Under the Stairs (fiction)

Preface

 

You asked.

No one would believe this story if it weren’t for the way it unraveled.  People you go to for your medicine, people who sit in judgement of others, people who you vote for at the polls are involved, and you’re thinking they’re just good, decent, imperfect people like anyone else.  You think they are like you.

I really didn’t know I was the perfect prey.  I didn’t realize that being a good person who cared about others and did things to make others’ lives better made me an absolute target. My past was part of it, too:  I had a tough way of coming up, and unconditional love wasn’t something I’d experienced as a child.  Approval was granted to me only sparingly by my family.  I went without having material needs met more or less throughout my childhood and youth.

And I had questions about my family.  Many of them still linger, or in receiving an answer to one question I saw another open up, like finding a small hole in the rocks that opens into a small cave, which in turn  leads to a larger cavern, which has tunnels here and there.

I had been snagged before.  In fact, I was raised by two people of just the malignant sort. I didn’t realize that in seeking desperately for the love that they were incapable of giving me I was placing myself in just the position of being lured in by someone cut of the same sadistic cloth as they were.

 

Chapter One:  Ethically Sourced

 

“Why don’t you get on this website? You’ll love it, Maye!”

I sighed.  That wasn’t my kind of thing.  I wanted to be sitting in front of a cafe in a rattan chair, drinking a skinny latte and reading a book when the man of my dreams walked up and said something alluring but not overly suggestive.  That hadn’t happened, and I’d been single for a while.  The dates I’d been on had led nowhere, which, I later came to realize, was a manifestation of my vulnerability to the wrong type of guy.  No, let me be clear with you:  I was actively pushing away genuine, honest men who might have been completely appropriate for me if I had been whole, if I had understood what love, attraction and honesty actually looked, sounded, and smelled like.

(I’d suggest that it doesn’t smell like expensive cologne).

“Okay, Lisa,” I said.  “I give.  What could it hurt?”

I signed up for a couple of sites, putting in my credit card information with little hope of return on my investment.  I was asked about different preferences and information about myself.  No, I don’t smoke.  No, I don’t have any of my own kids, but it’s okay with me if a guy who is interested in me does.  I’m divorced.  I have a postgraduate degree.  No, I don’t care if a man is of another race.  Me? I’m white.  A few extra pounds?  Yes, I think that’s me.  Maybe I should check average.  But I don’t feel like that’s true.  I want to be honest.  What picture?  Wait, I have to upload a picture?  Can I just upload a picture of some dead leaves, or maybe my mom’s neighbor’s cat?  What?  that photo is not approved?  I don’t want to put my face out there . . . .

My first resulting date was to take place at a bookstore.  An independent bookstore with an independent coffee shop in the back.  The kind that uses ethically-sourced beans and offers used grounds for use in your garden.  I arrived early, fiddling with the absurd hot pink silk flower I had stuck in my hair to identify myself to the man I was waiting to meet for the first time.

I sat at a table for two, auditing the condition of my cuticles.  Bored with that, I took a pen out of my purse and sketched a female face on a napkin.  Soon I was engrossed in that bit of self-soothing activity, and worked downward, penning in her neck, shoulders, and arms.  I don’t know how much time passed before I realized that someone was standing beside me, watching as I created a person on a napkin.

“You didn’t say you’re an artist,” said the stranger.  I looked up at him, then stood up as I came to from my artistic escape, and extended my hand.  “Hi, I’m Maye,” I said, my voice sounding to me like a rock clunking against the inside of an old tin bucket.

He looked nothing like the photo he’d posted.  I wouldn’t have known him if he hadn’t come up to me.  “Steve,” he said, smiling and grasping my rigid hand.  “What’s good here” he asked.

“Uh, well, I like the skinny latte, but that’s just because it doesn’t taste like jet fuel and contains very few calories,” I explain.  “Do you like something chocolatey?”

“Sure,” he says, shrugging slightly.  He really looks like he wants a Mt. Dew.

“Actually, you might like the Italian sodas,” I suggest.  He looks at me blankly andorders a mid-size coffee.  I get a skinny latte with sugar-free vanilla syrup.

We settle in at our table for two.  “How’s that coffee?” I asked.

