So that explains her anger

   If you want drama, look no further than your own family tree. I was sharing my research with my Grandmother recently. I found a picture of her Maternal Grandmother Leslie, a woman she never got to meet. She was told by her mother that she passed away due to Influenza. How sad the real story turned out to be.

    My Grandmother told me that when the topic of Leslie came up, my Great-Grandmother Kate turned to silence. She always had an angry looked about her, but she would not say anything but “She died of Influenza when I was a child.” When my Grandmother asked her Grandfather what happened and why it seemed like such a sore subject, she was told the same story. Influenza. 

    Then I came along. I found a picture of her and she is beautiful. I filled in the lines on my tree and when I found a copy of her death certificate, I happened to glance and notice the date was what would have been my Great-Grandmother Kate’s 12th birthday. Maybe that was the reason for the silence about her own mother.

    It was a few days ago that I was compiling all my information about this side of my family when I took a second glance at the death certificate for Leslie, my Great-Great Grandmother. Back then, a family member had to fill out the certificate and include the date of the last time they saw the person in good health. I noticed Leslie’s form had a second form attached. On the line for cause of death, was the words “Presumed Dead” and the date the certificate was made was a full month after the last time she was seen alive. I understand that she was presumed dead to allow her husband, my Great-Great Grandfather, a chance to remarry and move on. Well he didn’t. The second form included a series of questions that asked if the person was mentally sound and had any medical issues that might cause death. She was listed as a Hemophiliac. Ok. For the life of me, I could not wrap  my head around why a woman, who had been married for 15 years and had children would just walk away from it all on her child’s birthday? 

   Well, that’s what she did. I noticed she is not buried with her family in the family cemetery. My Great-Great Grandfather never remarried, looks like he was waiting for her to change her mind or he wanted to live in denial. I found out that she ran away with a close family friend of her father’s. They moved back to Ireland. She had two more kids. Now my Great-Grandmothers silence says so much. She lived with her Maternal Grandparents, along with her father until she married at 18. Her father moved in with her and spent the rest of his life bouncing around as a boarder at different houses until an angry confrontation that ended in murder. 

    After discovering all this, I thought about my Great-Grandmother Kate. Her small body lost in her huge robe. Her legs thrown over the left arm of her recliner, with a cigarette in between her fingers of one hand and a novel in the other. Her Yorkshire terrier napping in her lap. I can see her sitting upright as soon as the neighbors dogs would start barking, she’d shuffle towards the door in her slippers. She would stand there for what seemed like forever, just staring. “Granny Kate,” I would say and it would snap her out of her fog, “Whatcha looking at?” She would turn and pause and have the saddest look on her face. “Oh nothing darlin, I just thought it would be someone coming to see me” she said. What a lonely feeling she must have felt. What a burden to keep to one’s self. 

Being Raised by a Borderline Pt.2 The Constant Confusion

If you have discovered you have a Borderline Parent, the first thing you might wonder is how did this happen, followed closely by you re-living your childhood in reverse when it hits you that something really was strange. The paranoia, the ever-changing expectations, the sudden and unprovoked outbursts of rage. You thought that was how all parents acted. You probably also thought it was normal to never really know what parent you were going to get when you woke up. Would it be angry mom? Sullen mother? Maybe mom will be somewhat playful today. It’s not normal and it causes the other people in the household to walk on eggshells.

Another thing that was always a source of frustration for me, was my mother’s complaints about me, my friends, my schoolwork. It was always negative. “Why don’t you go to a friend’s house!” She would yell if I was home on a Friday night, knowing full well I wasn’t old enough to drive yet. As soon as I would have a friend come get me, she would scream and rage. “They are NOT coming to get you! I don’t need their parents thinking ill of me and your dad!” This would continue for the whole weekend. It got to the point that my friends or their parents would call and speak to my mom and say it was their idea so she would shut up. Getting to drive was another fun exercise in how fast she could “raise the bar” to keep me inside.

When I became of legal age to drive, my mother followed it with a “You can drive as soon as you practice with your father and he says you’re ready.” This pretty much ensured that I would not have my licence until the next year, because my father is a rage-oholic with a short fuse and that fuse was usually lit whenever his own children walked into the room he was in. So you can imagine what a joy it was being trapped in a car with him. 4 months after this began, my mother took me to get my learner’s permit. I asked if I could go the next week to get my actual license and she added yet another rule. “You can drive as soon as you get a car.” Ok, how was I going to do this? They wouldn’t take me to a job or pick me up from one because that was too much hassle for them and my older siblings had cars handed to them by our grandparents, so I called her bluff and called my grandparents. This fight pulled out for another 4 months with my mom making up excuse after excuse to get together with her parents and I to go pick out a car. Finally, my father decided enough was enough and we went. I was so excited! After we got the car home, I ran inside and was greeted by my mother and she was in one of her moods. “I hope you don’t think you are going to be driving anywhere. You can’t drive that car until you get your licence and we will not take you to do that until you pass private driving lessons.” She said this all while staring straight ahead at the television. I was crushed.

