By Ox Drover
I’m sure we have all heard the old saying, “I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet.” This “old saying” is true, though I think it is made up to inspire some guilt in us for complaining about the small things we lack and make us aware that we are fortunate to have the many blessings that we do have, which many others are not fortunate enough to have.
Another one I remember is, “Eat your vegetables; there are children starving in China.” I always wondered why I couldn’t just send the hated vegetables there instead of eating them. It would solve two problems: I wouldn’t have to eat them, and the kids in China would be grateful for them. My son D has turned this phrase around to joke, “Drink your beer, there are sober children in China.”
All jokes and platitudes aside, however, the feeling of gratitude for what blessings we do have is, I think, an important concept for our healing. The encounters with sociopaths, sometimes for decades, have given us a feeling of destitution and emotional poverty. The thing that we prized and valued most—the love that we thought was shared between us and the sociopath—turned out to be an illusion. We have lost this vision of the relationship we thought was so important.
When my kids were very little, if one had a birthday, we would get the other one a “consolation present.” It was never as big as the birthday boy’s present, but it was a token to show that the non-birthday boy was not forgotten. One year when they were about four and three, we forgot to get the non-birthday boy something, and so my mother wrapped up a nice new shirt in a package, since the non-birthday boy did like clothes very much. When it came his turn to open his package he was all smiles, expecting some sort of toy I am sure. When he saw that his expectations were dashed and he had clothing, however, his little face fell. He had not gotten what he had expected. I was gratified, though, that he looked up, almost ready to cry I think, and said the most pitiful “thank you” that I have ever seen a child force from his lips.
Our expectations of our relationship many times turn out to be like my son’s expectations of what was in his package, very disappointing. Sometimes even devastation follows the exposure of the one-sidedness of the true relationship, with emotional, physical and/or financial abuse as well.
Walking down the street and seeing another couple holding hands, we may start to have a feeling that only we are alone, only we don’t have someone who wants to hold our hand. This feeling of “poverty,” of “not having” what others have, I think, fuels our feelings of worthlessness, abandonment and sadness, and the loneliness of wishing we had the relationship we thought we had. We feel deprived of what we deserve by someone else, or feel that maybe we don’t deserve more, or that we got what we deserved and if we had only worked harder, we might have managed to make it come true.
I think those feelings of deprivation, those feelings of poverty of spirit and soul, tend to drag us down further into the abyss of failure—a failure that keeps us from appreciating what we do have. A failure to appreciate just how important we are, and also a failure to appreciate that we have escaped the clutches of a bad relationship, even if that escape was painful.
The appreciation of ourselves, of our unique value and worth, is important to healing. To appreciate ourselves, I think we need to look at ourselves on this (U.S.) holiday of Thanksgiving and to enumerate and validate the many things about ourselves we do have to be thankful for. We need to count our blessings, and assess the many valuable characteristics that make us who we are.
Even if we have lost our “shoes” we still have our “feet” and while we may feel that we don’t have “as much as” someone else, we still have something that cannot be taken away from us, and that is the unique spirit that is ours and ours alone. The unique spirit that can be grateful and give thanks to the universe for new opportunities to expand that spirit in new ways we’ve never before explored.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Isabelle:
You set a boundary. Others do not have to like them……thats why YOU CALL IT YOUR boundary!
Not theirs.
IT sounds as if your sister is not used to having to live amongst boundaries……of others……
BUMMER….
You need to do what you need to do to be healthy and happy…..
RIGHT NOW…..its’ all about YOU!!!
She can yell or scream, judge or throw god around…….but your doing the right thing….don’t respond…..
It’s NOT personal! She’s pissed your in control of YOUR life!
Keep your umbrella down in the rain girl…..sounds like she’s sending lightning bolts your way!!!
🙂
Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone. I am so happy everyone got through it. Now comes Christmas…Ugh. Well, I had a nice meal at my parents and one of my sisters, my niece, her 2 kids too. Uneventful, but that’s good!
LIG: Stay strong. Last year we didn’t hook-up in NYC for Christmas, but maybe this year we should. You just let me know. At least you are busy and working toward getting your masters. That is awesome!!
Hey Superstar! I wish I had a job so I could have afforded an airline ticket to have Thanksgiving with you. Like I said, when I’m working again, who knows? I just might show up next year! LOL!!
Matt: You’re doing so well! I’m out of work and it’s driving me crazy. I am applying everywhere and in between I volunteer for our county. I raked leaves last Saturday for an elderly woman and this week may tutor some kids after school.
