But I know it won't be.
Mother called shitty cousin yesterday. The shitty cousin that started this entire blog. The shitty cousin I owe everything in my life to. She made a shitty choice to be a shitty person and ended up changing my life for the better. Funny how that works out, eh?
Karen. Let's call her Karen. Her real first name starts with a K as well, but she's more of a "Karen" personality. Karen is a bully. An ugly bully at that. She's homely, yet thinks she's cute, and tries to pretend to be more than what she is. She's a raging narcissist who controls every aspect of her husband's and children's lives. Her oldest, from a different husband, was my little buddy when he was little. I loved him so much. I wish I had a pic of him. Let me check to see if I do. I do, but they are of him as an adult. I do have some kid pics of him, but I don't have them scanned into my computer. Anyways, he was a silly little kid who had type 1 diabetes and wanted to grow up to be a doctor to cure diabetes. And he ended up being a pharmacist, because his mother made the choice for him. I heard her bragging about it to her friend. "Oh, we chose being a pharmacist over being a doctor because it was cheaper and less schooling. I told him that was the only choice we'd pay for, so he chose it." (insert rich person laughter here). She's not rich, she just pretends she's something she's not. Like usual.
Anyways, she was a bully in high school, and probably all the years prior as well. She was never nice to me. When we were kids, I was sleeping over and she has a FIT that I wet the bed (I remember this) and her sister, let's call her Taren, since her name starts with a T and she's a version of her sister no, was so nice to me about it and helped me change my clothes and change the sheets. I wasn't a bedwetter. So why this happened the one time in my life at their house...one can only imagine. I will say their father? Was a gigantic fucking asshole (I even wrote a song about him on my YouTube page) who liked to hurt people and do bad things to kids...like take their worst fears and phobias and shove them in their faces. So, did he do something else? I don't know. He was super touchy feely with children and when he got dementia, he tried to feel me up and told me not to tell my husband (wtf?). So maybe. But all Karen cared about was that I was her shitty little cousin who was a nuisance and I wet the bed.
When I called her out for abandoning me in my home with my abusive alcoholic father and never telling anyone to come and save me, all she did was whine about her own life and how she couldn't help me because she was too busy with her own life. Yet, why was she the one who, when she lived with us as a young adult, told me when I was a kid that my dad was an alcoholic? I had knew what one was, but I never realized my dad was one. She could have called CPS on my dad for what he did while she was there, but nope. She did nothing. But leave me behind to rot. My entire family did. My aunts, my uncles, my grandparents. Everyone. Not even my parents' friends or our neighbors or the parents of my friends, ALL PEOPLE WHO WITNESSED the abuse that went on in my home, they all did nothing. Like, not a damn thing. So, I called them all out on it in a blog post on a private blog. And my cousin's shitty daughter got ahold of it (she is just as bad as her mother) and showed it to her mother, who then went to my mother's house and showed her the blog. That blog had hundreds of hits on it. From my cousin, her sister, my mother, and my aunt. And probably my other cousins too.
Anyways, you already know all this if you've read those past posts from way back when.
So, my mom calls her (I thought she called, but I checked our phone, my mom called her) and she spills all the tea about her children's mental health struggles (which is NOBODY'S BUSINESS but her children's) and then proceeds to say "I drive by there all the time and was thinking about stopping by but I don't know if I should." My mom then proceeds to tell her not to unless she calls first, because we have "too much stuff"...which is weird, because our kitchen is very empty, but whatever. So basically my mom was telling me this, and asking "Can she come over and play?"
I normally don't say shit to her about anything. But I looked her straight in the eye and said "That woman is not allowed anywhere near my house. Absolutely not." She asked "why?" She knows damn well why. Though I explained it all over again to her. Not nicely. I told her most of it was HER fault, that she was the one who started all this shit by lying about me and my childhood. About how she did all these terrible things. And she didn't even bat an eye and said "So why did you move in with me here then?" No apology. Nothing. Then she started talking about her brother and ignoring me and slapping a smile on her face. She also kept saying over and over again that she didn't remember, YET she remembered everything else that happened at that time. She also knew 100% to tell her not to come over without calling first. If she had "forgotten" like she said she did, she would have said "Sure, let me ask Shay when would be a good time for you to visit" or "Here is my address! Come over any time you like!"
