The Blinders Start Coming Off

 

 

The Blinders Start Coming Off

Ricky made his way to his mommy's house in Texas. After he left I lost a lot of weight and bleached my hair back to blonde and I was looking great and feeling better. I got a full Doctors exam and was deemed healthy. Rickys best friend Richies girlfriend at the time Beth, looked a lot like me, just chubbier. Something that over the years Richie pointed out to me often. (???)

A few weeks after Ricky made it to Texas, Richie called me one day to ask me how me and my son were doing and told me that he was donating part of his liver to his sister and he had had a full battery of blood tests and he was clean of all diseases. He told me he broke up with Beth. I cant remember if he said it or I did, but whatever was said, later that night he came over to my house when Ricky was in Texas and we had sex. I made the specific point to give him a blow job.

At first I did it because he was STD free, but when I realized that he no longer gave a fuck about Ricky, it became strategic.

 

I continued it to be able to tell Ricky later on that I had fucked his best friend and sucked his cock! It was fun to have that thought in the back of my mind. After that Richie was on MY TEAM and did MY BIDDING!

 

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Women stop giving their BF/Hubby blow jobs, cause there are resentments built up and intimacy is broken. I had stopped giving Ricky BJs 8+ yrs ago.

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Richie didn't care about Ricky anymore.
One day he even just dropped by to eat me out. LOL

He told me he'd do anything to be with me.

Maybe it was my cooking?

I applied for custody at the courthouse, Ricky came up from Texas for the hearing. He sat there in front of the judge and sobbed the ENTIRE TIME. I gave him visitation. No one understood why he was crying if he could still see his son!

 

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Looking back I think Ricky was either a Narc himself or Autistic -years later Ricky had another son who was also autistic (and half blind)

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Ricky stopped at my house with Richie after the hearing to see his son. He cried the entire time. My Mother was there and told me later that she was upset that Ricky was doing all that crying cause his son could sense something was wrong.

WHAT?

So lemme get this straight!
My Mother ignored all MY psychological cues my whole life but was able to care about my sons
psychological cues?
 

 

First Strike

 

Something about that really really bothered me....
*
Richie brought Ricky over a few days later to pick up some of his old clothes to take back to Texas. While Ricky was upstairs Richie was trying to hook up with me later...I think Richie happily drove Ricky to the train station.

HA!

A month later, Richie had called me one night, and even tho I told Richie I didnt wanna hear anything about Ricky he told me Ricky had called him from Texas and told him that he had found out he had cancer, and that Lance Armstrong had come and visited him. But Richie told me that each time he told Richie the story the type of cancer changed. Richie said there were other strange things he was saying, so when he moved back up here and came to see our son, I was reticent to let him see him because he was not well and was saying such weird things...I didn't want my son to be out with drugs and illegal activity in the car. It was just 6 months ago that he had threatened to jump off the bridge. I told Ricky to get help...I never saw nor heard from him again. It was 2002.

 

(Note: Ricky has been back in jail a few times and was caught laying on the side of the road in a residential street, while he was casing houses to burglarize. I made the right choice)

Richie on the other hand seriously wanted a relationship with me and told me he'd do and be anything for me. But I was done with him.... I told him to get lost.

 

Can you see the change in me? Im starting to stand up for myself.

 

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I hate using people or playing people. but my blinders were coming off and I was starting to see men's lies BEFORE they caused me harm. and I know exactly what Richie was up to. He was trying to move in, and assume Rickys place in my house and use me. He was just as lazy as Ricky. So I played him and I don't regret it.

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He saw me sitting on that couch for 10 lonely, HORRIBLE, LOVELESS, SEXLESS years with Ricky
doing nothing, having no job, using and neglecting me while I did everything and was so good to
Ricky and he said and did NOTHING!
He could have been my Knight in Shining Armor but instead he was a NOTHING!
SO FUCK YOU TOO RICHIE! 

