complaints, holidays, rants, social media

Calling it “St. Patty’s Day” is one way to get an Irishman’s Irish up…

Top o’ the mornin’ to ye… Here’s a little mood music…

Kiss my ass.

Actually, as I write this, morning has about eleven minutes left. Then it will be noon. Bill has to leave for Bayern/Bavaria again this afternoon. I will spend the next three nights alone. Then he’ll come home, and life will continue until Friday, which is St. Patrick’s Day.

We probably won’t be doing anything special on the big day for “wearin’ green”. Even though Bill and I have some Irish roots and an Irish last name, I’m really more of a Scot. I think Bill is, too. For the longest time, we both thought he had a lot more Irish ancestry than he does. I was sure he was more Irish than I am. But, according to 23&Me and Ancestry.com, I am more Irish… and one can probably tell that by my temperament.

Bwahahahaha… I’m kidding, of course.

This morning, The Irish Times ran a story that got a bunch of Facebook comments from Irish people. The lovely Brianna Parkins, who is evidently not an Irish native (she’s from Australia), wrote yet another compelling column with a controversial title. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might remember that last month I posted about Parkins’ column. She wrote a piece titled “Now it’s okay for men to pee sitting down, here are a few other changes they could make“. Irish people went “fookin'” nuts.

I ended up having an argument with one guy, who was apparently irritated by my comment that some German women train their men to sit when they pee. That’s the truth, by the way. One guy wanted to argue with me about it. It turned into a blog entry.

But, as it was on that occasion, and as it is on this occasion, Parkins’ column wasn’t actually about what the headline implied. The earlier post I wrote wasn’t really about men sitting down to take a piss. The column was actually about violence against women. But Irish men were “taking the piss” and arguing about whether or not they should be compelled to pee sitting down. It was quite the mess.

Today’s column that has Irish people’s Irish up is titled “Be patient with us clueless foreigners this ‘St. Patty’s Day’”. Of course, because the article is behind a paywall, most of the people commenting haven’t read it. They don’t understand that, of course, Ms. Parkins knows that there’s no such thing as “St. Patty’s Day”. And, amazingly enough, they don’t get that the quotation marks in the headline are a dead giveaway that The Irish Times is well aware that the correct term is St. Patrick’s Day or, if one must abbreviate, “St. Paddy’s Day.” The Irish equivalent of Patrick is, of course, Padraig.

I can understand why it makes Irish people grit their teeth and cringe when they hear some clueless Yank refer to “St. Patty’s Day” while they pinch people who aren’t wearing green. However, the misspelled name was part of the point Ms. Parkins made in her very funny and astute column. If they had respected her enough to read what she actually wrote before complaining on Facebook, maybe they would have had a good laugh.

Butters gets in trouble for pinching people who don’t wear green…

Parkins’ column was a polite request for Irish folks to be patient with us excitable non-Irish folks. We Yanks get excited about St. Patrick’s Day and our connections to Ireland, no matter how tenuous. And a lot of us are clueless about the realities of living in Ireland in 2023. We just have romantic notions of what it should be like.

Parkins writes of the tourists who show up for St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, wearing their “Kiss me, I’m Irish” t-shirts:

These are the people who swear blind to you that it’s “St Pattys Day”. The type that say they are allowed to pinch you on March 17th without repercussions because you didn’t wear green. In primary school I once walloped a particularly strong fingered and vicious child which I viewed as a proportionate use of force for the shocking act of violence foisted on me. The teacher did not and explained I should have known that I had to wear green or the ‘leprechauns’ would get me because I had an Irish family. An Irish family who never did this pinching carry-on because it’s not actually done in Ireland. My mum might have laughed at this story but not as much as the time she received a note from the school canteen advertising a special Irish lunch option to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.

Was it bacon and cabbage? Coddle? Stew? Crisp sandwiches? No, they proudly announced they would be serving traditional Irish tacos, just like Peig Sayers and Fungi the Dolphin used to enjoy. The fillings you see make the tricolour – orange is carrot, white is over processed shredded cheese and green is lettuce. Which means the tacos were an insult to Mexican and Irish culture. Quite the achievement.

Bwahahahaha… too funny.

But go on the Facebook post for Parkins’ column, and you’ll read many, many indignant comments from people who couldn’t be arsed to read the article before chiming in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know… it’s behind a paywall. So buy a fucking subscription, then! Or, at least pay attention to the comments from the people who did read, so we don’t have to wade through your uninformed complaints.

That shit drives me NUTS. Seriously… if you don’t have the time or money to read before commenting, I don’t have the time to wade through your bullshit drivel. Check out these comments…

Bravo to Joan Butler, to whom I gave a red heart. Read the fucking article, PLEASE. Show us you actually CAN read!

I have noticed there are a lot of conservatives in Ireland. I’ve also noticed that a lot of conservatives aren’t readers. Coincidence? I don’t know… But The Irish Times is a great paper. They have some truly good journalists who don’t want to work for free. So, for the love of St. Paddy, please subscribe to The Irish Times and then, by all means, make your informed comments on the articles… not just the headlines! The writers will thank you, and those of us who do read, will also be grateful that we don’t have to read your comments and complaints about literal non-issues.

Danke sehr… 😉

Standard
Bill, love, marriage

Every day is a gift with my Bill…

I just wrote a piece for my travel blog, that details our Christmas morning. So far, it’s been a nice holiday. I asked for a new vacuum cleaner, and Bill delivered a cordless Dyson. I hope it will be less cumbersome and annoying to use than the canister vacuum I’ve had for the past seven years. I just tried it out, although it’s not yet quite fully charged. All I gotta say about that is that our carpets are pretty disgusting. A new vacuum was definitely needed and appreciated, even though one of my former bosses once told me that no one should get appliances for Christmas. She criticized me for giving my mom a new hand mixer. That boss and I didn’t get along, as you might have imagined. I’m one of those people that other folks tend to love or hate. 😉

I’m better at Christmas shopping than Bill is, because I know what he likes and needs, and he’s easy to please. I’m a lot harder to shop for, because I have a tendency to get what I want when I want it. The vacuum cleaner was an outlier. I’ve been eyeing the Dyson cordless vacuums for ages, but never pulled the trigger. One of the reasons I hate vacuuming is because it feels futile. The vacuums never seem to do a good job– even other Dysons I’ve had have not been very useful. But downgrading isn’t the answer, either. I used a Dirt Devil when we first got back to Germany, and it lasted about a year before it started dropping parts. Our dogs shed a lot, and Noyzi, in particular, leaves tons of hair. So I needed something lightweight and portable. We’ll see how long I like the new vacuum, but I suspect we’ll get a couple of good cleanings from it.

