Memory Serves

I have written about this before. As a matter of fact, I've written about it multiple times but I don't think I'm conveying to my audience very well the gravity of the drama in this matter. There is no way to explain how explosive this family dynamic has become over the years, just adding a person here, removing one there, it was never enough. It was always just one rift away from unraveling every single day.

Nobody should have had to suffer from the mutated ambitions of the people in their life; least of all children. Here we are, nearly 30 years later, and there are still people in this theatrical shit show who are trying to maintain some ill-conceived notion of martyrdom and concurrently crucify anyone whose opinions differ from their own. Unless you really haven't been paying attention to my blogs, you know who I'm talking about. I mean everything that happened starting in 1991. I mean the melodramatic, overbearing narcissist in the form of a creature who, for all intents and purposes, should never have mattered a hill of beans to anyone, but has remained on the lips of people she doesn't even know for nearing three decades. I now feel somewhat reassured that was her intention from the inception.

Some people cannot survive without attention, at least in their psychotic minds. They have to have the attention of their family and friends, and they have to perceive loyalty (nee "fealty") from everyone in their life or else they become so histrionic that it garners at least some of the attention they crave. In her case, it was being unfaithful to her husband that gave her the "jolt" she felt she needed. She was 20 years old with barely a high school diploma under her belt, and her only worldly experience was between her legs. Yet, in order to feel "whole" she began having various affairs with random men to satisfy an itch that would not stop; not even if the skin was completely removed. Eventually, as so often it does, that "scratching" culminated in a surprise pregnancy. The child, completely and utterly innocent from conception, was not her husband's.

So, not only was she unhappy as a human being, she produced enough drama around herself that she made certain her husband was unhappy as well, and destroyed his trust in her, and left doubt and misery in his heart; this man who was the father of her first son. With this pregnancy, with this over-dramatization of an affair gone awry, she not only destroyed her marriage, but also the family she had created with her first husband when that marriage abruptly ended and left one child without his mother (she signed over full custody of her first child to her estranged husband). I met her a month before that baby was born. Now, that's HER back story.

Mine is a little different, but bear with me, mine also didn't cause all this either. So, I digress.

For the next few years, she had physical relationships with everyone she chose; male and female, in the presence at times of not only the new baby, but also when she had the option of visitation with her eldest child. Nothing was off limits to her, as evidenced by her own handwritten letters to me, and she had great pride in her sexual prowess. At this stage, I was in and out of the picture because I was living my own life. I was dating the guy she blamed for impregnating her with child #2, but it was on and off. We were serious for a while and then we weren't. Then she dated my best friend. Then she didn't. Then she had sex with my best friend's friend. Then she didn't.

I've called it like I've seen it from day one, and from day one I wasn't afraid to tell her what I thought of her. That seems to be the reason she really hated me. I'm the only one in her life she couldn't bat her black eyelashes at, and glare through her blue eyes, and I wouldn't just be putty in her hands. No ma'am, I have my own eyelashes and much more interesting eyes. You don't interest me in the slightest, but what does interest me is why you chose not to take care of your children. What interests me is why you played mother of the freaking year in front of your family and then left your babies in the care of "Barney" while you proceeded on one conquest or another. "Dating as a divorced woman"? Perhaps you were, but your children weren't. They didn't deserve it. Still, that's also not my business.

When it became my business is when you broke into my home and strung my cassette tapes all over the house, ransacked the place and then tied my door closed with cassette tape and left a note telling me how you and Margaret were together and there was nothing I could do about it. That was brilliant, by the way, leaving a note at the scene of an actual crime.

Then you used the baby to lure Jerry to Margaret's dad's house just to keep the door locked and leave us standing outside, making fun of us at the window until I was so infuriated with you and Jerry was broken-hearted, that I jumped through my best friend's window trying to grab you and yank you outside to beat the living crap out of you. Thank your lucky stars (and Rebecca - God rest her soul) that I didn't grab you. Your own mother wouldn't have recognized you after I got through with you that day. Just saying. Do what you want to me, but you hurt him and I loved him dearly.

When it became my business is when you could not leave well enough alone and when Jerry and I got married, you could not just go on about the business of sleeping your way around southwest Little Rock, but you had to drive Moki's car over to Sears to haunt my husband at his job and threaten him with your son to coerce him to leave his new marriage. I mean, it worked, but what did you really get out of the deal? You destroyed my marriage just like you'd destroyed your own, fortunately, I was independent enough not to need him there and not to make myself look like a fool chasing around town after him like you did. You had Margaret and Moki, Steve and whomever else in your bed but you could not be happy and content until you had destroyed my happiness as well? Really?

Then you were mad because I got a Camaro.

Then you had my tires slashed while I was at Rebecca & Melinda's house.

Then you had my car set fire to while I was asleep in my bed.

Then you made sure and sent me a wedding announcement when you FINALLY decided to marry my husband the next year.

Then you made sure and sent me photos of you and my husband. Then photos of him and your son. Gloating suits you doesn't it? Looks really ugly from my perspective. I was STILL kind to you after all you had done because I could have literally RUINED YOUR LIFE with those photos that were left at my house. I chose to give them back to you because you have children and those children never needed to see that side of you - at least not by my hand. You did that all by yourself.

But I'm the "bad guy"?

I moved to Hot Springs so the letters and the drive by crap would stop. I moved to Hot Springs to get away from Little Rock anyway because it was a crap place to raise children. The next year, I was blessed to have a new baby, and so were you, but I can promise you this, I can ASSURE you of this, mine was raised a hell of a lot differently than yours was and you had a husband at the time! My husband, to be exact. Our divorce wasn't legal if he didn't sign in front of a notary - and he did not sign in front of your uncle's wife. He doesn't remember signing them at all and was coerced if he even did.

Again, somehow giving y'all what you wanted and leaving your lives still made me the bad guy. Because I shopped at K-Mart? Because if I was in there with my friends and we saw you we laughed at you? Well, damn Sherry, you're stupid! You were stupid then. It is funny. It's still funny, and if I saw you today I'd STILL laugh at you for thinking you'd won some great prize by hurting your first husband and son, giving birth to a second son who'd grow up in a miserably neglectful and abusive home, and then bringing a third into the world who'd suffer even more atrocities at YOUR hand. Remember, at this point you were in Louisiana and I was in Arkansas. What harm could I have ever done you or your children from this far away? That was over 20 years ago. In over 20 years we have not lived in the same state, yet you have manufactured this nightmare of a life that I supposedly created? Seriously? Do you still believe that I caused the harm and discord when you asked me to take your child and treat her like she was my own? You still believe I caused the horrors that have befallen you when I have taken your children into my home to care for them when you wouldn't even speak to them? What did I stand to gain? You knew these kids. What did I or Jerry stand to gain by being kind to these kids?

Nothing.

None of it was ever done to "thwart" you because YOU don't matter to us. You are just the side effect of a disease that befell humanity long, long ago. You are nothing more than a blight on the life of anyone who ever loved you. You have lied to anyone who gave you their ear and you make me sick, yet, I'm the one who keeps extending the olive branch. I'm the one who CONTINUES to give YOU, the one who destroyed my marriage to the man I loved, destroyed my vehicle that I loved, and the home that I loved, I continue to TRY to make peace with you - which you have spat in my face time and time again.

No ma'am, I'm no martyr. I'm a bitch. I wear the badge proudly. You have been ugly, hateful and nasty to me at every opportunity (behind my back) and yet I still defend you as a "person".

So, I'm not going to do that anymore and let's see how well that works out for you.

Goodbye.