H1-B Blues

Noticed this on Ramen Noodle Nation

H-1-B Blues

The same thing is happening here. I know tons of unemployed Americans with computer and other degrees, can't get a job to save their life, but you see all these foreigners with good jobs. I know some leftists are brainwashed to scream xenophobe but sometimes it seems to me, the powers that be are out to destroy Americans at any costs and leave them unemployed and sinking down into economic morass. Of course this helps their various agendas, using these economic pressures to take away freedom and make more profits. Some are right that the powers that be use the hatred towards immigrants, but there is a reason for the growing resentment, when millions of people see economic hope disappear and others getting all the opportunities that were once theirs. 

Some Things About Immigration I Don't Get

Self Improvement and Achievement Queens and Kings

One question every ACON asks themselves and a popular ACON book is even named this, is "Will I Ever Be Good Enough?"

Out in the world the answer to that may be "No".

The world is being taken over by Self Improvement and Achievement Queens and Kings. 

Ableism, classism and elitism can impact some of us. 

So what does one do when they are never good enough and never measure up enough? Walk away. If someone makes you feel like you are not enough, then it is not a good deal. Sadly we have some trends in society now where everything is about clamoring up to the mountain top.

One thing about American society is that you always have to be improving, or healing or progressing to be deemed acceptable. Those who do not progress or "solve all their problems" or "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" are deemed less persons deserving no love. In a land where competition and status rules, those who don't climb the ladder or even who fell off it are considered human "throwaways". Life is all about moving on, status and competition. If you are not "moving on, you are considered "stagnant" and a "bad person." Anyone who has been poor or deemed the "family loser" by narcs knows what this feels like. 

This has been happening to me lately. I will explain further.....but

I am going to lay down a new boundary, that people have to accept me as I am presently, warts and all, or just walk on. I can't be hurt anymore being told that I am "not good" enough and that I must "change my life".  I spent most of my life being told what is wrong with me by my family and needs folks around me who will tell me what is right.  One thing that can happen to a person like me is you can hook up with people who want to FIX you.

But where is the acceptance in that?

And if you end up in that position, you are a "complainer" while they can vent freely. You don't mind them telling you about their problems, in fact to you it is normal sharing. They don't offend you when they do it, so why isn't it mutual? But the emphasis is on "fixing" you and if time has gone by and they don't see progress they expect, well then things go badly.

I am questioning why this happens to me. Some of me wonders if this was born in the crucible of never feeling good enough and my own constant scurrying to be accepted and "liked" by people. This was formed in the fire pit of narcissistic parenting. Also if one is disabled or otherwise "low status" in society one can fall in this group. It's like we fell into this trap where it's like we have to justify our existence on planet earth. I don't even know how to explain how being the weight I have all these years impacts how I am viewed. 

 Perhaps on my end I do overshare or complain too much and need to work on my acceptance of my circumstances but is that enough condemn someone?  I write about many topics and think about them too, and these are not all happy perky topics, obesity is not fun and games and neither is being a survivor of a narcissistic family. Why do I have to worry about being perky to begin with?

Neurotypicals [maybe not all?] seem offended by any complaints, while for us Aspies, we can talk about things freely and not censor everything about it being "negative or positive".  While too much ruminating may annoy people, it's something Aspies do. I never called anyone up at 3:00 in the morning or crossed boundaries though. Us Aspies can show each other pictures of volcanoes at sea or go see antiques and then on the end complain about how much everything hurts or if something sucks, say so. There isn't this bullcrap I see in the  worsening narcissistic world where one has to weigh and measure each word by status and if they are being a successful human being.  

 Sometimes it scares me that with some of these sorts, I already have been trying to rapidly smooth down the rough edges and still ended up failing. Here within is a major problem, once you have to start walking on eggshells and worrying about what you say, trouble is afoot.  Some are nice to me and I don't even realize I have pissed them off just being who I am. This is something I have to change in me, where I no longer seek the approval of others and be careful about who I expose vulnerabilities to. Sadly some of these people I have cared about, but it gets scary when you realize you have failed their expectations. I don't want to be fixed or anyone attempting to fix me anymore. It just hurts. 

 Here is the facts about my life unless God wills a miracle for me, chances are I am not going to have some incredible cure. I have stayed alive far longer then doctors even estimated. I was almost 700lbs at one point in my life and I am one of the few who stepped away from this.

Many people with Lipedema at my stage have trained themselves for years to hide pain to function. This means inside I can be screaming from my legs hurting or even my neck, and say nothing to you with a smile on my face. There is a reason I can be in bed half the day and it's not laziness, it's called pain management.  If someone wants to deem me "selfish" for focusing on health problems too often, sorry I can't help it. Some of us had to become "selfish" to even survive. If they think I go on about my health too much or define myself by it, I write a blog about health problems of course I am going to talk about it. I live in this body. There is still some fun to be had with taking pictures of butterflies or watching a movie but this is my reality. No one should expect me to hide my health problems to love or accept me. Already I hide a lot people do not know about.

 My nurses and doctors have already told me what lies in the future. I wouldn't want my worse enemy to face what I have with these problems and deterioration. The sad thing is too often those who face huge health problems and sickness realize that our culture today says there should be easy fixes. All prayers are good and we all love people praying for us, but no one should have their self worth fixed to the "health" wagon and whether we "recover" [mental or physical].

I was in this self help group for 5 years. It was for many years a very positive and good experience. I did lectures while there and made cards for volunteer projects.  However I noticed a strain of thought in the last year, that deeply concerned me, many people went to this group to have friends to talk to and shared their problems but some people within this group, kept talking about how people were just coming to talk about "their problems" and were not progressing.  Some people were using the group for friendship, what is wrong with that? Here they were influenced too by the self improvement and achievement focus of our culture that is growing worse and I think has been mandated by narcissists who have turned everything into life into a giant check-list of measuring up and "success".

They would say things like this group is meant for people to "move on" and "heal" they were angry people were not solving their problems.  I noticed unless someone had their life steadily improve that there was judgments to be had. It can really bother a person who is down and out to realize some around you are getting angry that you have not fixed your life. That is disturbing on some levels. Here we have the New Age and fantasy delusion beliefs impacting things here where you see more and more that people think bad things happen to people because they are "bad" or that their lives are "bad" because they are.  This ties into the hatred of "victims". Many things lied outside of some people's control like money and health problems. In my opinion, it was wrong to shame people for not "recovering" or "changing" their lives in the way that some judged them on.

 I thought to myself maybe some people just wanted a safe place to come to and share some of their tribulations. The group for some time was a good place to be. They helped me learn about boundaries and overcoming abuse, and in many ways this group was the catalyst in me growing stronger and giving me the ability to break away from my abusive family. The earlier facilitators were kind people as I stated early.

While my depression waxed and waned at different times, I knew it was something I would have to maintain the rest of my life and did in the years before, and they were helpful with this. So I do not regret my time in the group.

This message of recover or else made me sad though, why was everything about people jumping through hoops and why were some so judgmental? Everyone differs even in the mental health world. Some will be able to recover and heal and more power to them while some may have to struggle their whole life and just maintain. I am no longer in this group anymore, but sat and thought about some of these issues.  I disagree and LOATHE this mentality that everyone must be progressing and setting goals and succeeding to be a worthwhile human being to be a valued and loved and acceptable human being. Some of the people who are advancing this stuff, truly WANT to help another person but they can hurt them with this mentality.

Not everyone is going to have easy fixes. Not everything in this world is SOLVABLE. These are some facts that the achievement set ignore. Disabled people know this all too well, that we almost have to overcompensate for our disabilities and appear like we are always brave, smiling and cheerful. Disabled people are seen as "different" and not fitting in. In a world where you are told to "comform" on an endless basis, what does it do? Too many categories of people today are deemed "inferiors".  I am not the first disabled person to be told I am too "negative", or "toxic".

