Another realization?

I was just responding to a post over at the DoNM board about NM's and inappropriate hugging and it got me thinking about something. Every time I'd visit, or very often when I'd visit, N stepjerk would ask me for a hug at some point, either right upon my arrival or shortly thereafter. I always thought it was just another way of him asserting his dominance over me and basically being an asshole but now something else has occurred to me.

(Warning - Potentially sensitive subject matter coming up. Proceed at your own discretion.)

When I still lived in that house, NSJ would often "accidentally" walk in on me when I was in the bathroom (before I got wise and began to lock the door behind me) or when I was in my room and he thought I might be dressing. He would also often make inappropriate comments about my developing body, like how huge my "tits" supposedly were. These comments, later joined by sexually offensive and inappropriate "jokes" about women and their body parts, continued after I'd moved out when I'd come to visit.

I now wonder if getting these hugs, the VERY few times I complied, weren't another way of NSJ getting some kind of sick sexual gratification? Ugh. The thought makes my skin crawl. I have ZERO doubt in my mind that if NSJ had thought he could get away with it, he'd have molested me and/or would try to have his way with me now, given half an opportunity.

I am SO glad I quickly stopped complying and refused to hug him. I'm even MORE glad my son is no longer exposed to that fat, disgusting, perverted pig.

I still remember the first time I refused. I'd gone over to visit with NM for a quick bit before an appointment nearby and NSJ was sitting there in his chair. He asked me to come give him a hug and I looked him dead in the eye and said, "No thank you." He said, "Come on. Give me a hug." and I repeated again, more firmly, "NO thank you." He just looked at me with this blank face, as if he couldn't believe I'd refused to obey his wishes. Then he went back to drinking his (ever-present) beer. My guess is that the rage came after I'd left. How DARE I not obey him?!!

I sometimes worry about my NHS' two kids, especially her daughter, being that NHS and BIL often let the kids spend the night over there. Then again, NSJ never acted sexually inappropriate with HIS daughter, just me, his STEP-daughter. Being that I'm no longer in contact with any of them and heard that NJS and NBIL moved to a new address (which I also don't have access too), I wouldn't know how to go about calling any authorities to have it looked into. And, really, without anything concrete to go on, I'm not sure it'd be taken seriously anyway. My hope - what I have to believe to have any peace on  the matter - is that because they are his daughter's kids, that makes them off limits in his mind. 

MY kids however, I suspect would be a totally different story. Just one of MANY reasons my child would never be allowed to be around NSJ unsupervised. DS may not be a girl but somehow I suspect that wouldn't make much difference to such a disgusting pig as my NSJ.

Bad dreams...

Don't know what it is lately but I keep having dreams of being back in that house with NM, NSJ and NHS again. I have been under some stress recently so perhaps that's it.

The first night, I dreamt that I was at a huge yard sale and NM was there. I kept finding these awesome ironstone pieces and was super psyched because they were all just a couple of bucks. I'd turn round to look at something else and then turn back to find my awesome finds had either disappeared or had turned into some ugly pieces that I didn't like at all. It was a very strange dream.

The next night, I dreamt I was back in that house and NSJ was being horribly verbally abusive as usual. Finally, having had enough, I announced I was done with their shit and was moving out. The problem was, I couldn't seem to find all of my stuff as it was scattered all over the house, seemingly in every room. The dream house wasn't the house we'd lived in in real life, it was a huge monster of a house with a ton of rooms and closets. I kept going all over the house, finding a thing here and a thing there and the whole way, NHS and NSJ are just verbally abusing the hell out of me. I was super pissed when I woke up from that dream and just kept thinking to myself, "I HATE that man. I swear, I HATE him!"

Had a couple other small dreams involving NM last night but don't remember them anymore now.

These dreams are less and less these days but I still hate when they happen. I almost always wake up in a bad mood afterward. They also get me to thinking about all the shit I had to endure and put up with while living with those people which usually winds up with me feeling angry.

I keep longing for the day that these dreams either stop altogether, or I finally feel so little for all of them - NM, NHS and NSJ - that I can easily shrug the dreams off and not give them another thought.

A realization...

A few days ago, I was soaking and relaxing in a nice, hot bath and thinking about a recent episode of "Teen Mom 2" that dh and I had watched a couple days prior to that. There is one mom in particular, Jenelle's mom, who stands out to me as she reminds me very much of my own NM. Basically, nothing Jenelle says or does is ever right. Her mom never has a nice thing to say and is always putting Jenelle down. Granted, Jenelle has made her fair share of mistakes and bad decisions - as do many 17 year old girls - but what strikes me the most about the situation is how her mom is always putting her down for not doing more with her life yet, at every single opportunity, does what she can to make sure Jenelle doesn't succeed.

As I thought of Jenelle and her situation with her mom, I realized that she and I share much in common, particularly with regard to our educational situations. I remember being about 18 or 19 and wanting to go to college. As I wasn't sure what direction I wanted to take at first, I thought I'd start by taking the basic required classes that were needed for pretty much any major and go from there.

