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.
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.