September 23, 2000
As the world turns, all my children are in General Hospital.
While I am in another world, searching for tomorrow with young and the restless.
These are the days of our lives....
Somebody wrote that on the chalkboard in my 8th grade history class. And at the moment,
I feel that I have been plunged even deeper into a soap opera. So, let's play catch-up
using emails again.
[Monday, August 21, 2000]
I just went through getting physicals scheduled for my children like the judge wanted.
My soon-to-be ex did agreed to the peditrician, but no one told me until today. I called the office.
First they didn't have an appointment until the 18th of September. I even made sure she
meant "1"-"8". Then I was transferred to another office person and it was the 11th.
Then I was transferred back the first one and she made it the 8th. No "1" in front of
it, just "8".
Okay, that will work.
BUT they will NOT accept my husband's insurance, because they are not listed as a preferred
provider. In short, I
will have to pay $320 out of pocket, send him the bill to submit to his insurance, and have
him not only pay me back the insurance portion, but his too.
Anyone want to bet that I won't see a single penny of this?
And to make it worse, the first office worker was someone who was deliberately dense or
had a hearing problem. I don't normally have problems with people with accents, but I
think some people use it as an excuse not to listen carefully in the first place -
because not only did I have to repeat myself several times, but I ended up saying it
loud enough that now my whole office knows what's going on. The second lady also had
an accent and she had no problem understanding me.
I want to cry now.
My lawyer's office called me the next day and told me that they got the judge
to sign an order to have my ex to pay the bill before the appointment. I was quite
surprised and pleased with their proactiveness. Unfortunately, my ex and his lawyer
then said that they didn't *really* agree to the pediatrician and protested - so I
did pay it all (I'll get to this later), but her report will still be accepted in court.
But somewhere around this time, my ex starting to drop off weekly child support money
orders to my lawyer's office. We're not sure how he is calculating the amount, but
by every calculation the lawyer's office has used, he's stiffing me by a few dollars on
each one and the amount is slightly different each week.
A few days after that last email, my truck popped something and began shuddering
really bad. I was pressed for resources, so I asked one of the lists I'm on whether
or not it was a good idea to drive it then.
Below is the result...
[Saturday, August 26, 2000]
Bad, bad idea.
My only counsolation (sp?) is that the truck gave out near the shop I was
planning to take it to in the first place.
Unforutnately, my fibromyalgia is bad today and while pushing the truck into
a parking lot, up a slight incline, I lost my footing and fell underneath
it.
Good news - my large body stopped it before it hit someone else.
Bad news - it drugged me a few feet first.
A city bus driver and another man helped me out and get the truck into an
handicap spot. Someone called 911 and the police and fire dept made sure I
was okay and someone is going to see if they can fix it.
They wanted to take me to the hospital, but I'm only bruised and I didn't
whack my head, so I told them no.
Someone else is going to take me grocery shopping. The person who took me
home also took me to my bank before the drive-in part closed - I remembered
that my ATM card had gotten screwed up a few weeks back, which is why I
decided to take a chance and go ahead and drive.
My sister's neighbor replaced the u-joint and the whole thing costed me
much, much less than I was expecting. Words cannot express my gratitude on
the whole matter.
My knee is still swollen from the encounter, but the truck runs much better
now. I also lost my normal glasses and had to wear my prescription sunglasses
until I could get a replacement.
About a week later, someone suggested that maybe I had gained so much weight
as a type of personal protection. I scoffed at it at first, but it preyed
on my mind, so I again asked my favorite mailing list for their opinion.
(I just love these guys!)
[Wednesday, September 6, 2000]
(from something I said previoiusly)
*I don't think that was why I gained so much weight in the first place*
(my addendum)
Damn insomnia. Anyway, I may have to take this statement back. As I
mentioned earlier, I did have one guy try to hit on me while I was still
with my husband. It was during our third year of marriage. The thing that
really blew my mind was that he was doing it at our house with my husband in
the next room.
He was fiddling with my computer (He actually did more to it than I wanted
and ended up crashing it and I had to rebuild everything) and making all
these comments about how interesting I was, what beautiful way I had with
words, and such. I wanted to keep an eye on what he was doing to my
computer because even though he had a file I needed, I didn't trust him.
But he made me so uncomfortable that I kept going into the living room and
asking my husband if he would like to come into the computer room. I even told him
I would *feel* much better if he was in the room with us. He said no.
