September Butterflies and Flowers

Here are some more of my recent pictures. I enjoyed picture taking in the cooler soon to be fall weather. :)

The Man in Black

Most People with Normal Families will Never Get It

One rule an ACON has to learn and pretty fast, is the only people who will get this whole narcissism thing, are other ACONs and those who have gone through what we have. We have to learn to drawn boundaries because this abuse thing is so complicated. More secrets make us sick and having our speech censored sucks but we have to protect ourselves. I have adopted the strategy of implying I simply have no family of origin, as if they all died, instead of getting into the whole sordid tale with newbies who ask questions. Narcissism is bad enough but how do you explain complete sociopathy or that your mother hated you from day one? It's better to keep your mouth shut in some settings.

While every family has faults, normal people cannot conceive of families that operate like this and where people are not loved. People see those who do not have good relationships with their families as toxic. If you are thrown away by your family, many "normal" people will consider it "your fault" and that there must be something "wrong" with you to have something like this happen. They think you drank, drugged and fought your way into rejection. At churches, people always ask about your family and that can be difficult. One day I had an Aspie moment, and just said, "I have no family!" which put me on the weirdo roster immediately. The less you say among the "normal set" the better. Otherwise some may think you are a nutjob.

The outside world just does not understand how these people operate. The ex-friend chided me for being "unforgiving", and seemed to have this idea, that if I went to go talk things out with all the members of my family, that bygones would become bygones. Such an idea is ludicrous. There is no "talking" things out with narcissists or sociopaths. That simply does not happen and you open yourself as being vulnerable, when you do. How many times did we all try to "talk" it out begging them to see the light and for them to acknowledge how they have hurt us? Many of us have spent years doing so with a litany of emails, cards and  more.  Mine writes basically like OJ Simpson in every card to me, "I didn't do it.". This is not someone who is ever going to admit any wrong-doing or question her own assumed superiority. I will be banging my head on the wall forever more to try and "work" out anything with that person.

Counseling is a fore-gone conclusion and can be dangerous with someone high enough on the narcissistic or psychopath spectrum especially if they succeed in bamboozling the counselor or if a counselor with narcissistic tendencies enters the mix. Most narcissists would play "nice" and "fake it" for the sake of the counselors. Sadly as many ACONs attest, most counselors who have had normal families and never been through this type of abuse, do not understand the dynamics. I had some good counselors but then any who did not understand the dynamics of abuse, I simply could not connect with. I felt judged. Anyone who has been with a counselor tricked and manipulated by a narcissist within a family court system or other court-ordered counseling, knows what hell is. It is rare one ever enters a counseling office unless ordered to.

ACONs are shamed by the outside world for not loving their families. For years many of us will be told to love our narcissists and abusers and if we do not, that we are cold horrible people. Love comes natural to normal families where there is true sharing and relationships.  When it comes to people with normal loving families, I've tried to put myself in their heads watching from afar. Their families really are places of love, solace and fond memories for them. What stands out to me is how they are treated like they matter and are important. They are listened to and validated. Even if there are disagreements, it's not winner takes all and revenge tactics between those who are in a debate.

People with loving families don't understand that this doesn't happen for all. Even the basic things of loyalty or visiting someone sick while in the hospital was lost for us ACONS. When someone does not love their parents, they are called out as being a horrible person and told they are "not right in the head". Teachers will shame students who will say "Mommy and Daddy do not love me." instead of getting to the root of the cause and listening to an abused student. What does loving people that abuse you do but create more self-loathing? Many of us are familiar with the guilt imposed for not having these normal loving relationships. "What is wrong with you?" people will ask. Sadly here the victims of abuse can earn more censure and put-downs.

One thing that happens is people are scared  by what happened to us. Even the fact that a little baby can end up with a mother that hates it, freaks people out for good reason. They can't deal with and often they just want to shut it and you out of their minds. The idea of parents plotting to destroy a young adult child is frightening. Their minds close these things out because they are too awful to contemplate. There is a major risk of a person who has not faced horrendous abuse, closing you the ACON out if you disclose too soon. Some will lack the ability to handle your tales of abuse.