“It tastes like jet fuel,” he says, stirring in three packets of sugar.

“That’s not going to be enough,” I warned him.  He added two more packets.

He was at least ten years older than when his profile picture was taken, and possibly more like fifteen.  I didn’t care about his age or have an issue with his looks, only the misrepresentation of them.  At the same time, I kind of preferred the older version of him:  more scars, more character, some sadness in his eyes that made him relatable.

“You look just like your photo,” he said, as if reading my mind, complete with a telling inflection that let me know he had read my expression.

“Guess I can take this out of my hair,” I said, unclipping the silk flower and throwing it into my purse.  ”  It’s dumb-looking, but I wanted to stand out so you’d see me.”

“Oh, I’d recognize you anywhere,” said Steve.

I looked at him quizzically.

“Your eyes.  I’ve never seen anything like them.”

My face warms.  It’s the tone of his voice.

 

Chapter 2: Red

Same bookstore, Saturday morning after yoga class.  My hair is twisted up in an elastic and my deodorant has given up.  I’m wearing yoga pants as pants.  This is not my finest moment.

I buy a book and proceed with my purchase into the coffee shop behind the store and order a cafe au lait with skim milk and a scone, then settle into a tiny corner booth and proceed to read about saloons and taverns in the 1870s.

About an hour later the barista wakes me from my reverie at my table and thrusts a bouquet of flowers into my arms.  Red roses.  I’m stunned.

“These arrived for you,” she says.  “They just walked them over from across the street.  It’s so romantic!” she gasps before prancing away.  I’m left there holding a dozen red roses like it’s a baby I’ve found on my doorstep.

I look around, my eyes shifting focus from person to person.  No likely candidates.  No one I know is here.

 

Chapter Three:

Something felt off.

Curled up in my favorite chair, I had finished my saloon book and was idly checking out matches I had received on my dating sites.  Some guy using the nickname twistedforlife was matched with me.  I thought that was a bad sign.

And then there were the red roses. The card read “For the prettiest woman I’ve seen.”  No name.  The flower shop had told me it was a cash purchase and did not remember what the purchaser had looked like.    The only candidate I could think of was Steve, and my gut told me it wasn’t him.  Yet, all in all, it was not a leap  to guess I would be at the same coffee shop I was at on the same day of every week at the same time, right after yoga.

The sender did not appear to know my name.  It wasn’t on the card.

My ex had been big about sending me red roses.  He had sent seventeen of them on my seventeenth birthday.  He had sent them for every occasion.  For some reason he had thought red roses were just right no matter how badly he had treated me or what the occasion was.  When my father died, my then husband sent me two dozen red roses, delivered in my name at the funeral home.  They matched the funeral spray perfectly.  I tried to give them away, but nobody wanted them.  They sat on the table, lingering as a vague threat long after he’d gone on to to something more important somewhere else.

God, I hate red roses.

They had been my father’s favorite flower.  That’s why we had chosen them for his casket. When he was little, his grandmother would pluck one from the briars and stick it into his lapel before he went off to school, his lunchbox pack with some sort of bribe to get him to go to school, perhaps a sweet or a toy.

She felt sorry for him.

 

Chapter 4:  A Bone to Pick

“No, I’m afraid you’ll die of boredom.”

“If you don’t want me to go, I won’t,” said Steve, sounding offended and looking hurt.

I sighed.  “Fine, then.  I insist that you come.  But you are going to want to get some caffeine on the way.  Stop at the gas station on the way into town.  They have that crunch ice and a wide array of beverages.”

“You want me to pick one up for you, too?”

“Yes.  A diet, the biggest size.”

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Dealing with dead people.  What’s it like?” asked Steve, sipping his bright yellow soda.

“It all kind of depends,” I say, staring into the pool of condensation at the foot of my iced tea glass.  “The first time I handled remains I actually held skulls up to my head to see if they would speak to me in some way.  Nothing happened.  They were just like animal bones, actually, in that way.  Nothing magical or spiritual happened, in other words.  But sometimes we do capture interesting phenomenae on our cameras or experience odd things.”

