Faulkner's Northern Wetdream: Revisited

     Yeah, we're the aggressors here, or better yet, I'm the aggressor.  Sure.  That's why you were sauntering around the crowd, arms crossed, so self-satisfied, while we anxiously hid in a CVS like refugees, nervously looking over our shoulders that you'd find us.  That really sounds like people on the offensive. You're so God-damned out of touch with reality.  You've gathered enough people around to buy into this bullshit, that it's like you've got your own fucking cult.  I think my mother put it best when she said you guys reminded her of the cast of Rosemary's Baby.  I would recommend you read Plato's Allegory of the Cave if I thought it would do any good, but it won't.  What you think is reality is really just shadows projected on the cave wall. I will be referring to you as a collective from here on in, not only to streamline the writing, but because you all seem to think exactly the same, so if the shoe fucking fits...
     There are just so many things about this that make no sense at all.  This is completely devoid of logic.  Why would a family want their son/brother to suffer with drug and alcohol addiction?  Why would they try to vehemently make the case that he doesn't have a problem?  Isn't it usually the other way around?  The addict is the one denying the problem, the addict is the one refusing to get treatment, while the family desperately tries to get him to see what he is doing to himself, to help him get into a program or therapy with some kind of intervention?  I was absolutely shocked at the resistance exhibited by the lot of you.  Telling him he doesn't have a problem, he's completely fine; he's perfect so why would he need treatment?  As if somehow you could possibly know what he was going through anyway.  You never cared enough about anyone other than yourselves to even inquire as to how he was doing.  Even after he came to you to let you know he did have a problem, you still denied it.  So any diffusion of  responsibility you previously felt justified by through feigning ignorance, was obliterated at that moment when he intimated to you the nature of his problem.  (Which actually only applies to one of you, because the others were active participants in his addictions, so there was no denying it.)
     I sat on that idea for years before it became clear to me why you wouldn't want him to clean up; drugged up people are much easier to manipulate.  Their reaction times are slower, that don't put up much resistance; they just hazily acquiesce, and they barely remember anything upon sobering up. You took a page right out of Bill Cosby's playbook.  You exalted him, you idolized him, you sexualized him, to the point where he was no longer a person, just this concept.  Also, I think the denial runs even deeper than that.  His addictions weren't the cause of his egomania, depression, and abusive nature; they were just further symptoms.  It was the abusive, covertly incestuous and neglectful environment in which he grew up that led him down that path of addiction.  It was his only escape from a perverse world in which he was so deeply entrenched.  He's really a textbook case, according to mountains of research on the subject.  (Please feel free to look it up.) And if you were to acknowledge the addictions, you would have to eventually acknowledge the cause of those addictions, which in no way were any of you prepared to do.  That would mean having to take responsibility for years worth of selfishness and bad choices, that affected him far into his adulthood.  That would mean that your secret was out, and you weren't all as great as you'd like to tell yourselves.
     It's really telling when an abusive person is victimizing themselves and pointing fingers at others.  "No, no, it's not me! It's this other person; this interloper, this stranger.  That's the problem!"  It's all part and parcel to the ongoing abuse that never stopped since his childhood.  It's also emotional abuse 101.  If you can blame some sucker, then you can take all the heat off yourself.  Why was it again that none of you got along with any of his previous girlfriends?  That you found something wrong with all of them, but never expressed that to him, oh no.  You'd much rather secretly sabotage things so they would break up.  Thanks for looking out!  You're the only common denominator between them.  It sure ain't me.  I wasn't around for all that belligerence.  I certainly wasn't the first person you fought with.   It seems that no one was ever going to make him as happy as you.  No one was ever good enough for your golden boy.  And the shit worked, for a while.  You were able to control and manipulate him to your ends.  You were happier when is brain was Swiss cheese because he actually bought in to your bullshit.  It just doesn't work too well when his mind is thinking clearly, especially when non-involved third parties alert him of the problem, and he can start to see the selfish and creepy motives behind your words and actions.  You continue to keep proving me right.
     The part of this that is the most mind-boggling though, is that you think for some reason he is going to want a relationship with you people even though you treat his wife and daughter like shit.  You talk shit about me to anyone and everyone that will listen, from mutual friends to his ex-girlfriend, who's guts you hated until a little while ago, when she could be of use to you.  Yeah, all of a sudden you guys are best buddies and you can barely remember why you were sworn enemies in the first place.  Fuck off with that shit.  I know she contacted me at your behest.  Just another pawn in the game.  And speaking of pawns, you used our daughter as a pawn to manipulate him into seeing you, to try to tug on his heartstrings, and even try to work on my mother, by sending that fucking Easter basket to her house or when you stalked her at her work to give her that drawing.  Because let's face it, it wasn't remotely about sending our daughter some presents, or offering a kind gesture to my mom.  It was about making a big stink to my mother, so she'll be sympathetic to your position, because you think for some reason she doesn't see through your manipulative garbage either.  You know who tipped me off to you?  It was my father.  My father told me you were the mastermind behind this dog and pony show.  So trying to get my mother to go against my father's ideas is pretty laughable, especially at this point, when his legend only grows.  It certainly didn't work; in fact it worked against you, because it exposed you further.
