Editor’s note: This artice was written by the Lovefraud reader who posts as “One/joy_step_at_a_time.”
I have been thinking a lot about Donna’s May 28 blog thread, If you feel an emotional void, the sociopath will step in, and the responses to it.
Tonight I took a long walk and sat down by the lake and thought about what the spath drew out in me. She showed me ”˜the gap.’ It’s humourous to me to type the phrase ”˜the gap.’ When I lived in Eastern Europe, I heard a phrase over the loud speakers at the train station, over and over again. I finally asked a friend the meaning of the phrase, and he told me it meant, ”˜mind the gap between the platform and the train.’
I haven’t minded the gap. I realize that the spath drew out two parts of my personality, and that these two parts of me, the three year old and my young adult self, can both look in on a part of me lost in the gap. I have often gone back and investigated ”˜the gap’ in my life. But, in the wake of the spath experience I see that it is still there, still in need of having light shone on it, and that I now have the opportunity to view it from two very different perspectives.
Damaged family life
There were brutal things that happened before this, but when I was eight, my mother had a horrific car accident, which put her in the hospital for a very long time, and damaged her body for life. It damaged our family life and left my sib and I to fend for ourselves as my father tried to maintain the family farm. We were terribly isolated in our small rural area. We had no family close by, and my parents wouldn’t allow us to go to live with our grandparents where we would have gotten the care and attention we needed.
The spath drew out these two strong parts of my personality — one part that existed before the gap, and one part that existed after the gap. During the gap my needs, first as a child, then as a teenager, were neglected. I did not have a role model for understanding feelings, nor a way to contextualize them. Life was like a dark dream — even when I was happy, there was so much pain.
When my mom finally came home from the hospital, broken and battered, she screamed in pain for hours on end. My poor little empathetic heart broke. I was not allowed to go to her, but would endure listening to her. I would not leave the house. I would stand under her bedroom and wait. I am not sure what I was waiting for — except the cessation of her pain. When she was finally able to get around, she was not a happy woman — she was riddled with pain and drugs. She was bad tempered and not able to cope with the life she was living. We should have left the farm at that point, so that she did not have to go back to work to support the damned thing — but my father is an n and she is supply, and he wanted to farm.
At the age of 13 I was asked to write an ”˜autobiography’ for one of my school classes. I had a wonderful teacher that year; someone who showed compassion and who really tried to reach me. I remember discussing my autobiography with her when she returned them to the class. I had written about my life to the age of 8 or 9, and then from 12 onwards. I had skipped the years in between as ”˜I didn’t remember’ them.
Abuse
I ‘woke up’ at 14, and immediately started to club myself to sleep with drugs. I was emotionally and sexually used by the young men in our area. I met the son of one of them last week, and it brought shame to the surface. I looked back on all the boys I knew from the age of 13 on, and there was a lot of usery. I didn’t know that these boys were using me and my friends. I didn’t know that my feelings were indicators that another’s behaviour was bad for me (how could I stay in my house if I KNEW that), and I was innocent. I had no idea what they were up to. Just as I didn’t know what the spath was up to — as I had never run into that before either, and no one protected me with knowledge. Innocence isn’t lost. It is torn from us. Pulled out our souls, leaving great rivers of raw wounded feelings.
My parents didn’t do much to help me understand life. They didn’t give me the emotional tools or the notion of boundaries that would help me to take care of myself and make my way in the world. They yelled at me, they ignored me, and they smacked me every now and then. Most of the significant events of my early life were met with an emotional frigidness that left me feeling shamed and alien. My mother was supply, and was set on my sib and I being supply, too. Dad was an n. I did my best to fit in, and when I couldn’t, I took drugs. Lots of them. I also participated in my own abuse at the hands of others — some who were too young and dysfunctional themselves to really be held accountable. And I learned to hurt myself in many ways: emotionally, mentally and with the choices (non-choices) I made.
The spath and the gap
It was great to move out of home and BREATHE. I started to feel the beauty in the world that existed outside the dark dream and repression in my family. But I carried on making ill-informed choices. And all of these hurts and abuses piled up. They lead me to the other strong part of my personality — the woman who wants to run, the woman who would fight fist-to-cuffs, the woman who cries like a warrior on the outside and who holds a river of pain on the inside. I didn’t truly meet her until I was duped by the spath.
