I'm not good with people. Socially, I'm rubbish and have been for as long as I remember. Remember me saying I felt normal until my parents divorced and my male parent began his campaign of alienation?
After that and ever since, I have never felt normal. My sister and I once discussed this as teenagers. We didn't feel right. We felt unwhole. We felt a lack of something but didn't know what to call it. Once my male parent had begun the alienation and thus once my mother had begun to pretend it wasn't happening, I stopped feeling safe.
Apparently, I also stopped developing socially in some areas too - because of the alienation. The divorce itself may also have been a culprit but I know children of divorce who are doing okay. I'm not going to say that the actual divorce of my parents and end of my previous way of life did not affect me, because it did. However, what damaged me was their behaviour afterwards, and in particular the war waged against my mother by the male parent.
I was about six years old when the first comments were made, maybe six and a half. We returned to my country when I was seven. The first comment I remember him making, which I think I've mentioned before, is the one he made in the middle of the night. Somehow he was in bed with me. I have no idea if it was his bed or mine. I know that my mother was sleeping on the sofa and he used to wake me up every night and take me into his bed. I'm fairly certain my sister was present on this occasion too. He said, crying, "Mummy doesn't love us anymore", the sicko.
According to my counsellor today, this could be the point at which part of me is emotionally stuck and undeveloped. She asked me to think about that point of my life, which didn't thrill me a great deal, but the more I thought about it and verbalized the event, the more I realised that those words shattered me and my world view. I had never known that it was possible for anyone to stop loving anyone else, let alone my parent, my beloved mother, to stop loving me. But he insisted and repeated it. Every action that she carried out that was in opposition to what he wanted "proved" him right. "If she loved you, she wouldn't do that", from mild tellings-off to bringing us back to our home country (click here for why I don't give any identifying details about myself in this blog). He's still the same dictator now: if you don't want what he wants, you're an idiot, you're selfish, you're stupid, you're thick. I think a pretty traumatized kid lay there in that bed after she heard that her mother didn't love her anymore. I told my Aunt, my mother's sister, about this a couple of years ago. She said it was lies and that she "could kill him for saying that, the bastard". "But it was true," I said, surprised. No it effing wasn't, came the outraged reply. "She used to sit and cuddle you for hours, not doing house work, just cuddling and playing with you! She adored you!" Their brother responded similarly: "She loved you, she just didn't understand you."
I guess she didn't. I rejected her - but she never spoke to me about all this. I don't know if she was stoic or just hated talking about her marriage, but she kept her mouth shut. Under ordinary circumstances that would be the right thing to do: to keep the kids out of grown up problems. But this wasn't an ordinary circumstance and, as I've said before, her silence was a killer.
I don't know what to think about him having me in bed with him. Could be innocent. I can't remember anything happening. No idea. I don't think I was afraid to cuddle him until puberty. I remember he wouldn't let me sleep in his bed when I was eleven (pre puberty).
So, anyway, thanks to my insane male parent, I am a bit emotionally stunted which makes me feel terrific, especially as I also feel stupid at the moment too. Today I feel inadequate and thick. I'm terrible in social groups and have never really had friends. I'm always the same: I try so hard to please everyone, to make everyone like me. I'm smiley and helpful (too helpful) and over eager and desperate for friends. I have felt stupid my whole life because he has treated me that way so I try to make people see that I'm not stupid. I didn't realise that I just come across as a big head, as arrogant, and as if I'm trying to put people down. People then clam up and don't want to talk to me, so I talk even more. People end up hating me and avoiding me. It's HORRENDOUS to be a social misfit, someone everyone avoids. And I know it's happening so it makes me even more desperate to be liked. A vicious circle. Now I avoid people. I do like being at home but I am afraid to go out socially. I haven't been out in years with another adult. People make me nervous because I know what's coming: that I'll babble and suck up and make myself look like an idiot, all the while thinking "Shut up! You're doing it again!".
