I hope it's ok to talk about working in my garden and weird sleep hours and such, but it's all about my healing/weight loss process. I am trying to rectify so many things that have plagued me from my rotten childhood, like the constant ridicule and shaming. I can see now more clearly that it wasn't me at all, but rather MD's skewed mental processes and her overwhelming but petty jealousies. She was a real pip.
But now it's all up to me to fix it, and I am really trying to! I don't need to be overweight anymore, and I figure that that goal should take about a year more or so. I find no problem with that because I
LOVE this WOE!!! I plan to do it for the rest of my life. I'm beginning to find a real joy in life: my garden and growing things, even finally cleaning up my house. DS's room is still in chaos, but not as bad as it was, so...improvement, and that's all I ask really. I do insist that when I finish one project that he follows suit, like when I have the tools in one place and he uses them, to put them back where he found them. This may seem like "well, DUH!" to most people, but to me it was a hard learned lesson. MD did do everything for me, never
trained me (KINDLY!) to do anything...and I mean
ANYTHING!! I did learn to dry the dishes on rare occasions, but we had a dishwasher, and then she'd put them away, too. (I think my father may have intervened and made her give me
something to do!) She made my bed, did the laundry, did every meal, all the shopping and buying of clothing and groceries, and cleaned the house
spotlessly. If I even attempted to pitch in and help out, she'd come unglued!! I knew I could actually get a beating that way, so I just kept quiet. It was HER house, NOT mine, and she made that quite clear, but when I got married (MARRIED!!!!) at barely 18, I was
totally lost as to what to do.
In fact, when I got married, I thought that I would
FEEL differently and was shocked when I didn't. I was still ME, only this time I was all alone while hubby worked and I was bored out of my mind. Somehow, I knew how to cook, and I knew that I was supposed to clean up the dishes, etc. I once even asked my DH when he laid his week's wages on the table: "Is that a lot of money or a little money?" because I just didn't know.
I now know that I needed to get a job myself. But then I had no idea. I got married because I thought you were supposed to by my ripe old age of 18. I truly believe that if I had had a job, I would have begun to feel my own independence and dumped the clown (DH) that I was with. I got married to him
because he asked me!
And once I was married, I didn't know how to get out of it. And once married, MD slunk away and I heard NOTHING from her for a full 6 months when I called her!! She had been my unwilling caretaker, NOT MOTHER, for all my life and once I was dumped on my DH, she figured that that was IT! In fact, her response when DH asked for my hand in marriage, she laughed and shouted out, "Oh, THANK GOD!! YOU take her off our hands!!!" Man, did that hurt and embarrass me! Not very nice. But then again, she never was when it came to me.
I dreamed of her last night.
I have a birdbath that I'm going to spray with a sort of clear paint before filling it with birdseed so I can watch the birds eat there from my Window on the World + I have my other birdbath in front of the WOW for water. I dreamed that MD was there, and once I began to spray this new birdbath, I found that they'd given me the wrong can and it was a deep forest green. I thought, "OK. I guess it'll just be green then."
But MD picked the wet, dripping with paint birdbath up, brought it inside my room, and set the wet, drippy FOREST GREEN birdbath on the light beige carpet,
ruining the carpet, with a cooing, "Oh! Didn't you want it
there? I thought you did!" and then a happy little smirk, like, "What are you going to do NOW??"
She is SO MEAN that way!! And this would be typical behavior for her. She revels in ruining anything I try to do, like how she used to destroy my model cars and other projects proudly displayed on my dresser when I went to school. I got the money for them by babysitting around the neighborhood.
Many, MANY times I'd find them after school in my trash can. "Oh, the vacuum knocked them off the dresser." THAT MANY TIMES???
AND I'd find them smashed into smithereens!! I finally just quit making them.
Once, when "helping" me to move right after my 2nd divorce in 1971 when I was 25, she first went from room to room throwing the bagged garbage all back over the floor as my impatient-to-get-moving father stayed with me in the front room, talking to me. When I went into the bedrooms and saw what she'd maliciously done, she had gone into the living room and began picking the stuffing out of my couch. The tiny hole in the couch's arm had been only dime sized, but she made it about a 4" hole!! This was NOT a dream! And then impatient daddy insisted that we leave THEN, with all the junk thrown over the floor. She admitted to doing the garbage tossing and pulling the stuffing out of the couch, but who was to stop her? My father? Not on your life! As he once told me,
"I've got to live with her, Honey!" - so no help was coming there! And so he let this go, too.
