What is a lie?

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I know some have dealt with this with t heir kids and other family members and people they thought were dear friends. Do they think they are telling the truth? Do they think that by saying others are lying that this makes their lies the truth or do they believe their lies? Are t hey being manipulative? Are t hey trying to bait us? (I have learned how not to take a bait). Are they trying to gaslight us? Invalidate us and others?

I am totally beyond puzzled at those who lie about others.

I don't know if anyone has read Bradshaw. He's an older dude, very smart. He talks about shame and points out that t he world looks to you like you FEEL the world looks to you. If you think the world is rotten, then it will look rotten to you. If somebody else sees sunshine and flowers all the time, they will see the world is good. And it IS good. So the two people see the same world, but their focus and attitudes are different. One says "The world is rotten." The other says "The world is good?"
In a way, aren't they both right? But isn't the one who sees the world as good going to have a better life? And is the person, by ignoring the fact t hat bad does take place, lying to herself?

This is a question I've been thinking about lately. What IS a lie?







































































































































































































I hope everybody does.

I have an angel who has been my confidante, great advise giver, spiritual adviser and loving friend since we were both pregnant with our first children. Whenever she needs me or I need her, we drop everything and give one another the time and love we need.

I had another soulmate, but she died too soon of cancer, and I miss her still.

Is this unusual? Anyone else feel THAT close to somebody who is not their spouse? I feel close to my spouse too, but he has a man's perspective. I think that's different from a woman's perspective.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Swot, I like philosophy too.

So, here is a definition of a lie, which seems to require deliberate deception to be considered such.
What IS a lie?
A lie is a "false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth."

do they believe their lies?
I think it is different for each person and each circumstance. I think with my mother and sister they knew were they lying but it never did bother them. I think each of them believed the end justified the means, and never did think one thing about it afterwards. By the definition above, they were lying, I think, because there was intent, that they may have justified to themselves, but it was there.

If you think the world is rotten, then it will look rotten to you.
Yes. I think this is how my mother was. She thought the world was hard and cruel and that justified to her the fact that she could be hard and cruel. As you say, it did become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think my sister is the same way, justifying whatever she does because of her worldview, and in this way absolving herself of responsibility for her bad acts. And because she behaves in a treacherous and deceitful way, her experience of the world is that her beliefs were true. And it goes on from there.

In a way, aren't they both right? But isn't the one who sees the world as good going to have a better life?
Not necessarily. Because the world is not good.

It is just the world with good and bad and all kinds of stuff in the middle. So, to go out into a world like a Polyanna, to me, risks getting eaten alive. Wouldn't that person become bitter and unhappy?

To me there is a middle ground, though.

You can choose to act as if the world is good while believing the contrary. Kind of like taking a stand for good. No matter what. And doing the right thing, as you see it. And staying committed to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences.

This is a kind of act of defiance. Defying the idea of a cruel, rotten world. But at the same time, it works. First, you don't have to roll around in the dirt with everybody who thinks the world is ugly. And at the same time you attract good, as you say, by a positive attitude. People are attracted to good, don't you think? I know Satanists aren't but I'm not that interested in them, either.

And is the person, by ignoring the fact that bad does take place, lying to herself?
No, I don't think so. To act as if there is good, and to act from goodness is not to say that the world is good. At least, not to my way of thinking.

Think about it. What is the world, really, except a perception, an image in our minds. Of something that is so vast and complex, that everybody that ever lived all together cannot capture an iota of it. So any vision of the world we think we have is not real. Not a lie. But an abstraction. A guess. A schema.

All any of us can ever do is pretend based upon what we believe, act as if. So, to me, that means I get to pick how I want to see the world. And that is not a lie, because there was no intention to deceive myself or anybody else. Just the intention to live well.

That is my way of thinking.

PS SWOT How does the title of this thread about soulmates fit into this topic? I have been trying and trying to figure it out, and cannot.

This was fun, Swot. Thank you.
 
Last edited:

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Do they think they are telling the truth?

I think they do. It is a really hard thing, to tell ourselves the truth about so many things. Like in that story about someone whispering a secret, and by the time it gets to the end of the table, the story is unrecognizable. What we remember must have to do with how we saw whatever it was in the first place. Like when I remember times I was not able to protect, right? That would be a whole different set of circumstances to the child being hurt. What was forever traumatic to me ~ I would not even be in his memory of those events. If we were to ask him about it today, he probably, between the intensity of the trauma and the age that he was and the time that has passed, would have no memory, no concrete memory, of the incident at all.

I never thought of it that way before. So, many of those incidents that traumatize me all over again when I think of them today may mean nothing, or may seem never to have happened at all, to the sib I still feel so guilty for not having protected.

Which is an interesting thing. With freedom in it somewhere, for me.

So that's good, then.

Thank you, SWOT.

And here is another piece. When my sister remembers a thing she has seen? She remembers the trauma in it, the shaming aspect of it for the person it was happening too, and uses that part of the memory against them, to name them, again and again, through the shame of that naming.

And I did not know that before answering this thread either.

I saw you.

I see you back.

What IS a lie?

A lie would be something like my sister does. Where you know what you are going for, and you don't cherish, so you shame and hurt and ignore and you mean it.

Everything that happens then, however it somehow seems right, is a lie.

Every single thing.

I tell lies sometimes, too. I don't do it to be malicious. I have a little piece of a thing, and before I know it, my brain fills in all the details, plus all the emotions and what happened because of that and etc. But at the center of it is that core thing that was true, at least in the way I remember it. That's probably why I have to pin it down in words to figure out what really happened, and why I am so surprised at how truly nasty so much of what happened to me really is. I am just so surprised when it keeps being a series of things that are still nasty.

And I keep wanting to put it somewhere better, or figure it out in some better way. It's like I believe I must have seen it incorrectly to start with. And that is a locus of control issue.

Again.

That is probably why I keep posting: I see you. I see you back. On the family of origin threads, I mean. I am determinedly seeing something I don't want to see. It's like a true celebration for me to see what I saw and know it for what it really was.

So, people could be lying in that way, because they are in denial.

And that is a really hard thing to break through.

***

Or, it's like routinely leaving late for work and then, driving like a jerk so you can get there on time or just a minute or two late. That might happen to anyone on a particular day. But when it is routine, when it is your pattern, then you have to take a look at that.

I used to do that?

And then, I got a ticket. Get this: On a day when I was driving home from work after such a rough day that I stopped at McDonald's and got a shake. And I was just sipping that shake, and thinking about my terrible day at work, and driving like a maniac out of habit. And I was so immersed in my terrible day and the good iciness of that stupid chocolate shake that I never spotted that police man until his lights were blinking in my rearview mirror.

I was so surprised that time, too.

And I didn't even have a story to tell him about how I was rushing to something important, like my job, because I wasn't. And I got a ticket on the freaking freeway because I was going 75 in a 65.

On the freeway!

And it cost $150.

You believe it?!?

And so, I began leaving for work earlier and drove with consideration, and got there at the exact same time, anyway. So, recognizing and not liking that pattern I was doing? I tried to leave earlier still?

And I never did.

WTF.

I still have issues around getting somewhere on time. But what happens to me is that if I leave too much time? Then I get distracted into something else and forget the time, because I think I have so much of it.

So, I try to be aware of that thing that I know about me.

I generally set a timer.

That way, I know what time it is.

It's been working pretty well. I just have to be careful not to leave too much time.

So, I don't know whether that would be lying...but I think it would be lying if I weren't trying to address it and succeeding in addressing it. If I just let it be, assuming that everyone else had to be on time and I didn't.

I am at a loss when I arrive early, though.

So now? I carry a book.

So, I don't think that is lying, because I am trying to figure out how everyone else in the world manages to get where they are going on time and not late. And not thirty minutes early, either. And I am hardly ever late now, and when I am?

I just am.

So I don't even make an excuse. I just let everybody think I am an a** h***, and let it go at that.

So that's my time story.

