Quote from the LTE: 

"I'm back *twitch* and seriously annoyed. Grrr...time to yet again complain about my *twitch* evil family. It is once again the time of year that makes entire families bond together...in the same sense that cats and dogs bond together when they have rabies. The time...is science fair time. My younger, eviler sister does a science project every single year. *twitch* The concept of science projects strikes fear in my mother's heart. She can not stand them. Naturally, this is why she takes over the project and does it for my little sister. Unfortunatly, this means that I am often called on for my "consultant" abilities. *twitch* In other words, I do the experiment, and think of all the results, and the wording of everything. I then interpret my work for my mother, who writes everything down because she has really, really obsessivly neat handwritting. Of course, my mother gets stressed merely handling paper that will potentionally be USED for a science project, so this is a very, very negative situation. Oh, and my mother refuses to even entertain the notion that my little sister might possibly be of help *twitch*. At this very moment my little sister is watching a Disney movie, while complaining of a headache. *twitch* My mother is getting more and more aggravated as I try to explain that my sister might fail if it looks like she didn't do the project. I am currently on strike. I refuse to assist this project in any further way untill my little sister does freakin' SOMETHING. Wow. Speak of the devil. My sister IS doing something. She is RE-WRITING everything my mother just wrote. Like mother like daughter. *twitch* I guess this is my mother's way to make sure the judges don't know that my sister didn't do the project. My mother makes my sister redo everything over and over again because it's not perfect enough for her. Now she is the one who's getting yelled at. I guess I can't help but feel sorry for my evil sister. *pauses* I guess I'll stop complaining, then."



So. 

It tooks years. Years and years to come to terms with the fact that my mother was abusive. 

During the pandemic, the last straw was reached, and I cut all contact with her. 

I don't regret it. 

I mourn the fact that it had to happen. That she couldn't be the kind of person who was safe to be around for me.



The longest text ever can be hard for me to read because past me... I mean. 

I knew something was wrong. 

I'd tell "funny stories" to my friends all the time, or to the website. I'd sanitize them, of course. Edit them for public consumption. 

And I'd choose the least emotionally fraught ones. 


Like I did when child services were called on us in middle school. 

I'm pretty sure I know why they were. Not just the event, but who called them. 

Mom was so scared, she said if anything went wrong she'd "be put on a list" for 7 years and she wouldn't be allowed to be around children. 

So.

We lied to the nice lady who came to interview us. 

My sister was just a baby, but they were dumb enough to have me and my brother be interviewed at the same time, and he was a born minion. Always followed my lead. 

We were asked questions about what happened when we were bad, and I lied my goddamned ass off talking about "groundings" because you saw those happen all the time in the movies so it MUST be the right answer. 

The one that wouldn't have us taken back to the orphanage to be adopted by a mean old lady named "Geraldine" like mom always threated us with. 

We didn't talk about how we were hit and tackled into walls and screamed at. 

We didn't talk about how Mom's temper was our problem and we always had to be the adult in every situation. Perfectly emotionally controlled or we were responsible for what happened. 

"You know how your mother gets", was a common thing my dad said. 

It wasn't HER fault, she just got stressed, you see. 

And I knew I hated it and I feared her and that it wasn't RIGHT. 

But when I'd say things were bad I'd be told I didn't know how good I had it, that they could take me back to the orphanage, that REAL abuse was like what happened on the shows on tv they'd make me watch so I knew that I wasn't being abused. 

And you know. Legally speaking, they were right. 

It's only abuse if it leaves marks. According to the law.

Maybe there'd be bruises occasionally. Maybe. I can't remember. But it was always the fear that was worse. 

When dad hurt us, it was very business like. He'd lay out what we did wrong. And he'd calmly cause pain, and then stop. 

When mom hurt us, it was because she had lost her temper. You could never predict what would set her off, or what the consequences would be. One day you forget to make your bed and she laughs it off, or has you do it then while berating you, or says "wait till your father comes home", or tackles you into a wall while shrieking. 

Once she started hurting you, she wouldn't stop until you submitted. Until you stopped trying to defend yourself and stopped crying and pretended like you were stone. Because if you were crying, you were calling her a bad mother, you see. And that made her angry.

And I knew all that wasn't right. But theres only so many times you can be told its your fault, that you're "too sensitive" before you start to internalize it, at least a little.

So. The things I wrote in there were without fully realizing just how bad it all was. 


I felt so alone in my family.

I was adopted, you see. 

So was my brother. 

From different families. 

But both of us would have been worse off in our families of origin. That was pounded into us thoroughly. 

