Hoovered by an Ex-Friend This Week

I got hoovered by this one ex-narc college friend last week.  When I woke up about the narcissistic abuse of my family, I woke up about the abuse of some other parties. I ended several previous "friendships". She was one who was a workaholic and choose her career over everything else. It was strange because we really had nothing in common anymore. Even value wise, she was opposite of me. This was a spiritual division too as well as a running from narcissist's division as well. I answered the phone by mistake.  I have Caller ID to screen calls but did not recognize the number right away.

What was interesting to me is I was not bound up in the usual ball of guilt, I just told her, it is best we both move on and I cannot trust her and got myself off the phone. She told me "But I miss you". She said some other weird stuff I won't go into here, but let me just say my worse suspicions are being shored up. Inside I thought, "You already had your chance, and second chance and third." 

Someone who will betray you around other people even strangers on Facebook, is someone you can never trust again.  Some relationships, they will treat you different one on one, instead of when other people are around. One red flag all ACONs should watch for, is if someone makes you feel devalued in front of other people run like hell! You probably have a narcissist on your hands.

 I realized she saw herself slumming with the likes of me. She comes out of an extremely wealthy family--her father is a multi-millionaire, and their connections have helped her in her career.  Just like my family, nepotism served them to great ends but it was interesting to notice who benefited and who did not.  Narcissists do not have bonds of love or true friendship with you. For years I would have told you I believed this person cared about me and I did her, while I was in the fog.

She betrayed me during some of the toughest times of my going no contact with my family and betrayed me over my adoption search. It is strange to me that she would find me so desperate that I would be go running back to her, it's been 18 months since I cut ties.

There's other immense trust issues as she became a flying monkey via proxy, seeming to defend my family who she only met once or twice when I was in college at every turn. I know the friendship died for this one reason to me, I went no contact with my narcissists and she has stayed in contact with a family she told me for years was abusive to her. I changed in ways she could never comprehend and in some of that change was ways I changed in what I would put up with. I also realized a lot of the vulnerability she showed me was completely feigned.

We met in college and were long distance for years. I actually had not seen her in person since 1993 and as time progressed I got a clue, she never was going to visit me even with the ability to do so, and I lacked the funds and health for the travel from my side.  There was one point where I said, we should see each other, it's been so long, "Come for a visit!" and she told me I should be able to Greyhound it for three days which I knew even one day was impossible. This reminded me of the time my brother told me, he would come visit if I sent him a thousand dollars. Normal people who do feel love and connection for one another, do want to see each other.  For some health, and money problems make travel impossible.  There are close internet friendships where people have never seen each other in person but this was a warning sign as well.

After I was away from my family, I realized how much she made me feel like THEY DID.

We talked on the phone several times a week for years, pouring out troubles and talking about life to each other. It is strange to me sometimes that I have such a new view of since I spent years talking about personal things with this ex-friend but there were red flags long ago. Sometimes she would call me 8 times in a day if she was upset or needed help with something. She seemed to think because I was disabled, I was supposed to serve as the "on call" counselor.

Now I can make the mistake of talking about too many problems to friends so I was very forgiving of this, but in the last few years, I was getting physically worn out and found myself sometimes ignoring the phone. As I got older and sicker, she seemed to minimize my health problems and would tell me she had horrific health problems but I always came to this point, "Well if you can still work, you're not that bad off."

She would complain and talk about her job. I felt weird because I hadn't worked in years and she was skyrocketing with promotion after promotion even though she told me on the phone everyday she was about to be fired. I could not relate to her work problems.  Her words and attitudes were of feigned vulnerability and bosses ready to strike her down while her actions and results were of a hard-bitten careerist and one who never failed to get a promotion or a dollar.

Looking back I find it strange she confided things in me but I did not know yet about the concept of narcissistic supply. I remember telling her there are more things to life then just work and jobs more then a few times. Today I seek to avoid workaholics, the type of life I have and what I value does not match theirs.  I do believe my family set me up to seek after cold success oriented people, after all success was everything to my family even though their worlds definitely did not mesh with a woman who has been disabled for 20 years.

