Thursday, September 25, 2014

Aunt Confused


                                                     
                                                                                     [snippet from photo of Jon Lewenstein]                                    

 This is the same Aunt as Aunt "No Pictures for You!" I have named her Aunt Confused because I believe she was another scapegoat, but one who has remained within the fog life long with incredible damage done. She is another person my mother destroyed my relationship with. Yes, there are parallels with my story of Aunt Scapegoat!

I grew up with a woman that whispered in my ear while at a family meal at Denny's and told me,

"The mafia's coming after me"

as she popped multiple blue pills into her mouth.

She would get drunk and high and one could tell. Is this something a 9 year old should have dealt with?


I dealt with that and other crazy stuff as a child, the two times she lived with us.

This was my father's sister. She was the product of the 1950s, New Jersey culture, and of an alcoholic father, enabling mother, and narcissistic brother who became my father who was around 5 years younger. She had and has serious problems from earlier drug addiction to possible multiple personality disorder. What can I tell you but to say at times it seemed she "switched"? There definitely is some kind of personality disorder in the mix there. I have never been diagnosed with one in case anyone is interested, and have seen enough therapists in my life time.

At this point you may be asking, "How could fivehundredpoundpeep have such disturbed aunts on both sides of her family?" How can someone's family be this crazy on both sides?" But it was. Recently I watched a video forget where, where the presenter said, that narcissists will seek out other narcissists. Water will find it's own level. "Romance" and connection blossomed between two dark souls that slithered out of dark families.

Narcissists do drive people to insanity. There is a special sort of soul murder at the hands of sociopaths and narcissists. I am not sure sometimes how I myself even survived. Sometimes I think Aspergers gave me some distance with an analytical mind surveying the insanity from above, knowing the people I was surrounded by were not normal. Spiritually I sought out God to rescue me from insanity too.

If you are in a family full of cold and cruel individuals, you will also have the ones you see who have cracked up. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger they say but many people are destroyed in family systems like these. You see the human emotional casualties strew around like chopped and tossed firewood. Aunt Scapegoat and Aunt Confused are definitely among their number.

 There had to be incredible abuse back there somewhere for her. When talking to her even in recent months and years, she would seem lucid and then would segue her way into talking about how the mafia was after her, or she was being watched or how all her neighbors were her enemies and trying to steal her husband. Her third husband is now deceased and she lives with her daughter, but the odd talk still would pop up from time to time.

I was doing some family research, and founds this old gossipy neighborhood newspaper that covered
my father's neighborhood. They actually reported on his birthday party at the age of 7. It looks like big money was poured out on this festival especially for the late 1940s and for a lower middle class factory worker who had been disinherited and cut off from his own father who was a multi-millionaire.

  Is it possible to be spoiled into being a narcissist? Was she the scapegoat compared to my academically achieving in math and science father? It makes me wonder. My father was an obvious golden boy, he would go on to earn a full ride 4 year scholarship to a well-known Ivy League university. He would go on to marry a golden daughter who outshined her four living siblings from the farm.

 One thing as I look back at the past, my father put his sister down constantly. He had no respect for her and no love.  I grew up being told Aunt Confused was trash, was "crazy", and even at one point my own father told me, "She's a sociopath!" as he told me she would hide beneath his bed to scare him as a kid. Perhaps that was a dose of projection?

One creepy thing, is both of my parents would express outrage that she dared to leave her abusive husband and leave her children behind. When I became an adult and learned about domestic violence and volunteered at a shelter in my 20s, this lack of mercy over a woman getting beaten by her husband  totally disgusted me. I don't understand why she left her kids behind perhaps it was her lack of money, but grew up being told she was the devil incarnate by both parents!