So we all know she's lying about how much she forgot, especially since if I bring up something else that someone else said or did during the same incident, she totally remembers. Weird, right? She can remember everything in her past EXCEPT what she did wrong to me.
At one point she said "Boy, I can't remember anything." I said "I sure wish I could forget these things. But I'll never forget. I have to live with them forever." She then changed the subject and pretended like we weren't just having an intense discussion about her shitty past.
Sigh.
Well, I know it does no good, but I can't let her keep getting away with pushing me to let my cousin come visit. And it felt good to remind her that I will never forget all the shit she's done. And I never will.
Long, long, after she's gone, I may be able to let it all go. But for now, I have to live with it. And move through it like it's a cramped attic filled with dusty memories. Sometimes I bump into little things. Sometimes I knock a whole stack over (like this moment). But mostly, I walk through it with ease, because I know the paths I've carved like the back of my hand. It's just days like this the mess gets to me and I have to address it. So I go through the boxes and put them back onto their pile, hoping they won't avalanche down again anytime soon.
Growing up, my mother didn't allow me to choose anything. If it was my turn, my item, she would stand over me and choose for me. Playing Yahtzee, she would choose all my turns for me and what to do with my dice. We played it regularly, most likely because I had a hard time with math. Aww, right? You'd think that would bring to mind the idea that when your daughter has a learning disability, you turn what they have hard time with into a game and work on it with her, right? Not my mom. She saw my weakness and decided to use it as a way to make her VERY limited knowledge of math look like she was a genius. Plus, she didn't just get to lord her her second grade math knowledge (I am for real, her knowledge stops at that age, because third grade you learned multiplication and she didn't know that, much less spell it), she got to shame me for my learning disability at the same time, which made her feel good.
She tried doing it again when we moved in here five years ago, and I put a stop to it immediately. But then I made this huge sign that looked beautiful for once (I make pretty shitty signs) that said "meals and memories made here" for the kitchen. And she grabbed it from me and immediately tried to decide where it would look good in the kitchen, rather than let me decide, the person who made it. It's been five years it's been sitting in my garage and now I am going to sell it because I can't even bring myself to want to put it up because it makes me angry AF to look at it. It's just a reminder of all the choices that were stolen from me by her. She chose to cut my oldest son's hair for the first time. She chose how my birthday parties would go and who I would invite (one time, in sixth grade, she chose to invite my entire girl half of my class for a sleepover, even girls I HATED...she also chose for my sixteenth we'd do absolutely nothing). She even chose how my entire wedding was going to go to my ex-husband. Anything in my life that was important, or even minor, she chose for me.
When we moved in here, she told me "I get to decorate the entire house, even outside. You get your bedroom. When I die, you can do what you like with it all." I was going to get no choices once again. It's funny, I am the only child. She has a brother and a sister. Yet, I know how to share. She doesn't. Because with her, it's all or nothing. And so when she went into rehab back in 2021 (less than a year after moving in) after surgery, I decided "Well, if it's all or nothing, it's either me or her. And I can't do this, I need to take my power back". And so I did. I redecorated the entire house and put everything that was hers in her room, including the cat tower that was taking up all the space in the living room. I moved the cat litter to her bedroom as well, as the cats were no longer allowed in the basement (I had all sorts of things I had made for my store that her cat went downstairs and pissed on). I also went through all her stuff in the basement that she's been holding onto for years that she never touched and donated it (my stuff too). I took her old wedding dress (which was my old wedding dress too....remember when I said she made all the choices for my first wedding?...well, she forced me to wear her old wedding dress rather than let met buy my a new one) and my grandmother's wedding dress, both preserved in boxes for no reason. And my shitty narcissistic cousin at one point asked my mother to have my grandmother's wedding dress. And that wasn't going to happen on my watch, so I donated them both. My cousin is the reason I started this blog...she's the catalyst for all of this, so yeah, no, my cousin hated my grandma and her child who she wanted the dress for didn't even know my grandma. So yeah, no. Let strangers have them both.
