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