My counsellor sees a six year old in all that, who has been told that their mother doesn't love them or want them. Remember me saying I spent my whole life trying to be her little girl? It all seems to come from there, from that moment (thirty one years ago!!!). That terrible, selfish, egocentric man has made me this social inadequate and made me think I was so unlovable that even my mother didn't want me - but that he stood by me, despite me "having my ways".
This is really, really painful. I can't stress that enough. It feels like she's right though because my whole body is reacting to it. It's awful and I want to scream my head off BUT if I know what the problem is, I can take steps to fix it. She recommends "parenting" myself, which sounds completely ridiculous but as my mother is not here to do it, I'll give it a go. If you know how to approach this, please jump in because it just makes me feel weird. She wants me to parent myself like I parented my offspring at the same age. Ooookay. Can't hurt, can it?
Just knowing the name of the problem is an excellent start because you have to remember I've lived for the past 3 decades thinking that there is something horribly wrong with me, something medical. I've even looked for symptoms of Asperger's, to the point that I wanted to go for diagnostic tests. I don't have Asperger's. I'm emotionally broken in one place - but it's fixable and I will fix it. I already feel better just knowing that I can change the problem - it's not autism and therefor permanent. It's damage and damage can be repaired.
If you're an alienator, re-read this post. Save your kids from this. My throat hurts from crying.
Monday, 8 October 2007
Saturday, 6 October 2007
Alienators are never wrong
Continuing from the theme of my last post, what's hardest for me to understand is, after all the long list of dirty, nasty things he did and said to me, how the hell did I succumb to the brainwashing?
I'm an intelligent person. I'm genuinely bright, but that man savaged my self-confidence and always managed to blame it on other people. Again, I'm not saying my mum was a perfect parent; she was far from it. Sometimes she was even cruel, but most of the time she did her best. He made me doubt my own mind. When I felt uncomfortable about him insisting on me going swimming during puberty or deliberately starting intimate and inappropriate conversations, I'd say so - but somehow, he was never wrong. I was. He was never wrong, never at fault, never to blame, and always had a million excuses as to why it's your own fault that you feel uncomfortable because you misread him drawing pictures of your breasts/got embarrassed by him using the word "erection" during a game of scrabble with two teenagers/kept ornaments of men with large penises around the house.
When you're consistently told something - in this case that I was imagining his bad behaviour - it sticks eventually. I feel so stupid for falling for this. I can forgive myself for believing in my dad as most kids do. I can forgive myself for not knowing he is a nutter when I was a teenager. What I can't fathom is how I allowed myself to believe in him as an adult?! I'm currently on my second university degree so I'm not uneducated. My offspring fares excellently - thriving, in fact. No criminal convictions for anyone in my house. I'm a good person. I contribute. I have responsibilites and respect from my friends. And yet, I fell for brainwashing until I was 35. I feel utterly ridiculous.
Unless I'm wrong, I've answered my own question. Brainwashing overrides your confidence in your own opinions. When someone you (secretly fear and) look up to and think is your friend builds you a world view from six years old and no one challenges it, when that person insists that they are always right and know better because they are older and male and no one corrects him, it imprints on your mind, despite the evidence of your own eyes and ears, despite your own best judgement, despite your instincts.
He abused me in many ways but always talked himself out of it and blamed ME. When you're growing up, you're trying to make sense of the world. One of my parents barely spoke to me - my mum. The other one - the male - spoke all the time and even now freely admits he may have talked too much. He bragged that he treated us like grown ups when our mother treated us like kids - hence us watching "Salem's Lot" before we were in our teens (a film so frightening I won't watch it now) - and that this meant he had more love and respect for us. I believed this too. I trusted him and he knew it so he fed my brain with rubbish and adult rubbish at that. Once he knew I trusted him, he could say anything he liked.