I didn't want to be more obvious because my intuition said that this jerk
would have probably deliberately destroyed my computer then. (Found out
from a few other people later I was right on this account.) So, I did my
best to hurry things up and get him into the living room. Even then, he
wouldn't go away until I got my husband to start bragging about a sword he had made
(he's a machinist). I even retrieved it and let him show off. Finally, the
guy decided it was his best interest to leave.
I told my husband what he had been doing while messing with the computer and my husband
said, "Well, I got the impression he wanted more than just friendship with
you."
"Then why didn't you come into the room when I asked you to?" I asked.
He just shrugged and said that I handled things well enough. But if my husband had
been in there, I could have kept a close eye on the jerk and I would have
caught what he was doing wrong before he screwed up my system. I had warned
him I had something on there he wasn't familiar with and he had to prove me
wrong by messing with it when I was out of the room. I chewed him out big
time over the modem and he spent the next few months trying to make my life
miserable on the BBSes and failed.
I'm going to interrupt this email to insert something about how one type of
Narcissistic Personality views marriage. Though it may not have much to do with
this particular incident, it fits mine almost to a T and may add more to any
possible subconscious motivation I may have had to gain weight.
However, as the memories of the crisis fade, as the Narcissistic wounds heal, as the
Narcissistic cycle re-commences and the balance is restored the second type of
Narcissist reveals his true colors. He abruptly loses interest in sex and in all
his sexual partners. The frequency of his sexual activities deteriorates from a few
times a day to a few times a year. He prefers intellectual pursuits, sports,
politics, volunteering anything but sex. This kind of Narcissist is afraid of
encounters with the opposite gender and is even more afraid of emotional involvement
or commitment that he fancies himself able to develop following a sexual encounter.
In general, such a Narcissist will withdraw not only sexually but also emotionally. If
married he will lose all overt interest in his spouse, sexual or otherwise. He will
confine himself to his world and make sure that he is busy enough not to have time
for anything else, especially not for his nearest (and supposedly dearest). He will
become completely immersed in "big projects", lifelong plans, a vision, or a cause
all very rewarding Narcissistically and all very demanding. He will regard sex as an
obligation, a necessity, or a maintenance operation needed in order to preserve the
comfortable human cell that he has constructed for himself. He will not enjoy sex and
by far prefer to engage in the auto-erotic variety to masturbate - or in object sex,
like going to prostitutes. Actually, he will regard his mate or spouse as an "alibi",
a shield against the attention of other women, an insurance policy which will preserve
his virile image while making it socially and morally commendable for him to avoid any
intimate or sexual contact with other women. While ignoring women around him (a form
of aggression) he will feel righteous in saying: "I am loyal to my wife". At the same
time, he will feel hostile towards her for ostensibly preventing him from freely
expressing himself sexually with others, for isolating him from carnal pleasures. The
thwarted logic goes like this: "I am married/attached to this woman. Therefore, I am
not allowed to be in any kind of touch with other women, which might be interpreted
as more than casual or businesslike. This is why I refrain from having anything to do
with women - because I am loyal, as opposed to most other immoral men. However, I do
not like this situation. I envy my free peers. They can engage in sex and romance as
much as they want to - while I am confined to this marriage, chained by my wife, my
freedom curbed. I am angry at her and I will punish her by abstaining from having sex
with her". He will minimize all types of intercourse with his close social circle
(spouse, children, parents, brothers and sisters, very intimate friends): sexual,
verbal, or emotional. He will limit himself to the rawest exchanges of information
and isolate himself socially. This way he insures against a future hurt and avoids
the intimacy that he so dreads. But, again, this way he also secures abandonment and
the replay of old, unresolved, conflicts. Finally, he will really be left alone, with
no secondary sources of supply. In his search for them, he will again embark on
ego-mending bouts of sex, followed by the selection of a spouse or a mate (a secondary
Narcissistic supply source). Then the cycle will commence: a sharp drop in sexual
activity, emotional remoteness and cruel detachment leading to abandonment.
The second type of Narcissist is mostly sexually loyal to his spouse. He alternates
between what appears to be hyper-sexuality and a-sexuality (really, forcefully repressed
sexuality). In the latter phase, he feels no sexual urges, bar the most basic. He is,
therefore, not compelled to "cheat" upon his mate, betray her, or violate the sacred
contract. He is much more interested in making sure that the next day will not witness
a worrisome dwindling of the Narcissistic supply that really matters. Sex, he says to
himself, contentedly, is for those who can do no better.
