I don't care what dh says, I heard a tone...

So MIL was over today. Dh couldn't get off of work and ds had a doctor's appointment so MIL came over so we could use her car to get ds to his appointment.

We were all sitting around at home afterward and the phone rang. It was my new therapist returning my call to set up my first appointment (March 19th at 9am - ACK!!). After I hung up with him, I went into the living room where dh and MIL were and said to MIL to try and get that day off of work if she could as I really wanted dh to go with me as he is my "safe" person with regard to my anxiety. MIL says, "That won't work." Her reasoning is that that is the date of her niece's baby shower - which she's not attending - but it's also the day she planned to have a small, early baby shower for my SIL since extended family would be in town for the other shower already. (The second shower for SIL is a very small, informal affair and is being scheduled around the other one so as not to cause any conflict. Still, stealing her niece's thunder just for convenience sake does seem a bit N to me!)

At any rate, here's where the snarky tone comes in. After relaying the information above, MIL says (in that condescending, smart ass "tone" that all us DoNM's are familiar with), "But if your thing is more important...", the unspoken meaning being that my thing clearly is NOT more important. I didn't take the bait and said simply, "Could you pick up ds earlier that day and then dh and I could come by after and get him?" Obviously pissed that I didn't take the bait, MIL said, "Yes. I suppose I could do that."

*rolling eyes* 95% of the time, my MIL is a dear but times like today - being that other 5% - she can be a real bitch!

Of course, dh says I'm imagining things, that there was no "tone" at all, but I don't care. I KNOW what I heard and even if I was unclear as to the tone, I think the major CBF on her face said it all! (That would be "cat butt face" for those who aren't in the know. It's a term to describe that pursed lipped, sour puss face that MIL's and NM's make to voice their disapproval at us.)

Think perhaps it's time to take a couple days off again...

A couple minor gripes...

Not much to do with N's really but I just needed to vent a bit.

The first gripe has to do with my SM and dad who will be visiting next month. They live up north and I in the south with several states between us. For me to drive there or they here, it's about a 9 hour drive.

Anyhoo so, according to SM, they are going to be coming down for a visit around the second week of April. They will be staying with friends a couple towns over - about a 45 minute to an hour drive from me. In talking with SM on the phone the other day, she says to me, "Your father and I just really need some rest and relaxation so, we'll probably be spending most of our time with (their friends' names) and only get down to see you for the party that weekend." (We're celebrating ds' birthday early since they can't be here on the actual date.) So, in other words, they are coming ALL this way and driving 9 hours............just to see me for a few hours the day of the party??? How much time am I going to get to spend with them while trying to host a party for my (soon to be) 5 year old? It's even more upsetting because the last time they came down, nearly a year ago, I didn't get to spend any time with my dad because he was busy helping dh replace the shower fixture and they kept having problems with leaking, etc. so as soon as they were finished, he and SM left.

On the one hand, I'm really hurt and pissed. Because they live so far away - and because my anxiety/panic issues keep me from traveling up to see them - I rarely get to see them. I missed about 15 years of having my father in my life growing up, in large part due to NM and NSJ, and now because of distance, I'm lucky to see them once every 3 years or so. And if that trend continues, with my dad being 60, I've got - what? - maybe 8 or 10 visits with him left?

On the other hand, SM can be a pain and highly annoying - then again, so can my dad from time to time - when they are in close proximity to me, such as during visits. It's why dh and I got rid of the spare bed in the guest room and turned it into an art studio - because they were so annoying and overbearing a few times ago when they came to visit and stayed with us. Part of it is that they have N tendencies (though aren't full on NPD I don't think) but it's also just a major difference in personalities. They are the sort of people who have their day planned out ahead of time and like to always be on the go. Dh and I, we are total homebodies and like to just lounge around home and watch a movie or sit and talk or whatever. Totally the opposite of my SM and dad.

Still, it hurts and angers me that they're coming all this way and will be in town for a week, week and a half and I'll likely only see them for the one day, and only a few hours at that.

Moving on to gripe # 2...

When FIL's mother passed away a few years ago, she left a lovely sideboard/hutch piece of furniture to MIL as MIL had always liked it. However, MIL has no place in her home to fit the piece and display it. She offered it to me a short time after inheriting it and I gladly accepted. When MIL found out I planned to refinish it however - as FIL had done a total shit job of refinishing it and wound up seriously messing it up - she forbid me to refinish it and demanded it back if I insisted on doing so. So, we had FIL come pick it back up and it went back into their garage where it continues to sit to this day. It's in the garage behind their home that FIL uses to hold all his crap. This gorgeous antique currently has FIL's paints, stains and tools sitting all over it ruining it.