I think that the moment he knew that was the day they abandoned me when I was maybe seven. They argued and my mum picked up my then baby sister. She ran from the house in such a panic that her shoes came off in the front garden. He ran after her, jumping over a fence to chase her. And there was I, left in the house by myself. THAT moment is when my mental outlook, my whole perception of life changed. At that moment, I realised I was not important to either of them for myself, or at least not to him, anyway. I don't know what was going through her head. Maybe she didn't think he would chase her and that he'd stay in the house with me? I don't know. I have, until I typed the preceding sentence, consistently believed that being left behind by both of them means that both of them did not love me. I don't know. I will have to think about this. Anyway, I think the moment he realised he could use me against her was shortly after they ran off. I ran up the road after them, wondering where the hell my parents had gone and why they had left me. I found them at a house futher down. My mother was sat in an armchair crying with my sister on her lap. I was so angry that she had left me - and taken my sister - that when she reached out to me for a cuddle, I backed away.
THAT was the moment for him. He knew then that he could (ab) use me against her. No thought of the two poor little girls involved in adult arguing. No thought for the seven year old they'd just ran off and left behind. Just: "I can turn her against her mother as revenge."
Sick!
I'm an intelligent person. I'm genuinely bright, but that man savaged my self-confidence and always managed to blame it on other people. Again, I'm not saying my mum was a perfect parent; she was far from it. Sometimes she was even cruel, but most of the time she did her best. He made me doubt my own mind. When I felt uncomfortable about him insisting on me going swimming during puberty or deliberately starting intimate and inappropriate conversations, I'd say so - but somehow, he was never wrong. I was. He was never wrong, never at fault, never to blame, and always had a million excuses as to why it's your own fault that you feel uncomfortable because you misread him drawing pictures of your breasts/got embarrassed by him using the word "erection" during a game of scrabble with two teenagers/kept ornaments of men with large penises around the house.
When you're consistently told something - in this case that I was imagining his bad behaviour - it sticks eventually. I feel so stupid for falling for this. I can forgive myself for believing in my dad as most kids do. I can forgive myself for not knowing he is a nutter when I was a teenager. What I can't fathom is how I allowed myself to believe in him as an adult?! I'm currently on my second university degree so I'm not uneducated. My offspring fares excellently - thriving, in fact. No criminal convictions for anyone in my house. I'm a good person. I contribute. I have responsibilites and respect from my friends. And yet, I fell for brainwashing until I was 35. I feel utterly ridiculous.
Unless I'm wrong, I've answered my own question. Brainwashing overrides your confidence in your own opinions. When someone you (secretly fear and) look up to and think is your friend builds you a world view from six years old and no one challenges it, when that person insists that they are always right and know better because they are older and male and no one corrects him, it imprints on your mind, despite the evidence of your own eyes and ears, despite your own best judgement, despite your instincts.
He abused me in many ways but always talked himself out of it and blamed ME. When you're growing up, you're trying to make sense of the world. One of my parents barely spoke to me - my mum. The other one - the male - spoke all the time and even now freely admits he may have talked too much. He bragged that he treated us like grown ups when our mother treated us like kids - hence us watching "Salem's Lot" before we were in our teens (a film so frightening I won't watch it now) - and that this meant he had more love and respect for us. I believed this too. I trusted him and he knew it so he fed my brain with rubbish and adult rubbish at that. Once he knew I trusted him, he could say anything he liked.
I think that the moment he knew that was the day they abandoned me when I was maybe seven. They argued and my mum picked up my then baby sister. She ran from the house in such a panic that her shoes came off in the front garden. He ran after her, jumping over a fence to chase her. And there was I, left in the house by myself. THAT moment is when my mental outlook, my whole perception of life changed. At that moment, I realised I was not important to either of them for myself, or at least not to him, anyway. I don't know what was going through her head. Maybe she didn't think he would chase her and that he'd stay in the house with me? I don't know. I have, until I typed the preceding sentence, consistently believed that being left behind by both of them means that both of them did not love me. I don't know. I will have to think about this. Anyway, I think the moment he realised he could use me against her was shortly after they ran off. I ran up the road after them, wondering where the hell my parents had gone and why they had left me. I found them at a house futher down. My mother was sat in an armchair crying with my sister on her lap. I was so angry that she had left me - and taken my sister - that when she reached out to me for a cuddle, I backed away.