One of my friends offered to take me to get my licence. We had to take my car. We were almost out of my subdivision when wouldn’t luck have it, my mother drove by. I turned around. It was an ugly confrontation. She threw things. She called me every ugly name you can imagine. My father grabbed me by my wrist and threatened to “knock my teeth out” and she told me if I ever left in that car again, she would call the cops and have it reported as stolen. So, I waited for her to sign me up for the private lessons.

Two months after that ugly little row, I was driving on the interstate with a monotone male instructor who liked to call people who passed on double yellow lines “people that should have been abandoned by their parents.” I did my lessons for two months. He gave me my certificate and even told my parents that I was an excellent driver. “I never had to correct her with my own wheel” he commented to them. When he said that my mother went from mildly annoyed to raging. As soon as he drove off, she put the smiley face away and got right in my face. “What did you tell him?” she said between clenched teeth. “Nothing” I said. “Well, you think you’re so fucking smart don’t you? Just for that, we are not taking you to get your license. Oh, and don’t think about getting your little dipshit friends to take you. If that car is missing, you’re going to jail.” She stormed off and left me staring at the gravel in the driveway. My dad tried to smooth things over and asked me if I wanted an ice cream cone. When I told him no, he told me to go fuck myself.

I was fixing to start my senior year and was a month away from turning 17. I was no longer allowed to ask when they would take me. One of my friends’ mother called the DMV to ask if I could take the test in a different car and they said it was ok. When I went for the test, I let it slip as I left and my mother told me if I took the test, I would have to find another place to live. I know this all sounds very extreme for a freaking licence, but if you were raised by a Borderline mother or father, you are probably thinking to yourself that this story sounds like just another day. It’s all about control and keeping people near. So after she made her newest threat, I just gave up. I didn’t ask and told my friends to drop it. I just assumed that I would never drive. During this time, my brand new car is sitting in the driveway. When my mother caught me washing my car, she told me that until I could “show some responsibility” that she would be driving my car to her work.

She did just that. She would come home to tell me how awful my car was. “It sits too low to the ground” or is “too jerky.” She would say all this to me with a straight face, not once acting like she cared and even now I really don’t think she did. I asked my dad take me to get take the test and all he would say is that he would ask her what I could do to earn my licence and car. So not only is she the fucking DMV, but the car company. Word came back from her highness that I could “earn the privilege” to get my license when I got a job. I had to work at least 30 hours a week, even while school was in session. I would also have to pay for all car maintenance, insurance and gas. Ok, I thought to myself, I’m going to do this. So I went out and applied everywhere and got offered a job the next day at a retail store. Finally! I got a lucky break.

Yeah, you know where this is going. As soon as I came in, a huge smile on my face, I was dealt a new blow. While I was telling my dad about it, who was excited, my mother refused to look up from her food. As soon as I finished my spiel, she cleared her throat and told me that for the time being, my dad would follow me to and from work to make sure I didn’t go out “joy riding” and I was to only take the car to work or to school, nowhere else. If I wanted to go to friends houses or anywhere else, my friends could come get me. My mom told me that they would no longer take me anywhere. Oh and also, on top of paying the gas, insurance and maintenance (which she told me she would decide when the car needed to go to the shop, and didn’t have to give me any notice for that) I was also told I would be paying for my own clothing and food. “Fun time is over” she said I she got up from the table.

I worked my 30 hours a week at a freaking hell hole that catered to tweens. I made minimum wage, which was $5.50 at the time. I paid for gas, which was incredibly cheaper at the time. I also handed my dad $180 for car insurance a month. When school started, I bought all my clothes and supplies. I also bought my groceries and after I realized how expensive my vegetarian diet was going to cost me, I decided to cut costs and buy junk food. I’m not 100% sure, but I think this is why I was having all those fainting spells that one time put me in the hospital after hitting my head on the concrete floor at work. I dealt with my final year of school, which was a breeze. On top of this, I had my creepy dad trail me to and from work. He let me sneak trips to the grocery store and mall, because even though I had to go to these places to buy my own things, I was told I could not take my own car. That was put to an end when my mother asked my father for a surprise mileage check. Little did I know, my father had wrote the mileage it took me to get to and from work and school and any deviation from the formula was met with punishment. My dad took the fall for that one and was not allowed to follow me. It alternated between my mom and older brother.

I wish I could end this car story in a good way, but I can’t. Throughout my senior year the car was constantly dangled over my head. If I pissed her off, I would wake up to find I didn’t have a way to school and they were not going to take me. Since I lived so far out and was not a bus-rider, the bus didn’t come my way and I lived over 45 minutes away, so walking was out. When the school called and said my parents would be pulled in to truancy court, they stopped doing it. When the school got into the way of taking my car away, my mom would pull her disappearing car stunt during school breaks. She would take it to work and give me a hand-written bill for the gas I owed her, because she would always fill up. Does your head hurt now? It finally came to an end when I wised up and decided to call my Grandmother, who was the reason I had a paid for brand new car. I told her everything that had happened. I told her that I could no longer afford to take care of the car, because my mother decided to make my dad haul it in for work. I didn’t know where or what it needed, but she presented me with a handmade bill with $300 as the total. My Grandmother called and after that, they never talked to me about the car again. My mother went on a rage fest and I seriously thought she was going to knock me out, but it gave me peace of mind. I also discovered that if I exposed my mother to others, she would back off. She hated to look like the bad guy , especially in front of her own mother.