(http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6297/faq29.html)
Now, back to the rest of the email:
And while I was laying in bed trying to sleep with all this rattling through
my brain, I remembered the first time someone made an advance on me. It was
a middle aged man on my newpaper route. He wasn't interested in the local
paper at all until he saw that I was now doing the route instead of the boy
who had it before me. He made some comment about having to show our young
women support. I always felt uncomfortable around him. He would make me
come into his garage to get my money.
Then one day, about six months before my family moved out of state, he asked me
point blank what I would do if a man tried to grab me. I sputtered a
"What?" and he said for me to imagine that I was walking back home on the
next street and to suppose that *he* jumped over the fence and tried to grab
me. I told him, quite truthfully, that he would be jumping into the yard of
someone I went to church with and preceded to explain how I could easily
zig-zag from one family I knew to another clear to my house house.
I told my mom about it when I got home and her brilliant idea was for me to
take one of my little sisters with me whenever I went out on my route. My
brother went with my other sister who had a route too. Luckily this bastard
was at the end of my route and by the time my sister and I got to his street, I
had a plan. I identified the houses I trusted and introduced the people to
my sister. Then I discretely pointed out this man's house and told her that
under no circumstances was she ever to step inside that house or that
garage. And if something happened to me, she was to go to one of the houses
I told her was safe and get help.
She did what she was told and three weeks later, stood outside as I went
into the garage to get my money. He didn't see her at first, but when he
did, his face became dark. Being an evil little thing even back then,
she gave him a big smile and stood her ground. He never said hardly
anything to me after that.
I did gain weight during this time. My mother had gotten me a dress for a
school choir concert at the beginning of the month. We could only find it
in a size ten and had to pin it on me. At the end of the month, I wore it
to a wedding and it was tight. A week later, I couldn't wear it at all.
Damn. If it's true that I use my weight as a protection, where do I go from
here?
On the 8th, the physicals went well. According to the doctor the only
real problem was dental, which was something I was working on and my soon-to-be
ex complained he got a lot of bills for.
Monday, September 11, was a very bad day for me. Someone reported that
my estranged husband had been sexually inapropriate with our daughter and it
also sounded that the same source reported me for not keeping our place
clean enough. The inviestigator took the kids out of school and after
questioning them, called me from work so he could question me. We spent
the first two thirds of the time discussing my soon-to-be ex's sexually habits and
then my health and what type of help I needed to keep things up.
Needless to say, I spent over week stunned and shocked. At the same time, my
load at work had increased unexpectedly and that Wednesday, for *no* discernable
reason, my truck stopped working on the way home. I hiked, sore leg and all, to
a nearby church and called someone from my own to get someone to help me.
I had made some suggestions of who I thought could help, but the person I called
couldn't get a hold of them, so she called other people instead - giving me a
chance to learn more about a few other church members. Turns out that the father
of the family who took my kids from Cub Scouts, makes eye glasses for a living and
made me a new pair, using the presciption I still had. The truck hasn't acted
up since, but I must admit that it was a blessing in disguise.
Despite his insistance that he would talk to the kids' dad that week, the CPS
investigator did not and one of my sisters emailed me for an update...
[Monday, September 18, 2000]
Beats me. I haven't heard back from anyone and neither has my lawyer. I
guess I will need to just sit back and wait.
My in-laws, (one brother in-law and his wife), called Saturday night to talk with me. They
hadn't heard anything, but they weren't surprised. They think my husband or
another family member may have called it in so they can claim I'm harassing
poor, innocent, little (what's-his-name) and he can play the martyr - his favorite pasttime.
Further more, (the wife) thinks they did it because of her. She chewed them out
big time for maligning me a few weeks back and a few days before that she
had mentioned that the one thing she could not stand was a woman who falsely
reports her ex to CPS to get him out of the kids' life. She believes that
they would do this to *prove* to (the wife) that I am scum.
I protested that surely they wouldn't put the kids through such trauma, but
she reminded me of several other incidences where they ignored what happened
to the innocent to get their vengeance.
I don't know. All the scenarios I've been coming up with seem equally
plausible. I really couldn't tell you want is more likely.
And I still can't tell you...