When she got home, it took her YEARS to get over it. Only dementia stole her memories of what happened and now she acts like this the way it's always been. Or she just accepted it and moved on. Who knows. I hated having to choose me over her...not that I wanted to choose her, I just wanted a mother who could share with me. Who would allow me to be my own person. I am drowning in my own bullshit because of making that choice because I have hard time keeping things organized. My mother used to call me "packrat". Which I find horribly derogatory. But that was what she called me. I just have horrible executive dysfunction due to my ADHD/ASD and I get overwhelmed and everything turns to shit. My mother is better at keeping things straight. We'd make a great team, if only she knew how to work on a team. I think most of her jobs she lost due to the fact she had to be the boss or nothing. Just like at home.
And now I get to make all the decisions again. Well, not all. I let my kids and hubby make decisions, too, but mostly it's me. And I am bad at it. But what I can do? It was either me or her and I had to choose me, because my entire life I was drowning a sea of her. And here I am 48, trying to find out to be an adult because I was never allowed to be one before. Funny, neither was she, but she pretended to be one. She was and is just a five-year-old kid in an seventy-eight year old body pretending to be her age. Maybe her mom didn't allow her to be an adult either? I would have to say that's most likely the answer. My grandmother hardly ever visited our house growing up, we had to go see her. When I grew up, my mother hardly ever visited our houses, we had to go see her. And my mother wanted keys to my house so she could come and go as she liked, which I didn't give her. But visiting? Never. She only came over to tell me what to do with my own house. Which I am sure my grandmother did to her. But unlike my mother and her mother before her and so on, I eventually became wiser. Maybe they didn't have the ability to? I do know it takes a certain level of IQ and EQ to do so. My grandmother had zero EQ, but had a high IQ and my mother has a certain level of EQ....though in a warped way, but a very low IQ. I have both intelligence (130), and a very high EQ (almost too high, it's called "hyper empathy"). So I have the skills to be able to break generational curses. Plus, I don't have their DNA, though I do have my own dumbass DNA I inherited from narcissists and assholes and weirdos, so in a way, my DNA doesn't really matter. I was just born lucky, with the abilities they didn't and don't have.
So I get it. They can't help but be narcissists. They can't help that they don't know how to love. That they don't see us any different from a stranger. Though since they know us so well, we are different, but not in the ways it counts...we're just easier to manipulate and they feel more comfortable with us. And if they feel comfortable, that means they will use us to get what they want in life. But they don't see us any different than a stranger when we do something wrong. They will just drop us like a hot potato, because what we mean to them is no different than a stranger. And they can't help that. I just wish that we, the non-narcissists, didn't have to be subjected to their abuse and bullshit. I wish there was a narcissist gene that they could see and test for and if they test positive, they can't adopt or keep their babies. I know that sounds insane, but because we don't do that, is why we're all so fucked up as humans. Narcissism is everywhere. And will always be everywhere.
We live in a world without choices because all those choices are being made by narcissists. I want to start a non-narcissist community, to give the choices back to people who deserve to have control over their own lives.
I got my choices back. It's not easy to live without a mother's input or help. But if we want control over our own lives, that's what we have to give up. I just wish it didn't have to be this way. Life isn't fair. But why do we have to learn that lesson from our own parents?
She's been annoying ever since her meds have changed back to normal. Why did her doctor even lower them to begin with? He met her for the first time and said "How are you feeling? Good? Then we'll just lower these meds right here..." without even asking her if she wanted to. And when we went back and I said she needed her meds back up to normal, he said "Why did I lower them to begin with?" I was like "Your answer is a good as mine. I have no idea. They were working and you just decided to do it." This doctor is soooooo weird. He can't remember anything and never writes anything down. And he agreed with me that AI is great for diagnosing. I was like...I sure hope you're not using it in your practice, or, if so, please be checking the sources LOL I didn't say that, but uh yeah.