So seriously, what does all this mean. I had strict parents. They wanted me to be a hard-worker and earn things. Well, I wish it was that simple. I was constantly getting her little bills or my dad would tell me that insurance premiums went up again. I was paying for my basic things and being told that when I graduated, I had to pay rent and utilities. This would not bother me if I would have had the chance to move. I graduated at 17 and could not legally move out. When my friend and her family offered to take me in, my mother said she would call the police. So, it’s not raising a child to learn responsiblity. It’s like being born into a dictatorship. You think it’s normal and when you try another way or to better yourself and no longer want to bow to their rules, you are quickly told “NO!” and reprimanded. I was threatened with the police more times than I cared to count. A good parent can instill important life lessons to their child without threats, intimidation, and keeping them constantly on their toes. That’s not a parent, that’s a crazy person.

It was years later when I was strolling around in a bookstore, I found a copy of the book Understanding the Borderline Mother. I flipped through and landed on a story about how one woman recalls how her mother constantly told her to get out there and make friends, but then would not take her to their house, and said they were not good enough. The woman said that her Borderline mother complained about her lack of friends and then made things very difficult for her. I immediately bought the book and even today, all these years later, consider it my Bible. Here in the South, you don’t talk about mental illness and as a parent, have every single right to discipline your kids in whatever fashion you feel fits. Grandparents turn a blind eye when their grandkids show up sporting new bruises at every visit. When a child reaches out, they are told that “is just the way things are.” As if that is ever makes abuse ok.

Borderlines are very good at manipulating the situation and know what they can get away with. My mother and her illness thrived here in the South because of the unspoken rules. As a child, I remembered listening to the weekly life lessons from the Guidance Counselor and thinking how bizarre it seemed to have a parent hug a child or play outside with a child. By the time I left Elementary School, I knew we, as a family, were very off.

As a child, you have no-one else but your parents. If one or both of them is crazy, you have to deal with it the best you can. Having a Borderline for a parent means you have to constantly be on your toes and get use to that dizzy feeling. I still get it when I feel like my mother is trying to “forget she said something” mean or play me for a fool and make up an illness or sob story. It’s a childhood of confusion, because you don’t know what to expect. Moods change and can be extreme. Spankings can come for something as simple as walking in the room to ask if supper is ready. What was ok and fine to do one day, is met with anger and abuse if done the following day. There is NO consistency at all. When you start to grow up and get tired of the bullshit, you are not allowed to show your emotions or defend yourself. You are tried with a your mouth taped shut and are not allowed to call witnesses. Your Borderline parents is judge, jury and executioner.

I am a mother. I could never imagine harming my children in the ways that I was. I could never speak to my children in the manner I was spoken to. I carried them, gave birth to them. My job is to protect and teach them. Not to play out some power trip I have hanging around from childhood on them. I think about that from time to time. The hopelessness I felt. How for years afterwards I would find myself in the car, in a store and suddenly I would zone out. I would mentally (and sometimes physically) black out and forget why I was there and where I was going. I learned that is a common trait of children that were raised by Borderlines. Sometimes things become too much and we disassociate. We wake back up and realize we are adults, in our own home and far away from the Borderline parent and we can’t believe our luck. Then we feel that we don’t deserve to be lucky.

Raised by a Borderline Part 1. The funny moments

My mother suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. I found out by accident when I was 15 and I have never told her about it. I was looking for my birth certificate, hoping to prove that she was not my real mother and I found a huge packet with the words MEDICAL written on the outside. Inside it was paperwork that showed how my mother was referred to a Psychiatrist and over the course of the months, what the doctor found to be Borderline Personality Disorder. I remember freezing in my tracks.

I quickly turned to the internet and found out that Girl, Interrupted was a good starting point. I read it from cover to cover in one night and made the following notes;

Unstable relationships? Yes and no. She is still married to my dad and they never fight. But she has battles with everyone else. Me and my siblings. Her own mother. Her siblings have nothing to do with her and on the other side everyone on my dad’s side of the family loves her and thinks she is great.

Efforts to be abandoned? Well she keeps saying how she can’t wait for us kids to grow and get out of the house. Yet, she makes it difficult to really leave. She is constantly telling me to leave and when I’m going out, she comes up with an excuse why I can’t go.

She does devaluation and idealization. Big time. One moment she can be talking about how great someone is, but if they question or disagree with her, they are the devil.