I no longer wanted to take crumbs from people who really did not care about me. It did hurt a lot facing facts, that with my family, they never truly loved or cared about me. Facing this fact, took some years of processing. I still have asked "Why?"

I do see my family and the treatment I was trained to take, as the reason I was in this friendship I ended too. In other words, my mother and her co-narcissists set me up for a negative pseudo friendship where I was just worthy to be there, for someone who barely noticed my real existence. That's why I never got any visits. That's why the friendship was false, I was just the "Lazy Boy" in the corner as the above meme states. So when she called me, I felt that resignation. Discovering the truth about this friendship was very difficult. Sometimes I have asked myself, "How was I so blind?" You think even of the lost years spent on families who don't love or care about you but it can feel the same of false friends too.

Diet Programs are Snake Oil

Language warning on this one, but she's right, they have known since the bleeping Eighties that diet programs don't work. The statistics about heroin addicts having more success are interesting.

I like what she says about the limits of will-power. Will-power is what they use to beat up on fat people all the time as if everyone had unlimited will-power and that is all it takes. Will power runs out. You know how some people start off the first period of time all gung ho on a diet, and it's even exciting but after some days, you are tired of feeling sick, and hungry and thinking about food. I'm happy when I can stop thinking about food and diets always used to make me focus on it more and "What do I get to eat?" She is absolutely correct about the limits of will-power.

Jordyn Duggar: Little Lost Girl

I've always considered the Duggar parents [remember they are the ultra-fundamentalist Dominionist family with 19 children on TLC to be narcissists. Here you see the mother, Michelle Duggar with one of her youngest daughters, Jordyn. You can tell the girl, is thinking, "Who is this lady?" What kind of a bond can someone with 19 kids really form with each one?

 In this girl's case she seems to be the one who lacks a bond with either parent. She may fit the "lost child" criteria spoken of on some ACON boards. This is where a child is not singled out as a scapegoat or as a golden child but simply IGNORED.  It's scary how Michelle Duggar as she destroys her children's futures and offers them no real education, always praises the daughters for "being good helpers" and never knows anything specific about them.

Those children became trophies to be shown off.  I notice "Mommy" has the fancy "Christmas lights"  necklace on, while Jordyn's clothes on her own birthday are much more plain. Jordyn is one girl on the show that always looks sad. Us, ACONs can definitely relate to that emotion. When children are objects to narcissists it shows.

Whitney Thore is Pregnant Supposedly

I watch My Fat Fabulous Life to post on it here, and don't consider myself a supporter of it. Last night's show was crazy even for scripted reality TV.  The show ended with Whitney Thore having a positive pregnancy test and also she told radio people she was interviewing with that she was pregnant. She's got TLC money and a house now, but how will a baby will fare with a mother that is so much into getting attention and acts like a teenager into her 30s?

 It bugged me when she said, she missed birth control pills and wasn't responsible. One can ovulate on rare occasions even with PCOS. I doubled-up on the birth control myself for years knowing I could not take care of a baby and health-wise I had been told by three doctors pregnancy would kill me. I was also taking Spironolactone for 15 years back then for PCOS, hormones AND congestive heart failure, and birth defects are so serious with this drug they require you to be on birth control while on it. I don't know if she is on that drug, I doubt it, but I know of two other women with PCOS assuming they could not get pregnant who didn't use birth control properly who got pregnant like her.

I had to go off birth control as I got older which most women have to do. I had the nightmare of regular periods returning after nearly 30 years, before I needed birth control or Provera to even induce or "have" a very light period. This unsettled me quite a bit. In fact four-five years ago doctors told me, after doing blood tests that I was in menopause! When periods came back and they were almost every month, doctors all made me get tests to make sure it wasn't uterine cancer but nope it was periods. Yes this confused me very much. My gynecologist told me to be careful of getting pregnant even though I was dealing with very low percentages considering my own PCOS and advanced age.

