By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired)
I often go to auctions and flea markets looking for “hidden treasures” to add to my collection of pottery and handmade baskets of split oak. One of the things I have learned to do is to look for subtle or hidden flaws in the things that I like to collect.
It isn’t uncommon to find pottery items that have been chipped or broken and then carefully mended. Sometimes the cracks are very subtle and difficult to detect. It isn’t unusual for me to see an item and get all “excited” about it, then upon closer inspection, find that there are some hidden cracks.
I got to thinking about the “hidden cracks” that are found in dysfunctional families as well. In my own, for example, we as a group tried to keep our “cracks” hidden from the community. As a teenager I frequently had something I wanted to do nixed by the adults with the phrase, “what would the neighbors think if they knew you did X, Y or Z?” It didn’t seem so much to be the actual act of doing something, but more about what the neighbors might think. Usually the thing I wanted to do that was denied was going to a school dance.
As I was growing up, I never thought of my own family as “abusive” or “dysfunctional,” though I did see other families with problems, such as alcoholism, infidelity or wife beating. My family would gossip about these people derisively, and I thought that our family was “better than” these other families because we didn’t engage in such antisocial behavior. (Little did I know!)
My uncle, the alcoholic wife beater
However, my mother’s brother (who I believe was a psychopath) was an alcoholic and a wife beater, but these facts were kept hidden from me and from the community at large until I was an adult. At that time, my uncle and his wife had (gasp!) gotten a divorce and he moved from out of state, where he and his wife had lived for many years, to our small farming community and built a house on part of my grandparents’ lands. (The part intended for him to inherit after my grandparents died.)
Of course, with him living in the community and being a “public drunk,” it was now no longer possible for my grandparents to hide either his alcoholism or his beating of his frequently changing girlfriends, who would run to the neighbors with black eyes, seeking immediate shelter. The cat was out of the bag and the community knew about my uncle’s antics. Even with this exposure in the community, my grandparents and my mother tried to keep up the façade, and seldom talked about what was going on with my uncle.
On the infrequent occasions when he would show up at our little local church and sit through a sermon, the hope was that he was finally getting sober. When he would go to rehab at the VA and spend a few days or weeks, the hope was again rekindled that this time he would change. Of course he never did.
My son, the murderer
When my son Patrick was arrested in Texas for murdering Jessica Witt in 1992, I, too, tried to keep up the facade of “being a nice normal family,” and kept the facts secret from all but my closest friends. If one of my extended family of cousins, or someone from the community, asked about my kids and where they were and what they were doing, I said that Patrick “lived in Texas and worked for the State of Texas.” This actually was “true,” as he was required by the Texas prison system to have a “job” inside prison. It wasn’t a “lie” I told myself, just not “the whole truth.”
Of course it was deception; it was hiding the crack in my “pottery” and trying to pass it off as “whole.” I felt shame that my son was a criminal. Somehow him being a criminal, a psychopath, reflected on me, and on my family. We weren’t really a “nice normal family,” but as long as I could keep the truth, the whole truth, from the community, then I didn’t have to feel the public shame of my son, my beloved son, being a common criminal, a monster. We could pretend to be a “nice normal family.”
Afraid to admit
When I first started writing articles here on LoveFraud, I posted them under my screen name of “Ox Drover,” because I still wasn’t ready to come out of the “closet” and admit publicly that my family was not “whole” and “normal.” Not ready to admit that I, as a mental health care professional, had failed so miserably in my own life.
As I healed, though, I came to realize that the shame is not mine, and should not be mine. I have done nothing “wrong.” I am not the one who killed Jessica, and I am not the one who should feel shame for Patrick having done so. Patrick is the one who should feel shame, though I know that he is actually proud of how violent his crime was.
I still don’t walk down the street with a sign of my back proclaiming “my son is a criminal,” but I no longer pretend that he isn’t, and if it is appropriate, I tell someone the whole truth, rather than cover it up.
