Today has been okay.  I had a migraine last night and woke up with it this morning, which lasted a good part of the day.  My neck and shoulder were hurting really badly, which pushed into my forehead and teeth.  So I spent most of my day in bed, playing video games with my hubby and kids.  They were all paying "Project Zomboid" on Steam, while I was playing "Kynseed", also on Steam (which is like "Stardew Valley" somewhat...though my favorite SV type of game is "Graveyard Keeper", also on Steam).  So, Mr. Brooks' computer refused to play their zombie game (which I was playing for a tiny bit, but I am HORRIBLE at it and would die about 3 seconds into spawning in over and over again) so he borrowed mine (and still is using it right now).  I have several laptops: one for gaming (that's hooked up to our large screen TV in our bedroom), one for writing, and one tiny one I use if I leave the house.  So, he can play, while I blog, which is nice.  

And as I was thinking of something to do while he was using my gaming computer (it's not a gaming laptop, it's just a laptop I use for gaming, as my dog broke my screen and I can't use it without a monitor, which I use my large screen TV for), I started going through my other Facebook account on my blogging computer, the one I used recently to message my rapist's ex-wife (that was a strange conversation), and the daughters of the man who sexually....touched me? Abused me?  Assaulted me?  I am not sure how to put it.  He grabbed my ass and tried to come into my house after I babysat his daughters one night during a thunderstorm when I was sixteen.  So, I got brave a few weeks ago and messaged these three people, as well as sent a Christmas card to my old neighbor whose uncle touched me inappropriately as an adult in 2014 or so, to tell her what he did to me.  And I completely forgot I messaged the people on Facebook until I opened that account today and saw responses.  At first, the one daughter told me that nobody named my name ever babysat her, but then she realized who I was later after thinking about it.  The ex-wife of my rapist said NOTHING about him raping me, but told me all about how he was a "neglectful father and husband" to her.  Yeah.  That was worth talking to her for.  I just wanted to know if he stayed abusive or raped anyone else.  Apparently, they just "weren't meant to be for one another".  Ooh.  Lucky her.  I wanted to write back and thank her for ignoring what I said and instead talked about what horrible and shitty husband he was to her by him ignoring her and her kids.  Because that's what our conversation should have totally been about.  But I didn't.  I just let it go, because you can't teach someone like that how to be a proper human.  You just have to giggle and walk away.  

But when I opened that FB account, I saw pictures from seven years ago posted on my feed when I made my mother a quilted pillow for Christmas.  I forgot I had made that.  I was the only quilt I ever made that turned out perfectly.  And my mother, when I went no contact with her in 2016, got rid of it.  Just like she did with all the pictures of us: me, Mr. Brooks, and the kids.  She just packed them away like we didn't exist.  And never put them back up.  

Funny thing, I found them two nights ago.  I will go back and write what happened these past couple days, since I didn't write all weekend (I tend to stay off blogging when Mr. Brooks is home).  But I made the decision to get rid of them all.  The box, when I found it, made me super angry and hurt, and I'll write more about that in those particular posts (though if you're reading this later, you'll have already read about it).  

So, I'm on this FB account, and I see these pics show up in my feed as memories, and I realized something: I don't need to hold onto items that don't bring me joy or have a use in my house anymore.  I mean, she didn't for me, so why should I hold onto anything of hers?  I honestly don't care about stupid shit that means nothing to me, so why am I storing it?   

I also realized that I should never, EVER, do anything or buy anything or make anything special for my mother again.  EVER.  You'll read about the potatoes the other night, which is where this idea started.  I do something special for her and she either never says thank you or she OVERLY says thank you, which means she's making up for internal negative thoughts or external negative words she said to me.  So, her profusely thanking me for something is just bullshit.  Same goes for profusely over explaining herself.  Or profusely giving me praise.  It's all stemming from guilt.  Not of actually feeling bad, but fear of me realizing she's being horrible.  She will lie her way out of looking bad, which is her specialty, which is what the profuse (insert fakeness here) is all about.  

So, instead, which is something I adopted this holiday already, she will get utilitarian gifts, normal plain food without me going out of my way to make it tasty (she has no sense of smell or taste and cannot taste anything I make her anyways), normal plain responses (which is what she gets from me already), and everything else in boring "grey rock" form.  For Christmas this year, she will get a pair of jeans, a new bathrobe (since she has one, but freaks out if I am going to wash it, thinking she won't get it back in time for bed, so having two will combat that fear for her), a bag of like 10 books (she's an avid reader), and a Christmas cat-scratching house for the cats (not all the cats are hers, but she loves cat stuff).  One year I sewed her a bathrobe, which she promptly threw away (she wasn't even mad at me).  I should have seen behavior this years ago, that nothing I make is sacred for her, so by proxy, it's not safe with her.  And nothing I buy is good enough for her, as she always complains.  So she will not get a damn thing from me, or my family, that's special ever again.  And just in time for her to have enough dementia that she won't even remember.  Yay.  

