Don’t want to take responsibility? Get amnesia!

Hi everyone! Sorry it has been so long since my last post. We had a rough time over the holiday break when Harley was visiting. I started a blog post but never finished it, I will get it finished soon and post it. Things have been quite on the narcissist front. Cruella seems to have gotten busy with her life. Right before New Year’s she showed up at the house, unannounced and certainly uninvited, and managed to surprise Sebastian when he was out taking the Christmas lights down. We had our lawyer send her a letter stating that she was not to come to our home and if she did we would call the police and his letter would serve as proof she knew that she was not to come here. After that, she got quiet. No angry emails, no phone calls or texts, a week or two ago I started getting kind of anxious. It has been long enough that you start to feel like maybe everything will be normal and we can all move on with our lives but if you have a narcissist or a sociopath in your life, you know that’s not how it works. They strike when you least expect it, and it is never over.

Bruce just had his birthday and of course there was nothing from Cruella – no call, no card, of course no present. She claimed that she was going to get him a Christmas gift but it never showed up. No surprise there, that would mean spending her money on someone besides herself. Because we are all from the same area, we have a lot of mutual acquaintances. I think I have mentioned before, she never bothered to unfriend many of Sebastian’s relatives on facebook, I was shocked to learn that she’s still facebook friends with his lawyer! So we do hear things from various people. On Bruce’s birthday, a friend sent me a picture of what Cruella had posted, a bunch of pictures of him and things like “If you are ever free to be in my life again, I pray that you break free…” making it sound like we are keeping Bruce from her which of course we are not but she loves playing the sad, abused ex. Bruce had recently become facebook friends with her, not that he uses it much because teenagers all seem to think it’s lame, but I mentioned it to him and he looked at it. In hindsight, maybe I should not have said anything because it made him angry.

After a couple weeks of stewing, he decided that he would send Cruella an email trying to explain yet again why he is not in her life – it is not that Sebastian is keeping him from seeing her, he is still angry that she lied about having cancer and told him she hated him since he was a young child. Pretty blatant things! Today he received 4 email responses, for some reason she always sends multiple rambling messages, I’m not sure if it’s an attempt to throw him off or if she just likes to hear herself talk or both. The kicker to 4 very long emails, in addition to saying she refuses to discuss Sebastian and then badmouthing Sebastian, was to say that she’s sure that she’s sorry for doing the things that Bruce says that she did but she has no memory of any of it because she has lost her memory. Let that one sink in. She says basically the last two years “are all dark” except of course things Sebastian has “done to her” that she somehow remembers when everything else is “a complete blank.” She says “Harley told me that I was very out of line so I believe her, I can’t apologize for specific things because I don’t know what they were and I don’t even have that email address anymore so I can’t go back and read the emails.”

That’s a new one for me. I guess nothing should surprise me. It’s like a normal brain can’t possibly comprehend how a narcissist’s brain works. Never in a million years would I have guessed that she was going to try to avoid responsibility by claiming to have amnesia. I guess we are living in a daytime soap. Maybe she lost her memory when she was being held in a dungeon by Sebastian’s evil twin! Seriously, I am just so WTF.

Narcissists can’t admit they are not perfect

Cruella shared on social media a photo of herself reading a book by Brene Brown. (Remember, we don’t “stalk” her like she does us, she’s purposely never unfriended Sebastian’s relatives. I’m sure it’s to bait them so they will tell us the horrible things she says about us.) At the time, I found this incredibly ironic, and still do, because Brene Brown writes books about being vulnerable and accepting our imperfections. Two things that narcissists absolutely do not and will not do.

This is a quote from Brene: “Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.” Because they cannot empathize with others, those with NPD have no sense of belonging, it’s “every man for himself.” Someone with narcissistic personality disorder is the type of person who will sabotage you, even if you are on their team! Narcissists either win or lose, there’s no second place, they’re either the best or they’re nothing. The book that she took a picture with (no telling if she actually purchased it or read it) was “Rising Strong” a book about picking yourself up and becoming stronger – which perfectly plays into Cruella’s “unfaltering, resilient victim/survivor” persona. I’ve started noticing a difference between the way women with NPD and men with NPD seem to view themselves and allow others to see them. I may write a post about that soon. While a male narcissist would want to project only power and strength, a female narcissist knows that everyone loves the underdog. By portraying herself like the heroine of a Lifetime Original Movie: victorious over an abusive husband, never giving up in spite of being abandoned with no money or job, fighting to keep herself and her children afloat even though her son has been brainwashed by his father, rising from the ashes of a marriage she was always too good for – Cruella paints herself as a strong survivor. Every bad thing that happened is absolutely not her fault but hardships she survives because she is so strong! What an inspiration to the world!