Many ACONS who still live in the same town as their abusers, often will face the problem of not being believed. I disclosed to three old classmates, a couple who had their own stories of abuse to share and was told that my parents, appeared as very "nice" people. One old friend and classmate told me that my family seemed "close-knit". The public images the narcissists will weave do work, and they will appear as "nice" people to the outside world. Another old high school friend who used to be friends with my sister, I described to her how I was abused behind the scenes as she was friendly with my parents. Her and her own mother were deeply close. She was around me long enough to know something was wrong even if she could not put her finger on it. One irony with her is my parents once called her their "other daughter". My old school mates, told me that I was very quiet and extremely withdrawn in high school. This pairs with my own memories.

I was fortunate these people all believed me but it was a long time in coming. It also made me realize how absolutely silent I was about all my abuse until I was away at college. I wasn't even telling friends I was abused in high school except the very closest. The fear factor alone kept all that inside. Around the narcissists until I lived long distance, their public face was definitely winning the day.

Today, my close friends find out with time, but there is a long list of "happy acquaintances" where I have said absolutely nothing. When one is middle aged, it is seen as odd to talk about childhood abuse. We are old enough supposedly to have found "ourselves" and gotten our life together. A few outer circle friends, get to hear a watered down version, where I just say there is estrangement. As an Aspie I had to learn the social rules, in what I told people, and that circle grew tighter and tighter. Even sharing that one is no contact with their entire family is risky unless it is a very close friend and even there be careful it is someone with the context to understand.

Another thing people will say to you is "You need to get over your childhood!" and "forgive your parents and relatives." There is no explaining to those people how the abuse continued far beyond childhood even into one's forties or what it is to sit in a room among relatives that mock you with derision. One thought I had is how I was treated like an absolute child until I was 44 years old and went no contact. One horrible thing about being so poor, is this feeling of never obtaining a proper adulthood, it burdens me everyday.

 Maturity melts when one doesn't have the right money to be a "good adult" but that was no excuse for the fact my mother talked to me for eternity like I was five years old. Most relationships in good families mature with age. The older adults, are treating middle aged adults like they are grown up. It was disgusting that here I am with gray hair, and using a walker, and almost ready for the senior center or the PACE program [a day program for the elderly disabled] and being talked to like I was a child by my mother. Sometimes I have this odd thought, that I am the only sibling who actually grew up in my family. My sister and brother are still both scared of my mother even though their degree of financial independence is higher especially in my sister's case and still living according to her edicts.

The rest have been forced into permanent childhood via my mother. I'm broke, and barely able to take care of myself in the financial sense, and on social security but I finally only answer to myself, husband and God. Some scapegoats in narcissstic families are kept in a place of suspended animation and never allowed to mature. Here Aunt Scapegoat is an example. She was always taken care of and never left home ever even living next door to my grandmother in a broken down trailer into her 50s. She never has been "on her own" in any adult capacity. As narcissists and sociopaths break down people sending them into depression, they successfully thwart their growth.

 It is strange, I keep having new memories coming back. One new memory came back to me, it's funny how much I blocked out, and this was before I hit my twenties and stood up for myself, but I remembered moments of laughter in my mother's family when I was visiting my grandmother's house and how often they would make me the center of jokes. Some would say to me, when I burst out into Aspie tears or got angry leaving the room, "We are not laughing at you, we are laughing with you" but I knew the laughter was directed at me.  I was often made the butt of jokes.

Abuse can continue late into adulthood. Some of us end the overt abuse where we stand up against insults or walk out of the room and drive away but it does not end the covert abuse and continuing abuses for decades. There are times now two years into no contact where I wonder why I put up with so much abuse? I have forgiven myself for it but am upset at my silence during her overt sociopathic displays. Why didn't I say anything? I was so afraid to.