 She and her husband lived at home with her parents, my father's parents and grandparents. She married young and had two children. Her husband was a factory worker she married right out of high school. He worked at the same factory as my grandfather. He was an alcoholic and beat her to the point of punching and black eyes. What gets me is thinking how could an abusive husband go full froth with her parents there? But he did. Things were so bad for her that she disappeared, leaving her two children home with her grandparents and husband she was fleeing from. My early memories of the grandparents on that side are very vague. [When I was very young, my parents had me and my brother live there too for some months when my sister got sick]



She would disappear. Literally off the map for several years. She paid one visit to my family and then went poof! My father was angry about this too, but when we moved out of state, she reconnected with him to her own detriment. During this time she hitchhiked the roads being homeless.  I suspect did what she had to do to survive. Why didn't her parents help her throw out the abusive husband? That question comes to my mind. But anyhow she disappeared, got divorced from afar and got rides with truckers. She found a nice one to rescue her. She would marry an African-American trucker [her second husband] who had a side line business as a pig farmer his relatives helped with while he was out driving truck. They lived in the wilds of the state my family just moved into. It was a very small town and extremely remote, poor and rural. I never met her husband but sadly he died. She reached out to my father out of desperation being left penniless with his grown kids inheriting just about everything. My father loaded up us kids into the family sedan and my mother too, and we drove up there.

As we drove up to the trailer on a muddy road, my parents argued. My mother expressed her disgust, with the rural area, it's poverty and everything else. There was outrage over her choice of husband as well with mean-spirited racial overtones.  We would drive up to her trailer and knock on the door. I was around 13 years old. I remember her looking shell-shocked, but she gave a wary smile and wave and "Hiya!". I had not seen her for a few years. The trailer was in horrible shape and had become a hoard, with piles of trash piled up. Bottles, piles of dirt,  rags and newspapers laid scattered all over the floor.  Obviously her grief and new loneliness had pushed her over a new edge. I walked gingerly in behind my father and my mother was there too.  My parents yelled at her, "What in the hell happened here?". She didn't respond.



She then laughed and said, "I made youse lunch!, it's in the oven!" My father handed me a oven mitt, and said "Go see what roadkill she made for us!", I went over to the oven, and opened it, and in it was a ROTTEN PIG'S HEAD! It had been cooked, but was at least 3-4 days old and left unattended. It's eyes bugged out, it's ears flopped. Flies poured out of the oven. "It's still good!" my aunt cried. I literally swooned across the table and almost passed out. My father yelled at me, "What in the hell is your problem?" but took a few steps closer and looked into the oven.

My father's response to all this would be getting her committed to a psych ward. That would happen twice in the few years that followed. I remember mutterings about speed induced schizophrenia. She speed loaded diet pills to remain under 200lbs. This definitely wasn't the full picture. I doubt the psychiatrists warned her about her brother or narcissism and sociopathy though.



However one thing that followed is my parents started to use her to abuse me further. They laid on the threats to commit me as well. At the time they scared me saying they would force me into an institution for life. No psychologist or counselor ever was ever sought for me. Why not? I would have told them about all the abuse. Multiple times, they would slap me in the face if I said the "wrong thing" and scream "You're just like Aunt Confused!" with a sneer of disgust.  My Aspergers brought me severe abuse. 

If I had not been a quiet and dutiful student, with a 3.5 grade point average, and had run into even a little bit of trouble as a teen, I could see my parents using something like that to destroy my life. I knew enough to hide my worsening OCD problems and to internalize any risky Aspie meltdowns into withdrawing instead. Constant comparisons reigned, "You are as crazy as Aunt Confused!" "Do you want to end up like Aunt Confused?"

I would hear this for years. Double-tag-team scapegoating. My father was a cruel brother as well as cruel father! The evil mindedness shown towards the mentally ill was something to be disgusted by as well. This has continued to this day, where any mental health problems are seen as an "in" and something to condemn a person by. As someone who has done volunteer work with a depression group and been part of one and worked with young people with emotional challenges earlier in life, their attitudes sicken me. That is narcissists for you! This aunt got no mercy from them either just like Aunt Scapegoat. They had no mercy for my physical problems either.