Unstable sense of self and identity. I don’t think she has as strong of a sense of self as she pretends to have. She is constantly trying to find a hobby or something that will make her feel whole and connect with others about and then she gets bored with it. I don’t want to know if she has a sexual identity crisis.

Has weight issues. Binge eats and can blow through some money.

Does not have any self-injuring behaviors.

Mood instability. Yes, Yes, and Yes. Lasting for hours even days. Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Chronic feelings of emptiness. Yes. She can never find the one thing that will make her feel useful so she keeps looking. Her kids formed personalities, so she grew tired of them because we cannot mirror her. Hobbies are fleeting and boring.

Inappropriate anger. Yes. We don’t call her the Banshee for nothing.

She has extreme paranoia, stress-related delusions. She has to burn all her mail. She is constantly paranoid about the internet. She became freaked out that Google Maps had her house listed and became convinced she would be robbed because of it. She thinks people are avoiding her.

So how can you have funny moments with a lady like this? A lady that is in charge of your well-being. It’s in the little things. The paranoia for one thing. As a child my father won me a giant white bear at the town fair. I loved it, but my mom kept eyeing it. Later one that night she told my father, who is equally or more paranoid than my mother, that she had seen a show about how people put tape recorders in things and listen in on people to rob them. Somehow, this ended up being my fair bear was stuffed not only with cotton but a tape recorder. My dad made me put the bear in the closet and they would not let me talk in my bedroom to them. So imagine being a child and having to stand out in the hallway in front of your bedroom, conversing with two loony tunes that are not only adults, but your parents, over what sides you would like with dinner. I can’t imagine a Carney was rigging stuffed animals just to hear that my family would be having Mac & Cheese with their Roast Beef. This carried on for a week until I found the bear in the laundry room, gutted. No tape recorder found.

My mother would also get on a paranoid medical kick, but since she had the attention span of a child with severe ADD, she would only get half the news story before taking things in her own hands. I had two flavored lip glosses. They were a gift to me from a nice neighborhood lady for starting Kindergarten. One tube was blue and had a boy bear on it and smelled like blueberries. The other tube was red and had a girl bear on it and smelled like cherries. I loved them. My mother was not crazy about me taking them to school and told me not to share them. If I shared them I would get AIDS. One day, I threw caution to the wind and let my dear friends Jennifer use the blue tube. When I got into the car after school, my mother started in with “You didn’t share your lip glosses did you?” I told her I had, but with Jennifer. We know Jennifer and her family. They’re clean! I said. Silence on the way home. At home she made me watch as she took my lip glosses and turned them all the way up the tubes, took a meat clever and hacked them off until a tiny nub of gloss remained on the tubes. “Never share again!” she screamed.

That was probably the scariest she was, the other things she took to her nutty extremes. You could tell you had cancer if your hair started to fall out. Well normal, healthy people can lose up to 100 hairs a day. Yet again, she was half-assing it. She told me that if you sit in a chair a boy had sat in previously, you would get pregnant. I wasn’t as knowledgable at the time, but even I knew that in the rare chance a guy did hump a seat, and ejaculate, it does not mean a girl will get pregnant. Just grossed out by the stain on her pants. She believed the AIDS toilet seat thing. She was convinced the Gas Station attendant that worked at the Full Service station we used, was a child molester. No real evidence, just had that feeling.

Her feelings were and are still a source of amusement for me and my siblings. She has elaborate theories on who does cocaine. She swears up and down the couple across the street from them are swingers. Why? A male friend stopped by late one night and he had a noisy muffler. Not kidding, that’s what my mother, AKA Perry Mason, said. She claims her cat died battling two coyotes. Nevermind coyotes do not live in our area. She then went one step further by dragging me and my siblings down the road to where the dead cat laid and asked us to re-enact what might have happened. Two of us had to be the coyotes, one the cat. It was madness. She would not hear any other theory. A dog killed her cat. No, her cat was too important to be killed by a dog.

She also makes wacky statements, that she says as angry as she can, but the anger is just out of the blue. Once, me and my siblings were talking about jobs. My mom, not even involved with the conversation yells “I could work you all under the table!” Huh? I like to think of her as a senile old lady at a nursing home that wheels up and down the hall yelling random bullshit, hoping somewhere will hear her. Her other random statements would be “You wish you’re house looked like mine!” This was said at a cousin’s wedding rehearsal dinner. “You can never have a good marriage like me!” this was said when my brother won his divorce case and got full custody of his kids. I guess a “Good Job!” was too formal for the occasion.

She is nicknamed the Rooster for her hilarious habit of calling you up and asking “You up yet?” you can hear in her voice that she is savoring you saying “Nope” so she can insult you for being lazy. If you say “Yes, been up since 7 a.m.” she replies with an angry “I’ve been up since 6:59 A.M.” You can’t beat the rooster. She one time called to tell me that Clay Aiken was on The Celebrity Apprentice. I told her I had never watched that show. It ended in a rambling anger-thon about did I think I was too good to watch that show? You just have to laugh.