“Is it gross?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head.  “Well, actually, normally it isn’t.  Of course, crime scenes would be different and so would a situation where a casket is well-sealed and the remains haven’t, well, they haven’t rotted down to bones.  I’ve worked with both situations, and neither are pleasant.  If embalming was particularly effective it probably contains arsenic, so then you have a poisoning hazard.  Then it’s all hazmat gear and containment.  We try to avoid  such complications,” I explain.  “But there was this one burial.  This one perfectly preserved child that caused me great grief and pain.  He was a little blond boy, so frail and small.  His family had been wealthy, so it was the best coffin and they had the best embalming, and he was in this little suit.  It was almost as if he had just fallen asleep, except that he was an odd blue-green-gray color.  And then when I touched his skin with a tool it was dry and firm, sort of like papier-mache.  Anyway, he reminded me of my little brother at the same age, and it still bothers me.”

(My eyes are welling up with tears).

“And in my research I found out he had a sister the same age as I would have been when my brother was his age,” I said, gesturing wildly.  “Anyhow, the real thing you probably want to know is that human remains do talk.  They tell a lot about a person.  Teeth speak of nutrition and diet, for example.  Bones show repetitive activity, illness and injury.”

“Is it spooky?”

Of course not, I think.

“Yeah, it is.  Because–” I stop myself there.

“What?”

“Okay, I may as well tell you.  You can laugh and run away if you want,” I say, “But I see things.  Not like, well, not with my eyes.  I get flashes in my mind when I handle remains or belongings.”

“Only in graves?”

“No,” I said.

His brow furrows and he sits back in his chair, arms crossed, and raises an eyebrow.  I grab his keys off the table.  “I see a pretty blond woman.  She’s wearing a red and white striped shirt and tight, acid-washed jeans and canvas sneakers, red ones.  She’s crying and screaming and she wants to know where you’ve been.  Oh!  She’s holding these keys.  But they don’t have this on them, just the Honda emblem.”

I put the keys down on the table.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says quietly, looking down.  He takes the keys and leaves.

 

Chapter 5: A Little Too Much Empathy

 

My time slot was 11:00 a. m., but we were missing a couple of presenters, so I volunteered to go ahead.  Just as I was covering the dentition of state hospital burials in 1845 someone walked into the back of the conference room holding two large foam cups.  He walked up to the front row, handed me a cup, and sat down.

“Somebody has a fan,” shouts Cray Clarence, an archaeologist with the forest service.

“Oh, thanks, Cray! I didn’t know you cared until now!” I volleyed back.  Cray was our resident heckler.  People always complain of his interjections, but I remind them that we need him to wake us up during these paper sessions.

After my session we had a break for lunch since nobody else volunteered to present.  Time for lunch in the lodge as planned, and the buffet was out, complete with odd dishes like hot banana pudding with meringue and lima bean and chicken soup.  I ordered a cheeseburger and fries.  It seemed safe.  Steve ordered a chicken wrap.

“Uh, yeah.  So, why are you here?”  I asked.  “I can’t figure you out.”

“Sorry about leaving last time.  I just thought . . .”

“Does this have something to do with those roses?  Was it you who sent those roses?  Because I went to the florist and asked who sent them and they didn’t know.”

“Can’t you do that magical thing like you did with my keys?” he asked.

“Sure.  The customer who purchased the roses never touched them,” I explained.

I look at him hard.

“So then it wasn’t you?”

“I didn’t send you roses,” says Steve.

“God that’s scary! Oh, and thanks for not sending me roses.  I fucking hate them.  Especially red ones.”  I make a puke-face to drive home the point.

Steve stares at me blankly.

“Did you catch any of that presentation, then?  Did I live up to my promises of being boring?”

“I didn’t understand any of it,” he says.  “I’m sure it would have been interesting if I had known anything you were talking about.”

“Bottom line:  the people who were patients buried on-grounds at the state lunatic asylum in 1845 were mostly poor people who had subsisted on mostly inexpensive, starchy foods and had lots of cavities, and most of them died of cholera, which is exactly what the records said.”

“Why would you not just use the records if you needed to know that?” Steve suggests.

“That’s simple:  because they may not be accurate.  How do we know whether they are or not if we don’t consult the physical evidence?  Plus, we were able to actually mark some of the graves with markers that have names on them instead of just number markers because the burial records were detailed enough to identify some of the individuals.”

