Last year, Slate published an article called My mother married her prison pen pal. A synopsis of the story is this: After 22 years of marriage, the author’s parents divorced. One day her mother receives a collect phone call from Joe, who was incarcerated. He dialed her phone number at random; thinking it was someone she knew who had the same name, the woman accepted the call. The prisoner asked the woman to write to him. She thought it was a good mentorship opportunity, so she did. Eventually, the woman married the guy.
Please pause now and read the story:
My mother married her prison pen pal
By Anna Balkrishna
The biggest myth
Mom knew that Joe was in jail—she started writing to him because she wanted to be a “positive influence” in his life. She fell for one of the biggest myths that our culture propagates: There’s good in everyone.
Unfortunately, it isn’t true. Despite the platitudes we’ve grown up with”—All men are created equal,” “Everyone deserves a chance,” “We’re all God’s children—”some people are rotten to the core. And they’re called sociopaths.
Joe worked his sociopathic magic, and Mom fell in love. So even when she married him, and then found out that he wasn’t in prison for vehicular manslaughter, he was really in prison for rape, she stood by him, and spent her retirement money on his lawyers. Balkrishna wrote:
She believed that he was put into her path for a purpose. She made a commitment: morally, to “turn him around” and wean him off his bad behaviors, and practically, to help him through his sentence and his parole until he could integrate back into free society. Once she made the commitment, she could not break it.
So Joe gets out of jail and guess what? He cheats on Mom. He stops looking for work and starts doing drugs. Eventually he ends up back in jail. Mom was heartbroken, and the author of the story makes a very telling observation:
Lovers are hard enough to give up, but ideals are even harder.
Discernment
Many of us know exactly what she means. Many of us tried to nurture that “poor, unloved child” under the abusive shell—only to find out that under the shell there was nothing.
We were crushed. We were deceived and emotionally destroyed, and we were forced to admit that our view of the world was deeply flawed.
Yes, our experiences with sociopaths were devastating. But I don’t believe that once we’ve encountered these predators, we have to totally give up on our ideals. However, we do need to recognize that our ideals can’t encompass everyone.
There are people who have been dealt a bad hand in life, and with understanding and assistance, can turn their lives around. They are worthy of our efforts. The sociopaths, however, will continue to do what they do, no matter how we persevere in our attempts to help them, save them, reform them. Once sociopaths are adults, they are not going to change.
We are not all created equal. We don’t all deserve a chance. We may all be God’s children, but some people have forgotten, and don’t care.
We need to be able to discern which people have a heart and a conscience, and which people don’t. Then, we can lavish our time, love and idealism on those who can benefit from our efforts. The others, we leave behind.
Hi, Silver. Thanks for the Adrianne Rich poem this AM.
I’m sorry you’re having a tough time of it, right now. You will get through this, and you’ll be a better person for it.
kim frederick –
Unfortunately, many of our female ancestors endured horrendous marriages, believing it was their duty to stick-by-your man, society frowning on women who divorced – they were ostracized. I think about women in past generations who stayed with disordered husbands, the hell that they suffered because they had to stay due to the times they were living. It was usually the rare woman who got out, divorced, facing obstacles, her status in society being affected. Shoot, I remember in my childhood how it was frowned upon for women to work outside the home and if they divorced, they were some how inferior, lesser than. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago (the early 70’s). I feel for all good-hearted women who endured hell on earth, staying in unhealthy marriages because of what society dictated or their religion dictated.
Adrienne Rich is one of my favorites.
Well, you know, as I look at some of the stories here, it aint’ over yet.
I don’t see many of them that say life is GREAT because its EASY to get out and move on.
It just Ain’t easy being a girl and it doesn’t matter which way the cards are cut. it isn’t easy being green either.
Some part of that is a function of the times in which we live that are beyond out control.
I don’t know we are any more or less free now, but the requirement of strength and clarity is every bit important not mattering the century nor age.
I remember the 70’s. In my neighborhood, there was a rash of divorces all at once. Like everybody’s mom caught a bug or something. Suddenly all the familes were divided. As kids, we had NO clue WHAT hit us!
Pretty weird.
OxDrover- My God! It must be heartbreaking to be a mother with a sociopathic son! I can’t imagine. Especially, the natural instinct to love your child.