As usual, I bought a lot more stuff for Bill than he did for me… although he did get some higher dollar items for me. And a few of the things he got were kind of surprising. Like, he bought me a weighted blanket, even though I just bought two new duvets for the bed. But maybe the blanket will turn out to be something I didn’t know I needed. And he bought me three shawls in different colors, but with the same patterns and in colors I probably wouldn’t necessarily choose. I do wear a lot of shawls on the rare occasions when we go out. He also got me a new chair for my office, which has heating and massage capabilities. I do need a new chair! I wear mine out pretty regularly.

As I watched Bill put the new cover on the weighted blanket, it occurred to me… every day is a gift with Bill. I smiled, and blurted “You don’t really have to buy me anything for Christmas. You have already given me the best life.”

It doesn’t matter what we’re doing or where we are. Some places are better than others are, of course. I remember when we lived in our first slummy apartment in Fredericksburg, Virginia on Christmas day, back in 2002. It was just weeks after our wedding, and we were pretty broke. We still had a nice celebration, with a tree and cheap ornaments from Rose’s, which was a discount store in the nearby strip mall. We had a nice meal and listened to music on the cheap CD player I owned that I had to weigh down with a jewelry box, because the lid wouldn’t stay down on its own.

The following year was full of challenges, as we lost our first rescue dog, CuCullain (C.C.) to a rare mycobacterial infection, my car got broken into, and Ex went on the warpath to try to get me under her thumb. We moved to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, into a Craftsman house that was meant to be “temporary” and came from a kit from Sears. I actually loved that house, even though it had its maintenance issues. We were there for three years, until we moved into a “brand new” house a mile away, where I mostly lived alone while Bill was in Iraq. We left that house after about eight months, as Bill finally rotated out of Virginia and into Germany. We had Flea and MacGregor, rescue beagles from BREW, a beagle rescue in northern Virginia.

Then, in 2007, we moved to a town near Stuttgart, Germany the first time as a couple, and we both fell in love with living here. We hoped to get three years, which is standard, but had to come back to the States a year early. We moved into a huge rental house in Fayetteville, Georgia, where we lost Flea to cancer, and added Zane to our family. Bill learned to brew beer. We spent two Christmases there, out in the woods with a family of deer, some black snakes, at least one armadillo, and chimney swifts who chirped incessantly for a month. I remember one of those Christmases was when I experienced my very first “White Christmas”.

Then, the post in Georgia where Bill worked closed down, so we had to move again. In 2011, we moved to North Carolina, where we had two more Christmases in different woods– one of those years, we visited my sister, who lives in Chapel Hill, not that far from Sanford, the town where we were living. We lost our sweet beagle, MacGregor, and adopted Arran, who is still with us.

In 2013, we moved to Converse, Texas, a San Antonio suburb, where I assumed we’d end up staying… but no jobs were forthcoming in 2014, when Bill retired. We moved back to another town near Stuttgart, where we spent four years, and now we live near Wiesbaden, and have been here for four years. Half our stuff is in storage in America. It’s hard to feel rooted, since Germany isn’t our official place of origin. And yet, as long as Bill is with me, I’m home and happy. And I can’t believe we’ve been in Germany for eight years. We lost Zane in 2019, but now we have our first non beagle rescue, Noyzi the Kosovar street dog!

We have worked together to make a great life, and we have succeeded, in spite of all the kvetching I do on my blog posts. I really do feel so fortunate for all we have, and the incredible man with whom I get to share my life. But honestly, we could be in a tent somewhere, and I think I’d be happy on some level, just because I’m with the right person… and he’s with me. I am amazed by all of the great stuff we’ve managed to do together, in spite of the pettiest of annoyances. And today, I was just reminded of that and just feeling so grateful… even to Ex, who divorced Bill. If she hadn’t done that, who knows where I would be? We make each other laugh, teach each other new things, and make life better for each other every day. I need to remember this feeling for when the going gets tough, as I know it will.

I know 2023 will have its challenges. I expect we’ll be losing Arran in 2023, because he has cancer. But we are lucky to live in a country where we can enjoy him for a little bit longer without going bankrupt. And there’s always the threat of something bad happening… but as long as I’ve got “my Bill”, it all seems bearable. No matter where we are, it “feels like home…” Today, I’m feeling really grateful, and I just wanted to share.

I recorded this a couple of years ago. It has 25 hits as of this writing, but I’m reminded of it today… even though it’s from Randy Newman’s Faust, and the character who sang it wasn’t one for true love. Ironically, it’s become quite a wedding staple. The lyrics are lovely, in spite of the character who sang it in Faust. The video contains photos of some of the incredible places we’ve been.

I might redo this song… maybe even today. Why not?

Younger daughter sent a video the other day while she was holding her newest baby. He was obviously hungry and was trying to get to her boobs, but he was so cute and good natured about it. I feel very grateful that she shares him with us, as well as her other two adorable kids. It’s so nice to have her and her husband back in our lives. It just goes to show that, in the long run, love always wins.

I hope you’re having a good holiday, if you celebrate. If you don’t, I hope you have a good day. Now, back to the festivities.

Standard
family, mental health, narcissists

WordPress suggests… “Talk about your father or a father figure in your life.”

