Moving Forward

 

I’m always amazed when I see how many visitors this blog receives each month. I don’t know who you all are, but I wish you well, and thank you for taking time to stop by. My latest novel is complete and is yet another attempt to explain the various colors of narcissistic personalities and generational abuses, I’m just taking little slices and expanding them into stories I hope are interesting.

 

I haven’t posted here for over a year, been busy writing books and keeping focused on a couple goals, and I needed time to do some healing. There’s been a lot I’ve wanted to say, but hesitate because I know simple words rarely change any situation, so why waste the energy? But then I remember how many people my book “Momma Said Write a Book About It” helped, so perhaps I’m a little obligated to share my experiences. I think the truth is important, though, perhaps the most important thing as we maneuver through these lives and this dark world. The truth is a light in the darkness, the truth is healing, the truth is all that matters in the end, and the truth is the only way to reach the narrow gate and what lies beyond it.

 

After my mother passed I heard how she held such a love for Jesus, and I surely hope it’s true, but if it is it is a love that was found after I parted ways with her. For years and years my mother and I spoke nearly everyday, and the one thing she never mentioned or discussed or brought into any conversation was Jesus, not one time. I often wonder if people considered what my mother and I spoke about in those daily, hours long, phone conversations, because it wasn’t God, it wasn’t Jesus, and it wasn’t empathy for our fellow man, it was people, it was family, it was harsh and destructive gossip.

 

Everyday my mother dumped on me, every secret entrusted to her, and all the “concerns” and speculations of family, how each member was less than they portrayed to the world, and all they lacked in her harsh opinion. She did this in a subtle fashion with a conversational tone, usually followed by a long-suffering sigh and probing questions. (Think: “All they do is sit in front of the TV and eat, what do you think is wrong with them?” “They don’t care about those babies, it just doesn’t seem like they have a conscience. Do you think they’re a sociopath?” “I don’t know why one had such a strict curfew and the other got to run wild, or maybe I do. I think they’re playing favorites, what do you think?”) She’d pull things up from years ago, imagine scenarios that hadn’t happened, and project her own flaws on others. She wasn’t lovingly concerned about their well being, she was a harsh judge to every aspect of their behavior (as she understood it), and she wanted to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk these people into the dirt daily. She had a surgical way of picking at their character, and expounding darkly on their motivations, often going so far to question if they even possessed a conscience, or if they were possessed by a darker force. (As a child she often insisted I didn’t have a conscience, and now I know that was simply projection.)

 

She dumped on other family members too, where I was the body being autopsied and scrutinized, and if anyone said something about me in response to her guided probing questions, she couldn’t wait to tell me. Again, in a subtle fashion she’d let me know I was the one being discussed, and share their carefully selected opinions about me with me. It was triangulation; she played both sides, and stirred up trouble and ill feelings. And if there was an argument in the family she was quick to call and share every detail; every hurtful word said to her, and always with herself as the long-suffering victim of the family’s cruelties. 

 

I find it disheartening to discover that the people my mother dragged through the mud on a regular basis are the people who hold her in the highest regard. It hurt my feelings that the people I defended over and again through the years so easily turned away from me and began ignoring, excluding, and gossiping, as well as blocking me on social media. I don’t quite know what to do with that knowledge, and it was incredibly painful, but I’ve accepted it, and am grateful to God for revealing yet another hard truth to me.

 

I also don’t quite know what to do with all the secrets that have been dumped in my lap over the years, as well as all the speculations on all the secrets. I know more about some people than I ever wanted to know, and now I carry secrets I didn’t ask for, and had no interest in knowing. It is almost as though I had an unwanted surveillance into the lives of others and saw the absolute worst of them, but made to keep it to myself, and to carry someone else’s burden. Biblically it’s called gossip and is an abomination to God. (In my opinion gossip is akin to black magic, it doesn’t stop with just a few people, the darkness spreads out in the world infecting others.)

 

The truth is my mother was an emotionally manipulative person who was a master in triangulation, plotting one against the other with speculations, half-truths, and lies. The only time she showed compassion for another was when attempting to emotionally manipulate someone, to triangulate to make someone jealous or emotionally triggered, and then she pulled the compassion out in abundance, but only to imply the lack in others for not feeling the same way. I see clearly now how she manipulated my son and I, and I see how she did it with others. Plotting one against the other, egging on and offering advice to both sides while trying to provoke jealousy and emotional outbursts (which she’d later use for gossip and condemnation), and then claiming her innocence and ignorance as things dissolved into chaos. My mother has left a lot of damage in her wake.

 

After I stepped away I then heard of her “disease” which I assume was supposed to be Alzheimer’s, although no one stated it. To me it wasn’t a disease as much as an inability to mask her true personality any longer. With me she began bringing up situations from the past, hurtful and traumatic and life-changing situations caused by her hand, but now defending her actions as just and right. (“I don’t know why everyone said I had a drinking problem. I never had a drinking problem.”) Day after day in those last months of contact she’d bring up one situation or another, and explain how she hadn’t been wrong in hurting me, physically, emotionally, and mentally, I had been wrong for pushing her to that point, and being a bad kid. There are some things in life you don’t do twice, not if you have a choice, and reliving my traumatic childhood is one of those things. I was a child, she was the parent, and I didn’t make her abuse me, bully me, insult me, call me names, or break my spirit, and I wasn’t going to agree that I was just because she was old.

 

All my life my mother stated that I was too honest, the most honest person she’d ever met (as though it was a weakness instead of a strength), but I suspect those statements changed when I stepped away. I think she was terrified that I would reveal her. She said many times I couldn’t share anything she talked about or she’d be homeless, ostracized, and hated, and I didn’t share it, even after I took a break for my own sanity. She often told me I was her best friend, the only person she could talk to, but I now know that wasn’t even close to the truth, it’s what she said to many people, the people she regularly lied to and manipulated, and those words were just another manipulation. My mother had a way of making everyone responsible for regulating her emotions, she did it to me from the time I was a young child, she did it to my son, and she did it to others. Everyone was responsible for her emotional needs and expressions, everyone except herself.

 

I’ve been able to find forgiveness, though, because I realize my mother was just continuing generational abuse, a curse the Bible would call it, and was once a young and confused girl undergoing abuse just like I did. I can easily forgive that scared little girl, God bless her. Curses can be broken with prayer and faith, with obedience to the God’s rules, but they have to faced and acknowledged. Buried and unspoken curses just continue to produce bad fruit, and in families that bad fruit is broken and hurt people.

 

I pray my mother did find Jesus before she passed, but I have no proof of that. It seems that if she did she would have reached out to apologize, to find a way to help ease some of the pain, to be honest about the circumstances, but she never did. Jesus is the truth, the life, and the way, and no one can reach heaven without Him. The path is very narrow, and according to the Bible very few will find it, and I know without any doubt it can’t be reached while living a life of lies. Facing the truth is incredibly hard because it brings change, and once you see the truth you can’t unsee it.

 

The truth will set you free, but it will also piss off an awful lot of people. Keep seeking, though, it is worth it.