Beware of Narcissists

I began writing this blog post weeks ago.  I’m not sure where I was going with it, but I felt that it was a relevant follow-up to yesterday’s post.  ~ Pam

In recent years, I have been engaged in a war, my own private, personal holy war.  I hadn’t realized it until recently, but hindsight has a way of pealing away the layers of emotion to reveal still shots, vignettes, of truth.  To look at me, no one would be able to guess the battles I have waged and the exhaustion in my weary mind and body.  From the outside looking in, I appear to be calm, successful, and in control of my lovely life.  In reality, I am wary, cautious, always looking deeply into the eyes, minds, and hearts of the people who enter my life.  On what side of this war have they placed their allegiance?  It’s not always an easy thing to identify.  The enemy is  clever.  They cloak themselves in good humor, joviality, even friendship.  They are intelligent and always charming, but eventually, it is impossible for them to stay under cover.  The black spots on their souls eventually appear.  Most of them aren’t clever enough to cross the guard posts that surround me.  My experience is my defense.  My security is tight.  Very few people are allowed to cross into my camp.  My circle of real friends is small.  I keep most people out, or at least far enough away not to allow them to hurt me.  If I don’t allow myself to care, I won’t be hurt..  I don’t allow many people to enter into my emotional world.  No doubt, this keeps good people out, but that is of little consequence to me.  I don’t care.  The most important thing is to keep the enemy at bay.

Tomorrow Began Yesterday

It’s all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow. – William Faulkner

It’s a quiet morning, and I’m in the house alone sitting in my room, sipping on a steaming cup of coffee, and cuddled under the covers in my robe.  Mornings like this are a rarity, and I am fully enjoying the moment.  Out there beyond my bedroom door are lists of things I need to buy and things I need to do.  Kids and family will begin descending on our house either tonight or tomorrow.  I haven’t really been able to clarify exactly who is being brought along to our house…or when.  For now though, until my feet hit the floor with some kind of purpose, these morning moments belong to me.  

Precipice

***Below is another draft blog post.  This one was written on November 16, 2011, almost two years ago now.  The event I refer to below is now even further in my past.  

I’m thankful for the gift of time.  Some pain never completely goes away, but time does heal.  Pain changes us in both good and bad ways.  I will never understand why things happened as they did.  I wish that I didn’t have this knowledge and experience with lies, cruelty, and deception.  I have been forever changed in ways that still make me sad.  I mourn my loss of innocence and my loss of the ability to trust.  I still struggle with the fact that I often expect the worst from people instead of seeing their best.  

However, I did learn one lesson that I hope to never forget.  At my darkest hour, I found myself alone, and I blame myself for that fact.  I had cut myself off from the good things in my life.  I had lost my relationship with God; I had emotionally distanced myself from my family and friends.  My emotions, loyalties, energy, and efforts had been misplaced.  I was lost, and it was my own fault.  I poured my emotions into blogging.  I talked to a therapist seeking answers.  Neither of those things worked.  The blog helped sometimes, but in the end, I was still alone.  The therapist helped even less.  I was seeking answers, reaching out like a person in the dark.  I was grasping and lost.

Life IS better now.  I am beginning to find my way.  I know who I am and where I am.  I’m beginning to soften and to carefully trust again…very carefully.

As I drove to work this morning, my thoughts were full of where I was in my life on THIS DAY exactly one year ago.  November 16, 2010 was the date of the biggest betrayal of my life.  I remembered phone conversations from that terrible day.  I remembered what I wore, gold skirt and a black sweater.  I remembered sitting on my therapist’s couch, and I was shaking with fear.  I was worried, yet hopeful.

R U OK?

To Write Love On Her Arms

Yesterday was National Suicide Awareness Day.  A friend’s post on Facebook last night made me aware of the day, but more importantly it reminded me of the lies that depression can tell a person.

 “Life is not worth living.”

“I am not loved.”

“I am not good enough.”

Shun/Un-shun

I have thought a lot about shunning recently. The definition of shunning is “to avoid deliberately; to keep away from.”  The act of shunning is common in some religions.  It’s also common among middle school girls.  Various forms of shunning are used among family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers.  For shunning to have any meaning, an emotional or social connection needs to be present.  Shunning is a form of bullying.  Shunning is also one of the most  insidious, passive-aggressive forms of abuse.

What I Choose To Remember

Recently, a fellow blogger requested access to my previous blog.  Of course, I had no qualms about allowing this person to continue to read my story.  We have walked this same path together, and she has become someone special to me.  I love and admire her strength, a strength I have often drawn on as an example for myself.  Today I finally got around to logging into the old blog.  I hadn’t read a word of that blog since May.  Many, many times, I have considered logging in and writing.  The story in that blog was a major part of my life.  It is a story without a satisfactory ending and a story with thousands of unanswered questions.  Many stones have been left unturned, many angles are left to explore.  Flipping those stones, searching for the answers, and exploring those angles could easily become an obsession.  I know that all too well.  I could spend the rest of my life seeking answers to WHY?  HOW?  WHAT HAPPENED?  I know now that I will never, ever find those answers.  Some things are inexplicable.  There are no answers to some questions.  Sometimes certain situations simply defy all logic.