THAT was the moment for him. He knew then that he could (ab) use me against her. No thought of the two poor little girls involved in adult arguing. No thought for the seven year old they'd just ran off and left behind. Just: "I can turn her against her mother as revenge."
Sick!
Friday, 5 October 2007
Egocentricity
My male parent is a chauvanist. He thinks women should never work when they have children at home. When my daughter was very young, I worked part time out of necessity. He criticized me regularly for it, said I was leaving my daughter. He also put a fake baby voice on when I would leave for work, saying, "Mummy, don't leave me again!". Git. My mum even once said he hates women.
He treated me like a boy. Once he'd decided I was a tomboy, that was it. His mind wouldn't change. He decided what I was and has never changed his mind. Even I believed it. I'm not sure I am a tomboy. He tried it with my daughter and went through a stage of buying her nothing but boy's things, until I protested. His partner bought her girls' things alongside his choices.
When I hit puberty, he became a pervert. He leered at me, would "accidentally" rub against me, against my breast, ran his fingers up and down my back to see if I was wearing a bra. He ogled my sister and I horrifically when we breastfed. He did this to me once. The second time I had to yell at him to leave the room. He actually argued with me about it, demanding to watch. He made disgusting sexual jokes and innuendoes. He drew pictures of me and added breasts (my daughter remembers this). I blocked a bedroom door once to stop him coming in but he pushed the block out of the way - I was 21. He kissed my neck like a boyfriend would (it was after this incident that my mother told me she had been warned, when I was a baby, never to leave me alone with him ... but she did, didn't she?? Visits, long stays ...). He looked at the back of my trousers to make sure my bottom wasn't visible through the material and made comments about "around the front".
He never thought he was wrong. My sister and I complained often and long to our mother about his teasing. To hear "You're getting big" and "You're growing up" all the time was mortifying. It made us feel so uncomfortable AND spied on and observed. I understand parents say these things. It's hard to convey the tone of voice he'd say these sentences or to describe the expression on his face, but I must stress that these were not the normal words of a parent amazed at a child's growth. His expression was DIRTY when he said these things. He was perving on our adolescence, telling us boys would be queuing up for it with us. Mum spoke to him once and asked him to stop. He told us afterwards that he had no intention of stopping because he wasn't doing anything wrong, that we were the problem - he therefore didn't care about how we felt, going back to my posts about Objectification and him not seeing me as a person. I remember a similar incident when my sister was about to get married. She was SO afraid of him going on about her growing up (which he had never stopped, just as he said) that she asked me to speak to him. I did, wondering what the point was because he never listens to anyone. He, of course, said "I will say it if I want to". I said, "Please don't, you'll spoil her day." This became an argument. He said he had the right. He felt entitled to say whatever he wanted, no matter what the cost or how much he hurt her. We both repeated our cases and he only behaved himself after the intervention, I believe, of his partner.
He has an excuse for everything. This used to drive me absolutely mad. He is impossible to talk to, sometimes. He's someone you would avoid talking to because he'll give you "a lecture with diagrams", someone once said, when you've only asked him for the time.
He treated me like a boy. Once he'd decided I was a tomboy, that was it. His mind wouldn't change. He decided what I was and has never changed his mind. Even I believed it. I'm not sure I am a tomboy. He tried it with my daughter and went through a stage of buying her nothing but boy's things, until I protested. His partner bought her girls' things alongside his choices.
