Jealousy dreams

 Last night I had this weird dream (aren't they all) set in the 1920s or so, where I was visiting, or staying in an old Victorian-type house. At some point, my siblings arrived - there was a reason, but I don't remember it - as did my dad, who is deceased in real life. 

My eldest step-sister is a bit of a band-wagoner and in this dream she was extolling the virtues of whatever thing she was into at the time and taking up all of my dad's attention. MY dad, her step-dad. 

At some point, I challenged her for holding court. There were words exchanged to the effect that I am nothing and to get out of her way. I asked her what she knew about me, and specifically my education, and she replied, "you don't have one." This is where it came to blows; full on me pound on her until she was on the ground, PAFF PAFF PAFF in the face!

This dream occurred only a few days after me having a moment of thinking I've put much of my past behind me. Apparently not. 

Just now, as I was searching for an email I sent to a client, I found an email to my spouse from March 2009. In it, I reference "two people, who came here (my house) with lunch they'd brought. For themselves... and they thought it was funny that they'd forgotten to call me to see if I'd like lunch too. But they weren't bothered about sitting at my table, eating the lunch they didn't share and letting me clean up after them.... " This was my step-sister and my step-mother. I know. It sounds very Cinderella. 

This incident happened following my step-niece having been here for most of the previous month, me feeding and housing her so she could be in town to complete her drivers training, with not a jot of "Hey can I pay you some rent/food money?" Nada. I found out not many months later this niece was bulimic/anorexic, which accounted for why so much food disappearing while she was here - huge blocks of cheese that normally would last several weeks and full loaves of bread, which disappeared over night - and all the "coughing" I would hear every night - not coughing; puking, I realised later. Oh. And she stole things from me when she left. Nothing huge really - some irrelevant bits and bobs and an expensive pair of tweezers I'd bought for work - I was still doing hair and related at the time. But theft is theft. 

This happened 11 years ago and I'm still so chapped about it - these two incidences specifically, and how often stuff like this happened and how marginalised I was - I mean, how loudly does it scream "YOU'RE NOT IMPORTANT" for my sis and istep ma to turn up to my house with a flipping COOLER full of lunch for themselves, not share, and to claim "Oh, we forgot to call and ask." Such a load of shit. I hate them for it. In my perception they both speak to me so condescendingly... I haven't seen either of them for ages, so certainly my memories are coloured by these incidences, but even recently my step-sister commented on something I'd posted on FB; her comment had the same condescending "tone" (if that can be derived from a FB post). She seems to forget I am in my 60th year... 

/rant. I'll flesh this out later. 

Ding Dong that asshole has been fired!

Warning, Rant: 

All those "fuck your feelings" people are sure having some feelings now. I agree with Biden/Harris it is time to begin repairing the immense damage the #trumptastrophe has wreaked on the US, and indeed the world, but I am going to gloat and be angry for a week (ok, probably way longer), because we KNEW. We KNEW it would go like it did - without question. 

Maybe we didn't know how bad it would be, but we knew it would be horrifying. 

 The vast majority of Trump voters are non-college-educated white people, and the vast majority of those are non-college-educated white males. This is TERRIFYING. It's also the reason #trumpstain uttered "I love the uneducated." 

Of course he did; they wouldn't/couldn't read or research well enough to understand what was going on, AND the #orangeshitstain capitalised on that, and their fear, and their propensity to believe conspiracies, and told them endless, endless lies - including that the economy was the best it's ever been - and they are not educated enough to understand how economies work anyway, so couldn't begin to understand the catastrophe he was selling them. 

Meanwhile, depression-level unemployment and nearly 250,000 dead because he knew about corona in bloody NOVEMBER but carried on calling it a hoax, and spouting LETHAL lies to this demographic - which, by the way, has sustained the vast majority of those deaths...

He has consorted with - courted - despots. 20 years ago, USians would have stormed the gates of the white house had the occupant so much as nodded their head towards Russia.

But Trump? He is so compromised as a person that the only personalities he wanted to emulate were Erdogan, Kim Jong Il, Putin - and that was OK with that uneducated demographic?? Good god!

I am furious. I'm furious about people posting and sharing utterly garbage "news," and calling me names for providing links to show them how wrong was the information. I'm furious about the destruction of relationships and families.

I'm FURIOUS to have had deep-seated racism and discrimination exposed in people I know and that fury is compounded by those people trying to convince me any of that has merit. I am beyond, beyond repulsed by how anyone calling themselves "christian" could entertain that disgusting man and his disgusting family - particularly knowing he is on record - as in video - lashing out at and disparaging the religious. 