Fair warning, y’all. This post is a downer, and it’s brutally honest. Not everyone will like my candor, but I’m not one for sugarcoating things. I don’t suggest reading this if you’re not in the mood for negativity. The featured photo is of me and my dad in my maternal grandfather’s garden in Buena Vista, Virginia.

Good morning, folks. It looks like our part of Germany is finally emerging from the recent deep freeze. Unfortunately, I have an unpleasant reminder of the super icy conditions we had yesterday. I had gone out to the backyard to clean up any deposits left by Arran and Noyzi, as Bill was trying to chip the ice on his car and the driveway. Thanks to some melting and refreezing of the ice and snow, the road in front of our house was a sheet of ice. And, sure enough, I slipped and fell on my ass. Fortunately, I was wearing my soon to be retired parka, which somewhat cushioned the blow to my left buttcheek. It’s a bit sore this morning, which is too bad, because my right hip has been hurting since last week, when I repeatedly had to get out of bed to take care of Arran in the wee hours of the morning. I think I’ve got some tendonitis in my hip.

Nevertheless, it’s a new day, and we’ve got stuff to do… like cleaning the toilets, washing the sheets, and writing a new blog post. I was having a touch of writer’s block today, mainly because I don’t feel too much like ranting about the news. Lots of people are already doing that, probably better than I ever could. So, I decided to see what WordPress suggested that I write about today. And, as you can see, they picked a doozy of a topic!

I’ve already written a lot about my father in this blog, who passed away during the traumatic summer of 2014. Seriously, that summer sucked so much! Bill retired from the Army on June 30th, and we spent several anxious months wondering what would be happening next. We lived in a rental house near San Antonio, Texas that we didn’t like, which had a lease operated by a property management company that we’d tried very hard to avoid. They took over managing the lease two weeks after we moved in, and I soon found out that they totally lived up to their terrible reviews on Google (although at least we didn’t have to sue them). As the fateful last day approached, we worried about transitioning into the next phase. Meanwhile, my dad, who was 81 years old and suffered from Lewy Body Dementia, suddenly got very sick and landed in the hospital for emergency gallbladder surgery. He recovered from the surgery itself, but was unable to recover from the anesthesia. That surgery turned out to be his exit from a terrible disease that had completely stripped him of his dignity.

I remember getting the messages from my sisters letting me know that our dad was ill. As we rode in the car toward San Antonio to meet one of Bill’s former colleagues, I recall saying to Bill, “Oh shit. This could be the end.” I meant it was likely my dad was about to pass. While I wasn’t that upset about the prospect of losing my father, I did think the timing of it was most unfortunate and inconvenient. However, in retrospect, I realize that it was actually a good thing that he passed when he did, because we ended up moving to Germany less than a month after he died. And that was when we met our psycho former landlady, who proceeded to be extremely annoying and very toxic for the four years we lived in her property. I won’t get into that, though… that’s a topic for another day. 😉

So… about my dad. We had a complicated relationship. As I get to know younger daughter more, I find myself empathizing with her a lot. My dad wasn’t a narcissist, like Ex is. He was, however, a pretty severe alcoholic. He had PTSD brought on by his time in the Air Force and tours in Vietnam. He was abused by his father, and rarely spoke about “Pappy” unless he was drunk. I didn’t know Pappy, because he died when I was two years old. What I do know about him was that he was also an alcoholic, and when he drank, he was very mean and sometimes violent. I heard about some incidents from my uncles that make me wonder if maybe alcohol made my grandfather a different person. My granny told me that Pappy was a really good man and very kind, but when he drank, he became the opposite. Again, my dad didn’t speak of his father very often, but I do remember him telling me one time that his father pulled a gun on him. My dad, at least, never did that. He never owned weapons.

I do have some good memories of my dad. I think he was, at his core, a very good person. He loved music with a passion. He was creative, and had a good sense of fun. He loved a good adrenaline rush, and had a daredevil streak. When he was in his 50s, he learned to hang glide. He loved roller coasters, white water rafting, biking, and jumping off steep cliffs into mountain water holes. He could be caring when he wanted to be. But he and I seemed to have a personality clash from the get go.

Some of my earliest and most vivid memories of my dad involve screaming and tears. I would get into trouble and he would yell at me or deliver a painful spanking. I remember that spankings were his go to punishment, at least when it came to disciplining me. And they usually came without warning, or any cooling off periods. I don’t remember my dad ever talking to me about the things I did wrong. My mom would often side with my dad, although there were a few exceptions. For instance, the time I got paddled in school in front of my entire class of fellow fourth graders, my dad had wanted to deliver another physical punishment. My mom stopped him, and said it was wrong for the teacher to paddle me, especially in front of my peers. But she didn’t go down to the school and raise hell, which is what I would have done if I had been a mom in that situation.

Whenever there were any problems involving me, my dad would often take the opposing side. He almost always blamed me when things went wrong, with a few exceptions. He didn’t protect me– not from the neighborhood pervert, not from bullies at school or church, and not from his own alcoholic rages. In fact, I seemed to be a gigantic pain in his ass. I remember him getting super mad at me for some reason and raging to my mom, “I’m SICK of her!” And another time, he looked at me and snapped, “You are an ARROGANT person.” He would touch my back and say things like, “You have some fat you need to lose.” Or he’d grab my head and comb my hair, none too gently, complaining that it looked bad. He called me names, too. One time, he called me a hog. Another time, he called me retarded. He frequently referred to me as fat, crazy, or unlikely to ever make more than minimum wage. And he would make me do things like give him back massages, which was rather inappropriate. Looking back on it, I think sometimes he came to me for affection, when my mom was freezing him out. Especially when I was a young child. It was never a sexual thing, though. In fact, my dad was very conservative about sex, at least around me.

