All her sins laid bare

I have tried really hard to delay the writing of this article as long as possible, but like any good pot left to cook on the stove, my cauldron is boiling over.  This might be a little long so grab your drink and follow along if you can.

In October, Jay and I headed to Desoto Parish for a cousin’s baby shower.  We never made it.  We blew a tire, and having no spare, ‘cause you know, we are poor like that, we called for a tow truck to get us home.  It was only free for the first 15 miles, so we were towed to my parent’s house.  It was a pleasant afternoon and we had several dogs with us.  I called my parents to come and rescue us.  They came and picked me and the fur kids up, while Jay waited in the car, with lots of water, his book, and his phone for several hours, until the tow truck arrived.  Meanwhile I went home with my folks. 

I spent the next few hours on the back porch working on sketching out my book, reading, and talking to mom.  I began to talk about writing and asked if she was reading my blog.  She told me point blank, “I don’t have time for that.”  And then the story gets very strange.  She begins to tell me that someone in the family has called her, and told her how upset they are about my blog, but she refuses to tell me who it is.  She says, this person is very upset over what I have been writing, is considering blocking me, and can’t believe some of the things I have said, especially what I said about Grandpa possible molesting me.  When I confirm with mom that yes in fact I believe this happened to me, she dismisses it out of hand.  I then ask her a question about something that happened in my childhood, something I have had confirmed by others that I know did in fact happen.  She blows me off and then tells me, “Hump, You must have dreamed that.” 

The finally straw of that afternoon was mom telling me she loved me, to which I responded, “How nice.”  She then pipes up and says, “What you don’t love me too?”  I then have to explain to her, that after all she has done to me, including robbing me, I don’t know that I will ever love her again.  She seems to be devastated and is unable to comprehend this.  She has since thrown this back in my face a time or two.  Saying, “Well I know you don’t love me, but I will do this for you anyways.”

Seven months later she finally tells me who it was that called her.  This family member said that it was not fair me coming forward with my story of Grandpa abusing me, because he was not here to defend himself.  That’s right people as if it was not hard enough to tell y’all this.  I should take my attackers emotions and motives into consideration.  But hey, he is still trying to think the best of him.  More power to him.  He doesn’t want to be part of my life because I spoke my truth, more power to him. 

Even though now I know my mom was not lying about his part, this conversation on the back porch planted the seeds y’all.  My councilor, Barb, had said after my mother robbed me in March of 2012, (Read about that here in My Mother - Part 2) that she was probable a narcissist.  I had of course done the research, and yes in many ways she fit the profile, but I knew she never had lied to me, so I was unsure.  All my growing up, she would tell me, “Don’t lie to me, you will make it worse!”  and my personal favorite, “I would never lie to you!  I am your mother!!”  And I believed her.

The day this conversation took place, I had actually just started working on my book, that morning.  I was making notes, drawing up genealogy charts, and figuring out names for my characters.  As time went on, I began to delve into the psychology of some of them.  I began to look at the characteristics of emotional and mental abuse, now simply called psychological abuse.  I began to ask friends who had dealt with similar parents in their lives, how they have coped with a mother like mine. 

I was discussing all this one day on-line with Aunt Cathy’s daughter.  She had grown up knowing Beau, my mother, and me.  She said, “You know my parents lamented the fact that it seemed your mom was brainwashing you.”  I was confused and befuddled.  I asked what she meant?  She then goes on to tell me that Beau had tried to see me, and my mother would not let him.  I was taken aback.  I knew for a fact that he had not, that is what my mother had told me my entire life, “Your father abandoned us!” again and again since I can remember.  I had even recently asked her if she thought he ever loved me.  I believe mom answered with, “I don’t know, or I don’t think so.”  Sorry little fuzzy there. 

As I began to look into psychological abuse, I saw how much of that fit my life.  I decided to try a little experiment.  My mom called to ask what I wanted for my Christmas.  I told her nothing.  I knew they were struggling to put food on the table, and I said I wanted nothing. I put out an article that week or so called, Christmas 2015.  In it, I said the only thing I wanted for Christmas was socks.  I never told my mom this.  Christmas Eve, on the Christmas tree, is a pair of socks.  When I saw those socks, I knew she was reading along.  She had lied to me, point blank.  She was in fact reading along. 

