I realized this morning that I haven't posted anything since Wednesday, and all I did that morning was talk about the weather.
Its not that there hasn't been anything to talk about, its that I fell victim to the Happiness Sucking Monstrosity that is my husband's first wife....so we're going to exorcise that demon (and I do mean demon) right now.
Before I tell the story, let me tell you a bit about the Happiness Sucking Monstrosity (hereafter referred to as the HSM, because the word I use to describe her will not be uttered here, or anywhere else in polite society. "Bitch" would be an upgrade.). What we are dealing with is a person with a real-live personality disorder--she's a narcissist. If you know anything about narcissists, you know that the only thing you can do with them to avoid serious emotional injury is simply stay as far away from them as humanly possible. The personality disorder itself is complex, but, in a nutshell, narcissists do not have the ability to feel empathy. Its not that they don't care how you're doing, it just never occurs to them that it should factor into the equation when they decide how to conduct themselves with other people.
Oh, and I lied--they actually
don't care how you're doing. They are physically unable to. Not that this makes them any more sympathetic...they are truly, truly awful people.
Personally, I refer to narcissism as The Great Facade, and I do this, in part, to remind myself that these people do suffer. Sadly, their constant suffering manifests itself as pure evil against other people, but, narcissists are in hell, in their minds, every day. They create, in their minds, and outwardly as much a possible, an image of perfection, or, what they think perfection ought to be. Their REAL image of themselves, they go to dramatic lengths to hide. I wouldn't call it self-hatred--it might actually be worse than that. Its like a constant, intense fear. The feel that they must be seen as perfect, but it is really a self-defense mechanism, because in truth, they feel that they are worthless. As a result, they go to intense, painful and ridiculous lengths to maintain the facade.
A narcissists great fear is that if the whole world doesn't think that they are a wonderful person, humanitarian, perfect mother, perfect spouse, ideal employee, all-around fabulous and smart person, then we'll think the exact opposite. The idea of it is just too painful for them to leave to chance. They do incredible things to maintain their reputations, including really, really hurting anyone who threatens to topple their precarious house of cards. Anyone presenting evidence contrary to the image they want to show the world is stopped, by any means necessary.
For example, if they have a child and the child is, oh, I dunno, behaving like a child, for example, the narcissist would declare their child "evil" because the "bad" behavior certainly couldn't have anything to do with their parenting skills, which are perfect.
The HSM has four children, all of whom she dragged to doctors until she got them diagnosed with something that would explain why they weren't perfect. Never mind the fact that they were CHILDREN, and children do children stuff. In her head, there had to be something
wrong with each of them. Her life with her children was a history of constantly dragging them to counselors and doctors, declaring herself the victim and begging for help with the awful spawns of Satan, all the while indicating that it must be something that the childrens' fathers introduced into the blood-line because it certainly couldn't have come from her. She found sympathetic medical professionals. All of her children were put on psychotropic drugs, and all were diagnosed with something--all four. Some were diagnosed with
many things.
(Statistical anomaly, by the way. Only one in 10 children, for example, is diagnosed with ADHD--she got four out of four. This also increased her "martyr" score by a billion.) She had one of her sons diagnosed with Tourettes, but, after he was removed from her custody, his father brought him back to the same psychiatrist, who re-examined him. The psychiatrist declared that he was wrong, and that the mother's anecdotal evidence had been the basis for the original diagnosis. The child (13 at the time) was a perfectly normal boy.
So, thats what we're dealing with her. An actual evil person.
Narcissist, as we like to say, "present well". That is, they are incredibly convincing. They will tell any doctor, psychiatrist, judge, court-ordered parental evaluator, teacher or crossing guard exactly what they need to in order to maintain the facade. None of it is true. My husband, for example, has undergone numerous drug tests and psychiatric evaluations because she has told anyone who will listen that he is "on drugs" and is abusive. In fact, she has been married three times, and strangely, ALL of her husbands were "abusive". I've met them. They're not. They were all just victims of the HSM, and as rational human beings, they didn't stand a chance.
