I’ve Learned Well.

This should be a good thing. To me, it is.

Except, for the world’s narcissistic population, it isn’t. Because it means, first, I’ve healed completely, and second, I can spot a narcissist like a well trained K9 drug cop on the Mexican – American border. This is very bad news for the narcissistic population of the world. This is why:

*I’m not quiet. I’m a NY Italian and this means I’m (by Midwestern standards) loud. It also means I know how to fight and know how to hit and where. I’m a 3rd generation first born boxer with a built in mean right hook.

*I speak. Clearly and often. To anyone who will listen. I have tact, but not a filter. And I’m not even remotely PC.

*I’m a certified teacher. As such, I’m not confined to teaching the 3 R’s. Teachers teach and teachers empower. This includes teaching and empowering the lesser educated about the narcissist. And I’ll do it every day for free.

*I know where the narcissist is weak. If the narcissist happens to be a male (they aren’t always), I can certify that the weakest point on any man’s body – especially the narc’s – is not in his pants. It’s his pride and confidence level. Interestingly enough, women are stronger here, especially after we’re healed. One good hit to the ego, where it hurts the most, when unexpected, it’s just as lethal as a Glock. Especially in public and exposing that one thing the narcissist is most sensitive about. I’ve done it – sent the narcissist physically to his knees, then to suicide watch and therapy, and then to a 30 mile radius because he kept trying to get me back and trying to RAPE me. ZERO exaggerating. After 15 years of abuse and after I left him.

*I have a well – itemized fuck budget. This is a list of things I care about. AKA….things I give a fuck about. It is a literal list. It’s quite freeing. Societal expectations, what the narcissist expects, and generally being nice are not on my fuck budget – or are at the very least, pocket change at best, on a good day. I’m independent of the narcissist, not an extension of one.

….So there it is. Having survived a narcissist mother and a narcissist ex husband, the latter because of the former, I’ve learned well. For me, this is a very good thing. The two people I’ve mentioned are still upset that I wriggled free of them. Except, that’s what survivors do.

Yep

I’m….

…. pissed off and this is become my modus operandi, interrupted by random moments of other emotional states. Except “pissed off” has become my default status even while asleep. I’m an optimistic misandryst who’s (A) unapologetic about it and (B) not holding my breath about it. I expect to be proven right but have left a slight margin of error in my reaction time which is less than 1%. I’m an unrepentant b**** who defers the blame to the 10 million Romanian war pigs and several dozen rolling balls of butcher knives, both of which have left burn marks on my psyche so deep that they have rendered me with an interior that resembles a burn victim. I’m the victim of robbery rape neglect incest shame abuse and cruelty that’s made me what I am today. I am now my own rolling ball of butcher knives. I have become my own rendition of a Romanian war pig. I frequently act outwardly the way that I look inwardly. I’m a raging b**** and I don’t give a flying f***.

To Those Who…..

….are the parents or abusers of people with Borderline Personality Disorder: it is your fault. May the curse you placed on those now grown children return to you two fold and with interest.

…have ever put your hands on a woman, in front of her children, and caused her to run for her life from you when you committed before God to love and protect her: may your penis fall at your feet and may you be exposed publicly.

In a Perfect World, and By and Large…

Men are the thing deep in the ground that keeps us from flying off into space. Men are the things that keep massive trees upright and in place. Men are the load bearing walls, the wrought iron gate in front, the ADT sign in the yard.

Women are the first defiant flowers of Spring, pushing their way up through the snow hailing the end of winter’s death and spring’s life and a perennial reminder that life always finds a way. Women are the thing that keeps the moon in the earth’s orbit, and the earth in the sun’s. Women are the wild honeysuckle scent carried on the wind. Women are the thing that transforms a “residence” into a “home sweet home”.

Men are the thing that gave Aslan his mane. Men are the thing that caused Gutenberg to make the first printing press, placing a Bible within reach of the masses in absolute defiance of  Catholic dogma. Men are the thing that causes honeybees to ignore broad sweeping scientific evidence that the honeybee is incapable of flight and FLY ANYWAY.

Women are the thing that made primates drop from trees, learn to walk upright develop speech and discover fire. Women are the thing that forces the Phoenix to emerge from the fire’s ashes. Women are the thing that makes butterflies oblivious to the beauty of their own wings.

I’m supposed to “like” this photo on a certain social media site. Except I didn’t.  Because it’s the story of my life. All I’ve ever done is survive. Made it through a whole series of gawd awful days and some days that were just days. And also survived a string of days   where I just hung on because I thought surely things would redeem themselves  once those days were over. Except they didn’t. The series of days just waited a minute, changed shape, and started again, leaving me to just hang on some more.
So I really don’t take any hope from this photo. Because I know its true. The series of days will start again soon and I’ll have to hang on some more and survive even more. I’m tired of surviving. I want to live. I want to be happy. I want to live the kind of life I see others living, where they have friends, hope, options, and a kind of life where they don’t have to live hand to mouth. Where when they’re sad because one more person in a line of two or three million has made the sad or taken advantage or dumped on them because they’re handy, strong and can take it because surviving has made the strong, they have someone to turn to to talk to instead of updating their blog.
Frankly, I don’t want to survive anymore.

