One Year Ago – Part 5

The past year has zoomed by at an amazing rate. It’s hard to believe the life I had a year ago. The memories are becoming fuzzy, less distinct and painful.

The narc claimed to have started on the medication his doctor recommended and he was cured! Even his allergies were clearing up! At last he saw the light and totally understood how I could be angry with him, but he was a New Man and I could come back and we could start over! As if. Meanwhile, Sabu started taking Doggy Prozac and my life became a whole lot easier 🙂

March started out with a conversation that left me infuriated. That he expected me to come over to his house for a conjugal visit after the way he treated me kept me angry for days. He did convince me to house sit for him for a week or so, and I’m sure he thought that as soon as I saw what I was missing I would beg to be taken back, but that didn’t happen, I just moved more of my stuff out of his house. In fact, no matter how many times I told him exactly what was wrong with our relationship, he always pointed his finger at me as the cause of his unhappiness and subsequent abusive behaviors. Sigh. He just didn’t get it and I was beginning to believe he never would.

Being the stubborn sort, there was no going back. Oh, I was interested in watching the narc implode, but going back never entered my mind and that has led to all kinds of wonderful things happening, things that would not have been possible were I still with the narc.

Today I’m very busy. The Fiber Thing is taking off in new, unexpected directions – I met up with the owner of my “old” LYS (Local Yarn Shop) (sadly now closed) and she needs help getting her crochet patterns online for sale. It seems I’ve become the local Computer Expert – Wool Division. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, but I don’t think I know all that much, really, and now there are people who want to pay me for my time? Too good to be true!

In my quest for seven streams of income, doing computer work to get other people online is #5. Not bad for the third month of 2014 🙂

 

V-day

Here we are again at the second most commercial American Holiday. For those of you not aware, this is the red hearts holiday, as opposed to the red and white candy cane one.

I’ve always had a problem with V-day. It’s so fake. So contrived. So commercial. So fucking stupid. Even as a kid, I resented having to give everyone in class a cheap little card when mostly I hated them all. Oh, Miss Sofie had no use for the imbeciles she was forced to spend time with every day. If she could have stooped so low as to use curse words, she would have sounded like a sailor describing the wild animals in class.

But this isn’t about childhood trauma. This post is all about that most “romantic” of days – Valentine’s Day.

God I hate the hypocrisy of V-day. Last year was the first V-day in 25 years that I “celebrated” as a single woman. The liberation was as sweet as the darkest fudge brownie, rolling across the palate like a fine Merlot, scenting the air with the fine fragrance of a hot lavender bubble bath.

And then the narc started in with his bullshit. I did my best to ignore it, celebrating Galentine’s Day with Awana instead, but the narc was persistent. When I failed to respond to his offers of love, he got mad. And then I got mad. I quit being civil and started telling him what I really thought of him. I had to explain to people why I wasn’t broken up over the ending of my relationship because everyone thought I was nuts for not being miserable to be spending V-day alone.

Ha! You know, I can’t recall a happy V-day. A box of chocolates (cheap, stale chocolates, usually) and/or an impersonal card do not a happy day make. It’s like the men in my life felt obligated to get these things for me but there was never any sincerity behind their actions. It was so obvious to me at the time, but I ignored my gut and thanked them. What a chump I was!

I could go on and on about how if two people love each other, every day should be romantic and loving, but fuck that shit. Being single rocks! I have everything I need with none of the obligations and pleasing another person to contend with. It’s all about ME now and I’m still loving it.

I don’t miss having someone to cuddle on this “most romantic” of days because I know there won’t be any obligatory sex on the agenda either.

I don’t miss being chastised for my lack of romance or abysmal gift-giving skills.

I sure don’t miss being told “it would take eight of you to keep me entertained.”

Fuck all that shit. I’m sorry for you singletons out there who are unhappy about your relationship state – I can’t relate, but I do want everyone to be happy 🙂

On this day, go forth and love the one you’re with, even if it’s just you…

And quit being influenced by the media hype over this stupid day – it’s all bullshit designed to make you feel Less Than whatever the current trend is.