Is this unusual? Anyone else feel THAT close to somebody who is not their spouse? I feel close to my spouse too, but he has a man's perspective. I think that's different from a woman's perspective.

I think we have so many soul mates. I think too, that a soul mate can be someone who teaches us how to be better in the world...but I also think our soul mates are those who teach us things we need to know about our own vulnerability. We might even be so upset with them, but in truth, they are teaching us, when they betray us.

I think, when that happens, that we are teaching them, too.

Everything that happens seems too precisely choreographed to be happening by chance.

But then, I always do seem to put all those disparate pieces together in that way. Sometimes when I have been betrayed again? I am beginning to get it now that I must have been part of it, too. Betrayal is definitely a thing that helps us see with more clarity.

That is why I am always walking around being surprised.

Happens every day.

When I become close to someone now? I try to really savor the good parts. Just in case there is going to be a lesson in there.

Ouch.

In marriage, I think that same thing happens. Only in our marriages, we are given, or we choose, someone with whom to work those things out that we don't even know we need to address. That is how my marriage is, to D H. That is why, probably for both of us, nobody left. Those same lessons would be there to be learnt.

And I still like and respect my D H.

So, that is what makes a successful marriage. You go through what you do and still like that other person enough to laugh together, and look at the stars. And maybe the richness of long term relationships is that when you are looking at stars or laughing (or crying, I suppose), you really are present when you are doing those things, instead of being distracted by the other persons mojo. And then, over time, those things make you lonely, if you have to do them after the other person is gone.

I will have to look at the stars with my D H tonight.

Oh brother, you guys.

I am not even going to explain to him why. I am just going to say, "We're doing it."

D H is like...he thinks I am strange, in some ways.

Yes, he does.

Cedar

Here is a D H and me story. So, something was happening in the heavens. Like Mars was rising or something that doesn't happen every day. Our house is surrounded by these huge cedars. (Thus, my name here: Scent of Cedar.) Anyway. And we wanted to see this event, but we would need to go somewhere without trees, to do it.

So, we drove to this golf course near our house.

And there we were, waiting for Mars to rise, or for the moon to eclipse, or whatever the thing was. And one thing led to another. And it was a hot night, so we had the windows in the car open.

And all at once, there was water pouring in on us.

Like someone had opened a hose on us or something.

It turned out to be the automatic sprinklers on the golf course.

*

So we got dressed and went home, and never did get to see Mars or the moon eclipse or whatever it was.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
It is just the world with good and bad and all kinds of stuff in the middle. So, to go out into a world like a Polyanna, to me, risks getting eaten alive. Wouldn't that person become bitter and unhappy?

Well, no. But you would be surprised, alot.

This is probably why D H says I would not be able to handle my mother or my sister appropriately if something were to happen to him, or to our marriage. I believe him. But it is disconcerting to think I can't or don't choose to, see correctly.

That is why I work so hard to see correctly, on the FOO threads.

But I still don't like to believe those things.

You can choose to act as if the world is good while believing the contrary. Kind of like taking a stand for good. No matter what. And doing the right thing, as you see it. And staying committed to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences.

Yes!

But I am at a stopping point regarding continuing to do what seems like the right thing. There really are people who know what they are doing and continue to do that same kind of thing, for no reason that makes any sense at all, every single time.

So, you would have to call them on it, every single time.

And that is why they explode all over a person and say things about you always having been whatever, or how they have to distance themselves from you because you are too toxic to them, and they have to do the right thing for themselves so they will not be sullied or destroyed by their contact with and loyalty to, you.

You've called them at their own game that they thought you never saw. But you did all along of course. But you believed in them.

That must be why I say I believe my sister, but I no longer believe in her.

That felt like a really mean thing to share, here on the site.

Which is a hard thing, when you have that lust of vengeance thing going on, like I do. But even there, the thing to be dealt with is the lust of vengeance, and the hurt and shame beneath its genesis, and not the person, at all.

I see you.

No, you only see yourself.

And that is true for my sister, too.

This is a kind of act of defiance. Defying the idea of a cruel, rotten world. But at the same time, it works. First, you don't have to roll around in the dirt with everybody who thinks the world is ugly. And at the same time you attract good, as you say, by a positive attitude. People are attracted to good, don't you think? I know Satanists aren't but I'm not that interested in them, either.

Yes exactly. An act of defiance, all banners flying.

Here is the thing with Satanists. If you believe in Satan, then you have also to believe in the opposite. A Satanist, by definition, cannot be anything other than a believer in the very thing they are determined to discredit. Believing in its opposite enough to desecrate things using the self same symbology is a true proof that the good in the Christ and the Mary and all those incredible teachings is real to the Satanist, whether he wants to see that or not.

So, why would he or she choose that other kind of believing. To a rational person, that would make no sense, no rational sense, at all.

People are not rational sometimes. I have worked with people who found power in that kind of believing. But to me, I could only see that they were that scared, and that powerless, that they needed that to believe what they believed.

Like we all believe what we need to, I suppose.

And their hearts are so broken when they wind up in psychiatric.

Just so broken, when they tell their so helpless secrets; when they have to let that go and just be human, like everyone.

Think about it. What is the world, really, except a perception, an image in our minds. Of something that is so vast and complex, that everybody that ever lived all together cannot capture an iota of it. So any vision of the world we think we have is not real. Not a lie. But an abstraction. A guess. A schema.

Very nicely put, Copa.

But I think we also change what others see, or sort of change the nature of how we will define whatever it is that we will come across next. I think we are responsible to ourselves and everyone else in that way. Take the times when witches were burnt. How could that happen and, once it did, once that was a widely held belief ~ that there were people entrapped and that the way to free them was to burn them alive ~ how could it just end?

Like a terrible movie where everyone just throws down their costumes at the end of the day and finds something else to do?

Or like the terrorists, today. They are acting out of belief systems that preclude their ability to see anything else. They are hurting people without a second thought, to get everyone's attention. In reality, they are trapped back in some other system of morality we have all grown beyond. We are busy trying to figure out how to solve hunger or end diseases or aging or suffering on every level. And I think we are doing that. I think our children are seeing differently, and will change how we all see, because of it.

Where was I going, again?

Lost it.

I was heading for this: This information regarding perception is precisely what the mystics in every spiritual belief I am aware of ~ this is what they say, too.

***

Oh, I agree, SWOT.

This was an excellent thread.

Thank you.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Thank both of you so much.

I love philosophy. I can't talk about it as well as you two can. But I enjoy reading people's points of views about difficult questions.

I can not post too much about FOO anymore. Someone is still watching and becoming vicious over it. If it bothers her that much that I post on an anon. site and include her in it, I'll just leave her out. I have checked her site three times and all three times saw "my sister did..." that's as far as I care to share, but she truly believes (here's where I wonder about lies and truths) that I am a diagnosed borderline. I am not. But what if I was? It is common in traumatized people. Maybe she thinks I said so, although I told her *I* thought about it, not any mental healthcare professional and that it was ruled out. But she either doesn't believe my healthcare professionals never labeled me that or she thinks I DID say it. Is she lying? Her intent is unkind, to try to make anon. posters on some borderline site think she is suffering with a crazy sister, but that does not make it a lie. Not if she truly believes it is true, right?

Or IS it the intent?

I was no angel either, nobody was in my FOO. Nobody. Everyone suffered. Some still do. That is my 100% belief. Am I lying?

I was abused. I have every symptom of PTSD including the dreams. The others were not abused by parents that I know of. That is my steadfast belief, but my siblings don't share it. Am I lying because we need a concensus?

I have a very interesting blub to quote here from a book I am reading.

"It's really very simple. You are the center of your universe. Everything you see, hear, feel and experience goes out in concentric spheres from your point of awareness there in the center of your world. This is not a weird idea. This is pure, rational fact."