Speaking in open court
Like many communities, especially small ones, the gossip flows hot and heavy. I have no doubt that people “talk about” the things that happened to our family back when the Trojan Horse psychopath, that my son sent to kill me, was arrested and caught having an affair with my other son’s wife. Both he and she went to jail/prison for trying to kill her husband and stealing money from my mother.
The day that I stood in front of the judge at the bail hearing for my daughter-in-law and the Trojan horse psychopath, and told in open court, in front of people I knew, what had happened, that they had been caught trying to kill my son, stolen money from my mother, and had taken “dirty pictures” in my mother’s home, I was so nervous I literally couldn’t see further than the ends of my eye lashes. My heart must have been beating 500 beats per minute as I stood there, baring for the entire community, the shame of our family falling apart.
It shouldn’t have been my shame, though. The people who did the bad acts should have owned it, but they didn’t. In fact, when the judge spoke to my daughter-in-law about her ties to the community (before he set bail), he asked her who she had in the community and she actually said, “Well, my husband’s family.” I almost choked that she would say such a thing after trying to kill her husband. The judge set her bail at $150,000. The district attorney said that without my “speech” to the judge, the bail would probably have been $2,500 or less.
The dysfunctional cracks in our family became totally public in that courtroom, and then again, a year later, when I had to testify at my son’s divorce hearing. I never did figure out why my daughter-in-law even showed up for the divorce hearing, along with the “support person” from the domestic violence shelter, where the court had released her when they let her out of jail, because she was homeless and had no other place to go. I found out later she had told the people at the shelter how she had been “abused” by her husband and his terrible family, especially me, the “mother-in-law from hell.” I never did understand why the support person with her from the shelter couldn’t figure out that my daughter-in-law was the one on probation, not her family.
Focusing on myself
Time has passed now, and I have started to focus on myself, my own enabling, my own cracks, and how I have patched them. The whole thing started out by focusing on “them” and how to cope with “them,” but now I am focusing on myself, focusing on the things I need to do to heal myself.
While a pottery vessel that is cracked can never be made “whole” again, it can still be functional and beautiful. I even sometimes now buy a piece of pottery I like, or a basket that has been mended, or one that needs mending, because I realize that being marred by chip or two doesn’t distract from either the beauty or usefulness of an item. Just as the “mended cracks” in my spirit and in my life I think don’t detract from either my own beauty or usefulness.
I also realize that the patina of wear and use in an antique item doesn’t make it less valuable than an identical item that is “new,” instead, they add to the value. We may not be a “nice, normal family” like my grandparents and my mother pretended we were, but there are some fantastic individuals in it, and those that are not “fantastic individuals” aren’t going to slime the rest of us with their shame. I’ll hold my head up both in my home and in my community, and if others gossip about us, that’s okay. If they are talking about me, they are leaving some other poor soul alone!
If you look closely you may see my Mended Cracks, but I’m no longer ashamed of them.
God bless.
I can totally understand how someone like me, with lifelong trust and self-esteem issues, can fall for a spath. With a normal, loving, caring guy, I would never feel worthy. I’d feel anxious and as though I wasn’t good enough. Along comes a handsome and nice guy (the spath) telling me that not only am I worthy of him, but that NO MATTER WHAT MY FLAWS ARE, he is going to marry me and love me for the rest of my life. I feel that FINALLY I can let my guard down and experience love. I don’t have to worry that I’m not good enough. I know I won’t scare this guy away. Then, when it all turns out to be a lie, I can say, “See? I really WASN’T good enough after all!”