She rewrites history in order to make herself not only sound better but to show more and more “abusers” who were out to get her. She didn’t tell Sebastian that she didn’t want to be married to him anymore in hopes of manipulating him into acting how she wanted, she courageously left an abusive husband after having her will beat down for 20 years – he was never able to break her! Wow! Or, she rose from the ashes, moving her kids almost a thousand miles away after her husband abandoned her and the kids, penniless. The story changes depending on who she’s trying to manipulate.

She didn’t get fired because she was irresponsible and couldn’t get along with her boss and her coworkers, she was forced to quit her job because she had breast cancer, and move in with her best friend for help and support! She didn’t have to move back in with her parents because she was fired from yet another job, in a new state, after just a few months there – she came back to save money, a responsible choice! Look at Cruella, always fighting to keep her head above water, tirelessly facing whatever life throws her way with grace and humility. Don’t you admire her strength? How she never gives up? How she’s always saying inspirational things about her victories against the odds on facebook?

That is how she gets her narcissistic supply, her attention, her admiration. This is the persona she has adopted for herself. It’s not imperfection though. She never talks about being less than perfect, about how she choose this supposedly abusive man and stayed with him for 20 years.  She is the perfect victim/survivor. With the perfect children. Denied the perfect marriage she deserves by a cruel world, a world she shakes her tired fist at and says “you haven’t got the best of me! Oh no! I will survive. As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again!” Narcissists cannot and will not ever be vulnerable, because to do so would be to drop their armor that says they are blameless, perfect, always right, never to be questioned, always having a retort to show you how wrong you are and right they are. Be on the lookout for other female narcissists who won’t admit they do anything wrong, even as they paint themselves to be victim/survivors. I suspect this isn’t an original manipulation that only Cruella has figured out.

Inside the twisted mind of a narcissist

About a year and a half ago, after Bruce came to live with us and told his mom in writing that he didn’t want to talk to her because he was upset that she told him she had cancer when she did not, she wrote “The Letter.” He probably would’ve started talking to her again if she had just left it alone, but she instead decided to write a letter to “apologize” that minimized her emotional abuse of him, attempted to manipulate him and make him feel guilty, put some of the blame for her actions on him, completely changed past events, and finally told him she has hated him for most of his life. In my memory, it was absolutely the worst thing I have ever read. When he initially received it he did not read it, but forwarded it to Sebastian who showed it to me. We all advised him not to read it, his therapist read it and told him not to read it, but he couldn’t help himself.

My original intention with this post was to share parts of The Letter that illustrate how the narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) mind works. I wanted to show the parts that were manipulative, minimizing, blaming her teenage son for her bad behavior, etc. I thought it would be helpful for other people to see how different the mind of a narcissist works from those of people who don’t have personality disorders. As it turns out, even knowing The Letter was the worst thing I had ever read, a year and a half had actually dulled how horrific it is. Upon re-reading it, I realized that it is so horrible and gut-wrenching that even though this blog is anonymous, I cannot publicly share the despicable things his mother said to him. I will instead share the different points of the letter, and then share in her own words, her description of herself.

The Letter

• It begins by her saying she loves him and that she is sorry that he hates her. She says she understands that it’s because of things she did and she deserves it but that she is heartbroken without him and misses him and doesn’t understand his need to torture her with silence. (Playing the victim, guilt, manipulation, projection.)

 

• She then shares some happy memories from when he was a baby. She talks about how she was devoted to him and his father was absent (lie, manipulation) but once he was a toddler he started to like his father and because she hated Sebastian so much, she took Bruce’s love for him as him choosing Sebastian over her. (distorted thinking, selfishness) She became resentful of Bruce and started to hate him, even though she wouldn’t realize until years later that it was hatred and resentment that she was feeling.

 

• Then she tells him that when she got pregnant with his sister, she chose Harley over him and continued to favor her for the next 8 years. She believed Bruce did not love, want, or need her. (distorted thinking, selfishness) When he was 12 and she realized her marriage to Sebastian was over, she decided to try to win back her son’s love by buying him things and spending lots of money on him, and ignoring his sister. (not even sure what this is, distorted views of love and parenting?)

 

• When Sebastian completely abandoned the three of them and left them to fend for themselves financially (complete and total lie) and Bruce will remember it because he “lived it” she for some reason decided that moving nearly 1000 miles away to be on their own instead of moving to yet a different state to live with her best friend was best for Bruce somehow so she did it for him. (lie, she moved there because she had a male friend there that she knew she could exploit for help, money, and attention, and she did.) Then, Bruce decided to abandon her in this place she didn’t want to be in the first place. (lies, manipulation, guilt.) Also noteworthy that Cruella keeps telling Harley they are moving back to this place she supposedly didn’t want to live.