Let's say we are all looking at the sky. We talk about the color. I say it's pale blue. You say, no, it's a shade darker than that and Copa says it looks like it may rain. We are talking about what WE see. And it's different. Is there a right or wrong truth? Can people experience the same environment and live totally different experiences?

I think the answer is an obvious yes.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
thanks, Copa. I really thought she'd have the ability to quit snooping. After all, she wanted NC with me, yet she is letting me upset her life because she doesn't like my experience in our family. She wants to believe it isn't true and that it's all me. Lots of gaslighting there. She even considers posting anonymously on a safe board where nobody knows me or her is trying to "destroy her." I think if her anon. buddies there knew what this destruction consisted of, which she does not explain, they would think she was paranoid.

But she does know who *I* am and it bothers her when I "expose" her in a very anon. way to a bunch of people she doesn't know, even though most of this board aren't even involved in our FOO healing adventure. Copa have I given away her identity? Cedar, do you know who she is? Of course not. Trying to destroy her would mean going to her peeps and telling them all the gossip and bad stuff she told me about them and she couldn't deny it because I know things I would not know if she hadn't told me. I could do it. There are ways. A real borderline may. I really have no interest in destroying her. She is good enough at doing that herself. Proof: She has been with a man who will not introduce her to his children and spends every holiday with his ex-wife and is overly jealous of her and checks up on her an d even she called abusive for five years. Would any of you have put up with that? FIVE YEARSS? Enough about her and be done with it.

Yes, I wish she didn't snoop, but she does. We can PM or else I can talk about my healing process leaving her out of it. The main abuser, the one who started it, was my mother. Sorry, but "WHen I held you in my arms, I felt nothing, absolutely nothing," refusing to hold me, yelling at me horrible names, taunting and mocking me constantly and giving none of us any skills to take into the world is abuse in my opinion and if anybody disagrees with me, I'm good with that. There are people who think it is ok to beat a child with a belt. They say, "My Dad did it and it made me respect me and I'm just fine and I do it to my own kid." They don't recognize that they were abused. Or maybe it isn't abuse to them.

I don't care.

This is my healing place and my story. I was abused by my entire very small family, except for my grandmother, which ticked off my mother. And grandmother had a mean streak too that I could see, although it was not leveled at me. If I could see that she could be mean to others, certainly others could see the incredible abuse this other lady threw at me? Yes, I yelled at her when she yelled at me and said horrible things to me and I said horrible things to her. BUT I WAS THE KIlD!

Speaking or destruction my mother tried to and did destroy me with the rest of my family, and she did me a huge favor. I truly don't think I would have found THIS husband, who is capable of close intimacy, and had lovely kids with him and a great life if I had been squashed in between my FOO. They were not normal and, as my therapist says, it was on the very very bad end, just before sexual and physical abuse. It was as bad as it could get except for that. I agree with her. Somebody else may not.

Guess what? Who cares?

I'm still here. I'm still listening. I will share, just try hard to leave sis out of it.

You know the biggest gaslight of all?

I truly believed it was all my fault and that Sis was the normal one.

How sad is that?If you are told you are NOTHING long enough by your own mother, you believe it.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Or IS it the intent?

Yes, I think your sister's efforts to discredit you to yourself, in your own mind, are things your sister is doing with malice aforethought and by intent.

That is what they do, SWOT.

I don't know what satisfaction they take from that.

SWOT, I want you to know I have enjoyed our conversations regarding family of origin. You have helped me clear things here that family of origin group therapy was unable to address, let alone heal. I do feel healed around these issues now, SWOT.

I want you to know I deeply appreciate everything you have done for me.

Cedar

I was no angel either, nobody was in my FOO. Nobody. Everyone suffered. Some still do. That is my 100% belief. Am I lying?

No, I don't think so. You carry the scars; anxiety, toxic shame. You did not imagine that, anymore than I imagined my own. That feeling of disbelief though runs through the thoughts of everyone hurt as we were. It doesn't add up. It doesn't make sense that these things could have happened. Who would do such things, and why, we ask ourselves. We think it must not have happened in just the way we remember it ~ or maybe, that it didn't happen at all.

But the healing process is the same for each of us, SWOT.

At the end, we believe what we knew was true, all along.

We no longer see ourselves through our abusers' eyes. We see our abusers through our eyes, now.

And once we know what was true about the way we grew up, the thing that happens next is that we let it go. I rarely think about my sister or my mom now, except for when I am here, working through it.

But I have a set point now, an incidence of abuse that I know beyond doubt is what happened. I know now that it was not only my mom, but my sister too, using me, twisting me and each other, for purposes I don't understand. But I do know this about abusive people: Sooner or later, they abuse everyone with whom they have contact. They leave a string of broken or puzzled people behind them.

It isn't just you they destroy. It isn't just me. It's everyone with whom they are involved. If you look into the patterns of their lives, there those same patterns will be.

That is how you can verify what you know.

I was abused. I have every symptom of PTSD including the dreams. The others were not abused by parents that I know of. That is my steadfast belief, but my siblings don't share it. Am I lying because we need a concensus?

No, or you would not have the scars.

And you do have the scars. One of the things that happens when we are abused is that locus of control is shifted to outside ourselves. We question our realities, just as you are doing, now.

To me, that she is doing this, takes away to some extent all of our safety; of course anybody could be doing anything with what we write. But, to know that she may be deliberately mocking or undermining a person who is and has been such an integral part of the board is to be undermining the collective body of us all.

You have dedicated your life, it seems, turning hurt into courage and care and responsibility. You have owned your hurts, and used them to help yourself and others and continue to do so.

She sits in front of her computer small, and bitter and corrupt and mean. You sit in front of your computer, giving, trying to understand, sharing, connecting and overcoming.

Here is another way to see this: Your own sister pursues and tries to undermine your healing. If the situation were reversed SWOT ~ if it were your sister who were trying with her whole heart to reclaim herself what would your response to her be?

It would be to help her.

I know this about you.

You would help.

Nonetheless, it pains me that she lurks here.

That seems to be what they do.

Can people experience the same environment and live totally different experiences?

I think the sibs' know.

Cedar, do you know who she is?

No.

I really have no interest in destroying her. She is good enough at doing that herself. Proof: She has been with a man who will not introduce her to his children and spends every holiday with his ex-wife and is overly jealous of her and checks up on her an d even she called abusive for five years. Would any of you have put up with that? FIVE YEARSS? Enough about her and be done with it.

She must be invested somehow in the family legend she created and believes. I am sorry you do not have a sister. Like me, you probably never did have a loyal, loving sister. Like me, you may have had something different, someone who knew your secrets but who was never loyal or trustworthy or kind to you in all of your life.

We never did have those sisters we loved, SWOT.

That hurts, but it is better to know.

Then we can go on with our lives, not thinking of them in those same ways that left us so vulnerable to their manipulations.

That is what we need to do, now. Let everything we believed about our sisters go, and believe that it is what it looks like and nothing more.

This is my healing place and my story.

Yes!

I truly believed it was all my fault and that Sis was the normal one.

Well, that is alright. You will be stronger and stronger, now that you have begun to question and order your memories, whether you post to us here about it or not. Most of us, people with loving sisters and brothers, trust them. We have not trusted our sisters, or been able to depend on our brothers. We display that hyper-alertness around them that all victims of abuse feel toward their abusers. That should have been a key for us all. But we couldn't see it and refused to believe that could be right when we did. But that's okay. There are people without siblings, and they are just fine.

I think we have done really good work, here.

Cedar
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Yes, I think your sister's efforts to discredit you to yourself, in your own mind, are things your sister is doing with malice aforethought and by intent.

That is what they do, SWOT.

I don't know what satisfaction they take from that.

SWOT, I want you to know I have enjoyed our conversations regarding family of origin. You have helped me clear things here that family of origin group therapy was unable to address, let alone heal. I do feel healed around these issues now, SWOT
Well, she is a total control freak.


