Two Stupid, Weird things

two weird things happened today. 

this wasn’t one of them: the path season 3 is on Hulu, which thrilled me this am since i had no idea when it would come back. why do i love this show so much. it’s not that great. i guess, 1 cults, 2 the way it’s filmed so creepy, and 3 michelle monaghan. man! her character is super awesome and scary and relatable all at the same time. and in the first episode of season 3 — whoa! she never fails to move me.

anyway, here’s the 2 things:

first, my horrible ex-husband called me for the first time in 10 years. someday i hope to blog alllll about that nightmare. suffice to say that he is a true villain and sometimes immigration does get it right — he was deported to russia in 05. so he calls me as i was headed to my lunch date with mollie. im driving. he sounded the same. he lectured me about getting the kids in the best colleges (what?! hahaha wow. this guy), and then asked me to scan and send some old photos of him, and then said he had no regrets and has lived a pretty exciting life.  ive been researching NPD (narcissists) lately and dang. hadn’t gotten around to plugging him into the checklist, but wont need to now. i basically was like, ok yeah glad to hear you’re doing well, i gotta go. wtf. this man brutalized me AND the kids (they were infants). he humiliated me in public so many times. he almost killed me when i refused to have an abortion. he threatened me constantly with bodily harm and with stealing the babies. when i finally dared to escape him, he terrorized me. i slept with a gd gun under my pillow. that’s never a satisfying sleep. even after i fled california, he found me and tormented me. even after he was deported, he called and threatened me. and he was a scary guy; it was hard to ignore his threats. it really wasn’t until a few years ago that i could breathe a little easier, because the kids were old enough that if he tried to abduct them, they’d be able to fight back or escape. just crazy to have that door from the past opened out of nowhere and in the 5 min conversation, for him to gloat about how exciting his (deadbeat, drug addicted, crime-riddled) life has been. i mean, it probably was haha, but dont go bragging to me about it. “i have no regrets”, he said twice. i was going to write a scathing email, but opted for a short and sweet one. i basically said “listen i wish you well but we are not friends. you treated me and the kids terribly. you made my life hell. you have done nothing to amend for that nor have you done anything to earn back my respect or friendship.” so, he’ll probably have some lovely words in response, but w/e idc.

second thing: my stupid ass ex bf, the one i’ve been rambling on about for 2 months, the one i just told last weekend hey were not friends, sorry. you treated me like shit and im not into that anymore. (same script as above, huh.) well, he texted me a bunch today. like telling me his whole office has the flu (ignored). and he’s super scared he going to get it (ignored). and that his throat hurts so bad (ignored). and what do i want to do for the kids bday. this i felt was within the realm of what i will talk to him about (house business and kid business) which im sure is why he brought it up. nevertheless, i responded, “let’s worry about the kid’s birthday after we see if you’re still alive” or something. he sent a crying face (ignored). it blows my mind that hes just going to keep texting me like we’re…friends? i effing told him im not his friend.  if someone told me, hey im really not your friend, i wouldn’t be texting, oh my owie throat.  is it that he doesnt believe me? he has always said he thinks im lying when i say, like, standing up to him type stuff.  so that’s very possibly it. i guess its just ignore ignore ignore. he knows i have a hard time being mean, and he may think i think it’s mean to ignore him. but i dont. its rational. he’s a manipulator, and this is obvs more of his pathetic game.

not playing. i hope this is the extent of the shit he pulls.

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What Happened, Part 1

In Jan 2006, i was fresh out of an 18th month failed relationship. I had been unhappy in the relationship for a long time so, altho i was a little bit scared of living in a new state with no friends and no job, i wasn’t too broken up about it. i got a work book that had you write daily about the relationship. like one day you wrote all the great things about your ex, and the next day you wrote all the things you hated, etc. i didnt sweat the future or lament the wasted time, partly because it had been less than 2 years, but mostly because i was 31 and death anxiety hadn’t truly hit me yet. 

by february of 2006, i had a decent job, tho low paying, and i was pretty much over the break up and happy to be on my own. i wanted to focus on raising my kids and getting healthy. i started weight watchers again. i was doing good. eating right, exercising, taking care of business. i was self sufficient and pretty satisfied overall.

in July i had a weird idea strike me on my way home from work. i said to myself, hey universe, i think i might be ready to meet someone new. it had only been 6 months, but that last relationship was definitely over and any pain was healed.