A month or so later I got the chance to go to a house warming party down in Longstreet with Beau’s family.  I had the opportunity to sit down with Bobby Joe.  He was one of the few family members that were allowed to stay in my life.  I knew he loved me.  I knew he would be impartial, just as he always had been about all this.  He had always been a great resource for me to talk to about all things.  So at the party I got the chance to talk to Bobby Joe at length about these things. 

I said, “I think my Mother is lying to me.  I have lots of questions.  Things are not adding up.” 

He said, “You ask the questions and I will tell you what’s true and what’s not.”

I asked the following questions:

I: Does Beau lie?

BJ:  He would have no reason to.

I: Did Beau try to see me?  I was told he did not.

BJ:  Yes, but your Mom would not allow it.  Beau kept trying, but he finally, gave up.  After the day you came home talking about Elisha (my sister), your Mom was pissed and told Beau he was not to bring you around Sandy (Beau’s new wife) or Elisha.  Basically she cut him off and told him he couldn’t see you anymore.

 

I:  Why didn’t he sue for parental rights?

BJ: In Louisiana at that time, a man had no rights to his kids.  (It is still damned impossible in this state for a man to get sole custody of his kids, and this was 40 years ago. Judges still almost always find in favor of the mother.  The two men I know that have sole custody of their kids, got it because the mother surrendered her rights.)

I:  I know I stayed with Aunt Ruby, while mom was in the hospital, recovering from brain surgery?  Did Beau pick me up in the evening times and take me home?  I was told he did not.

BJ:  Yes, Aunt Ruby had a have a break.  Beau picked you up every night and took you home.

I:  Did Beau come to see Mom in the hospital?  I was told he only came a few times.

BJ:  That’s a lie.  Beau came every day or every other day.  He came to pick up your mom’s clothes, took them home, washed them, and brought them back.

I:  Did Beau pay child support?  I was told he did not.

BJ:  When your Beau worked for UPS it was deducted from his pay check.  He paid so much child support, he couldn’t rent a place to live.

Another family member chimed in to confirm all of this.  They then talked at length about which relatives Beau had lived with, while all this was going on.  So now I have three independent, non bias sources tell me, basically that everything that my mother told me was a lie, but then again she has been telling this story so long, she probable believes all of it.  The above conversation has had a profound impact on my life. 

In February, I dispatched an email to Beau, telling him most of what I have just told you, and with the above conversation between Bobby Joe and me.  Within a few days I received a wonderful reply back to my letter.  Confirming yes, all of the above was true.  He was so grateful that all this had come to light.  He felt like his heart was healing from all this.  I wrote to tell him how sorry I was, that for years I had continued to tell these lies.  And that now I finally believed what I had felt all along in my heart.  He loved me, he tried to see me, my mother kept him from me, and he did not abandon me. 

I have talked with councilors, family, friends, and strangers about how does one stay in relationship with a person like my mother after all this, yet keep a relationship with my Dad, Jef.  I do not want to lose him.  I love him so dearly.  Even Beau has great respect for him, because he is such an awesome guy.  And to Beau’s great testament, he refuses to speak ill of either one.  I have thought of trying to warn Dad, and tell him about all this, but I know he would side with mom, and just see it as me trying to hurt and upset his dear precious, emotional disturbed wife.  He has no idea she is a psychic vampire and has been draining both of us for years.  It’s not like they would break up, or she would get help.  He would not divorce her.  He loves her too much.

There are days I don’t want to believe all of this.  Days I just want to go back in my shell, say they are all liars, confess my sin of betraying my mother to her.  The sin you know of loving, being with, and believing my other family, beg and grovel to her, and hope above all hope she will forgive me, and give me just a morsel of the unconditional love that I need.  There are days I want to blame this all on her surgery.  There are days I want to say, “If you had a father like Grandpa you would be fucked up too, and not know how to love.”  But most of all, I worry about the phone call that will come from my Daddy Jef, when this is posted.  Saying, “Your momma’s in there crying again.  She had to take one of her panic pills and lay down.  You hurt her real bad this time Ilsa, real bad.  Those people have an agenda.”  Which will make me cry and grieve, and hurt and panic, but I am not the one who lied here, and the evidence is overwhelming.  As of this writing I now have 5 sources confirming this story.  I am not the one who is playing mind games.  It is a vicious loop, the snake biting its tail, consuming itself. 