I have NO love for religions - plural; religion is a scourge and if we didn't know that previously, we must know it now after watching the "religious right" fawn over a child rapist (who so intimidated the two women he raped - with witnesses present - when they were 12 and 13 year old children, they have not proceeded with their cases. Yet), a sexual predator, a liar, a cheat, a philandering asshole, a confirmed criminal; "I voted for him because he is a christian," is the most serious indicator of utter paucity of ethics and morals anyone could ever utter.

"But abortion!" Really??? He paid for at least two of his concubines to have abortions - and probably paid for more. 

"But her emails!" FuckSAKES! EVERY member of the Trump family had a private email server for the entirety of that "administration." Ivanka used hers to secure millions and millions of $$ in Chinese patents at the same time her #trumpstain father was inciting war with China. Dumb and Dumber (Jr. and Eric) used theirs for similar pursuits. 

"But Hillary killed 42 people." GodDAMN! Anyone who's ever had a job knows how bloody impossible it is to keep a secret in the workplace; how the fuck could Ms. Clinton kill 42 people and the facts never emerge. LIke, this level of idiocy is impossible to comprehend. 

"But gay marriage." It's MARRIAGE. Period. It's a legal contract; if you don't want one, don't have one. Stay out of other people's bedrooms... and by the way, the contract is nice for some, but unnecessary in the bedroom; consenting adults can have sex with any other consenting adult any way, and any time, and anywhere everyone consents to. 

"Oh, the supreme court..." the fallout is yet to be seen. As a side note, who paid off Kavanaugh's debt? #impeachthatlyingrapingassholenext. 

He didn't ignore white supremacists. He never spoke against them; he never called them out. He COURTED them. He literally consorted with them and THIS lit a BONFIRE of racists emerging into the public and KNOWING they would say whatever, to whoever, whenever - and that they could literally kill a man by putting their knee on his neck and taking almost 10 minutes to cause him to suffocate to death, and that the #cheatoshitpresident would not only NOT condemn the act, he would revile those who did. 

Anyone who claims the #orangecatastrophe isn't racist is fucking crazy. Not once ever did that predatory asshole ever date/marry/consort with a woman of colour - and while that is likely due to women of colour having too much self-respect to even entertain the idea of it - but it is yet another proof he's a racist. This is a fact and it is public record as are the NYC discrimination cases he lost. 

So yeah, people may read this and think I'm super angry and they will be absolutely right. I am angry that my drive to be informed was reviled and pilloried. I am deeply, deeply angry my character was called into question because I was informed, terrified, disgusted.

I am beyond disturbed people I know well chose to dive into idiotic Qanon garbage and that they berated me when I provided corroborated information that might have given them pause, but which they rejected without considering. I am furious people shared (and continue to do so) idiotic, unsubstantiated, massively false memes, and that they called me names (You're a bitch. You're negative. You're a loser. You're an angry libtard) when I showed them how wrong and dangerous such memes are.  

Yes, I'm pissed and I'm going to be pissed for a long, long time. Suck it up. 

It's not my country, but I will, along with an historical number of voters, try to begin healing.

Raiding the Archives

I decided to do a bit of digging into my parents' past. Upon checking with the provincial archives, I discovered two things; divorce records are public domain, and secondly, anyone can order a copy. So I did. I received 123 pages of legal documents (some duplicates, so about 115 unique pages), including a hand-written letter my mother (the narc) wrote, which was entered into the record as an affidavit, and which became the basis of questions in a later deposition.

Nothing in that letter surprised me necessarily; she has harped on about her divorce for more than 50 years.... However, what DID come as completely new information was that it was SHE who brought the divorce action. She has always claimed my father "abandoned" us. Completely false. I also didn't know she had threatened several times both in the letter and the deposition to leave the city with us to prevent our dad from seeing us. This was at odds with the fact she wouldn't acknowledge she was divorced and continued for years to call my dad her husband, even after he had remarried. It was so, so weird. It wasn't "I am divorced and my former spouse is remarried," it was "My husband is living with another woman and they don't have a real marriage."

It should be noted here while she was carrying on about my dad and "his women," (the only woman being someone who became my step mother and was for 33 years) my mother was herself dating someone - she the sunday school teacher and he the deacon - and this resulted in her falling pregnant and them having to marry very quickly. She will have become pregnant slightly before she got her decree absolute. She's a very skilled hypocrite....