My mother also makes observations in public, very loudly. She insults my sister-in-law for going through the nursing program. It hides her shame at her being kicked out for showing mental issues. She once spent a big chunk of time at a family reunion telling me who had AIDS and who was an ugly baby. No filter  on that lady at all.

It’s all a front for the sad parts of her life, which were numerous.

Bless Your Bones

My Great-Grandmother Francis use to say “Bless your bones” to anyone no matter the circumstances. You could step on a bee, lose a race, have your heart broken or get an award and it was always “Bless your bones.” I remembered asking her why the saying, what did it mean to her and she answered that blessing a heart was too superficial. The real blessings have to go to the core of a person, down to their bones. As I grew older, I found myself saying it to others. As I worked with abused children, I would find myself whispering it to them while I rocked them. I have children of my own and I say it. When I find myself stressed out, I repeat it over and over in my head. “Bless my bones, Bless my bones..” as if it is a chant that will make everything better.

   My Great-Grandmother became very ill away on a stormy spring day a few years ago. The Dogwood tree’s were blooming and I had set out to start my garden for the year when I received the call the that it might not be much longer. On my drive to her house I found myself saying the little chant repeatedly between “Please let her be alive when I get there.” As I walked in the room, my Grandmother told her that I was present. I walked over to her and I started crying immediately. She just grabbed my hand and I leaned forward and she said it, “Bless your bones the most my sweet girl.” 

   She passed away later that night. When I had my last child, I realized that he would not be blessed by her. It actually made me sad for him, though I know it doesn’t make his chances in life any better or worst. It was just a little bit of magical thinking. As soon as he was born and I held him close to me I had to say it to him. When my other kids came in the room, the first things they said to his was the blessing. The nurse that was present said it was the cutest thing she had ever heard.

    I don’t believe in an afterlife, though wouldn’t it be a nice thing? I could see my Great-Grandmother again and hear her voice and feel that her blessing and love would make anything instantly better. It’s a nice dream to think she is up in her little cloud house, looking down on her babies and loving every moment of it. I like to think that when I’m troubled or sad or scared, she is whispering it over and over again, like I do. Our voices overlapping each other.

“Bless your bones. Bless your bones.”

 

My eyes! Oh God my eyes!

I can’t see very well. I’ve actually had an Opthamologist stop the visit and ask me how I went about my day with such bad vision. “Well, you just get use to it.” I replied. “Use to it!” he said, sounding astonished. “Yeah, you have to break the bad vision in, like a new pair of pants.” He laughed at my come back.

My mother says that I have Mole vision. “You get those bad eyes from your father,” she said, nodding towards my father, half-asleep on the couch. “I have perfect vision.” My mother is a braggart and suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, so I can’t tell where the truth begins and the Borderline ends. She wears glasses.

My father has glasses and deals with the same eyesight issues as I do. His eyes are smaller than mine, they remind me of mice eyes. They are beady and make him look like he is up to no good. I like to pretend that my father lives a second life as a mouse. He goes out at night and breaks into house. He nibbles all the food and pees along the baseboards. He then goes back home and sneaks shredded newspaper under his pillow.

“That’s ridiculous Anais!” my mothers shrieks at me. “Your father doesn’t have the energy to be that dedicated to breaking into people’s house.”

I think she is missing the point, or maybe I am. We have bad vision.

Also, because the vision is bad, why does the eyeball as a whole have to suffer? We say things like terrible eyes, bad eyes. But it’s not the eye that is naughty. It’s the optic nerves, it’s genetics, in my case my eyeball’s are longer than normal, so I can see great if you hold it up to my nose, but if you go past that I’m at a lost. My mother has the long eyeball part and my father rounds the plate and heads in for home with the nearsightedness. So really it’s my parents fault, namely my father but just because I can, I will also blame my mother.  She knew my father had mole vision and she chose to breed with him.

So not only do I forward my Therapy bills to them, I guess I should start forwarding my vision bills to them as well.

My DNA

I set out a few years ago to trace my family tree. I enlisted some professional Genealogists and communicated with local Genealogical societies. It took a long, long time. I would think I was getting somewhere, only to discover I took a wrong turn. Online sources are great but can be wrong. Ancestry.Com, RootsWeb, and FamilySearch.org are the best help with this search. Local libraries also have some resources available, but most times it is only within the county the library is located, so if you are not from there, it can be pointless.

So what did I discover? Well to start with I knew I was Austrian on my mother’s side and Greek on my father’s side with some Native American. After my research, I discovered that on my father’s side I am Greek-Native American-French-Irish-Hungarian-British. On my mother’s side I am Austrian-Jewish-German-Dutch-British-Native American. I even went one step further and did a DNA test. I gave an ungodly amount of blood to be tested (and rule out any genetic issues that would arise being Greek or Jewish or Native American) and the results were the biggest shock.