When I hit puberty, he became a pervert. He leered at me, would "accidentally" rub against me, against my breast, ran his fingers up and down my back to see if I was wearing a bra. He ogled my sister and I horrifically when we breastfed. He did this to me once. The second time I had to yell at him to leave the room. He actually argued with me about it, demanding to watch. He made disgusting sexual jokes and innuendoes. He drew pictures of me and added breasts (my daughter remembers this). I blocked a bedroom door once to stop him coming in but he pushed the block out of the way - I was 21. He kissed my neck like a boyfriend would (it was after this incident that my mother told me she had been warned, when I was a baby, never to leave me alone with him ... but she did, didn't she?? Visits, long stays ...). He looked at the back of my trousers to make sure my bottom wasn't visible through the material and made comments about "around the front".
He never thought he was wrong. My sister and I complained often and long to our mother about his teasing. To hear "You're getting big" and "You're growing up" all the time was mortifying. It made us feel so uncomfortable AND spied on and observed. I understand parents say these things. It's hard to convey the tone of voice he'd say these sentences or to describe the expression on his face, but I must stress that these were not the normal words of a parent amazed at a child's growth. His expression was DIRTY when he said these things. He was perving on our adolescence, telling us boys would be queuing up for it with us. Mum spoke to him once and asked him to stop. He told us afterwards that he had no intention of stopping because he wasn't doing anything wrong, that we were the problem - he therefore didn't care about how we felt, going back to my posts about Objectification and him not seeing me as a person. I remember a similar incident when my sister was about to get married. She was SO afraid of him going on about her growing up (which he had never stopped, just as he said) that she asked me to speak to him. I did, wondering what the point was because he never listens to anyone. He, of course, said "I will say it if I want to". I said, "Please don't, you'll spoil her day." This became an argument. He said he had the right. He felt entitled to say whatever he wanted, no matter what the cost or how much he hurt her. We both repeated our cases and he only behaved himself after the intervention, I believe, of his partner.
He has an excuse for everything. This used to drive me absolutely mad. He is impossible to talk to, sometimes. He's someone you would avoid talking to because he'll give you "a lecture with diagrams", someone once said, when you've only asked him for the time.
About me
There's not much I want to say about myself at the moment. I'm female and 37. I lived with my mother, the target. Male parent was the alienator. Siblings.
I think that'll do for now. I don't want to say too much for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, fear. If my male parent ever found this blog and worked out my identity, he'd be after me in a flash. He'd encase my feet in concrete and chuck me off a bridge. Though I may no longer see him as the tragic hero, he still portrays this front to his own family (though why don't they ever, ever, ever invite him over?!) . I am afraid of him. I have only dreamed about him once that I know of and during that dream I angrily told him to go eff himself. In life, I'm constantly worried he'll turn up where I live. I wouldn't be surprised if he has spied on us already. Sometimes I see men who resemble him and I panic. I feel like I want to run away. My daughter is 15 and I don't want him perving over her. I don't want him anywhere near her.
Secondly, I don't want anything to detract from its purpose. I don't want anyone to go away thinking that my words don't count because I'm somehow not like them or their situation is similar. Parental Alienation is what it is, no matter the gender of the alienator or the target or the children. Gender is irrelevant. Fathers do it. Mothers do it. All sorts of people do it. All sorts of kids get hurt. Simple.
YOUR child will be or is like me if they are in this situation, no matter who you are or what gender you are or where you live or how much you earn or your skin colour or country of origina etcetera, etcetera. The differences between YOU and ME, right here, right now, are meaningless.
I'm speaking for YOUR CHILDREN.
I think that'll do for now. I don't want to say too much for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, fear. If my male parent ever found this blog and worked out my identity, he'd be after me in a flash. He'd encase my feet in concrete and chuck me off a bridge. Though I may no longer see him as the tragic hero, he still portrays this front to his own family (though why don't they ever, ever, ever invite him over?!) . I am afraid of him. I have only dreamed about him once that I know of and during that dream I angrily told him to go eff himself. In life, I'm constantly worried he'll turn up where I live. I wouldn't be surprised if he has spied on us already. Sometimes I see men who resemble him and I panic. I feel like I want to run away. My daughter is 15 and I don't want him perving over her. I don't want him anywhere near her.