 

One Year Ago Part Four

A year ago I was posting about how I hate curry (one of the top posts on this here blog, strangely enough) and pissed off at the narc’s efforts to pry every penny he could out of my bleeding corpse.

I was fighting the narc’s indoctrination, the voice in my head that dictated my every move based on what would or would not please the narc on any given day. He was making preparations to go work on his boat, leaving me alone for a few days and I had planned my escape. I was tied in knots, anxious not about my escape plan, but about how he would react and the possible consequences.

That Thursday, Awana and I traveled over to The Valley and found my home and had her hauled back to The Coast where I set about making modifications and moving in. The narc was due to be back some time between Sunday and Wednesday, but I knew it would be sooner because he was always hoping to catch me doing something he didn’t approve of, and that was pretty much everything.

Everything that could be fit into Awana’s van and my car was moved out of the narc’s house on January 20, 2013 and of course the narc had to try to make a scene when he came home to find my Fuck You note, but I handled it okay and was able to spend my first night in my very own space with not too much stress. I didn’t die or have a heart attack or have to explain a nasty public scene or any of the other horrible things the narc had trained me to worry about.

So much has happened in the past year, and all of it has been good. Or at least a Learning Experience 🙂 No catastrophes, I’m not living under a bridge or starving or in some kind of danger as the narc told me would happen if I ever didn’t have him to “carry” me through life. I have a good job, a warm place to live where everything is just the way I like it, I eat what I want, watch TV, spin & knit, go to the dog park, anything I want to do, any time I want to do it. I can talk on the phone with anyone I choose to with no interrogation afterwards. If a friend invites me out to do something I can go with no worries about narc consequences. I can visit friends and family at any time, even staying overnight with no worries that I’ll have to pay a price when I get home. No one is forcing me to eat or do anything that makes me unhappy. No one is laying guilt trips on me or beating me with words or denying me basic comforts like heat in the Winter. No one is beating my dog or threatening me.

I woke up today (again) with an indescribable feeling of unreality. As I looked around the dim room (it was not even 0630, damn you, Revy!) it felt like a dream and I was afraid I would soon wake and find myself back in that narc-made hell. But, no! This is my life now and it is fabulous! Can’t say that enough!

There was a Big Storm on Saturday, making travel unpleasant so Awana came over on Sunday to stay for a couple of nights. We went thrift shopping, out to eat, watched part of Dexter Season 6 (LOVE me some Dexter!) cooked, and generally amused ourselves doing what we like to do. And you know what? I can do it again today, or tomorrow, or next week. It might not sound like much to those of you have never lived in the shadow of a narc or similarly disordered person, but just being able to cook a meal of my choosing at a time of my choosing, letting the dog lick up the drips, listening to my choice of program on the radio, it’s all still a bit unreal and feels like an amazing luxury.

On Monday I deleted the old email account and changed every name and login for every account I’ve accumulated over the past 10+ years. My old ID is gone from the internetz.

Life is good!

 

New Year, First Post

“They” say that on New Year’s Day you should do all of the things that you want to do more of in the New Year. If you don’t have time for all that, a symbolic effort will do. Today I:

• Got up way too early
• Watched Breaking Bad while drinking tea
• Finished a quilt
• Went thrifting
• Went shopping for office stuff
• Visited the dog park with Sabu
• Took a nap

Wow. So far it’s not looking good, is it? Until I sat down at the computer to tally up my Grand Accomplishments for the day it felt like I’d run a marathon. Sigh. Well, there are 5.5 hours left of January 1. I wonder if I can:

• Spin something
• Knit something
• Fix the water pump leak
• Do some drafting for The Other Boss
• Finish writing a sock knitting pattern
• Fiddle
• Vacuum
• Do laundry

A couple of those would have been handled in the course of a usual Wednesday night but when I drove over to the yarn shop it was all closed up. Guess there’s no Knit Night tonight. Sigh. Too bad because that would also have covered “spend more time in the studio working on Stuff.”

Better get at it!