Cedar, my sister is plain mean. She can be vicious when she feels attacked and unable to stop people from doing what she wants them to do. I know first hand. If I checked, I'll probably see some scathing nonsense on her site about how her mentally ill borderline sister said this or that and how I'm shouting her secrets to the world of anonymous. If sh e cared more for herself, she'd stop reading my posts, which upset her, and leave her horrible boyfriend who will never be able to show her any intimacy.

But maybe that's her problem. She likes this lack of intimacy. Who knows?

Cedar, I will keep sharing and healing. I will just try to leave Thing 2s part in the story out of it. She is not the main character. The main characters are all deceased. My brother hasn't known me for forty years so he isn't really a factor either.

I have control over my own life and will write what I want, being mindful not to give away any information about the identities even of the deceased. Nobody needs to know who they are.

This healing has been really good for me and I am not about to give up something good for me just because somebody who is not in my life anymore doesn't want me to keep getting better. I don't know how she made my healing story about her, but she did (shrug). We both have a life walk to take. Our lives are not over yet. And I'm walking in a sane direction with people who truly love me.

I appreciate you and Copa so much. You both will never know. Sometimes it seems like nobody "gets" it, but both of you do. I'm sorry you do, but you both are very kind and comforting people.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Here is another way to see this: Your own sister pursues and tries to undermine your healing. If the situation were reversed SWOT ~ if it were your sister who were trying with her whole heart to reclaim herself what would your response to her be?

It would be to help her.

I know this about you.

You would help.
I did try to help. I shouldn't have because listening to her talk nonstop about her boyfriend when I knew that she was incapable of leaving him,, although he made her miserable, was a form of enabling her. In the end, when I didn't want to enable that anymore and told her I would not discuss him anymore...I'd talk about anything but that...she said, "But he's a big part of my life." I said, "It's your decision." Shortly thereafter we had another one of our "You're crazy and it's all your fault" fights, this tim,e on text messaging or e-mail. I still have the conversation on e-mail. I showed it to my therapist. She said, "Wow, she really is trying to bait you, isn't she? But you didn't let her. Good for you." At one time I would have let her. I learned.

I want my sister to heal. She is not happy with her life and this is just my optinion...i could be very wrong. I believe she is taking her misery with this man she loves and can't have, who is truly cruel to her most of the time, and making me her target. Do I think that's all? No. We have had words through the years. Once I got angry at her when she yelled at me and I friended all her FB friends. A few accepted!! This drove her nuts. I thought it was funny. I am far from perfect. Yet this never happens with anybody outside of my FOO. Since I have many relationships, by choice or not by choice (as in work) I know it's something about the deep hurts from our childhoods that drive our behavior towards one another. And we are better apart.

I find it spooky that she feels a need to read my thoughts. I had hoped when I checked that she would have only posted on the borderline boyfriend part of the site...lol.. She does that too sometimes :)

In the end, this isn't about whether or not I or she want to heal. She is beyond furious at me because she decided to go no contact with me and found she has no control over me anymore. At least that's how I see it. She tried to get me banned from this site. Isn't that silly? For this? And she used to get my dad to threaten me, but I have told him many times he can not control my behavior with the inheritance and to do what he wants with his money and I will do what I have to do too. He doesn't bring it up anymore. She can not control him like she controlled E. And she'll never be able to. My Dad and I love each other. He is also not perfect, but he loves me and I really, reallyl appreciate it. I feel bad because he wishes we'd all be friends, but that is now impossible. I couldn't even fake it. We are done. Enough drama, crazy stories, crazy snooping...not in my life, thank you.

Well, thank you, Cedar and Copa, I got that off my chest and hopefully can drop her now as a topic. She did not start this dysfunctional collection of people called a "family." I believe it started with my grandmother and grandfather. I know nothing about their backgrounds. They never spoke about their relatives or childhood experiences. My grandmother, who I loved dearly, only saw a few of her siblings so I'm sure there was a story there, but we never heard it. So I'm sure the dysfunction was passsed along from her FOO to her marital family and her kids and I do feel E. was probably treated as second fiddle to Uncle. And she was unable to detach enough from her mother to break the cycle and then it got all complicated when her mother loved the child she didn't love...and it's really from there t hat this mess happened and I'm just glad to be done with them...lol.

I will talk to you anytime about FOO issuees, just will try to leave out Thing 2 since s he thinks her identity is being spread around and slammed on a forum where nobody even knows me, let alone her. Honestly, I really don't care that she lies about me on a forum. I wouldn't care if she told her friends wh at I do. She probably has. I wouldn't care who she told because nobody who matters would believe her.

I have issues, but I'm *not* paranoid ;)

Thanks for listening, friends.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
It is strange that our sisters seem so much alike. I am posting about some things that seemed strange on the other thread. When I actually write them out, one after the other it sounds like I must be making it up. Or taking innocent things out of context.

Until I begin listing them, and begin not telling about the other things that seemed stranger than ~ like, I must have ~ it's that same feeling I always have with my sister. That she is doing the right things, but it seems like she isn't.

It feels like a conspiracy theory. I don't get the win. (How many times have I posted that phrase regarding my FOO.) Because I so don't get the win, I discount the weird of it. But taken together, written down here for us...man, something way terrible is happening that has nothing to do with accidental inappropriateness and the seems, more and more, to have everything to do with determined intent.

But why?

What intent?

What could the reason be, for her to do what she does.

So, it seems that I must not be thinking rightly or kindly. I wonder at my suspicion. It is the forever question: What kind of person thinks like this about her own sister?

Well, looks like I do.

And it's beginning to look like I have been foolish not to have taken these things seriously, sooner. I am a permissive, forgiving, excusing sister. I have that dinner thing going on where, come hell or high water, we are all going to have that family I have been trying to get around to having forever, it seems.

I have that FOG thing going on a little bit, here.

Surely these things cannot be what it looks and feels like.

Like I always say, I can go back later and see her with compassion. For right now, I am having a look at things here, in this anonymous place.

I am not comfortable with how I am looking at her. But when you add everything up, all the things I have posted about...it's like it was when I was first posting about (or talking about) what went on in my family of origin.

That disbelief, that wondering what in the world I am thinking, and how is anyone ever going to get better if this is how I look at things.

I am going to keep looking in this way I am looking now. We can go back with compassion, later.

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Hi Cedar:

Here you may be still protecting your sister or your vision of her or that of your family:
When I actually write them out, one after the other it sounds like I must be making it up.
Or taking innocent things out of context.
It feels like a conspiracy theory.
I don't get the win.
it seems that I must not be thinking rightly or kindly. I wonder at my suspicion.
that wondering what in the world I am thinking, and how is anyone ever going to get better if this is how I look at things
But here you seem to be clearer:
seems, more and more, to have everything to do with determined intent.
when you add everything up
something way terrible is happening that has nothing to do with accidental inappropriateness

Copa *still whole and strong
 
Last edited:

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I like that you sign "Copa * still whole and strong."

I am going to start thinking of myself that way. Whole and strong. I really like that you do that, Copa.

I showed it to my therapist. She said, "Wow, she really is trying to bait you, isn't she? But you didn't let her. Good for you." At one time I would have let her. I learned.

Oh, that's a really good thing to do, SWOT. Now you have valid proof from someone who knows what healthy relationship between sisters would look like.

That is the thing we need to know how to proceed. Clarity about whether we need to be more understanding and less judgmental, or whether our sisters' behaviors are part of the initial family toxicity we are trying to pin down and respond differently to.

It is hard to know which it is.

It feels wrong to make judgments. Especially to me. I don't want to be like my mother in those ways. That is why this is so difficult. In a way, it's like what I was doing with my kids. I was not the strong mother they needed when the problems were such tough ones. Then too, as you noted earlier, there is the issue of guilt for all the things I did that were wrong, where my kids, and especially, where our sisters are concerned. That weakens us, too. For me, it helps to remember that when I did those things, I was just a little girl, too. But when I think of them now, as an adult, they shame me because I am expecting adult behaviors from the child that I was. When I look back at the wrong things I have done, I am seeing from an adult's perspective.