Hi Style! About the internet dating thing…it’s a crapshoot. I went online and started dating again last year and none of the dates I had were bad ones. Nothing like the guy you were chatting with. You have to be careful. If someone tells you they are sick and start asking you about STD or HIV tests, red flags are flying. He’s looking for sex right away. Yikes! Don’t worry about the age thing. There are many younger guys who could care less.
I kicked my ex-S out in May 2008. I am still having residuals in the trust area. I met someone from a dating site 1/09. Things were fabulous. Then I started doubting. Started analyzing, started panicing that perhaps he was unreal and I got clingy and needy when I lost my job in July. He felt suffocated and we broke up Sept. But, now, we are starting to get back together and I had to explain from my heart that I have some issues and am working through them. We are taking one day at a time. We have a date Sunday and Thursday and he already told me he bought me a Christmas present…so, I am hopeful. I just wish we had been together Thanksgiving. Oh well.
Lost in Grief – sorry sorry sorry for all you are going through. It is so unfair and no you didn’t deserve any of it. That is what is so hard to understand and accept in all of this – we give everything … they take everything and then move on with no real consequences to themselves. You’re amazing to be almost done with your Masters while going through all this crap – testament to the woman you are and please believe that things will get better once you have that bit of paper and have lots more work options.
I have put on weight as well – comfort eating is such a trap! I think maybe we need a thread called the LF Weight loss challenge 🙂 It is minor though – weight can be gradually lost. You survived that war – you are alive and your mind is intact – you didn’t go mad (yes you have all kinds of horrible symptoms, but if you were stuck in a psych ward you wouldn’t have a lot of power or capability to change your life as you are). You have your heart still – yes you will be choosy about who you share it with next time, but from reading your posts to me and others – you have an amazing capacity for love and caring – he didn’t destroy that.
I know these things are of little consolation at times like this. Please don’t feel as I did – inadequate … that was THEIR BRAINWASHING!!! It isn’t true! I was able to socialise and talk with strangers as though the whole attack on my soul hadn’t happened. He made out I couldn’t handle the world or was somehow unfit to be seen – I don’t know if it was his words or behaviours that did that but the message was loud and clear. THEY WERE WRONG – you are fine and as soon as you strap on some pants that fit (I had to try several pairs to find some that didn’t leave me with flesh wounds from the waist band lol), a bit of lippy and get out there into the world you will find as I did they were LYING BASTARDS. There is nothing wrong with us that other people will notice … and hell if they DO notice, I will just tell them – if I am a bit shy it’s because I just got out of a relationship with an asshole 🙂
As to the hair issue – just a suggestion, but buy a home dye a shade darker than the darkest and do an all over job. It doesn’t cost a bucket and you’ll feel heaps better once it’s all one colour. And when you have a tiny bit of money – go and get yourself a nice cut – you deserve it and it will give you a visible boost for a few weeks – yeah it’s shallow, but it works 🙂
For touchups of roots either find a training college that does it cheap for student practice or swap with another ‘going grey’ friend – a colleague at work and I do each other. Mine started going grey at 21 and she’s 51 so we just sort each other out every six weeks or so. Salons are just too expensive but trying to do it yourself is a nightmare! You can get the proper brushes for a dollar from a drugstore. I would come over and do it for you if I lived close by – my colleague and I usually have a good gossip and coffee while we’re both ‘caped’ up with huge black rubbish bags with our grottiest towels wrapped around our necks !
The ex S has left everything in the house – that’s a pity ploy to make himself look like the good guy and also a mammoth dodge of any responsibility. I have a whole house full of junk to dispose of so I can move on out of here. I can’t really afford to live in the house by myself at the moment but I can’t face bringing a stranger into the midst of my emotional climate at present – I am still sorting through things and very much up and down – just like you LIG. I SHOULD be working on my Masters but have neither the energy nor the inclination. So many things feel like too much effort at the moment and for the first time in my life I am considering what I want to do rather than him or family members. It’s scary and uncharted territory for me.
Has anyone here looked into the work of Alice Miller? I have been reading through her site quite a bit today and what she says seems to make a lot of sense although in the past I haven’t advocated strongly against the odd light smack for guidance and correction. I am thinking now to go back through my own childhood to shine a light on the emotional abuse that happened way back then. I accept that my mother had her own problems (poor upbringing herself by a potentially borderline mother, raising me alone with no support and struggling with depression that she never sought help for) but that doesn’t cancel out the pain and fear I frequently experienced through childhood.
I believe these are the seeds that grew into a woman who accepted an emotionally abusing relationship as NORMAL. I have to go back even though I really don’t want to – I thought acknowledging it and ‘forgiving’ was enough, but I never got really angry about it. The site kind of freaked me out because people were posting letters cutting off relationships with their parents who abused them in some way leading to profound effects in adulthood. needless to say parents when confronted commit the behaviours we know so well – denial, minimisation, changing history, distortion, distraction, blaming, accusing us of creating drama or exaggerating, bringing up an irrelevant past.