English among Amish

I’m not English, as it pertains to being British. “English” is the Amish way to whitewash all non Amish with one broad stroke.
I used to think the Amish were pure. Then I moved to an Amish (infested) occupied community. I have witnessed an Amish man asking an English man to “flip his wife the finger” with aforementioned wife 5 feet away. I am unable to go a week without seeing an Amish person load up cases (plural cases) of Michelob into a Yoder Toter’s car. And that’s something else…if the Amish are too pure to own their own car, for fear of going to hell, why does this line of thinking not also apply to hiring a English to drive them in their car??? (English who serve as hired drivers for the Amish = ‘Yoder Toter’. Many Amish have the Yoder surname). The Amish are unwilling to risk their own soul by driving but are willing to risk the soul of another??? Awesome.
So, no. The Amish are categorically not pure. At all.

A Dick Ain’t One

I got 99 problems and a dick ain’t one. That’s one thing to add to my list of positives. Especially because of the reasons behind it.
My grandmother said something about men that I originally thought was ludicrous. But then, gentle reader, I grew up. I experienced that little known phenomenon where the only -the only – benefit of experiencing the sphincter end of life like being abused and later homeless in NY is that it afforded me insight and knowledge that the unabused don’t have. Grandmother said that men are spoiled and feel entitled. All of them, and that it has a great deal to do with the fact that A) they’re told as boys that they’re more capable than girls and B) when they become men, culture dictates that they’re dominant and heads of relationships, the household, and the office. So A bleeds into B and alacazam.
Except a by-product of all of this is that men, many times, are unable to differentiate between ‘I am (these good male things, fill in the blank) and so will use them for my family’ and ‘But I waaaaannnt it!!!!’, referring to whatever they want. Spoiled boys become spoiled men.Spoiled men want women to cater to them as their mommies did. Spoiled boys are called brats and spoiled men are called assholes. Or a dick, if you prefer.
And I refuse to tolerate a spoiled man. I want a real man and am willing to be single rather than deal with a tall brat. I’m content with that. And happy with it too. Because I am not a resource for a man and nor am I a fuck hole. I am a worthy woman of quality and want a man who’s the same.

Putting this into the universe…

So when I was about fourteen, I happened upon a Mike Warnke CD, entitled “Out of My Mind”. Warnke was a Christian comic and, like myself, defiant as you want. As a PK (pastor’s kid) I had a certain obligation to play the aforementioned CD for my parents. During the playing, Warnke references Houston, Texas. He stops at this point, and in true Seinfeld style, points out that Believers in Houston pronounce their city “__ouston” because Christians don’t pronounce their “H”‘s. (“__allelujah,” “_umble”, etc.) It’s not true, of course, but my pastor (step)father slaps his bald forehead and my hippy mother throws her head back.

“It happened AGAIN!!!!!” (Step)dad lamented…
Apparently, every time my parents observed something they deemed “original”, a more public figure would always present the idea as if they realized it first. Commenting on it to each other, however quietly, released it into the universe so that someone entirely unconnected to them would  catch it, observe it, and comment on it before they had the chance. The Houston/__ouston distinction among Believers was just the latest example. Their theory was akin to the butterfly affect.

So now I’ll bite….take their theory on face value and hope to the great spaghetti monster in the sky that there’s some truth in my parents theory.

The butterfly affect I want to initiate is as follows:
Someone needs to bottle baby laughter. No red blooded, oxygen dependent occupant of the great blue and green marble that we all live upon can resist  feeling happy when they observe an infant’s laughter. Once bottled, it needs to be prescribed to all sufferers of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Addiction encouraged, and the pharmaceutical companies can keep their damn hands out of it. The prescription should be handed out for free, thrown from windows in small bottles, given away with every new checking account, found attached to garments near the washing instructions, hidden inside of new shoes and appliances like those “do not eat” and “not for human consumption” packages, and attached to all new mattresses. Babies give out their laughter for free with reckless abandon, brightening the day of anyone who’s within ear shot as if it’s their life mission, and maybe it is just that. Its 100% safe and 2000% effective, not to mention how it lasts for hours, even days.
And there are people dying for want of baby laughter. Dying because they have no hope, no one to care about them, no purpose they can see, even though they’ve been hanging on and searching for a purpose for years. And their internal pain is searing, reminiscent of their very souls being lit on fire except the fire never goes out. The pain feels like the napalm girl, who is just fine now and has had reconstructive surgery and DID find joy.
And I’d like to point out that the people who need bottled baby laughter were, in fact, babies once. They contributed laughter then, but can’t now. Maybe this is good enough reason to hook them up.

There…..it’s in the universe. Maybe it’ll take.

The Giving Tree

There’s a book by Shell Silverstein called “The Giving Tree”. Its about a tree that loves a little boy so much, that whenever he comes to the tree and asks for something, the tree provides it. His entire life, he wants something, he asks, the tree gives it, because the tree loves him. Finally, the boy is an old man, and comes to the tree, which is by now a stump, so the old man sits on the stump that was the tree.

This is what parenting is like…..being a giving tree.

But what would have happened if the tree had said ” No”?. Sometimes, the most loving thing a (parent) tree can say is “no”.

No,  you may not continue forever to go potty in your pants.
No, you may not insert that fork into that light socket.
No, you may not run with scissors.
No, you may not skip school just because you don’t want to go.
No, you may not wear that blouse that shows too much cleavage at age 13.
No, you may not drink and drive. Even when you’re an adult and no longer living here.
No, you may not disregard your inability to swim, leap into the ocean, where there are sharks and stingrays, and where the deep end is 20 miles deep.

Except, (mothers) parents who don’t say no, and don’t continually give until they are a stump, so they can be sat upon, are considered selfish.

The funny part is that we raise our (daughters) children to believe that they can do and be anything. But do we really mean it? Or do we only mean “you can do and be anything you want until you become a parent, and then you must stop being and doing what you want, and instead be hacked down in the prime of your life and become a STUMP.”

Personally, I don’t want to be a stump.