I would spent a lot of time with Aunt Confused after she was more stabilized when she lived in a trailer in my family's town. I would leave my family's 6 bedroom house near a country club to sit in her trailer in a seedier part of town and watch TV.  In my early to mid-teens, I would prefer her company to that of my cold mother. I knew something was wrong with her, but she didn't yell at me or criticize me every minute. She was nice enough to me at least on the surface, but sadly there was rejection there too, that would come. We would talk about current events and share meals of home-cooked hamburgers with fried onions on top and reading Globes and National Enquirers. My family would mock me for spending so much time with her. Sadly my parents scapegoated her so much, they got my GC sister to reject her and even my brother to express disgust with her "craziness", and to make up rude nicknames for her. Neither of them talk to her or her daughter to this day.



                                                  From Pinterest snippet of photo by Andre' Gamma

My mother did what she could to destroy that relationship. One day when I was around 15 years old, Aunt Confused simply moved away and didn't even say Goodbye to me. I think my mother forced her in some fashion to leave town seeing our growing "closeness". My mother never allowed me to be close to anyone and always did what she could to take people away from me. This devastated me at the time. I would later get some phone contact and write letters but it was never the same. The same thing that happened with Aunt Scapegoat, happened with her.

She would move back to her home state and meet a financially comfortable older man, married him and moved with him to Florida. I would only see her once in person 30 years. She forgot about me, and kept me at arm's length at the behest of my mother and would not visit even when I asked as an adult years later.  One odd thing is she would send my brother and sister $1,000 dollars on their wedding days for presents but ignored my wedding and did not attend. This should have given me a clue.

 Aunt Confused was scared of the narcissists in her life. She never confronted my cruel father but submitted to him.  She had cloying respect for the man who committed her twice and who never stood against her first abusive husband. Where did I come from? I refuse to submit to any narcissist or abuser. I match none of these people. While she called me "her buddy" even to two months ago, she betrayed me as well multiple times when it came to the narcissists.

So she was no loyal ally. She would throw me under the bus in a milli-second if it kept narcissists pleased. I realized this was true too when I was teen but I was desperate for love and digging for what crumbs of it I could find. I did truly love her too but here too was cast aside. She put my parents way above me.

For years, I took the few morsels that came from her and now realize, there really was no relationship anymore and I was fruitlessly trying to recapture the days of my youth where I and her could talk to one another. There was only feigned niceness and more rejection. My narcissist mother is friends with her son's wife who displays the same personality. There is some massive control via that network. Her son controls her money and could be a possible guardian over it so perhaps you can see where I am going with this.

 She decided to bow before the narcissists like Aunt Scapegoat on the other side of the family. I found out I was chopped liver very recently. Like Aunt Denial, I took her crumbs of a kinder tone of voice with me and didn't face the facts of how much she lied to me. I suppose it was easier. I also ignored too long how she took my mother's side on everything and served as her enabler. She also does fear my mother. She lied for my mother as well.

 While she would admit some of the narcissist wrong-doings to me, my mother always came first to her. I never will understand this. The second to last time I spoke with her, she kept telling me that my mother loved me. If that is love what is hate?

She knew of the abuse I faced, and as an adult, I have faced facts, she served as another enabler too, too mentally ill to really lift a finger herself to help. While I worked to form a stronger relationship with her over the last year, there was my mother, always put first even though they live 1,000 miles away. Her grand-daughter would not invite me to her wedding but would invite my mother. I tried to talk to her about all this and how it hurt me but it was a fruitless venture. I went no contact with her recently after she refused the pictures. It does hurt but I see no other choice. She was telling my mother everything I told her. I could not trust her. I asked her not to even let it be known we were still in contact.

It was scary to have that cousin call me and use threatening language. Aunt Confused never tried to fix the relationship or reach out to me. Sadly I think she is glad I am gone. She doesn't care. The relationships my mother have destroyed are endless. My would be family is so sick on both sides. I'd rather be alone then sacrifice integrity and my well-being to any of these people anymore.