The stress she has put me under for so long has taken a tremendous toll on my health.  My blood pressure is through the roof.  In the last year since I have started talking to her again, my periods have become all out of wack again.  In those two years while I didn’t talk to her, they were damn near perfect.  I have anxiety and panic attacks, because I am so afraid all the time of who will emotional attack me next, and not being able to get my life perfect so my mom will stop critiquing what I do, even if it is just with her tone of voice or body language.  In so many ways it has become her or me. 

As I have thought on all of this I have also considered how she has treated not just Beau’s side of the family, but other family members as well.  Her brothers she adores, their wives she calls bitches, and I have often seen her have contempt for her nieces as well.  All behind closed doors you understand.  She is polite to your face, and stabs you in the back as soon as the door closes.  Everyone she seems to find flawed and horrible. 

All of this has had a profound effect on me.  For the first time, in probable 30 years, I no longer believe I am crazy.  I am perhaps troubled, scared, gifted and / or mental ill, but not crazy, a word that has defined me for so long.  I believe that living under her rule, was like trying to build a house with broken bricks.  It just won’t stand very long.  She lied to me.  She gaslighted me, basically told me I was crazy or wrong for believing things I knew to be true, therefore making me question everything I did and not believing in myself, or that I had a stable mind.  She kept me isolated, and lied to me and made nasty comments, so I would hate not just Beau’s family, but my other family as well, at the very least keeping strong bonds from forming with those around me.  Making it seem like it was just me and her against the world. 

You know I was the good kid.  I never got in Jef’s face and said, “You’re not my real Daddy!”  I never threatened to leave and go live with Beau.  I toed the line and hated Beau, just the way she taught me too.  And in the process I hated myself because I was half his.  I wonder now if she did all this so I would not run away, or fight her, and she could keep control over me, so she could keep using me.  So she could keep me to herself and feed off of me.  No longer.

The idea that I can trust myself, and that I am not crazy, and that people are not just waiting around to hurt me, has changed my outlook on life, so has learning the truth about Beau.  I am beginning to think maybe all men are not bad, and I am beginning to lose my fear of them.  But I can still hear her in my head saying, “Don’t you ever trust no man!  You better be able to do it on your own!” 

As all this began to come to the surface, as it all began to bubble and boil if you will, it felt really familiar.  It felt like Mike.  It felt like Melinda, Marie, and Paige all over again.  In my mind, once a liar, always a liar.  I felt like I had been used all over again, like I had been a pawn in her sick game, like I had been run over by this truck before.  I began to see the connections and of course the psychological abuse all in my life.  It began to answer the questions I had of why I got involved with these people, even all the way back to Sonya in grade school.  Why I had fought for them, been so fiercely loyal to them?  They were all copies of my mother.  They say you attract to you what you want to heal, people with issues you are not done with yet.  I always thought I chose, on a subconscious level, to be an abusive relationship with Michael, because of issues with my Grandfather.  I think now it was because of issues with my mom.  All five of them were in many ways very much alike.  So much of my life has been a repeating pattern.  Here I am trying to hang on to people, and be good to them, when they didn’t deserve it.  All in the hopes they would love me back. 

For so long I have associated being loved, with being controlled.  I think that’s part of what has been hardest on my relationship with Jay, is that because he has always been so wonderful to me, there was always this thought in my mind that it was somehow not real, or I didn’t deserve it.  I know now, I am worthy of his love, and I love him more deeply today, then I did 6 month or 6 years ago.

I have yet to reveal any of this to my mother, like any of it would make a difference.  Those of you who are following along know she has seizures from her brain surgery 38 years ago.  If not you can read all about that in, Hello Ilsa, Goodbye Beau.  My mom goes for long periods of time without being nasty to me, or lying to me.  The other day she calls me and says she, “had a night seizure.”  Now she had not had a seizure in 30 or so years, not since they got her meds right.  I remember being about 5 or so, when she had her last one.  She has had no more since then.  So mom proceeds to tell me about this night seizure. 

She says, “I sat bolt right up in bed and said, ‘oh no!’  Then I saw a seizure in my head.” 

I ask if she is trying to tell me it was a “Focal Aura,” which feels like a mini seizure.  It is what would have been a seizure, had she not been on meds. 

