leave me alone already!

[daisyk9292]

Alatariel - I think your doing great with all you've had to deal with. You're head is a lot straighter than mine is. You do a great job of posting your questions, thoughts, etc. to get them out of your head and working them out in a real way. It's been a big help to me too. So thank you.

Pearls - Your posts are so grounded and comforting to me. So much common sense.

The empathy, validation, wisdom of everyone on this board is such a gift. And of course thanks to Legs, I'm able to get my angries out and enjoy every juicy bit of them!! hehehe!!

[pearlsb4swine]

Oh, Daisy, thanks for saying that.  I relate to you so much.  This board has been a tremendous gift to me.  It's like, alone, we're all missing pieces and confused.  Together, we are the complete enchilada.   

pearls

[alatariel]

Daisy, I like to read your posts, b/c so often it seems like you're thinking what I'm thinking before I knew I thought it. 

And Pearls, your name is fantastic, b/c you put layers of beauty around the irritation you suffered from the N, and thank you for sharing it with us. 

[alatariel]

OH!    With all the mentions of triangulation here, I just realized troll is triangulating!  She mentions my friend P, to make it seem like they're aligned behind my back and discussing me, or that she (troll) is part of my "friend list".  In N-world that should throw me off balance: how can I continue to refuse contact with someone if P thinks it's ok to talk to her?  Shouldn't I trust P's judgement if she's my friend?  Oh, and this is also supposed to show me that troll can still get to me, get info about me, and can subvert all my friends, too.

  WTFever.

I'm already aware that she has some contact with P, she's P's advertising agent for the paper, and that's absolutely fine with me, troll is actually good at her job and I sincerely hope that she does some great ads that generate lots of business for P.  And if they want to discuss me, that's fine, too.  There's nothing to discuss, I live a totally boring life.  So none of this is news to me, nor does it throw me off balance at all.  Screw you, troll.

[daisyk9292]

There's nothing to discuss, I live a totally boring life.

I always say this too? Why do we believe this?  Our lives are so mundane, especially when we are so caring and loving towards others and want to share our feelings.  YAWN.

I really don't think life is meant to be filled with all the excitement N's seem to need as much as the air they breath!! I believe something inside of them knows they are super dependent on external stimulation, that they convinced us our so called "boring" lives is a sign of weakness on our part.

 How about we replace it with something like, "We live a life of simplicity" free of Trolls and Dickheads who prefer complicated and get off on stirring up drama whenever they can. Why do they do this? BECAUSE INSIDE THEY ARE BORING!!!!

Yes, screw you Troll and every other loser N on the planet.

[Rosemary]

Yes Screw you TROLL     

[JennyWren]

Urghhhhhh  The "Boring Life" issue.

This is truly NBiL...the Golden Boy from Hell`s speciality.

There he sits with his pencil sharpener...sharpening up his Special Question for whenever he saw me......Here it comes...."So....Jen....what have you been doing?" STAB STAB STAB.

And back he would recline in his nasty little self-satisfied sneery way. While BigBird would shift in his seat uncomfortably wondering what idiotic reply I might give.

By the end I would just say....."Well [Golden Boy....you hateful excuse for an organic life form]....as you know...I have done very little to speak of...just kept things running along smoothly and gently and occupied by every breathing second utterly practically and productively."

By the end, I was not scared at all by his intimidating facade. I had run circles round him in multiple arguments...because he only appears superior.....while in fact he is no smarter than me or even BigBird (Who is dumb like a sloth who has let go of the tree and fallen on his head)

So...the question of how boring I am ceased to be a weapon. But it was a very barbed one for SO LONG.

I would suggest that those who feel well placed to judge the value of another person`s life and boredom factor therein might like to go boil their head.

Ok....I`ve finshed my rant now. I`ll go back to being BORING.