I believe doctors need to tell women with PCOS to use birth control just like they are normal women and to hedge their bets. I hear about too many getting pregnant who forgo birth control because they think they are completely infertile. If you read through my past posts, when I speak of my own infertility, I always wrote "almost infertile".  Doctors are setting up PCOS fat women for unwanted pregnancies if they don't make sure they understand the facts here.

That said, Whitney's choices in life bother me. There's a weird set up in the show, where her and her roommate are caught naked together by her parents, and supposedly she is getting a "massage" and comes racing out in a sheet. She risks pregnancy in bad relationship where the man has no commitment to her, or promise of marriage or marriage. From the start, I thought that guy just wasn't that into her. I don't want to sound judgmental because I know birth control can fail and it takes two to make a baby, but there definitely was a lack of responsibility here. She's kind of the TLC spokesperson for fat women with PCOS, now super-sized fat women and her narcissism and irresponsibility isn't helping our cause.

I find myself hoping she isn't really pregnant, and this is just a reality show ploy. 

Calling People "SnowFlakes"

I saw this discussion on an ACON message board, and I agree with it.

"I just want to discuss the newest buzzword I see everywhere around me.
"Snowflakes"
Sometimes accompanied by "Special" making it "Special snowflakes".
I see it everywhere and it is so demeaning and triggering for me. This term is typically being thrown at people who are voicing an opinion or speaking with empathy about a subject, and it just kills me to see people throwing this around. It's just a stab at you to say "Hey, you, with the feelings. Yea you. You don't deserve to have them because... NEWS FLASH, you don't matter."
I just want to say to everyone seeing this awful name, you do matter. Your feelings matter. Your opinions matter. And when someone calls you a "special snowflake" for voicing your feelings, it is because they are insecure within themselves and are desperately seeking to make their reality feel safe for them at your expense because your feelings threaten their sense of self.
You are special snowflakes, but in that you are beautiful individuals, you are valid, and you are an important part of the whole snowfall."

"Snowflake" became a sneering term on many "Conservative" and "Alt-Right" websites. They seemed to lob that one at millennials a lot. It is used to shut up very economically oppressed millennials. "What do you mean you actually want a job that pays the rent, shut yer trap, you whiner and weakling!" is the whole message behind this term. While some take identity politics too far, how does it help, for "snowflake" to be used as a term to call someone "weak" and "whiner" and to invalidate their feelings.

I've noticed a Hunger Games hatred of emotions that is growing in our society.  This term is from the "Buck up or Die" Brigade and growing in way too much popularity. It is a sign of growing narcissism in society when people are told "You are so weak!" in various ways whenever they express emotions or concerns.

The Importance of Small Pleasures

Small pleasures always has kept me going. This is where I talk about how all the competition of our society is destroying joy in life. I'm dirt poor though we did manage to pay the bills this month. Really when I am broke, I miss some of the little things money can buy, but then I try to find FREE small pleasures like hanging out in the park, going to sit on the beach, and taking the bus to the library. Today my small pleasures will include going to this community church dinner where they will give us chili, and maybe drawing a cartoon or two. I need to call two friends too which if it doesn't happen today will be tomorrow. When sick in bed try and enjoy some youtube videos, or a free magazine from the library. The "competition" of pleasure like on Facebook in a way ruins it, where people "compete" for the "best vacation", and the "greatest time" I had. Sometimes the smaller stuff counts the most.

Exploring an Abandoned Vintage House

I've posted other videos of people exploring abandoned houses and cabins, but this is one of the most interesting ones I have seen. It's a huge old house in Mississippi and it looks like the people who lived there were very elderly and had grandchildren or great-grandchildren in the 1980s. The roof has caved in and one wonders if they became too poor to do upkeep on their home. I am sure this place would be a mecca for antique scavengers.