I am lonely too. I am scared to make friends and feel very unanchored in the world. My co-workers look at me with pity when I describe weekend events or celebrations! I have lost the status I had as a wife and even though I acknowledge it had to happen it still sucks – I did everything possible to contribute to it working – I just hadn’t banked on a personality disorder erupting out of nowhere and knocking me on my ass.
LIG I can well relate – I feel damned angry and stupid and fed up at the waste. I look at all the items around the house and each represents a day when I went out and looked for something and raked through sale items trying to find the best quality for the cheapest price. I would bring home each item hoping somehow that if I built enough of a ‘home’ then everything would come right. Every object is imbued with hope and disappointment at his indifference towards my efforts – they all tell a story and while I can’t bear to look at them, I equally can’t afford to replace them and they are the least of my bitter feelings.
I should be settled in a warm and long relationship with someone who knows me implicitly and a comfort built up between the two of us. I should have a couple of small children and be focussed on living LIFE. Instead I live in my mind and am hyper aware of the passing of time, the decay that happens all around me and the urge of all things towards death. That is unfair to have your worldview changed so radically.
I have no support person here. My mother thinks I should be over it all as soon as he is gone. It is so unrealistic I just don’t know what to say. ‘Oh well it’s all done now so you won’t need to be reading anymore of this stuff or looking it up anymore – just let it go and move on with life.’ She doesn’t seem to understand t his is not something you just spring back from and that in order to move on with life I have to go through a grieving and healing process. She has been divorced herself but not with someone like this – she has no concept of what it is.
My friend I went out with had a socio boss a few yrs ago. He didn’t know the name of the disorder, but the experience so damaged him he quit his job, moved in with his parents and for a year cleaned their house and cooked for them in exchange for free room and board – he wasn’t fit to do anything for a yr – and that was just with a boss. (I don’t mean JUST, but the experience with a romantic partner is betrayal on a totally different scale I think).
LIG I hope you’re feeling more upbeat today. Better a simple meal alone that nourishes and sustains than a twelve course feast with a toxic person that wishes us harm. Things will look so much brighter once your studies are over and you are a Master 🙂 Hugs to you – it’s not easy
IWonder – sending good wishes your way that you get something just right for you – sounds like you have many talents 🙂
Stargazer – I sometimes tell fibs too! “Oh I just had a couple of old friends over.” Outsiders don’t know the ‘friends’ have fur and claws lol
polly: thanks so much. you have me LMAO. and i think we have the same mother!
can’t write much now. i have to get to the thrift shop (in the midst of black saturday) and find some mumus! (what the heck is a lippy?)
will write more later, but please know that i feel so less alone after reading your post. thank you for the helpful dye-ing tips. i’m going to get a darker color. my gray is all in the front at my hairline so i look like i have a halo around my face of ‘medium golden brown.’ pretty sure i can fix that with ‘darkest golden brown!’
what a hoot.
yea, i’m fat and old and maybe even undesirable … but lord, i’m here! (nods to celie in ‘the color purple’).
much love to all.
p.s. are you in a major city on the east coast?
i sit hear reading all the things you guys say and I can certainly relate to many of them. I unfortunately, am still in the process of getting a divorce… almost a year and over 20,000 to try to save what little I had… Can anyone describe why a s derives such pleasure from the court system? How they feel no need to comply with court mandates and wonder when will he no longer want to destroy me and just want to move on.
Dear Maverickwest,
Order Legal Abuse Syndrome book from LF bookstore, it explains it all! There is some good advice in there for dealing with it too. ((((good luck and hugs)))))
maverickwest, They love the legal system because they can manipulate it. BUT, in the end, while you may lose some, you will get YOU back and for me, that was all that mattered. I recommend the book Ox suggested. I found in my case, it was a form of revenge on me, drawing out the process just because he knew I wanted it done so much. There is one other thing that I did that helped a lot. I documented and documented. It is time consuming, but it saved my butt in the end.
I, too, don’t understand how they can ignore court mandates, restraining orders, anything the court puts out there. There is something in my ex P. that truly beleives somehow he is above the laws. They were written for others, but not for him. I had a restraining order on mine. He broke it 3 times and each time, I called the police. When we finally went to court, he was in more trouble for breaking the restraining order than for the original charges! And then he turned around and blamed me for putting the order on in the first place. I was mean, cunning and manipulative, not to mention selfish and a few more dozen deragatory names. Whatever. I had my peace of mind. He is one who finally DID pay for ignoring the laws.
