About two years before all of the preciously described incidents of betrayal and manipulation had started to show up, I was to be forewarned of unspeakable harmful untruths through a jar of jam. It would be some 30 years before I would unravel how deeply concerning this was and how blind I was to the magnitude of such behaviors. It was something that ran so deep and was so frightening that one would even consider it a curse. There was something in my ex's family line that would bring the best of us to our knees:
Something so secretly sinister that it defied description. This thing was so insidious, something so gradually cunning and crafty that I was pouring my heart, soul, life and spirit into a battle of survival against it; not knowing that I was destined to lose. This was a condition passed down from one generation to another and involved larceny by trickery, theft by false pretenses, lies told simply for the reward from lying itself, sordid motives and bribes and scams and a mob mentality, not to mention addiction and abuse. These in turn would be modeled and given freely to their progeny in order to watch the consequences play out for others. The subversion and secrecy was so veiled that it was impossible to detect what was truly afoot. You would get only pieces of being "had" but never know what was underneath it all. You could know there was a tree of deceit but not the root it grew from.
It was the opening day of the State Fair in late August. We went to the Fair as a family. It had been a wonderful summer. I had spent weeks preparing my entries in baking and canning and my daughter would enter some things I had helped her with in her 4H Group. A lot of the women and girls in our little rural community had entered their favorite and best efforts. I thought this would be a great adventure as well as fun at the fair. I was excited but reserved and I was little giddy inside as I knew I was a part of this event in my own small way. It was a good feeling. We were in public and we would have fun.
As we entered through the gate at the fairgrounds the smells and sounds greeted us. There is an unmistakable atmosphere full of tantalizing aromas and noises at a fair. An orchestra of organ grinder music from the Carnival, together with the shrieks from the rides gave off a jangled harmony of excitement. Carnies invited people to participate by barking "Get your honey a stuffed animal here "Only a dime a throw". The lights from the Ferris wheel twinkled as the chairs rolled round and round in a dizzying display as you looked up at them. Puffs of Cotton candy seemed to be floating like pink clouds in the midst of the patrons. We couldn't wait to see the 3 headed monster in the spook house and giggle at our distorted images in the House of Mirrors. It was silly fun but I loved it. My children being 8 and 10 added to the thrill because they were old enough to really enjoy it. The true joy was seeing through the eyes of a child again. A vicarious moment you might say.
We soon wandered into the Barn that displayed all the entries that had been judged and awarded. It was my turn. I knew there were hundreds of entries in every category so I didn't expect to win but the joy was in participating and exposing my kids to something so big. Maybe I would even get 5th place or honorable mention. I went to see the baked entries first and they were next to my daughters entries so I looked everything over and of course she placed in all she entered. I was so excited for her but she had gone off with her dad to look at my canning exhibits. I went to catch up with them. We met as they were returning to see me and he told me that I hadn't even placed at all. That was hard to believe but I and took it in stride. However, something looked "OFF". There was that inner voice again: "warning, caution, pay attention". My daughter was very quiet almost sullen and she was no longer interested in what she had entered at all. The whole thing had taken a downturn in mood and demeanor and I was trying to keep my anxiety under control while I tried to read between the lines. What was going on?
We wondered off further into the animal barns and my husband was distant and aloof. It was as if the kids were walking on eggshells and I had no idea what had changed the mood so drastically. Hopefully we could enjoy some rides and get something to eat to elevate their spirits.
We left for home…nothing left to see. It was so miserable being married to him, I thought to myself. I am 35 and absolutely miserable. Oh well, there will be other fairs, I decided. This was the day that the seeds of a toxic alliance were planted in earnest right under my nose.