Her dementia is getting worse, y'all.  She can't remember much of anything anymore, and acts like everything I do is new, even though I've done it a 100x for her.  Which I guess is kind of fun for her.  I mean, when you're 74 you've seen so much, that nothing is new anymore.  But wait!  Then comes dementia!  And everything is new!  Wheeeeee!  

Anyways, she hasn't asked once about getting gifts for people, which is really, really not her style.  So that's one way I can tell she's going off the deep end.  I mean, she's a total shopaholic, guys.  This is really not like her.  Which is fine by me, her gifts are usually either over the top or kind of horrible.  AND she LOVES to use gifts as a way to play games with people.  "Oh, I hate you this year, so you get something I bought from the resale shop for dollar.  And you?  Oh, I want to punish the person I hate so I am going to buy you $100 worth of stuff so they can be all sad about their shitty gift!  Yay for playing games with my family!!  Wheeeeee!"  Yeah, I do NOT miss that, at all.  

But I really miss that pillow, guys.  It was huge and for once, something I made, turned out well.  Here is a pic of it: 

When it was done, the back was all one piece of fabric and had a zipper at the top to put a pillow in.  And she just chucked it.  All because I wasn't speaking to her.  

Because narcissistic mother's egos are so fragile that the moment you remind them of just how awful they truly are, their ego jumps in and FREAKS THE FUCK OUT about it, because feeling that amount of emptiness is too scary for them to face.  In IFS these parts of their personalities are called "the firefighters".  They are a type of protector whose job it is to put out the fucking fire.  And feeling that void, that swirling vortex of emptiness, that our mothers are always finding ways to dance around but not feel, is a definite fire that needs putting out.  Firefighters to the rescue!

So, if they can push those feelings out by pushing them onto us (like my post here explains), then that's what the firefighters will do.  It's automatic, without much thinking about it.  It's a "sirens going off in their heads" kind of emergency, because feeling that void is too much for them to bear.  Like how our brains can sometimes push out bad memories, so we don't break our brains trying to understand them.  Peering into that void, may just break them completely.  So, they avoid it all costs.

Why does this void filled with such negativity exist?  Because of two reasons (well, more than two, but two underlying reasons): 1) they were raised by narcissistic parents, who abused them.  And 2) they couldn't cope with the abuse due to the fact the void has been there since birth, being that they are sociopaths.  These things are what makes our mothers have a void that is filled with nothing but self-hatred and anger.  NPD is the coping mechanism a sociopath/psychopath uses to deal with their issues surrounding their enormous amounts of emptiness they feel inside.  A sociopath is born with a gaping hole where their "soul" should be (as an atheist, I still like to use the word "soul" as a way to describe what makes us human: love, caring, empathy, forgiveness, being honest & real, having remorse, etc.).  And sometimes that hole is filled with abuse & cruelty from their own parents, and other times, with massive amounts of fake love (like the Dursleys, in Harry Potter), in which they know will be taken away if they don't do what their parents want.  Or maybe they don't care?  I guess it depends on how much of a sociopath/psychopath they are.  

This doesn't give them an excuse to be abusive.  But it does give an explanation, which leaves us, the children of these crazy ass people, out of the line of blame.  We did not cause the way they treat us.  We could have been the best children on earth, and we'd still be treated like shit, all because their emotionally stunted "firefighters" were protecting them, in the worst way possible: by lashing out to protect them from falling into that vortex of nothingness where their soul should be. 

And throwing my pillow away, the one I spend hours making for her and thinking she'd love it, was her lashing out because she could not face that the fact it was HER fault I stopped talking to her for fourteen months.  That everything I said about her during that time (and after) was true.  And mostly, realzing that she wasn't a good mother to me.  Instead, her lashing out placed the blame square on me, and throwing someone's work away is the most obvious thing to do when you are being treated badly by someone, right?  I mean, why keep something someone made you if they don't love you the way you deserve to be loved and treated, right?  Now that I think about it, she treated me going no-contact with her as though I broke up with her and she was a scorned ex-girlfriend or ex-wife.  Boxing up everything that reminded her of me and my family and getting rid of it all.  It's kind of really insane when you think about it. 

So, my mantra for today is: "I can forgive you for being the way you are, but I will not allow you to repeat those mistakes again with me.  I will protect myself from you by being as grey rock as I can be with you."  

Forgiving her for being a narcissist doesn't mean I forgive all the instances of her abuse.  It just means I forgive her for being born with a broken brain.  That's it.  What she does with that broken brain is her choice.  I can forgive the cause, but I don't have to forgive the actions.  Which could be a shortened version of my mantra above.

Until tomorrow.