Paranoid-BedBug
New Here
I haven't kept a diary in decades. When I kept one as a child, my mother would find it, read it, rip out pages, and punish me for what I said.
She was an incredibly skilled pathological liar. And she told such vivid stories.
I didn't realize her process until I was an adult.
She would always summarize movies she saw with such detail and expressions, bringing the story alive.
In childhood, my parents didn't allow us access to a TV, internet, or many movies. They were miserly, but also liked to control our exposure to outside influences.
One day, I came to my mother's house on a break from college, and she gave a lovely narration of a movie that I had seen. Usually, I didn't see the movies she did.
I noticed that she changed some important and many subtle details slightly differently, which, in culmination, changed the entire impact of the story.
I pointed our the errors afterwards, and she denied it, claiming I was being negative and insulting her by not believing her version.
So I found a copy of the script and the commentary by director and screenplay writer.
When she was in a guys mood, I cheerfully pointed out the parts she got wrong, framing it as interesting, because I really did prefer her version as compared to the actual movie.
She said "I just like to tell the story the way I want it to be."
And that's when it hit me that she rewrote history the same way.
She'd change minor details when relaying information to fit the narrative that felt best to her at that moment.
She was a very skilled triangulator, sometimes adding details and intentions behind what other people did or said to manipulate the person she was lying to.
She lied about everything, constantly, minutely, and artistically.
She'd leave out details that didn't serve her and never gave all the truth.
The impact of this gaslighting was profound.
If I listened to her retell an experience I'd had, she'd change minor details so that I'd feel confused. I'd doubt my perceptions, and she never admitted to changing the truth when it resulted in consequences.
It's impacted my ability to memorize facts, to recall history, and to distrust the honesty of others.
My father did similar things, but he was so blatant about it that I wasn't confused as to the real facts, I was confused as to why he was lying about them.
It's easier for me to remember incidents that happened to others, as what was done to me has been largely suppressed.
My father asked my brother to do a lot of yard work. But my father's credibility was shot with his kids because he'd refuse to honor agreements and claim we lied just to extort him.
So my brother refused unless father signed a contract with very specific terms. My brother agreed to a hundred hours of labor in exchange for a specific Lego set worth a hundred dollars in the 90s.
Our father agreed, wrote it up. My brother asked us to witness them both signing the contract and a few of us even signed in attestation.
Our pre-teen brother performed those 100 hours in 120 degree heat (We lived in the muid WA desert). Much of the labor was pointless and served no function.
When our brother reported his work for inspection, our father nitpicked and even sabotaged the work, like drifting the car in the raked gravel driveway and then claiming our brother didn't do the work.
He pulled all this cruel behavior in front of the rest of us siblings.
Our brother persisted and finished the work overnight, again, so it was all done at the same time and our father couldn't ruin it before review time.
Our father agreed it looked good. Then he acted like that was all to say.
Our brother asked when he'd get the Lego set, and our father blinked, playing ignorant, like he didn't remember the agreement.
We brought out the contract.
And our father scoffed, and claimed that wasn't his signature.
It took weeks of sobbing and red-faced screaming by my sister and I, who are the only older siblings, and even our mother. Finally, our father gave him the set on his birthday, claiming it was his birthday present to our brother.
Because our father's behavior was so audacious, and our mother sometimes stood up to him for us, confiding in us how he'd pull the same behavior on her, too, I didn't realize that our mother, too, pathologically lied to us.
Much of the abuse we suffered by both parents was far worse from our father, in terms of extremes, so I didn't even register that our mother did the same types of manipulation and abuse, but usually under the mask of creativity and sympathy.
It has been easier to grasp the truth that our father was abusive than it was to even recognize that our mother was. She made us feel ashamed, foolish, and crazy because she lied so subtly; artfully, and always with a jolly dismissive attitude.
But her lies repressed a lot of memories of severe CSA, because she painted herself as the victim, her children as perverts, and loaded all the shame on us. My memory became so confused by the repetitive gaslighting and rewriting of history, along with the faux pity at my 'fantasizing abuse,' that I shoved it all down, intentionally trying to forget my entire childhood.
But in my mid 30s, it started coming back.
I started flashing back events instead of just emotions. It was so confusing and horrifying.
I've been no-contact with all but my loving sister, but the damage done to my nervous system is crippling. I'm barely functioning.
I'm entirely preoccupied with trying to recover from the symptoms of what we experienced.
I've made very little progress on processing the childhood trauma.
I need professional help, but I keep picking therapists who trigger my fear of being gaslit, invalidated, and labeled as 'crazy.'
I'm not crazy. I'm profoundly traumatized, and I didn't deserve those experiences from my parents and the professionals along the way who failed to help me, to stop them, or to punish the abusers.
I deserve peace in my life. I'm suffering so much. I'm so exhausted and sick, depressed and miserable.