Orphan

 

“As T and I sat on each side of her bed, we talked quietly of the other deaths we have witnessed together.  There have been too many.  I looked at him and I thought, “One of us will be here in a bed like this while the other sits in a chair holding a hand.”  Just as I had that thought, my mom opened her eyes.  It was the first time all night that she was aware of our presence in her room.  She turned her head and  looked at T.  A big smile lit up her face.  She reached for his hand and said, “You are a good man.”

She asked him where I was, and he said, “Right here by your side,” and he gently turned her head.  She said, “I love you,” and reached for my hand.  It all only lasted a moment and she was asleep once more.  There was no more conversation or consciousness.

T and I sat there on each side of the bed holding her hand.  This mother who caused me grief, strife, and years of conflict held onto our hands, the three of us connected.  Forgiveness should not be something that is given lightly, freely, or without justification.  Forgiveness is earned.  Tonight, I forgave my mom huge, vast quantities of past injuries.  She confirmed the one thing I know to be true.  T IS a good man.”

I wrote those words a little over a week ago.  I was writing them during the final moments of my mother’s life, perhaps I wrote them even as she died.  That late night/early morning I sat alone in the living room cuddled under a blanket with my feet propped up on the coffee table and my laptop warming my lap.  I needed to write so that I would not forget those peaceful, touching moments.  I didn’t know that they would be our last moments together.  I knew the end was very near, but I thought she might make it through another day.

That night, I finished writing, shut down my computer, and headed up the stairs to get ready for bed.  Only moment later, my phone rang.  It was 1:30 a.m.  A nurse was calling to tell me that my mother had passed.  She had been alive at midnight when the nurse had checked on her, but now she was gone.  I was naked when I received that call, stripped bare and standing in the bathroom.  I stood there holding the phone, and my first thought was how ironic it was that I was nude.

I didn’t know what to do next.  The nurse wondered what funeral home we were going to use.  She wanted a phone number.  She said that they needed to make arrangements for “the body.”  I was naked, standing in the bathroom.  It was 1:30 a.m.!  I didn’t necessarily carry that kind of information around with me.  I wrapped myself in a towel, woke up T, fired up the computer and began making calls.  The ball was set in motion.  There were an amazing amount of details, arrangements, and phone calls to make.

This past week has been exhausting.  I was still borderline sick.  T ended up getting sick, and Lola woke up on Thursday with a 102 degree fever.  We have had a funeral, cleaned out an apartment, and had a son home for the weekend.  It has been a roller coaster ride of emotions.  There have been wonderful visits with family that I haven’t seen in years.  Our friends have been kind, caring, and supportive.  I love my friends who instead of bringing casseroles brought the ingredients for chocolate martinis.  In the midst of pain, there was laughter, friendship, and love.

This weekend is the first time in two years that I haven’t been drawn to visit a hospital or an assisted living facility.  I tried to see Mom on most weekends.  On the weekends when I wasn’t able to make it to visit her, I felt a weight of guilt.  This weekend has been the first time in over two years that I have been able to choose without conflicting feelings the activities I engaged in.  Still, it has not been a great weekend.  I am drained and exhausted.  My emotions are fragile as hell.  I looked at a tree today, and it brought back a memory that made me cry.

These past two-plus years have been terrible.  There is no other way to describe them.  It all began in December 2009 when I lost the person I thought was my best friend.  By choice, this person turned away, ran away, changed paths.  However you’d like to phrase it, this person who meant so very much to me, decided that I didn’t really mean that much to them.  A handful of days later, I lost my dear, dear father.  Losing Dad left me with the sole responsibility of my very sick mother.  Eventually, I was called upon to support her through the withdrawal of treatment and the weeks leading to her death.  Two years of senseless hell.  At times, it has felt like I have been trapped in my life, and there was no way out, nowhere to turn.  At times, I have crumbled and fallen apart, but for the most part I have just dealt with the circumstances.  Like a drone, I have learned to deal with what life threw my way.  I coped as best I knew how.  I trudged through the days, the weeks, the months, and it all added up to two-plus years.

In the sadness of this past week, there have been moments where HOPE has popped through like bright sunshine.  I can take a trip now without feeling guilty.  I will have a summer of working in my yard on the weekends instead of running to the hospital.  Little by little, I am beginning to see that I have a chance to reclaim my life.  T and I are talking about a short trip to Vegas or to a beach sometime soon.  I’m planning a trip this spring to visit a friend in Georgia.  We will be able to have moments of doing NOTHING, and not feeling like we should be doing SOMETHING.