[alatariel]

Boring as it is, my life is pretty much morally impeccable, which probably drove the troll nuts when I still hung out with her.  I don't like drama, though I've spent my share of time with Drama Queens b/c I was drawn to their drama.  I go to work when there's work to go to, I come home, I spend time with my kids, I take care of my cats and my house, and I occasionally enjoy a few adult beverages with a friendly group of ppl.

Troll is probably hoping to hear that I've gone into a deep depression w/o her and been committed to the psych ward, or that I'm out in bars with a different guy every night, or I'm losing my house and all and moving away to live in "the project" b/c I can't find a job, or that I've finally decided to become a lesbian prostitute and open a real Cat House.

[Legs]

Welcome to the Lesbian Prostitute House of Shame. Outfits for tomorrow are either schoolgirl or naughty nurse.


Mistress Legs

[alatariel]

ooooh, I can do either "Naughty Librarian" or one of the newest looks, "Geek Girl".

[MoreMyself]

I always say this too? Why do we believe this?  Our lives are so mundane, especially when we are so caring and loving towards others and want to share our feelings.  YAWN.

I really don't think life is meant to be filled with all the excitement N's seem to need as much as the air they breath!! I believe something inside of them knows they are super dependent on external stimulation, that they convinced us our so called "boring" lives is a sign of weakness on our part.

This is an interesting side topic, how Ns create false excitement by always stirring things up.  The Hobbit could never hold a job longer than a few years, never wanted to live in the same house more than a few years.  He wanted movement for the sake of movement, whether it was jobs, people, houses.  And I confess that it had an addictive quality to it, living with that uncertainty, wondering what he'd come up with from day to day.  One day he'd want to tear down part of the house and rebuild, the next he'd want to sell up and move to another country.  I understand now that this is not normal, that this was part of the facade he had created.  He saw himself as this vital, vibrant, intelligent, creative genius who had so many brilliant ideas that the rest of us should act upon them along with him.  My life did seem slow and ordinary after the Hobbit exited.  But I have discovered that this lead to something else someone here mentioned, the time to reflect and reconnect with the self I was before I met him.  To let my own interests and values and personality traits surface.  And I know that a lot of people, perhaps even the majority, when faced with meeting me as I am or the Hobbit as he acts (outgoing personable interesting), would chose the Hobbit.  They too would be drawn into that false sense of excitement. 

Some days I think my life is boring and meaningless.  But I tell myself that it is because I am entering the third act of life. It's a major transition. The career/job life is over, the raising children is finished, and I am looking forward and wondering how people manage when they get to this point, how they find a reason to just go on.  And part of that emptiness is the hangover from 30 years with the Hobbit and GO GO GO!  I try to live in the moment and not think about the meaning of life too much, or my place in the universe.  I remember reading an interview with Johnny Cash's wife a few years before she died and she said she was just trying to matter.  I know what she meant.

[daisyk9292]

More - You do matter!      We all do.

[MoreMyself]

More - You do matter!      We all do.

Thank you Daisy, I needed to hear that.  I'm having a down day because yesterday, which coincidentally was also my 61st birthday, I smashed my car up.  It was my fault that the other driver hit me as I didn't see him and pulled out of a driveway.  I'm a bit bruised up, my car is gone for possibly weeks for repair, and I've been a bit teary and feeling guilty for what was just an accident that could happen to anyone.  The other driver wasn't at all hurt and was very understanding, but I still feel badly about it.

[daisyk9292]

 Happy belated B-day!  =msn cake=I wish I could have a piece with you personally but this is the best I can do. 

Well, what a lousy thing to happen on your birthday. No wonder you're feeling a bit down.  Yes, it can and does happen to anyone. But I'm like that too. I've had a few fender benders and always tortured myself (what else is new?) you'd think I had just murdered someone.

I'm glad I was able to make you feel a bit better. You and the rest of the WoN family mean a lot to me. Do you have someone to help you get around while your car is getting fixed?

[daisyk9292]

   There it is! LOL

[pearlsb4swine]

Oh More, you do matter, and anyone who would choose the Hobbit over you is nuts.  I am so sorry about your car accident.  They are traumatic.  Of course you are feeling a little blue (and black!) 