“What about DNA?”

“Do you know how much that would cost?”

“So, who’s the new fella, Maye?”

It’s Cray.  Cray is short for Crayfish, a corruption of Craig. I remind myself that I like Cray. I remind myself that I’m the only person who does, and that, therefore, he needs me to like him.

“Oh, Cray.  I couldn’t wait for any longer for you to fall in love with me and gave up.  This is Steve.  It’s our third date.  The last one ended when he grabbed his keys and ran out.”

Cray studies us, his eyes shifting back and forth.  “Oh, you’re serious,” he says to me.

“Yeah, I am.”

“She doesn’t bite, man.  I’ve known her for a while.  I promise.  She’s the nicest person I ever met.”

“Thanks, Cray.  I didn’t think I’d see him again,” I said.

“Do him,” says Steve.

I give Steve a censoring look.

“Now that sounds exciting!” bellows Cray.

“Give me something of yours for a second.  No, not a coin.  Everything under the sun will come up.  Okay, that will work.”  Cray hands me his sunglasses.

“Your aunt Maggie shouldn’t have said that to you, Cray,” I whisper. “She was the one who was wrong, not you.  You shouldn’t feel bad about it any longer.  She was–she was a lot like my husband.  I’m so sorry,” I sputter, starting to cry as I feel the pain stored in Cray’s sunglasses.  I hand them back to him and look him hard in his eyes.

“Thanks,” he says.  “Hey, I’ll see you later, okay?”

“You bet.”

He walks away, wiping his face.

“Lima bean and chicken soup,” I say softly, “is better than it sounds.”

 

Chapter 6:

Hot air balloons fill the afternoon sky over the state park.  I sit on the porch and sketch with pastels.  Steve is making a phone call in the lobby. I’m not sure why he is still here. He should have run away again by now.  In fact, I can’t figure out why he showed up.

I shrug and gaze into the distance.

I would not have shown him my quirk if it weren’t for the fact that I liked him.  I didn’t want to be dishonest, and if I had just told him he would have guessed me plain crazy.  If it was going to make him run away I wanted to know earlier instead of later so that I wouldn’t get attached and neither would he.  That he was back was bad.  He should have just stuck with his decision to stay away from me.

“I don’t know.  I saw him walk to his room a while ago.  He seemed upset.”

“Cray’s never upset.”

I jump up from my rocking chair.  “What’s his room number?”

“249”

I run down to his room, leaving my pastels to roll across the porch.  “Cray!” I shout, banging on the door.  “Let me in.  You have to let me in.  You have to let me in right now.”

An hour later I emerge from the room.  A crowd is arrayed around the door.

“He’s fine, now,” I whisper.  Act like nothing happened, okay?” I command.

They all look at each other.  Matt has my stuff packed up and hands it to me.

“Thanks, man,” I say, grabbing his arm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Fiction in progress) *trigger warning*

Dedicated to the last narcissist in my life.

(I bet you think this story’s about you).

I bet you think this song is about you.

 

Chapter One:  Ex in Repose

Last night, while you were watching professional wrestling and eating a bag or two of chips, stalking me on the internet and scheming about how you can grab more of my family’s money, I was working at my second job.  You know, the one where I earned enough, working evenings, to make up the difference when you lost your job,to pay our bills.

Because you’re entitled.  Because you’re a taker.

You’d hate it that I’m now in EMDR.  You studied my triggers with avarice,  pretendingto be concerned, and specifically used them to keep me in fear.  I have to hand it to you:that was really effective as an instrument of abuse, a means of causing intense fear,a method of gaining and maintaining control, and a true representation of who and what you are.

You’d hate it that I’m writing, always writing, but you’d love it that most of my writing is about you.  Even what I write about the nauseating smell of your feet and the stench of what grows under your toenails would give you joy, because you can recall how you got me to haul water into the den, sit at your reeking feet, wash them, check them for ulcers, clean under the nails, and always had some complaint that I was hurting you no matter how gentle I tried to be.  You insisted that I had to do it, nobody else would do, even though you complained.  I did not want to bow at your feet and wash them and clean them and be responsible for them.