I doubt I'll ever find relief.
I hope I never totally give up on myself or my sister.
She was an incredibly skilled pathological liar. And she told such vivid stories.
I didn't realize her process until I was an adult.
She would always summarize movies she saw with such detail and expressions, bringing the story alive.
In childhood, my parents didn't allow us access to a TV, internet, or many movies. They were miserly, but also liked to control our exposure to outside influences.
One day, I came to my mother's house on a break from college, and she gave a lovely narration of a movie that I had seen. Usually, I didn't see the movies she did.
I noticed that she changed some important and many subtle details slightly differently, which, in culmination, changed the entire impact of the story.
I pointed our the errors afterwards, and she denied it, claiming I was being negative and insulting her by not believing her version.
So I found a copy of the script and the commentary by director and screenplay writer.
When she was in a guys mood, I cheerfully pointed out the parts she got wrong, framing it as interesting, because I really did prefer her version as compared to the actual movie.
She said "I just like to tell the story the way I want it to be."
And that's when it hit me that she rewrote history the same way.
She'd change minor details when relaying information to fit the narrative that felt best to her at that moment.
She was a very skilled triangulator, sometimes adding details and intentions behind what other people did or said to manipulate the person she was lying to.
She lied about everything, constantly, minutely, and artistically.
She'd leave out details that didn't serve her and never gave all the truth.
The impact of this gaslighting was profound.
If I listened to her retell an experience I'd had, she'd change minor details so that I'd feel confused. I'd doubt my perceptions, and she never admitted to changing the truth when it resulted in consequences.
It's impacted my ability to memorize facts, to recall history, and to distrust the honesty of others.
My father did similar things, but he was so blatant about it that I wasn't confused as to the real facts, I was confused as to why he was lying about them.
It's easier for me to remember incidents that happened to others, as what was done to me has been largely suppressed.
My father asked my brother to do a lot of yard work. But my father's credibility was shot with his kids because he'd refuse to honor agreements and claim we lied just to extort him.
So my brother refused unless father signed a contract with very specific terms. My brother agreed to a hundred hours of labor in exchange for a specific Lego set worth a hundred dollars in the 90s.
Our father agreed, wrote it up. My brother asked us to witness them both signing the contract and a few of us even signed in attestation.
Our pre-teen brother performed those 100 hours in 120 degree heat (We lived in the muid WA desert). Much of the labor was pointless and served no function.
When our brother reported his work for inspection, our father nitpicked and even sabotaged the work, like drifting the car in the raked gravel driveway and then claiming our brother didn't do the work.
He pulled all this cruel behavior in front of the rest of us siblings.
Our brother persisted and finished the work overnight, again, so it was all done at the same time and our father couldn't ruin it before review time.
Our father agreed it looked good. Then he acted like that was all to say.
Our brother asked when he'd get the Lego set, and our father blinked, playing ignorant, like he didn't remember the agreement.
We brought out the contract.
And our father scoffed, and claimed that wasn't his signature.
It took weeks of sobbing and red-faced screaming by my sister and I, who are the only older siblings, and even our mother. Finally, our father gave him the set on his birthday, claiming it was his birthday present to our brother.
Because our father's behavior was so audacious, and our mother sometimes stood up to him for us, confiding in us how he'd pull the same behavior on her, too, I didn't realize that our mother, too, pathologically lied to us.
Much of the abuse we suffered by both parents was far worse from our father, in terms of extremes, so I didn't even register that our mother did the same types of manipulation and abuse, but usually under the mask of creativity and sympathy.
It has been easier to grasp the truth that our father was abusive than it was to even recognize that our mother was. She made us feel ashamed, foolish, and crazy because she lied so subtly; artfully, and always with a jolly dismissive attitude.
But her lies repressed a lot of memories of severe CSA, because she painted herself as the victim, her children as perverts, and loaded all the shame on us. My memory became so confused by the repetitive gaslighting and rewriting of history, along with the faux pity at my 'fantasizing abuse,' that I shoved it all down, intentionally trying to forget my entire childhood.
But in my mid 30s, it started coming back.
I started flashing back events instead of just emotions. It was so confusing and horrifying.
I've been no-contact with all but my loving sister, but the damage done to my nervous system is crippling. I'm barely functioning.
I'm entirely preoccupied with trying to recover from the symptoms of what we experienced.
I've made very little progress on processing the childhood trauma.
I need professional help, but I keep picking therapists who trigger my fear of being gaslit, invalidated, and labeled as 'crazy.'
I'm not crazy. I'm profoundly traumatized, and I didn't deserve those experiences from my parents and the professionals along the way who failed to help me, to stop them, or to punish the abusers.
I deserve peace in my life. I'm suffering so much. I'm so exhausted and sick, depressed and miserable.
I doubt I'll ever find relief.
I hope I never totally give up on myself or my sister.