Looking at her story, she is just like Aunt Scapegoat. Driven to mental illness, scapegoated to the max, abused, stockholmed, institutionalized, left in extreme poverty for a time-though she was driven enough to find husbands to take her out of it in this case, and submitting to the wicked. Narcissists destroy entire families. 




22 comments:

  1. What I wouldn't give to go back and relive my childhood again, but as an adult. There is so much that didn't register on the crazy meter until I got older. That and I wouldn't have tolerated half of the crap I tolerated from her. The one and only time my mother actually gave me clarity on something, was with my fathers death. She was telling me how she thought he was crazy all along. I said to her Nah! not crazy. Just because he took a gun and went into the yard and......mmmmm .....nevermind. Of course the context around her comment wasn't about what she had done to drive him to that extreme. She had some weird lifetime exemption on accountability for everything she did. In my family my mother set us all off our rockers at one time or another. For good or bad, her effect was to drive us to turn it back on ourselves rather than to act out on outsiders.
    I think my mother badgered me with my fathers death to imply I was just like him or that I was weak like him. She also ginned up some fabricated story about him being a peeping tom. It was from so far back any corroborating witnesses are long dead,
    Pigs Head?!?!
    I have to hand the crazy family crown right over to you. LOL
    I certainly don't feel so alone now that you are revealing more of background.

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    1. I know I feel the same way, Q, if only I knew then what I knew now. I told one friend, I'd lose myself in a big city at the age of 5 and suddenly forget my name, and commit very youthful fugue and amnesia. Perhaps the narcs wouldn't have looked for me too hard.

      if I was to go back in time. I'd take a spin of the foster care roulette system then what I had to deal with. When kids cried over their parents getting divorced, I used to think "I wish!' because one of them at a time was easier then two.

      So sorry your mother hounded you over your father's death, and that is horrible. Yeah sounds like she over-reached to lie about him and try and ruin his reputation. There you can see some of her darkness, the worse thing to say to any young person whose parent faced that. They don't mind speaking ill of the dead if they remember their existence at all.

      LOL thanks for the crazy family crown. I always figured I was living in a Kafka novel and things were insane. With this aunt there are more stories I could tell too. I am glad you do not feel so alone. Hey your blog helped me too, not think I was the only one out there.

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    2. q1605 I did not know your father was a suicide. My father also was a suicide. He was diagnosed as bi-polar in the mid 1970's and my NM always mocked him accused him of faking. I honestly thought she drove him to it. I was only 11 when he died but there was almost 7 years of turmoil in the house because of this.

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    3. It sucks doesn't it? As underwhelming as that sounds, I don't know if anybody else but a suicide survivor can fully get what it is like to be left behind. It's an exclusive club that no one in their right mind would join.

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    4. Anonymous? I was wondering if the long term effect on you was to develop a macabre sense of humor. I will talk to my sister about what he did and we will "laugh" about it and say we understand why he did what he did, He just shot the wrong person.

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    5. The thing is that she goaded him into it I overheard them arguing and she said go ahead I dare you, I don't believe you. And then she played the grieving widow to all the callers to the house crying and moaning.
      I am currently NC with her and my sisters but I do have a weird sense of humor no one gets. I can understand why, but afterwards I became the scapegoat until my early thirties, when I was "kicked" out for refusing to play and be at her beck and call when she wanted me. She is currently on #3 and I heard things are not going well there, so God help that man and his family.

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    6. I am so sorry you went through that Q and it is too bad your father turned all of that grief and what he went through on himself. It does sound like she goaded him into it. I wish he had left and gotten you kids away from her. Sickening. :'( Outside of your one sister do others have contact with her. God help the third man and his family. Sigh.....

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    7. Being a suicide survivor has to be horrible. Can't even imagine. You were probably thinking why did you leave me and then especially WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME ALONE WITH HER?