I know, it’s important to find fault where there is none to reinforce that someone else isn’t good enough and has faults that aren’t there.

And, if anything were to happen to your feet, which you refused to wash, you’d be able to blame me for it with great confidence.   I’m sure I was the last person whowashed and cared for them, months ago, right before you insisted I get you some ice cream while you sat and watched professional wrestling.  Because nothing follows up diabetic foot care like ice cream, and it hurts to care about someone and watch him actively destroy himself.

(Have some more ice cream and french fries, sweetie).

Yes, diabetic.  Health problems and more health problems.  It’s funny how you claimed to have erectile dysfunction because of this issue and that issue and could get off when I lived within your sexual requirements:  only on Sunday, I have to be on top, I have to have a clitoral orgasm (using the vibrator because my vagina triggered your selective erectile dysfunction), I have to do all of the work myself, I have to suck your dick for a half an hour, so forth and so on.  Never mind the way you smell, never mind the way it hurts me physically and mentally.

The truth is that you have erections all night long.

The truth is that you know I enjoy vaginal intercourse, so you can’t, because you hate for me to enjoy anything.

The truth is that you raped me anally because you enjoyed humiliating me, and you are angry because I will not allow that to go on.

Moustache scene

The truth is you like to make me work like a slave sucking your dick, because it hurts and humiliates me.  You like to make me responsible to do all of the work.  You’re lazy and entitled, and you said it after the last time we had sex:

I hate to see you happy.  I hate to see you smiling.

Indeed, you do.  It makes your dick limp to see me happy.

Narcissist sex

Impotent.  It makes you impotent to know I’m happy. I paid for your therapy for five years.  I guess you enjoyed that, too.  You claimed that everyone in your group loved you, thought that you hung the moon.  Guess what?

You were wrong.

My money was good to have, right?  You could take it and spend it as you wished. You could buy your friends and family and even my friends and family dinners and drinks and so on so as to prove you are such a generous guy.  And when your grandmother needed a bed to use in her assisted living apartment, you took my grandfather’s bed to use instead of buying her a bed.  I know, I know.  Why should you carry any of the responsibility and make any kind of sacrifice  to care for your own when called upon,  especially when you can take from me?

And how dare I want it back when you choose to divorce me?  How dare I?  First of all, I am your property to use and abuse as you wish.  Don’t I know that?  And any thing that’s yours is yours, and anything that’s mine is yours, including my money, my body, my religious perspectives, my abilities.  All yours to dispose of as you wish.

And, if it’s something important to me, you will naturally want to take it, abuse it, destroy it, control it.

 

 

Chapter Two:  Finding a Root Wound

 

It’s time for EMDR

I’ve been dreading this all week, because I know that we are going to confront the things you did to me.  Sexually.  That’s the plan as stated at the end of last session.  I’m settling into the sofa as best I can.   The truth comes out of my mouth:  I’m afraid.

My therapist asks me:  What experiences seem to be affecting you most right now? I tell her it’s the sexual abuse, assault, and rejection I experienced at the hands of my ex- husband.  She nods.  She asked me what images start coming up for me.  It’s my mother, heavily pregnant, being verbally assaulted by my father.  I’m four.  I want to intervene and try to make it stop.  There is nothing I can do.    My therapist starts to move her fingers and my right eye blinks uncontrollably. Resistance.  Protective resistance. My therapist, who I’ll call Suzanne, pulls back and asks me what is coming up.  Soon I’m having a memory of being gravely ill in my mother’s womb.  We’ve been poisoned, and I’m burning inside, sick in my belly, foggy in my mind.

Yes, yes I am serious.  Yes, we do record what happens to us in the womb.  And yes, it does impact us for the rest of our lives.

Sick, dying in the womb.  Completely aware of it, actively trying to make a decision to live or die.  I can die.  There will be no penalty to me if I choose to let go.  “That’s it, I say to Suzanne, “and I’ve said repeatedly over the years that I wish I’d been aborted.  I don’t feel that way anymore, and those suicidal thoughts I’ve had in the past, I haven’t been having them.”  She nods and begins the finger movements again.  The movements seem so fast this time.

Later, I leave knowing that I can expect a rough week during the adjustment, but I tell Suzanne that I can literally feel things shifting in my head, though I cannot explain the feeling.

