world including and especially their children. He was drinking in those years (no explanation needed as to why) so she took full advantage - she couldn't have done a better job had she been able to hypnotize the poor guy.
I never gave up on him. Not ever. She pulled this up until the day he died, but I remained just as steadfast, and he left this earth knowing the truth. I didn't have to tell him - he finally figured it out. He spent his last fifteen years doing just that - quietly, trying to put together why I kept coming back to him - no matter how far away they moved, I made sure I was in his life until he died.
I didn't know then exactly what lies she was feeding him, but I knew it was negative about me because he always loved me so much - and I knew, too, because of the way my siblings acted toward me. Something was really wrong. Nothing ever measured up or made sense.
I knew it was her though because she would pick a fight with me - poke and poke and manipulate and lie, until I would be forced to cut visits short - many times. Then after leaving, she'd tell enormous lies about why I left. I was crazy. On drugs. Mad at my sister. You name it - ALL LIES. Poor Dad like everyone else believed her. But, even so, he wasn't stupid - things didn't make sense.
He knew me. That was the only thing she couldn't change. He and I had a special connection that she couldn't possibly figure out. She was clueless about love. It drove her nuts how we could finish each other's sentences and laugh and laugh at things we both thought funny. Psychopaths don't get humor so she ignored us.
Usually, I would pay for it after Dad went to bed and NM would start in on me. She'd become a whole different person when he couldn't hear or see her. Evil. Just evil. "Your husband might take those kids to Egypt and you'll NEVER get them back. Or those Palestinian's deserve to be slaughtered. God chose the Jews over the Arabs and God never changes his mind or makes mistakes." She'd say with an evil grin. This woman is a piece of work. I should have recorded these sessions (25 years of torture). My father would have divorced her. I just figured he'd find out on his own some how. I never did tell him even one rotten thing she said or did to me. Not one. Looking back on it, I know it was because of FEAR - that fear she instilled in me from birth that kept my mouth shut.
I dragged that fear with me and wrapped myself in it tight like plastic wrap everywhere I went until three weeks after my dad died. Then on an innocent visit to her home to see how she was - if she needed anything... this wacko nervy fearless bitch started in with the emotional abuse. Using my late father this time to hurt me. Telling me she went to his memorial service that day but didn't tell me about it because she figured I wouldn't care one way or the other about it.
That was the end. All of that fear spun off from me like someone was pulling that plastic wrap off hand over fist around and around faster and faster - I was dizzy with freedom in a single moment!! I wasn't playing any of her games anymore. I just looked at her and took a cleansing breath and sat down in the living room chair that was my father's, opposite hers.
I looked her straight in the eye and told her for the first time in my life exactly what I thought of her and her lies about me and my siblings.
(Here's the kind of thing she would do like right then). She would keep the service from me, but tell my siblings she invited me and I told her I didn't care about the service and said NO I'm not going. To which they all were shocked and agreed that yes I'm crazy. When I tell my siblings the truth, they don't know what to believe. The story of my life surrounding the NM.
But, those days are over. I made that perfectly clear to the NM that moment in the living room of her place. I didn't shed a tear. I wasn't angry. I was free. Whatever she wishes were happening, she proclaims to be. So she told me I had a lot of anger and I needed to go to that Mosque of mine and ask for forgiveness. Nope it's not going to work, NM - I am still not playing. I told her "You don't have that kind of power over me anymore. Never again. I'm not angry. Not in the least. In fact, I'm not anything where you are concerned. I feel absolutely nothing for you".
I left there vindicated. All the crazy making NM worked so diligently to perfect ultimately failed on me. It was a sad day for the NM. I never saw her speechless and defeated. But that moment was just priceless because I saw it then.
Best of all, I left all that FEAR right there with her. I don't know what she would do with it since psychopaths have little or even no fear - but surely she's forced it onto someone by now. She had a good 50 year run using me as her main source of entertainment and torture - but now if I could wager a guess, her new victim is one of my siblings - which ever is the kindest to her.
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