Now that I like a guy who is not a spath, those self-esteem issues have resurfaced that I never healed before. And I know that since he’s a normal guy, I certainly CAN push him away with them. It’s scary, and in a way, it’s like my catch 22 in relationships. Part of me just wants to run before I can scare him off. I have even considered just dropping out of the salsa class and stopping going to the clubs. But I really want to do it differently this time! I am very conscious of the process, so I’m confronting the self-esteem issues. I am not going to push anything with this guy until I feel I’m ready for it. I don’t want to sabotage it because I think he can be really wonderful for me. Of course, there is always the chance that he has already recognized me too as the woman he really wants, and that he is a big enough and loving enough man to accept me with all my flaws and insecurities. He looks into my eyes with such love when we’re dancing – surely he must see my fear and hurt?
We’ll see – I will just take it very slow. I will see him tonight at the salsa club and dance with him again. I’m very excited but also very scared.
Starz. I relate. I was always interested in the bad guys, the mysterious one’s. If a nice decent guy showed interest I ran like hell, because I didnt feel worthy, I was always afraid if he really knew how much baggage I had he would bolt. So I guess that is why I attract how I feel about myself. I am glad I am finally at the point I dont want anybody, good or bad. I just dont have the energy for it, beside’s nobody want’s an old geezer like me, unless it’s another old geezer..or a sociopath.
Hens, you are closed off to real love because you are completely identified with how you feel about yourself. Can you see that as a place where you are stuck, where you can get unstuck? You are one of the people here who has told me over and over again how superficial it is to chase after good looking people. And you are right. I do believe that if I feel beautiful, even at my age, a beautiful man will also find me beautiful. Why is this not true for you too? A gay man is still a man and he is still human, capable of seeing into someone’s heart. Don’t you think? Are gay relationships ALL that superficial? I know gay couples who are very devoted to each other and are in their 50’s and 60’s. And none of them are that much to look at, if we’re just going by looks.
The self-esteem issues are very hard for me to clear, because I’ve had them ever since I can remember. I am now experiencing it as an energy – a tension – that sits in my solar plexus and heart. If I can feel it, I know I can release it. So far, it’s only been in bits and pieces. I want to release this so I don’t have to run away from love.
I kind of want to recluse until the process is over. But I don’t want to run away from the man I like. he will be at the club tonight, and he emailed me saying he hopes to see me there. We meet there every Sunday and dance until we both are teary-eyed with happiness. He is a truly good and decent man – not flashy, not classically gorgeous, just a real man who seems not to be afraid of a real woman. The connection is more spiritual and emotional, though it is also sensual because of the dancing. I usually am not attracted to men like him because I have gone for the alpha males and pretty boys. I am drawn to this one because of his qualities and not his looks. But to me, he is beautiful. And I am all anxious now that he will reject me because of how screwed up I am. I feel unattractive and unworthy. I REALLY want to change this before I scare him away. This is the catch 22 for me. I don’t want to run away. But I’m afraid if I just be around him the way I am I will scare him off. How can I maintain the connection in spite of all my fear and anxiety? I will just continue to work with these issues and try to release them. I am receiving bodywork, which helps, and meditating a lot, which helps in bits and pieces.
I guess the bottom line is that lately, once I decide I “like” a man is when I scare him away. I’m afraid to like this guy so much. I feel like I should pull back and continue to think about other men, but that goes against my hopeless romanticism that kicks in when I like someone. I don’t know how to slow it down. And that’s dangerous for me.
I find the discussion about the pitcher imagery very interesting. I have been playing with and using a particular deck of tarot cards for many, many years. It is called Motherpeace and one of the interesting and beautiful things about these cards is that they are round rather than rectangular. Anyway, the imagery in BreckGirl’s dream reminded me of the image of the 7 of cups which can be seen in this link:
http://jeanbakula.hubpages.com/hub/The-Motherpeace-Round-Tarot-Deck-Suit-of-Cups
You have to scroll down to the image and I didn’t read the text very closely so I don’t know if I necessarily agree with the author’s interpretations. These cards are designed to speak to our intuitive parts of our minds anyway.