in October of 2006, i was at work and got on myspace at lunch. i got into a casual conversation about russian authors with someone in a literature forum. over the next few weeks, we messaged thru myspace, continuing to have  purely intellectual discourse — nothing personal. altho, it did become personal, but i dont remember how. eventually we were instant messaging on yahoo (i think?). by november, it has become important to me and we “chatted” every night. in december we started talking on the phone. altho he told me later he thought it went well, i remember the first phone call as a real let down. his writing was very captivating and his lavish and intelligent praise and attention was very seductive (love-bombing). but the phone call revealed a weak voice and a less certain person. i decided to let that first impression slide. because it wasn’t the first impression if you count our written correspondences, nor was it a true in-person first impression, right?

we talked on the phone again soon and it became sexual fairly quickly. he made me feel safe and i was more open with him than i normally would have been. i told him secrets. then he told some of his. i was committed to respect his secrets, since he’d respected mine, and i have an open mind. but his secrets stretched my compassion and understanding. 

first, he told me he was leaving for Korea on Christmas day, just weeks away. he was scheduled to be there for one year. while i was disappointed in a way, i was also happy that i wouldn’t have to meet him soon. i wanted to lose 25 pounds before we met so that his first impression of me would be “perfect” like he deserved. but a year did seem like a very long time.

but his other secrets were tougher. he had confessed that he was a sexual masochist. at this point in my life, i had only had relatively vanilla experiences, and altho i’d read a variety of classic erotica, i hadn’t put a lot of thought into it. i was intrigued as i always am when confronted with something i dont know much about, but i was disturbed by some of his stories. incestuous stories of sneaking in and sniffing his mom’s underwear. masturbating in his sister’s rooms when they were off at college. various interactions with strangers he’d met online where he paid them money to either do nothing more than act bitchy, to requesting him to meet other men in hotels and insert objects into each other’s asses.

a normal person would have hung up the phone and been done. and i have so much regret at not having done just that. there wasn’t ever anything good that i got out of the relationship after this point, so it’s impossible to justify. as one might expect, it just got worse. i can only assume that it was the intense and overwhelming nature of the love-bombing in the first few months that set me on a path i wasn’t able to escape until now, 10 years later. that initial love-bombing was followed with teasing crumbs and a few minor love-bombings over the years, altho they were never as good. maybe because he didnt put as much into it, or maybe because they were always tainted with the pain i’d begun accumulating.

but at that time, i thought this was it. this was his openly confessed flaw and im sure i thought with enough love and care, i could help him. that was the dynamic that was set, the trap as it were, and i was only too eager to rush in. again, because of the love-bombing, but also because he convinced me of his shame and hate of this predilection–which turns out was true. he does feel shame and hate. however, he loves it too, and has the cake as well as eats it by compartmentalizing. he also convinced me that there was never any incest, he was not molested, nor had he molested anyone. and he was not sexually attracted to any family member, but that he was drawn to explore sexual taboos. he made this seem like a virture, nay a sacrifice he was making to becomeing his best self. but, more than anything he was drawn to powerful, older women, which is unusual so i was intrigued. and all this that he said is also true. in a way. and also untrue.

thus began my foray into the duplicitous nightmare of false realities, crazy making, and unattainable acceptance that has completely destroyed me. for now.

this is the photo i keep on my phone to help me stay focused, because it so perfectly represents the following 10 years of my life, to be detailed in future posts.

 

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Day 19: Little Baby Soldier

so, the lady who I talked crap about yesterday called me today and was super nice and encouraging. yes, im a dick. but, also, i am completely drained after a lifetime of being used by narcopaths. (this is the delightful term my therapist says means pathological narcissists, who would be my grandma, my mom, and most of my partners! :D) maybe it’s true, i can’t deny there’s a pattern. if im an empath (which supposedly just means very empathetic, which i know to be true), then i am a neon sign to these types of people. 

its crazy tho, because I really do think im smart and careful and cautious. i have fucking cPTSD from my childhood and struggle with hypervigilance. isn’t the one positive thing of hypervigilance supposed to be that im actually vigilant– like, really, really vigilant?  then why do i keep failing to spot these guys? how are they sneaking thru my radar? 

it’s the unconscious mind. it’s so much more powerful than my conscious brain. and I just haven’t done things right. i haven’t figured it out. ive tried to be this little baby soldier. but i think im supposed to throw all the armor down and focus on taking care of baby me. that sounds logical. and ridiculous. and impossible. and like a ship that’s sailed long time ago. feeling very discouraged. and fragile.

he keeps texting me. so nice. asking can he come over, can he call, can he help me. baby soldier aint falling for it. hells no. one time he said (something like), “I know if i wanted to, i could have you fall madly in love with me, i could really blow your mind.” wtaf??! who says that? a nut! and who hears that but doesn’t run? another nut!