But I was just a little kid, too.

Just a messed up little kid, too.

But I really did try to do the best I knew, once I got it that what I was doing was not who or how I wanted to be.

Every time, I did that.

This is true.

But I think our guilt over not having been perfect or anywhere near it (there is that word again ~ perfect) but only human little girls who were sometimes spiteful or rageful or angry or inappropriate in any of a thousand ways weakens us, today. Whatever it is motivating our sisters, they certainly do seem not to have our best interests, or the best interests of the family either, at heart.

But they are adults, now.

So they are making an informed choice whereas when we were behaving in ways we wish we hadn't, we were just little girls.

That is the difference.

Parentification is in here somewhere, too. Poorly parented myself in so many ways ~ and I am sure I was well parented too, in many ways. But I was not able to balance everything that needed balancing very well. It must be, and have been, a hateful thing for my sister to have had to accept whatever nurturance there was from a sister she hated because what she needed was a mother.

But here is the difference: So did I.

I never even suspected that before we began going through all this about our FOO. But it is very true that you were, and that I was, and that Copa was too, just a little girl doing the best she could.

I wish I'd been stronger. I wish I'd been better and kinder and etc.

But I was just a little kid, too.

Well, I am getting stronger, now.

Why all these things happened doesn't matter. Each of the sibs is an adult, and is making adult choices, just like I am.

I would just like, for once in my life, to see what to hay they are really doing.

It doesn't look good.

I did try to help.

I have wondered before how this piece fits in where our sisters are concerned. Why would they call us like they do, if they neither like nor trust nor respect us? Was that some weird kind of game too, to get us to reveal secret things about our relationships, or about the ways we felt about our mothers, or...? (See what I mean about the rotten way I am thinking, now?)

But why do they do that?

Why do those same people who seem to choose us as sounding boards because together, we can figure a thing out ~ like, why would they go through our journals or our luggage or stalk us on Facebook?

Those two things just don't go together.

But your sisters seem to do the same kinds of things. So, those pieces must fit together in a way I cannot see yet. But I always did wonder about that similarity between ourselves and our sisters.

Is this normal between sisters?

Maybe it is.

If anyone is reading who has a normal sister, what is your opinion on this question.

I have a friend with normal sisters. They enjoy being together. They do things like travel hundreds of miles to dress up and watch the Oscars on television together.

She says my relationship to my sister, and to my mother, is not good. Regarding the mess that happened around my father's death, she says: "Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional death; that is when the skeletons come rattling out."

I want my sister to heal. She is not happy with her life and this is just my opinion...I could be very wrong. I believe she is taking her misery with this man she loves and can't have, who is truly cruel to her most of the time, and making me her target. Do I think that's all? No. We have had words through the years. Once I got angry at her when she yelled at me and I friended all her FB friends. A few accepted!! This drove her nuts

Here is a question: Why do these kinds of things seem to affect our sisters this way? I see other families on my FB page, and they are all together with friends posting in (or friending me) and etc.

That target part rings true for me. I am on FB, but not so often, but my sister ~ like, one time? She had a boyfriend and his friend here for dinner, and here for the 4th of July and we went out for dinner and etc. So, we have come to know them too, through that time. And I said, "Well, if you come through next summer, call us. We would love to see you both again." (They, the two male friends, were motorcycle touring, and this was something they did every summer.) And my sister was upset about that, and said they should not come here without her. And I felt that was probably valid. If it hadn't bothered her, then it would have been fine, but since it did, then my position had to be loyalty to my sister. And I never really thought about that again, but I am thinking about it this morning.

But I feel like I am being a poop, to think like that, because of course I should not have invited them without my sister.

?

Except that it was a casual invitation kind of thing, not an exclusion. But maybe it was an exclusion. So maybe, I am the excluder here, but I don't think so.

So this is how my brain works, and I left it in on the off chance it will help one of us to see that circle that I make until I cannot see anything but that I should not have done whatever it was.

So: In clarity, I would say that as the two men were friends, and were here with us more than once, and were invited to our 4th of July family event and so on, that it was okay to invite them if they came through again in a way it would not have been okay to do that if it were my sister and her boyfriend and I invited him to come back alone.

So I am good on that one, then.

I don't think I was trying to come between my sister and her boyfriend, like my mother.

But that was the question.

Not whether whatever I did was wrong or right, but whether I was behaving like my mother.

That is the secret question under most things. That is the reason this still bothers me when it happened something like fifteen years ago at least.

D H and I wanted to go to the place the (now ex) boyfriend owned a supper club / bar with music to see him when we visited my sister after her marriage. She did not want to, and she did not want us to, either. She said her new husband would be upset by that. Yet, she has other former boyfriends in her life ~ boyfriends who were around when her oldest daughter was little.

But I don't want to blunder into being my mother.

That is probably the core of the guilt piece I feel beneath much of ~ not all of, but much of ~ what goes on between my sister and me.

Well, I don't know what to do with much of this.

So I won't post anymore about that.

But I don't think I was doing that. D H wanted to go there, thought it would be really fun to see those two men again, too.

At some point, there was a motorcycle accident. The friend was killed. The other man is dead now too, but I don't remember how that happened.

She can be vicious when she feels attacked and unable to stop people from doing what she wants them to do.

Well, this is true about my sister, too. I have seen her do that to ex-husbands and an ex-son in law and his family.

I mean, she did something, pursued a thing, that was not...I don't know. It just didn't seem right, what she did. And the upshot was that the other grands are out of the golden grands life altogether.

And that was their first grand, and they hadn't done anything wrong. But they have a different lifestyle, less money, less stuff for sure, than my sister.

In a way though, that is what having strong boundaries looks like, isn't it? Like, you are not always wandering around trying to figure out what is the kind thing or whatever. I am still in contact with the family of the male who hurt our daughter. We're not calling on the phone or anything, but I like to see what they are up to on FB and so on. I want them to recover, too. It was an awful thing for all of us. It is an awful thing that their son or brother or uncle is where he is and that my daughter was hurt.

Circles within circles, right? What I do is right for me. What my sister does is right, for her.

But I don't like that exclusion thing she does to our family, and I don't have an ounce of compassion or pity or anything but rank hatred for her over what she did to my daughter when she was so out of it.

But as I posted, our daughter took her right down to the short hairs on that one. My daughter can be kind and compassionate and so on? But she takes no s***.

So, that's good, then.

I am that way too, now that I think of it. I have no problem at all saying what I believe. Once I can figure out what it is.

I thought it was funny.

I think it's funny, too.

I should go stalking my sister on FB. But that is the thing. I have no interest in stalking her. I never did. She was just someone in my life that I wanted to do well, and be happy. I did not need to know every detail.

But then, I never once thought about going through her luggage, either.

I know it's something about the deep hurts from our childhoods that drive our behavior towards one another. And we are better apart.

Oh, that's a good way to see it, SWOT.

I will begin thinking those words where my sister is concerned.

When you get right down to it, what you posted is the truth of the thing.

No villain, and no hero role, either.

Yes. I like that very much.

Thank you.

:O)

Cedar
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
That she is doing the right things, but it seems like she isn't.
If nobody else in the world gets it, I do. They are good at putting on a "normal, nice" face and fool people. But there is an underlying meanness or maybe damage from the past or whatever. How they behave is not how they are deep inside if they allow you a spat of their thoughts.

I still have the last e-mail conversation with my sissy in my e-mail which I can look at to see it in black and white...she was trying to bait me and I wouldn't take the bait. This is new for me and it makes me feel good about myself.

Now the one thing I need to 100% stop is ever going to her site and seeing if she's still watching this one. I usually have tons of willpower. I can lose weight, pass up a chocolate cake when everyone is eating, turn down booze w hen everyone is drinking even if it makes me feel kind of like an outsider, make a decision and stick to it...except when it comes to not engaging in my FOO. That's why I said this no contact stuff is deeper than just "You aren't good for me." No, we aren't. But neither is her boyfriend good for her and she knows it and she has been with him for five years.