Months ago, this would not have worked.  I was re-traumatized every day, my existing triggers used against me by a man who wanted to present himself to the outside world as kind and generous.  He did it at my expense.  And a lot of the time he failed, because as it turns out, people were on to him.  In fact, I’m surprised how many people knew he wasn’t normal and wasn’t right.  I figured I’d be facing a scourge of his flying monkeys, but it hasn’t been like that.  That could certainly still happen.  But when he went around my back talking about me people didn’t generally just believe that he was simply telling the truth.

He did a stint at the local megachurch and was attempting a smear campaign there. It started a year before he filed for divorce, and he insisted on me coming to said megachurch with him, disregarding my beliefs.  When I quit it was the beginning of the end, and I quit because he was using the conservative message of the church to attempt to control me, even though he did NOTHING to fulfill the expectations said church set out for him.

The unfortunate truth is that it’s easy for narcissists and sociopaths to hide their true selves behind membership in such congregations.  They can put on a holy face if they like, and drum up needed support.  Mel Ignatow, who murdered his girlfriend Brenda Sue Schafer, found a church home at a local megachurch.  The church gave him support and legitimacy.  My ex was never moral or ethical, but he certainly wanted to create that appearance.

It’s interesting that  my ex became more interested in attending church as I worked hard to lose weight, to improve my appearance, and to become physically and mentally healthy. At the same time, as I became more attractive and healthier, my ex made more excuses about why why could not have vaginal sex.  He finally rested upon his excuse that he is impotent, even though he had erections all night long and could climax when he was imposing upon me to do things that were unpleasant or hurtful to me.  By neglecting his hygiene he made it even more difficult to engage in sex with him.  I desperately needed sex, and he knew that.  He enjoyed my frustration and the control he had over me by only allowing sex to occur on Sundays, within a specific time frame, and with me doing all of the work and doing things I did not enjoy and that made me feel desperately humiliated, used, abused, and rejected.  Because that’s what I was.

When I confronted him about the fact that he doesn’t actually have erectile dysfunction, he tried to use his alleged prior sexual abuse experiences as a reason why his dick couldn’t work in or around my vagina.  By then, the gig was up, and even now I’m not sure if he is straight and sadistic, bisexual and sadistic, or just gay and sadistic.

If he is looking for another lamb to slaughter, the megachurch will be an excellent place for him to find one.  He can use the sheep costume of churchgoer, tell his new target about all of my alleged misdeeds, and gradually work his way in through her weak spots. I already feel horrible for her, whoever she is.  But he will need someone to wash his feet and clean under his nails, someone to cook him french fries, someone to pay his bills, someone to keep the house clean.

Someone to use up.

Someone to blame.

Another slave, another scapegoat.

She’ll make the same mistake I did, thinking his wounds are his trouble and that he can heal (from me and my abuse) just as I thought he could heal from his family’s abuse.  Who was his scapegoat before me?  Why, his mother, or course.

Chapter 3:  His Mother

I used to hate my mother-in-law, because she was at fault for everything that was wrong with my husband, including his sexual problems.  That’s what he said, anyway.

Interestingly, he decided, after several years of minimal contact, that he needed to have a relationship with the woman.  And as I began to realize that this blame he and his father/father’s side of the family placed upon her was unfair and inaccurate and expressed as much, noting that my father-in-law was cruel and ignorant and a bully, I was approaching the end of my captivity, the end of the marriage.  He was about to end it.

As I mentioned, his father is a brutal man.  He used to make an attempt at having manners around me, but for some reason, after my own father died, my father-in-law gradually settled in and started showing his true self around me.  A true misogynist, he spoke to his elderly mother, sister, and wife as though they were garbage, bellowing at them.  His wife, my ex-husband’s stepmother, would wait until he was in another room to tell us how bad he actually was to her, speaking to her with deep derision.  It was abuse.

And that’s what I said.  I said it to her, out loud, in front of my husband.

I think that was a problem.

I told him she could do better.  I told him she should leave him.  I told him I was afraid he would start abusing her physically.  I told him that his father gave me the creeps and had bad boundaries with me.  I did not like the things he said around me, and I gave specifics.