I swear that every day that passes, i see things clearer. and all these old ladies ive been gathering around me help so much. im grateful every day for older women. 

I am nervous about what he’s going to do when i tell him he can’t come home for christmas. i think it best if we just visit him on christmas at his flat, so i can leave when the time comes and can’t be confined with him in a private space. but, i don’t think anyone, he or the kids, will go for it. my son, to whom i suggested the idea, said “ew no, gross.” next best would be letting him come over on christmas day for a few hours. i would have to have my guard up, and maybe lie and act like things are going to be more relaxed between us from then on, agreeing to go back to providing emotional support, etc. which im not going to do. and im nervous about that too– when he finds out that it’s not going to just be ’30 days of no communication’, but ‘forever of no communication’. because i have found that when he doesn’t get what he wants, he does some very sneaky underground crazy stuff that ends up making my life very complicated. he has less ability to do so now, since i have distance. but the financial ties scare me. i believe that’s where he will strike. he has to know im nervous about it. and i need to be prepared for something completely unpredictable and extreme. for myself, it doesnt matter, but a financial blow would definitely upset the kids lives, and he knows how much that would stress me out/hurt me.

I can’t belive im here again — trying to extricate myself and my children from a dangerous relationship ever so carefully. ive got to stop trying to do everything myself, and start looking to other people to show me the way to heal properly and grow stronger and safer. i can’t trust my instincts, they’re all muddled up. and this will be my greatest test of my life: putting my fate in the hands of others. this is that same path i keep running from. the path to a power outside of myself. 

I hate this so much ❤

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Day 16: Breakthru Sun

I feel different today. Not sure what it is. I said before that i finally saw a light at the end of a tunnel — to realize this is a tunnel and not an abyss was huge — but maybe now i feel that light. idk. one thing im doing is trying to remember, really get in touch with the person i was before him. i look at pictures and think, i don’t know her. or i think worse things, awful hateful things that come from the regret and pain of right now. but if i step out of all that and just think. try to get back in that head space. no, it wont be exactly the same. but she is me, one of the hundreds of iterations of me, and i can remember. and actually this is practice for when my kids leave in september. if i can do this, my next challenge is to find a way to remember who i was before i had them. so daunting. especially since i was a disaster.

one of the ways I am getting in touch with pre-him me is with music, of course, right? it’s very complicated tho because music is HIS.  i think this is a good time to record how we met and a little bit about him and the relationship. we met on myspace! in august of 2006. we were both in a literature forum and started communicating about tolstoy, my fave. it was strictly a non-personal thing for a few weeks, but then his writing started to get to me. he has a way with words. he’s actually brilliant, in a way. he thinks very deeply in these beautiful and unique strands of mind. communing with that part of him is euphoric. it’s the best ive ever had. the deepest. those strands tho are so narrow and are totally disconnected. his mind is so rigidly compartmentalized, and his walls are reinforced a thousand times over. you can ride the bliss train down one of those trails and find yourself trapped in a nightmare of ambiguous hate and fear. brush one of the thorns, and the whole thing wakes up and starts to constrict. its horrible.

one of the areas in which he excels is art.  he is not a creative person, altho I believe he once was very much so, but he has a true gift for recognizing art. what i brought into the situation was long years of studying, and a passion for, literature and film. i have limited experience with visual arts overall, but threw myself into film, first in film school and it blossomed from there. i have experienced real escape and transcendence through literature and film. and in these areas, he and i were quick to find connection. 