You must be exhausted after all those years with that frenetic hobbit.  It doesn't sound exciting to me, it sounds like an enormous amount of mental, emotional and physical work.  And after living that way all those years, when the pace ratchets down a notch or two, life is bound to be a little beige. 

Be good to yourself and let yourself recover from your accident. 

Happy belated birthday.

Pearls

[Rosemary]

Happy Birthday more  for yesterday       xxx

[MoreMyself]

Thank you everyone.  I think what troubles me is not so much the accident.  No one was seriously hurt, everyone was insured, everyone was well behaved and even the driver of the other car touched my shoulder before he left and said not to worry.  It's just that I have been so well conditioned to accept blame - first from nMom and then from the Hobbit - that of course the voices immediately started shouting in my head.  Why didn't I look a third or fourth time before pulling out (even though parked cars obscured my view).  Was I careless and am I a bad driver?  I hate those voices.  I hate that they still come out to haunt me.

My son came when I called him after the accident.  The ambulance crew wanted to take me to hospital but my doctor was just around the corner so I had my son take me there instead.  A strange thing happened as we were in the waiting room.  A young mother was with her little boy, about 4 years old.  He looked so happy as he played with some toys while waiting.  I don't know what made me say it but I asked my son if he had been happy when he was young.  Then I started to cry.  He took me outside and we agreed it must just be the shock of the accident.  I just suddenly felt so responsible, and so guilty.  What if I'd screwed his life up.  Maybe I should have left the Hobbit sooner, maybe I could have done something that I didn't. 

I sooo hate this.  The taking on of all the responsibility, the blame, the guilt.  All it takes is a minor car collision to plunge me back into it.  There's a lesson in this somewhere, something I need to take out of this experience.  I just have to work through it and figure it out.

[JennyWren]

Ohh MoreMyself.......oh 

(Happy Birthday also by the way  )

All you have posted about the Hobbit tells me everything I need to know about how you are feeling.

Nasty little jerks like him are like those skanky little retroviruses that implant themselves in your DNA and start getting busy buggering everything up without your knowledge.

A car accident of any kind is a deep instant psychological shock...and it is not surprising that it rattles those remaining strains of Hobbit virus and conjours up their all-time favourite thing ....Blame and Guilt.

I had a similar experience to your thoughts on jumping ship sooner when talking to my younger d a few days ago. She got quite cross...saying why didn`t I get rid of her dad years ago. After a lot of thought....and obviously hindsight is a grand thing...I conceded that Yes...things would have been better for her. EXCEPT....she would have had to visit with him whenever he wished....because she would have been too small to be heard by a Court.

I think being alone with BigBird would have been a world of hurt and confusion for her. I think what has happened has been the best of a bad deal.

I tie myself in knots worrying about whether BigBird ruined the ds childhoods entirely. But he is a fact of life. Like Cholera. And famine.

MoreMyself...I am absolutely positive you made the best of the festering pile of Hobbit-infested cards you were handed. You are one of the most levelheaded sensible insightful and funny people ever made! Your sense of responsibility and your capacity to feel is what the Hobbit worked with for so many years.

Just let the feelings ride on their wave. And you will have new perspectives on things.

[alatariel]

   Happy Belated Birthday, MoreM!  Your present contains a hobbit-free life, and a chance to be yourself.


Sorry about your accident.  A car accident is always traumatic, even a minor fender-bender, go easy on yourself for being shaken up.

[daisyk9292]

He looked so happy as he played with some toys while waiting.  I don't know what made me say it but I asked my son if he had been happy when he was young.  Then I started to cry.

More - The mere fact you asked your son that question shows what a caring parent and person you truly are. Even if he's an adult now. My own mom is 72, I'm 42. I'm a grown woman, but what I wouldn't give for her to even ask me such a question! It really doesn't matter so much to me that my parents made mistakes and were neglectful to me, and focused only on themselves. But it does matter that they simply can't find it in themselves to care, to share what they were going through, to allow me to understand them. But they never will.