 

Taking back breakfast

As you all know, the narc had food issues. There were a million rules about food, its proper preparation, the consequences of wasting it, my inability to use “proper language” when describing it, his inability to remember what I like to eat and of course the many arguments about tortillas. Sigh.

Breakfast was no different. He insisted on eating oatmeal every morning. Every.Morning. With coffee, made just the way he likes it. Okie-dokie! I was on board for oatmeal because I really like it spread a bite at a time on toast. Yum! Oh, but wait! The first time he saw me eating it that way (we won’t talk about the horrors of eating bread!) he sneered at me and said that I was “eating like a ten-year-old!” and that was no way for an adult to eat oatmeal. I continued to eat toast with my oatmeal, but never again did I eat it “like a ten-year-old.” Just another small erosion of my Self.

The narc eats a lot of oatmeal and is also a cheapskate, so he insisted that I buy a 25-pound bag of Old Fashioned Oats (no other kind was acceptable, not even for a bit of variety) from the local bulk food store. This bag was stored in a musty cupboard behind my chair where it sat at the kitchen table.

::Just a word about the seating arrangement – there was just enough room for me to get into my chair, and not an inch more. You see, moving the table so I could actually sit comfortably was impractical, because that would mean that HE wouldn’t have three feet clear to maneuver around his chair (when it was pulled out for sitting) on the other side of the table, and it would interfere with the “traffic pattern,” never-mind that it was almost always just the two of us and if we were sitting down to a meal neither one of us was walking through the “traffic pattern.”::

So, in order to re-fill the re-purposed cat food containers (gack!) that lived in the cupboard by the stove (this particular duty never fell to him, rest assured) I had to move out my chair, move out the extra chair, get down on my knees, open the cupboard door as far as it would go, and squeeze the oatmeal bag out through the opening. I would fill the containers and reverse the process, being sure to put the chairs back exactly so, per instructions.

Because of the awkwardness of the cupboard, it was rarely opened and was used to store canned goods. As a result, it smelled musty and was damp after a rain storm. Since the oats had to be stored in the original bag (buying more plastic to clutter up our lives was against The Rules, even if it would mean fresher food. Using glass jars that I already owned was out of the question, too) you can imagine what the oatmeal tasted like at the bottom of the bag. And no, throwing it out was not an option because wasting food was akin to cold-blooded murder in the narc’s book.

Whew! Bad memories make my gut churn.

I hope y’all don’t think I’m crazy for this long prelude to say that yesterday I had oatmeal for breakfast. At 11:00. With tea and toast. While sitting on the couch, letting the dog do her best Begging Tricks. I used a ton of butter on the toast and I covered each delicious bite with oatmeal (with sugar added – another no-no in Narcland!) It was so delicious that I had the exact same meal (another no-no in Narcland!) for dinner. It was just as good, English muffin bread for the second round.

I smiled as I ate my fresh-from-the-round-box quick oats covered in real milk (“Milk is for babies! You’re going to die from drinking all that milk!”) with sugar drizzled on top. Sheesh! I’m sitting at work getting hungry all over again 🙂

Another small victory. Can “normal” be far behind?

 

One Year Ago Part Three

Last December was a very bad month for me. The narc was amping up his abuses because I finally had a handle on his tactics, a look behind his mask, and he was not happy at all.

November ended with a fight about moving some plywood, of all things. He got mad that I didn’t jump up from my desk where I was doing paying work to help him before he needed to ask. The argument went round and round until I just didn’t care any more and shut down, refusing to respond to him at all. He pretended to “make an effort to change” which I knew was just another tactic to bring me back in line.

Because of my wonderful readers and lots of internet research, by December I knew I was dealing with a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and that there was no cure, no hope, and no reason to say with the asshole. I started to turn his conversational beatings around on him, refusing to play his games. I admit I found it thrilling, like poking the tiger in the cage at the zoo. Now that I was no longer emotionally invested in the relationship, I didn’t care if I made him mad and said what I really felt with no regard to what he might think. It was Sofia Uncensored. He hated it. I reveled in his hate. His anger and switching tactics only fueled my own anger and determination to get the hell out.