in many ways tho we are different. where he is rigid, I am fluid. he is closed, i am open. in the very beginning he explained to me that he knew good art, and his opinion on that was unequivocal. that art is a real thing and “good” can be objectified and qualified. i felt that this was ridiculous, because art is an individual expressing an inner state, therefore it is inevitably subjective. a piece of art can do nothing for one person but then explode the mind of another person. maybe they can relate to something in it that the first person can’t. i felt, and still feel, that one person can never determine what will speak to the entire species.  i mean wtf? that bothered me from day 1. but, i couldn’t argue with his taste. he did discount some amazing films, and i think this is where i first started doubting myself and feeling inferior. i was resentful, but didn’t know how to articulate myself. partly because he was triggering old feelings of insecurity, and altho i am a sharp debater, he was as cold and slippery as a fish. manipulative af. i can’t count how many times ive legitimately wondered whether he is a complete idiot or devious as hell. i still wonder. irregardless, he introduced me to a hundred films that expanded my world immensely. 

while I was somewhat new to film, i was not new to literature. i have been escaping into books since i was 9. when i was 9 my mom left her abusive 2nd husband in the middle of the night with her 4 kids in tow. my sister and i were older and, since she could only choose 2 kids to take to the small apartment with her, she dropped us off at my grandparents, where we lived for the next 18 months. those months were traumatic for me, because my grandmother openly despised me. she was later diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder among other things. the family was well aware of her ways: she would pick a couple of favorites and terrorize everyone else. my grandfather was too afraid of her to intervene, so her house was a hellpit. her house was a meticulously clean hellpit, and children were not to touch anything or even sit on the couch. we were contained, along with her animals, in the back yard or garage during the day and straight to the guest bed at night. we were allowed no belongings, and our few clothes were kept in a box in the closet. my  mother was too busy to visit more than once a month for a few minutes, dropping off money i think. most of my memories of that time were of hiding under furniture. if i did interact with her, generally i was being screamed at, hit, or called names. however, the boredom under the table was a massive problem for my always too curious mind, and i started sneaking books from her bookcases. mostly westerns and dirty romance novels.

I was a sheltered child and learned a lot from those books. but escapism was the dominant lesson. it never ended. as a goth teen i became obsessed with the romantic writers. as a young adult, i delved into non-fiction works of eastern religion, 19th and early 20th century american authors, and eventually Tolstoy. his fiction stole my heart. his non-fiction woke me up to what one man could offer. he was the ideal version of myself, and i loved him. i felt a strong sense of self in this area. one that took my ex many years to dismantle. i eventually came to feel separated from literature, and i no longer read. his dominant superiority claimed literature as his. aside from a handful of authors, any book i liked, he knew more about, critiqued harshly, confused me. i started doubting myself. if i read a book, he’d ask to see it and dismiss it, he’d already read it.

it’s very hard to explain this. it seems like, “Who cares?”, but it was a constant subtle undermining of my connection to things i loved. if he didn’t know more, like with the aforementioned handful, he would insert himself there. he’d study the author, he’d get into forums, he’d research the history. so if i ever mentioned it, he’d correct me. and i would be taken off guard and not know how to react. if that happened once in a while, it would be fine, that’s just life and learning and that’s great. but it was everything. it was constant. it was like a thousand tiny tentacles ever so lightly and innocently severing every last ligature of my body until i was floating lost in a sea of confusion and an inability to claim a self or reality. i recognize there is a sublime opportunity in this, and i have managed to seize it in many ways. unfortunately, the destruction of my frail self-esteem has made it incredibly difficult.

music…is a whole other thing. sighhhhh. i think i have to explain a little more: my mother was a fundamentalist christian who had worked tirelessly to keep her children safe from the secular world. nice and cloistered in the twisted, perverted molester world of the pentecostal churches. the most succinct description I can give is one she repeatedly told me, somehow unaware of how nuts it proved her to be: when i was 2 she discovered my father had been cheating on her. when confronted he silently packed one bag and left. she scooped up my 4-year-old sister and i and went to live with people from her church. they counseled her to burn all of my fathers things, which she did.  every last picture. (might not have been that big of a deal if he hadn’t been killed 3 years later, leaving us nothing of him. but that’s another story.) these church people told her she was still too attached to things and instructed her to kill her beloved cat. when she couldn’t, they killed the cat in front of her, and she lost her mind and went wandering. when she was picked up, she was covered with sores and all her hair and nails had fallen out. she was admitted to the hospital, a mental institution, where she recovered for 6 months. during this time, she allowed my sister and i to be kept by the church people. i have had dark wonderings about what happened to us there. if nothing else it is a fundamental layer to the pattern of my life of being abandoned and unprotected.