The ”˜gap’ is the person who bridges these two strong parts of my personality. I don’t know what to do for this part of me, for this part of my past, but I need to shine some light in that frozen dark dream space. It seems to be thawing, yet again, as I look in from the eyes of the child and the eyes of the warrior. The spath once called me a ”˜magnificent creature’. It was a deep compliment to me. She saw both this warrior and this child. She called the warrior out. The fake boy (child) she made up needed to be cared for. I need to care for myself, but I learned early and repeatedly to care for others — even if all I could do was stand frozen in the face of their suffering. I wasn’t taught autonomy — I am lucky that it is natural to my character, but I still have to fight all of the time to develop it and retain it. The spath got me to care for the fake boy — instead of myself. But in the end I have learned that I want to take care of myself at the expense of taking care of others. My eyes have been opened to what my family members are, and what they would still take from me if I allowed them to. It has been a hard, harsh lesson.
parallelogram,
In Dr. Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning” he talks about how people respond to their own victimization in different ways. Some people sit down and turn their faces to the wall and literally die. Others become more compassionate, some also take their frustration and pain out on co-victims, or others who are innocent. Some strike out at the world at large just because they feel that because they have suffered, they are entitled to make others suffer.
“The same sun that hardens the clay, melts the wax.” In other words, the same conditions do different things to different people based on what they are inside.
You are right. We can choose how we respond to the pain we have been given in our lives. your dad may have experienced pain and abuse himself, b ut HE CAN CHOOSE HOW HE RESPONDS to that pain. He can abuse others in turn, or he can NOT abuse others. His choice. Even though he may feel remorse afterward and offer to buy you an ice cream cone, that isn’t the same as sitting down and talking about it, showing contrition and STOPPING doing it in the future….my egg donor, when I wanted to TALK about what she had done to me said “No, let’s just pretend it never happened and start over.” WTF? Pretend it never happened?
NO! I did that all my life. She would shaft me, hurt me, betray me, lie to me and I would PRETEND IT NEVER HAPPENED, but no more, I will NOT lay pretend any more.
BTW, I wish you would post more! Enjoy your posts!
parallogram,
I agree with Oxy, your posts are amazing.
If it must be that you post infrequently in order to have that amazing quality, then so be it. But if there is a way for you to give us more of what you are, then please, don’t keep it to yourself.
The pain we feel…there’s no way to talk about it, it seems sometimes. And then someone does, and it feels good to read it.
Recently, I read about Jesus’ words on persecution. He said, “Blessed are the persecuted for my sake, for they shall see the Kingdom of God.”
He tells us that we will be persecuted for being good.
Already, I know that I’ve lost the aethiests in this crowd. That’s too bad because what He said had nothing to do with Christianity. I’ve come to understand that spaths can read our faces. They look at our expressions and know when we are empathetic. They target us for that reason. Jesus knew that. That’s what he was saying. He understood Gray Rock.
Word, Oxy, word (and thank-you for the encouragement). I always believed this but felt I shld only be concerned about whether I behaved in accordance with it and forgave others who didn’t seem like they had it in them to rise above it. That wasn’t correct of me and not only because it’s presumptious. And the pretending is bogus. When you stopped pretending with your egg donor, how did she react?
I DID read “Man’s Search for Meaning” b/c you referenced it a lot, I read it a few times, although “read” doesn’t quite capture it. It’s a teeny tiny book that is worth its weight in gold, truly.
Paralleogram,
Yes, that tiny book was what turned my life around….gave me hope and helped me to get rid of the shame….what a wonderful man he was. Glad that you too enjoyed his book. It was sometimes a painful read, and I started to feel like “wow, Joyce, you have no reason to feel bad, this man suffered so much worse, but then, he talked about how pain is like a gas, filling its vessels completely. Each person’s pain is TOTALLY FILLING and that made me realize that my pain was REAL and I was OK for feeling it…and that because he “lost more” than I did it did not mean I had no right to feel my pain. That was an IMPORTANT turning point for me.
Yes, forgiving them is not the same as TRUSTING them again….and I don’t think that God expects us to trust someone who has not repented, who is not showing any signs of contrition. Forgiveness to me is getting the bitterness out of my heart for MY SAKE.
The teachings of the Bible are not just for the religious or even for the believers. I don’t “believe” in the Greek gods, but there is a lot of wisdom in the stories there if you look at them carefully. I don’t believe in the Hindu gods but there is a lot of wisdom in some of their teachings or in the Dali Lama’s religious leanings, but he has a LOT OF wisdom. There is even a lot of wisdom in the book “The Art of War”—where ever we find wisdom we should SUCK IT IN! DRINK IT UP! Inhale it!
How did my egg donor act? Pitiful of course. When I said “NO!@....... We need to talk” she said “Oh, (insert pitiful look here) no, I only want to think of uplifting things, not hurtful ones.” Make me PUKE! Sure she didn’t want to think of things that would show she had been hateful, mean, nasty, vengeful!~ No, she wanted to PRETEND IT NEVER HAPPENED.