I think the system now being formed in our society is expanding the categories of people who are deemed "inferiors" and "throw-aways", the people who have jumped on the self improvement and achievement wagons have a certain level of health and well-being. You need it especially in this world. Strong social and family support is important too. This is one way society is doing the divide and conquer game, especially here in America, where the social classes are becoming more polarized, racial relations set back by 50 years, and people are divided according to "success" or "non-success". I live in a very affluent community even as a poor person and sometimes it can be very hard. I don't agree with these values. The bankers and 1% are laughing as they make more money and social cohesion breaks up and everyone is running to "keep up with the Jones's" though today it's not just the station wagon in the driveway or the rancher home to keep up with but the personal "achievements" and carrots on the stick as well. In some places, everyone has forgotten how to relax and just "be". Everything is about getting ahead and self improvement. Sorry, but us ACONs are tired of proving ourselves to people. We had enough of that with condemning parents.

What is sad is with many of the measuring sticks today, a great deal of the populace is doomed for failure and the system is designed that way. The achievement people are caught up in this whirlwind, following advertisments--constant ladder climbing brings profit as people buy products that will "enhance" their lives or themselves, media, and oppressive messages and sadly they can not be happy with those who fall off the ladder or even those who threw the ladder on the ground and walked away.

I see this stuff as growing narcissism in our society, where community life is sacrificed on the altar of competition and "proving" yourself. Empathy is affected adversely when one is told achievement is the most important. People who do not heal from a myriad of chronic physical or mental conditions are told they have "failed" and feel even more oppressed and sad. One question to be asked is who are we trying to impress? Must we live life always on the hamster wheel? What is even more disturbing is when you feel like you have to be someone else to please others. Sorry as Popeye said, "I yam what I yam."

A Sane Person

Britt McHenry Tells off Tow Truck Company Employee

ESPN employee Brit McHenry tells off a tow truck employee. Language warning with this one. Let me be frank, I don't love all tow companies. The ones in the big city can be crooks and did tow my car twice when it was legally parked. I remember steam coming out of my ears to see my legally parked car "stolen" and then having to track it down after two hours to one of those places. I think those are places anyone is most likely to lose their temper.

 So Britt McHenry was probably angry in trying to track down her car, but it was stupid to take it out on the employee. Her classist, elitist and fat-hating comments bothered me.  I don't agree with people losing jobs over things they do outside of work but since she is in the public eye they chose to suspend her for a week. The elitism and entitlement here is extreme as Britt McHenry, insults the employee for having a "low-class" job. She puts her down for not going to college or dropping out, but who knows our towing company attendant could have a doctorate degree for all we know, given the state of the economy.

"Do you feel good about your job?" she asks her. Some people have to work jobs they hate to eat! Britt reminds me of "mean girls" in high school, always skinny, and assured of their own superiority. Was she hired first for her brain or her looks? She gets the classist skewer out with the rude comment about teeth. Sadly teeth can be a class marker, in that the poor can't afford dental care. Then there is the comment about "trailer-trash" and of course the ever present slam-dunk of weight hatred, "Lose some weight baby girl!"

I don't know if Britt is a narcissist or not, but she sure was acting during that the moment there. America is becoming one hard cold place as people trash others over their level in society and jobs they hold. One thing I hated is how people who did honest labor but had menial jobs started to be trashed.  Britt McHenry later apologized and some asked, "What was the employee saying?"

Narcissism in a Commercial: The Bankers Have Bestowed Their Favor!

This commercial is worthy of our disdain. It advances narcissism. Look at the woman who is proud of her high credit score. If I was 18 again, I would drop out of the credit system. It is one reason all the prices are higher then what people can actually afford. The other commercial where the dope has tattooed her credit score on her arm creeps me out, it makes me wonder when we switch to the cash-less society if they will have your credit score showing up on your mark of the beast.

 I am sure my credit score is in the negative range. The only credit card I could get would have 50% usury rates. I find it interesting in this society that we are judged for things beyond our control like a boss on a bad hair day deciding to destroy our lives via "at-will" employment.

This woman in this commercial is so proud of her "mammon" score. She puts her feet up on the surprised banker's desk. Doesn't she know with a few key strokes he could destroy her life and oops not register a few mortgage payments? Her snotty arrogance is how they advance narcissism in our society on some less then subtle levels.

It is Better to Be Alone than Abused: Loneliness in Our Society

This is a tragic story about a lady named Pia Farrenkopf who was discovered 5 years after she died, mummified in the back seat of her car in her garage. No one checked on her. No one realized she was missing. This is the loneliness of nightmares. Sadly as our society breaks apart, and social connections die, these stories become more widespread. Hers is not the first I remember reading about. Pia's story to me is very sad. I wonder if she was an Aspie too though an Aspie in this case who had computer skills allowing her to maintain a middle class lifestyle.

I don't feel as alone now before as I have years earlier.  I do have some good local friends, they call and check on me. Even people I am acquaintances with ask after me around here. My town is friendly. My friends and I have fun times together. My husband is with me everyday. He worries about me and keeps track of me. I have a ton of long distance friends I write to and call. Some of them I am very close to as well. My husband and friends are very important to me.

The isolation of disability though can hit hard. It takes me years to make friends. I am Aspie and unlike a neurotypical it can take me 5 years in a new community to even make a friend or two.  I am not one of those people with 1100 friends on Facebook, or with a party to go to every weekend. There are many times where I do worry that I and my husband are far too isolated though we work to change this. At least half of my social life due to my circumstances is conducted online. My husband only has one living relative, a sister who never has visited us. Also if I won the Lotto tomorrow, forget buying the new house and rest, the first year would be spent visiting friends nationwide. There's at least 12  people I'd go visit in different towns right off with rests in between.

We have moved too much too. While I like my present community and need its medical care, my life has been full of too many goodbyes. As economic nomads, the constant moving for survival just meant roots being constantly ripped up and thrown away.  I wrote about my grief of leaving my old loved small town. More grief was piled on as more and more people including several friends died. Even my old church closed and three-four of my old favorite hangouts burned down. It would take years to even talk about the place without crying anymore.  I told my husband 4 years ago, I will not move anymore and have stuck to this. I cannot bear to live in a place again where "no one knows my name".

When I went no contact, one old long distance friend was kind of against it, though I told her it was my life is at stake, and she came around. One thing she said to me was, "If you keep cutting everyone off, you will end up alone!" She acted like it would be my fault if I ended up alone. This went through my heart like a stake. Why? Because it is something that many people worry about in their heart being alone.  I believe there are many ACONS who cling to rotten abusers because they fear the desolation of "having nobody". For those of us who do part ways from narcissists and in many cases entire toxic narcissistic family systems you do worry about the ramification of your decisions.

My response to her was, "It is better to be alone than abused!"

One of my commenters pointed out this story in the video above to me. She pointed out her theory that Pia was an ACON. I think it is very probable. One thinks about stories about Tiffany Sedaris and other stories where they have no family to check on them. No one is there to care. They go unnoticed and invisible, they are cut out. No one is concerned about what becomes of them. Pia had nine siblings, where were they all? Why did everyone disappear? Where were any friends?