My dad loved to sing and many people enjoyed his efforts. I was not one of his admirers. When I started singing, too, he would compete with me. When I decided to take voice lessons as a means of easing my depression, he got wind of it and decided to take lessons from the very same teacher. He would deliberately pick fights with me, and disrespect my property. When I was in Armenia, he went through my CD collection, got it all completely mixed up, and lost a few of my favorites. When I confronted him about it, he got all pathetic and shitty. He didn’t respect me. I was just a product of his loins. 😉

Later, when I married Bill, it was clear that he liked Bill more than me. He wanted to see and talk to Bill, but would ignore me or get my name wrong. When Bill was deployed to Iraq, my dad called me– one of the few times he ever did that– and lectured me about being unemployed. He felt I should be working while Bill was gone, even though we would be moving in a matter of months. I told him my employment status was none of his business, which seemed to take him aback.

One time, we did my parents a favor by driving them to my sister’s graduation. It way May 2003, and I was 30 years old. While we were watching the commencement exercises, some woman was sitting near us and had a problem with us talking. The ceremony was in a gymnasium, and there were people screaming, cheering, ringing cowbells, etc. For some reason, the woman said something to my parents, and my dad turned and bellowed at me that I was “disturbing” people. I was absolutely mortified and humiliated; he spoke to me like I was six years old. I got up and stormed out of the gym, so angry that I told Bill I wanted to leave right that moment. It would have meant taking a train home, since we’d driven my parents’ car. Bill was trying to get me to calm down and change my mind. This happened during our “broke” years, and we didn’t have money to spare for train tickets. My mom tried to sweep the incident under the rug. I ended up being passive aggressive, by ordering several cocktails during our celebratory lunch. Oh, it also happened to be Mother’s Day, so when the restaurant gave me a potted impatiens flower, my dad loudly pointed out that I’m not a mother. I was a stepmother, though. At the time, Bill was still able to talk to his kids.

And then there were the times when my dad was violent with me. He hit me in the face more than once, and one time throttled me after I rightfully called him an asshole. The last time he ever physically struck me, I was almost 21 years old. He hit me in the face and bruised my arm. I told him if he ever laid a finger on me again, I would call the police and have him arrested. That, of course, enraged him. But he knew I meant what I said, and the next time the impulse came to strike me, I asked him if he remembered what I’d told him the last time. In spite of his love of libations, he did remember and backed off.

I remember a lot of fights and arguments with my dad. I remember times when I would get so upset that I’d hyperventilate. My mom would hand me a bag and they’d keep fighting with me, criticizing me for everything from my appearance to my laugh, which my dad hated. I remember going to school with swollen eyelids from crying, and sitting out in the cold at the barn where I boarded my horse, because I didn’t want to go home and deal with him after a fight.

I don’t think my sisters had the same experiences with our dad that I had. I do remember there were some pretty epic fights involving the two middle sisters, but when they were growing up, he was often away on military missions. I, on the other hand, came around when he was at the end of his military career. He started his own business when I was eight years old, and ran it out of our house. So he and my mom were always around when I was growing up, and I grew up like an only child. My sisters were significantly older than I was. Consequently, when he died, they were sadder than I was. I’ll be honest… although I am grateful for the good things my dad did for me, and I realize that he’s certainly not the worst parent there ever was, the truth is, he really traumatized me. And when he passed away, it was kind of a relief for me. I’ve also noticed that in the years since my dad’s death, my mom has become a much nicer and happier person.

My dad was a well liked person in our community. He was a well loved member of our family, too. When he died, a lot of people came to pay respects. I sang at his memorial. No one asked me to speak. They wanted me to sing. There was probably a reason for that. A religious song written by someone else would be more appropriate than anything I might say about my dad. On the other hand, it’s kind of funny that I sang at his memorial. I don’t think my dad was proud of my musical gifts. I think he was jealous of them. I don’t remember him telling me that he thought I had any talent for music. Instead, he would usually criticize me, even as he’d ask me to sing duets with him at church.

I grew up wondering if there was something really wrong with me. I had a hard time relating to other people. To this day, I’m pretty weird and people don’t seem to know what to make of me. But as I’ve gotten older, and become part of Bill’s life, I now see that there was a place for me. I do have a purpose. Because maybe my life would have been easier growing up if I had been more of a people pleaser… but being a people pleaser and marrying Bill would have been disastrous. I needed to survive my dad, because learning how to deal with him made me prepared for dealing with Ex. And I think it’s given me a lot of empathy for younger daughter, who is “nicer” and “kinder” than I am, yet still very resilient and emotionally intelligent. She knows her mother is abusive. She has impressive boundaries. But it still really hurts to have to enforce them against a parent. I can relate. I had to do the same thing with my dad. I wasn’t as resourceful as she’s been, though. She’s a very strong person, with a kind, forgiving, heart. I, on the other hand, have a very long memory, and seem to hold onto anger more than she does.

A few years ago, I had a revelation about my dad. I realized that he was very much a product of his upbringing. My Uncle Ed, who passed away earlier this year, was a lot like my dad in so many ways. They even looked alike when they were elderly men. Ed was younger than my dad was, but they both went to the same college– Virginia Military Institute– and they were both Air Force veterans. Like my dad, Ed was an alcoholic. He could be a lot of fun when he wanted to be. There was a really awesome, fun loving, hilarious, adventurous side to him. But he was also racist, and a proponent of MAGA… a total Trump devotee. Ed used to send me political emails, most of which I ignored. One time, I responded negatively to one he sent about how “great” Trump and Pence were. He sent a totally vile drunken screed to me that brought back awful memories of my dad when he was at his very worst. He called me a “liberal nut job” and spewed all kinds of hatred at me. Unable to tolerate that kind of abuse anymore, I told Ed to fuck off, and warned him to leave me alone before I delivered him a verbal ass kicking. Those were the last words I ever said to him before he died. I’m not sorry about it, either. But it was at that point that I realized that my dad and Ed, when they were going off on these abusive tears, they were basically vomiting up things they heard from their own father. I’ll be honest. It makes me glad I don’t have children to pass this baggage to. Because it’s pretty awful.