Two weeks later it was time to pick up our entries from the Fair office and claim our prizes and monetary compensations. There it was, in black and white, with a blue ribbon attached to it: my jam had taken 1st place and some other awards as well! I was without a good explanation for this deceit, but the lump in my throat told me that he had taken my ribbons off of the jars when he previewed my entries and my daughter had kept his secret. She knew what he had done and she would never tell on him. How confused she must have been. I decided that I would never let on that I received the ribbon and tell the truth about winning first place with my jam. I put it away and never mentioned it again. I would not engage him over this. It was now obvious that he could not afford for me to ever know my worth. He wanted me to think that I was failure. That would guarantee my dependence on him. How wrong he was.
You know what they say, "Once it is jam it isn't strawberries anymore." Things had changed. I had made validation jam without even knowing it. This jar of red sweetness was very unimpressive just sitting there without a ribbon on it but within it was the secret that the thief thought he had stolen, my SELF.
He didn't know that I knew how twisted he really was and I would get out of this relationship before I would let on about his craziness. The things he had done before this were indicative of a perverse pattern of behavior that I no longer wanted to be around. He had stolen recipes that I had received compliments on. He had dug up flower bulbs that I had planted and when they didn't come up he wanted me to believe that I was an inadequate gardener, he hid things and then blamed me for losing them. Thank God I had been given a strong mind and his games were cataloged in my mind as things to watch out for but never taken on as my true beliefs. This was the turning point, however difficult it was to live with. On this day in September, I promised myself that I would not continue to live like this. I would definitely be divorcing him but it would take a year and half to get that in motion without spilling the beans. It would take 3 years more to actually get a divorce. It was dangerous enough as it was and to divulge my closely guarded secret would bring on a wrath too volatile to survive. I was getting closer to the truth but not close enough. I wouldn't find out that I was dealing with a personality disorder and some form of psychopathy intertwined with Pseudologia Fantastica (Pathological Lying) until it was too late: 3 more decades. I was looking under every rock trying to find out what had happened to my children. The answers were not kind. By this time I had had their backs for 40 years off and on, but eventually forgiveness and empathy would look like stupidity. How many times are you going to let them lie to you and humiliate you before you close your doors? I had gotten rid of the man who had betrayed me in many ways and many times, I just couldn't find a way to free us from his genetic code.
Would it surprise you to know that the answer to the question in my last post is: They are most likely a combination of all of these labels in some form or another; each one having a different set or combination of traits and tactics. They walk like phantoms among us appearing to be a regular guy or girl while concealing their true nature from all who know them. What they hide inside of themselves is a raw force: an acquaintance of which you will never forget. I often think of the story of the trickster coyote in Indian Lore. He is said to have put his shoes on backwards so that nobody would know where he was going or where he had been. That way he could hunt his prey without being caught or detected. How like him they are. Of course, coyotes don't wear shoes but they are so Wiley and convincing that you might believe they do. If you would dare to point out to them that their shoes are on backwards they would simply deny having shoes at all or state that you are crazy because coyotes don't wear shoes. If they think it is obvious that they are wearing shoes, they may end the whole conversation by biting you. Their deceptive ways bring them great fortune and gives them many advantages. You, however, will never win. I found my best advantage was to ignore the "shoes" and plan my exit. I took note of the behavior and the deception but gave them no excuse to use it against me.
It seemed never ending. I was being attacked from all sides. My ex-husband was one day hoovering me and the next day punishing me. He was relentless in his obsession:" I love you, come back to me", to "I will get you for this". My daughter was becoming an alcoholic and was his spy or lieutenant, as they call them. She was sneaky and full of rage. My son was a thief and a closet drug addict and con man. Of course, this was all hidden from sight so they could continue their abuse of me undetected. They enjoyed watching me go crazy because I couldn't figure out the plot and put the pieces together. Lies were like a gold currency to them. They rarely if ever told the truth. Pulling one over on me was their best reward.
