I used to refer to my youngest as The Prodigal Son. No longer!
Most
of those who have known me for any length of time will be aware of what
a troubled relationship we’ve had for the past ten years or so, the
recurring pattern of it, and of the nightmare his last visit home became.
(He lives overseas.) This post is mainly to update the caring friends
who might be interested to know the sequel to all that. It’s also part
of the process of closing the chapter for myself.
After
that visit I told him that he could not come and stay with me again,
and asked my other sons to please make sure that if ever I should need
a carer, it would not be The Youngest. (I have been firmly reassured on
that score.)
We had settled down in recent months to a fairly
superficial but polite exchange of occasional, brief emails. After what
we’d been through, I was happy enough with that.
In the last week, the following correspondence happened – certain personal details edited, obviously, for obvious reasons.
Skype Chat History with [The Youngest] Created on 2009-10-13 20:24:55.
Youngest: 17:33:19
Mum.
Youngest: 17:33:34
How are you?
Me: 17:34:22
I'm good darling, but just rushing out to meeting. [The Spouse] is
going to talk to his grand-daughters in a min. Before I go, how are you?
Y: 17:34:51
I am great, doing great in [city of residence].
Me: 17:34:57
Good!
Me: 17:35:18
Doing what great?
Y: 17:35:22
Coming to Australia in 3 weeks, I might visit if you want, for a few days only.
Y: 17:35:41
Work.
Me: 17:35:50
Triffic.
Y: 17:35:55
Creating value.
Y: 17:36:06
Getting into the system here.
Me: 17:36:18
No more house visits, I want to stay friendly.
Y: 17:36:18
Just work stuff.
Me: 17:36:33
Besides doesn't work much in this house.
Y: 17:36:48
OK your choice it is your house.
Me: 17:36:48
Gotta go. xxx
Y: 17:36:54 Bye.
********************
Email Sequence:2009/10/13 The Youngest:
Mum,
It
was with great sadness that I spoke to you on Skype. Your refusal to
have me visit you is as close to basically ending our relationship as
anything you could have done. I know that your Soul loves me. I also
know that your Inner Child hates me. I ask it to be honest. I ask it to
question its own lies. You are a massive liar. You are a child caught
in an 8 year old's moment of seeing your father making love to another
woman not your mother. You made his action the truth to keep loving him
and the rest of your life has been that lie. My ex girlfriend has done
the same with her father. She has loved him so much creating a world
where his actions are the truth and everything else is a lie. You are
two children living in the lies of your father. I am sad for you.
Here is an email to her about you in part:
Subject: The Inner Battle
[Ex-G],
I
sent you an email I sent to [best friend] to show you that we are
always talking about you. I have spoken to [him] about you for 9
months. You are the most important person to me and everything I have
been through with you has had only one desired outcome. That is for you
to release the lies of your inner selves and become the true self I
adore. It is always about me and you living together with inner bliss
and happiness and eternal love. I have fought a war with you that you
are fighting inside. The Soul, the Inner Child, the Conscience, and the
Social Rules. The 4 parts of your inner battle. I have released the
Inner Child when I lived with my mother. I have released the Social
Rules when I went traveling. You are still fighting this battle. I love
your soul and that causes me to engage in this battle with you.
Unfortunately my mother showed me that there are those that refuse to
win this battle. They are only their Social Rules or their Inner Child
and their true Soul is dead to the world. Their conscience is overcome
by their Inner Child and truth is meaningless. Considering my mother
she is a child that lies to the point of hallucinating about facts yet
if you ask her about herself she is a spiritual healer. She
continuously changes facts for lies to create an "I am always right"
existence. It took working with her daily for 2 months for her to even
ask the fundamentally simple question "What if I am wrong?" Even then
she refused to answer it. You also avoid this question "What if I am
wrong?"
[Y]
********************
For
the record – when I was 4 (not 8) I saw my father and my visiting aunty
(his sister-in-law) lying on the carpet together, didn’t understand
what I saw, did mention it to my mother. Aunty’s visit ended suddenly.
It was decades later that my mother reminded me of this and told me the
full story.********************
On Oct 13, 2009, at 11:20 PM Me:
Dear [Y]
Seeing
you come on Skype, I felt the usual surge of affection. I don't want to
end my relationship with you; I want to keep it on the basis it has
been these last few months. I'll always want to know how you are,
where you are and what you're up to. I think you also want to know
these things about me from time to time.