I realized that I had lived that way my entire life. Pretending it never happened. Not talking about my feelings, my pain, my injuries she had inflicted. She would carry a grudge till hell itself froze over for someone else, but DARE YE NOT mention anything SHE had done.
I caught her with a lie, STILL in her mouth, ,she hadn’t even had time to swallow the lie when I caught her in it, and when she was called on it, she said “Don’t tell me you never lied to ME!” I said, “yep, you are right I have lied to you, back when I was 15 years old, that’s about 45 years ago!”
One of the things that had kept me “down” where she was concerned was that I was NOT PERFECT. No matter how good I was, I was NOT perfect. And anything less than perfect was not good enough to suit her. I finally realized that I didn’t have to BE perfect to be OK. DUH! Yep, I could be imperfect and still be OK, be good enough!
I read the story of King David in the old Testament. David was not a perfect man by a long shot, he killed a man, took the man’s wife and knocked her up, did a lot of stuff that was FAR from perfect. But yet this man was called “a man after God’s own heart” How can that be? Well,, the way I see it, because he was a man who when he was shown that he was in the wrong, NEVER said “oh, it is someone else’s fault” he immediately TOOK RESPONSIBILITY, showed contritiion, publicly showed he was wroong and sorry, and made it as good as he could, and tried to be better in the future.
David also had a psychopathic son, Absalom, and he enabled this young man….forgave him over and over, and even when the young man tried to kill him in a Civil war that cost the lives of 10s of thousands of people…grieved over the loss of that son. When his general came to him though and said, “Shame, David you grieve over this psychopath while your subjects have sacrificed their own sons to save your sorry butt (paraphrased! LOL) and you are in here crying over this psychopath! Get up and wash your face and say sorry!”
David did exactly that.
David’s life was told I believe to show us that we don’t have to be perfect either. St. Peter was also a far from perfect man. Lots of the people in the Bible stories were far from perfect. Yet, my egg donor told me I had to be perfect in order to avoid hell…she never told me about God’s love…and sure enough not HER LOVE for me. By the time I was 5-6-7 (somewhere in there) I was terrified of this big old man with a white beard sitting up there ready to zap me into helll if I had a single sin on my conscience when I died. I can actually remember wondering how if I died in an accident I might not have time to say “god forgive me” before I died, so I went around saying “God forgive me” continually in case I got hit by a bus! That’s pretty awful to scare a child that way I think.
I also got a different take on forgiveness from reading about Joseph and his brothers….he forgave them a long time before they showed up in Egypt…but he did NOT trust them until he had TESTED them pretty harshly. I had read that story “a million” times and never realized WHY he had tested them so harshly….not untijl that summer of 2007 when I read it with NEW EYES…not ones that were contaminated by the egg donor’s hell fire and damnation views. Funny thing, that she and her few like-thinking folks would have the ONLY keys to God’s mind…or the “eternal truth” OR the gates of Heaven. Gosh it is going to be lonely up there in Heaven I would think with no one there except her and Jesus and God and maybe some of the apostles…but not Paul (he killed Stephen) and not Peter because he denied Jesus 3 X, and not Noah because he got drunk, etc. LOL and not even Moses because he killed a man and tried to cover it up then skipped town when the king found out. LOL Yep, egg donor is gonna be really lonely in heaven…that is, IF SHE IS RIGHT, but I sincerely doubt that is the case. But that is what God has to decide not me. HE is her judge, just like He is mine, but I will believe more in love than hate, and forgiveness more than damnation of those who are doing the best they can.
Aw, THANKS Skylar!!
“The pain we feel”there’s no way to talk about it, it seems sometimes. And then someone does, and it feels good to read it. ” Exactly, just…exactly.
My parents are old fashioned Christians (Dutch Christian Reformed). The kind who won’t divorce or cheat or steal or spend money on Sunday b/c it’s a sin, but will behave badly in smaller but more insidious ways, maybe ruin the quality of their children’s lives, etc. I’m one of the only people in my family that is still Christian. Most of my siblings wanted no part of something that my parents preached but didn’t practice. I don’t blame God for their behaviour and misinterpretations, and I love hearing about all faiths and practices. (I’m researching Scientology right now – wow, the similiarities to sociopathy is…strange, unbelievable). I understood that verse to mean we wld be persecuted for our faith in Jesus (“for my sake”) – that because we love and follow him, others will hate us for it and mock us and treat us badly. Jesus understands Gray Rock, heh – and I agree. Turn the other cheek cld be Gray Rock, actually. Gray Rock = turn the other cheek = walk away. I thought a lot about how God wld want me to handle the situation (spath, family abuse) once I was made aware of it. Like, “God, I’m dying here, can you be a bit more clear on exactly what I shld or shld not be putting up with?” I did feel God was telling me that I wasn’t the only one who had to follow the rules and that He wouldn’t mind me speaking up about it and not take it just for the sake of taking it. He reminded me about that time Jesus shouted while overturning tables in the synagogue.