I’ve always loved my family, but for so many years I had a distorted view of them. I never realized just how fucked up it was, or how it affected me on so many levels. It took getting out of that environment to realize what I couldn’t see when I was growing up. And now, I’d just as soon stay away, which is what makes living in Germany so perfect for us. I don’t miss that traumatic shit at all. So, when younger daughter talks about her mother, and how the prospect of having to talk to Ex gives her nightmares, I completely understand. She just wants to have a healthy, loving, relationship with her family. But doing that is impossible when you have to deal with someone who is incapable of being mentally healthy… and can’t or won’t address their demons, take responsibility for their part in conflicts, and do what they can to be loving to people who are supposed to be their closest allies in life.

Whew… this post turned out to be a lot heavier and longer than I expected it to be.

Anyway… it may not seem like it, but I truly do believe my dad tried his best. I do think he loved me, in spite of the way he behaved sometimes (which wasn’t all the time). He did have a genuinely kind side to him, and he was always there when I was growing up. He was a good provider, and as responsible as he could have been, given his issues with alcohol addiction. I think most of his problems stemmed from being abused by his father, spending time in a war zone, and being addicted to booze. Ex, like my dad, was also abused, but instead of becoming an alcoholic, she became a narcissist and probably a borderline. Dealing with people who are damaged is very difficult. Maybe if I could have stayed a cute little girl, like I am in the featured photo, we wouldn’t have parted company on such sad terms. And again, I do have some good memories of him. But I sure am glad I married someone who only shares the military and the first name “Bill” with my dad (and actually, my dad’s name was Charles… he just went by “Bill” because my Aunt Jeanne started calling him that and it stuck).

Standard
holidays, narcissists

Christmas time is coming… you know what means, right? Here’s the best Christmas gift…

Before I get started… this isn’t going to be a super lighthearted post. It might be funny or interesting to some readers who know our story, and it could be helpful and informative to others… I just want to warn anyone who’s here looking for festive glad tidings that this post ain’t it.

Still with me? Mmm’kay…

When I was really young, I loved Christmas. I loved the food, the music, staying home from school, and getting Christmas presents. I loved being with my family, too. As I got older, Christmas became more of a burden. I found out that Santa isn’t real, not that I was ever a big believer in Santa… I recognized my mom’s handwriting on the packages. Then I felt like I had to buy gifts, and I never had any money. I also realized I didn’t know the recipients well enough to get them something they really wanted, so it felt like I was wasting money that I didn’t have.

As time went on, I came to realize that Christmas had lost its magic for me and filled me with apprehension and stress, rather than the touching family moments depicted on the Hallmark channel. It wasn’t until I married Bill and swore off family gatherings that I started to enjoy the holidays again. So… from about 2005 onwards, Christmas became fun for us… I now enjoy Christmas. I like shopping for Bill, because I know what he likes, needs, and wants. And we don’t try to make Christmas what it isn’t. It’s just a day. We enjoy the day and all the good stuff that comes with it. He is the one person I can count on to love me for exactly who I am. That is a huge blessing. I, in turn, love him for exactly who he is.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t see drama about to erupt from other sources. Most of it stays away from us in the most personal sense. However, because Bill and his daughter have reconnected, he’s hearing about drama from afar. It occurred to me that this is the time of year when narcissists usually become completely insufferable. And based on what I’ve seen from Ex lately, I think it could hit a fever pitch this year.

Behold:

On the surface, this sort of seems like a “cute” post, right? She’s putting up her Christmas tree, and oops! She forgot to add one of the middle sections! She must now get on social media to show everyone her “mistake” and ask for advice.

Ummm… I know for a fact that Ex knows how to put up a Christmas tree. And I think she knows how to fix this problem. That tree has just four parts to it. It’s not even like the trees of yore, which had dozens of individual limbs and color codes that had to be put on one at a time. It takes two minutes to put up a tree like the one pictured, even if you put the wrong section on the lower part. On our tree, the top part wouldn’t even fit on the bottom section. And why in the hell would you put lights on before you assemble the tree?

But then I notice at the end of her post, she writes “On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… no help on the Christmas tree.”

Uh huh. That was a dig at #3, who is apparently checked out. After twenty years of this kind of shit, I can’t really blame him. It took Bill half as much time to withdraw from Ex’s craziness. So when he ignores her, she hits up social media for attention.

Some of you who might be reading this are probably thinking… “How do you know all of this? And more importantly, why do you care?”

The fact is, I don’t actually care, except to the extent that it upsets younger daughter. She lives in another state, true… but it’s the holiday season, and narcissists are typically a nightmare during the holidays. They just can’t help themselves. They have this image they desperately want to project, and they expect everyone else to buy into the image. The trouble is, even if other people are cooperative, the reality never lives up to the perfect image in Ex’s mind. That causes her a lot of stress and gives her excuses to stir up drama.

The holidays are also a time of year when people are expected to be kind, grateful, and happy. Narcissists aren’t naturally kind, grateful, or happy people, even if that’s the image they try, and sometimes manage to project, to strangers. BUT– they expect YOU to be all of those things and more. If you protest when they criticize you, there will be hell to pay. “You can’t win for losin'”, as my sweet husband likes to say.

So… Ex decides to “spread the wealth” that comes with being upset during the holidays. Instead of sending warm wishes in a Christmas card or a lovely present, she sends hateful private messages full of rage, accusations, and guilt. Instead of making a phone call or starting a video chat, she drops a load of psychic angst via Facebook messenger. And then, when the response is anything other than groveling or mea culpas, she “shares the wealth” of misery to other people who care enough to listen to her complaints. Ah… holiday stress. It’s the narcissistic gift that ripples across generations, right?

I’ve been in Bill’s life for over 20 years, and I have seen Ex spoil MANY holidays. She usually craps on Christmas, but I’ve also seen her fuck up birthdays and Easter. Since one of her daughters and a granddaughter were born on July 4th, you can bet that day will be messed up, too. It’s a double whammy– Independence Day and a birthday for two family members. She hates it when the attention isn’t focused on her, so she’s got to do something to get into the limelight.