I was starting to get a backbone and heal!

-----*-----

After Ricky and Richie disappeared I started getting on with my life. My mother seemed like she had changed and so we started talking a lot again.

But a few months later things started to unravel....

She gave me this BIZARRE folder of poetry about looking for me and my son in crowds and shit! Not ONE single poem in the folder gave any indication of her believing that she might have had any culpability in why I had stopped talking to her.

NONE!

I had hoped she would have changed and started to treat me as her priority and not treat me as a troublemaking burden and treat me as an adult and be genuinely interested in me for once in
my life...

But NO,
She faked it for a few months then it all crumbled. In the few yrs that I had started talking to her again I had done a lot for her...

I had gone to Harrisburg for one of her cooking contests
I had gone to several boutiques SHE was interested in to spend time with HER.
I had driven all the way to Parkesburg, Pa to the closest Super-Walmart to us to buy something for a cooking contest she couldn't buy in West Chester, before the deadline.
I had given her a handheld CB to borrow to keep in her car for emergencies then replaced it with a Cellphone.
To surprise her on her birthday I drove a round trip out to Chester to 2Js Deli (from her childhood) to buy her a Hoagie and then to Pats Steaks to buy her a cheesesteak in 3 hours just to bring it back to her office to surprise her.
 

 

Two-J's Sandwich Shop, Chester, Pa

So what happened?

First I had asked her repeatedly to come with me to Reading Pa (35 miles away) to see the Pagoda. She always acted all exhausted and dropped her shoulders and eyes and said, "Thats too far!"

But then she called one day and asked me if I knew the best route to get to Middletown Delaware cause she wanted to drive down there to visit her cousin Joanne. Middletown, De is 62 miles away!

So once again my mother was showing me she was not interested in anything I was interested in and doing something fun with her ONLY child was not her priority.

After that, I just started getting very annoyed that no matter what we were talking about or discussing on the phone she couldn't bear to be on the phone with me for more than 2 to 5 minutes. She literally would hang up on me if someone called on call waiting.

She stood me up on several occasions when we were supposed to go somewhere together and a lot of little things were happening along the way that started making me feel like shit under her shoe. 

 

Just like when she stood me up on Thanksgiving she expected for me to let my Aunt and Uncle mooch off me with no regards for MY feelings.......

My Aunt, Uncle and Grandmother have never come to anywhere I lived after I moved out of my Moms apartment. I still don't know why. I invited them to all the holiday dinners..At my new house I would invite them and my mother would always tell me that they were traveling or they weren't gonna be home on that date (always saying they were going to Albania), then sure enough my mother would come to my house and eat my holiday food and then right before she left, she'd tell me she was stopping at Stacey and Lennys after my house and "can she have platters of food for them?" After 4 times of her telling me they weren't home and couldn't come, and yet "Surprise Surprise" they'd be miraculously home and ready for my food at THEIR house.

I had had enough!

I told my mother "NO, if they aren't coming to my house to eat my food and share my company then they aren't getting any of my food at all!" My mother told me "don't be like that, they love you!"
       "Oh really? then why has Aunt Stacey never called my house in 13 years?"
Why did Aunt Stacey stop talking to me when I turned 18? She used to say that me and her were like twins. Why aren't we still twins?

Why does no one love me?
 

 

STRIKE TWO

 

 

I just feel that my mother has been lying about me and/or making up untrue cock-a-mamie stories about me.

GASLIGHTING

I felt like she told everyone she knows all this horseshit about me so she didn't have to admit that she mentally screwed up both her kids and damaged them. If she lies to people and makes me look like a bad person for years behind my back, then they wont wanna be around me and then they wont find out who I really am or the truth. Then she doesn't have to account for her bad parenting and they wont wanna be around me and they cant find out that I am nothing my mother tells them...
　
I feel as if she didn't want her sister, BIL and Mother to ever come to my house and eat my food and talk to me as an adult.