But about the article, I have heard many similar stories. Everytime it hits right in the heart to see people being decieved. Its sad to see my loved ones especially my little brother fall for my dad’s lies and manipulations. If only he knew what Dad did to him when he was younger. The man left my little brother at a stranger’s house one night! My little brother had no idea where he was! He was three years old! Oh my God! Not all people in prison want to change and you gotta really dig deep to their intentions.
Dear Silvermoon,
This is where I started:
’I think the hardest part is that along with trust, my sense of belonging is shattered. I end up with the reality of being alone that I sought to best in finding a partner and accepting the illusion.’ The ppath presented an illusion to me – showing me things I didn’t know I wanted; awaking things long in slumber; bringing into precise focus hungers and desires unattended for decades, maybe lifetimes; and played with old deep dynamics of sacrifice, abandonment and betrayal within me. Offered me both a way to nurture another (receiving the love of my unborn child), a way to sacrifice myself and the temptation of possible rescue from the life of oneness or twoness; teasing me with a tribe and a place to breath out the give considerable I have to offer. Offered to lift me from the pain of the mundane and drop me square, a romantic placement, in the possibility of magical.
But, twas only a lie. A big lie, made of tiny faceted glinting small lies, hundreds of them expanding and shining as the motar holding them in orbit crumbled ”.and slowly the centrifugal force of my desire and dreams imploded. I was left standing with my shattered self, knowing full on that I would never have what ’he’ offered me. that those magical things I wanted my whole life, had touched with others, but never fully realized, would never ever be.
It started with an offer – politeness, humour, a partnership in art and sex”and ended with me wailing aloud in the councilor’s office, that no one would ever care for me or ever take care of me, (never rescue me or meet me in those sacred places I really live. That life was in fact, forever and a day, hard and without magic, that all was unreal and without meaning).
What a hard place. It seemed to even be without despair. It was a sort of resignation on finding oneself on the wastelands. I was in deep shock and so sick. I crawled for the next four months. During that time I found out who the ppath really was. And energy shot from my head, and i felt liberated. This feeling was short lived, I was cloaked in the grim nightmare of what had happened, wrapped from face to foot, roped and trying to navigate – the distortion of my axis so acute that I had no idea where I was or where to head. I cannot string that time to this ”“ (joy de PTSD) ”“ somehow, I am here now.
The people in my life are not able to comfort me, to make space for my dark journey. They do not come to me and say, ’what can I do for you’, or ’what would help’; I could not tell my employer and so had to struggle daily to hide how devastated I was and how deeply it affected my work. These pains are so large ”“ because, truly, it is through community that we heal. To be seen and accepted and loved in, through, and out of darkness. That wisdom does not show itself readily. This is still a large struggle for me ”“ even to write about it makes me feel the ongoing and difficult impact of it. this too, in time, will become different and I will understand more.
I feel this is a time of coming to know myself. And learning the very difficult patience/action paradigm. I am an action girl. Except when cowed ”“ then I freeze. To wait (patience) triggers feeling like I am cowed. And this has made me roar. But I am possibly learning something. It’s just new and painful.
I don’t know how to go forward from here. But I didn’t know 1 month ago, or 7. And yet, here I am. (And utterly blown away that 7 months have passed since ’he faked died’.) If I made it this long, this far, then I can extrapolate that I can make it the next 7, no?
I keep expecting that it will all get worse ”“ the mess I am in, that is. And it may well. Many months I have stood on the ledge over the precipice (which for me is homelessness) and have somehow managed to rest back on my heels, month after month, after month. I fear and anger that if I go over the precipice the self admonishment will be extremely hurtful; and that the speed I am capable enough isn’t fast enough’ to pull back from the edge. But I have to stop this thinking. Completely. (oxy ”“ I think I need a boink now, please) And just be in the day that is. And know that I can trust myself, and that outcomes may be better than expected.
And dear Ingraine, the anger WILL come. I think it demands that we be willing to give ourselves over to it ”“ to fall apart a bit, so that it can roar out our mouths. The injustice others have faced with ppaths has touched me and opened me to the multitude of angers I feel. I have evaluated my relationships with my family, and have chosen nc with my father and sib, since the ppath. Yes, they really ’are everywhere.’ The world is different for me now.