Denying you access to
my home is in the interests of keeping things on a friendly basis
between us. It became very clear on your last visit that we can't be
under the same roof in peace and harmony, and I told you after that
visit that I would not have you to stay again. It is sad, yes, and it
will not change, not even if you arrive on my doorstep without a bed
for the night, so please stop trying it on.
I'll always love you, and I know you will me. The sad truth is that we don't much like each other.
I'm not going to enter into any further discussion on this.
Love, Mum
********************
Date: 2009/10/14 Y:
Mum,
The
only basis on which we have a friendship is your honesty with me.
Refusing me access to your home is about you avoiding the truth. The
last time I was there you admitted so many things that you had been
lying about. When I left you went back to lying. The reason you do not
want me in your life is that you are a liar and I confront you with the
truth. It is better that you simply cease to exist for me. Your lying
is your life. You are an 8 year old child lying. Your whole life is a
lie. I know that now. I see it for the truth. You are a liar. I do not
want your lies in my life. It is better we never speak again. Your love
is unwelcome in my life. I choose the love of an honest woman not the
love of a liar. You loved your Dad. He was a liar. You modeled your
life on it. I massively thank you for showing me the consequences of
lying. It eats at your soul. You are the most miserable person I ever
met. I choose truth. Regardless of the fact that you gave birth to me
that does not give you the right to treat me badly. Your lies are the
death of love. I end this with a fundamental understanding of the truth
of True Love. You never loved me as you never loved yourself. You live
your life inside of a self created lie. Whatever happens to you I want
you to know that when you die I will be more happy that you are gone
than upset as conforming to your lies for 38 years was a massive
detriment to my life. You sucked the truth out of my life. You are an
evil woman. You are a selfish woman. You are a delusional woman. You
pretend you are a spiritually pure Reiki Master to hide the fact that
you are a liar to your husband, to your sons and to yourself. I reject
your lying. Goodbye.
*******************
I was just
numb after this last arrived. The following morning I started thinking
of the delightful little boy and lovely young man he was, and found
myself having a good howl under the shower, then did a lot of sobbing
to my Spouse [stepfather of my children]. (Yes, I mean Andrew. This is reposted from another site where I don't use names.) I
wasn’t so much upset by the verbal abuse – which I am well used to from
The Youngest by now – as horrified at myself, that I should have
reached the point of denying a child of mine access to my home. Even
whilst being sure it was necessary, I felt it was the worst thing I’d
ever done as a mother. Then my older son pointed out that his brother
is a man of 40.
“You are not a mother depriving a child in dire need. You are asking for the space you need from a fellow adult.”
He,
his foster-sister, various close friends, and of course The Spouse have
been very loving and supportive, and have talked a lot of good sense.
“Move on,” they suggested.
It
seems to all of us that Y is unlikely to change. Some people think he
may be bi-polar, others that he could be autistic, or suffering from
Narcissistic Personality Disorder. We’ll probably never know for sure.
The Youngest despises psychologists and psychiatrists, and believes he
is his own best counsellor.
Anyway, I thought that was that. Relationship over. Correspondence concluded. Then came the next onslaught:
2009/10/18 Y:
Rosemary
This
is a skype chat with my friend about Ex-Girlfriend who I have ended all
relationships with today as she continuously lies to me. It may help
you understand my choices in ending my relationship with you. Given the
significance of my choices I think I owe you some explanation. It has
an important honest true message for you that will most probably upset
you. It is your choice if you choose to read this email. Either way I
want you to know that I am choosing the people that I deal with based
on the rule of honesty and truth with me and themselves. That means you
are no longer welcome in my life. Thank you for my life's experiences
and being. You do not need to respond to this. Know that I did truly
love you for a long time. I just choose truth.