 

• Then, oddly, she begins to talk about me. She characterizes Sebastian beginning to date as: “brutal and violent and abusive. I was sick for weeks. Throwing up, unbearable headaches, insomnia, exhaustion I was a mess.” (really distorted thinking, guilt, manipulation) By then Bruce had started acting like his father (cold, distant, dismissive) and decided to live with him and Cruella was so overcome with it all that she had to quit her job and then move to another state to live with her best friend. (irrational blame, guilt, manipulation) What’s oddest about this is that her story for why she moved is constantly changing. She has said on her now-deleted blog that it was “to begin cancer treatments,” she told Sebastian it was “to get help for her mental illness,” now she’s telling Bruce that it was because of him. Also noteworthy that she was fired from her job because she couldn’t get along with her boss and was irresponsible, she didn’t quit. She says: “I gave you everything you wanted, at great personal cost and you still treated me like shit.” She also notes that her anger and hatred toward her son has continued to grow and grow.

 

• She then tells him that she lied to him about having cancer due to finding out he had read her blog when she “had not slept in almost 3 days, alertness was no longer sustainable with caffeine and I honestly remember almost nothing. All of that anger came out. I was scared, I was angry, I felt threatened, I felt violated, I was in complete panic.” She then goes on to say that because she came from an abusive family and had been in an abusive marriage, lying is what came naturally to her so that is what she did. It’s funny that she says she remembers “almost nothing” yet can give so much detail about how she felt. She’s inadvertently being honest – lying is what she does, lying is who she is. (lies, minimizing, excuses, manipulation.)

 

Now, because I feel that it is not a violation of Bruce to share this, here is Cruella describing herself in her own words (probably the most honest she has ever been about or with herself):

I have a god awful vindictive streak that is my absolute worse personality trait. I despise nothing about myself the way I utterly despise this trait. When I am alert and have all my faculties and I feel threatened, I spend every ounce of grit I have keeping that viciousness silent. You have seen me get angry and silent before, well when that happens all my energy is focused on not saying the most hurtful thing I can find about a person. When I get so angry I get cold all of a sudden I can see exactly how, to hurt and destroy the individual in front of me. I am not proud of this trait and it has earned me a well-deserved reputation as a vicious bitch in the past.

I never use it, not even with your father. (lie) I made myself a promise years ago not to do it again, and I have kept that promise. But when my faculties are impaired the wounded attack animal shows up without restraint. My faculties were down that night and the horrible part is I am quite positive I just wanted to strike back. I am sorry more than you know, although I don’t know how to apologize for that one. None of what I told you justifies my betrayal. I only wanted to tell you exactly how I failed you. That night when your father told me I couldn’t see you, I lost it. All the rage and anger I have been harboring for years came out. It was truly ugly, I was broken, devastated. I was a screaming, crying lump on the floor. I have never cried like that in my life. I had lost you forever and my heart finished breaking. By the time your email came I was numb. I tried to answer your questions but I was barely able to read them, I had to get help to answer them. At the heart of it is the fact that all the people who were supposed to love me never did, being deemed unlovable can carry some huge rage. So now, I also have to fill the hole it left and that is a really big hole. I have spent a lot of time feeling empty and my mind wanders in bizarre places without my old friend anger.

This is probably the most insight I have ever read from a person with narcissistic personality disorder and the most honesty that one will ever express about themselves and their disease/disorder. I decided to call this post “inside the twisted mind of a narcissist” because these paragraphs are a window into the mind of a very sick person, desperately in need of help. It’s sad that during lucid moments she realizes how sick she is and doesn’t seek help. I have read that the feeling of a hole inside and feeling unlovable are traits of Borderline Personality Disorder which is why I also think she might have BPD. It is possible to have BPD and NPD. Where she mentions about being able to figure out what to say or do to “destroy the individual in front of me” is something that several personality disorders have, the ability to find what makes a person tick and their fears and exploit them is what makes people with NPD such good manipulators. They know the buttons to press. This is also true of sociopaths. I don’t think she’s a sociopath, because I think she does love her kids, as much as she is able to, in her own sick twisted way. She just doesn’t have the ability to empathize or care beyond how it affects her and her feelings.

Faking Cancer

Faking cancer 

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I meant to post this almost two years ago   Somehow it was marked “private” and never published!