You're a good mom. 

[pearlsb4swine]

It's just that I have been so well conditioned to accept blame - first from nMom and then from the Hobbit - that of course the voices immediately started shouting in my head.  Why didn't I look a third or fourth time before pulling out (even though parked cars obscured my view).  Was I careless and am I a bad driver?  I hate those voices.  I hate that they still come out to haunt me.
...
Then I started to cry.  He took me outside and we agreed it must just be the shock of the accident.  I just suddenly felt so responsible, and so guilty.  What if I'd screwed his life up.  Maybe I should have left the Hobbit sooner, maybe I could have done something that I didn't. 

I sooo hate this.  The taking on of all the responsibility, the blame, the guilt.  All it takes is a minor car collision to plunge me back into it.  There's a lesson in this somewhere, something I need to take out of this experience.  I just have to work through it and figure it out.

Dear More....I can relate to you so much it is uncanny.  The taking on of all responsibility, the blame, the guilt.  The N mother and the N exh.  And being plunged back into it, over and over.  Even the car accident.  I was in two car accidents and totaled two cars within three months of my marital implosion.  I too burst into tears afterward, feeling like this latest calamity was just another example of one more thing I  had screwed up, one more way I had failed, one more disaster to process.  Like I was drowning. 

I am in some heavy therapy right now, and doing EMDR treatments.  I feel like, finally, after all these years, I am taking care of myself.  Finally making the connections that I need to make.  Finally facing the damage done to me as the scapegoat daughter of two N alcoholic abusive parents.  The daughter with ADHD.  The awkward daughter, the less socially adept daughter.  The dirtiest mirror in a set of three that were supposed to match.  I have always known that my FOO was less than ideal and understood in an intellectual way that I had been affected.  But I did not realize just how much guilt and blame I had taken on and how that morphed into the voices in my head today.  And really it's not about understanding the voices.  It's about making them go away.  I need them to go away.

I am reading Karyl McBride's book about daughters of N mothers.  Have you read that?  What did you think? 

Just as a side note, it turned out for me that the car accidents were blessings in disguise.  First of all, they were concrete traumas I could add to my list of bad things.  I needed an impressive list of bad things to give myself permission to take this leave of absence from work to take care of myself.  I ended up losing two cars.  And I bought a shiny new one that I love that is kind of a symbol for me of my new life post divorce.  And the check I got from the car insurance went to xnh in the divorce.  Basically I used that check to get out of paying him alimony.  After everything he had done to me, the cheating, the draining of our modest bank accounts to give to the gf, he had the N nerve to demand that I pay him alimony.  Without those car accidents, I would not have had the cash to entice him into settling.  So it all ended up working out to my advantage.

Wishing you a rainbow after the storm, More.     You deserve all good things. 

 

Pearls

[MoreMyself]

Thank you.  Jenny, you are right about second-guessing the timing of leaving.  I kept the marriage going until the youngest was 15.  He wasn't an adult and although I know the divorce was hard for him, it would have been harder had he been 10, or 5.  Because as it turns out the Hobbit D&D's his sons pretty quickly and hardly bothers with them.  It would have been heartbreaking to have had this happen when my son was little.  I tried to shield them as much as I could but of course they are going to be damaged.  What child of an N parent isn't?  And Jenny, you really should start writing seriously.  You have one of the strongest voices I've ever encountered.  For a few years I was writing short stories and was published in magazines, those women's style magazines with the stories about Brad and Angelina.  I took a writing course and it took off from there.  I gave it up when the Hobbit bought the business and I had to go work full time in it.  I mentored other writers who were trying to get started and get published, but gave that up too.  I can tell you with certainty that you have something very unique, a strong voice that can make your readers laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time.  You should forget about doing somebody else's filing and start to write.  If you want to give it a go, PM me because I'd be happy to help you in any way I can.