There were days that I just didn't want to go home from work. As a matter of fact, I would even get sick in the car before I got home. I just didn't know if I could face another day of their cruelties. I never knew what was waiting for me upon my return to our home. It was always chaotic combined with some terrible news or behavior. I was sinking and they were hoping I would: Especially my ex who thought if he made it tough enough on me that I would fold and go back to him. The kids may have thought this very thing also. Nobody knew that my resolve was to never return at any price. Little did I know at the time that they were the price. It had been too terrible to repeat. I despised him and for good reason. I guess he thought otherwise and figured that he was irresistible. He thought wrong. He repulsed me. I did not miss anything about him. This only reinforced his rage and his continued obsession with me until the day he died some 15 years later.
One spring morning my walking buddy and I had decided to walk in the early morning because we both had work duties that would interfere with our usual evening walk. She called that morning to confirm and we set out for our exercise. As we turned the last corner on our journey my ex came up behind us in his car. He was following us home. My friend looked at me and asked me if he was ever going to leave me alone. She didn't know the half of it. I was wondering just how he knew that this is where I would be at this time. Only three people knew that I would be walking at this early hour; me, my friend and my daughter. I began to lose trust. I was alerted to the fact that he always knew more than he should about me but to accuse my daughter of a betrayal of this magnitude was hard to do without actual proof. My own child???? Heaven forbid. Things started to fall in that direction no matter how hard I fought against it.
On another morning when I had agreed to take her and her friend to school, I went out to find her and her friend standing by the car. They had obviously let the air out of my tires. The look of guilt on their faces was a give -away. I had an air can in my trunk and I fixed the problem. Whatever they had planned was no longer in play. But that didn't stop my daughter.
The next one was a biggie. I had a boyfriend, nothing serious but we did spend time together on weekends. He offered to take us to breakfast on one Sunday morning and we asked my daughter if she wanted to go with us. She accepted but had to go get ready in her room, he said he had to stop at the bank so she needed to hurry. When we arrived at the bank auto-teller there sat my ex waiting for us. I knew she had called him when she went back to her room. I kept still about it but I was mulling it over trying to figure out what to do. I had never dealt with this kind of skullduggery.
Meanwhile my son was acting like a hooligan and his new friends bothered me greatly. He was unruly in my absence but generally cooperative around me. I was trying to figure out if he was into drugs because his demeanor had changed so much but I could never find anything except my own weariness and suspicions to pin it to. If anyone knew of his delinquent behavior they weren't talking. I had this terrible feeling that I was being over-run in my own home. The loyalty that I had counted on from them was not there. They were old enough to understand who their father was and to be supportive of the woman who was supporting them but they refused to participate with me. I never dreamed I needed a babysitter for a 12 and 14 year old. I had stayed home at that age while my mom worked and never sought to betray her or malign her. It was awful.
My mother offered to buy my son a dirt bike so he could be like his friends. I thought it was wonderful and my son acted very grateful. Within a month we came home and the bike was gone. It was parked in our front yard and all but disappeared into thin air. He told me it was stolen and I could not for the life of me pick up on it. I would find out some 20 years later that he had actually sold it for the money and we were none the wiser. This was not the only thing that had disappeared over the years. My grandmother's wedding ring was missing, checks from the check drawer were missing, food was missing and given to some juvie delinquent down the street, my more fashionable clothes were missing; anything that was not nailed down was destined to disappear. Both kids were looting my house for anything of value to them. I was saddened. These were definitely more than some mischievous pranks. My son had turned duplicitous and had only acted like my loyal son for most of those years. He actually was two people, pretending to be trustworthy and to have feelings but behaving in a way that was absolutely in direct contradiction of these traits. How and when had things gone so terribly wrong? I was now strapped to three people whose defiance and misconduct was tearing our lives apart at the seams. What was worse was that they were enjoying it and would never consider stopping it. They were addicted to anything that would cause my demise. They were getting a high off of the experiences they were causing. While I was frantically trying to get them to make different choices they were bound and determined to emulate their father. They thought that their dad's power, greed, hostility and freedom from responsibility were to be admired. They thought my endeavors and patience showed weakness. They thought I was a fool.