When I was young, I had times of extreme loneliness. In school there were times I did not have one friend in between family moves and other circumstances.  I did not know my husband yet during my first no contact and I had no family. My college friends had all moved home after graduation. When I moved out of my boarding house, into my first apartment on my own which was three rooms on the bottom floor of an old house in a poor neighborhood, I was totally alone.   My work hours were long but when times of unemployment hit, or there was a weekend with no work hours, sometimes it got scary sitting there and knowing I was so alone. I had no where to go, no one to see and no one to talk to. The long distance phone calls cost a lot more back then. Life seemed to pass with just a series of strangers going my way.  I knew no one who lived within 100 miles of me outside of co-workers. In my case, I'd hang out at the library or looking at the art at the local art center. Sure, I volunteered and took classes or went to church but it was just me, myself and I.

This was one very painful aspect of my first no contact. My journals lamented my pain, as I asked, "Why don't I have anyone?" This is the legacy of our abusive narcissistic parents too.  If you are the scapegoat they lead others to reject and ignore you and consider you unimportant. It isolates us to the extreme. I realize entire groups of people turned their backs on me because of my mother including entire families of neighbors and family friends. This went through my narcissistic family like a virus. I just wasn't important enough. As I wrote in one comment, one of my long time friends said, "They just didn't like you!" and sadly it was true. However they never knew me and my mother set that up in her own nefarious way.

The world figures out who doesn't have supportive kinfolk and sees you as prey. They have destroyed your ego and confidence and ability for self care to help you survive in what can be a very cold and hard world. For a socially awkward Aspie, alienation comes with the territory and this quadrupled the social problems. Watching other people who had loving families who "had their backs" and were active part of their lives without disdain and reluctance could be very painful. Other ACONs I am sure have shouted "Why me?". I find myself in awe of those in families where they mean something to the other people.

Fear came with being so alone. There were times I would be in the hospital with severe asthma attacks and no one would be there at all.  Thoughts of dying unmissed and unnoticed and in a pauper's grave went through my head. These are the days I started crying out to God before I became a Christian. Those kind of times change a person. While solitude to me can be a pleasant thing with time to think and do art work, I am scared to death of ever being that alone again. I don't think I could handle it.  The me of today is not physically capable of living alone too, which is a whole other ball of wax.

I never want to live alone in an apartment, disabled and forlorn. So many people in our society who are elderly and disabled, are isolated in this way. It worries me. Why does our society do this? Forgetting the elderly and disabled and shunting them away. Some people don't even have families, I never had children and know what that means while others had children and families, they are ignored after they move away. It is my life's endeavor to reach out to other lonely people. One thing about me is I often do reach out to elderly people and others.

 Our society is one sick place, closing everyone away in little boxes [apartments] to be alone and with no one to talk to. Even if I am concerned about Agenda 21 and other manipulations, cohousing sounds good to me, those wanting to rebuild community between neighbors and people, many have some good intentions I agree with. Who wants a life of just staring at walls with no one to talk to? I know I don't. One reason you may see me screaming against the housebound tsunami, is I know it guarantees more social isolation, it is even a test on the relationships I manage to form.

One thing I think about my narcissistic mother is that she never has been lonely. She never had one period in her life where there was no one there, this is the same for Mini-Me.  They don't even relate to emotions like this. They didn't end up outside the reservation with no one to talk to. She grew up with a close knit family surrounded by at least a hundred relatives. In her case, she takes people for granted, there are so many surrounding her. Could she even feel lonely though? If you are not attached to people you will not miss them. This is something I noticed about my sister too, no feelings of nostalgia or missing people there either. It was scary to see. My sister isn't as popular and lives a more isolated life then my mother but in this case does not care.

Our narcissistic society is having it's social connections breaking down. Others who are not disabled have told me they are just as alone, or they may have people they are friendly with but are not close to. They know something has gone wrong. Others tell me how difficult it has become to meet people. I cry reading the stories like this where someone dies alone and not cared about and unloved. Why didn't a neighbor or even an acquaintance check on her? Some may say, "Maybe she pushed everyone away!" but no one deserves to be that alone. I do believe the family connections are breaking down more and more. People took more time to visit each other. Some families stay intact despite long distance putting the energy and visits in, while others break apart. If there is a narcissist in the midst, they hog all the attention and people and leave none for you.

I still think it is better to be lonely then abused, no matter how hard loneliness can be. You really are still alone if you are keeping company with those who do not respect you or care about you. I know I never had a family, or people there for me. They didn't like me decades ago and the die was cast.  More room can be made in one's life for good people when energy is not being wasted on those who make you feel alone.

How many lonely people are there out there? How many lonely ACONs to eat their cup of soup and sandwich in front of their blaring TV at night with no one to share the hours of their life with? How many were cut off via the smear campaigns? How many elderly and disabled feeling the pain of no one there who really cares about them?  How many lost their families to the wicked machinations of narcissists? No one deserves to die alone like Pia did. No one.

Psalm 27:10 Though my mother and father forsake me then the Lord will take me up. 

Living Next Door to the Country Club

I wrote this essay some years ago, in a senior center memoir writing class that allowed disabled people in it.  It was the year my husband's first lay-offs had occurred before we moved here. While the elderly people fondly remembered good times on the farm and grandchildren, there I was, just starting to process my crazy childhood and life. Hopefully my essays didn't shock them. I have added a few corrections here.

I was raised to marry into wealth. My mother had escaped her hardscrabble farm kid's lifestyle and had escaped to a big city by the age of 19. Poverty suffered as a child is easier then as an adult. At least when you are a kid, it's not your fault.

So while I would be an adult of currency exchanges, Save-A-Lots, scrimping every penny and living in fear of ghetto criminals, shopping was a fun hobby to my parents, the overpriced mall a center of delights. I grew up among Ethan Allen furniture, private school education, vacations and in high school lived on what was considered the richest street in town. Thank goodness, I had no idea what would await me as adulthood beckoned.

My parents lived on a near six figure income by the late 1970s and I grew up clueless. I had no idea what a sirloin steak really cost, my mother would fill 2-3 grocery carts full should relatives visit from out of town and think nothing of it. I didn't realize that a 5 course dinner could sent you back forty dollars. I grew up in a house that if the Russians had bombed, there would be food for a year. Today towards the end of every month my fridge is absolutely barren.

                                   this isn't my mother's collection this is a normal sized one.

Money was wasted on strange things. Thousands of dollars on china figurines was spent freely. One day I entered my mother's living room during a warmer December day to see at least three-five thousand glass snowmen of various kinds standing like a snowman army. My eyes bugged out as I calculated how much money she had probably spent on the endless variations of clay, porcelain and fabric Frosties. There had to be at least $30,000 dollars invested in this particular shopping spree. My mother should have bought stock in Hallmark.

For my father there were car parts to be refurbished in the garage, and entire "muscle" car in one side of the garage to be redone, and endless gadgets and tools. He had everything from an air compressor, two or three riding mowers and endless construction and house re-modeling items.

I was no spoiled kid, as I actually got goaded by the other high school kids for living in a 6 bedroom house next door to the only country club in town. While the neighborhood kids went on constant vacations, and got to play golf, we never joined. Everything was about keeping up with the Joneses, model households, "work til you drop, children or not. Today several family member's houses look like untouched museums and the houses you see in magazines. While I would get a decent number of Christmas gifts for good pictures, I didn't dress like a rich kid. I was befriending the kids who lived in the projects and the working class neighborhoods nearer to my school. My mother didn't buy me very many clothes and when you show up in high school wearing the same 2-3 outfits over and over, it establishes your social rank more then your parent's address.