No, this is stuff buried way from the past in our dysfunctional FOO and it starts before we were ever born. But it was given to us and all of us suffered. The parents raise the kids and set the stage for the future and there relationships with other people, especially their significant others. The first time I picked one who talked to me just like SHE talked to me and I thought it was normal, even though being called "dumb" made me cry, like it had when my mother said stuff like that to me. (He never called me selfish. At least he wasn't trying to gaslight me. Most men would have thought I was either lazy or not up to speed due to all my neurological differences...it was literally hard for me to stack a cabinet neatly). Still...I lived with him for seventeen years and adopted kids with him, truly convinced, although not really, that we had a good marriage. I didn't actually think so, but I thought it was because of me, not him. I didn''t see it as two way. I thought it was all me, just as Is thought my getting screamed at as a child was all my fault because I was "bad." It never crossed my mind that anyone else was culpable too.

I have decided to stop lying to myself that I disconnected emotionaly from Thing 2 while I still check her site to see if she's been here. I haven't done it often, but I shouldn't do it at all. Since I do have strong willpower, I am going to exert to stop all contaact with her, and that includes the stuff she may write about me on another site or if she is reading this.

She is renting too much space in my heade (see my post about people renting space in your head on PE). I know myself and if I truly go no contact at all, in a way that we don't communicate even by checking each other posts on sites out, I will move on without her. I can do it. I've done it before. I did it when she didn't talk to me for three years and if she had not come back, I would have been fine. I wish she had the she hadn't. I think she felt she was doing me a tremendous favor, although that is conjecture.

So I'm renting out her room in my head to myself. I feel much better about the entire situation than I did when I first saw her post about how I was never abused (in her opinion, of course). I can laugh about it now and no longer care.

Do you know what anger is?

Pain and hurt.

I don't feel anger anymore. And talking to you two about my mother was cleansing too. She was hateful. She hated me, at least. She disowned me as if I were not born to her. She had never loved me. She abused me from the time I was little. I know this. It will not happen with my father. This event will never happen again. It is over. She is gone. I did not grieve her passing. I will try to keep my head free of renters...lol.

Cedar, I'm not quite sure which thread I read it on so I want to tell you how interesting it was to read about your amazing, intelligent children. They sound smart and unique just like you. Your daughter is fascinating!!!

I am still here. I will still talk about issues. I am just talking with less anger these days.

Have a good day! :)
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
So they are making an informed choice whereas when we were behaving in ways we wish we hadn't, we were just little girls.
Yeah. True. I do feel bad. I have always felt bad about that. But, at the same time, I WAS the kid...an unstable, undisciplined, learning disabled, depressed, screwed up mess of a little kid who needed a prent's love, guidance, boundaries, discipline and influence even more than most kids who are neurotical. My dad was never home w hen I was little. So it was up to my mother to raise us and teach us life's lessons. She didn't and even shse must have seen I as a disturbed mess.

Or maybe she thought I was just "bad." She called me that a lot.

At any rate, she failed all of us kids. The only one she gave positive attention to was my very physically sick brother, whom she worshipped, and my opinion is she screwed him up so that he could never have a relationship with a woman. Dr. SomewhereOutThere speaking ;) Certainly I could be wrong, but I always felt he was on the high, high end of the autism spectrum. He had symptoms. Loud noise shocked him. He did not know how to socialize AT ALL. He was worse at it then even ME. He rocked back and forth, like Snic used to do...typical autism trait. But he was so brilliant, I believe he was able to look around and actually take in how you are supposed to act and somehat normalize his issues. At any rate, I'm not going to say he had it for sure. I'm no doctor. But he made great strides and was/is a successful person who does have friends now. Maybe his feeling ill all the time made him not be able to socialize too. There is also that. Who knows? I'll never know. I need to get his rental room out of my head too, although it is admittedly very tiny...maybe the size of a closet :)

Well, I digress.

My sister was not protected either. My mother let her down too. I'm glad that eventually I quit teasging her and tried to help her/be her friend/be nice to her/be a good big sister. If I failed, I failed, but I did try in the end. And it was no thanks to my mother. She would have let me and my brother pick on her forever. She had absolutely no parenting skills and should have never had children. And that is my opinion. And nobody can say anything about my life growing up that would change my mind.

I do feel good that the only one capable of intimacy is me, but I got away from her early. Although it hurt, her absence was a blessing. I will never think otherwise.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I don't think I was trying to come between my sister and her boyfriend, like my mother.
You weren't. Your sister could have told you that this made her uncomfortable later, but not act like you were after her boyfriend.

You know your sister more than I ever knew mine. I didn't socialize with her family, friends, etc. To be honest, my sister and I are so different, I'm sure we would have had nothing in common.

My kids despise her. They don't even like her when she is trying to be nice. They think she is phony and they don't like how she treats me. She and her son came to my daughter's for Thanksgiving one year and my daughter told me afterward, "Don't take this wrong, mom, but I don't want to ever have your sister here again." (she doesn't call her aunt). I asked why and she said, "She just creeps me out and her son didn't say a word. I won't have her over again."


I always validate my kids so I told her it was 100% her choice and I would not invite her again. And that's about the only time Princess and Jumper ever met her.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
In a way though, that is what having strong boundaries looks like, isn't it? Like, you are not always wandering around trying to figure out what is the kind thing or whatever. I am still in contact with the family of the male who hurt our daughter. We're not calling on the phone or anything, but I like to see what they are up to on FB and so on. I want them to recover, too. It was an awful thing for all of us. It is an awful thing that their son or brother or uncle is where he is and that my daughter was hurt.
You have so much heart that it explodes in your posts.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Why do those same people who seem to choose us as sounding boards because together, we can figure a thing out ~ like, why would they go through our journals or our luggage or stalk us on Facebook?
Because they want to know what we're doing, for whatever reason. Even if they say they "disowned" us...in that rental space in their heads, they have not.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
In this post, I heal. Totally, I think. That part comes about 3/4 of the way through this meandering chain of consciousness post. I am going to leave the rest, in case it may help anyone else to see how I got there.

Cedar

***

But when we are lying about others ~ when we lie to destroy their reputations behind their backs, where is the motivation coming from to do that? I get the part about uniting ourselves by unifying against someone through attempting to make it appear they are not what they seem. We see that all the time in the way reputations are made or destroyed in the media. Is it that the person listening to the lies and believing them has an interest in seeing the person being lied about discredited? Everyone has feet of clay and ect?

It's all over the place in the media, so there must be that human nature component to it. So then, when our families do it...well, that would be the essence of the dysfunction. That we do that, instead of sticking up for one another like they do in healthy families.

I keep thinking about that piece SWOT posted about the difference between healthy and unhealthy families having to do with rigidity or fluidity.

I wonder how that fits in here.

As I've been doing this morning's work, I was able to see this change: When I first learned that my mother had been saying things that were unattractive enough that the man who wanted to marry her wanted me to know, I felt ashamed that he had been told whatever he'd been told. Not even just for my sake or D H sake or the kids, but even for my mom, to do things like that.

I felt ashamed of whatever she'd said, but at the same time, it was not a surprise at all to think she had been saying disparaging things. I felt badly to know for sure, but ~ we had had she and the man for dinner numerous times, and we have what we have and we are who we are, and I kind of knew that would be coming. Which sounds strange I know ~ that I wouldn't have stood up to that, I mean.

But that is just my mom.

That is my answer to everything.

That is what I said to D H when she started tearing out those hostas that day.

She would do those same kinds of things to my face. When I applied for work after having been home for some years, she said I belonged at home and I had a husband and she would never hire someone like me.

But she worked herself, and always had.