Years ago, Dr. Tara Palmatier, the Shrink4Men, wrote an excellent article about high conflict individuals during the holidays. If you have one of these in your life, I highly recommend that you check it out. Narcissistic exes who routinely act even more like self-centered idiots during the holidays is a real “thing”. It’s not all in your head. Dr. T also wrote a hilarious gift guide for the high conflict person in your life. Yes, it’s tongue in cheek… and maybe it’ll make you smile as you figure out how to get through another holiday season… and maybe consider if you really want to spend the rest of your life dealing with this kind of ridiculous nonsense.

A few days ago, younger daughter told us a bit about a recent conflict she had with Ex, who berated her for her supposed shortcomings. Younger daughter, to her credit, attempted to stick up for herself. She actually told Ex that she was being abusive. She hoped that Ex would see the error of her ways… but sadly, Ex didn’t get it and simply heaped on more abuse and blame. I couldn’t help but shake my head. I could totally relate.

I once made the mistake of thinking one of my own family members was mature enough to have a discussion about some abusive behavior from a Christmas past. Sure enough, she turned into a victim, and I was the bad one for bringing it up. The crazy thing was, I was actually trying to be positive. I was trying to tell her that her tantrum during the last Christmas I spent with my family of origin had strengthened my resolve not to tolerate that shit from anyone else, including and especially Ex. Saying “no” to this particular relative had led to my having the strength to say “no” to Ex the following year, when she “invited” Bill and me to Bill’s father’s house for Christmas. Instead of looking back on that incident objectively, she claimed I was being mean to her. She turned into a pathetic victim.

Younger daughter is more mature than I was when I was her age. Hell, she’s probably more mature than I am now. 😉 As she was talking about this dramatic exchange she had with Ex, she got this wizened look on her face and said, “It just totally blew up in my face.” And I knew that she realized, then and there, that there is no point in trying to talk reasonably with personality disordered people like this. They can’t see your viewpoint. They won’t consider your perspective. They have no empathy. That’s part of their disorder and, sadly, it won’t ever change. The best you can do is minimize how that shitty nonsense will affect you. Learn to either diffuse it or ignore it, or better yet, go no or minimal contact.

Then last night, we heard from younger daughter again. She was very excited about and thankful for a birthday gift Bill had sent her. And she told us that she had decided to apologize to her sisters for all of the things Ex claimed they were angry at her about. She also sent them copies of what Ex had sent her in her private message of doom. To that, I say, BRAVO. Ex is a world class triangulator. She has perfected to an art form the skill of telling people different things to get them upset at each other. They don’t speak to one another, so whatever they know has been filtered through Ex, who naturally spins it so that it’s completely twisted and totally askew. She said that older daughter was “nice” and wrote “I accept your apology.” I could see by the slight flash of snark on younger daughter’s face that she could tell it was bullshit that older daughter felt owed an apology for anything. It was quite hilarious.

But what I’d also like to tell her is that it’s a brilliant move to send transcripts of Ex’s diatribes to her sisters. Why? Because then they can see for themselves what was actually communicated. There’s less opportunity to take it out of context. And, there’s a LOVELY side effect to taking this action. Once Ex knows that her secrets aren’t being kept, she stops writing things down and sending them.

Back in 2006, when I wrote to Ex for the first and only time, I ripped her a new one because she had sent Bill an email with all sorts of nasty bile about me, and how the kids hated me and didn’t want us in their lives. She then asked Bill not to tell me what she’d written. She claimed she wanted to “spare my feelings.” Nope… that demand wasn’t about sparing anyone’s feelings. She wanted to drive a wedge between us. She is Olympic class at doing this; I’ve watched her do it for over twenty years. She was hoping Bill would resent me for being an obstacle to having his daughters in his life. It backfired, because Bill could plainly see that I had nothing to do with stopping him from having relationships with his kids. Moreover, the (now adult) kids are free to think whatever they want about me. That’s not something I can control, nor would I want to try. BUT… I will not tolerate Ex telling my husband to keep secrets from me and interfering in our marriage.

She could see that I know all about her and that Bill is loyal to me. Sending him nasty emails simply gives me more evidence of who and what she is. I’m not going to keep her secrets or accept her abuse. So, when that fact became clear, she stopped sending Bill emails! Blessed be! She also never called him again! The last we directly heard from her was, unfortunately, when she sent many boxes of Bill’s possessions restricted delivery, along with an itemized list marked “confidential” and a toxic little story book Bill used to read to the girls… HA! There was a nasty letter about what a horrible father and husband Bill is, along with paperwork for Bill to sign that would allow #3 to adopt Bill’s daughters. Of course he wasn’t going to sign the papers. Even if he did that, she wouldn’t have to file them, and he would have to keep paying child support. And then she’d have a paper with his signature on it to use as an alienation tool. That nasty little delivery occurred just in time for Bill’s 42nd birthday. Another special day ruined!

Bill still has all of that stuff. He’s kept it for the day when he needed to explain it to one of his daughters. Sure enough, that day recently came, and he told his daughter about what Ex had done. He did that because, in her recent little tirade, Ex told younger daughter about how Bill hadn’t wanted to pay child support and “offered” to let #3 adopt them. So younger daughter asked about what had actually happened… or even just Bill’s side of the issue. She’s figured out that her mother lies and twists things to suit her agenda. She knew there was more to the story and she wanted to hear it. So Bill told her his side, and offered to show her the stuff Ex sent anytime she wanted to see it. He told her about how he went next door and spoke to our neighbor at the time, who is a lawyer and is still a dear friend. 😉