The rich kids of my neighborhood rejected the whole lot of us, my family didn't realize that farmer's daughter and that a man with an New Jersey accent who cussed his head off in a Honeymooner's a la violent Fred Flintstone fashion don't quite fit into some upper class enclaves no matter the pretensions made. If anything after the neighbors called the cops, on my Dad cussing his head off so loudly they covered their children's ears, we were forbidden to play with the rest of the neighborhood teens. They avoided us like the plague. One popular girl fled my house during her first visit, when my father stomped up the stairs screaming about some lost papers and throwing things. She was petrified. At least she could run away, I was stuck!

My family never had heard of women's rights. While I was a good student, having free laborers came first. I still remember 10-14 hour workdays, scrubbing, polishing and dusting the 3,500 square foot house we lived in. Cinderella just wasn't a fairy tale. Before anyone says, "Quit yer whining all kids have to do chores!" This was a labor camp with a mean drill sergeant by your side. Perfectionists out of the gates of hell--Mommy Dearest and Daddy Dearest nightmares that made Joan Crawford's whining about the wire hangers and chopping down the tree in the backyard a slight tiff. No one would ever realize there are 5,000 ways to rake leaves the wrong way or even fathom that a rake had to be held the right way. I would grow up with a lifelong distaste for housework and yard work.

As college rolled around, my father kept threatening to throw us out on our ear by the age of 18. Having a father who won a full-4 year ride to university due to extreme math skills I did not inherit meant as a normal kid, you were simply resented. I worked 30 hours a week, my last two years of high school in restaurants as a salad and prep- cook. I used to hoard money like a fiend. The irony would occur to me years later. At one point in late high school, I had the greatest amount saved in the bank that I would have for the rest of my life which was $5,000. College and payment on my first car soaked it up like a sponge.

Things got only worse, in college, I in youthful idealism chose art education as a major not realizing it would sink me into future poverty. Some people make that one bad decision that turns their life on the dime towards the bad. For some it's getting pregnant as a teen, dropping out of school, doing drugs. This was mine 3.4 grade point average or not. I was good at art and actually a very good art teacher in the few years I got to work in it. The subject of art had served as my escape for survival. It was not only an interest but a vocation, but sadly my declining health blocked me from the good teaching jobs.

My parents hated what I stood for. The money I got for help to get through college was paid for with as pound of flesh attached even as I worked my way through college in the dorm cafeterias. I was called an evil hippie and a prima donna because I wanted a state school education and wanted to be a high school art teacher. One would think I wanted to run away and join the circus or had become a prostitute by the reaction of my father to my choice of a future career. He even tried to get me to join the convent and got angry when I refused, saying they would pay for my college.

No one warned me of how hard it was to make a living. No one told me that young adults could struggle. No one told me or prepared me for the fact that life may brings struggle or turmoil. With parents who could indulge in immediate gratification, what did I know? My mother who had no college even got a $40,000 a year job via my father who gave it to her. No one told me how to write a check, or how to budget or that the wrong step could lead to years of poverty. No one told me that things had drastically changed since the Baby Boomers made their first steps out of college. There were losers and winners and the winners had money.

By age 22, even with a part-time $14.00 an hour art teaching job and then making the decision to go back to school for a paralegal degree, I was considered a wash-up by my family. The summer I graduated from college, my 20 year old sister was marrying the ex mayor of a big city's son. She never would have to worry about living out of milk crates or struggling to pay bills. My parents would tell me, "Why can't you be more like your sister?". She went to community college and met her husband right after high school graduation. She has never lived on her own and went right from her twin bed covered in Garfield sheets with stuffed animals on top to her suburban housewife bliss. I wondered if the marriage was arranged since she never dated in high school, went from zero to 60 and they both treated each other like they were entering a business partnership instead of showing normal love behavior like kissing and hugging one another.

My sister had reached the pinnacle of success in my parents eyes by being engaged at age 19. My college graduation was ignored and neither parent showed up. One of my friends drove me to my college graduation. I would be stuck living at home for a year paying a small amount of rent and saving money for my great escape into my first no contact.

The years then came where as an adult, I would visit my mother's house with the perfect rooms, with one room of new furniture equaling a year's salary for me and my husband. Two doors down from multimillionaires, she added onto the house, and remodeled to her heart's content. After my father died, the insurance pay-offs made her even wealthier and more self satisfied. She has no idea what my day to day life is like. She doesn't know what life without money is like. The glass snowmen stand on patrol every winter with their empty eyes surveying the suburban landscape.

See:  Money, Snobs and Narcissists

The Work World is Run By Narcissists!

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I haven't worked in years but I am noticing as an outsider the job world is getting meaner and meaner. As a Christian I should expect this as the world descends more into the abyss, but this one is hitting home and has and it's tough. There's too many people I know who have been thrown into poverty seemingly for no reason but that the sharks won't let them in the pool. The lines of people with extensive degrees taking orders to grill hamburgers and clean toilets are long and sad.  The work world is becoming a cold hard place. Some may say "Sure what do you know, you haven't been in it for years"!  My flying monkey cousin via my mother thinks I am laying about eating bonbons, she can trade bodies with me anytime. I'll go work her factory job rather then putting up with what I put up with in this body.

 Friends suffer from cruel bosses and of course I saw what my poor husband was put through. Honestly the narcs and sociopaths are rising through the ranks. Do any of you think they are all the ones in charge now? With the "right to work" crap, more like "right to be fired" every serf in America knows they can be fired in a heart beat. Boss had a bad hair day? Out you go! Told a coworker during a political debate in the break room, that you don't want the cultural marxist who wears nothing but ugly pants suits as a president in 2016? Told another you think both parties suck? Out you go! 10 minutes late because the bus showed up late? Out you go! Jobs have become even more unforgiving.

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They convinced the right wing to throw out unions, so now the only system where one could demand some things like a decent wages and hours are gone. Sure some became corrupt, but the money-masters sure pulled that one over fast. That's why wages are the same as in 1999 for many jobs. I made 11.00 an hour as a residential counselor during my last year in the mid 1990s. This would be a good wage in some areas but not where I lived at the time.  Residential counselors now make 8.00 an hour. Newspapers still want to pay reporters around 25,000 a year.

They could outsource jobs to their heart's content and hire only people from overseas as Gen X and the millennials saw their ambitions collapse. Woe to us with narcissistic parents who had great 9-5 jobs just from showing up and a guaranteed suburban house. They saw our failures as personal rather then systemic.

Everything is about weeding people out. Some of the narcissist inspired love their power to deny opportunity at the flick of a wrist. Why are some let in the door and not others? I almost became a middle school art teacher in 1993 but was told my lungs were too far gone and failed the medical exam. This experience was replicated twice with a mighty dosage of reluctance too for my then low to mid 200s body.  Thus started my descent into poverty. This was one reason I went to school to become a paralegal because I knew my health was going down hill, was anyone going to hire a big fat paralegal? I just wanted to do paperwork in a back office. I think I would have been good at it, if my body hadn't further imploded, but I see the long list of employers shutting the door in my face away from the good jobs, as a puzzle piece in my descent into life long disability and poverty.

So watching what happened to my husband was hell on earth. He worked the 14-16 hour days, and still got tossed away, even with great writing skills. What does a person do then? Even if he has his quirks, does that mean someone is now supposed to starve? He mulls about the piece-meal freelance slave factory and that is exactly what it is. He used to be a newspaper assistant editor. Some may so wonder you two are poor, newspapers went the way of buggy whips, but what of the other copy ad writer job where the resident sociopaths felt no compunction about uprooting people's lives and firing a spinning door of people? We counted 7 ads for his position after he was let go within a very short period of time.