So, I didn't believe I would be offered the job, and I tried to figure out whether I was dressing inappropriately or whether it was my hair or just what it was that would make people not want to hire me. But I got the job. Just like that, they called me up and hired me. And I was so sure they were calling to tell me they weren't hiring me? That the woman had to ask me point blank whether I wanted the job, or had changed my mind. So I said, "Oh, boy, do I!" Or something equally unprofessional, I am sure. But anyway, I was happy I got it and it turned out they were happy to have me, and I did very well. And it was a little part time job that I could do between eleven and three when the kids were in school. And I cleaned the house and made dinner and etc and everything was very good, because they even gave me money.

And they had educational reimbursement.

So, I took that first class though D H was like, "What now?"

And then, I quit to go back to school full time and D H paid for all that and wasn't that a nice thing he did for me.

But even after they hired me, I didn't think I would do well because there must be something, some invisible something my mother knew that I was tricking everyone else into not seeing. And you guys already know why that school and what I was really doing there, but I took that degree with honors in the mean time. And had other honors and blah, blah about that.

The point being that I did exceedingly well. In that I didn't fail, I mean. That is what I would see, whenever I aced a test or got a raise or whatever. Like, "Huh. I didn't fail."

One time? I purposely didn't study for a test in anat/phys just to be sure I wasn't picking the correct answers to everything out of the air or something. And I did really bad on that test. So I was like, "Huh. Looks like that isn't it."
And I studied, after that.

I did things like that two or three times during those first years I was back in school.

I suppose I had to figure out why I was doing what I was doing so easily when my mother had said I was foolish to be going back to school, that it was a wrong thing to do. (You know she did that of of course, though I haven't posted specifically about that. Suffice it to say, I have done what I've done believing I would fail anyway, everywhere in my life but where my kids were concerned.

And you know what happened there.

And now we know why that broke me.

Back to the original post.

***

So, that is the fraudulence piece. That is where that comes from. So when my mother would say things that weren't true, she had to question whether she was telling the truth or not, didn't she?

So, how does that all work, then.

What I intended to say was that after reviewing what I went through this morning, I was able to stand apart from whatever my mother would say, and just know that what my mother says is what my mother says, and that she is responsible for her own words. But then, I stumbled onto this extra, really important piece of where that feeling of fraudulence, that feeling that I am forever (probably) missing some important thing everyone else knows that is wrong, with or about me. So, I got into a circle over that. Round and round it went. So this is a piece of a KFCD tape. This plays over and over in my head. I can see my mother's face, see the sneer on it as she says: "Just don't think, Cedar."

And I post here all the time about feeling like I am not thinking correctly, that I have a thinking problem and this is its genesis. That feeling, my mother's face and voice, validate that I will not be able to do whatever it is, and that I am tricking people when they think I did or am or can. It ties into what happened with that first therapist. Someone healthy would have said: "Excuse me? Did you just accuse me of manipulating you when I am paying you to help me not do that, if that is what I do?" Or something similar, but less clumsy.

But I continued to see him after that because I believed he must know what was the matter with me that had affected my child. Because after all, he was a therapist and I had never been to one before so I didn't know the difference between therapist and holistic physician and I had to know. After all, he was the therapist. Who later turned out to be only a holistic physician, but I didn't know the difference back then. So, and this still surprises me today? Maybe, he was wrong.

And here is the piece that connects to this post: He named the word that my mother implied. Manipulator is a bad thing, the way he said it. That was what my mother must have meant.

That was the name of the thing that was wrong with me.

"You are a manipulator. I would never accept the compliments of someone like that."

Well, who knows what that even means. I didn't compliment him, I don't think. Like, fawn all over him or anything.

***

Another piece added after the healing.

Really? I think he must have meant something sexual. And it makes sense that I would have taken that hit there, given what we were all just figuring out about Copa's sister and that whole sexual power piece a young woman holds in counterpoint to whatever it is her abusers have been teaching her about who she is or can ever expect to be.

That was the thing my mother could not prevent. I grew up and out of her realm of influence ~ as far as physical destruction or easy access for verbal abuse ~ once I was pretty and young and female and most especially, once I had D H. Copa, I hope you are reading this as regards your sister's possible mother connection and her behavior when she was introduced to your M.

So, somewhere in my psyche, that was the wrong thing I did. I grew beyond her power to hurt or control me and as she believed that was an act of unforgivable rebellion, on some level, so did I. Just like I believed everything my mother said for the rest of my life. I remember posting about whether and what kind of person, would consider her own mother a liar. That was earlier in this process. Now we know she is and was lying, always. But she believed her own lies, and that is how she could hurt us the way she did, and that is why she could never, ever believe we were bright or talented, or anything that would not justify what she did. Otherwise? She would have been a bad mother. And that, she could not face. In my mother's psyche, she would be a despicable person if she were abusing children. So she blamed it on us and justified it, somewhere in her psyche, by believing we were the things she taught us we were. The abortion piece, the total power accruing to her in that piece, dovetails perfectly here, as well.

(That paragraph above was written as I went through this again before posting. As it always does when something is resolved, all the disparate pieces fall together and come to be understood for how they fit. Trauma builds on itself, every incident a double whammy because it dovetails perfectly with the original wounding.)

Back to the original post.

****
I am not stupid. I don't gush.

Much.

I don't gush much, but I do tell people whether they look nice, or have pretty hair or whatever. I think that is an okay thing to do, and I like to do that. But I have a neighbor here who gushes on and on in an obviously insincere way. That, I do not do.

So, huh.

Great thread, SWOT.

That is a really important question, when you think about it. Because the essence of what happens in abuse, in the betrayal of trust all abuse essentially is, is that one person is lying about who the other person is and they know it and they knew it all along.

That is all I know about this for right now.

But isn't it something that this could have been such a familiar thread on KFCD that I never even was able to hear it. It is a feeling. A state of being, sort of. But attached to it in every direction is my mother, saying: "Just don't think, Cedar."

So I will have to take a look at that.

Or maybe I already did.

I actually am competent in everything I learn to do well. Maybe, this negative KFCD is at the heart of why I challenge myself, why I put myself in situations where I don't know, where I am the new guy.

That could be true.

That thing I call "leaning in". That is a bigger thing for me than it is for most people, then.

I even took that college-level algebra review class online that time, remember? That could be the same thing, because I have never used any algebra I have ever taken in all of my life. (Except for a smattering having to do with IV therapies ~ but I was no longer working when I took that online class. And the level of it was way beyond anything having to do with practical matters.) But I did it. (I got an A, too.) And there was no one else who even knew, and it was online, so it wasn't like I was trying to impress anyone.

Except you guys, now that I made sure you know I got an A.

:O)

This is an extraordinary breakthrough for me. This is a big piece of why I don't stand up, why I always have to think through everything to be sure I am saying what I mean to say and not something that would sound like it came from someone who should not be thinking.

"Just don't think, Cedar."

I can feel the withering and the contempt in that to this minute.

My mother used to kick us, too. I think I was fourteen the last time she kicked me. I have been thinking about that, choosing the word or rejecting it, in my posts here lately without even meaning to.

But you know? I have never seen her kick my sister. I have seen her kick my youngest brother. But she kicked the brother next in age to me, the second born child, in a way that left me all about coward because I did not attack her. But I did go downstairs and stand there and watch her and she stopped.

So I wasn't a coward. But all my life, until I worked through that piece at some point here on the site, I believed, with all my heart, that when the chips were down I would be a coward.

In my heart, that is what I knew about myself because I just stood there and did not protect him.

So, that will be coming next, I guess.

And there is rage there, and shame ~ whew. What a different reality than the one I was learning was the reality of a very pretty, very young, woman. So those two things are in there. And my sister. And whether the pretty and the responses were a trick, a fraud I was committing, because there was something the matter with me that was bad enough that my own mother could kick me, her face twisted in contempt. (Manipulator. That must have been the name of it, some KFCD tape spins on and on. Oh, that stupid first therapist, to have given me that word!) And my sister was there when my mother kicked me. And she was happy, was contemptuous was...was like my mother, when she would say "Just don't think, Cedar." That same "I know who you are."