My DNA matched 90% with that of an Ashkenazi Jew. When I asked the doctor what in the world that meant, she said “It means you’re more Jew than water.” Wow. Didn’t see that coming in a million years. I also shared DNA with Mediterranean and Native American. The percentage was what shocked me the most. I knew we had Jewish in our family, but for my DNA to match that closely was just odd.

I met with a Rabbi friend of mine to share the DNA results. He gave me some information about Ashkenazi and helped me locate other resources about my Jewish relatives. It helped tie up some of the loose ends I had about some of those relatives that never made it to the states. He also put me in touch with relatives in these countries that I did not know I had. I’m not going to take the plunge and turn to the Jewish faith, nope still Atheist. Just a neat little footnote in my life.

When I was growing up, the only person I looked like w as my mother’s sister, my aunt. She died when she was 18 and I was 8. Outside of her, I do not look like anyone. I don’t favor my parents and I don’t look like my siblings. I just wanted to see someone else that I favored, I wanted to feel like I belonged. With my family tree and DNA results, I feel like I do belong to a group, I have extended family and the craziest thing of all was when I started communicating with my family on my Jewish side (the relatives that are around the same age as me) we favor. We have the same nose, the huge Anime looking eyes. We are all short and tiny. We either have blond hair or reddish-brown hair. I finally feel like I fit somewhere on my family tree. Like I do belong and I was not abandoned by my real family in a barn and discovered by the people I thought were my parents, as my brother always told me growing up.

As with any discovery, you sometimes uncover sad things. On my mother’s side of the family I discovered not only that Depression is a serious problem, I suffer from it, but I have lost many a family member to suicide. I found out my grandfather was institutionalized for a year and received Electro-Convulsive Therapy. He had to be rehabbed back into normal life. He would work and see his family during the day, then report back to the hospital by night. My Great-Great Grandmother was in and out of Psychiatric Hospitals and ended up dying in one. This was back in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s so you can imagine how humane the treatments were for her. She suffered from hallucinations and depression that did not response to any treatments. My own grandfather was suicidal and tried to jump off a bridge and would stick a coin or fork into a outlet just so he could feel something from time to time. His mother was seriously depressed and could not do the day-to-day care taking of her own children. They were raised by their father or later on the older siblings would take over the responsibilities. I had a distant cousin take his own life just a few years ago. He shot himself in the head. I have many, many cousins that have been in hospitals for depression and suicidal tendencies.

On the other side of my mother’s family, I uncovered a scandal. The woman he would be considered my Great-Great-Great Grandmother was married 5 times. She married once, had 3 kids then became pregnant with another man’s child. Married him, left him, married again. 3rd marriage seemed good until she fell in love with someone else and became pregnant with my Great-Great Grandmother. She ended up leaving him for her last husband and had a few more kids. The sad part about all this is that when she would leave for another man, she would leave her children behind to be raised by the dad and a new wife. Their mother just kind of didn’t give a care about anyone other than her impulses. No one knows where she is buried and it was rumored that she was murdered when the last husband suspected her of cheating on him.

On my father’s side I found out that Alcoholism, drug abuse and infidelity run rampant. It still affects my generation. I have seen quite a few of my cousins and second cousins enter treatment for alcohol, pain pills, and heroin abuse. It’s sad. The man that is my 14th Great-Grandfather was a ruthless man. He would kill, steal and destroy anyone or thing that got in his way and his job was as a tithe collector for the church. When this branch of my family tree made its way over to the states, they were Loyalists during the Revolutionary War. Much closer to my time, I found the rap sheet of my own Grandfather and Great-Grandfather. They both killed people. My Great-Grandfather was arrested for holding a knife to another man’s throat and another time bashing a man’s skull against the sidewalk because the man knocked on his door at the wrong time of night. My Grandfather stabbed a man and left him for dead at a bar. I guess the ruthlessness never really goes away. On the other side, my Great-Grandfather shot his neighbor. He had heard a few altercation between the man and wife and one day heard her begging for help. He meant only to scare him, but he shot him. He regretted it and would never talk about it. I also found out why my Great-Grandmother would never talk about her own mother. Her mom died on my Great-Grandmother’s 12th birthday. It was a sad death and after seeing pictures of her with my Great-Grandmother and her sister, I can tell they were the light of her life. You can just see the love she had for her daughters. After that, they lived with their dad, until he went to jail for the accidentally shooting, and things were rough. He would never remarry because he loved his late wife. I found a sweet note from him to her that my Great-Grandmother had saved. It was bittersweet because it was a list of all things they would do together when she got in better health. Sadly, she never did.