She tells me, “No”

I said, “Wow you haven’t had a seizure in 30 years.”

She says, “Well I’ve had my night seizures.”

I am like, “What?  What the hell are you talking about?!  This is the first time you have ever said this to me!  You have consistently told me for 30 years, that you have been seizure free all these years!  No!  I think this was something else.”  She forgets I have seen her have a seizures.  She has Grand Mal’s.  She falls out on the floor, and has no memory of what has happened to her. 

She then corrects herself and says, “Oh well, maybe it was something else then.”

She’s on the phone fucking trying to lie to me, gaslight me.  And in my head I am screaming she is fucking lying to me again!  She’s still doing this to me.’  I got off the phone real quick and hung up with her. 

My parents came the other day for my birthday.  I begged them not to spend money on me.  That the greatest gift to me would be for them to buy some food, cause I knew she was going to guilt trip me and tell me how little they had at home.  They came to see me and brought pizza, at least I talked them down from taking me out to dinner. 

As she is getting ready to leave, I show her a few things with her camera, and before she leaves I show her my binder, with the first 100 pages of my book in it.  She looks up at me kind of dumbstruck and says, “Ilsa this could really turn into an income for you.”  I said, “That is what I am hoping for.”  In my mind I am thinking, you should have told me that, all the years before when you saw that I could write.  “Darling you are so talented,” is not, “Darling I think you could make a career out of this.  I believe in you.  Do what you dream.”  We have a nice time, she goes to leave and wants to kiss me.  I kiss her on the cheek.  She says no she wants a lip kiss, just as we always do.  Instead of standing my ground and saying, “No,” I kissed her.  When she left I smeared hand sanitizer on my lips.  It felt so dirty, ‘cause I know I don’t love her.  How could I?

One more thing, and then I am going to quit for the day.  My mother’s childhood friend, who I call Aunt Diane, calls me the other day, and we chat and visit about mom and other things.  I tell her about the book and then I ask her if she is following along, reading my blog. 

She says, “Ilsa, I didn’t know you were writing a blog or a book!  Why didn’t your mom tell me all this?” 

I said, “Guess it wasn’t high on her priority list.”

And I don’t want y’all to read this, and think, “Oh she’s just ragging on her mom.  Everybody’s got troubles, and crazy parents.”  And that is so true.  Beau even told me the other day, “remember your mom fed you when you were hungry, and took care of you.”  So writing this article feels in many ways like a betrayal.  But I have to tell y’all.  I think I owe that much to y’all, to keep telling you what is going on in my life.  Y’all know I do a lot of thinking on paper, it helps me to get all this stuff out.  But for those of you who know me, in person, have been concerned about over the years, have loved me, I wanted you to know I feel as if I have turned another corner, come back to myself, grown a back bone, and have become hellaciously stronger in the last few months. 

And I have tried, and tried, and tried, and I have given her every opportunity to right these wrongs and the ways she treats me.  I get nothing in return.  I have begged and pleaded for her to go to counseling.  She refuses.  I have even said I would sit down with her and her priest or her pastor.  Nothing.  She still continues to believe there is nothing wrong with her, or our relationship.  She makes me feel it is all my fault. 

I have been sitting on this article for over a month, because mom is playing nice at the moment, even pretending to care.  But as I was doing some reading this morning, I realized I was trying to give her one more chance.  If she hurt me again, I would publish this article.  She will hurt me again.  She will say nasty things to me again, that is her nature.  So to wait is kind of moot point.  I am just so very tired of all of this.  I have tried for the last year and a half to play nice for the sake of my dad, but it continues to take an emotional and physical toll on me.  I have to be content that I have done everything in this relationship I could.  I will not continue to jump across an ocean for a woman who won’t cross a puddle for me.  A woman who’s hate has consumed her so much that she has destroyed lives in the process.  Hate is the enemy, love and truth are the answer. 

Writing this will not fix her, will not change her.  I will only change me.  I feel like a shield maiden, a warrior queen, Freya, Boudicca, Xena, and Holda and Kali in their dark mother furry.  I am mad as hell.  I have given up hope I will ever please her, or that she will ever stop playing games with me.  I am just going to have to release her in light and love, and give her to the Gods, ‘cause there is not a damn thing I can do with her.  As my mother always says, “A leopard, don’t change its spots.”

Ilsa