So...huh.

And Copa's contention, about the butterfly dead beneath transparent glass.

So, how does all this tie in with lying and lies and liars?

And my mother called me a liar that night on our (mine and husband) lanai. She called me that over religious discussion ~ not even a personal one, as my mother claims to be an atheist without using that word ~ she just says religious people are stupid, and she was always smarter than...well, than to be that stupid. And she did it (screamed that I was a liar) loudly enough for our neighbors, whom she had met, and that she knew how we felt about, to hear.

So...that wasn't an accident either, was it.

One of those times someone might scream "You are a liar." or whatever her exact words were, in the heat of the moment. Which there was no heat, because we were not talking about my religion or hers or anyone's. In fact that discussion had probably come up because my mother does not like the religious aspect of things at my sister's which is where she had been.

But when she said "liar" I heard "manipulator" and I heard, "Just don't think, Cedar."

Well, whatever that was, I am posting about it here in relation to the kick when I was fourteen. Because somehow, this stuff is all connected, for me.

And after all, it was the same thing, really: You are not (she is not) as you appear, here in this place where you live in this house that you built. That your D H built, actually.

And man, my mom and my sister hate that we have what we have. That is why they are always talking about anyone can get a mortgage, and ghettos for people who think they have money but who will lose their houses when everything collapses which it is going to.

Or be consumed by the rising flood waters of climate change, and that is what everyone who builds something where that an happen deserves and they can't wait until it does.

Not much wiggle room there.

So, I wish I'd said.... You know what I wish I'd said instead of nothing? I wish I'd said, "I am so out of patience with your stupidity and greed and grasping and jealousy and nastiness and I don't see the sense of it and I will never take another word out of your mouth as meaningful because you just can't let go of trying to hurt and belittle me." Well, okay. I might not have said that. But I could have said, "Stop it."

Just like "No." is a complete sentence, so is "Stop it."

And nothing more need be said. (Best to keep it short and sweet, so I can remember it if I need it.)

And my sister has that same flavor to her, once I stop protecting her in my own head. She is a grown woman. Just like our children are grown men and women, too.

So, what is the power piece for me in having taken that role of protector. Which I never protected anyone except that I did. My sister and I have talked about specific incidents where our mother stopped because I saw her. Because I looked at her like someone who was seeing what she was doing, not as someone she was victimizing.

But she still kicked me when I was fourteen and I knew that different truth then, at least where boys were concerned, than that I should be kicked. And to tell the truth, I had known that secret true thing for some time, even where men were concerned.

Even where my own father was concerned. And he was always surprised seeming, and like he didn't quite know what to do about me or where to look. The same way he was sort of befuddled that the same little girl he raised could be a grown up married lady who was going to have a baby any day now.

He just couldn't get over that.

It was pretty cute, when he said that.

But to go back to my mother.

So maybe that's why she kicked me when I was fourteen. And destroyed all my things that she could, when I was babysitting for other people and had my own money and bought records and a record player. (That's how old I am everyone. We had records and eight track tapes would be coming along soon.)

Man, I get surprised at how old I am, really.

Back to my mother.

So that is why she howled out the windows in front of the neighbors and sailed all my albums, one after another, into the lake that day. To shame and destroy that growing up part of me who knew she was not right in her head or her actions.

Too late you stupid, stupid mean thing.

Now. My sister. Laughed in that same cruel way, that snide, I saw you not able to stop her, I watched you break way.

SO RIGHT AFTER THIS I HEAL. THE NEXT PARAGRAPH WAS WRITTEN AFTER THE HEALING.

It makes sense that she would have aligned with the powerful mother to eradicate the mother aspect of the mother stand-in that was me. That was all she had, and how bitter than must have been, for her. That makes perfect sense. But she is an adult now. So she knows better. In her heart, she should not be lusting after my destruction, but she does and probably, always will. And just like it always is when we figure it out...the abuse is and was and will forever be, nothing personal to me. She may want me in that transparent glass bottle Copa, but what she sees there has nothing to do with me. What she sees, and what her every behavior demonstrates, is the messed up family dynamic my mother set up in the first place. If I am gone in every way, discredited in every way, then there will only be herself and the mother she still so desperately needs to grant absolution.

That's what it looks like to me.

Man, I hate it when I turn out to be a bit player in my own melodrama.

***

Here is how miracles happen, sometimes.

I was taking a little break from all this. And I was thinking, "Yes. But how does this instruct me on the essential heart of the matter thing: What do I do, how do I see and respond to, my mother's death or my sister's whatever it is she is doing and it is beginning to look like, has always done and how do I look at all that?

And I remembered the Monty Python piece on Lil and Jabber's pirate thread.

And I know now how to see all of it, and exactly how to know how to respond.

And for those who haven't read it? The essence is that King Arthur presents himself at a French stronghold. Telling the person who finally comes to the turret of the castle that he is King Arthur on a quest from God. And the humor in it is that the Frenchman does not buy in to that reality in the tiniest way.

So my setpoint for anything having to do with my family of origin is:

You silly king! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberry! Now go away, or I will taunt you, again!

That's it. That is right where I need to be in regard to all these terrible things I have been posting and posting about for the past weeks.

And then? I have the Scotsman for the visual of how I should be seeing myself afterwords.

Ha!!!

:O)

I will go and watch that again. I will try to find how to post it here in case you haven't had time to read that pirate thread Lil posted. That is exactly the position we need to be coming from when we try to figure our families of origin out.

We are the Frenchman.

Just like that.

And then, we are the Scotsman, all unattractive and not giving a rip.

Just like the way it was no big deal to the Frenchman whether they were outside demanding to be let in or whether his accent was ridiculous.

"I fart in your general direction!"

Perfect.

Though I am all over the place on this post, I think I am going to post it as is. That way, you can see how I got there and that may help someone else, too.

It's just like I post all the time: We are meant to be whole. All we need to do is take it, have a look at it, find out where they still are in our heads and what is the damage they are doing.

And...fart in their general direction. But with this imagery, I think we may not even need to do that.

:upssmiley:

:hugs:

:starplucker:


So...this is kind of like in that movie Poltergeist. Where the woman pronounces the house clean and then, all the ghosts come roaring in.

But you know?

If they'd had that Monty Python clip in Poltergeist?

That good laughter would have vanquished every last one.

So that is a miracle that happened, right here on the site, for me and maybe, for all of us dealing with these nasty and so powerful negativities that should never have happened to anyone, ever.

But here is a point of gratitude for all of us capable of recognizing a thing we determine to address: There are some of us who are not able to do that; some of us who were so thoroughly roughly used so routinely that we cannot know the possibility of anything but what they told us we were.

I have been reading "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond.

There are worse things by far than what has happened to us.

So we have been fortunate. So fortunate, that we were not wholly in the power of our victimizers.

And maybe we should be thinking about that. They say there are children enslaved, right here in our country, today.

So I will continue reading and posting as I said I would, as you have done in witnessing my own healing for me. But I think I have the answer to whatever else comes up. For me, I mean. It is never what happened. That is over and cannot be changed. It is how those things work away at us, in the present. Once we can see it, their holds are broken, forever.

I think that is true.

Cedar

So, here is the way it works. The brokenness within us would be similar to the supposed authority of the king, in the Monty Python clip. Right from the beginning, right from the instant when the French know the king is out there, they never forget who they are.

And who they are is "French, you silly king."

And they don't take the king or his henchmen seriously. At one point, the English henchman says "Is there anyone else here we can talk to?" And the Frenchman says: "No!"

And that is what happens to us too, as the present day abusers, whether they are FOO members or just predators in general, feel us out to find the broken place that will work. The broken place they scent out the way sharks can detect even miniscule quantities of blood in the water and hone in for the kill. Which is pretty dramatic? But perfectly true. And somewhere in here, the Frenchman tells the English to go away, or he will "taunt them, again."

:O)

And that's how you do this.
 
Top