I found a little of everything when I went searching through my family tree. I found violence, anger, abandonment, sadness, incredible loss, devastation, joy, perserverance, and commitment. I found people that loved each other to the end of their days. People who meant well. In their stories and records of events and pictures, I discovered comedians, journalists, singers, and actors. In those moments that they took pen to paper or posed with that silly face, they could never imagine that in the future, a relative would find these jewels and love them. All those words have not gone to waste, all those sweet pictures of people I will never get to meet. I cherish them. I think the words of my namesake, Anais Nin, say it best; “ Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. I see in you that part of me which is you. “

My (sometimes hilarious) fight with a Narcissistic man

Some things before I jump right in. I guess I should lay out some characters. There is me. I’m in my late 20’s. There’s my partner, he’s in his late 20’s as well. Then there is Mr. Narcissistic Man, who is in his 40’s, along with his wife. You may be wondering why I am referring to him as Narcissistic, it’s because he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I made the diagnosis before he properly was. I was raised by a Borderline Mother and in college my focus was in Mental Health and treatment of Personality Disorders, so I don’t throw those types of diagnosis around. How do we know each other? Sadly, distantly related. We’ve been hearing these wild, incredible stories about him and his wife since we started communicating with this branch of the family tree.

What’s NPD? You might be asking. A summary;

They may seem charming, have it all together, some are known for possessing the best of everything and some are preoccupied with looking great. It’s all a lie. They frequently live beyond their means, ending up in foreclosures or short sales of a house they never could afford. They get family tangled up in their web by borrowing money and using guilt trips. (Mr. NPD in this story, told his own mother that if she didn’t foot the bill for a expensive home repair project, he would never talk to her again. That and his wife Mrs. NPD called and emailed everyday about it.) They take high risks in everything and end up losing jobs, losing friends, and making questionable decisions. They react to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation. Mr. NPD reacted with anger and what is called Narcissistic Rage. They take advantage of others to get what they want. See above, using the mother and now the NPD family does not have the house with the expensive repairs because they lost it, and mom is on the hook for the money.They exaggerate lots of things about themselves. Mr. NPD has lied about his jobs, and his income constantly. It became a running joke between me and my partner.They have unrealistic ideas about romance, success, beauty, power and intelligence. We discovered (much to our surprised) that Mr and Mrs. NPD lied about their own children and their successes. How lame.

The NPD person needs constant praise and positive reinforcement and easily becomes jealous. They lack empathy because they are obsessed with themselves. They have trouble with healthy relationships because healthy relationships have boundaries. Mr. NPD was not someone you said no to. If he didn’t get his way, he let everyone know it. They appear tough and cold but the slightest perceived abandonment or disagreement and they explode. The Narcissistic Rage I mentioned above was spectacular. I mean there is nothing you can really do at that point when someone is so angry they cannot form a complete sentence and are rambling. It can get dangerous, and that is what this story is about.

It was a few years ago that I had a very mild misunderstanding with Mr. NPD. Up to this point, we behaved as polite acquaintances. Then I couldn’t help him shop for a gift right at that very moment. At first he emailed me a very sarcastic email but then he was cool. Even apologizing. The end of his email said “I know, you’ve got your own life. You shouldn’t drop everything for me.” We were still cool with each other, I thought. A few hours later I received an email from a family friend who wanted to know when did I get on FB. I’m not. Apparently Mr. NPD talked his teenager into starting up a profile for me. How sweet! Since we  have mutual family and some friends, he added who he could. The profile said that I was a liar and break promises and (my favorite!) an Atheist that celebrated Christmas! The shame!! The profile was reported before he could even send me his first of what would be many long-winded emails. The teenager came to her senses and took the profile down that instant when I called her and she apologized. But that apparently just put more fuel on the fire.

An excerpt from the first email:

“How fucking dare YOU call MY kid and tell HER to take anything down. I don’t give two fat fucks what you think. You deserved it. You stuck up bitch.”

and that’s the cheery part. I responded back, which was the worst thing to do, but I felt that if I could tell him I was in no way attacking his child but telling her to remove a profile using my name and picture that it would be the wisest thing to do. Again, when dealing with the Narcissistic it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

So for the next two weeks of my life, I received at least 2 emails a day, was informed of groups about me (he was usually the only member) and another attempt at making a profile of me that was abandoned very quickly. In his other emails I started to notice that anytime he referred to himself it was capitalized. I received some that were just bizarre ramblings about HIS family. HIS money. HIS time. other times it was about if I admitted how wrong I was for telling his daughter to take down the fake profile, he might forgive me. I thought this was about me not having time for him. Now I was confused, but I refused to communicate with him anymore.

Then the threats started. It went from being a funny little game of “what will he say next” to”Ok, we have to get the cops involved.”  He posted on FB (See, that part about perceiving themselves to be intelligent) about hurting me and how he was going to do it. Then he followed that with an email to me about coming to my house and attacking me and my partner. This was no longer fun. So I had to take all my emails and FB info and turn it in. As soon as the Detective looked over it he said “You’ve got a Personality Disorder on your hands. Either Narcissistic or Borderline.” He looked over all the info and called me back in for a meeting and about how to proceed. “Did this really start over you not being available to help him with something?” he asked. “Yes.” I replied. He looked amazed.