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    8. Of course I believe my aunt committed suicide so had a bit of taste of the survivorship there. I thought why did she do it? She was only one in that family that seemed to have a heart and mind. It bothers me to this day. She was the only one who would talk about deep things. I wish she was here for me to talk to. Sadly her kids got dragged into the narc fog though one escaped far further. I hate even when I hear about my mother visiting with her children. It makes me sick. I have some contact with them very minimal.

      http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-aunt-that-loved-me.html

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    9. her children are in their mid 30s. my mother is spreading her poison via their family networks. She stayed friends with one's ex wife.

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    10. So sorry your father committed suicide too, Anon. These sociopathic narcs have no feeling. They will use the deaths as show time when their soul-murdering ways led to the person's depression and suicide to begin with. With my aunt above, she had recently divorced and had money problems--surrounded by judgmental narcs I wonder what she was feeling. I know what an adulthood full of poverty felt around those &&&&&& myself.

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    11. Oh one thing too in some of the families, the GC and scapegoat roles can do a switch based on life circumstances and more. I have seen scapegoats elevated to GC [its rare but happens]. If a scapegoat makes good money or does something where there is more narc supply there can be a flip. The opposite has happened too, in your case Q you stopped serving her needs to the level she wanted. I worry about someone still in contact with their narc family where the family seems to be switching them from scapegoat to more insider status. They are still in the "fog".

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  2. I am glad to see you don't pull any punches. People think we exaggerate when we talk about a narcissist destroying our whole family. My mother was so good at divorcing herself from the direct result of her actions it is hard to tie cause and effect. Only in hindsight can I chart the whole trajectory of her destruction. But to an outsider her destruction will always be something easy to explain away.

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    1. Thanks. I know people thought I exaggerated too. They think how can one person have that much control over other? Yes they all divorce themselves from their actions. They would never admit anything. They tell the world they are pure as the driven snow. "I don't control anyone!", my mother would exclaim and call everyone calling her out as "crazy". I had to be outside of the whirlwind to see the patterns, the plays and the deep manipulations. I see through her games now and I could see with the flying monkeys she is in her game night and day.

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  3. Wow. What a story! So interesting and the images are perfect. Too much to say on this one, but the first thing that comes to mind is the narcs have imprisoned this aunt and she is living in fear; one false move and it's back to the psych ward for her. Given Aunt Confused's history she likely knows she is treading on thin ice and has to obey narc rules or get incarcerated - the Mafia will come for her! I wonder if she understands, or even cares, that she's already serving a sentence. Her freedom is illusory. Narcs are powerful when they ban together. They destroy the mental health of their victims and then exploit that vulnerability by lording over their victim with threats to lock them up if they don't fall in line. The cruel irony is the narcs are really the crazy ones.

    Honestly, I would take real prison over a narc prison any day. At least in real prison I would still have some semblance of human Rights and I would still have my dignity. Non ACONs can't comprehend the strength it takes to break free of the evil narc cult with a sense of self intact.

    What a fascinating look at generational narc abuse. Keep going, Peep.

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    1. Her cries about the mafia, may have a nugget of truth. Hey it's New Jersey after all! But mafia yes could be serving as a metaphor for her real prison guards. All those narcs around her. Talking to her was like talking to a prisoner trying not to let the kapo catch on to any secret signals or letters in code. You are exactly right she is imprisoned by narcs, and by the way it's not just from my side of the family but her own too, the daughter-in-law that my mother is friend's with, her son and maybe others I don't even know about in the extended family system. One false move and it's the psych ward for you. She kept telling me she needed permission from her son to go a short trip and this told me of the money control. You are right narcs are powerful when they ban together. She is afraid. I agree with you that they destroy the mental health of their victims and then lord it over them. Some can use commitments to the psych ward [historically even read about abusive husbands and others who did that to people] as "punishment". The narcs are the crazy ones for sure. I believe there was a campaign on my end to drive me "insane" and break me too as a child. They would tell me i was going crazy and that was an insidious part of my abuse. I would put myself in therapy the first day I went away to college almost suspecting they were the ones who were truly nuts.