     Why would he be excited or happy to have people that were supposed to love him act like this?  You're not happy for his happiness, you're not happy that's he healthy and sober and focusing on being a good human being.  You're pissed off that he isn't under your control anymore.  That's what all this bullshit about telling him he's being controlled is about. It's the reaction formation defense mechanism employed to discredit others in an effort to keep your subconscious secret safe and try to regain power.  For the first time in his life, he isn't being controlled! He is lucid and making his own decisions.  It's a *real* uphill battle trying to make the argument that I am the one controlling him, as I am the only one asking him about his feelings, what he wants, what he would like to do, telling him to make up his own mind, and do what he feels is right.  You just can't accept that he found happiness elsewhere.  You just can't accept that he found his own voice and his own mind.  You have no idea what goes on between him and I, so how could you judge what our relationship is or isn't?  No one talks to you, by your own admission, so how could you possibly have any insight into this?  You're not there when we hold each other, you're not there when we snuggle on the couch, you're not there when we're making love to one another and all these beautiful emotions erupt after that expression of love.  You're not there when he is upset about work and I ask him what is wrong and how it makes him feel.  He's never had that.  He's always a little surprised that I actually care about his mental well-being.  He's so often been made to feel like he just had to listen to others problems or even accomplishments, without a genuine concern for his own.  That makes me sad.  You're not there when we feel all the good things that make our connection so strong.  We've had a lot of problems, but they have mostly stemmed from his inability to express himself directly due to the dysfunctional environment in which he was immersed for so long.  To put it more simply, he had a hard time being an adult.
     Further, why would he want a relationship with people that make him feel like shit about himself?  Toggling between the guilt trips and sob stories employed to manipulate and expose his vulnerability, while over-compensatory, exaggerated praise and inappropriate compliments are meant to endear him to you right after the abuse he suffered, at your hand. Often times within the same conversation.  Basically, you'd cut him open, just so you could kiss it and make it all better.  That's sociopathic narcissism, by the fucking book.  You purposefully push and pull him from feelings of guilt and indebtedness, to feelings of obligatory loyalty and duty in an effort to elicit some kind of needy, unwavering love.  But all it's done is left him confused, depressed, addiction-ridden, and wildly uncomfortable.  That type of ambivalent and volatile behavior is a standard manipulation tactic for the sociopath.  Keeping someone constantly on edge is classic control by fear, and always dangling affection and love in front of his nose like a dog with a treat, is a cheap way to make him dance to your abhorrent tune.
      You must think so little of him to say that he is only capable of being a puppet.  That he could never, possibly, make these decisions on his own because that is the only way he wouldn't want your wonderfulness in his life.  You fucked him up, and you want to continue to fuck him up.  I can't just sit idly by and let him get fed to the wolves.  My daughter needs and deserves her father, and quite frankly, I need my husband.  You refuse to listen to a single thing he says, citing that it can't possibly be him talking; it's his puppet-master.  At some point, or more likely, at no point, you will realize that you were his only puppet-master.  Why would he be amenable to people that hate his wife and daughter and are actively doing cruel things to them?  That are continually making them feel like shit,  that are trying to hurt their marriage, and completely dismiss anything he says that carries a kernel of truth.  It just makes no sense.  He really does love us, not because he has some obligation to, but because he wants to, because it makes him feel good.  We make him feel better than he has ever felt.  He told me he didn't know love like that before; he didn't understand the unconditional part.  He only ever had conditional love.
      I'm really tired of this bullshit that I abused him.  I never abused him.  I certainly took abuse from him for a very long time.  From the moment I moved in to that God-forsaken house, throughout my pregnancy, and through my postpartum depression.  It was after I came out of my postpartum depression fog that I started to feel differently.  I just couldn't take it anymore.   I was tired of being treated like I was worthless.  I was tired of being treated like I was a slave, and I was tired of being made a fool of.   I felt like I was worth something, a lot, actually, at least to my daughter.  I had to have some sense of self-worth if I was going to be a good mother.  My daughter didn't need to see the main female role model in her life being emotionally and mentally abused by her father, as if to say, "Sorry kid, women are just born less than men, so this is what we have to put up with."  Yeah fucking right.  His emotional abuse tapped into the abuse I experienced from my grandmother as a child into early adulthood, so I just felt sort of trapped, again.  And then when I finally said I wasn't going to put up with this crap anymore, he decided he needed to add physical abuse to the list to try to keep me "in line."  Double fuck that.  I stood up for myself, I stood up for my daughter, that's not abuse, it's fighting back.  If you think that your son should be allowed to do whatever he wants to women (or men, for that matter) and there should be no consequences to that, just some sort of dutiful acceptance, then we are never going to see eye-to-eye.  But all that stuff is between him and I, anyway.  It's none of your God-damned business.  He came running to you, back then, because he knew the jig was up and he was desperate.  He lied, he made it seem like he was the victim of some evil plan, because that's what abusers do, they deflect responsibility by trying to gain sympathy.  He did cruel and awful things to someone he purported to love in an effort to control them.  It takes a real genius to figure out where he learned that from...  He wasn't an adult that could handle his own problems, he was a little boy that got himself into big trouble and wanted to go hide under Mommy's skirt.  And you let him.  Shit, you made him.  You weren't doing him any favors.  We've had to go through so much just to get to the point where we are now.  For whatever reason, I didn't give up on him.  I don't know if that is love or just stubbornness or feeling trapped, but that's where we are at.     