We were lucky to be there, and the good life they were giving us was responsible ENTIRELY for any successes we had and anything we did wrong was our Bad Nature winning out from our terrible terrible origins.

I also felt alone because I was just. Wrong. Weird. Bad. ...Sensitive.

My little brother would mostly just fold into himself when Mom got Like That. He was very passive. 

My sister would fight back, especially as she got older and bigger. She told me recently she punched mom and had to be pulled off her when she caught Mom hitting her kid (my nephew). (good for her)

I was small. Shorter than my sister when I was 16 even though she was six years younger than me. I couldn't fight back.

So mostly I tried to be like my brother. Shut down, fold into myself, stop existing. It *worked* against Mom. Kept me safe. 

But sometimes I couldn't and I'd talk back or get angry or try to EXPLAIN myself. 

I got tackled into a wall when I forgot to make my bed because I had been trying to FIX THINGS and make the bed and she didn't like that. Plus, I accidentally called her a liar by saying she "never told me" to make my bed, when what I MEANT was I hadn't heard her tell me that. 

She hated being called a liar. 

She hated liars. 

I learned to be so careful with my words. So militant with my empathy. If I could read her mind and sanitize my words to predict every single possible bad faith reading of my words I'd be safe. 

Surely.

Ironically, hating liars or not, she turned everyone around her into one. 

If you told her the truth she'd hurt you. Even dad. 

So the two favorite passtimes of the family were telling her not-quite-lies (you're a good mother) and mocking her to her face.  Somehow if you used a joking tone she never would get ANGRY, just a little huffy. 

So the LTE became peppered with bits of my mocking complaints about her, as a safe way to express my fear and anger. 

To this day, if someone says I'm lying I get shaky. 

Obviously, sometimes I lie. No one tells the truth, not all the time. 

Sometimes you remember only part of a thing, or are telling only the parts that make for a better story, or condense something down to make it make more sense. 

But I rarely outright lie.  

When I got my first job out of college, I messaged my team at some point to let them know that I had finished up my work for the day, and was going to take two hours of vacation because it was a nice day out and I didn't want to just twiddle my thumbs in the office.

Later, a coworker took me aside and told me that he hoped I "didn't get in trouble for my honesty". 

Everyone else had actually already left for the day at that point. The boss was on vacation, and they didn't seem to be in a working mood.

That's when I realized that no one else had recorded it as vacation. That they were fudging their time sheets. 

They were *lying*. 

And I'm not a narc.  If you get caught lying, the consequences are so so scary. I'm not going to do that to someone.


So I kept their secret and continued frittering away my vacation by being honest about when I wasn't working. 

I got better, over time, at parsing certain activities as "practically working". Like doing mad science experiments to level up my javascript skills.

You can see, though, why the Magnus Archives aspect of the spiral appeals to me so much. 

I'm so so scared of liars and being lied to. It's the Worst Thing you can do to someone. (plus re: spiral, scizophrenia runs in my biofamily (though it missed me) and was used to browbeat me a lot about how I am Naturally Bad)

But I also was raised where a form of play was skirting that line between the Truth and a Lie. Mom wants to be told she's a good mother? Well sure, here's a few facts that support that! I can say them with a straight face, even!

I don't believe it. 

I dont' think it's the truth. 

And I'll pepper in small details to point out that she in fact wasn't a good mother, that she can't pick up on but my dad finds funny.  And then he'll riff on what I said and turn it into a mocking joke and she goes "Hey!" and swats him because she is kind of dumb and only understands she's being made fun of and not what the subtext is. 

Is it a lie if you're having fun doing it? 

Is it a lie if everyone knows its a lie?

Is it a lie if every single fact is true but leads somewhere false?

Yes. 

Of course it is.

But my fear just doesn't parse it that way.

I miss my dad. 

When I cut off contact with mom he made it clear that... 

Well.

She reads his texts. Scans his call history. 

Makes him explain every single piece of contact he has with me and what he said. Yells at him for betraying her by talking to me. (You see, I'm the bad guy because I made her feel like a bad mother) 

Especially if he tried to hide it.

So if I do call him, he reminds me of this, and then hangs up after a minute or two even if I still want to talk. 


I think he does still like hearing from me. 

But god does it take so much energy to reach out to him knowing what the consequences will be. 

So yeah. 

It's weird reading the bits of the LTE and going back to that headspace. The loneliness and fear and sheer desire to be undertood, to BELONG.

I'm glad that past me words connected with people though. No matter how weird and vulnerable it is to see them now.

(and yes, I'm aware that future me will feel weird and vulnerable if they're reminded of the shit I've shared here).

(hopefully not too weird and vulnerable though. hopefully future me will be happy to be remembered and understood)