Y
Y:
Ex-G
went out last night to meet this celebrity guy she said she wanted to
hook up with. Hook up with means kiss and maybe sex. I told her that I
knew it was not just a desire to screw around, that she is looking for
another man to love to avoid her love for me. I told her that if she
went she would know she does not love him but I would not be there
waiting. I told her that I am not a Plan B guy. I told her that she
will always be looking for a better guy who ticks all the boxes and
that she will never embrace her love for me. She went anyway, found
that she did not love the guy, and then told me she loves me. I told
her it was over. She then sent me emails saying how it was a business
meeting and she needed to meet him for work. I reminded her that she
told me she wanted to see if she loved him and wanted him. She is a
delusional liar like my mother. I stopped all contact with my mother
this week. I realized that she is a liar who loves to lie. I just ended
all contact with Ex-G. She called me wanting to sort out the issues and
I told her there were no issues to sort out. I told her to let me go
and she said "OK." So it is done. She will try again for me and I know
it will not work as she will always be looking for a way out of love.
So now I have said no to love in order to have true love now. Sad but
also I must do what Rhett Buttler did in Gone WIth The Wind and leave
the bitch. I realize that Rhett says "Frankly my dear, I don't give a
damn." as he is angry and hurt as he loved her and she lied to him. It
is not the leaving of someone that you don't love that takes courage,
it is the leaving of someone you do love. It is the leaving of the
parents that you love as you are programmed to love them and yet they
are false mentors and you must leave them behind. it is the loss of
love and sadness when your parents die and you continue on without
them. Yet the release of the false mentor despite love is something we
must all do. She is a liar, delusional, changing facts to avoid the
truth and I am free of her. My heart is sad and my heart also knows
this is the way to true love. I cleaned the slate to start again.
Anyway I don't want to have a long conversation about it. I just wanted
to tell you and then go back to work. It is something I would rather
just be free of. Is that OK with you? Telling you the final conclusion
is my way of being free of it.
Friend:
Can I ask you something? What if your mum would die now. Any thoughts you would have done different?
Y:
Yes
I would have let go of her 22 years ago the day I left home. I would
not have wasted 22 years trying to fix her by dating liars like Ex-G
and trying to fix them. I would have just left and said "Thanks for 18
years of food that Dad paid for and you hardly tried to cook, and for
occasionally doing some washing for me. I'd thank you for breast
feeding me but you didn't even try."
F
Thank you.
Y:
Yes
now that I am willing as an adult to look back on the past with honesty
I see the truth. And that allows me to leave my mother forever.
********************
At which point I finally got angry. ("What took you so long?" asked Spouse.)
I could have said a lot.
E.g.
That I tried to breast-feed my first child but couldn’t, due to
inverted nipples, which was frustrating for the baby and distressing
for me. When I gave up and put him on the bottle, he got a decent feed
and a good sleep. I wasn’t going to put the next baby through all that.
E.g.
That he owes me nothing; that his father and I always took the view
that it’s parents who owe the children – until they are adults.
E.g.
To refute the allegation that I “hardly tried to cook.” (When I THINK
of the thought and care I put into meals ...! Maybe not very brilliant
at it, but at least I did try.)
E.g. That I have never claimed
to be “spiritually pure”. Anyone who thinks that Reiki Masters believe
that about themselves has no understanding of what Reiki Mastery
entails. It is not about self-importance in any way; it’s about
learning how to act as a channel for universal energy, whilst remaining
entirely human in oneself, and retaining the humility to know that one
is merely an instrument.
But what would be the point of saying anything? He wouldn’t believe me anyway.
At
least the washing thing is a slight improvement. For years he alleged
that I never did any! Which is not how other people who were around at
the time remember it. My best friend, who used to visit a lot with her
little boy, says now, “You always seemed to be doing mountains of
washing.” Funny, that’s how it seemed to me, too, at the time.
Although he knows very well how to press my buttons, he’s not a good psychologist. This final unnecessary email was overkill.
“You
can’t keep putting me through this emotional wringer every year or so,”
I could also have said. But clearly he can, and does – so long as I
continue to allow it. I’ve stopped.
18 October 2009 9:17:12 PM Me:
Y, if you're going, just go.
If you need to get me out of your life in order to find your own truth and love, just do it - with my blessing.
Your loving Mum, who has had enough.
*******************
Then
I blocked him on Skype, spam-filtered any future emails from him, and
went to delete him on facebook – but he’d beaten me to that and already
deleted me.
Driving to town next morning, I found myself
singing the old Buddy Holly number, You Don’t Matter Any More: “You’ll
go your way and I’ll go mine, now and forever till the end of time”…
happily!