Are You Effing Insane?

People inquire: “Aren’t you afraid people will think you’re angry, impossible, and insane?” And the truth is many people have thought that about me, and for years I was those things from having not learned how to navigate such trouble waters.  My family relied on me reacting poorly to abuse, with insanity, so they could justify being abusive.  Even if I am, does that make it ok to destroy my co-parenting relationship and to alienate my children?  I do not think so.  Now that I do not scream, swear, or threaten in response to being bullied, they are left only with their own behavior to contemplate…if they were capable or willing.  I stopped offering the gift of distraction with my outrageous reactions, years ago.  I learned to say No.  Period. It was the beginning of the end.

So if I share what is happening right now the specific actions taken which disrupt my family that does not make me worry at all.   What worries me, would be to have a pain of this magnitude and to not use it for something beneficial, like illuminating my experience for the others who are still frightened, alone, in the dark spinning hopelessly and caught up in the axle of this madness that I have come to see as narcissism and untreated addiction in my most significant relationships (before recovery and divorce!!). I already am judged as too intense and too emotional to anyone who needs to see me that way.  And maybe I am deranged with the anger and the grief over the family that I was born to and what passes for acceptable.  I think that would make sense and might be a call for compassion, not judgment and bigger bombs.  Whatev.  I am just trynuh live my life…not getting up on anyone’s porch or children.  Keeping it tight.

I see no reason to not illuminate recent events.   Being annihilated by my sister and my mother in writing and deed hurts– and how my pain looks, is less of a concern than my treatment of others.   Recovery teaches me that it is not my business to manage the opinions of others.    I manage my words and my behavior.  And with the triangulation with my ex, baiting emails, and stonewalling or whatever this madness is called, I have managed my behavior like a near champ.  My only engagement has been limited to requesting a better way, a third way.  

Being silent doesn’t make me look less crazy or insane, just offers cover for what is to be seen and shared.  It is not my job to be less visible.  It is my job to seek truth and to speak truth and to protect my children from this needless and painful complexity.  Having that imposed on them is tough to live with and the urge to enlighten them people is damn strong.  Still, I do not.  The only people whose opinions are worthy of consideration, are my people: who genuinely love me in deed, respect me, and count on me to be spiritually striving and wholly present.

When my kids grow up and they read my blog or my nieces if they ever decide to, they will recall dinners arranged without me and with my ex-husband and his sister they will remember sitting at the table with my ex-husband and his father and my children AND they know that those things are not right, under any circumstances.  That sort of betrayal and alienation is what it is.

No matter the justifications offered, that is unwholesome behavior by someone who is not kind-hearted.  If sharing that reflects badly on me to those in judgment of me, so be it.  I’m going to share and share and share until I no longer feel the need.  Trying to make sense of it and trying to endure, change, and work with it made me batshit crazy.  I will own that.  I was not a good abuse getter.  Fail!

My boys will not forget hearing me leave messages for my mother to please stop what she’s doing for the turmoil it is causing for OUR family.   They will remember me crying and begging father to please back off from my sister so that my family can heal and we can work together in peace– and him laughing.   I am sharing in ways that are healthy and factually indisputable, as it is in overt action and in writing….documented for the miniseries screen play that will surely follow…ahahaha.

This will make unhealthy people uncomfortable and I think that’s good news and I will continue until I no longer feel the need.  Fuck shame and silence.  When my mother insisted I get over it, after telling me it never happened, and then that it was my fault.  I said to her “I was raised to have sex and share meals with people who treat me this way.”  But I now know better and can no longer abide.  Meals and sex are not for that.  All she could say was “Maggie, I wish you well”.  That was our last perhaps final exchange.   Am I crazy? Am I emotional?  Does sharing disgrace me?  I am not disgraced by the abuse of others.  I can only focus on how I treat people.  While I may be wildly displeasing to some, I do no harm….unless sharing is harmful.  My story is mine to tell.  If the truth of your actions hurts,  I cannot help that.

Abusing people for displeasing you is sociopathic and narcissistic.  Oh wait, I am not in a position to diagnose…

And in  my continued journey of introspection and recovery, I see it is not reasonable for me to diagnose anyone.  I am not PHD in anything, but I know abuse—from both ends and have no tolerance from myself or others.  I know better.  I do better.  If sharing openly feels like abuse…well, this cannot be helped.  My story is too much for some, that means it is not for them.  Those are not my people.  My people can hear my truth without turning away or trying to fix it.  My people can be trusted to let me feel, think, do, be, and want in only ways that I can.