 

It's Emotional Munchausens By Proxy. Her parenting made me emotionally and mentally sick and she instead blamed it all on me and said I was the bad troublemaker, handicapped etc. (my mom loves to get pity!!!!! I'll bet she loves it even more than Praise.)  so when I moved out she probably scrambled to figure out how to fit me being independent, with a house and baby and a car, with me being a bad troublemaking, violent, handicapped person.

My father told me lies shes said about me. Her coworkers Wife told me lies shes said about me. My half sister told me lies shes said about me.

So I know she was gaslighting people.
She had to prevent her family and friends from knowing me. If they came to my house and ate my food, saw my house, saw my parenting and listened to me talk about things I'm passionate about, then they'd realize that aside from her being a prize winning cook, that's all she is. She's just like her mom. 

A boring, brainless Narc Robot.....

 

And she'd melt away like the Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz

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Holidays are sooo heavy and cold the first 3 yrs of no contact. And its worse when you have kids. But you start making new traditions like decorating the tree together, Going to see other neighborhoods, Getting hot cocoa at Starbucks and walking around the hood after the first snow. IHOP on Easter morning, sushi on NYD....

I used to bring a KingCake to his school every MardiGras and throw an April fool party...Every holiday I bought all his classmate Ashers holiday choco lollies.
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We found our footing 

My mother has always stated that she LOVES the Limelight! She loves attention and praises etc. Which is the hallmark of a Narcissist. So I think that if Aunt Stacey, Uncle Lenny and Grandma ever came to my house, and ate my food that it would have taken away from HER attention and praise and her narcissistic supply and she would be just sitting there without HER house, HER food, HER conversation pieces and
shed be a wilting flower and she couldn't have that at all, so she put a stop to it and cancelled on her own child to keep all attention on her.

I mean, I am a better cook than her. She has won cooking contests with my recipes.

----*----

I had been living alone for almost 2 yrs by then and I'd started realizing just how capable and how good a person I really was. I remodeled the kitchen myself that first year. But my mother still was treating me like shit. It was confusing!

So I called up a shrink in the phone book and started to go see him. I never felt normal. And so much never made sense to me growing up. I wanted to know if I was as bad a person as my mom made me feel or if it was all my Mothers problem....

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Therapists cannot TELL you what to do, they can only very gently steer you in a certain direction. The patient is the one dong all the work. In order to get better and move on, all the painful things in your life get dredged up in therapy and you are forced to validate the authentic answers and discard the invalid ones. What is left, is the TRUTH.

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Like I said in one of my previous "chapters", when I got out of my Mother's apartment and started working at the Seafood restaurant and I got around peers my age and started listening to them, I would hear them talk about allll these naughty things they did or were doing (things I never did or would even think of doing) and they all had their driver's licenses and had these great fun lives and they weren’t on permanent lockdown in their parents PRISON! I think the seafood restaurant was the beginning of the end of the brainwashing by my own Mother. BUT, It took me 10 yrs after working there to comprehend what was done to me and to seek help.

So I went to therapy to find out once and for all…

Is it ME or my MOTHER?

I saw him several times then one night, in September 2004, Hurricane Jeannie came up the coast and it started to rain real badly and everyone who knows me (really KNOWS me) knows my basement floods at times and I get panic attacks because of it cause I'm allergic to molds and I cant be down there and I'm always freaking out that one day my house will fall down from flooding....and then where would I stay and how would I pay for it? I'm all alone with my son, I have no support yaknow?
*
Panic attacks take A LOT out of me. They make me pee so much that I get dehydrated, I get very shaky and feel like I am about to jumpout my skin and I cant breathe. I'm exhausted for a few weeks afterwards and it gets worse each subsequent one I have. Panic Attack sufferers almost always have sexual or physical abuse in their background. They are a psychological and biological response to unresolved fear. Mine developed after my physical and sexual abuse was not remedied and I was not protected as well as the fear of seeing my mother get pushed around as a small child.
*
So my basement was flooding and I was freaking out MAJORLY and for awhile at that time my mother had been telling me that "If you need any handiman work done around your house, Bobs son Ralph is looking for work and extra money, just call me and I'll call him!" So I called her in a panic...Begging her to please call him to have him come wet vac my basement...