The only words and concepts for what I have experienced and what the ppath is, are biblical. Evil is no longer across the world or on the other side of town. (I sit in a room not one mile from where paul bernardo is housed.) Once I let anger start to flow, I obsessed, raging, about ways to hurt the ppath. Months of not being able to even go for a walk without this consuming my thoughts. Then, through finding the ’perfect way’ fantasy, it began to fall away. In this fantasy I still see my own compassion, but the whole thing makes me question who I am, and I struggle to understand who I am in community of people a that doesn’t recognize my experience, or reflect it, or that can stand with me in the darkness. Except here.
There is so much to integrate ”“ there is evil, not everyone deserves ANY chance, not everyone has good in them; I fantasize about killing someone and I think deeply about whether I would actually let my hand go to her flesh; and what does this mean about me, do I accept this possibility within me, or do I work to uproot any idea of it. I want to find some true wisdom in how i integrate all of this. What I fantasize and think of is so at odds with who I have been, the societal prohibitions, the prohibitions of religion and conscience”..and yet it is somehow familiar ”“ I have a memory or sense of being a warrior ”“ both a steely one, and a hot headed one. (Or perhaps she is the mother, protective and enraged. There is a search for an archetype) But there is a sadness, as to live like this is to be outside society. I have lived outside society (sent out by homophobia and misogyny and actively working against them.) and I do not like it. But perhaps the warrior needs a life on the page, written as fiction.
One Step,
“The world is different for me now”…..You said. And I think this is really cutting it right to the core. A life altering experience changes us. In FACT it changes everything. The “world” itself really hasn’t changed. But our perception of it has. And so we can’t navigate through it, as we have in the past. It is a DIFFERENT place, now, for us.
Alot of it is about fear now. Trying to navigate in this world knowing how vulnerable we really are. The false beliefs are gone. And the false beliefs being gone, leaves alot of “empty” spaces in us.
I try and have faith that these voids in myself are being filled, as I tip toe in new and unfamiliar territory.
And learn more and more about myself, in these “new” shoes that I wear, as I tentatively put one foot in front of the other each day.
Integrating who we were, and who we are now is a process. A LONG process. Maybe a never ending process once it begins.
You are well on your way One, and I am right there with you. On that same path…Trying to not just survive it, but come to the other side of it, intact, and complete.
dear witty,
i have always known i was vulnerable – my expereince of life started showing me this from a very early age. what i wasn’t shown was how to really defend and protect myslef.
i get some wicked good modelling here.
i look forward to figuring out how to be in the world once i have some stability. i am having to do it regardless of the stability, but i am not really trusting my ability to make good significant choices. (like moving, jobs, etc.)
(oh lordthunderinjayzus, another cologne weilding ‘dud’ has sat down beside me. )
what i am doing is trying to be more authentic – more than before the spath – i was hiding trying to fit in. it takes a lot of effort. so i am just showing myself a bit more (in my job search). it is making some things easier. (like each resume rewrite). and maybe it will bring me something that is better suited to me.
all best,xx
one step
Witty:
“The false beliefs are gone. And the false beliefs being gone, leaves alot of “empty” spaces in us.”
Yes….so very true….
We must be certain we can fill these spaces with healthy thoughts and feelings and beliefs……
Howz YOU doing?
Dear One,
How about a hug instead ??? ((((((One)))))) But it IS time for you to get your head out of your “cranio-rectal inversion” and start using your BRAIN! ONE STEP AT A TIME, remember?
I know the computer problem is frustrating, my air card is crapping out off and on and knocking me off the internet. Probably going to have to get a new one and either pay for it, or sign up for another “contract” and get one “free” AND NOT SURE WHICH IS THE BEST IDEA and ultimately the cheapest.
Well, on top of it all I have reached “official old age” and am now taking medication for high blood pressure. My family genetic legacy has always been LOW (very good) blood pressure but has been slowly creeping up over last 6 months so started on the medication yesterday! Egg donor had to start taking BP medication at age 61 so I guess at 63, I’m doing a bit better at least. Especially when you consider the stress I’ve been under. Otherwise, my check up yesterday was ALL A-OK! But, it IS back more solidly on the DIET (4-letter word!)
Remember One-step, put one foot in front of the other and concentrate on YOU! ((((Hugs))))
oxy – omg have you just insulted me by saying i have to pull my head out and that i don’t think!!!! LOLOLOL
and thanx for the hug. 🙂
(that particular insult is one i levy against my, dad ALL the time…head so far up we haven’t seen his neck in a decade…)