When he could no longer move me to tears or talk me into submission he changed his approach: suddenly he was helpless, unable to keep his finances in order, broke, sick, depressed, unable to remember a host of little things from one day to the next. He became a toddler again and he expected me to pick up his slack and take care of all his needs.

I had money in my bank account and a plan for the next time he left town, but he seemed determined to not leave me alone. I tried my best to keep from rocking the boat while standing up for myself – not an easy task. I didn’t want him to kick me out before I was ready to go, but I had a backup plan just in case.

And then Christmas was upon us, and he did his usual gift thing. I bought him clothes, careful to choose exactly what he said he wanted. He took back some clothes that he had given to me and whined constantly about how he felt like he’d been taken advantage of all these years by “everyone,” including me and that was why he wasn’t where he wanted to be in his life and why he could not be happy and treat me well. He was laying the guilt on thick at every opportunity.

I was angry. So very angry. I was very impatiently waiting for him to go out of town again so I could put my escape plan into motion. I was keeping many secrets from him and I felt justified in doing so because of his lies and manipulations. I no longer loved him. I did hate him with a red hot fiery passion and I knew that hatred was the primary force keeping my head above water, paddling slowly forward, looking for an opening to get away.

In less than a month I would be free. That last month was the hardest to endure, but I made it and have been narc free for almost a year!

Thank you all for traveling along with me on this journey.

 

As Time Goes By

Shortly after I left the narc, Awana and I took many walks along the beach with Sabu. On these walks I occasionally picked up rocks that lay strewn on the beach, particularly if they had holes in them. They were mostly flat and the idea that the ocean had pounded them smooth was very appealing. They lived in the back of my car until I moved over to The Valley, when I finally set them out into the edge of the flowerbed.

Some of the rocks have remained mostly whole, while many of them have broken into little bits all on their own. When I picked them up, I had no idea that they weren’t really rocks at all, but were instead made up of sand and smaller pebbles cemented by the sea into their smooth, pleasing shapes.

As I pass by them every day I think of how they are like my relationship with the narc – smooth and pleasing on the outside, but ready to fracture and fall apart at any moment. As they break into smaller and smaller pieces and get washed away by the rain, so, too, does his hold over me. Soon both will be but a memory.

 

A messy desk…

means what? I can’t recall, but it’s good, right? Last night was a busy evening, catching up on all the Cleaning Chores that were neglected while the Soap Marathon 2013 was in full swing (did manage to get the laundry done, though) and it was clear that the desk needed some prompt attention:

No apologies. It was a disaster. I was just too tired to get to it over the weekend. There was some moisture in the cupboards above the desk, so a few things were pulled out and set atop the growing pile while the cupboards dried out. There was a cat in the picture seconds before this shot, but I missed him.

Here it is, ready for NaNo:

I even dusted! I need to find some sort of fancy boxes with lids to hold all the small stuff because that darned cat thinks anything that’s not nailed down is a toy. God only knows what he’s stashed behind the couch!

The more I use this desk, the less I like it. What I really want to do is build another, much like the desk the narc built for me years ago that I left behind (it would not have fit through the door) out of old hollow core doors. Very light weight, but very strong, and pretty, too. It’s on the Project List…

 

Whirlwind

There’s a lot going on around here and my mind feels like a tornado every waking moment, which unfortunately is the majority of the time as Lil’ Shithead has been moving up Wake Up time for the past week. It was three days of up at 0530, followed by one day at 0500 and this AM he decided that he needed to get me up at 0230. Yup. That’s 2:30 AM!!! WTF he was thinking, I just don’t know.

I’ve decided that he’s just not a cat at all; he’s a yappy, spoiled dog in a cat suit. He cries like a little dog; he insists that he will do what he wants like a little dog; he wants to go OUT at all hours of the night, nevermind that he’s never been out; he constantly re-arranges everything on every flat surface. Gaaaahhhhhh!!!

Now, I have had kittens before. Quite a few, in fact, but I have never had one be quite so difficult and active. If he sleeps, it’s only because his batteries are suddenly depleted and he just falls over and passes out for an hour or so. Then he’s right back up and raging for hours.