Secondly, I don't want anything to detract from its purpose. I don't want anyone to go away thinking that my words don't count because I'm somehow not like them or their situation is similar. Parental Alienation is what it is, no matter the gender of the alienator or the target or the children. Gender is irrelevant. Fathers do it. Mothers do it. All sorts of people do it. All sorts of kids get hurt. Simple.
YOUR child will be or is like me if they are in this situation, no matter who you are or what gender you are or where you live or how much you earn or your skin colour or country of origina etcetera, etcetera. The differences between YOU and ME, right here, right now, are meaningless.
I'm speaking for YOUR CHILDREN.
Comments. Questions.
I'm getting panicky about continuing the previous train of thought so I'm going to hold off for a few days. Deborah's lovely comment here sums up the purpose of this blog: cleansing.
If you want to ask me anything, fire away. My email address is on my profile, plus you can leave comments.
I appreciate all the comments so much, as well as the increasing number of visitors this blog is receiving and the referring links which provide half the traffic (I'm considering reciprocating. Leave it with me). As I said at the start, my posts are about catharsis but also about warning potential/current parental alienators off carrying out their attacks on the other parent. I know that someone reading this may splutter indignantly that they have every reason to make their children hate their other parent or "see them for what they are", but believe me, you're hurting your children (and yourself because one day they'll suss you out, I guarantee), not helping them. Deep down you know what you are doing. Please stop.
I have spent much of my life trying to find out what is wrong with me. Turns out it's nothing that a good dose of counselling and catharsis can't heal. I remember sitting at a train station in my country writing in my diary when I was eighteen. I wrote: "Will someone please help me?". I did not know what I meant. It took nineteen years to find out. All through my childhood and adolescence, I knew something was wrong somewhere but I couldn't put my finger on it. The mental signals I received from each of my parents was wrong. I believed my male parent to be the greatest person on Earth - and yet he abandoned me three times, called my mother a slut, my aunt a slag, my grandmother and a second aunt lunatics, and also felt me up. My mother cared for me and tried to be my friend, but smacked me when she lost her temper from frustration and tiredness (and a second husband who cheated on her and admitted to never having been faithful to any woman, and treated her like a doormat).
I thought the problems were all my fault: that I was the screw up. When one parent does their best to care for you, and the other one is acidic and merciless in their attack of that parent, causing you to doubt your own mind, your own memories and experience of that parent, what the hell are you supposed to do? I felt like I was out of my mind sometimes.
But I never was.
A counsellor told me the following: you're not unstable, you were around unstable people.
NOW I know she was right, but I waited thirty years for those words. I thought I was evil and worthless and useless and ugly because of the words/lack of words of my parents. As I said previously, the alienator used every single situation he could find to denigrate my mother. She almost never said a word about him - so I believed him, not her. He said she was wicked, she never said she was not, so therefore my child's mind believed him.
He thought it was hilarious.
If you want to ask me anything, fire away. My email address is on my profile, plus you can leave comments.
I appreciate all the comments so much, as well as the increasing number of visitors this blog is receiving and the referring links which provide half the traffic (I'm considering reciprocating. Leave it with me). As I said at the start, my posts are about catharsis but also about warning potential/current parental alienators off carrying out their attacks on the other parent. I know that someone reading this may splutter indignantly that they have every reason to make their children hate their other parent or "see them for what they are", but believe me, you're hurting your children (and yourself because one day they'll suss you out, I guarantee), not helping them. Deep down you know what you are doing. Please stop.
