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Welcome back.
Sophomore year of high school was much like freshman year - I made stellar grades and teachers loved me, my friendships were becoming much more shallow and occasional, and I dreaded going home and couldn't leave for school early enough in the morning.
I was devastated at my breakup, and had half a mind to lash out at my ex a couple times. It didn't help that at home Nmom and N/Edad liked using him to taunt me - for example, during our denouements trying to add in things like "there's plenty of fish in the sea who will understand you aren't a psycho, just misunderstood" then during future outbursts saying things like "he was smart to leave you, and one day everyone else will follow"
Only...there weren't just verbal outbursts anymore. Nmom started saying that she felt she wasn't getting through to me. If I shed any hair that I forgot to pick up, she would bring it into the dining room and stir it into my food as N/Edad would watch across the table half in disgust and half in this expression that just screamed "well, that's what you get." I didn't put a condiment back in the refrigerator where she wanted it and it fell out when she was trying to take something out of the fridge. I came home from school to it smeared on my walls, my sheets, my dresser, and faced another outburst for initially refusing to clean it. I had holes cut into my clothing. There was a security camera installed on top of the fridge because she swore I was contaminating her coffee creamer by spitting into it. My bedrom door would be taken off its frame for days at a time and she would sit and stare into my room from across the hall, doing the "phone everyone and gossip about me" thing I hated. Of course, there were many "calm" phases in between, but I was never calm. I pretty consistently hated myself and her by this point.
I used to have a drawing hobby, and not bragging, but I was really really good. During one of our honeymoon phases, Nmom convinced me to draw portraits of her daughter's now three children (she had identical twins after the first baby) for her birthday, and I printed reference photos of them and did so. Nmom was delighted and gifted them to her daughter, who for still unknown reasons said she "liked them, but didn't want them" (and this might be another factor in me not liking her honestly, because it did kind of sting). So, Nmom put them up in our house and would tell any guest, anyone glancing at them at all, about how I drew them and if they paid her $75, she'd have me draw them something too, and frame it. I got my first job, in a way, and although I didn't ask for it I wasn't complaining. She'd use part of the $75 to get the frames, and would give me the rest. This and me being a genius were things she would brag to anyone about, peppering in how glad she was that she saved me from deteriorating in a poor dirty room at bio-mom's house. And because she knew everyone and I didn't, as the outsider, and as she asked me many many times, who would they believe if I spoke against her? So I would smile, say thank you, act like I was a GC too in a way. Her son, for nearly all of sophomore year and with rare exceptions lasting no more than two weeks at a time, had moved out to a friend's place by this point, so I did not see him much anymore. I should add he was never in the house for the outbursts, but I think he knew they happened.
Several weeks after my breakup, I had a different boyfriend. I did like him, but was not sure if I agreed to date him because of this or because I would have felt bad saying no because I wasn't over someone else. This boyfriend did not question the fact that we only talked and saw each other at school, and he wanted to be a gentleman and walk me home, but did not question me when I would make him stop and turn around to start heading home about a block away and around the corner from my house, because I did not want Nmom, N/Edad, or any of their neighbors seeing. Despite the nightmare my house was, I could at least talk and laugh with this guy for a brief while on my way back to face it every day. After my Nrents found out about him a couple weeks into the relationship, which they took almost suspiciously well, he started buying me small presents - mostly candy, but my favorites were a fake rose at our first month anniversary, a copy of the pocketwatch from Fullmetal Alchemist because we're both lowkey weebs, and a beautiful necklace he saved up for and got for our first year anniversary.
This boyfriend was aiming to go to school for psychology/human services, and had a tendency to get really concerned about his friends and almost analyze them and their lives for issues he wanted to help with. One of the times he walked me home he tried to ask me my thoughts on child abuse - "do you think it's still abuse if it's not leaving a mark?" Only years later did he tell me he'd picked up on the idea that something was wrong at home, but this was how he let me know it back then. "I know you really like school, but even the other people who really like school don't seem to leave every day as if they'll never come back. I really, really like you. I'll be here." I met his family when I got to hang out at his house on my birthday right before we started dating, and on Halloween when we took his brother trick or treating. I immediately got the impression I was welcome, and that he'd probably talked to his parents about mine, based on how cold they turned when N/Edad came to pick me up.
Then Thanksgiving. Fuck Thanksgiving. I can't say that enough.
I don't like to talk about it in detail, so here's the condensed version: Nmom was especially testy, and it was the one time N/Edad seemed to have cracked and tried to defend me. Total shitstorm followed, she threatened to leave, she uninvited a bunch of people, N/Edad got blackout drunk (he didn't usually drink) and she dragged me to his unconscious body on the floor at the end of the night and told me it was going to be my fault if alcohol poisoning killed him. I literally did not come out of my room except to use the bathrom at night for two days after, and when I did come out in daylight, it was because Nmom was like "FFS, you need to eat something" then trapped me in the kitchen with N/Edad who let me know "I know you're trying to make us break up, atomkat, but so you know Nmom will not be going anywhere and you cannot destroy our relationship."