Anyways, she's been annoying, getting angry a couple times, which is now unheard of for her. It's nice she's so quiet about stuff. But the other day she had a doctor's appointment with the same doctor...we JUST went to see him less than a month ago, so I cancelled the appointment. Not only that, there was no way we'd get to his office by the time we'd drop my hubby off to work, so yeah. She had a fucking meltdown. Why? We JUST saw him. She was like "THIS IS THE APPOINTMENT WHERE THEY CHECK MY A1C!!!!" She gives ZERO shits about her health. ZERO. She's just making up a reason to be angry. I said "Ma, you don't need a doctor's appointment to check your A1C, they can just order that." That seemed to calm her, but god, why does she get so pissy when she feels good? She's also been pissy lately about her medicine, screaming "AM I GOING TO GET MY MEDS TODAY???" from the dinner table. I said "They're right there." She screamed "WHERE?!" I said "Look behind you." "Oh, you left them up there!" I replied "Ma, that's where I always put them, every single week." I am not prepared for this level of her dementia, if that's what's happening. She's either reverting, because she feels good, or her dementia is getting worse. Last night she did the same thing, asked me for her meds. I said "Don't you have any??" "No!" I said "Well, every week, you take out the night meds and leave me your med container and I refill them in the evening and and put them out for the morning. Why did you give them to me today, and not yesterday?" "Because there were meds in them!" I said "But that's what we do every single week." She ignored me and said "Am I going to get my meds tonight??" I then explained how she needs to give them to me the day before again, and ignored her question. I have no idea if she understood me or not, but I gathered her pills together and had my husband give her her nightly meds, and she said "Oh, this isn't necessary, you didn't have to do this right now." Good grief, I wanted to scream.
But this shit bores me. Her behavior getting bad when she feels good. I am tired of it. Who the fuck on earth acts like an asshole when they feel well, but acts sweet as pie when she feels horrible??? That's so weird. I swear, this woman is a backwards alien and makes no sense. I want a life where I can talk about the good stuff and the amazing stuff. Granted, good and amazing things have been happening, too, but I just need to make my life be more of that instead of this. Because this shit is getting old and I am just so bored of people treating me like shit.
I just want a break. When my mother feels bad and acts good? My son's BPD acts up and he acts bad. When he feels better and acts good, my mother feels better and acts bad. I AM SO TIRED. I need a fucking break. My hubby is off work this week, so we can go places to relax a bit. Our anniversary is in a week, so maybe we can do something fun.
Of course she makes it be where it has to be somewhat about her. Not as bad as her usual self, but still. I woke up to her cleaning the kitchen. Something I've told her time and time again NOT to do. But I let her, because she was using baby wipes and not her usual dirty ass scrubby sponge (that she won't me let me throw away). Then, she comes to me tell me all about how she cleaned the bathroom. Something I just recently told her never to do again, not since she threw away my facial cleanser and expensive shampoo (something I never buy for myself, but going through menopause makes my hair AWFUL and I needed something special). She not only threw these things away, she hid the bottles from me. Rather than just throw them in the bathroom garbage (where I can see them) or the kitchen garbage (same reason) she hid them somewhere I'd never find them. And I still haven't. So, I told her she's no longer allowed to "tidy up" or clean the bathroom in any way for any reason (unless she makes her own mess). And I explicitly told her to never touch any products in the bathroom again, because she moves things where people can't find them.
So today, when she told me she did it again, I interrupted her to say "I just told you you're not allowed to that." She replied "Oh I know, but..." (insert random bullshit here). I said said "I don't care what you did today, I told you never clean the bathroom again unless you made the mess. Did I not say that to you?" "I know but..." (insert random bullshit here). She just kept ignoring me by saying "I know but..." and inserting more information about how she cleaned the bathroom today. So I kept interrupting her and saying "But I told you that you're not allowed to" over and over again. And then I said "Well, I did tell you that I don't want you doing it, so do not do that again. That's not your stuff to clean or organize. So please leave it all alone." She got angry and said "FINE." Which is silly, because I told her this before. More than once.
Then thinking about her cleaning my stove/oven today really pissed me off because it was then I realized she was doing it so she could say she did it, to piss me of even more. The stove/oven is the one place I REFUSE to let her even entertain cleaning, because she will use things she's used on her dirty toilet to clean it with. But I said nothing about it. Let her think she's won. I don't care. I just want her to stop.
So then.....the really fun part happened. She addressed my son's birthday card to my son by his birthfather's last name. I looked one look at his card and went into her room and said "Mom! What is our last name??" She said "Oh, I addressed the card that way because those are his middle names. Are they not?" I said "Mom, you've never addressed people's cards with their middle names." She just kept babbling on about how it was his middle names...but never once in his life as she ever once done that. Either it was a total dementia moment, or it was a dig to piss people off. Also considering that for the first time in my youngest son's life, he just recently told his birthfather off (which you can read about here) and both kids have now completely cut contact with him. So way to go, Ma. Making yet another birthday be about you.