Hang on and trust in yourself. It will all work out and it will all be worth it.
Hugs, Cat
A OX DROVER
“wack jobs of EVIL” very nice. thank-you.
when I found out who the spath was, I realized that she has been doing this shit FOR DECADES. that took away some of the embarassment.
I felt stupid a few times whilst in it – like, ‘why am I putting up wit this shit’? But I know why and I know why I didn’t continue putting up with it.
I had an abusive bf once when i was very young. I know how stigmatized i was by that. I never question why people stay in abusive relationships, I understand that there is a process of control that digs deep into us.
I started reading about con artists a few weeks ago and looked at the steps used to real us in, and started to understand the process she used. I have also looked at the ‘ppath next door’. what was most important to me in that book was to see that SYMPATHY was THE big tool they use. Another thing that was important to me, was a freind telling me that she had heard a radio interview about spaths and the shrink interviewed, who worked with spaths every day, said how he knew which patient was an spath: that of all the people he met during the day on his rounds, who asked him for money, the spath was the one he would have given it to. Point taken.
They are good at what they do. It is THEIR game. I sometimes marvel at the audacity of this woman and SMILE, and then I remember that she has FUCKED WITH ME. But it is WHAT SHES DOES. It probably is her nature as much as it is mine to care for people.
I feel quite influenced by her game. I am angry at being targeted in any small way by anyone right now. This has made me look at some other situations that, that I certainly didn’t see them as benign, as being wrought by people with a tiny bit of spath in them also. And I don’t want to play by the rules any more. the nice girl, the good citizen who follows the rules. I’d really like to have some tools to fight. And in some of the situations there are no legal recourses and I am just fucked – in others, the legal reocourses will be long and an emotional burden and there will be great losess. I want to not feel this so much. I want to be able to not play by the rules, and use the legal system and say, fuck you to these people. But I don’t. I feel the cost to me of every bit of fight. I have ‘walked away’ and ‘let go’ and ‘accepted’ much i my life. I am a recovering 12 stepper (as in, recovering from 12 step programs), I have meditated for years…yadda yaddda. people are still shit and all these tools haven’t left me feeling at peace at this time. and THIS is bitterness and this is why I feel so ‘lost and fearful’.
these are big rants. I am trying to give myself permission to just go for it. I need to see what I am harbouring. it is hard to do this. want to make it nice and considered and blah blah blah. but i need to risk being the nut job here.
Maybe I need to post my hearing results here.
At first I felt like they were punishing me!!!…
The gist of it is that the court postponed your motion that we brought for now and ordered that we try to settle the case if possible (since the court knows you were close to settling at one point and the court hates dealing with domestic issues).
In the meantime, the Judge will sign a temporary order that says that at your exchanges, the party who is dropping off will go to the others car with your son. The person picking up will stay in the car and not say anything. Neither of you are to speak. If EITHER of you do, a protective order can be sought for violating the court order.
Exchanges will stay at the Stewarts. The law guardian and the court didn’t want it at police station due to there not being one convenient station for both of you that was in a safe neighborhood . I argued adamantly that it should be at police station but was overruled.
Instead of talking to each other at exchanges, you are to keep one journal that you give to each other each time you exchange Noah. It will include any pertinent info (what he may have ate, his health, doctors appointments, etc.). The order will also indicate that there shall be no contact between you unless it pertains to your son’s health, child care or exchanges. Last, the law guardian and the court want the two of you to attend parenting classes which I will send you the info later. This encourages positive communication.
Dear ONE step,
Nah, sweetie, you are NOT THE NUT JOB here, we ALL are! LOL We have ALL been diagnosed as ‘the crazy one” by our Ps and their dupes. that’s just part of the territory when you start trying to recover.
As for being “stoopid” well let me tell you dear, you are among a bunch of VERY SMART STOOPID people–we’ve all been conned, all felt stoopid, and mad, and sad, and had pity parties for ourselves and wanted to strike out and wanted to do them in, get justice and every emotion you can imagine!
But you know what, in the end, we are the CARING people, the people who are ABLE to care, to love and that very wonderful thing about us (along with a bit too much trust in others because we ourselves ARE TRUSTWORTHY) have been conned, scammed, and abused for X period of time and it HURTS. BUT, the bottom line is we are still good people, did not deserve this, and WE WILL come out the other side, and they will ALWAYS be evil!
So you are in excellent company here…a bunch of smart people who are sometimes gullible, but we are learning, we are growing, and our lives on the whole are a bunch better than theirs! Hang in there One_step, cause that is what it is, one step at a time! (((hugs))))