The other revelation, which makes sense of her relationship with me and with my two sibs, is the clarification of our roles to her, and the clarification - like crystal clear - she at no point saw us as humans separate from her, but as the means of expression.

She has always scapegoated me, but these documents confirmed she has done so at least since I was nine (when all the custody proceedings were in full swing), and likely before that. I don't have any particular memories but a younger-than-nine-year-old child wouldn't recognize scapegoating or gaslighting.

The hand-written letter and the later deposition are fascinating with respect to scapegoating though; my mother put words in my mouth: she made claims - numerous times - about what I was saying to her or telling her. For instance, she claimed I told her, and I quote, "Daddy says you're sick, sick, sick in the head and we don't have to listen to you." This. Never. Happened. She makes this statement three times in the deposition as something I allegedly told her, and curiously, it is always in exactly the same format: three "sicks" followed by "in the head, and "we don't have to listen to you." It's weird. She claimed I told her my dad said this to us. I know this is a full lie. Anytime - up to and including when we were married adults with children of our own - we'd ask our dad what went on, his reply was always "It's a long story." He never said anything more than that.

My mother makes several statements about things I supposedly said to her, including that I (specifically me) wish to see less of my dad - absolutely false - and that I (again, specifically me, not my sibling and I) are disturbed by my father's "lovemaking in the front seat of the car and in the pool." This specificity is so, so weird. My dad was a preacher's kid who struggled very much to find a path to remarriage, as he'd been told since birth he'd burn in hell if he committed adultery - and in Baptist world, a marriage after divorce is adultery. The idea he'd engage in "lovemaking" in front of his children is ridiculous. None of what she claims happened and she contradicts herself several times between the letter and the deposition.

The short form is she has always used me to voice what she will not say herself. Where it concerned my dad and my step mother, my mother would claim I said terrible things about them, when it was she doing it. She put words in my mouth to my teachers, to a couple pastors, to people we knew. I spent most of my pre-teen and teen years being utterly confused about what was going on, because people would confront me about what I'd "said," when I hadn't said. It took me ages to understand she was lying to everyone. For the record, I haven't seen her in seven years, but she still claims I'm somehow wrecking her computer... or her life. It varies.

My next youngest sibling is mentioned but once in the entirety of those documents and not at all in the hand-written letter. I'm not sure whether this was due to her being invisible to my mother, or because she was the "golden child" so my mother protected her. Predictably though, as neither I, nor our youngest sibling has anything to do with our mother, the golden child is now the unfortunate recipient of our mother's wrath and abuse.

I'm after my mother's counselling records now. I'm almost certain I won't be able to find any records of her therapy sessions with my dad prior to their divorce, but I know I will find family counselling records and can access them because I was there. I've read some of them. I'm going to get copies so I can re-read.

Fascinating shit.

Wait! You're Taking THAT out on ME??

I get into loops in not-rare occasions; loops of thinking about events and what I could have, should have said at the time... had I understood what was actually happening.

There are so many events I remember as being confusing and weird and incomprehensible; so many times shit would go sideways and I would have no clue why and would be standing there like I'd been hit by lightning of a sort. In retrospect, knowing what I know now...

The first I remember was when my sister was 20. She was dating a guy who was quite a lad - slick, self-absorbed, and someone I suspect was treating her more like an accessory than a person, and who I think was likely cheating (I don't know this, but I knew that guy on and off for about 20 years). I was at her house one night and she began insulting me and calling me down. It still hurts thinking about it. Shortly after that, this guy was gone.

Another of these instances occurred at her house after she was married and a mother of two. She and I had had some disagreement about something - I don't remember what, but these incidences were common and had been since we were little kids. I detest arguments and I detest more feeling like I've done something for which I should apologise, so that's what I set out to do. I went to her house, sat at her kitchen table, and told her I was feeling badly about our argument and that I was sorry we'd argued.

One always hopes the response to an apology will be something like, "Thanks, I appreciate that." But no... her response was to fly totally off the handle stand bent towards me, pointing her finger in my face and screaming at me for 15 minutes... I left in tears, devastated.

Another time, I was at her house for our parent's 70th birthday. She was agitated and annoyed, and a day after this shindig emailed me some caustic edict about how I had disrespected her daughter, and terminating with "Manners. Get some."