The betrayals became bolder and bored deeper into my psyche. My ex kept breaking into my house while we were gone. I heard he had said he was going to burn us out. After these increasing threats to our safety, I had to take extra precautions over his invasions. I would stay awake all night sitting in darkness and watching my children and the house in case my ex would make good on his threats. I would sleep for a couple of hours before I had to get ready for work. I was exhausted but I didn't have a choice. We really were in danger from someone who didn't have control of himself. Something might tip his balance and he would be driven to the worst possible solution to his problems.
Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I drove up the driveway after work and saw the neighbor man standing in my front yard. He said he heard a gun-shot coming from my barn. My ex had been holding my son hostage in the barn but let him go as soon as I pulled up. I called the police and my son and I had to follow up with a prosecuting attorney. My son wouldn't talk and the case was dropped. What they weren't telling me was that my son had compromised his dad's equipment that was in the barn and my ex caught him. My ex really wasn't supposed to have left anything on the premises after the divorce but this was overlooked by the prosecutor since my son took out his frustrations on him in that way. My ex's lawyer said he could help him stay out of jail for a fee of $5,000 dollars. As soon as my ex was off the hook nothing could stop him from driving up in my yard, doing whatever he wanted to and pushing everything to the absolute limit. Harassment was a "go" word and there wasn't a day of peace after that. He gave my daughter a key to his house that she could use anytime she wanted to. Since he had managed to buy a house only a few blocks from the high school she could take complete advantage of this offer of freedom. She would take the bus into school, get off, and walk to her dad's house and chill alone or with her friends. He had convinced her that she didn't need an education because she would only end up like me, a poor collage educated idiot. I called him on this one, telling him to take back the key, but he only laughed and claimed her as his daughter in his likeness. Luckily, a mother of one of her friend's called the school and reported that her daughter was hanging out at his house and that ended that.
My daughter thought she was the queen of the household and tripped me up in every way possible. She thought she was in charge now and nothing would get by her. One day I spoke to my son about getting our fireplace insert out of the barn where my ex had stored it. I asked him if he and his friends could haul it up to the house so I could put it back in. It was getting cold and I wanted to get more heat in the house.
The boys hauled it up to patio. All of a sudden I heard some loud shouting outside and when I looked my ex was standing near the insert yelling at the kids to put it in his car. His car was in my back yard! This was the last straw, I looked at my daughter and she lied straight to my face. She said the guy who was going to reinstall the insert told her dad about it. I knew she had done it. She was not fooling me. She had torn us apart. I would play along for a long while but I knew she had a misguided soul. She had betrayed both my son and me and had intended to do it. She reported our every move back to her dad for something she wanted in return. Three months after her 18th birthday, I told her since she was continuing to play this game, I thought it would be best if she would go live with her father. She did, but it went over like a screen door on a submarine with her father. It proved one thing to me though, he wanted to use her for his malicious acts but he didn't want to raise her or provide for her in that way. She might cramp his style. He called me right away and threatened me. He said I had to pay him child support. I said NO and so he called the county and told them some lies about my property. Although, I was investigated on his false charges, I really didn't care. Funny, my daughter never figured out that sheltering her in his house was not in his plan. Through her brainwashed boozed up brain she clung to his power switch as her life line. In 3 more months she would be back living with me. I was hoping she had seen the light but that would never be. It was broken between us. I couldn't trust her. She was a dyed in the wool dangerous little narc. I wouldn't be sure until after my ex died. The only way I knew this was that her contemptable treatment of me and her malicious lies and gossip about me continued past his death. She was responsible for her own acts now. He wasn't forcing her any longer, if he ever had.
What was this phenomenon that blew through my home bringing a hurricane of violence and menacing to the extreme? Was it psychopathy or parental alienation? Was it inherited or nurtured? Was it delinquency or DNA? Was it forced or welcomed? Who were these three who hunted, persecuted and haunted me? Who were these three that saw me as a delicacy just waiting to be devoured by their insatiable insanity?