This is the first time she's lashed out at my youngest though. He's her golden child. But I guess the dementia means everyone's fair game now. Or maybe she's just sick of pretending.
The thing is, I sound like a petty bitch, stating she can't clean up the bathroom or kitchen. But I have my reasons. Her touching my stuff triggers the ever loving fuck out of me. My entire life she's felt she's had control over my stuff. As a child, she'd not only clean my room when I was at school, but throw everything I loved away. NEVER ONCE did she say "I am going to help you clean your room. You can, and I will the hard stuff." Because that's what you do with an ADHD kid. You let them clean, but you do all the dumb things like throw away the things they want, or clean the things they find gross. And you help them organize their stuff. Not only that, her rules were "my house, my stuff, when you pay rent, then you get to choose". Well, that sure didn't last, because moving in here, I not only paid rent, but groceries and everything else, and yet, she'd taken my things and either hide them from me (which she did a LOT back in the day) or she'd throw my stuff away.
I put a stop to it, but it took YEARS to be able to get to that place with her. And here we are 5 years later, and I am still fighting for the right to not have her have control over my things.
So, rather than make a new sign (because I am so tired of making them), I am just going to remove my items from her reach by installing a locking doorknob on the closet door. OR one of those baby doorknobs. I know her grip strength is bad, but I can't be 100% sure she won't figure it out. So I think I am going to order a doorknob. Because this is just bullshit. And from now on, everything needs to be in the closet, not in the bathroom itself.
I just went in there and my stuff was EVERYWHERE. She put everything in the weirdest places and even put garbage up on the shelves. Yes, she has dementia, and maybe that's why, but since she bragged about it to me, I just don't know. Like I always say on this blog (and in real life): I ask her twice. Then I remove the item (or her access to the item) from her reach. I am not going to play her games of "I do whatever I want just so you'll yell at me!" Nope. Now she doesn't get access to my stuff anymore.
As for the card...I would find it hilarious, but we all know that narcs have ulterior motives for most things they do. And my ex has been giving my kids grief lately and causing chaos in their lives and this just isn't funny.
But we'll brush it off and move on. Because narcs want attention, and we can't give it to them. We just have to ignore it as much as we can.
I won't let her antics ruin my son's birthday.
Got I sometimes hate this show. AARRRGGHHH!
Not because of sweet ball-punching Baylen and her sweet getting-his-balls-punched fiancé Colin. But because of Baylen's meddling, controlling, pretending-to-be-sweet parents. Do I think they're narcissists? I cannot tell you that with certainty, because what we're being shown is TV and not real life. So while some parents (like the mom Julia on "My Orthodox Life") are blatantly narcissistic, many are covert, which makes them hard to spot. And we have no idea how much of the reality show is put on, compared to their actual life, so on the show, it could go either way with her mom and dad. But I will say that they are definitely going to be an issue for their relationship and unless they back the fuck off, Baylen will be a young divorcee soon enough (if they even ever get married).
Here's what needs to happen whether they are narcissists or not:
Every six months, I am to get a mammogram, so in a week or so, I get another one. Let's HOPE I do not have to get a biopsy afterwards. UGH. The mammogram isn't comfortable, but it's not horrible. Biopsies...the afterwards sucks. And now that I am recovering from covid, I really hope I won't need one, as it takes forever to recover from that shit. At least for me it does. It messes with my thyroid and throws my entire system out of whack and I get all these stupid symptoms that make no sense. And now my thyroid meds are going up. We'll see if they stay there, or if they'll need to go back down again. I guess covid can cause thyroiditis flares. Yay.
I did get my first fallen leaf that's changed color today, so that's nice! Though I stuffed it in my purse and now it's missing....weird.
Anyways, I woke up this morning to my driveway getting tore up by the county...they didn't even tell me they were coming, but hey, they replaced my rusted ass culvert for free (which had put a hole in my driveway) so we were stoked! Saved us $5,000! Hell yeah!
Now we can have our garage sale AND not worry about trick-or-treaters falling into that hole, never to be seen or heard from again. Yay!