The work world always seemed a mystery to me. Back stabbing ruled as the office narcissists gossiped the day away. It seemed the people actually getting any work done were few in number. There were more discussions about what clothes everyone was wearing then any actual emphasis on the job at hand. As an Aspie, I realized how much of the work world was not based on actually making or doing anything outside of my stints of being a soup and salad cook and art teacher but on "busy work" and "workbooks" for adults. These were the worse aspects of school revisited. I suppose Common Core will put the final nail in the coffin as they make even 2+2 impossible to understand among the nation's youth. Common Core honestly is "busy work" and bureaucrats screwing things up for kids. They make add 10 steps to an otherwise simple math problem.

I noticed things were mean at jobs. While a nice boss popped up here and there, they were far rarer. I had this person who even achieved MENTOR status in my mind for a few years when I was an art teacher at a juvenile home, and a nice Arby's boss took pity on my growing health issues. These were the exception to the rule though, many of the bosses were just flat out mean.

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While in school one gets a mean teacher here and there, most professors are accommodating and nice, the bosses often weren't. I learned to avoid many of them to avoid write-ups or being yelled at for "saying the wrong thing" the latter often a special abuse for Aspies, especially for me who was in over her social head while trying to keep 12 violent and mentally ill youths from committing suicide or killing each other for 12-14 hours a day. I will say this, no one jumped me unlike each and every one of my co-workers, and there were no great tragedies that required an ambulance, though one time I needed the cops there pronto. Unlike other coworkers I avoided being pushed down the stairs, beaten to a pulp,  bitten on the wrist or locked in a closet.

I know with the narc parents, I had learned to fear authority. Too many were there to destroy my life and not help me. While oddly I had a bond with some teachers and professors that was the opposite of this, with work bosses, I was always shaking in my boots. It brought out the hammer from some of the most predatory ones. I was the agreeable sort of employee, I would sign up for overtime, and try to keep my nose clean and often just wanted to be left alone, but some of course didn't give me that peace. With the health deteriorating, fear set in.

My bad health problems aside, the mystery of some getting in the door while others don't befuddles me. How do some have simple lives with guaranteed jobs that pay enough for a decent life. How did they manage it.

I think of the secure lives more people used to have with jobs that would actually last. We are seeing our communities fall apart even from this. The jobs are like merry go rounds, with people jumping off and on. One shocking thing about obits for people in their 70s and 80s plus is they always talk about them having had the same job for 25 years plus. My husband tried various government jobs including apply for the post office when his legs were not yet a problem. So many slammed doors. So many unlived lives. They tell us in America we supposedly have endless choices but really for most of us our fate has been determined by various bean counters behind desks. The job world is like the Lotto, and the entrance fees are perfect health, a good body, a decent car--no broken windshield and not being too old, and more and more a conformist personality that doesn't offend anyone. I often thought "What if I had gotten the good non-grant based school district art teaching job?" One thing about me, I believe I was a good art teacher even if my time in the field was short.

Connections really help. Almost everyone I know who has gotten a good job had a family or other connection getting them in the door. Skills help too, but even there I have seen the highly skilled left in the dust. If you have rare computer skills you can write your ticket it seems, but not all of us have those aptitudes.  It is scary to be 40 something, well 50 something in husbands case and to end up in the poverty world. Me because of my health and him because of being "thrown away" in the work world to the point of extreme disheartenment. I look back and have my regrets. I think of things like "life skills" and "how does one make REAL money that can change a life" and trying to help improve things but I am beyond stumped. He sold books on ebay last week and I got a 10 dollar gift card from taking a survey. I try to do what I can to survive.

 I had my days of tears and regrets too over the art ed choice, but have forgiven myself for that, it was something I was good and interested in. I have done volunteer things related to it as late as 2013 when I did an art therapy presentation.  I was not a businesswoman type nor the type to ascend in a corporation.

And speaking of corporations, I have noted more and more there seems to be a corporate personality. I live in a town that is kind of a "company town", and one can almost tell who works there. They all seem to have these personalities, I do not get. More cold? Very rigid? That is what I have seen. The few good people inside look scared and repressed. Corporate people are all told to dress "professional" ie all the same. I feel like everyone who works at "Widget Corporation" [my made up name] are all in a cult. It's like an Amish guy with his hat and certain look, they all have it too. Some make an easy 6 figures with job titles I don't even understand, innovation directors, risk analysts, lead analysts. What do these people exactly do?

 Innovation seems to be beaten out of our society with a business world that considers creatives unless they are independently wealthy multimillionaires like they are poison. I know of one company that hires computer gifted Aspies in the entire nation, but most Aspies even the ones with high IQs are floundering in forever underemployment or underemployment, lacking the skills and ability to conform to even manage to get a job. Why are things like this? How come there are no bosses who hire differently outside of the resume system? Socially in the job world, the straight A nerds unless they are computer gifted or get themselves into science fail. Aspies who fail to connect often fail to find secure employment.

I am not up to working but disabled people have noticed there are no job programs for them anymore outside of the set ups for the developmentally disabled. If you are disabled, the job programs simply aren't there, or you are forced to compete with the healthy who are always chosen over you to keep the health care insurance costs down. Vocational rehabilitation counselors throw up their hands or suggest fields that you can get a job in, like residential counseling because no one else wants to do it.

 I still cringe wondering if the timing of me going on my husband's supplemental insurance, was the reason for his toss-out at the last job. It may be the reason why he had a good evaluation and all of a sudden they changed their mind and did the "you are not a good fit" song and dance. That's the song and dance that allows them to legally discriminate to their heart's content and there isn't one thing you can do about it. The lawyers would laugh at you, how could you prove it?  Your economic life is bombed at the hand of an uncaring narcissist.

I don't agree with Bob Black on everything, but he nails down the terrible way that many employees are treated.

"And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately deStalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a par-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. Without necessarily endorsing it for them either, it is noteworthy that children at home and in school receive much the same treatment, justified in their case by their supposed immaturity. What does this say about their parents and teachers who work?"

I worked at Toy's R Us one summer when I was around 18 or 19 where they literally patted us down at the door and made us open up our purses treating us like would be thieves. I think of the abuses at other jobs--at one I discovered my secret dossier in the bosses desk while looking for a stapler, a hand full of write-ups they never showed me. Some bosses seemed to think working 70 hours a week was to be expected. One complained about me losing my hair and my clothes being too old. I remember my IBS up in the bathroom, being yelled at for taking too long during a 16 hour shift. At one job I got accused of smoking in the bathroom, something that would automatically kill me, and caught an assistant manager sneaking a ten out of my cashier drawer. I had no choice but to quit there.

Many jobs seemed to be continuations of my abusive childhood. While every now and then you were left alone, many places you were not. The bullies of my elementary school paled compared to the bullies awaiting me in the workplace who always had a smile on their face and daggars behind their back. These types had to create drama and stress for their own entertainment. As an Aspie, I had to cloak too, hide all stims and "fake" the small talk and smiles. I knew if I didn't my new home would be a gutter in the street but this took a toll too. It gets tiring to cloak to survive as an Aspie in a neurotypical world.

I think of my long list of jobs, sometimes 3 and 4 jobs overlapped with another. The norm for me was having two jobs just to keep a room and a car running. There was a period of time I had 4 jobs at once. Some of these were summer jobs too in between or even during college semesters. I dug up work anywhere and anywhere, even working as a temp childcare worker during a college Christmas vacation.

Papergirl--delivering newspapers
Salad and soup cook/salad girl--2 different restaurants after one went out of business-high school and college
Dorm Cafeteria worker--cook, check-ins, sandwich maker
Substitute teacher K-12/some long term assignments/special ed
Home health aide and housekeeping/temp aide for the disabled
French Fry Maker and Cashier at Arby's
Arts and Crafts director and counselor at Girl Scout Camp
Child care worker
Temp in graphics studio
Temp plastics factory worker--3 month assignments and others
Grant based juvenile home art teacher
Residential counselor for violent and severely emotionally impaired  teenage girls
Part time legal secretary [unpaid internships here too in law offices]
Games counter at Toys R Us

It was an extreme challenge to make a living. Even to get a job because of my weight, I had to move heaven and earth. This means for every job I actually got I filled out dozens of resumes. The temp agencies were the bane of my existence, I would have done anything to have a stable factory job even back during those years.