Skylar’s story about her sister reminded me of some of the stupid things my ex-spath did. He was interviewing for jobs, frequently out of state and the prospective employers would reimburse him for expenses. He is an alcoholic spath so he drinks heavily every day. He would buy drinks, at the airport or with his dinner and he invariably submitted bills for these expenses. Then he would be pissed when the company would cut these kinds of items from the reimbursement. I think several times he actually went as far as calling/emailing to complain to the administrative person in HR handling this. He seemed completely unable to understand that this would lead to a bad impression of him in so many ways and it was better to drop it (or never ask to be paid back for the numerous drinks at the airport bar!!). On one interview, he was asked to stick around while his references were called. The prospective employer came back and told him that one reference had said (basically) that he was a mess at the end of the job due to his divorce. I was not surprised but he was when he didn’t get an offer, he was convinced he would be taking a job with that employer. When I asked if he was planning to talk with his reference to try to correct the problem and think about changing to someone who wouldn’t ding him, he shrugged me off.
Anyway, thinking about this lead me to a different story too. This morning, my mother mentioned that she had attended a historical society meeting in her small town where I grew up. She said our former neighbor was there, trying to get into some position within the society. She was friendly to my mother but my mother (a fairly benign N) is a grudge holder and doesn’t forget when she first met this woman. When our family moved to the town, this neighbor told my mother she would always be considered an outsider and would never be accepted. Now she is seeking to be accepted in a group where my mother is already established so she gets some enjoyment from the tables being turned.
Then we talked a little about the children who were the same ages roughly as my older brothers and me. It was clear even when we were children that theirs was an unhappy home for many reasons. The father was a state police officer and also high-ranked in the National Guard. He took advantage of this position and used Guard equipment to do a major landscape job in their yard. The family did something that angered another neighbor and she called and reported him to the authorities for his illegal use of this government equipment. When my family returned from a vacation, we were met by some investigators looking into this matter. As my mother recalled today, before either she or my father could think of what to answer, my brothers jumped in and offered to explain everything. My brothers were about 14 and 12 and I remember my oldest brother especially walked over to the neighbor’s yard with the investigators and showed them everything. The whole family was always mean to all of us so they were glad, I guess, to get some vindication. The father was pretty sternly sanctioned as I recall, I think he lost his National Guard position at least.
Now both those parents seem so toxic and although the kids were already ruined by the time I knew them, I feel sad for what they must have gone through. The youngest girl had a weight problem. I remember hearing her being scolded loudly in their yard for taking a half gallon of ice cream into the woods and eating it all. I think she was around 10. Even as a slightly older girl, I knew there was something more deeply wrong there.
Edited to add that I just looked the text accompanying the image of the 7 of cups and I disagree with the interpretation that the woman in the image is doing a magic trick. I have interpretative books written by the authors of the cards (who painted them while in meditative trances after years of studying tarot). The main text says she is carrying a net, maybe for winnowing out what she will keep from what she will discard. The card is about making choices.
Well, all I can do is share my experience. Many times, when I’ve shared my experience, in the past, I’ve been met with resistance. I understand the resistance because that is in my experience, too. But, even as we are talking about the lovely pitcher, the one with the crack in it, it is also my experience that at some point I have to stop pouring myself into something that can’t absorb, or hold what I offer.
It isn’t so much how we behave, or what we do, it’s who we are, inside.
How much energy are we putting into something…is there balance? How big are our expectations and desires? How big are our fears? What are we telling ourselves about our fears?
Intensity or intimacy? Not the same thing at all. Itensity is addictive, and scarey. It breeds arousal, and thrives on danger.
Intimacy comes slowly and without all the drama and passion…it doesn’t leave you giddy with happiness…it isn’t an intravanious tube dripping a fix that gets you high.
Intimacy is scary, though, in a different way that intensity…and a lot of us choose intensity over intimacy, because intimacy is even scarier for us.