Her excuse? "Well, it doesn't matter. It wasn't that clean when you moved in. And your couch? BUY A NEW ONE!" I was on Welfare at the time with little to no money, especially for a new couch! And although I'd previously tidied up the place, I was
forced to leave it like that in a mess and forgo my much-needed cleaning deposit. She never missed an opportunity to shame and/or ridicule and/or hurt me. That is, up until about 2-3 yrs. ago when I just
QUIT going to see her, save for this last trip over there for her birthday in April. That decision has really helped me to heal up, too. I didn't bring her a card or cake or anything...just a visit. And she actually seemed glad to see me...or maybe it was just surprise.
She still could not keep herself from throwing a few zingers anyway about my weight, how bad I looked, gossip re: others in the family, etc. I
knew I was on this WOE and finally had an answer to my weight problem, so it didn't really bother me. But I decided that I need NOT ever go back. It only took my visit of ONE HOUR. I happily skipped Mother's Day, too. Let DB do the trek over there with flowers and cake - the $700,000 estate of hers that he controls with an iron fist has paid him well for those duties until she's dead. It's easy for me to let go of that one!!
I have
one blessing in my life: my DS that I love most dearly!! He is my family, and I am his. By his association with me, he is also an outcast. (It used to be DD and ODS, too, but she's figuring that if she "likes" them, then it will make my DS's and my shunning more pronounced.
) When I hear about "family" and how important they are supposed to be on ads on TV, my blood curdles!! That dream last night reminded me of how devious and just plain
MEAN MD is!!! Shall I try, try again to be close to her, hoping against hope that she'll turn into a REAL human being instead of the monster that she's been to me for all of my 71 yrs.??? Nope. I don't think so.
BTW, she
HATES HATES HATES my
dear ♥cousin R♥ and that whole group, who are my mother's sister's kids (my late Aunt J who committed suicide), and they hate MD with an equal passion. These grudges go
WAY BACK to MD's childhood, her adoption (Aunt J was NOT adopted by my grandparents and stayed close instead to her bio-mother), and even the sad demise of my own and R's bio-grandmother on Christmas Day. (R offered his bio-GM a home with him for FREE, but MD insisted that she be in a nursing home instead so MD could be in control of the finances. And when our bio-GM was sick in the hospital on Christmas, R went to see her there, but MD showed up and sent him away, then left bio-GM alone shortly afterwards to go back to the Xmas party, and bio-GM died alone.)
I've
always been close with cousin R, so DS and I would like to get together with them, but I'm dragging my feet somewhat in case they reject us, too. I'm just being gun-shy, I think, due to MD and
her treatment of me. I
love my cousins as much as MD hates them. I need to just push myself in that case. They seem to be a really fun group. I just hope that they can accept us...despite MD and her despicable influence throughout the family. She's really hateful!! The first thing cousin R said to me when I finally found him was, "Wow. You sound just like your mother!" Horror of horrors,
NO!!
Let MD rely on my DB instead, who has married a woman as devious and mean as MD!
My SIL makes no bones about HATING MD!!! But MD knows that IF she does anything to irritate SIL, the ax may fall and sever her relationship with
PRECIOUS DB forever, and then she'd be
ALL ALONE and she fears that most of all.
Hm??
"All alone??" Who does that sound like??
Oh wait!
ME!!
But over the years, I have learned how to live with it, ("Honey"), and KNOW how to cope with it. It may have taken numerous sessions with an army of Ts, but thank God,
I AM HERE!!! And I enjoy my life and my DS and my dogs and my garden and watching my birdbaths and watching my new plants raise their heads, ready for LIFE! So there, MD!!
You did NOT win after all. AND you've lost a daughter, too, for all your meanness!!! You sit all alone in your supposed $15,000/mo. room with servants/caretakers surrounding you, but with no happiness and no spark or spirit to your life. How sad for you. But I WILL NOT return for more of the same nonsense that you so happily dish out to me whenever I come there.
IT IS DONE!!!
Ooh, that was purging!!!
'Nuff said! Today I'm cleaning off the old Winner's Only computer desk (the first piece of furniture I bought while working as a bus driver
) so DS and I can sell it. It's REALLY hot outside, but in the house? 78ºF...all summer long!
YAY!!!
Honeybera
), I bravely went out online just now and began to look at hats and then at dresses. SO BLOODY HARD for me!!! But the time grows nearer every day (early July!! 
), they will be just fine. Also in the wintertime they will have the heat of the house to protect them when it gets chilly. It never really gets too cold here, right around 32ºF is about the worst, so just the house warmth right next to them should be plenty. That spot will be the strawberries (and avocados) permanent homes.