Parallelogram,
I don’t think Jesus was a pacifist! LOL He confronted hypocrites at every opportunity….He was kind, caring and compassionate to those who were in pain, or were abused, but He confronted those who were the abusers. The Pharisees and other hypocrites who did not DO as they preached. Who tried to make others live to a standard they did not themselves live up to. Psychopaths are that kind of hypocrites, and expect US to be perfect while they are far from perfect.
Challenging them in their false fronts of perfection is not a bad thing. I figure His example is what we should do. Yes, we will be persecuted I think if we live up to His example…and whistle blowers are always persecuted I think. Look what they did to Him!
In accepting my own imperfections, and realizing that while my egg donor might have required I be perfect to meet her expectations, I realize that God doesn’t expect me to BE perfect, just try to do better. Hey, I figure if it is okay with God that I don’t have to be perfect, then I’ll not worry about the egg donor’s expectations. LOL ROTFLMAO Forgiving myself for not being perfect was a big step for me.
Parallelogram,
I am also from a Dutch Christian Reformed family/community. I know exactly what you are talking about in that regard.
I’ve only posted here a few times, but I read almost daily, for strength.
Welcome cut and run…feel free to post and share as the spirit moves you…unfortunately the group you two mentioned isn’/t the only one that has hypocrites in it. Church pews are full of them, but I am determined to not let the hypocrites get between me and God, That means that they are closer to Him than I am then…LOL
Parallel and Oxy,
I do think that we express our ability to love on our faces as well as a myriad of other ways we aren’t aware of.
Something about us triggers their envy and they envy our goodness, so what are they seeing? I mean to say that even when we aren’t doing anything particularly loving, we have a contented look or a look of innocence.
When Jesus told us we would be persecuted, I think that is what he meant. He understood that spaths are envious and exactly what they are envious of.
Not sure how to work on my poker face!
Oxy, I’m going to borrow your biblical references in my letter to my parents. The Joseph story always resonated with me but David – of course! And your comment on Absolom is something I never caught before, thank-you.
What your mom said to you, her pathetic accusation that you lied as a teenager and this justified her demonizing, is outrageous – and from what I’ve learned on this blog, typical. Once we finally get some intel out of them, their reasons for their harsh judgements of us are so breathtakingly ridiculous. A few years ago my dad, in what was supposed to be a phonecall that would lure me back into the family, said I was negative to be around and always have been. I asked for an example. He said this: Once, when I was a teenager, he asked me if I wanted to go for a bike ride and I said no and acted like I was better than him. He also said I was a “snob” as a teenager. I was 32 when he said this. Ridiculous. I’m glad he said it, though, it was a blessing. That’s when I started putting him on notice and beginning to think that maybe I’d been had. The pity voice and reaction and appeal is the worst. That is why I went “no contact” with my fam. I fall for it, I can’t trust myself not to fall for it so I have to make sure they don’t get the chance.
“Get up and wash your face and say sorry” – yeah! But that you walked around as a little girl anxiously reciting “God forgive me” in case you died is pretty heart-crushing and inhumane.
cutandrun: Hi and high five, sister! Sooooo boring, right? The most boring denomination ever, Calvin this and Calvin that. I’ve been Baptist since I left home so I’m no radical, either. I do miss the songs from the Psalter Hymnal, though.
skylar: my spath wld often bring up that he had seen an elderly person who had a really kind face and how happy it made him and how he loved looking at it and he’d speculate that they were probably really kind and giving and wise. He brought it up often and in different ways, sometimes in the way a normal person would bring up something fascinating they saw once while on holiday, and other times in the way a normal person talks about the awesome thai food they had for lunch. But never in an appropriate way. Once he took a picture of such a person on the subway and showed it to me. It was creepy b/c I saw that he was getting something from this observation while at the same time it didn’t mean anything at all. He didn’t know these people and he didn’t care to, what he was interested in was how their faces made him feel – and as to what it made him “feel” exactly, I’m not sure. Something vaguely cannibalistic, I think, and probably something else effed up and abnormal I never want to know about, as per usual.
I wld love a poker face, too. I’m one of those people who blushes and flushes and all that other stuff. It’s a security breach issue. I’ve been doing deep breathing excercises. I second the call out for any tips on how to achieve this.