part 74

So the neighbors have apparently gone from glaring in silence to smiling and waving. I preferred the glaring in silence. At least that indicated to me that they were aware of the fact that I was telling as many people as possible what they did to me.

The smiling and waving thing is really baffling. For one, I am again shocked by the dedication these people - including my mom - have to keep the truth from being real in their own lives.

It seems as though the solution to the past is to ignore that anything bad ever happened and instead continue to ease into their twilight years sitting in rockers on the front porch and drinking wine and watching people go by and the sun go down. Smiling and waving.

It is a good strategy, one that has been very successful when used against me specifically. I mean, how much are you going to keep telling how people hurt you when the people who hurt you are smiling and waving and the people you're telling are trying to convince you that you're crazy?

I watched Rosemary's Baby for the first time when I was 19 years old. I was also pregnant at the time, and so a bit more vulnerable to the effects of the dramatization of mind-fucking a young women knocked up by Satan. I never thought my baby was Satan's offspring, and as much as my ex-husband pissed me off, he was definitely not Satan's clever little imp sacrificing his young wife's sanity and uterus to perpetuate the evil one's bloodline.

However, I was very disturbed by the mind-fucking part. I had other things on my mind at that time (such as keeping myself and a baby alive with tremendously limited resources), and I put my reactions to that movie off to the side.

Looking back, I can really relate to poor little Rosemary. She was so naïve and young and wanting so much for everything to be as perfect and wonderful as it seemed. She didn't want her darling new husband to drug her and offer her to Satan to be raped and impregnated with evil. She didn't want the sweet loving neighbors in her building - her social support system - to be part of the insane conspiracy.

But that's what really happened (in the context of a fictionalized movie, of course), and the more Rosemary tried to address it, the more she was treated like a delusional freak.

She was convinced that she was weak and mentally infirm and in need of a great deal of care by those around her. Her memories of what was real were dismissed as nothing more than very silly "misinterpretations" of what she was told by those around her was real.

By employing this analogy, I am not suggesting that I believe the events portrayed in that movie can actually happen in the real world. Quite frankly, I think Satan would have a much simpler plan to perpetuate his blood line - if I believed Satan exists, which I do not.

But I do believe people can be as evil as Rosemary's husband and neighbors were, and I can definitely believe there are people as vulnerable and naïve as Rosemary, and I can definitely relate my experiences to the absurdity and horror of what Rosemary experienced, and of course to the mind-fucking she took.

Seriously, if you want to get an idea of how I felt as a child, watch Rosemary's Baby and try to empathize with Mia Farrow's character - yes, I am saying that really is how I felt for most of my life.

Unfortunately for my abusers, I am not that naïve and vulnerable and dependent child any more. I don’t have to rely on my mom or my dad or the people in that neighborhood to survive.

I am much stronger than that now, and I really actually believe that I am strong.

My confidence in my strength and in my ability to discern what is real from what is bullshit makes everything that was huge and terrifying and crazy by huge and powerful people when I was little into a bunch of really fucked up abuse and torture of a child by small and weak people.

(Just as a side note, my confidence in my strength and ability to discern what is real from what is bullshit is a continuous process of reality-checking with trusted friends and professionals on a daily basis. Having those people in my life is a tremendous advantage to me, and something I didn't have growing up. Another tremendous advantage is the knowledge that just because I am not perfect - that I am definitely wrong about some things - does not mean I am incapable of being a good person who can make healthy decisions. Now that I think about it, this little side note describes an arsenal of empowerment that no small and weak person stands a chance against.)

So anyway. As baffling and shocking as the smiling and waving is, I can see why the neighbors and my mom continue to employ such methods - they have always worked before, why shouldn't they work now?

It makes me think about bad people who do bad things and keep them secret for their whole lives. When you have done something bad to someone else and spend your life trying to convince yourself and everyone else that you are not capable of doing anything bad to anyone else, do you anticipate the day of reckoning?

Do you realize that the good guys really do always win? Do you wonder about the fact that no one is perfect, and the only thing that separates the good guys from the bad is the willingness to acknowledge and accept our own human imperfections? Do you wonder if the bad things you did in the past will prevent you from being a good person now?

Do you really, actually, for realsies believe that pretending you didn't do all of those bad things that you did will make you happy? Will give you peace? Will allow you to sleep at night? Will keep your knowledge of those bad things from eating away at your soul for the rest of your life?

Does it scare you knowing that regardless of how vehemently you deny the accusations, how successfully you discredit your victims, and how steadfastly you stand in denial you will never, ever be able to change the fact that what you did was real?

These are things that I wonder about, and the idea of having that shit swirl around in my guts for the rest of my life is much more terrifying than acknowledging that I have done bad things and am capable of doing more bad things and try very hard to do what is good now. It seems very simple and logical to me.

I suppose that is why I am so baffled by the smiling and waving thing. It takes so much work and causes so much pain and a lifetime of dedication to lies - it is so much easier to just acknowledge it and move on. I mean, why would you want to dedicate your entire life to lies? Like I said, it is baffling.

I am really hurting right now, still about all of this shit with my mom. I expect that pain to take a really long time to get past - if it ever happens at all.

I am finding that no amount of harm and betrayal and bad things people did to me, or their attempts to conceal those things, can destroy the peace of knowing what the truth is, and being able to have that peace and knowledge on my side.

Because really - the truth is the bottom line, the foundation. Anything else is bound to crumble eventually.