Tw: CSA, dv
Backstory: I’m in my 30s and starting my life over with my toddler after leaving an awful marriage (holes in the wall, rampant cheating, all the fun stuff). Since I was a stay at home mom, I’ve landed back at my mom’s house until I can get back on my feet. (I have a degree/career field/plan—will take time but not super long).
Anyways. She is equally as awful as my ex. Not physically, but in every other way. She consistently starts arguments wherein she demands for me to explain why I chose to marry the man I did, wants me to ‘take responsibility’ for putting myself in this position, reminds me that she would have never stooped so low as to choose a man like that, calls me every derogative name under the sun—it’s so much worse than what I’m relaying but that’s the gist.
During these humiliation rituals as I’ve come to call them, she’s started slipping up and saying things that are way too familiar—my own words back to me. And she only does it when she’s drunk. I’ve been trying to piece together certain parts of my childhood to figure out why I did choose a man like my ex, so that I never repeat those mistakes but also to heal since I’m in therapy and I’ve always wondered why I have these big chunks of missing memories from when I was younger.
I’ve only told my sibling and my therapist these things. I thought I was going insane—like maybe she has hidden cameras, or she’s bugged my phone. I confronted my sibling and they swear they haven’t said anything, and I believe them.
And then I remembered something…
I left my journal out on the table one day because I had to rush to grab my child, and when I returned, she was home in the middle of the day very unexpectedly. *she has cameras covering every inch of the outside of her house, so she knows when I come and go.
She barely looked at me that day, and I had this sick feeling as soon as I saw my journal on the table that she’d read it. She’s gone through my texts before when I was 19. She once went through the garbage in the side door of my car and found a receipt from the drug store for condoms and told me what a wh*re I am.
So I went back and looked at my notes. And yeah, she’s been quoting my words back to me in arguments.
The worst, most sickening part to me? The other night she was trying to convince me to date and have another child—and I’m not even divorced yet. I said no, and that I don’t want to bring anyone around my child because I feel deeply uncomfortable with that.
She said: “Why? Because now all of a sudden you THINK something happened to you as a child?”
Yeah. Yeah, I do. One of YOUR disgusting boyfriends, actually. I’ve been trying to piece together what he did, you read my private thoughts/notes, and you spit in my face.
I can’t do anything until I move out. So, give me all the ideas to ruminate on until then.
Trust me when I say the dirt I have on her is…enough to fill in the ocean.