I also told him that I know why my mother-in-law had cheated on him and left him.  It was because he was a brutal, repulsive bully.

Please don’t misunderstand me, my ex’s mother is a narcissist herself, and she is only attracted to men who are actually worse than her. That is her pattern.  She’s still entitled and recruits and uses flying monkeys effectively, helping herself heartily to resources that belong to other people.  She pits her children against each other, sets them vying for her love and whatever narcissistic supply she is willing to dole out.  Two of them are her children by birth, and two are stepchildren to her.  My ex claimed that all of the kids in the household were treated better than he was, and that he was singled out for a higher level of mistreatment than the others.

Yeah, he doesn’t need me in his life, anymore, because I now know that that  is an absolute lie.  I know that he was a complete lie, at least the “good” person I occasionally glimpsed.

Did you know that’s a tactic that they use on purpose to keep you confused, always pining for the person you catch glimpses of, hoping to bring that side of them back and help them to stay whole and kind and sane.  I’m sorry, sweethearts, that cannot happen because that sweet person doesn’t really exist.  It’s just an act, and it’s one they cannot keep up.  You don’t have to take my work for it.

As I sit here, I say to myself: “It doesn’t matter now.”  The truth is it does matter, because trauma has defined my life, and well over two decades of that trauma was dealt me by my ex-husband. If I could just say “It’s over, and I’m fine” then I wouldn’t have to be in therapy and EMDR, I wouldn’t have to be afraid and live with flashbacks and panic attacks. In other words, the abuse is not strictly over, because it was internalized. That’s what makes it so effective and enduring.

Chapter 3:  Detour

Obviously, I came from a rather ill family.

But I did not know how ill until yesterday.

My grandmother’s first cousin, who I’ll call Stony, showed up at my workplace last week. He was on his way to the Veteran’s Affairs office one floor up.  He told me that he had broken up with his girlfriend of many years, his girlfriend who has helped him through grindingly awful things.  He’d certainly have died without her.  He said “She wanted my money.”  He asked me to come see him, his elderly hand shaking as he clutched his documents.

His ex-girlfriend is better off than he is.

Fast-forward to yesterday:  I stopped to see Stony as he had asked.  I mentioned that I was looking at a house a short distance away.  He said:  “Well, I want you here with me.  I want to give you the house next door, I just don’t know how to do it.”  I intend to buy my own house, of course, from whoever owns it.  He took  me into the house.

Mind you, I knew that Stony’s sister, who had lived with him even after their parents died, hoarded both objects and animals, and that some cats had died in that house.  I wasunder some level of misunderstanding about what had and had not been cleared and cleaned up.  As I walked in with Stony I saw lots of junk and quite a few valuable antiques.We walked over wet plywood and broken glass, approaching the stairs.

Yes, I proceeded up the stairs, even though there were cat remains covering each andevery step.  It was a moment of truth:  feline bones crunched beneath my feet.  And me,I’m a cat momma (with just one cat, to answer your question), so seeing splattered cat shit dried on walls and carcasses scattered over the carpeted floor was NOT easy for me. I persisted, because this was an answer to a question that I cannot yet articulate.

 

That’s not where it ends.  Stony wanted to show me through his house, which has been in

the family for over 100 years now.  His house, and the one next door, were some of the

homes built to house people who worked at the nearby car factory (where railroad cars

were built) in the late 1800s.  Downstairs is cluttered with antiques, whereas upstairs is

jam-packed, and that’s after he’d had help cleaning it out after his sister’s death.

 

After we got back downstairs Stony started to be ‘affectionate.’ I slipped out of the front

door, but he wanted to go back in.  He hugged me, touching my breast, me trying to deny

what was going on, told me I could spend the night, kissed me (me dodging him so that

kisses landed on my cheeks) and I kept telling myself that I was making things up in my

head.  It’s when he said the following that it all landed on me like a ton of bricks:  “Nobody

knows what goes on behind closed doors.”

 

I escaped as politely as I could, keeping it together until I got myself to a nearby park.  I

started walking.  I texted my boyfriend.  I called my brother, who, in a fit of instinct

had called to check on me when I was walking through desecrated cat remains.  I was

crushed, and my brother was infuriated.  He came down to the park immediately and

we sat together for hours, reflecting upon the family atmosphere that had produced our

narcissist father and his narcissist mother, who had, at very least, an emotionally

incestuous relationship.  Our grandmother was haughty, bossy, a habitual bully, and cruel.