     The feelings I had for him in that first month were so strong, he made me feel so much better than I had ever felt before, that I just couldn't let go because I wanted so desperately to get back to that. I never had any intention to "take him away from you," as if that's even a viable possibility, as he doesn't belong to you.  You tried the whole 'keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer' tack; and it worked for a while.  I bought into it, I thought you were all being sincere in your friendship.  But there were hints along the way that it wasn't the case.  I took them in stride until it was glaringly obvious that it was a con.  The arbitrary competition about cooking, sideways comments about how I dressed, calling me by his exes' names, constantly badmouthing them to me, almost like an implied threat, trying to divide and conquer by always wanting to do activities separately.  Then there were the lies, slave labor, along with the attempts at troubling making, saying things like, "Keep your hands off my brother," under the guise of a joke, taunts about him picking up his mother's phone calls, but not mine, or informing me of mean things he'd said about me to you (I mean, who sells out their own brother, unless there was some greater, nefarious purpose?)  All the weirdness that surrounded the wedding and so-called "friends."  It all added up to just too much.  It was, as it seems, an effort to control me in much the same way you've controlled him, just with a different motive.  If he is the end game, I, and even our daughter, are just obstacles, if we can't be used as pawns.   I've taken enough abuse from others along the line, I'm not going to take abuse from you assholes too.   And I'm not going to let you abuse my daughter or him either. You are abusing us.  Abuse isn't ignoring someone, or wanting to be left alone.  Abuse isn't standing up for oneself. Abuse isn't saying, "I've had enough of this shit."  That's not what abuse means.  Abuse is actively and persistently causing pain and making trouble for someone else for your own personal, twisted gain.
     The bottom line is you are hurting him, directly, and indirectly, by hurting me and my daughter.  You are hurting your own son/brother with your bullshit antics and your selfish egomania.  Why would a person choose to be around people that hurt him so much?  That level of masochism has no place in his life.  He has responsibilities as a father, and husband, and provider.  And he has a responsibility to himself to find happiness.  Your unwillingness to accept him for who he is, is what led you to this point.  Not some outsider conspiring against you.  No one ever did that.  I am not to blame for the tumultuous environment in which he grew up.  I didn't cause the alcoholism, neglect, smothering, fighting, or inappropriate relationships.  I'm not your family's scapegoat, and he is not the family's superhero.  I was nothing but nice to all of you, and you tolerated me, until I wasn't towing the family line anymore.  The guy was fucking miserable, not because of me, but because he had forty years worth of unresolved issues that he was trying to drink and smoke away.  You didn't give a fuck.  If he cleaned up then he might make the rest of you look bad. You did this to him and you did this to yourselves.  And you're the ones missing out.  Hey, maybe you're just pissed because he's doing a better job than you ever did.  At least he is trying to do better.  I don't think it is a coincidence that he was drawn so intensely to someone like me.  I think I gave him hope, by being so significantly different than anyone he'd ever known before.
     So many times, I've wondered if it's all worth it.  Is it worth all the anguish and anxiety that come from this cruel and delusional family dynamic?  So many times I've told him just to go back to live over there in the "family compound," just so I wouldn't have to deal with this.  But he won't.  He doesn't want it.  And, quite frankly, I don't want him to go down that road, again, but he is certainly free to do so.  I don't want him fed to the sharks.  He doesn't want to be there, he doesn't want his old, depressing lifestyle back.  Who would?  He's changed for the better; he's grown, he's matured, but what do you care?  It was never about him.   It's crystal clear that you would like nothing better than to drive us apart so you can be his top priority, because really, why should he have a life? You laughably don't give a shit about me, and you don't even seem to care about your own son.  But what is particularly shitty about it all, is that you don't even care how it affects and hurts your granddaughter/goddaughter, because let's face it, she's more competition for you. Just another interloping chick, you have to out-compete for his love.  You'd rather her have a broken, fucked-up family, than parents that love her and love each other.  I can't comprehend that level of selfishness.