NM and particularly NSJ were always totally insistent that I go to college. The problem is that any time I mentioned wanting to go and study a certain subject - first fashion/interior design, then later psychology - I was told by NSJ that he "wasn't wasting his money on a fuck up like me" and then told I needed to get a REAL job. His "advice" was to go to school to learn AutoCAD so that I could go work for his company. That was his definition of a "real" job.

On top of that, NM and NSJ made it difficult to go by bringing up their usual excuse of "We don't have the money." So I was expected to go to college but they weren't going to help me out or make it easy for me in any way. Great. Mind you, when NHS decided a few years later that she wanted to go to school to study nursing, they were ready to take out a second mortgage on their house but, that is another (very long) story so, I digress for now.

Very little thanks to them, I managed to get a Pell Grant which covered most of my expenses. Thankfully, NM and NSJ agreed to make up the rest which covered the cost of my books, though I paid for it by having to repeatedly hear about "all they did for me", even years after the fact. I enrolled in the local community college and began taking some basic classes.

Once I was in school, I signed up for a couple of Psychology classes to see what it was like. Turned out to be very interesting. Not only that but I was really, really good at it. Made A's in every Psych class I took. It was around this point that I decided I wanted to major in Psychology and eventually transfer over to the local university. NM and NSJ reluctantly went with me on the campus tour and I, against my better judgment, began to have hope that this was actually going to happen. Of course, after the tour, it was once again mentioned how they "didn't have the money" and how NSJ wasn't going to waste his money on a fuck up like me (at which point he again told me I should study AutoCAD and then get a "real" job with him at his company). This time, even NHS chimed in with her comments about my being a "flunkie". 

To this day, they all insist that I flunked out of community college. The TRUTH is that I went from a 2.7 GPA in high school to a 3.9 GPA in community college. I failed only ONE class, a college biology class, that I later retook with another teacher and made an A in. Aside from that, I withdrew from a college Algebra class because the teacher felt her only job was to read the material in class and it was then our jobs, as students, to go home and learn the material. Apparently my definition of "teacher" and hers differ. At any rate, the withdrawal did not count against me or my GPA. Yeah, some "flunkie" I am. *eyeroll*

At any rate, the point I'm trying to make here is that, from day one, I've been told what a fuck up I am, how I never succeed at everything, how I'm stupid/bad/wrong/etc. They've consistently gone out of their way - NHS, NSJ

If you take a small seed and don't give it the proper soil, water, light or nutrition that it needs to grow and be strong and healthy, do you fault the seed for not developing into what it was meant to be? Of course not. You'd fault the grower for not giving the seed what it needed and neglecting to care for the seed properly. I was much the same as that seed. I was not given what I needed to become all that I was meant to be, all that I could be, and because of their neglect, I am stunted in my growth in some ways.

True, now that I am an adult and I realize this, it's my job to find a way to overcome this legacy and change things about my life. Not that my life is bad the way it is, mind you. I'm a good person, a good wife and mother and I am happy if this is what and where I'm meant to be/do. But should I decide I want more out of life, then it is now my responsibility, as an adult, to overcome my issues caused by my toxic NFOO and do more with my life. 

With this realization comes a letting go of self-blame. Now when those thoughts and feelings about not being good enough or being a failure come up, I can say to myself, "NO! You are NOT bad or inherently flawed, you just weren't given all that you needed to succeed."

A little funny...

When MIL was here las week helping out with ds while I was still on the mend from a recent food poisoning incident, she asked if when I was logged into my Yahoo email if I got "updates" from certain people. I said yes, that people I'd connected with via my Yahoo account, I got updates for and then asked why she wanted to know. She said that when she'd checked her email earlier that day before coming over, she noticed an update from my NM. MIL says it read simply, "I love my grandchildren." MIL said she was VERY tempted to email NM and ask, "Which ones?" or say something snarky like, "Oh really? And would that include (ds' name)?" (And if you know my MIL, she is NOT the sort to be so bold.) MIL said that, in the end, she knew it wouldn't do any good or change anything since NM was so convinced she is perfect and not to blame for any of what is currently going on but stated that NM just irritates the living heck out of her! HA!! MIL then asked me how she could stop receiving those sort of updates. I told her she could either click on the little arrow beside the update and select to stop receiving updates from that person or the easiest way was to just delete NM from her email contacts. MIL said she'd take that route as she'd thought she already HAD deleted NM from her email a long time ago now! LOL

It still amazes me a bit that over a year later, NM hasn't changed at all. She's still going on and on about how she supposedly "misses her grandson" and is no doubt still claiming that I am "keeping him" from her despite the fact that, when last we spoke, dh and I made it clear she could see ds as often as she liked provided she come here to our house to visit with him. To this day, at no point have I said to her that I don't want to speak to her or see her yet she continues to cry the blues about how I've "cut her off". 

Meanwhile, my life has changed and I've grown in leaps and bounds in the past year. My anxiety has gone down, my health problems have decreased drastically, I have more energy, I'm sleeping better, I've lost about 50 pounds at this point and am generally feeling better, physically and emotionally, than I have ever felt in my life.