But, I think what really made me PROUD of younger daughter and impressed by her smarts was when she looked into the camera and said, “Now I can see things from both sides.” She said she remembered how Bill recently explained to her how, when she was still a kid, Bill would call and try to speak to his daughters. At that time, younger daughter was always “unavailable”. She was in the bathtub, or had a headache, or otherwise couldn’t come to the phone. Gradually, former stepson and older daughter also quit speaking to Bill. Ex turned the ringer off of the phone, so he’d call and no one would answer. Younger daughter became more and more hostile, and for a long time, I didn’t like her. My dislike was because of the image she was portraying. But that wasn’t really her. It was a facade spackled by Ex, designed to turn off anyone who might influence or assist her daughter, whom she sees as solely her “property”. Ex can’t share, and she resents anyone who takes what she thinks belongs to her. That includes other people, especially those who have passed through her birth canal. 😀

Since younger daughter now lives in another state, and has her own family, she is now seeing things the way Bill used to see them when he and Ex communicated. Now, she gets it! It’s a beautiful thing that she finally understands– although I am very sorry that she’s now on the other side of her mother’s abuse. Being on one side is bad enough. I guess we can take comfort in knowing that this is how she treats everyone eventually.

In any case, I strongly suspect that the holidays are causing an uptick in drama at Ex’s house. But I also suspect that her husband is about to ditch her. And this time, she might not land on her feet. So that will cause her to act up and act out, and try to pull other people into her crises… to include strangers on social media whom she asks about how to put up her stupid Christmas tree as she slides in a little dig toward #3, who clearly isn’t paying enough attention to her during this holiday season. Too funny… and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person, huh?

What I’d also like to tell younger daughter is that I’ve learned not to be too hard on anyone who has to live full time with Ex. For a long time, I didn’t like people who seemed to be on Ex’s side. But now I realize that Ex makes people miserable. She’s a toxic person, and having to live with a toxic person is unpleasant. Toxic behavior is contagious, especially if you live in the FOG (fear, obligation, and guilt that comes with living with a high conflict person). It’s not really personal. They’re literally living in an environment that makes them “sick”. I have observed people leaving Ex’s sphere and becoming completely different, happier, healthier people. I also observed my own mother becoming a different person after my toxic dad passed eight years ago.

So, when her sisters are snarky, rude, or clueless, or #3’s mother says something thoughtless or insulting, it might be helpful for younger daughter to remember that they live in a toxic place, and they are affected by Ex’s toxic bullshit. Misery loves company, so they’re inviting her to join in their little miserable soiree. That might help her feel more sympathetic when they say shitty things to her. Actually, in her case, it probably would have that effect. In my case, it probably wouldn’t. I’m not as nice as younger daughter is, and I have never had a “loving” relationship with the people involved in this situation. In fact, I barely know them at all. So… I guess I could muster empathy, because they’re fellow human beings, and I don’t like to see fellow human beings suffering.

Anyway… Bill told his daughter that she doesn’t need to apologize to anyone for living her life on her own terms and being as healthy as she can be. One of the best things about being an adult is that you have the ability to make choices like whether or not you’re going to show up for people who behave like jerks. Children don’t often have a choice in whether or not they tolerate abusive behavior. Adults do. And younger daughter is well beyond the age of majority, so she really doesn’t have to tolerate this crap anymore. Better yet, she has young children of her own to protect from this toxic, narcissistic fuckery, which is an even more important reason to tell Ex to “zip it” and kick her to the curb.

For you, Ex.

I’d say that realizing that she doesn’t have to put up with ruined holidays and acting accordingly is the best Christmas present a person could ever get. I know it was a life changer for me when I stopped showing up for dysfunctional family holiday drama. 😉 So… Merry Christmas! And have a happy, HEALTHY, new year.

Standard
family, holidays

Mother’s Day isn’t always easy, is it?

Special thanks to my friend, Marguerite, for sharing today’s featured photo.

I didn’t post any fresh content on this blog yesterday. It was mostly because I spent a good portion of the morning writing new posts for my travel blog. Our trip to Italy was pretty intense. I took a lot of photos that needed to be uploaded, and I had stories that I wanted to share before I forget them. Adding photos on my WordPress travel blog is harder than it was on Blogger. Once I add pictures to a post, for some reason, it gets a lot harder and slower to add written content. It’s like the photos slow down the server, which they probably do. I’m definitely not a tech guru, though; so I can’t explain it.

My travel blog is a true labor of love. It currently gets very little traffic, even though there was a time when it was somewhat popular. But then I moved the blog to a new address and stopped promoting it so much. Then the pandemic happened, and we quit going places. A day after I spent all morning adding three posts, I see that I only have one or two hits– seriously– on my new posts. It’s a little depressing. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

I remind myself, though, that above all else, the travel blog is for Bill and me. There will likely come a day when travel will become much harder or even impossible. We’ll either lack the money to go places, or our health will make it difficult… or, more likely, both situations will occur simultaneously. Maybe the blog will someday even be a source of pain for that reason. But, for now, I like to share the stories from our trips and preserve the memories. If other people like to read it, that’s a bonus. That blog might be the only worthwhile thing I do with my life. 😉

Maybe Bill’s younger daughter will want to read the travel blog sometime. She often asks Bill questions about our travels. Unfortunately, her upbringing left her somewhat culturally stunted, so she doesn’t know as much as she could about places outside of the United States. The other day, she asked Bill about which side of the road people drive on in Europe. Bill got visibly upset, and expressed sadness that she was never taught about life beyond the US. If she had grown up with Bill, he would have taught her. She would have seen Europe for herself. Ex doesn’t have the excuse of not knowing about Europe herself. She lived in Germany with her first ex husband, and with Bill. Her eldest child was born in Germany.

But, in spite of Ex’s platitudes about loving Scotland and humanity in general, the reality is, her kids were very sheltered. They were denied a lot of normal experiences that most kids in America experience. At the same time, they were often expected to deal with things that children should not have to deal with at all. It’s a real pity… but, on the bright side, at least younger daughter can talk to Bill whenever she wants to now. And he can now teach her some things she should have learned about years ago.