Recently my dad's 25th deathaversary just passed. We still need to get to the gravesite. I have flowers and a can of Popeye's spinach for him. I feel that he's still out there, living his life somewhere, in an another dimension, hopefully being a better person than he was in this one. But he tried. He failed miserably, but at least he tried. My mother doesn't even try. She's better now, but only because she's falling apart. Which sucks. I don't want my mom to be a good person only because she doesn't feel well. Well, what I mean is, I don't want her to not feel good in order to be a better person. I wish she could just be a different person. But she's not, so what can you do? She's on better meds now, I hope that helps. But I also am not looking forward to her being a butthole again. But I can't control that. And I have better coping skills today if she reverts back again.
Well, off to go pick up my husband and son from the movies.
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I think my mom's BFF Christmas is getting dementia. The crazy woman is still driving and her daughter lives hundreds of miles away and pretty much has nothing to do with her mother (her daughter is a HUGE narcissist). So nobody is there to tell her to stop driving. Or to even notice this is going on.
Yesterday Christmas calls my mother and tell her she has skin cancer, something that was found in her blood tests. I was like huh? So I called Christmas myself and her give me her test results, and to find out, it was a urine test and in it was the term "squamous epithelial cells". She said this to her friend, and her friend said "Well, that's cancer." And then, without looking it up, she just accepted that as fact and started freaking out and telling everyone she has cancer. Well, as it turns out, having some of those cells in her pee test is absolutely normal. I then told her that next time she's confused about a test, to please call me first, before anyone else, so we can go over it together, and I can advise her to call her doctor or not.
As we're talking, we were talking about her doctor, and how he snapped at her because recently she fainted and hit her head pretty hard, and he was angry she didn't go to the ER. He was right, she should have, but he's a dingleberry, and I had to switch from him as a doctor for my mother, due to the fact that one day he just "decided" to stop refilling her meds, and to instead go to the neurologist for refills. Which would have been fine, except that they couldn't get us in for months. And she was almost out of pills. These pills are her primidone and without them, she cannot function, and would most likely die (she wouldn't be able to walk or eat or do anything). She just needed a few months prescription until we could get into the neurologist.
He flat out said no.
I said "He has no choice. She will die without her meds. You need to refill them. TODAY."
He still said no.
So I marched my ass into their office and yelled at the front desk until they went back and told him I was out front yelling and lo and behold, like magic, he sent the refill in, right then and there.
And then we switched doctors.
I told my mother about all the work I put into getting her meds refilled and how he refused and how we were switching doctors. And she agreed what an asshole he was.
But apparently, that's not what she was telling Christmas.
This was a year ago, back when she was still talking shit behind my back. I thought it had been longer than that, but apparently, it wasn't. In fact, I thought she has already stopped doing this back then, but I was wrong.
What she had told Christmas was that I had known that I was supposed to be making an appointment with the neurologist and I had just been refusing to (for what reason, I have no idea!). And it was my fault she wasn't getting her meds. She supposedly had been leaving me notes about making an appointment with him, and I just wasn't doing it. How on earth would she be the one telling me when I am supposed to be making appointments when she has no freaking idea herself? And why would her doctor just flat out refusing to refill her meds surprise me if I had known I was supposed to be doing this all along?
She just wants to paint me as a failure to everyone, even though I literally went into her doctor's office to fight for her.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why you don't tell narcissists shit. Because they will take everything you say and do and twist it into a lie for their own amusement and to make themselves look better and feel better than you. It's so fucked up.
And this is why I don't like her. I care about her health and well-being. I will always care about about that. I am a real human, unlike her. But I do not like, nor love her. And I never will.
She will never change. Deep down, she's still the same exact person she's always been, and always will be. The ONLY reason she stopped talking shit about me is because she realized I was listening to her phone calls. That's the only reason. Well, that, and her declining mental and physical health.
I have been on a path recently of understanding and forgiveness with her...which I will write about later. But this just reminds me that while I am on that path, I should not be sucked back into her drama for any reason whatsoever. Because that's a dangerous path that will only get me hurt.
Ugh. Well, at least it's reminder to stay the course of grey rock. So that's something.
Sigh.
Welcome to Healing From Her.
I am a daughter of a narcissistic mother, one of way too many in this world. If you're here, then you're probably the child of one, too. I hope by reading my words someone out there will realize they aren't alone.