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 The best jobs were the ones where I was left alone. I still remember the satisfaction that came with concocting salads and making soup from scratch at one restaurant job, a healthier me may have wanted to be a chef in another life. The art teaching job also was very enjoyable even if I had a few Aspie run ins with co-workers out of the classroom.  Paperwork in the few office jobs is something I liked doing.  Teaching jobs were good in that you ran the show usually on your own. Substitute teaching ranged depending on the school, but working in very rough schools was very tough at times--think "Dangerous Minds" territory here.  However the worse thing I remember about the work world was the long list of narcissists and sociopaths making the work experience far more miserable then it should have been. Some jobs I was spared while others it was a nightmare.

Maybe some people out there do find stable jobs they enjoy and where there is less abuse. They don't live life with the sword of economic Damocles hanging over their head. Maybe they find nice kind bosses.  I wish my husband had found a mentor instead of the people who seemed to fire people for fun. One of his firings came the week after he even got letters from the community praising him for an article when he was a reporter. Maybe I wouldn't be on the soup kitchen line then.

 

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Something is really wrong with our work world, and it is getting worse. No one is calling it out. The Republicans and libertarians will sing the praises of big business, destroy unions and Ayn Rand stockholming even their socioeconomic challenged followers into accepting political policies that add to their own demise. The Democrats will throw open the borders and praise amnesty ignoring the working class sinking into worse and worse poverty as their love affair with globalism supercedes their own countrymen's needs. They don't care about someone like me. They'd rather hand everything over to the rest of the world. The politicians have only made things worse.

One sees pundits writing nasty little articles about how we should all live in tiny houses and have towns without cars to praise the future descent into poverty with Agenda 21 leading the way. This is all about stripping away the American standard of living. The elites want a reduced life for us all. Some write that stable jobs are in the past and that the young will have to piece together contractual work to stay alive.  A disposable workforce is nauseatingly the new norm. One's bills aren't disposable which basically means one will be living on the desperate edge. These are all things that bring them profit but they sell these things to people telling them these are the times now and you are "entitled" to want anything different. Don't be fooled by that crap that Gen X or even the millennials have "entitlement" when they lament not having a job that would actually buy them apartment or allow them a decent life. That is one gaslight going on for the entire society.

Abuse at work is now accepted and a given in an increasingly growing wicked society. No one speaks of an honest day's pay for an honest day's labor. The work world is run like the Lotto and Hunger Games. That's a huge problem. When 90% of the population is scrambling, it's not going to build secure communities. If some of us seek recovery in our personal lives and reject abuse, it should be applied to public life, where some people say no more abuse when it comes to the work world and life on the job!

50 Shades of Grey: Sociopath Propaganda

I don't consider it romantic at all, but this meme has a point.

I told my husband a joke the other day about Fifty Shades of Grey. I said it was Propaganda for us to accept literal butt-beatings at the hands of the billionaire 1% and for us to like it and call it "love".

I refused to read the book. I would sooner throw up then watch the movie. Remember I am a born again Christian, there is some stuff to me that is just out and out wicked. This 50 Shades of Grey nonsense disgusts me. One thing in our sick wicked society, they do have propaganda out there advancing sociopathy.

A Psychiatrist’s Letter to Young People about Fifty Shades of Grey

The Great Narc Take-Over

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One thing I have pondered is how society is growing more narcissistic. I have ideals that are even outside of my religious ones, that I am realizing are growing more rare, in today's world. Why are the wolves taking over? Why is it getting harder to function in society? Why does altruism seem to be growing more rare. Why do so many people who rise to the top seem to be either connected or always the meanest sharks with the biggest teeth in the swimming pool of America? What ever happened to friendship, love and altruism? In the "selfie" society everything is about appearances!

The narcs are ruling here more and more. The Bible says in the last days that

Matt 24:12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

It sure feels like those days are now.

One thing I notice in any group, is the narcissists always get their way. I have seen it happen in my family, offices, clubs, health groups, Internet support groups, and a multitude of other places. How does this happen? The way often group dynamics work among humans is the meanest ones, get the most respect. All a narcissists has to do is instill enough fear, and they have plenty of sycophantic minions, enablers and flying monkeys to do their bidding. I have noticed almost all groups if a narcissist is in the midst that MOST will submit to them. Why?

Human dynamics suck, there is a reason we get a bunch of evil sociopathic scum running the world, who bring in wars, and endless destruction. I think a sociologist should explore the issue of why do humans love and worship the most evil? Why do the most evil always climb to the top of the pyramid?

How come there wasn't one person in my family who ever defended me? One relative told me the Aunt that Loved me, called out the extreme favoritism of my mother for my sister, but with the exception of her and my brother standing a little against my fat abuse, there was nothing. I was left alone and isolated. The narcs convinced everyone to have as little to do with me as possible.

One recent thing for me is I have not officially "unfriended" or gone no contact with the few left in the family, but I am not talking to them. I have nothing to say. I have not called for weeks. Right now I'm trying to make up my mind about two birthday cards for younger nephews, they never write me or send me a card. The days of kids being told to write their old aunt a letter out of politeness sake are over with. I barely know them.  I worry about those kids because they are being raised on a diet of nothing but video games. I even joined "Steam" one of their video game forums which kept crashing my computer because I don't have a special gaming computer to try and talk to them to no avail. Hopefully their public schools will teach them something useful in life.

 I hid everything on my Facebook from the few remaining relatives.  I knew it was getting back to my mother and she had a constant information source. Cousins defend and visit my abusers, my mother and her brother. My brother I already wrote about. My nephew refuses to write back or any contact. My niece wouldn't even let me see her Instagram account she told me about. Her letters were written extremely stilted and even there I wondered if my sister was reading and editing them. She is 14 years old but seems unable to figure out the ease of setting up an email account of her own. You know something is wrong when you ask direct questions and get no answers. These weren't crazy questions either, I never brought up my no contact with her or told her about the other relatives, just simple ones.  Why am I bothering? It just isn't worth it.

I sat back and realized I am a stranger to my family. I didn't choose this, but they did. This is something I have to admit in my letting go process, these people don't know me and didn't want to. The narcs set this into motion. Yes sometimes I stand back and think, "How did this happen?" "How did I lose so badly?", "How did the narcs turn everyone against me so effectively? I am sure this is something ACONs all relate to. I know now I can't take the disrespect and disloyalty anymore. I did for years putting up with it. I suppose it's odd to choose to be alone, but I got tired. Tired of trying so hard even with the ones I considered the "nice" ones.

The worse thing is how they silence you, especially for an Aspie where the social rules are tougher, and you go silent afraid to say the wrong thing but then wondering if the silence worsened things for you? Did I say too much? Did I say too little? I realized even with the few I opened up to, it made not a whit of a difference.

But then what do you do when everything you say is twisted and turned against you. One thing about Aspergers, I believe narcissists have it out for Aspies. We are often bullied by them. We are not as submissive and followers to group dynamics and it pisses them off. An Aspie who has had to float their own boat for years, is an annoyance to a narc. I don't feel like obeying the narcs for social ease. This gets me in trouble in endless groups.