I had a weird moment the other day when the oil light came on the car. Our dipstick is not working any longer to show the car's true level of oil since there is a leak, and we put more oil in the car immediately and it was okay. We change it often enough too to keep track of where it is at.  I kept thinking how when I was in contact with my narcissists, how one car slip-up or break-down mean endless abuse. I was relieved thinking now I no longer have to explain myself to those people. Those who want us to "forgive and forget" childhood, don't get the fact most ACONs did, and then got steam-rolled over as adults. To go back to being treated like a worm and like a brat that never grew up, would be to destroy myself completely. I could end stuck on the bus, but now I only have to worry about answering to myself.

Those of us who walk away often are seen as monsters by a world that does not get it.  "How can you walk away from your whole family?" "What is wrong with you?" They don't get in many cases, we were abandoned long ago and that in many cases the narcissists just kept us around enough for the narcissists to keep track of us. I have had to face the facts, my family does not care about me and I will never see any of them again in person even the ones I am low contact with. My few low contact relationships are ebbing away with time. Even on a social website, they are all talking to my mother and ignoring me more and more.  How many times can a person reach out only to get slapped back? There were so many ignored cards and emails. The one niece did write me back but even there I feel the separation of the future as the others turn her against me.

Sometimes it felt like a kick in the gut every time some of the people around here including the ex-friend would talk about their families. I had to learn to rein that in and not let envy ruin relationships. I would rather no one suffer what ACONs have.  They had a cousin, sibling, or other family member around them it seemed at every moment. They were part of each others lives, I was long forgotten about. We can't begrudge people having things we missed out on, but I wish I had been wise enough to realize someone that had such a loving and close family, was not going to have any understanding for me.  Some may try to have empathy for us but they lack the ability to understand. Some of the people who don't get it mean well but because their experiences were so different where they had loving parents, they just are unable to. People who post memes like these, just do not understand our experiences.

Here ACONs need to protect themselves. I learned to be quiet and only share my pain of abuse with a support group, on this blog and with close friends. Even with the friends you choose to share it with, be careful. If they are someone who has never gone through abuse, they may not get what you are talking about. We have to avoid those with narcissistic tendencies, who may use the vulnerablity of exposing past abuse to hurt us. Don't show your blog even to a friend of 4 years  [now ex-friend] who never has been abused. I made a giant social faux paus there. Avoid anyone who tells you that you are "unforgiving" or that you "ruminate" too much, or that you are a horrible person for having nothing to do with your family. Protect yourself too, and realize that in some cases with these issues, the less some people know the better. At the same time though, do not be hard on yourself. We spent enough of our life being shamed by others and being told what to say and think.  Our days of having to explain ourselves to narcissists and others are over. Protect yourself but don't blame yourself. We don't have to be the narcissists whisperers and we aren't responsible for educating every person on the planet, some of whom refuse to learn.


Update 2019: I deconverted --the thoughts pertaining to God here and in the comments are different today. In conservative religious circles, the family rules even more so Also the "other daughter" friend  mentioned above chose the narcs too and betrayed me: 
http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/2016/05/my-mothers-second-daughter.html

Seb Lester Calligraphy

Calligraphy was a hobby of mine when I was a teen, I used to buy those calligraphy markers when they first came out with them in the 1980s

Putting Down One Group Won't Elevate Another

Check out this article:

Are you Racist?

This article is scary with it's extreme PC stuff. Have you noticed our society wants everyone shoved into their little demographic boxes and if you do not fit anywhere, you don't matter. Am I weird to react to this article saying, "Hey people are people, why does everything have to be about race and color?" and "Why does it seem like they don't want people talking to each other?"

I believe the global elites are using the race thing to do a divide and conquer. Race is a focus and a tool for them to divide and conquer. The 1 percent will cheer as they have blacks, whites and Latinos and other races all fight. I believe they even use immigration as a pressure on countries too. I do not blame immigrants who simply want to survive, but they are denied decent livings in one place so the elites can suppress wages in another. They are used as pawns for wars and for economic purposes.  As they destroy the economy, they would rather people fight among themselves rather then notice the real problems, and how society is becoming more corrupt. I go with the Bible on race:

Acts 17:26 KJV

"And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation."