Ala, you are right, I need to acknowledge the after effects of shock and just take it easy.

And Pearls, you made me cry, but in a good way.  Because I have been having flashbacks but oddly not from this accident, but from a very bad car accident I was in at the age of 12.  Memories are coming back, things about the way nMom treated me during and after that time, the realisation that I was just a nuisance to her and she didn't care about me.  I have stuffed those memories down so hard and kept them submerged for so long, it frightens me to have to confront them.  It feels like it could be a tsunami of emotions and I'm so afraid I might get swept away by it.  I am thinking of getting counselling.  I haven't read the book you refer to but I am going to order it from Amazon as it looks like it could address and explain what nMom was doing to me.

I'm feeling like this birthday and all that happened might just be a major milestone for me.  Like I can finally dredge up the emotional muck from where it's been infecting my soul since I was a child.  Like I can finally stop doubting that my nMom is really at the root of so many of my problems. There are so many sideroads to take, like understanding that nMom hated the love between my grandmother and me and tried to sabotage our relationship.  It's time for me to do the emotional work and take off my denial hat for once and for all.   

[pearlsb4swine]

And Pearls, you made me cry, but in a good way.  Because I have been having flashbacks but oddly not from this accident, but from a very bad car accident I was in at the age of 12.  Memories are coming back, things about the way nMom treated me during and after that time, the realisation that I was just a nuisance to her and she didn't care about me.  I have stuffed those memories down so hard and kept them submerged for so long, it frightens me to have to confront them.  It feels like it could be a tsunami of emotions and I'm so afraid I might get swept away by it.  I am thinking of getting counselling.  I haven't read the book you refer to but I am going to order it from Amazon as it looks like it could address and explain what nMom was doing to me.

I'm feeling like this birthday and all that happened might just be a major milestone for me.  Like I can finally dredge up the emotional muck from where it's been infecting my soul since I was a child.  Like I can finally stop doubting that my nMom is really at the root of so many of my problems. There are so many sideroads to take, like understanding that nMom hated the love between my grandmother and me and tried to sabotage our relationship.  It's time for me to do the emotional work and take off my denial hat for once and for all.   

 

Good for you!!!  Of course the accident would bring that memory up for you.  And of course it is painful to remember your mother's indifference.  Mothers are not supposed to be indifferent.  A lot of my bad memories are from that age, 12, 13, 14, 15.  I know I tend to gloss over just how mean my mother could be.  I make excuses for her in my head.  And now, with what I have learned about narcissism I have more insight into what she was thinking and what her motives really were.  It's not pretty.  But it's a relief to have to validation of what I knew in my heart back then--my mother was treating me badly.  I know what you mean about the fear of the tsunami.  I really, really don't want to talk about some of my memories and feelings.  Scared on the one hand that it will sweep me away, and scared on the other hand that I will find I am making a big deal out of nothing.  But I am in it now, and so far so good.  Somehow like I am finally right-sizing these memories and putting them where they belong.  So hard to explain. 

I am also reading "The Narcissistic Family."  Imogene recommended it to me yesterday and I spent all day yesterday buried in it.  It really resonated with me.  Between the reading and the EMDR and therapy, there are a lot of bells going off in my head.  Dare I say it......I feel hopeful that things will get better for me. 

Pearls

[Imogene]

Wow, I have been missing an amazing thread!  (Glad you're liking the book, pearls!)  Yes, yes, yes--the voice of self-blame.  What would it be like to have an accident and simply allow yourself to be taken care of?  Not to feel like you did something wrong? 

Believe me; I sure don't know.  I blame myself for EVERYTHING.  I wish it made me a better person, but it doesn't.  It's just a useless maladjusted coping mechanism.  If I blame myself, it won't hurt so much when my mother yells at me.  Sound familiar?  I have more to say on this subject, but ironically enough, my mother called!  Got to go vacuum out my head.