I asked MIL again a couple years ago if I could please have the piece and refinish it. I promised to take good care of it and give it a place of honor in my home, etc. MIL asked what color I was going to stain it. I told her that I planned to paint it black and distress it. MIL said she didn't want it painted black and that I couldn't have it.

Well, since her comments the last time I asked led me to believe her issue was with the color black and that she might be open to my painting it another, lighter color, I asked her again last night if I could please have the piece, stating that I planned to paint it a lovely, creamy white to match my kitchen cabinets that I just refinished. She stated (rather snarkily in my opinion) that she didn't want it painted and that I could maybe have the item someday when she passed away.

Granted, it's hers and therefore she can do with it as she wishes. Still, it kills me to know there is this gorgeous antique hutch just rotting away in her damned garage just because she doesn't want me to paint it (and make it look nice), especially since she can't use it in HER home. By the time I finally get the thing, IF I ever get it, it's going to be ruined beyond repair and all because of MIL's stupidity.

AARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!


Note: In re-reading my second gripe, I'm sure I come across as some greedy beyotch. I'm really not that way. I just really appreciate the beauty of a nice antique and I hate to see them ruined or otherwise wasted by thoughtlessness, even if it is the owner's right to do so. :o)

Feeling the need...

To correct the lies, that is.

Was talking to my aunt N via email the other day and she asked if I'd ever told my NM that she was forbidden to see ds. I answered her honestly. "No. In fact, dh and I told her the exact opposite when we last spoke to her and told her that she could come by and visit with ds seven days a week if she wanted. We even went so far as to tell her that we were willing to arrange it so that MIL wasn't here when she came so she could have her own time alone to visit with ds and she stated flat out that she didn't WANT to have to come here, that she wanted to take ds out on her own WHERE she wanted, WHEN she wanted and she should be able to do so because she's my mother." Aunt N said that's what she'd thought but wanted to double check to see if anything had been said to NM since that day since NM had apparently told my GM recently that I'd forbidden her to see ds - a total and complete lie.

Since then, I've found myself wrestling with a compulsion to call or email up my extended FOO and defend myself correct NM's lies. It's just so damned unfair. Here is this group of people, my family, and my relationships with them have all but been destroyed by NM and her vicious lies and for what? Just so NM can appear the victim of my "unreasonableness" and gain N supply from it.

And to think I'd recently begun to found myself feeling pity for the bitch. (Not that I was contemplating going back on NC or anything drastic like that, but I'd started feeling a lot less angry and resentful toward her and was finally reaching a place of peace about the whole thing. Well not anymore!) Awfully hard to feel sorry for someone - especially one's own mother - who continues to talk shit about you behind your back and smear you to anyone who'll give her the time of day.

Honestly, I wish they'd all tell her to go jump off a cliff, at least in regard to the situation with me. According to aunt N, NM is asking her about me and ds constantly. Aunt N says she just tells NM that we're "fine" and refuses to say more than that. Despite that, NM continues to call her up and inquire about us. If I could have my way on the matter, I'd have everyone say to NM to stop asking about me, that if she wants to know about me so badly, perhaps she should contact ME and ask! Not that I'd want to speak to her or respond mind you, but at least it would cut off that source of N supply for NM. It just chaps my ass that she's sitting there, not making the least bit of effort to have any sort of positive relationship with me and ds in large part because why should she have to when she's getting all the information about us from everyone else? (Hope that makes sense. I know what I'm wanting to say here but having a hard time putting it into words!)

My aunt N and GM are planning on coming down to where I live for a visit very soon. They're going to spend the night at NM's and then say they're leaving for home early and then they're going to stop by and visit with us for the day before actually heading home. Aunt N says that she's not going to lie to NM about coming here but she's not going to be the one to bring it up either, mostly because NSJ would start running his mouth about it. Which is another bone of contention for me. Here we have a "man" - (and I write it that way because NSJ is a perverted pig of a creature and not a real man) - who has made it clear my entire life how badly he wished he could be rid of me and not have to take care of me or be bothered with me in any way. Clearly, had it been an option, he'd have chosen NM and sent me away to wherever he could dump me. And now, he's finally gotten his wish. I'm GONE. I'm out of NM's and his life for good and yet it STILL isn't enough for him. He continues to badmouth me and bitch about this, that or the next thing that I've done in the past or whatever. WTFH??! The only upside to that is that it makes it all the more clear that I'M not the real issue since, even now that I'm absent from the picture, they continue to bitch about me and find fault and I haven't even spoke to them in about 14 months (2+ years in NHS and NBIL's case)!!

Asshats, the lot of them!

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.