So what we see is the left doing the new "white bashing" thing focused on "white privilege" where every white person is presented as wealthy and the oppressor and someone that makes 6 figures a year and lives in Mayberry, and the Right does its thing which is play it's blame game which seems to center on blaming poor people especially African Americans who are poor though whites are often included as the source of all the country's problems. They of course put down anyone who is on welfare and act like jobs can be picked off a tree.

 I hate both political sides.

I'm not an Anarchist, but I found this article written by one of some interest. He definitely well defines how states can play the divide and conquer games using race to fulfill their sociopathic goals. He uses hair color as a metaphor for race.

Race: The Divide and Conquer Tool of Tyrants

A second and final thought experiment: imagine for a moment that you are a sociopath, and that you aspire to rule over a people, living off the sweat of their brows as a parasite. Your biggest challenge will be to keep the people’s eyes off of you and on one another when the problems inherent to parasitic relationships begin to arise.

As your taxation ushers in poverty, you can dodge the bullet if the grays believe that the redheads are milking the system. As your regulations bring unemployment, you’re safe if the balds believe the jobs are being taken by the brunettes. When your corporatism causes rioting, you are in the clear if the silvers believe that the mixed-hues are given legal preferential treatment. When you want to go to war and must convince the people to fund it, you would do well to demonize the savage raven-heads on the other side of the world.

Racism is the friend to and the creation of the controlling collectivist—a redundant term, to be sure.

The truth is that there is only one race at issue here, and that is the human race. It is just as inane to classify by melanin as it is to classify by height, age, shoe size, chin shape, or eye color. Such groupings are tools of the State, and as such, are to be soundly rejected.

What does playing "privilege" games do but breed resentment and distance between people? Are people going to befriend their "oppressors?". Why do they seem to want black and white people walking on eggshells among each other?  If I am a white person talking to a person of another race, why not be real instead of following endless PC rules? That is a person who is most likely to turn into a friend. The narcissists and sociopaths that run our society want to divide every group they can and create as much hatred as possible.

Will another group of people find dignity in life when they are always patronized?  I'm so poor that if I came out against anyone more privileged then me, the only friends I would have left would be two homeless friends from my old town.

I would like to ask someone how does bashing white people lift up anyone? And why do all these liberals present white people as all one monolithic group that seems to be all wealthy and right out of the suburbs? Conversely they seem to see black people and other races too all monolithically too. Everyone's a cookie-cutter according to color. Remember philanthropy can be a cover for sadism.

Sure racism is a problem. I saw an inter-racial couple I was friends with almost get jumped in Chicago by some frat boys. I was thrown out of a skating park because I brought in 10 clients who were African American. Just for being with my clients when I was a residential counselor, they and I would hear racial slurs.  I almost got beaten up in a mall when I was with another client to the point security was called in.

The South kept black people out of restaurants, colleges, schools, business establishments, and drinking fountains before the Civil Rights movement. There are still Klu Klux Klan members. However racism can go all ways. I was laughed at when applying for a job and told I wasn't the right color. I was turned away from another job. There are people being knocked out in "knock-out" games for being the wrong color in some places. In the wrong place and wrong time, anyone can be a victim of racism. Wickedness is sadly a thing that affects all of humanity.

My own race is complicated. I am a dark enough white, that I had an African American man come up to me, during a friendly chat when we were both in a park, and ask me if I had Indian blood? I gave him an honest answer, "I don't know.". Others in my German ancestry dominated town have asked me if I am Greek or Italian.  I sometimes even get the subtle feeling that my more dark looks are one reason not to be liked in my family especially among the blonde and blue eyed set within my mother's family.  No one looks like me around here.  I'm lightly olive toned with almost black hair that is rapidly going to grey.

I spent my young life, working and living in predominantly African-American communities, working with troubled youth and in inner city schools. I lived in a "ghetto" area where I was the minority in two different neighborhoods. My best friends when I was young were Vietnamese.