At yet another point, she was dating some guy from the US. She was angry and agitated for several months - her anger and agitation was directed at me, of course... After an alarming visit to his home, which was "off grid," down a long driveway, hidden by a huge berm and with "private property" signs lining the way - she said it was weird - she broke up with him not so much because THAT was weird but because she discovered he had broken into her on line accounts and had been deleting her male clients and male friends. Although she had been very abusive towards me during this relationship - which I knew very little about - after she dumped him, she called us - my spouse and I - to help her protect her information and block that guy... Note pattern beginning to emerge. 

Then there was the French guy who she was dating when she hosted our parent's 70th. He also lived away and obviously wasn't going to be able to commit easily given the distance. Also included in her email about her daughter was some rant about how it was rude to speak French in a room full of non-French speakers... I dunno... is a sideline conversation unrelated to and unheard by anyone else in the room rude?

And then there was a cocaine addict... She called me up and asked to go for walk... she wanted my blessing, I think, to date this guy, who she acknowledged has a huge problem but who she thought she could "support." I did NOT give "permission." I told her she was crazy, that cocaine addiction is the WORST, that those people often spend all their own money and that of anyone they're with... I don't know what happened, but given this was one of the few times I didn't end up being the brunt of her wrath, she might have taken my advice.

Then there was the six-year-long relationship characterised by pathological jealousy, stalking, anger, verbal abuse... As a note, she is extremely private - fine - but secretive - not fine, so nobody knew what was going on in that relationship. Throughout this relationship, she was secretive, intense, often angry, closed off.

About four years into the six years she dated that guy, I agreed to attend counseling with her. Prior to the day of our counselling session, it seems they had been arguing for days. I found out that day they'd been in counselling for a while. When I arrived to the appointment, I found her sobbing outside the counsellor's office. She was on the phone with him. She was so agitated that day and the counselling session became an opportunity for her to express her anger. Within 30 minutes of us beginning the "counselling" session, she was already accusing me of all sorts. This escalated into her yet again yelling at me with her finger pointed at my face. The counsellor said nothing, which I still find bizarre. My sister left shortly before the end of this session. I left in a suicidal fog and walked the 45 minutes from the office to my home.

Also during that relationship, another time she lit into me: she had invited my spouse and I for dinner, but called literally as we were walking out the door with food in our hands to tell us to delay our arrival for two hours. I found out later she and this stalker had been arguing for hours and she hadn't been able to prepare food... but who did she tear into? Me. Why? because I was inflexible not being able to wait around for two hours for dinner with zero notice.

Then there was a guy who I had dated about 25 years ago. Lovely guy; kind, diligent, funny, but dumb and slightly dishonest. She knew him of course, but imagine my surprise one year when upon arriving at my step-mother's home for christmas dinner, and he opened the door.... They dated for maybe six months, but then she dumped him for the abusive stalker. In 2016, they decided to give it another go. She is intense, a personal trainer, long-distance runner, ironman competitor... he is NOT; definitely comfort, not speed. They date for a year, but without warning - literally - she turned up at his house, dumped him again. He was devastated and called me - something he hadn't done for many years - trying to understand what had happened. Two weeks after that, SHE is calling me, after been entirely out of contact for several years, asking me to call him and go pick up her running shirt, which she says he has. He is not amused .... 

Speed forward to yet another incident in February 2018. She was angry about issues I was not party to and couldn't do anything about. I understand things had become dire for her, financially, as she had taken on my mother's financial affairs in addition to her own. I don't know this for certain, but the details add up to her having got to a point of possibly losing both her home and the one she had purchased for my mother. When she was finally able to sell her house and rent out my mothers, and get our mother settled into new lodgings, she called me up and spent 45 minutes telling me how resentful she is (I would be too were I in her shoes - but she bought those "shoes" all by herself...) and chastising me for all the stuff I should have been doing over the last seven years - ignoring the fact the past is unchangeable and the issues were of her own making.

Looking back over these known incidents, I think I have identified what was going on; she has been in many unpleasant, sometimes abusive, and twice, dangerous relationships. In every instance, she has been absolutely silent about what is going on in these relationships but has taken her anger and frustration out on me.  It strikes me now, from the distance of non-contact, she has used me as her target throughout her life. To be fair, she learned this from our parent, who has scapegoated me since I was a tiny child (read the previous and next posts for background).

She has lately contacted me suggesting she owes me some apology, but she has no clue how deep is the pain I live with on the daily. No clue. She doesn't comprehend how much she's contributed to it by siding with our abusive parent, and by engaging in it herself.

I don't doubt there will be another few times where she'll get herself in to a bind and call me to sort her shit out - except now the answer is NO (unless she is in physical danger, which I can't rule out because she is unfortunately stupid about men).