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momentsofcovertabuse · 2 years ago

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The last (and first) story

I wrote this out a few months ago but have struggled with not wanting to put more negativity out into the world and also with wanting to put all this to rest and not write about her anymore. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I need this story to be out there, but after I share it, I’m done spending any mental energy on this person ever again. This will be the last story I write publicly here. I’m so far into my healing journey and truly feel so much better than I ever have about the whole situation. Most of what I feel now for her is pity, but even that is a dull feeling at this point. I do think, though, that people need to hear this story. Whether they have their own situations they are processing or whether they know my mother or someone like her and deserve to know what evil lies beyond the surface. So here we go.

I’ve been grappling with how exactly to write this because so many pieces are still truly unknown to me. So I will paint you the picture as I see it now, through 33-year-old eyes. I want to start with the fact that over the last couple years I have uncovered *many* lies that my mother told to me and others. I think these are so hard for me to believe in a lot of ways because not only am I naturally a trusting person, (she literally molded me to be that way) but she was such a convincing liar. I think she warped her own reality so much that she truly ended up believing her own lies. In my adolescence into adulthood, if I uncovered a lie and tried to talk to her about it, she truly believed that it wasn’t a lie. She would act like she didn’t remember it, or didn’t remember it in that way. I never knew not to trust her, so I always just blindly did, even though it was so confusing and made me question my own reality and sanity in the process.

It wasn’t until recently that I even thought to question the validity of the most impactful story she has told me throughout my life. I went to a meditation retreat in October 2021, 5 months after I broke off contact with her, and this specific story would not shake from my thoughts. 10 days in silence will make you really think about things, I guess.

So, here’s the story the way she told it to me. The way I always believed it blindly to be an unshakable truth. A story that would change my perspective and make me not question certain things about my childhood, keeping me compliant to her for the next almost 30 years.

My mother always told me that my biological father, Joe, was a very bad man. She told me that he was incredibly controlling with examples like that he would draw chalk lines behind her car tires and record her mileage so that she could never go anywhere without him knowing. She called him abusive, both sexually and physically. She called him an alcoholic, a gambling addict, bipolar. All I knew for sure was that I had a half-sister that was almost exactly 9 months older than me. That fact, alone, helped paint her story in a very believable light, though I’ve never talked to the other woman who had his baby.

My mother met my father on Halloween while she was married to someone else who she had been with for 10 years. She always wanted a baby, but that man could not get her pregnant. She became pregnant quickly after meeting my dad, and I was born a little over a year later. It was a fast relationship, and by the time I was three, my parents were proceeding with a divorce from their one-year long marriage (her third of four).

The story of the incident has been repeated to me throughout my life by my mother, over and over again. In hindsight, I think there is a strategic reason for constantly bringing this up even though had I remembered such a thing, it would’ve been super traumatizing. But I didn’t remember anything. I was only three. My mother says that she left me alone with him for the first time even though her gut told her not to. She left for the night, I don’t know what she was doing, and my dad and I were watching TV together. From there, the only detail I know, is that the next morning three-year-old me came down the stairs and exclaimed “daddy made me touch his p***s last night” — yes, I apparently used the anatomical name and everything. My mother said that she was so shocked but her first thought was that she needed a witness. She called my aunt over and told me to repeat what I said. I told her, too.

From there, it seems that a divorce and a case for child support was easy. So my parents got divorced, but my dad visited as often as he could despite living five hours north and he sent me gifts until I was about eight. I remember when the last gift stopped. He sent me funny thing is like a box full of crumpled one dollar bills. He never forgot a holiday. But then it just stopped one day. The next I heard from him was when he called when I was 13 and I listened in. He told my mother that he had terminal cancer and would likely die soon. He asked for me to call him, but I never did. He died not long after that and my child brain held onto that regret from not calling him for a VERY long time. My mother never encouraged me to call him. She always stuck to the narrative that he was a monster. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. That didn’t change the regret I constantly felt for years.

Now here’s where the adult-brain critical thinking comes in. When I first reunited with all of my family that my mom basically forced me to push out of my life, one family member looked at me and said “do you really believe what happened with your dad?“ My jaw literally dropped at their suggestion. I had literally never questioned this in my life. Why would I? What kind of monster would make up a story about child abuse, like this? Something that has been part of my identity for so long. Something that has been repeated to me over and over again to show that my mother saved me from what could’ve been a terrible situation had my dad stayed in the picture.

This simple question made me start to reconsider some of the things my mom told me as a kid. But the biggest change in my situation presently was that I was now an aunt to two little girls who are both almost three themselves. So when I was left with 10 days of silence at the meditation retreat, only a month after this reunion with my family, I started thinking of those two little girls. It just seemed so unlikely that a three-year-old would know that being asked to touch their father in a way that did not hurt them at all would be noteworthy enough to repeat to their mother the next day.