      Yes at least in real prison, there are some human rights and dignity. You also know what you are dealing with rather then someone playing "sainted mother" to the masses. It does take strength to break away. I look at Aunt Scapegoat and Aunt Confused and yes bother are surrounded by the prison bars. Aunt Confused in my last conversations with her seemed horrified that I had dared to break away. I asked her point blank, "Are you afraid of my mother"? She laughed nervously and changed the subject. Yes these narcs definitely have her in a prison cell and it's been lifelong. When they adopted me, or God help me if I am their biological offspring which I doubt, they didn't know what they were getting into. I am glad I have broken free and will be an old woman that is no longer owned by them. They may have broken my health but they didn't get my mind. Even though I am NC with Aunt Confused and she betrayed me, I do feel sad about where she is at. After years of this stuff ingrained, with the grooming included [severe poverty and abandonment] for all three of us, I feel for her. It is too bad she did not break free. Thanks Lisette.

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  4. That's so crazy. I thought I was reading fiction for a moment. When I was in contact with my mother and the crazy that went on it was unreal to me too. Now being in NC for 3 years its hard to understand why that all happened and all the people that followed her.

    My sister called me some time ago and told me mother had broken her arm and had to be rushed for medical care. Gee, its hard for me to get my own medical needs met, because I'm scared that I might have cancer or something serious so I just avoid it all. So I stopped listening to sister and told her I don't care. Just like that. lol. Made me the cruel one so I would probably not respond that way again. Now the gossip that I'm horrible, but I was angry, mother is always well looked after and no one came to the hospital when I had my babies.

    Yes, its too bad your aunt couldn't break free and she would betray you like that. It looked like a promising relationship and its awful your mother did all that.

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    1. I have even more crazy tales. LOL It is like fiction. LOL can you imagine my life, circus lady fat-two rare conditions, a family like this? and an Aspie on top of it.

      I understand you saying "I don't care". Yeah sadly they could use that. Why should I care when I was so sick last year visited or the times I almost died in the hospital and no one showed up? I know my ability to care is over with. Mine is always well looked after too with everyone at her bid

      Yes she did betray me. All the anger turned on me, instead of the narcs keeping her prisoner. What is scary is she even complained about some of her treatment and I talked to her about narcissism, and told her my mother was one, but it wasn't enough. I ask myself everyday why does my mother always "win" all of them? Nothing I say seems to matter. I then reflected thinking she threw me under the bus all the time too when I was teen, when I begged for help from the abuse. I even asked to move in and was refused. I don't think the narcs would have cared. Why did they force me to live with them when they hated me? Probably for someone to abuse. I confronted my mother about all the people taken away from me. She didn't care of course. This aunt was weird, almost of two minds, but in the end still choosing my mother.

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  5. Yeah peep there is usually a grain of truth behind every bizarre claim. I was in the hospital a couple of years ago and this lady was telling me that the nurses were trying to poison her. They weren't, but they were grinding up her pills and feeding them to her in her pudding. Which if you are the least bit on the other side of lucid could have been interpreted as them poisoning you.

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    1. I think there is a grain of truth behind the weird claims. Why was she so scared of people being after her? Even if one thinks about it, it is really sick my aunt lived at HOME with her parents there and her husband and she is the one who had to flee and escape. She obviously didn't see my father as a safe individual. He had no empathy for her or anyone else just like his cold fish wife [my mother] No protection from a living father and brother. In my book they failed the manhood test alone for that one. So why was my aunt so afraid? I think there was something to be afraid of. I think the lady in the nursing home definitely knew something was going on but couldn't figure it out. She probably knew her pudding tasted "funny".

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  6. I think you need serious help to grow as a person and deal with what you perceive your life and childhood to be like.
    Best of luck to you.

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    1. http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/2015/05/perceove-perceive-perceive.html

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