I have spent much of my life trying to find out what is wrong with me. Turns out it's nothing that a good dose of counselling and catharsis can't heal. I remember sitting at a train station in my country writing in my diary when I was eighteen. I wrote: "Will someone please help me?". I did not know what I meant. It took nineteen years to find out. All through my childhood and adolescence, I knew something was wrong somewhere but I couldn't put my finger on it. The mental signals I received from each of my parents was wrong. I believed my male parent to be the greatest person on Earth - and yet he abandoned me three times, called my mother a slut, my aunt a slag, my grandmother and a second aunt lunatics, and also felt me up. My mother cared for me and tried to be my friend, but smacked me when she lost her temper from frustration and tiredness (and a second husband who cheated on her and admitted to never having been faithful to any woman, and treated her like a doormat).
I thought the problems were all my fault: that I was the screw up. When one parent does their best to care for you, and the other one is acidic and merciless in their attack of that parent, causing you to doubt your own mind, your own memories and experience of that parent, what the hell are you supposed to do? I felt like I was out of my mind sometimes.
But I never was.
A counsellor told me the following: you're not unstable, you were around unstable people.
NOW I know she was right, but I waited thirty years for those words. I thought I was evil and worthless and useless and ugly because of the words/lack of words of my parents. As I said previously, the alienator used every single situation he could find to denigrate my mother. She almost never said a word about him - so I believed him, not her. He said she was wicked, she never said she was not, so therefore my child's mind believed him.
He thought it was hilarious.
Monday, 1 October 2007
Don't get me wrong ...
I lived with my mum and she was NOT perfect. She wasn't a brilliant parent either, but one of the issues I'm trying to understand is why she wasn't a great parent. She could be a real bully, when she wanted. She was also into corporal punishment BIG TIME, although this seemed to lessen with my younger brothers. Perhaps she realised what I realised when I was seven: hitting kids does not punish them or teach them ANYTHING. It just makes them angry and if they get angry enough, they will hate you. End of story.
Mum put a roof over my head, cooked my meals, clothed me, took us on holidays, helped me hugely with my education - but did not hug me.
I'm trying to understand, timid person that she was by nature, how much of the anger she displayed towards me came as a result of what the alienator did. I don't remember EVER having any anger towards her before my parents split up, nor even immediately after they split up. At first, though I was confused by all the changes, I didn't blame anyone. I wasn't angry at anyone.
My relationship with my mother changed when my male parent came back into our lives during the first year after their divorce (there were legitimate reasons for his absence of a few months: we had been living abroad and he needed to sell the house etc). All of a sudden, the floor dropped out from under me.
I trusted her. I loved her. I was quite happy living with her and her parents while she tried to get our lives sorted out. I remember this period of time. It was weird and changing but I took it in my stride. I was with family who loved me. I lived with Grandma! How great is that?! I loved it!
And then he came back to our country and the nastiness began. My memories of that period have emotions and underlying feelings attached to them, and whenever I think of his return to our country and to our lives, I feel uncomfortable and negative and sad. I was sent off for weekends with this man who I hardly knew anymore. I kept telling him my sister's characteristics as if he was a stranger. "She always does that", I'd say. I could barely rememeber him, and yet he'd been gone no more than a year. I feel odd right now, typing about this, because, to be honest, I've rarely analyzed this period of my life before. I think there's some anger there, in me, for her letting us go off with a complete stranger, four hours away in the car, to a town we did not know and the home of an uncle we had no memories of. I feel pain and sadness. A knot in my stomach. We had no control of anything! Shunted off with this guy who, surely, if I loved him or had any good memories of him, I would not have forgotten in the first place?! Just to show how long it was that we'd been away from him, he kept everything in our home and would not let us or our mother have a single thing from it, other than the clothes we had returned to the country wearing/carrying in our suitcases. He would not even let us have our toys - he held them hostage at his home. As such, by the time we saw him again, and by the time our mother had been legally coerced into letting us visit him, I had forgotten about all my toys. I just realised this recently. I have seen photos of myself as a small child with teddy bears that I must have loved - but by the time I was reunited with them, I'd forgotten them. That's so sad. I had no bond with any possessions I had grown up with.