she was released to my grandparents care. they took the three of us in. she was constantly in and out of fugue states and often wandered for days with bleeding feet. she told everyone that she was in the hospital because my dad had been poisoning her with arsenic. i believed this as a child. as an adult, i realize that if there was arsnic in her blood, it would have been more likely the work of the insane cult she was involved with. and i think its fair to assume that my dad left the way he did because he was afraid of her volatile emotional reaction, the same fear that came to rule my life for many decades.

back to the topic: I was raised for most of my childhood in an extreme fundamentalist home. one of the things we were not allowed was music. when i was 10, my grandfather bought me a small radio. i got a taste then. when i was 11, i was taken back to live with my mother and brothers, and the radio was confiscated. we were only allowed christian music, went to school at the church — if you could call it a school — and attended religious services 4 times per week in addition. she remarried a real sicko from the church. he abused us terribly with her as witness. when i went to the school for help, i was kicked out of the home: i came home, terrified of what they would do to me for telling, only to find two black bags with my things on the front porch. this is when life began for me.

I lived with friends until i finished high school. i stayed out all night, i met interesting people, i lived in clubs and bars and coffee shops that had all night music. i went homeless after graduating. i lived in flop houses and in cars. i fell in love with music; it was a huge part of the real world. it was a huge part of me, i realized. i listened to goth music, 80s darkwave, industrial, 60s and 70s psychodelic (mainstream), and some punk. when i got pregnant, i had to pull it together. i found a job, an apartment. i didn’t go out anymore. but, music was still so important to me. we were dirt poor, but my kids were raised with books and music. 

when I met my ex, i had my little soundtrack of loved music, only about a dozen were obscure bands, something that didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. but music is his deepest calling. i think in another dimension he could be some creative genius musician. in yet another, he’s a world-famous producer. the man has an uncanny ability to find amazing music. he has a relentless drive to search it out. and his dominance is most thoroughly presented in this world by “his” music. he collects it, like badges of his own worth, and plays it constantly. he wakes up: he puts on music. he drives: music. he goes to the lake: bluetooth playing music. he sleeps: music. our home became his domain because he always dictated the music. it was like living inside of his mind. or his mind expanding and encasing the home. “well, just change the music!”, you say! “put something else on!” and i did that! at first a lot. i said, hey its my turn. but when my music was on, he would pout and pace. he would never say anything outright– he’s too polite– but his body language and energy would be super negative, making things uncomfortable. so instead of being able to relax and enjoy the music, it became like a stand-off. playing my music became a rebellious act. a fight. and i hated that. 

and so I would fight less and less. I would go thru phases where I’d get some energy, and I’d kick up some dust, make a big deal. but mostly, i was so tired. and his music was really good. i loved it. within the first year, he copied all my old beat-up discs to an external hard drive. made sense. easy access. i gave my brother a garbage bag full of them. (he sold them for heroine, incidentally.) then the hard drive fell off the desk, and i couldn’t get it to work. it was going to cost almost $300 to have a computer guy pull the music off. money i didn’t have. i tried to list everything on there, but couldn’t remember over half of it. eventually, i never listened to music that wasn’t his. presented to me with his domineering stamp of approval. “this is good. listen to this”

and eventually, I just disconnected from it all. it was too hard. i was too drained with the other stuff going on, the sex stuff and the emotional roller-coaster. he constantly pushed his choice of books and movies and music on me. i was choked with it. i stopped liking movies, i stopped reading. i started driving in silence and tuning out his music when my home felt like a trap. and now i have an iPod full of his music. not a single song unconnected to him. we use google music on our phones, and it’s so hard to remember who i was before, and what i listened to. when i try, i hear him in my head, telling me whats good and what’s shit. 

so its been pretty silent around here. im afraid to play anything, because I don’t want to think about him. i have played a little reggae, because reggae is so positive and powerful it escapes him. and the ramones were always mine. he tried, but he could never get inside that. and I’ve been digging around online finding old favorites that he trashed, and i gave up on. 

I think its one of those things that time will heal. i have to believe I’ll come back to it. i’ll be able to read and watch and listen all by myself again. i’ll be able to say, “this is what i think.” full stop. 

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