Overwhelmed. Feel just like I got a gut punch. An older friend of mine asked about my parents. And of course, dad is deceased, so that stops that discussion in its tracks. Mom and I do not speak. After going through this situation yet again, I have finally realized I can just tell people that mom is deceased too. She might as well be as far as I am concerned. But, when the friend is asking and I feel on the spot to answer a question politely and HONESTLY as I know how. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Peggy, why doesn’t your mother talk to you?” This is a friend that when called for a reference he told the person I was the most honest person he knew. That means a lot to me. I respect him. He was obviously confused….I can understand it. I’m a good person with a good head on my shoulders who believes in doing the right thing for the right reasons, and I’ll eat the consequences like corn flakes if I find out I’m wrong or made a mistake. No one, and I mean NO one says, “I’m sorry” like me…. my kids have heard it so often they are probably sick of it. So, I answer honestly, and then I am sick to my stomach because …’here we go again’. I am sick to death of so much of thinking about my mother and how “I betrayed her” even from my own mouth.
I betrayed absolutely NO one. It is flat out impossible to betray a betrayer. She announced herself before going upstairs each evening that my daughter was with my step father, so that he could stop the hurtful, illegal, disdainful behavior he was negotiating — WITH MY CHILD. She watched from around the office doorway and saw exactly what was going on. I did NOT put those ideas into my child’s head.. the truth was certainly ugly enough without my help. And no this is not a made up story this is my reality. And it NEVER goes away….even the most innocent of questions and statements can set me off. Example: “I’m so proud of you, Peggy, that you’ve held your head up and carried on.” Not an exact quote, but the ‘held your head up” part was original to the quote. Oh so happy was I when the encouragement was given. Only later did it hit me to question it. Why would I not hold my head up?? What did I ever do wrong??? The truth of the matter is that I did NOTHING wrong. I choose my child over my mother. That is what any good mother would do. My mother choose money over her grand daughter. That is NOT what any good grandmother would do. My sister and I have a friend in common who thinks we have two separate mothers.,,, this is how much different our worlds are. I do not have the umpf it takes to explain or even begin to correct. I have been utterly exhausted by this mess for nearly if not more than 30 years now. because it never goes away.
A family member comes to me and announces to me that my mother wants to make up, all I have to do is call her. How do I tell this family member who is just trying to help that if mom told her that, that its a lie…mom has no intention of ever making up because I ‘betrayed’ her. It is NOT a betrayal of a person to take care of your child with 100% of everything you have. It is IMPOSSIBLE to betray another when taking care of a seven year old who had been abused by a grown man for 3-4 years. I could go on and on and on and on…. this stuff makes me so sick. My guess is that my mother will out live me by years because this shit has made me so sick. I am tired. I am tired. the sickness has been passed on to my kids, and now I get to live with that. There are truly days when I’m not sure I really belong here anymore at all. Ok, I’ve had my say.
I signed a non – disclosure agreement in 1991 or so…. promising not to talk about this. But, I am so sick of the silence. I am sick of having to listen and not be able to say what is on my mind. I am sick to god, that I’m the one being told I am wrong when I am not. I signed the non-disclosure agreement because I was exhausted and scared. My mother took me to court and said I was a bad mother to my oldest child—not my son, only my oldest, and she sued for custody of my oldest. I was sick and tired then. I wanted it to stop And so I tried to drop the civil case against the HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE in order to make mom stop suing me. She required I sign the non-disclosure paper. That does NOT make me a looser, nor does it make me a betrayer. It made me exhausted. It wasn’t an admission of guilt, because I never was GUILTY of a damn thing.
My mother is the person who made me think that my step father was abusing my daughter. It was she who spoke the first truths. It was she who told me the story of how for WEEKS or maybe months my step father would stare over my daughters school photo while eating his oatmeal. That it was she who noticed and HID the photo from him multiple times…. He’d find the photo and the cycle started again. It was she who hid important evidence from the police that was used on my daughter including a pistol and a vibrator.
She has owed my child an apology for AT LEAST 27 years. And to make matters worse…. at that time, she was a LEGAL mandated reporter. And when I told her I called the police on my step father, she actually asked me, “WHY?” And yes this is public and yes, it’s going on my blog! This has just got to stop. I need out of this damn nightmare. I want the mother monkeys off my back!!!
Last and not least, at one time I had a $1.4 million dollar judgement in favor of my daughter and for my daughter’s future. I sued the homeowners insurance not my mother. She went into court with my step father and got the judge to toss the judgement. $1.4 million dollars. And she still turned around to sue me!!!!! Today my daughter has MS and the ACES studies pretty much prove that MS can be caused by trauma. And yet when she took that money from my daughter, she said in a letter to me that my daughter would “survive, just like she did.” Heartless, I am telling you, the woman is heartless. My daughter sure has survived, and been robbed over and over again by the people in her life that she should have been able to trust the most!
Note: Copied and pasted from my Facebook account.
Note II: At the time, I was told that my step father’s primary residence and means of transportation was protected from seizure by law enforcement or because/for any civil case. My mother USED the fact that I was trying to “take away her home” as an excuse to legally bully and abuse me in order to control the information getting to law enforcement. My mother is far from being an idiot.
I have yesterday (8/4/2019) realized that she knew her home was protected from seizure if I were to collect on that 1.4 million judgement (the courts would take some personal property that might be worth something prior to hitting up the home owners insurance, or at least they could try. As I learn more in life, what I see is that the insurance company would have been 100% on the hook for the money, after all that is what they were paid the premiums for). So, my mother lied about me and harassed me (i.e. MALIGNED ME) for no reason other than to keep herself out of jail.
She succeeded in staying out of jail. But, over the long haul, when family stories and myths are passed down, she will not win. The generations ahead will know exactly who and what she was/is. This story will be published in a black and white bound paper book. It will be a story that lasts.
Tis funny, my oldest daughter claims I called her a ‘monster’ and at any point in our disagreement did I do any such thing.
When I look at this whole story, and when I see my mother, this is when I see a ‘monster’. & I do have a habit of calling them as I see them, whatever that ‘them’ is.
artwork & ‘essay’ (i.e. editorial) copyright 2019, Peggy A Rowe-Snyder (the ‘monkey’ is a Pokemon Go critter that I took a photo with using my cell phone camera, so that piece art before I took it and changed it belonged to Niantic, & the Pokemon crew!)