On his #11, I wanted to ask him if he is high? Anyone without cash, of ALL races gets crushed by the justice system. The police state is growing for everyone. This writer lives in his own classist bubble seeing white people as wealthy and able to afford justice. According to him, no white person can do anything right. Even the guy who marched with Martin Luther King still stinks if he is the wrong race. I hate to tell the guy but white and poor means being crushed too. They may have started with the crackdowns in the ghetto, but unless someone is living under rock or under a mountain of cash, they would know one most often buys their justice today.

I have known poor people who were white without bail money who got crushed by the system too. Here they want division too, where he wants to have people of one race think that the other is getting nothing but easy breaks. This keeps people from asking too many questions of a system in general that is growing far more corrupt. I am horrified watching the police brutality grow, with the right wing defending the cops trained to grow more militaristic and the extreme sides of the left wing acting like the system is still just for "some". It's just for those with cash. Divide and conquer. They can do the round-ups and federalize the police force, using racial divides to put up endless smoke-screens.

The guy who wrote the "Are you Racist?" article emphasizes differences between people and patronizes people of other races as well. I believe this kind of stuff is worsening racism in America. It sounds like it was written by a Committee for Mind Color and 1984 "proper speech" rules.  There are aspects of the left that scare the crap out of me. The term "people of color" is patronizing too. Am I a person of color? Everyone is on the spectrum somewhere from lighter to darker. Do they think this stuff will actually fix race relations? Are they nuts? Just read his endless rules, and his message to focus on racism above all else, and you will be afraid to open your mouth in fear of offending someone. That's not going to build a relationship with anybody.

Even later update: while I came to understand some troubles people of other races may encounter, I was right about this stuff creating more division. I'm tired of reading books that act like there is no such thing as a poor white person. CRT and "Wokeism" is actually making life for all of us worse. Always it boils down to the elites use this crap as they steal trillions from the tills, and the division serves them best. I'm tired of the "woke people" boiling everything down to gender and race too. The "woke" are elitists too that don't give a damn about economic oppression crushing people of all colors and about the growing tyranny from Covid.  

Happy Labor Day!

Pastor Shepherd or Wolf

Churches can be breeding grounds for narcissists. More and more, I have realized the helpful martyrship "church lady" masks can hide many severely damaging narcissists who use one's troubles and turmoils to drive the dagger in deep into someone's back. Don't just be careful of pastors but be careful of them too! The fake church ladies are just as dangerous. There are some who make a hobby of helping the downtrodden too but they just want to your broken down body to stand on.

I had one good pastor who was young and sincere in my small town church but obviously the me of today disagrees with some teachings regarding the church. We had one disagreement where I told him, many Christians are leaving the church system and the Bible seems to point to this fact but he said, every Christian should be in a good New Testament church. I said, "Well many people there isn't one good church in the entire county!" One thing that is worrisome about churches is charisma is what keeps the pews filled. And sadly it is mostly narcissists who have charisma in spades. The nice quiet thoughtful person, probably today gets weeded out in seminary or bible college for not doing an exciting enough sermon.

I visited a lot of churches in my present county and it always bugged me how churches revolved around the pastors. A few churches made a nod towards having a few deacons or elders, but most didn't. The pastor was the main personality keeping the show on the road. Maybe some would argue leadership is needed in every organization but isn't there a problem in the body of Christ where if the pastor leaves, the church folds? Why didn't the relationships among the congregation keep it going?

There are some pastors I ran into where oil oozed out of their skin and they came across as used car salesmen.  They always wore shiny suits and had big white shiny teeth. While I saw it right off, a few of these guys had big churches full of thousands of people. That always weirded me out. One guy was so charismatic, at one church, that was a smaller church, that troubled me. Those people were all eager to please the man. When I stood next to him he seemed to shrink away, I felt like he wasn't happy about this big fat woman showing up to his church. He kept bragging about his "vacation' [cough] mission trip to Jaimaica that he took every year. Can you imagine having a Jamaican trip every year as a job perk? I left that church after only a few visits. The people were nice but the pastor was literally worshipped. He would make sex jokes during bible study and present this cookie cutter suburban world I did not relate to.

The big money guys who have jets, and mansions are some of the obvious deceivers but they have many smaller versions in the "making merchandise of you" set even in small towns.