She sighed and hemmed and hawed and drug her feet in even saying "yes! I'll call him" She finally called him at home and she told me there was no answer. I asked her if Bob could find him and she acted like I was pulling her teeth out and asking her to do something very difficult and did the SIGHING thing a few more times and THAT WAS IT!
　

STRIKE THREE

(Cue the Family Feud Music)
 

 

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
I truly had had enough!
I couldn't deal with her one more day!
The apathy towards me
The disappointments
The treating me like a third class citizen.
The Neglect
The Mental abuse
The Ignoring me
The NEVER HELPING ME, LOVING ME, OR PROTECTING Me
The unequal treatment between me and Dana
The never sticking up for me.
The EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!

I told her I didn't wanna talk to her anymore, she screamed at me that SHE WAS A VERY GOOD MOTHER TO ME wah wah wah wah wah! All about HER! I hung up on her and called my shrink and told him what had just happened and then I went and saw him the next week.

He suggested she come in with me for a session and it turned into two sessions. For the record my therapist at that time was a Doctor in Psychology and is actually a respected family reconciliation specialist and tries hard to keep families together. She sat stiff as a board in the chair, she blamed everything on me. told the therapist that I was a difficult child and that she didn't remember me running away and screaming if I had been raped. and that "all kids beat each other up"...She confirmed everything for him in a way, but refused to take responsibility for any of it!

When we were discussing my rape and her ignoring it I was very upset and crying, she sat there
emotionless, no tears, nothing.
EMOTIONLESS!

Instead of being Horrified and coming over and hugging me and saying how sorry she was for not being there for me and ignoring it. She sat there and treated me as if I was lying and just said "I don't remember you running away screaming or anything!" I told her to get the fuck out of his office 2/3rds thru the second session! I told her that until she could admit what she did to me all these years and make a heartfelt
genuine apology I no longer wanted to have anything to do with her, After she left, my shrink told me she was highly delusional and had problems. Later on he confirmed that she had Narcissistic Personality Disorder with a side order of Histrionic Personality Disorder.

I cried for a few weeks after I finally got the "diagnosis" and that it

IT WASN'T MY FAULT ALL THESE LONG HARD YEARS!

After that came out, I started doing research and everything fit into place. For the FIRST time in my life I stopped blaming myself when someone was mean to me and started standing up for myself. It made perfect sense why my Mother couldn’t stay on the phone with me for longer than 2 minutes and why she Gaslighted me and why I could do nothing right and my sister could do nothing wrong.

 

Simply put, my Mother ONLY thinks about herself…
She never truly loved her children or anyone else…
I know that must be unbelievable to people who know her, after all my Mother puts on a great show of caring and sending cards and acting concerned about others. But what you need to understand is that it is all an ACT. She does it all to make them THINK she's a NICE person.

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The abuser mistreats only his closest – spouse and children. To the rest of the world, he appears
to be a composed, rational, and functioning person. Abusers are very adept at casting a veil of
secrecy – often with the active aid of their victims – over their dysfunction and misbehavior. This
is why the abuser's offending behavior comes as a shock even to his closest, nearest, and
dearest. Secrecy is a major weapon in the abuser's arsenal. Many abusers maintain a double life
and keep it a well-guarded secret. Others show one face – benign, even altruistic – to an
admiring world and another – ominous and aggressive – at home. All abusers insist on keeping
the abuse confidential, safe from prying eyes and ears. Many victims feel guilty. They have been
convinced by the offender that they are to blame for his misconduct ("you see what you made
me do!", "you constantly provoke me!"). ~Dr Sam Vaknin