Sidenote: I admittedly don’t have a lot of experience with three-year-olds so here’s where I would really love your help if you have three-year-olds in your life or are a parent yourself and are reading this. What are the chances that if a man your child trusted told your child to simply touch them in a way that they have no context is sexual or in any way abusive, how would your child perceive that interaction especially after a night’s sleep? Maybe I’m off here, but it just did not seem like something a three-year-old would care enough about to even remember. However, it does seem like a three-year-old is the perfect little brain to repeat verbatim something that they were told to say. I’m sure I would have happily repeated anything my mom wanted me to if I was given even just a little praise for doing so.

When I asked my family what else they could remember about my dad, they repeated some of the stories I knew, like the chalk lines behind the car, but couldn’t remember if they had ever actually seen aggression, violence, or weird behavior from my dad directly or if these were just stories that my mother told them. I do remember my grandfather always talking about how good of a guy my dad was, but I always shake it off like my grandfather loved everyone and he was just mistaken about him.

A couple months ago though, I reconnected with my dad‘s widow and it was the first time I mentioned this story to her. She was shocked at the accusation and said that there’s no way my father would be capable of what he was accused of. She said that he was mentally stable, definitely not a pedophile, and the love of her life. I understand that her take may be biased, but from what I’ve learned throughout the years, it seems very unlikely that someone would get drunk and ask a little girl to touch them in a way that is completely out of character to everyone in their life who knows them deeply.

What I’ve discovered, though, is that it is not out of character for my mother to call normal people alcoholics. It’s not out of character for her to make big lies about a sensitive topic (she once told a boyfriend he got her pregnant and she needed an abortion — just got fun and to pocket the money). And sadly, I’ve seen first hand in a completely different situation that it’s not out of character for her to accuse someone of sexual violence or child abuse when it is not true at all. That one was the hardest one for me to witness and know about as an adult and that lie hurt so many people so deeply. With that track record and all this other information, I’ve come to the conclusion that this whole thing was in fact, a lie. It was an easy way for her to obtain child support. It was a way for her to make a clean break and look like the hero to everyone in her life, especially me. She also got to dabble in playing the victim card, a common theme among narcissists. And, this whole rhetoric was a perfect way to explain why my dad eventually stopped showing up and completely left my life, (which by the way, my dad’s widow told me that my mom made it impossible for him to see me and it broke his heart when he finally gave up).

One of my mother’s favorite quotes that she repeated throughout the years was “some things, Amber, you just have to take to your grave.“ I never knew what secrets she was speaking of and always just shook it of as needlessly dramatic… I never assumed there were actual lies, especially any involving me, but now in hindsight, I think this might be one of the things she was referring to. She planned to take it to her grave because I think on some level she knows how significantly this lie impacted in my childhood into my adult life. Every time I saw a father-daughter dance, every Father’s Day that came around, every time she was cruel and I cried myself to sleep alone, I always wondered what it would’ve been like to have a father that loved me enough to stay in my life. It took me 33 years to realize that I could’ve had that all along and it was taken away from me. Personality disorder or not, mental health issues or not, that is unforgivable. And never admitting to the truth or apologizing for what she’s done is the nail in the coffin for me.

However, I do believe she is paying for her actions. When I discovered she had narcissistic personality disorder I asked her to go to therapy, and she refused, which is textbook narcissism. I even told her this was the only way that I’d consider talking to her again, and it still wasn’t worth it to her. She has completely isolated herself from every family member she had, mostly because of awful things she did to them and the lies she’s told. Her friends are starting to realize what she is and she is becoming more and more alone. Her husband stands by her, but that is because he is a victim of abuse himself, and doesn’t know how he should be treated. It’s very sad, but she treats him the best he’s ever been treated even though a frequent occurrence in their household is her screaming “a**hole!“ at him at the top of her lungs, every single day of his life…

I’m happy to say that I’m building my life back. I’m questioning things more, treading a little more cautiously in my interactions with others, but still living a positive and optimistic life. I recognize red flags very quickly and run the other direction because I refuse to be a victim again. There are a lot of sick people out there and sometimes you can be abused, and it can be so subtle or something that was built from a lie in your childhood, that you never would have questioned.

If you are reading this, please don’t feel bad for me. But use this story to critically think about relationships in your life that make you uneasy or anxious. Even if it’s the tiniest red flag. Or even a pink one. I always ignored what my mother was but every time I got off the phone with her, I wanted to cry and was so emotionally exhausted but I could never pinpoint an actual reason, so I blamed it on my own mental health. I didn’t know that with every single interaction she was continuing to control me, making me so confused and overwhelmed in the process.

I’m happy to say that I’m now surrounded by love every single day. I have family that I thought that I had lost forever, but they took the chance to forgive me and listen to all that I have uncovered. I am lucky to be in a position where I could take control back of my life and it’s only getting better from here. I love you all, you are all strong and unique and beautiful individuals. I wish you happiness and healing yourselves, if you need it. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

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