Earlier this week, the HSM brought her youngest son to a shelter to dump him there, and declared that he was being "violent".
What I mean to say is...she dressed herself up, put on make-up, mustered up the Educated, Rational Person (Show-Stopper) personality that she's got down to a science and sat there and lied. Again.
Thankfully, Sam had the presence of mind to tell her that she was going to rot in hell for all her pathological lying before he retreated to the relative peace and quiet of the little room that he was to share with another boy.
At a shelter.
That is how little regard this person has for anyone other than herself....put her
own, innocent, child in a shelter.
He's 16.
Of course, in our minds, this was as close to an act of kindness as the HSM would ever get. I drove to Minneapolis, went to the shelter and got Sam, fed him, then brought him to Duluth. And I was happy to do so.
I'm sure that sometime in the near future the HSM will decide that all of this might make her look bad, so she'll call the cops to report that I kidnapped the boy. Whatever...
Since Wednesday, I've been pouring over the HSM File. Its about 6 inches thick, and is stuffed to the brim with notes, telephone and email transcripts, court paperwork, psych eval notes (for the entire family, by the way, because every time we take her to court, she drops hints that we might be insane, so they have to check it out--yes, my young daughters, too...), affidavits, and the like. In the relatively short time I've been with Jim, we've been through an amazing string of events involving this woman. We've been to court with her a couple of times because she pushed our hand and behaved so badly that we had to take action. We had to. And...here we are again...
The HSM has told Sam, repeatedly, that his father doesn't want him (all the while taking steps to assure that he COULDN'T have him). Not true. We've been trying to get him out from under her wrathful fist for years.
She also told him that, Gee, she would gladly sign over custody and give up the child support (because she loves him just that much!) but she is sure that as soon as Jim stops having to pay child support, that he will kick Sam out of the house--and, (because she loves him just that much!) she is trying to protect him from his evil father.
In her brain, children are nothing but dollar signs or a means to an end, and she assumes that everyone else feels the same. She projects her ugly onto everyone and everything.
She is, truly, a hideous monstrosity.
Just reading the transcripts...depressed and sickened me. One of our inside family jokes involves comparing my divorce from my first husband to Jim's divorce from his first wife. My ruling was typed up on two pages, in which I got my maiden name back and custody of the children--child or spousal support was never discussed, because I didn't care and I didn't want it--the point of getting divorced was not to remain financially tethered to someone, after all, it was to get the hell away from them.
Jim's paperwork? Well, I mentioned the file, right? The divorce itself is a stack of papers a half-inch thick. Follow that with three other court appearances of similar girth, and all of the accompanying notes.
And every bit of it hideous. You can't read it without being overwhelmed by the urge to grab the woman by the hair and smash her face into a door frame, because she so richly deserves that and much more--so many lies come out of her...so much venomous evil. If she fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, no one would miss her. No one would mourn. No one.
Yet, she's somebody's mother. In fact, she's FOUR somebody's mother. Two, healthy, happy young men, who were removed from her care when they were in their early teens, one daughter who appears to be developing a similar personality as mom, and Sam.
She was, and is, awful to all of them.
She hides it so well.
I'm sick of fighting the evil dragon. Sick of it. I'm not going to lie--I wish she were dead. I've been wishing it for years. While I wouldn't personally kill her or endorse anyone else doing it, her being dead is the only thing I can think of that would bring peace to this family--so pervasive is her corruption.
As much as I like to approach things with a sense of humor (my own little defense mechanism), there is just nothing funny about a narcissist. Someone who is evil, for real, evokes no laughter. Wishing someone was dead is not entertaining, in any way. I won't be spending a lot of time talking about the HSM here (mainly because I'm sure that it would presented into evidence, and, surprise, surprise, the bitch has no f*cking sense of humor...). I just wanted to use this Saturday morning to purge the ugly, cleanse my brain, and shake her off, at least for the weekend. We live to fight another day. Regain our strength...slay the dragon.