Intimace involves trust…people like us don’t trust easily, or we trust too much, too easily. Intimacy is a problem…we want it, we fear it…but instant attraction, now that we can handle.
Star, I don’t think there is a better place for a narcissistic Don Juan to seduce a woman, than in a classical ball-room.
The sexiness of salsa…all that testosterone, and the oxytocin flying around on gossimer wings. Please be careful.
I think you are very vulnerable to this sort of thing.
And lastly, I think that you are giving it way to much energy….if you were already healed and healthy and whole, you wouldn’t give it so much power.
I know you won’t like this. I’ve been holding my toungue from the beggining. Couldn’t do it anymore.
Please accept it as coming from the spirit of recovery.
Nice Tarot deck, Sparklehorse.
I read the Tarot, too. I have used The Rider-Waite deck for years and am kind of stuck there, because I am familiar with the imagry and interpretations….learning a new deck would be like starting at square one.
I was visiting, “Tarotsmith” yesterday, and tried a new spread and a new deck…I was really impressed…I can’t remember the name of either, but, I’ll look it up for you.
Nice reading you. It’s been a while.
It was the Bifrost Tarot and the Golden Dawn method.
Sparklehorse,
I mostly use the Crowley-Toth deck. Don’t like Crowley as a man, but the woman who painted it had more say and freedom over the paintings than people sometimes think, and so it is also her deck.
The 7 of cups is called ‘debauch’ in the deck, and totally shows how the water is poured endlessly in the illusions of a spath. A sad waste!
http://www.corax.com/tarot/cards/index.html?cups-7
The ace though is pure unconditional love and light (click on the meny at the bottom to see them), 2 and 3 and 4 all show this sharing of light at a different level.
Whereas the 8 of cups is extremely dark and the card of denial. If seven is wasting the lovelight on an illusion, in the eight you already know it’s not a cup 2 situation, you already know it was an illusion like 7, and logic demands you quit pouring, and yet you are bonded and cannot give up yet.
http://www.corax.com/tarot/cards/index.html?cups-7
I’m doing it again – obsessing over a guy but not just speaking my heart to him. The guy I like was at the salsa club tonight. I showed up late in the middle of the lesson where the women were rotating around to dance with the different guys. I watched J light up dancing with all these beautiful women. When the lesson was over I danced with a few guys. I was very popular tonight and guys were constantly asking me to dance. But as soon as I had a break, J came over and asked me. We had that beautiful eye contact. He then asked me to dance a slow song, and it was so romantic. Later we danced a cha cha and it was even more romantic. He is incredible. At one point I was sweating and started taking off my little short sweater I was wearing over my tank top. He immediately got behind me and helped me take it off – he is a TRUE GENTLEMAN. I didn’t have the guts to tell him I had feelings for him. So I just continued to dance with other guys while he drifted away and danced with other women. At the end of the night, I went to find him and he had already left. This is ridiculous. I can’t just keep liking these guys and sitting on my feelings like this. I don’t know what to do. I went through this for 2 years with the neighbor. Where it can be argued that the pot-headed rock star neighbor was inappropriate for me, J is the total opposite. He has everything I ever wanted in a man. He is a real man.
I feel very frustrated because I’ve been reading in a salsa dance newsletter that it’s not good to date men in the salsa circuit because they are usually players. So I’m thinking I should just let this one go. I feel like an idiot. I see this guy in class every Thursday, and it’s likely to go on for another year. I don’t know if I should tell him my feelings or not. And if I do, I don’t know the way to word it so it doesn’t scare him off. I really can’t tell if he likes me but thinks I’M a player, or if he is just about having fun and not getting serious with any one person. That seems to be the M.O. at the salsa clubs. I know he sees me laughing and smiling with these other guys and being all sexy (salsa is sexy). So maybe he feels a little insecure too. I guess I will never know because I’m way too chickenshit to ask him.
Just my luck. I finally find a hobby with tons of hot guys. And they are undateable. Ugh.