That’s not what I intended to blog about, but he’s inciting the dog to riot at this very moment and I’m getting ready to put him in his crate out on the patio to see how he likes that! If he wakes me up again in the wee hours, you can bet he’ll be getting his wish of being outside!

I got the word at knitting last night that the knit shop owner’s offer was accepted on the 1910 Craftsman house down the street and she will be moving shop. The really fabulous news is that there are four rooms upstairs that she will be renting out as studio space and I managed to procure one for myself!

This means that I will finally have a Room of My Own where I can set up my sewing machines and cutting table and work on the projects that have been on hold for years! I will be able to start the projects that have been percolating in my brain without anyone criticizing my materials, color choices, sloppiness, speed or anything else! I will finally be able to open the totes and air out the smell of the narc’s house from my fabric stash.

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me! The rooms have great lighting (they were used for offices so they have nice, bright lighting) and each room has one or two windows and a walk-in closet. The basement will be used for washing fleece and dyeing and having classes while the main floor will house the yarn shop proper.

Sigh. It’s all coming together. Now I better get moving on updating my patterns and website. And do some laundry…

Anyone participating in NaNoWriMo this year?

 

Love Advice

Yesterday one of my IRL FB friends posted this picture to my wall along with the accompanying blurb –

Les and Helen were born on the same day. When they met as teenagers they eloped because their parents disapproved. After 75 years of wedded bliss they died just one day apart, aged 94…..’She didn’t want to see him die, and he didn’t want to live without her.’….How many Likes for this true love between this couple?♥♥!!!!

Sigh. I can’t tell you how annoyed I am every time I see another one of these stupid memes. So few of my IRL “friends” post anything of any real value on their FB pages. WTF are they doing all day? Now, I’m just as guilty of not posting much, or sharing clever, witty or inspirational things that other people write, but you will never see a “like this or you are a horrible person” memes on my wall.

Anyway. She accompanied this meme with the following:

An example of some stories that are happy ones. Being with the wrong person is defiantly hell, but finding the right one makes life worth living. I hope you do not give up on love.

Before you go, “Aw, that’s sweet! She must be so happy in her married life that she just can’t bear to see you all alone and miserable…” the person who sent this to me is someone I’ve written about here before. A little recap: P’s husband is an abusive asshole and probably a narcissist. He behaves like a child and corrects her behavior in public. The little time that I spent in company with the two of them was very uncomfortable as he was watching her every move and she had her jaw clenched and her eyes downcast.

So what is the message she’s trying to send to me? Does she think that she has anything to offer about relationships when her own is an oozing pile of crap? Really?

My reply:

I knew from a young age that I did not want to go through life two-by-two. I saw, even then, the inequalities and understood the trap that is marriage. Three times I gave in to pressure to join my life to a man who promised to be my Prince Charming. Three times I did everything I could think of to do (including looking the other way when they committed Deal Breakers – you really have no idea what I have put up with) to make our life what he had promised it could be. Three times I have had to uproot myself (twice my son, too) and make a new life because those men were assholes who only wanted to take everything they could from me, to use me until I was empty. I don’t believe in love at first sight. I don’t believe in happily ever after. I am content, very happy in fact, to live with my dog and my cat alone with only our needs to take care of. There’s just too damn much Happy, Happy, Happy ’round here to find room for a man! Kudos to you if you’ve found your Bliss – I don’t intend to discount your own happiness – but your path is not MY path and never will be.

In her defense, she really doesn’t know what I went through with the narc* so she can’t have a full understanding of why I might not be eager to jump back on the Couples Bandwagon. She did back off, though:

Happy your way is definitely what counts. I can fall into the desire to see people happy as I define it no matter how often I learn that it’s not valid. I have good intent thou. I hope the happy good life stays.

She’s not happy. Everything about her screams at how unhappy she is. What does she hope to accomplish with her bullshit wishes for me?

I just don’t understand some people…

* Taking El Guapo’s position and no longer capitalizing 🙂