It was only a few years ago that my aunt told me that Grandma had been toted around to

houses of ill repute by her father and would remain in the care of women working at these

places while he was busy upstairs.  My aunt said that when someone told my Great-

Grandma where Great-Grandpa was taking their little girl, Great-Grandma threw a fit

and told Great-Grandpa that she didn’t care if he went to those places, but he wasn’t to

take their little girl with him!  Our aunt also said that Great-Grandpa appeared to have

had sexual liaisons with various women in the neighborhood (who were not prostitutes)

and was accused of impregnating one young woman, though it was never proven.

 

Grandma had never told me this story.  She had told me that a wealthy couple had come

into the family grocery store and, upon seeing what a beautiful little girl she was, offered

to “buy” Grandma from my great-grandparents, saying, “She’ll never want for anything.”

She told me that her father had carried her up to bed every night, even when she was a

teenager.

 

Our father, now deceased, had told us that our great-grandfather took quite a liking to

young girls, much to the dismay of our great-grandmother, and often offered them candy

and other small gifts.  He would recall this as if it were funny, which I did not (and still do

not) understand.

 

As my brother and I sat talking and watching the sunset we reflected upon what appeared

to have been a family habit and a family secret:  incest.  Whereas it was practiced

respectably enough on my mother’s side with first-cousin marriages and as a function of

preserving noble bloodlines until the 1700s and continued openly with first-cousin

intermarriage for another century and a half, what was happening on one of my father’s

branches was far more sinister, practiced without any legal sanction or ethical preface,

purposely hidden from those outside the family, a form of sexual predation,

intergenerational, opportunistic, and sick.  It has functioned to keep members of the

family in a double or triple bind, and explains why my father felt it was appropriate

to molest me, blaming the three-year-old me for seducing him (which he expressed to

me on his deathbed, leaving me with all of the emotional material I needed to have a

nervous breakdown).

 

And then, of course, the hoarding . . .

 

What do I feel and think about myself right now?  I wonder why I have been targeted

over and over by sexually creepy people.  What the hell is it about me that invites them

to assert their sickness upon me?

 

Chapter 4: Complex PTSD

 

So much for finding comfort and innocence in a relationship with an older male

relative, someone who could be a father figure.

 

Forget it.  I feel like I did as a young child all over again, violated, confused, and

put upon.  My therapists have a lot of work ahead of them this week.  I’m

back to feeling the intergenerational shame that was almost (or maybe was)

a genetic memory of sorts.

 

Somehow I have to get through today.  I have to deal with the tension, the self-

loathing, the need to protect myself from further harm.  I can’t let my anger spill

into my interactions or allow myself to feel as though I am being attacked, because I will

act toward others as if they are attacking me.  There is no healthy way to deal with this

right now.  I feel pure anguish.  I am working.  I will be at my second job as soon as I finish

here.  I have to cope.  And I have to do it in extreme emotional pain and turmoil.

 

When you love with this and have a good day, you fear the whole time, because you know

the pain, the inner struggle, the confusion, the mortal fear.

 

I’d like to sit in the sunshine.  I’d like for my boyfriend to hold me, or for one of my ultra-

strong female friends to let me bellow out my pain while she  puts her arm around me and

brushes my hair away from my face with her fingers.  I want to not feel soiled and alone.

I wanted an apology from my father, and in the end he blamed me and left me hold my

wounds and his guilt in the vessel of myself.  I want what’s left of the family to forgo the

secrecy and force what’s ugly but true out before the scathing light of day so that it can

wither.

 

Chapter 5:  Theft

I’m sitting with my lawyer.

“I’m not going to let him one thin goddamn penny I don’t have to.  The fucker broke his own fucking court order.  No matter what he does, he just gets away with it.  I can’t go on like this.  I can’t take it anymore.  He gets to violate court orders and break the law repeatedly and NOTHING happens.  Fuck that shit.  If he comes after me and kills me, so be it.”

I guess the EMDR is working.