Things flow fine if there are no narcs in a group or club. My present church seems narc-free thank God, and my old one was too. My time with these folks is joyful, however if a narc is in a room, Aspie watch out. Narcs like to pick on those they see as the weakest and most vulnerable. The way their twisted brains work, is they seek to find out who is the "weakest link" and they go after them to gain power. Sadly this seems to work far too often. They go after those they consider vulnerable, the sickest, the Aspie, etc. Narcissists are like the head chicken telling every other chicken in the chicken yard to peck at the scapegoat. They get others to join in but many others scurry to the sidelines not wanting to be the next target and the Narc has attained power via fear. One thing about me as a personality, is I have always defended the underdogs and this angers the narcs. This often makes me a target but not something I plan to change.

Think about today's work-world. Why are so many places back-stab factories? In the old days, if you showed up, did your work and were peaceful, things were fine, now people lose their livilehoods at the behest of narcs. Now if they "don't like you", they kick you to the curb into welfare and starvation. My husband worked a job for 5 years but sadly a sociopathic narc came in to run the business, and he got rid of him within a year. He laid in wait for him to make ONE mistake, in a newspaper article. If you are going to write 100s of newspaper articles a year, there is bound to be a mistake, if you are a human being and not a machine. This man fired others, destroying untold lives including firing one woman in a day, he decided he "did not like", who had uprooted her life to move to our town. He did not care about firing a man who had to do caretaking for a disabled wife, and seeking to destroy his life. The sick thing is he made a big production of being a Christian. The man was no Christian.

How many work organizations are being destroyed by narcissists now? Innovation and production will not increase under them. Most of the narcs will clean the place out and cook the books, so they look good. This may be one thing that describes why the American economy is failing. Too many narcs, too much destruction and no one can get any work done. It seriously worries how the nicest people seem to be the poorest now and left out of the running in the work a day world.  I think it should be illegal to fire someone simply because a sick twisted boss "doesn't like" someone who has worked a job successful for years, and is not insubordinate and the business isn't going out of business. Of course as they pass horrible laws like the "right to work", really the "right to be fired and unemployed", the narcissists grow in power. Too many narcs become bosses and are true incompetents using scapegoats to carry the blame as they destroy businesses. The boss who fired my husband, ran the newspaper into the ground and was fired himself eventually when the bottom line sunk too low.

I have had a life where I have seen the narcissists never lose a job or suffer a bout of unemployment. They all ended up wealthy with money enough for condos and second homes in Florida, and endless decorations, vacations and eating out. Being crushed by health care bills or even taxes somehow didn't seem to be part of their world. The narcissists know how to play the system, not get caught and know how to scoop up the profits. The Bible talks about in Psalm 73 how the wicked will prosper. This doesn't mean every rich person is a narc or evil, but there are some who are, and they are doing big money clean-outs. The bankers with their bail-outs and politicians, what is the percentage of narcs and sociopaths in that world? I've read 10% of Wall-street bankers are sociopaths before, I find such a stat totally believable.

In our society of celebrity, the narcissists have a whole world stage upon which to play. They desire for the world to revolve around them and to have constant attention. Many of the celebrities that Americans worship are full blown narcissists. You see one every now and then who really loves acting and where it is a craft, but many simply are the most successful at getting attention and are connected. While not everyone can be world famous, one can see that narcissists DO get the most attention even on smaller levels. They suck up notice like sponge. They are bored by others, and say "What about me?" In our society however the way competition works, now where achievement is more about getting attention more then actually DOING something, many of the narcissists are experts at getting attention. The sell-yourself and NETWORK society threw open the door WIDE for the narcissists and self-absorbed to take power and they did. They are the ones who have the known names, they are the ones everyone is seeking to please because they are the one up on stage. Their faces are everywhere, and yours is not.

In a society where close social ties have broken and where there is constant moving, that helped the narcissists too. When people lived in the same town all their lives and knew folks, narcissists had it harder. Screw enough people over and many would talk and learn to avoid you. However in a society where the crowds are larger, and there's always a group of new "suckers" to be had for the narcissist, they are harder to detect and can pull off more antics. Small town gossip is no longer a curb on their behaviors. They are lost in the big city always with a new supply of victims. Their lies are easier to hide in a group of unconnected people or a bigger community.

Piss off a narc enough, via disagreeing with them, and they will go on their smear campaigns. They will make up endless lies about you. Most of their lives are based on lies. They lie about themselves too. Most do not see through their lies. To get a narc angry at you, you don't even have to get in an actual debate with one. Merely disagreeing with a narc in a polite fashion is enough for one to become your arch-enemy for life. Remember when people could have different ideas and not hate each others guts? Those days are over with now too. Their reaction is way beyond the original dispute. They will try to color you as bad as they can. "You attacked me, you are vicious!" they will shout in their classic ploys of projection. One thing about narcissists, is they project on you, what they are doing! So when one screams, "You are a liar!", they are lying their butts off.

 They want constant admiration and if you do not provide this, they will hate your guts. Before I went no contact, I disagreed with my mother about something in front of other family members, she started shrieking about her "respect" and "how dare I". I thought to myself I am old enough to be a grandmother and still being browbeaten by this woman? I thought no more. One sick narc I encountered was so extreme, she wrote on Facebook, that no one was allowed to disagree with her on her wall lest she would ban them. That's not friendship but a committee of "yes men and women". but she gathers them and quite easily too. Conditional friendship based on propping someone up. One can see narcissists making crazy rules all over the place, one thing they want to police constantly is speech. I see narcissism in the bad politics of America. Narcissism and wickedness is what is driving the police state and desire for control and silencing.

  Even if you retreat in realizing they are a sociopath with no human empathy, they are hell-bent for revenge and destruction behind the scenes. People will unfriend you and stop talking to you, and you won't even know why. They will go after your friends well just because they are your friends. My narcissistic mother hated all my friends even ones she never met. Why? She was angry at them merely for being my friend. My mother managed to destroy even what should be the strongest of family bonds.

 In the minds of reprobate narcs daring to challenge them on anything makes you a non-person. Instead of defending their ideas, they will attack the person. They will tell others long litanies of everything that is wrong with you and do endless smear campaigns. After I went no contact I realized how complete and utterly poisonous my mother's smear campaigns had  This is how they work, to vilify rather then to defend or stand on any principles. Narcissists and their minions sell out at the drop of a hat. If cash is involved they would sell their grandmother down the river. They go where the profit is at and ideals such as goodness, honor and integrity don't matter.  In America, those became old-fashioned ideals are meant to be cast aside among the Lady Gaga worshippers. We have seen the great sell-out continue. This is one reason things are growing more corrupt in our country. The Great Narc take-over. They do not care about what is good anymore but seek their own elevation and profit.

In a society where people have been trained to worship bare naked power, and where the whole premise is king and queen of the mountain antics, the narcissists have been emboldened even more so. Their power is growing. Their meanness is growing. The people who have given in to them and the flying monkeys lacking moral standing themselves have given them more of a place. One thing they can and do use is fear. No one wants to be their next target, so even the people who may know what they are, hide in the shadows. Fear keeps them on top. Fear and active destruction of people's lives, keeps all the others in line. I realized to my horror, people absolutely feared my mother. I wrote in my NC letter to her,  "why should I fear a narcissistic woman, when I almost got shot by gangbangers at my last job?".  Aunt Scapegoat and Aunt Confused shivered in their boots before my mother. In my family I am not considered brave for being the only one who has ever stood against her but crazy!

That is one thing I notice about the narcissists is everyone is afraid of them. This fear has some reason to exist. Many narcissists will destroy your name and reputation but the ones higher on the sociopath scale, won't let any human laws hold them back. This is why no contact is recommended, "winning with narcs" in this world doesn't happen. They aren't playing by the same rules. When I see a narc in my midst now, I know now to separate as much as possible.