I braced myself to explain to new boyfriend why he didn't hear from me at all for a week, convinced he wouldn't believe me, but by the grace of god he did. This one piece of validation gave me some surge of defiance for a couple of days, until I came home from school to find the gifts he gave me destroyed, the school picture he gave me ripped up, and was made by Nmom to pick the pieces up, put them in the trash, then take it out. Specifically, anything in my room that had to do with him, no matter how I'd hidden it. The next time I came home after thinking we were still in a honeymoon phase, my diaries were gone, and photocopies of the pages were strewn about the hallway leading to my Nrent's room. After that, they took everything out of my room but the bed and put a motion-sensor alarm on my door, because ironically Nmom had started telling her family she was becoming afraid of me and afraid I would hurt her in her sickly weakened state since N/Edad and her son weren't really around much (she hadn't, at this time, had the hysterectomy yet). When she got fed up enough of the hair, even though by this point I was obsessively checking behind me every other step for any physical trace of my existence, she had it all cut off. When she got angry at me for not cleaning the stovetop properly, she made me eat several bowls of older leftovers until I was made physically ill. Thanks to Thanksgiving, N/Edad would not intervene, but would in fact watch when he was home to see it.
And such was the state of things well into junior year. I withdrew more and more socially, except for clinging to my saint of a boyfriend like he were a lifeboat, Nmom and N/Edad were convinced I just couldn't stay good because they hadn't found an effective way to punish me yet, so they kept trying new things. I lost weight from stress and from skipping meals due to the fear of even entering the kitchen. Nmom would make fun of my weight. Nmom would make me change after showers in front of her and remark on my ribs barely poking out calling them fat rolls. N/Edad made me sit in a stool behind them, facing away from them, for seven hours on a Saturday once while they watched shit like Dr. Phil and casually talked about wishing they could kick me out.
And then one night Nmom had her first ER visit. tried to hug her when she came home with N/Edad, but she told me to get away from her because it was my fault she even went.
I sliced up my right wrist, and couldn't "finish the job" due to an anxiety attack. This happened in winter during my junior year, so I had long sleeves covering it at school and at home so for a while, no one knew. I told my boyfriend about it and apologized for that and for the necklace he got me being broken. I showed Nmom during one of her outbursts when we were home alone again and begged her to check me into inpatient somewhere so I could get the hell out of the house.
She called her son, by this point a licensed EMT, to come and take a look at my wrist. He came by promptly, and mouthed "I'm sorry" as he bandaged it up for me, otherwise being quiet. Nmom was hovering in the background, trying to interject medical advice like "pour some rubbing alcohol over it" and when I quipped back "You aren't being a damn bit helpful" she. lost. it.
The end result about three minutes later was me going into my room and locking the (thankfully reinstalled) door behind me as her son yelled to me to do so, then yelled "What the fuck is your problem?!" at her as he took the knife out of her hand that she tried to press into mine as she kept repeating "Do it, please do it" and not coming out for the rest of the night. This also resulted in all my long sleeves being taken away, so everyone at school could see the bandages and gauze.
Funny enough, a couple months later I got my wish. Just not for something I actually did, and it upsets me that I can't change the admission paperwork.
Some prefacing for this next part, I think I was very disturbed by this point. Nrents had me briefly seeing therapists here and there, but would pull me out once I felt like I was getting anywhere becausde "That quack doesn't know what they're talking about, they're a hopeless idiot and you're manipulating them to believe in your world." I had heard this enough that I think I had started becoming convinced I was indeed disconnected from reality, and was in fact doing all these covert terrible things to Nrents, and just not remembering them for some reason. I was certain that I could not distinguish reality from my delusion that I wasn't doing half the things I was being accused of doing anymore. I didn't hear the word "gaslighting" until a few years after this damage was done, and I wish I'd heard it sooner.
As a way to try to trigger another denouement after another outburst, I detailed the entire kitchen. Top to bottom. Because at this point, whenver I took showers I also had to remove Nmom's products from the bathroom and then replace them exactly after showering so she knew I didn't tamper with them, I was also careful to leave everything in the kitchen as exactly as it was. So I still, to this day, don't know how I missed the stove having a gas leak unless it had just atarted while I was finishing up cleaning somehow. After I cleaned, I went to the basement of the house to relax for a couple of hours with N/Edad in awkward silence, debating breaking the ice, until Nmom's son stopped by and smelled the gas because in those couple hours it had made its way into the living froom and partly down the hall upstairs. I don't know how I missed it, but to this day both Nmom and N/Edad will tell you, and me, and everyone they know, that I did it and left it because I wanted to blow the house up. And because by this point I was so drained, I didn't say anything back when a nurse at the psych unit asked me about it. I was in inpatient for four days. I hated it because I hate hospitals and because the nurse was very much on my Nrents' side (she told them her "assessment" of me (which was based on me socializing wiith two other patients who reminded me of my friends) was that I felt no remorse for the situation and was possibly a sociopath - at least according to Nrent it was, so who knows what really was said), and because I didn't know if I'd get to go back home. Boyfriend knew it wasn't like me to miss several days of school, and one of the many things I could not stop thinking about was how he must have been getting worried. I do know I mentioned that concern once in the hospital and it was sent back to my Nrents, who tried to turn it into "she has an unhealthy codependency with that guy, it's not going to end well" (you have until the end of this madness to guess how it ended)
The real fun, however, began after I came back home.
Thanks for reading/listening so far. I think two more parts and this is over. I'm very tired. Will post link to part 5 when posted, which could possibly end up being the morning here.
Submitted July 04, 2017 at 12:01PM by atomkat http://ift.tt/2tl2Ns2 raisedbynarcissists
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