 The last few months have been hectic at best! We (Sebastian, Bruce, and myself) had all been waiting for the court date as a stress relief. I think in everyone’s minds, once the papers were squared away we could just get along with life as it is now and not have to think so much about Cruella (evil ex-wife). Life has been very busy. With Bruce playing in the high school band, anywhere from two to four nights a week have been band related activities that he needs to be driven to and picked up from. I’m sure for people that have kids, this constant running around is normal, but I am certainly not used to it. It was difficult adjusting to seeing Sebastian one or two nights a week as opposed to four or five. He always wants to drive out of his way to see me, even for just ten minutes, but usually I won’t let him if it doesn’t make any sense. 10 minutes is really not enough time for him to go out of his way, in my opinion. I love Bruce and I want him to be happy here, but having a kid is tough when you don’t live together!

The other problem is that Bruce has been so hurt by his mother, Cruella. I mentioned in my last couple posts, he had found the “anonymous” blog that she was keeping and was very upset at the idea that she might have cancer. Sebastian and I never really thought she had cancer, given her history of making up stories and constant lying, but as her child, Bruce loves her so it really bothered him not knowing if she was lying or not. He is angry at her, and rightfully so, for her selfish, narcissistic, abusive behavior but he felt he could not be angry with her if she was dying of cancer. We talked to him and ultimately decided the healthiest thing to do would be for none of us to read her blog. Sebastian printed out a copy for his lawyer and we all stopped looking at the blog, which was 95% lies anyway. All the sex stuff might have been real but Sebastian and I do not care about her sexual exploits and her 15 year old son REALLY did not need to be reading about it!!!!

As the court date got closer, we began getting more tense wondering if she was going to show up. When she was served papers from Sebastian’s lawyer, she became irate that he was not going to continue paying her the same amount of child support he always had, even though he now had one of the children! I am sure that was her shopping fund, she is very bad with money and he is still paying off the $8000 worth of debt she ran up on credit card in his name and stuck him with during the divorce! Sebastian had only asked that the judge reassess and make a decision, he did not ask to pay a specific amount or stop paying, just that the judge should decide. In the three months leading up to the court date he continued paying her $600+ each month even though he’d had to move and incurred the expense from moving Bruce 1,000 miles from up north back down here and then moving again into a two bedroom apartment so that Bruce could have a room. Moving twice is definitely not cheap, not to mention that he was taking Bruce to the doctor and dentist, all stuff that Cruella did not do in the year he was with her. He did not have his ADHD medicine for that entire year because she was too selfish and lazy to take him to the doctor, and he also got SIX cavities that year. Sebastian had paid for both the kids to go to the dentist shortly before leaving, and even though it was in the divorce papers that Sebastian would pay ALL the children’s medical expenses if she would submit receipts, she did not take them to the doctor ever.

She called Sebastian’s lawyer and was extremely “unstable” in his words. Apparently she thought that she could get out of paying for her own lawyer by telling Sebastian’s lawyer to put what she wanted in the papers. To which the lawyer basically said, get your own lawyer! We did not know if she would even bother to come here, she wrecked her car and still lives 12 hours away even though she moved to another state, moving Harley twice in two years. Two to three days before the court date we found out from Sebastian’s lawyer that Cruella would be coming, she had left him another “disturbing” voicemail. The court date ended up going pretty well, they agreed to most everything and Sebastian is still paying child support for Harley although it is much lower given it’s not for two kids. Cruella told Sebastian that she has “aggressive stage four breast cancer” that had traveled to her lymph nodes and spread significantly in a 3 month time period, yet somehow the doctors said she had an “80% chance of survival.” That did not sound plausible, and as I researched it I saw that it was even less plausible than I realized. So Sebastian’s lawyer said that he would put a discovery request in for her medical records and that in his legal opinion if she was lying about the cancer, Sebastian should try to get custody of Harley.

The discovery request went out and Sebastian’s lawyer was not playing around! He requested Cruella’s medical records, the name and contact of her encologist, a report on her prognosis, and all sorts of things to prove the cancer was real. When Cruella got the discovery request she melted down. She called Sebastian and he said that he couldn’t explain it but he was afraid she was going to hurt herself. She admitted that she does not now nor has she ever had breast cancer. She made it all up. She claims she didn’t want the kids to know and then when she found out Bruce knew she didn’t want him to know that she is “crazy” (her word!) so she decided to pretend like she was getting treatment and that she would “get better.” She begged Sebastian not to try to get custody of Harley but it’s like, OMG, why would you FAKE CANCER to begin with? How SICK does someone have to be? It’s so f***ed up.