Often they are the ones with the money and power, and to stand against one can bring great sacrifice. Many will dirty the names of the one's who do make stand. I believe in standing with God behind my back and no succumbing to wicked narcs.

The Social Rules I Break!

1. Never talk about anything too negative or intense or intellectual.

Aspies cope by analyzing things, this means fully facing reality and dealing with the way life really is.  Smiling stoicism is not our natural setting. It is our suck it up and avoid getting beaten up default setting among strangers. It's hard. Why are things like this? Sometimes the human world seems like it is run like the animal world, and if any individual exhibits any weakness, they are pecked to death like in the chicken world.

One thing I notice some neurotypicals get into, is that one is never to share or display pain or vulnerability. Maybe there is the good reason for that for self protection from narcs but it helps the narcissists rule, because no one has the ability to talk about anything real. Sometimes, I feel like I have to censor myself constantly around some neurotypicals. One thing about our society is the powers that be want the serfs to smile and not cause trouble. Don't help them out. No one is feeling their feelings. No one's crying and patting heads in the American Hunger Games.

There is some scary stuff happening in our society where talking about troubles means you are a bad person. New philosophies are teaching people that anyone who has bad things happen to them is at fault. The Bible admits that life is full of tribulation. The graveyard whistlers don't want to admit that poverty or bad things can happen to them so they want you to shut up so they can shut their eyes to the human pain around them and play their video games or live in fantasy. A lot of our world now is manufactured around Roman "bread and circuses" and well, no one is supposed to be bawling their eyes out in the circus or discussing the stampeding barbarians outside of the tent.

You are to keep the smile on at all times. I can see emotions becoming a thing of a past in our growing narcissistic world. All emotions but anger and glee will be canceled out. Watch an old movie sometime and notice a few people cry in there, or feel loss. Men of the 1950s have no problem speaking of romantic love. People cry. You will know that the emotional landscape has been extremely altered even since the 1980s. Us Aspies are outsiders and are viewing this stuff. An old Aspies sees these wide changes, while many within the heating up pot are clueless.

Aspies are being really oppressed by the appearances oriented society we have now, where we are told to hide any bad stuff. However it goes deeper then this, there is a severe anti-intellectualism now in our culture. If you are an intellectual in America, you are written off as a "nerd". I remember this started sometime around the 1980s with the "Revenge of the Nerds". Only weirdos and social ingrates sit around and talk about history or obesity conspiracy. While I can explore theories and topics with many Aspie friends and maybe one or two good-minded neurotypicals, the majority of neurotypicals seem angered by intellectual forays. You can even avoid religious and other topics and discuss a neutral one, and still manage to anger a few people without meaning too. One Aspie incredible joy is intellectual banter and discovery, so it gets very sad that around some neurotypicals, this joyful part of our personality is to be suppressed. I know among my family, discussing any intellectual endeavors fell flat. The most neutral thing pissed them off. They seemed bored, wanting to show something off instead.

 I want to dive deep into the ocean, while many neurotypicals are telling me to stay in the puddle, and splash. Am I too intense? Maybe. I like humor, jokes and funny movies like anyone else, but I feel so repressed at times. Often in the world, I am this very quiet person. I learned long ago opening my mouth got me in trouble more often then not. Sometimes I bounce between "just being me and letting the chips fall where they may" and running back to the corner to hide. I can't handle having endless enemies and fighting endless battles. I like blogging because I can talk about things openly.

2. Maintain your Status.

Status is too important to to many out there. I don't feel like playing the king or queen of the mountain games.  If I had money, all of you know, I would not going to spend it on a giant McMansion in the suburbs with a double sink and granite counters in the kitchen. Boring!  Aspies usually are bored to death via competition. It bores us or troubles us. We derive no joy from smashed up opponents on the ballfield. I never wanted to destroy anyone else to get their bennies or climb to the top. Status to me seemed a useless thing but it is so important in our world. Sometimes I have told Asperger friends my theory that a lot [not all] of neurotypicals operate according to status. Many of their mental and emotional battles are hierarchy maneuvers that a great deal of energy is dedicated to.

Whose on top? Whose on bottom? Who cares! Sadly here too, with our growing narcissistic society this has only grown worse. The narcissists want to be in charge and want control. One thing that will happen to Aspies is sometimes they will get thrown under the bus, because they may be a threat to someone's status. Every little Aspie remembers the people in school who would be nice to you in private but pick on you in front of the bullies. Going back to the pecking chickens again, group status and dynamics have some really poison attributes to them. This is how conformity is demanded and expected and any "stand-outs" smashed down with a hammer.

Our entire world world is based on status, and well this is one reason some Aspies may really suffer. While we want to be left alone in peace and just want to do our jobs in the work place, this doesn't happen. The games and drama to establish the social order and status seem never ending. I always had the thought before, if all these narc and social pecking order games were ended, that society could advance somewhere more decent. You would have your flying cars and cured diseases because Marge and Sally and George and Henry would be busier working and innovating rather then fighting, backstabbing and reporting each other to the boss.

 There is always someone who is going to have a higher grade point or or more money. Aspies are more loner types. We do not feel like playing the "Big Cheese" or selling ourselves. Perhaps this is  a bad thing and why too many Aspies who lack sellable savant or computer skills, end up broke. The world sometimes feels like a bunch of screaming matches where the narcs are on the stage screaming "Look at me, dammit!", the non-narc enablers in the audience and some of us decided to leave the theatre while being sick of it all. A lot of status seeking is empty to the Christian and those with a more spiritual mind-set, but as I look out in the world, that is what so much of it is about.

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3. Conform in dress, opinion and thought.

I'm failing that one big time. As I age, I realize there are many people who simply aren't going to like me for the opinions I hold. There are times in life where I have found out someone has flat out hated my guts. These are people I never had one argument or debate with in my entire life. How did this happen? They hate me because I'm different.

 Surprise, Surprise! Us Aspies can offend some neurotypicals just by just being ALIVE! If you are Aspie trust me it will happen. I know I'm not politically correct, and everyone's cup of tea, but one thing Aspies have to develop is a thick skin, especially if you are going to fly all your weirdo flags. People either love you or hate you when you are an Aspie. There are many times where I am simply hated for breaking some social rule I don't know about. I try to be nice, so wasn't rude to anyone. Sometimes just being me is enough to make this happen. Sometimes it is because I simply do not conform.

I have noticed too many people's opinions all match now. There are the independent thinkers who don't fit in the Republican or Democratic box, but have you noticed over the last 30 years people started to match their official demographics. I've had people get mad at me for things they thought I believed based on demographical assumptions.

Don't get me started on dress. I noticed someone wrote that manufacturers had streamlined the clothes for the global market, and that is why fashion creativity for the average person died on the alter of expediency. I'm old enough to remember different styles and colors and patterns. People get mad sometimes now if you don't dress like them. If you see a person with an individual style, don't lose them, it means something today.

The herd expects too much conformity now. You think the 1950s were the conformity society, they couldn't beat the 2010s. While they advertised fake freedom and "choices" for the masses via entertainment, actually the screws got tightened down more.

There is a reason weird Uncle Charlie or Aunt Lucy could still get some kind of job 50 years ago but sit unemployed now. There's a reason it feels so hard to make friends. I get this complaint from non-Aspies. There's a reason going to work at the office feels like a session of mental gladiators and a back-stab fest. Something is really wrong. The cultural rules have grown tighter and tighter and life I would say has gotten tough for the Aspie in this way, even if there is more discussion of disability rights and cultural awareness on the surface level.