Then the process. It was longer than I cared for really. He stopped pretty quickly when he was contacted by police. He apologized and promised to stay off FB for a year and to no longer contact me or my partner in any way. Then I heard that right after his apology to me, he threatened a woman at his work and was fired. His wife cheated on him left and right and admitted to others that he was verbally and emotionally abusive. I feel sorry for this person but they continue on the same path. As for me and my family, we want nothing more to do with him or his equally strange wife. I refuse to walk on eggshells any longer. I did that with my mother and I cannot and will not do it any more for anybody.

It was a sad, scary time. I was going through a huge loss. I lost a grandparent and someone I cared deeply for. It sucked getting on my computer to see he had sent more hate mail. the low blow came when he said he was happy to hear that my grandparent had died. That did it in for me.

I’ve tried over the years to figure out how someone can live like that. With all my understanding and knowledge of Personality Disorders, I know they live with tremendous pain every single day. They feel beneath others and have to act out and behave in these ways so people will pay attention to them and listen to them. But what a shitty way to live.

I’ve been everybody else’s girl

I have had more and more thoughts and dreams about how where I am in life is not where I should be. I don’t think I am living in the right place. I know I am not doing the day-to-day job that I am meant to do, but I choose to do it right now. It’s comfortable. I keep dreaming of living in England or Austria. It may never happen though, so maybe I should start small and just visit. But where would I find the time.

I use to be optimistic and say “My life is not over yet!” but I am losing that war to pessimism. I have my travels all planned out. I will visit England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and I will defiantly visit my ancestral homelands of Austria, Israel, and Greece. I would also like to see Norway and Holland. I just have to keep my goals in order. My goal has always been to live in Europe but I don’t know how that will happen now. I won’t be attending school, don’t know what I would do for a job and do not want to marry. AHHH! I sound whiney and I hate that.

Back to the feelings. The past few months I have been facing my own mortality. I went from 2 years ago having all 4 grandparents, a step-grandparent and a great-grandparent to only having two grandparents left. I do not think I  lived up to my potential at all. I have no one to blame but my myself. I’m trying now but I get discouraged very easily.  I get interrupted and sidetracked often. I don’t give myself any “me” time at all. It’s catching up with me, because I am not finding much satisfaction in my life. I live for everyone else. So the dreams have come back.  I need to find the place that makes my heart feel at home. I need to be in a place that does not suffocate me in religion.

My mother tells me that “you can find home anywhere,” and she is right to a point. But if you don’t really feel complete and happy with your surroundings you make do until you find the right fit. You are lying to yourself.  I feel selfish for wanting to move somewhere else. To move away from family and friends. But this was a plan I  and my partner have had all along. My partner is right there with me. Where we live now is just a springboard to somewhere else. It’s not the end, but it seems like it is taking forever to get to the next chapter. Have you ever felt like you were just going through the emotions until you could really start living or feel happy?

So where do I go from here? I’m going to start traveling outside of the South more and see if we can find a place in the states that we can call homes and then do our Family Tree trips over in Europe and the Middle East. We are going to find the place that makes us feel like finally we are home.  I am going to start taking time for me. So, here goes…

Cloudy

I am in a huge mind-fog today. I have tons of things I have to do and things I want to do, but I can’t focus on anything for too long. It’s a crappy weather day and I would rather be sleeping. I feel like I am forgetting something.

To pass the time:  A work of pure genius. Karl Pilkington

and to put me in a better mood. This always makes me laugh, no matter how many times I have heard it.

I agree with Ricky Gervais, I don’t know why it’s so funny but it is.

Here’s to a better tomorrow.

Magnolia Tree

I use to write all the time. I received my first diary in 3rd grade and wrote until recently. Life gets in the way. I share my time with my partner, my children, my pets. I like to look back and read my own journals and wonder what people would think of me if they stumbled upon them. But now that life has slowed down a notch, I find myself wondering what happened to the writer in me. I use to have promise. I was awarded a spot in a competitive Writer’s Camp for children. I was awarded a full Scholarship to a University on the West Coast, but my fear got the best of me. Wonder if I get there and I am terrible. Taste are different in Tennessee than they are in California.

I found this poem in a journal and I heard the words of a local Literature Professor come back to me. “I wish you believed in your talent as much as I do. You can move mountains, Anais.”

Magnolia Tree

Up
Up
Up
The big Magnolia tree. The one that is too close to the street and makes our mother warn us of our heads cracking open, should we fall.
We climb and pretend we are miles away from the earth. We act like we can see into the neighbors houses and they are all fighting and as unhappy as we are.
Everyone eats in their own rooms.
Up in the tree I pretend I am a boy, so I can fit in better.
I faintly hear my mother yell and hear a car drive by and it shakes the tree. The music is so loud.
My mother says people that do that have no taste or concern for others.
I pull off a bloom and pry it apart.
I hate waiting for things to happen.
“You have to make them happen”
I rip off the petals and watch it land on the road.
Down
Down
Down
The big tree and I run inside.
In the house, my father is not home yet and my mother is in her own world. My brother and I are dirty. I have itchy fingers from the bloom.
It is an itch that is between the first and last of your whole hand.