I think younger daughter would probably enjoy reading my travel blog more than this blog, anyway. It seems that I’m always trashing her mom. I do realize that while younger daughter may totally agree with a lot of my points, it’s still her mom that I regularly trash. I know that reading some of my passages might be painful for her. Or, maybe she might feel vindicated. She’s about to have her third baby. Bill said that his new grandson will be born sometime this month. I wonder how she feels about Mother’s Day, now that she’s a mom herself.

When Bill finally went to see younger daughter in March of 2020, they talked for two days straight. It had been 15 years since they were last in each other’s presence, and there was so much to discuss. There still is. Younger daughter has proven to be very astute in her observations. She is very clearly Bill’s child on many levels.

During the course of that visit, younger daughter observed that Bill voluntarily helped her in the kitchen. While they were washing dishes, she said, “Let me guess. When you and my mom were married, you did most of the work, didn’t you?”

Bill answered in the affirmative.

“When my mom comes here to visit, she just sits on the couch with her phone and complains. She never helps in the kitchen.” younger daughter continued. For some reason, she never calls her mother “mom”. She refers to her as “my mother” or “my mom”. She has also said that she doesn’t call her “mom” in front of her children. Instead, she calls her by her first name, and tries not to mention her.

She later told Bill that when she was growing up, she and older daughter were expected to do all of the housework, while Ex sat on her can. Ex’s daughter with her third husband apparently rarely helped them, either. One time, Bill’s daughters did the laundry and brought it into Ex’s bedroom. Ex said, “This is all well and good, but you should be putting the laundry away for me, too.” When she turned 18, younger daughter decided she had to get away from her mother. So, with help from some good people in the LDS church, she made her escape.

To younger daughter’s immense credit, I have observed the way she interacts with her own children. She’s a wonderful mom. The other day, she sent Bill a video from a park where the kids were playing. Her son, who will be five this year, could be heard off camera saying, “I had an accident.”

A lot of moms might have been annoyed by the interruption. I’m pretty sure my own mom would have been put out at having to clean up an “accident” at a park. But Bill said his daughter said, in a gentle tone of voice, “That’s okay. Let’s go find a bathroom and take care of that. No, don’t take your pants off here!” (giggle) And then she ended the video, so she could take care of her son.

Meanwhile, her little daughter was mugging for the camera, showing off her toy cell phones, and literally “shooing” away another kid who was bothering her. It’s just so obvious to me that Bill’s daughter is a wonderful, caring, involved mom. She’s made a point out of not being like her own mother, who would tell anyone who would listen how involved and devoted she is, telling her children to “follow their dreams”. The trouble is, Ex makes it impossible for her children to follow their dreams, and she tries to deny them access to people who can help them achieve their own desires for their lives. She expects them to stay close, and help her achieve HER wants and needs.

I know Mother’s Day isn’t easy for a lot of people. My own mom was never much into the role of motherhood. She would be the first to admit it, which is one thing I admire about her. You can say what you want about my mom, but she’s brutally honest and pragmatic, even with herself. I called her yesterday, and we had a brief chat, because she had promised her friend that she would have brunch with her. As we were about to ring off, my mom said, “Well, I wish we were closer, but we’re not… so…”

I think she meant “physically closer”, since I live on another continent, and we haven’t seen each other in person in almost seven years. But I think it could also mean “emotionally closer”. I saw a lot of people posting beautiful tributes to their mothers yesterday. I posted a few for my mom, too, because she is genuinely worthy of a mention. My mom is very, very creative, smart, and talented. She was a church organist for over fifty years, and she makes incredible and intricate creations with needles and threads. She ran a successful business for twenty-five years, without benefit of a bachelor’s degree. She spent 56 years married to my father, who was not an easy man to live with. And she raised four daughters who have basically turned out fine. Through it all, she managed to stay beautiful and youthful, and basically healthy and functional.

When I was growing up, she could be harsh and aloof, and I was expected to take care of myself. She was not a mom who would spoon feed me medicine when I was sick, double check my homework, or comfort me when I was sad. She was not maternal like that. However, she would be the first to admit that she wasn’t very gifted at motherhood. She used to tell me that my sisters and I grew up okay “in spite of” her. Wow. Talk about self-reflection.

This picture pretty much sums up our family…

When my father died in 2014, I watched my mom turn into a different person. I think she’s a lot happier. She’s definitely a lot easier to talk to now. I know she loved my dad, but like I said, he wasn’t easy to live with. She didn’t always have all of the choices she might have had if she had married someone else. Now that she’s a single person, she can do as she likes. She only has to worry about herself. That’s very freeing, and I’ve noticed that her disposition is much nicer these days. We have had a lot of nice conversations on Skype… which, weirdly, makes me feel closer to her now, than I felt when I saw her on a daily basis.

One of the things I love most about my mom is that she’s happy to let me live my life. She doesn’t expect me to live my life on her terms. She isn’t emotionally manipulative to me. I don’t get guilty emails or phone calls from her, shaming me for living so far away. For a long time, I thought she didn’t care much about me. But now I think she is just content to live independently, and is happy to let me do the same. As I’ve gotten older, my appreciation and respect for my mom has grown a lot. She’s a remarkable person, even if she’s not the most maternal woman in the world. I’ve learned a lot from her. I’m grateful that my feelings about my mom have improved as I’ve gotten older. She’s very honest about who she is, and that’s a good thing. I much prefer my very honest and painfully pragmatic mom, to Ex’s bullshit facade that she puts on for everyone who shouldn’t be important in her life. Above all, my mom is, deep down, a good person. She’s not a great mother, but she’s a very good person. Now that I’m a middle aged person myself, I appreciate that about my mom.

This is a weird post. I know it might not go over very well. I’ve never been very good at presenting the best image. Maybe I just inherited my mom’s pragmatism and bluntness.

Anyway, I hope those of you who celebrated Mother’s Day had a great day. And if Mother’s Day is painful for you, for ANY reason, I wish you peace and comfort. Mother’s Day isn’t always easy.

Time to end this post and move on to my travel blog. I still have several more days to write about…

Standard