He kept my toys from me to punish our mother, to force her to go back to him. Even things she'd owned all her life - he never gave them back to her. He considered everything from her previous life and their life together his property and kept (still keeps) everything.
Unrelated though this has been on my mind for a while: I spent my whole life trying to be mummy's little girl again, like I was before the alienation started, but always failed because he told me she had never loved me in the first place. Everything I ever did was to gain her approval and make her love me, because I completely believed that she didn't - because he told me that. This is not the end of this subject but I'm feeling a huge, distressing lump in my throat right now I'll stop for today.
Mum put a roof over my head, cooked my meals, clothed me, took us on holidays, helped me hugely with my education - but did not hug me.
I'm trying to understand, timid person that she was by nature, how much of the anger she displayed towards me came as a result of what the alienator did. I don't remember EVER having any anger towards her before my parents split up, nor even immediately after they split up. At first, though I was confused by all the changes, I didn't blame anyone. I wasn't angry at anyone.
My relationship with my mother changed when my male parent came back into our lives during the first year after their divorce (there were legitimate reasons for his absence of a few months: we had been living abroad and he needed to sell the house etc). All of a sudden, the floor dropped out from under me.
I trusted her. I loved her. I was quite happy living with her and her parents while she tried to get our lives sorted out. I remember this period of time. It was weird and changing but I took it in my stride. I was with family who loved me. I lived with Grandma! How great is that?! I loved it!
And then he came back to our country and the nastiness began. My memories of that period have emotions and underlying feelings attached to them, and whenever I think of his return to our country and to our lives, I feel uncomfortable and negative and sad. I was sent off for weekends with this man who I hardly knew anymore. I kept telling him my sister's characteristics as if he was a stranger. "She always does that", I'd say. I could barely rememeber him, and yet he'd been gone no more than a year. I feel odd right now, typing about this, because, to be honest, I've rarely analyzed this period of my life before. I think there's some anger there, in me, for her letting us go off with a complete stranger, four hours away in the car, to a town we did not know and the home of an uncle we had no memories of. I feel pain and sadness. A knot in my stomach. We had no control of anything! Shunted off with this guy who, surely, if I loved him or had any good memories of him, I would not have forgotten in the first place?! Just to show how long it was that we'd been away from him, he kept everything in our home and would not let us or our mother have a single thing from it, other than the clothes we had returned to the country wearing/carrying in our suitcases. He would not even let us have our toys - he held them hostage at his home. As such, by the time we saw him again, and by the time our mother had been legally coerced into letting us visit him, I had forgotten about all my toys. I just realised this recently. I have seen photos of myself as a small child with teddy bears that I must have loved - but by the time I was reunited with them, I'd forgotten them. That's so sad. I had no bond with any possessions I had grown up with.
He kept my toys from me to punish our mother, to force her to go back to him. Even things she'd owned all her life - he never gave them back to her. He considered everything from her previous life and their life together his property and kept (still keeps) everything.
Unrelated though this has been on my mind for a while: I spent my whole life trying to be mummy's little girl again, like I was before the alienation started, but always failed because he told me she had never loved me in the first place. Everything I ever did was to gain her approval and make her love me, because I completely believed that she didn't - because he told me that. This is not the end of this subject but I'm feeling a huge, distressing lump in my throat right now I'll stop for today.
Definitions: which parent is which
The alienator, the male parent, is consistently referred to as either "male parent". He's not my "dad". Never was. Never will be. I've never had a "dad" because no real dad would do what he did. I did not live with this person. My sister and I talked to him on the phone once a week at least and saw him every third weekend, usually.
The other parent, the one to whom the campaign of alienation was targeted, my mother, is "target parent" or "mother" or even "mum". I lived with this parent.
The other parent, the one to whom the campaign of alienation was targeted, my mother, is "target parent" or "mother" or even "mum". I lived with this parent.
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