The apartment is empty.  Now it is time to turn our attention to the house.  We need to sort through the rest of my parents’ belongings.  We’ll keep a few things that have sentimental value, but most of it will go on an auction in a month or so.  This afternoon, I went to the house alone.  I haven’t been there in weeks, and it was the first time to stand in my childhood home knowing that BOTH of my parents are dead.  It hit me hard.  I have no one left who shares my memories.  I went from room to room, and the memories were vivid.  I saw things.  I saw my parents as they were years ago.  I saw a little girl and her little black dog.  I remembered where the piano once stood, and the Christmas tree, and where Dad sat to drink his morning coffee.  I remembered addressing my wedding invitations as I sat on the floor of the living room.  I remembered my own now-grown children coloring at the little table in the sunroom.  Where did my life go?  Where did my family go?  I wandered from room to room, and I felt like an orphan.  I cried and cried.  I finally let it all out.  Two years of loss and pain.

I couldn’t stop crying until I walked into my dad’s room.  I stood in his closet and put my arms around the one special shirt of Dad’s that I had saved.  It was just a silly polo.  I had bought it for Luke, but he hadn’t liked it.  Grandpa liked it, though, so Luke told him to he could have it.  It cracked the boys up to see Grandpa wearing a purple American Eagle shirt, but I think that made Grandpa love it even more.  I stood there looking at that purple polo alone in the closet.  I put my hand out and touched the fabric.  My dad had been here.  He had been real, wonderful, and loving.  Oh, how I miss him!  As I stood there, I felt his love.  Yes, lives are too short, but the love lives on and on.

 

 

Who Will Catch Me When I Fall?

Today is one of those horrible anniversaries of a BAD November day, a day that was most likely the worst day of my life.  I have been thinking a lot about that fact this past week in anticipation of this hated date.  It truly was the worst day of my life, and that makes me feel bad.  It makes me feel guilty.  I have lost loved ones through death, but not on this date.  On this date, my horrible experience was something worse than that of losing someone through death.  That makes me feel bad and guilty, so I have been trying to examine what happened and what went wrong.  Unfortunately, all the fingers point to me.  I have no one to blame but myself for getting to a point in my life where I was truly alone in my pain and grief.

While the experience of losing a child, or my dad, or when Andrew had his terrible accident were all gut-wrenchingly horrible to live through, I didn’t blame myself.  Those things were “just life” or bad luck.  During those terrible times, I felt surrounded by love.  I had a safety net.  I had people there to catch me when I fell and to soften the blow.  On this WORST November day, I was utterly alone.  I was crushed by ugliness, lies, and betrayal, but no one knew.  No one cared.  I had destroyed my safety net.  Those good people who had once been there for me where no longer around.  My dad was gone.  My friends had long since washed their hands of my troubles.  My family was clueless.  I had taught them through my actions to simply “leave me alone,” so they did.

I had made a mess of my life, but I thought I could handle it.  I thought everything would be OK.  That was not the case, though, not on that dark November night.  On that night, the very flimsy ground that was my foundation crumbled out from under me.  No one cared.  I had misplaced my trust.  Those I thought cared, did not.  Those who did care, had no clue.  I was truly alone for the first time in my life.  I wanted to die.  Truly, literally, I wanted to end my own life.  It scares me now to remember that BAD November day.  It scares me that those whom I thought would care, did not.  It scares me that those who did care, had no clue.  It has been a long struggle back from that dark place.  Many times, I have wished for a quick magical cure, but there is no magical cure to the pain life sometimes brings.

Last night, I thought about the times in my life that have been seasons of grief.  I thought about those other, more rational times of grief, and I realized how things have changed in my life in the past several years.  My Dad, my friend and father, he TALKED to me.  He and I talked about anything and everything.  During some of the most horrible times in my life, I could always count on Dad’s daily phone call.  On days when all I wanted was to pull the covers over my head, Dad would call, and I always answered.  We would talk about politics, religion, local news, or current events.  He always had a story.  He always made me smile.   He pulled me through some of the toughest times in my life.  He has been gone now for almost two years.  Without a doubt, those two years have been the worst years of my life, not because my dad has been gone, but because my life was a mess (and only got worse) at the time of his death.  Oh, how different these past two years would have been if my dad had been there as a steady, loving part of my life.

These past two years have been terrible.  I have learned some valuable lessons the hard way.  We are all responsible for our own actions.  I will repeat that one, because it is important.  WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR OWN ACTIONS.  No I didn’t deserve to go through such a hellish experience, but as I said, when I look back at the circumstances, all fingers point at me.  If my trust was misplaced, who placed it wrongly?  Me.  If I went through a terrible experience, and no one was around for me to lean on, whose fault was that?  Mine.  I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN ACTIONS.

Slowly, I am rebuilding the foundation of my life.  Many of the people who were once part of my support system are gone, but I am learning to reach out again to the good people in my life.  More importantly, I am trying my best to be good to others and to be there for those good people in my life.