I felt weird having my latest post about the first of two abusers I ever had left to sit until the next time I decided to write here.
I don’t like that it sneaks up on me and lives in my head like that. Especially Don because he was by far the worst and most life ruining. I cried about it all Sunday until the evening.
Anyway, here are some random pictures because I feel like cats and pics will cleanse the blog.
He passed away over the summer and I have not really talked about it besides with my therapist. I oscillate between being “okay” with it to being sad or some semblance of sad.
I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. But he was not a nice guy. He had his own burdens to carry and was a deeply injured and complicated person. But that doesn’t excuse the things he did to me. Did to my mother. My brother and sister. The physical pain, emotional wounds, the irreparable damage on my family that we have never been able to fix.
He was an alcoholic - barely functioning. His punishments, which were daily, would be classified as severe child abuse even back then. A serial cheater to the point he has multiple women he was engaged to or seriously with while he was with my mother. Which she never knew about - at least the full extent - until the end of his life.
I think my mom sees herself as a martyr. She needs to sacrifice herself on the altar of love to show her devotion. She inherited that from my grandmother. My grandfather had a second serious relationship on the side during all of his marriage with my grandmother. My grandmother knew, his kids all knew. When my grandfather got sick with lung cancer my grandmother retired from her job as a nurse to be his nurse full time. The other woman disappeared into the ether as if she was never there.
When my mom talked about her partner, Don, being sick she said, “I found out he was buying a house with another woman and was planning on leaving for good. I told him once he feels better he needs to leave.”
But he just got worse. And worse. And so much worse.
I hope I am breaking some generational curse and I wonder how many women before my mom in my line stood by and watched as a man beat and kick her kids until they were covered in bruises or until they passed out from the fear and pain. Over a bed not made military style, over a friend stopping by uninvited, over a C on a test, over wearing socks to bed, over just standing there when he came home drunk.
Or was it just mine?
Don was my first experience with a walking red flag - crimson and bleeding. I was a kid but old enough to know something was genuinely wrong with the dynamic. A child should not be afraid to come home on the weekends from their father’s house. A child shouldn’t have to put makeup on their bruises. A child shouldn’t have to jump between a grown man and her brother and sister to take the brunt of the punishment.
A child shouldn’t have to tell her lovesick mother, “Mom, I need you to be my mom and not his girlfriend.”
“Mom, he doesn’t love you, if he loved you he wouldn’t put his hands on you. He wouldn’t cheat on you.”
“Mom, I don’t respect you anymore for all of this. Why do you let him hurt me. Do you not love me? What can I do so you love us more?”
I was always the performative respectful daughter. I’ll do a bow, shake a hand, curtsy in a dress. I’ll be polite. I remained cordial to Don until the end. But every day of his life I wished and I prayed he would go away and leave my family be. That the spell would be broken that he had somehow wrapped my mother so tightly up in his drama with.
My dad - he loved me. He respected me and treated me as an equal and worked his hardest to give me a secure attachment. I think he was unaware of how bad it was. I like to think if he really knew - if we weren’t so afraid of telling him - that he would have fought to keep us full time. I think the one time I took the chance to tell him my mom told my dad I was lying (I was about 8) & then the abuse got so much worse and I was the laser focus.
My mom cycles between admitting the abuse and outright denying it was bad.
“He didn’t push the dresser on top of you and kick you in the head with his boot. You were already on the floor. Then he tripped. You made that up because you just hate him.”
My mother said that to me when my sister had me on speaker about 7 years ago trying to tell my mother about what happened when I was 14 and trying to stop him from strangling her.
My sister responded, “What did Don tell you that? You weren’t there. Megan saved my life and Don lies to you everyday and you still don’t believe us.”
When they begin fighting I said, “Guys. Stop fighting. Mom when we tell you this stuff we’re being honest. I don’t know why you don’t believe us. But there is nothing we can do now to fix it. We can’t go back in time. Heather, stop bringing it up to her because she doesn’t want to face it yet. She’s not ready. Mom, stop covering for him.”
Then Heather hung up on me.
I don’t like to relive it. It was like some psychological horror movies like some negative energy demon would be in our house constantly. The atmosphere was so thick and I was constantly on edge when I was younger.
When I was 15 I would sit on the internet for hours trying to figure out how to fix my family. Consume psychological articles, search, “why is my house so dark and negative?” “How do I get my mom to love me?”
I think at one time I read that there was some folklore demon from Irish lore - I forgot its name - I haven’t thought about it for years now. A disembodied black figure that would bring negatively and pain into a home. I remember really thinking that was the problem - that we had some kind of presence because it didn’t make sense to me that I couldn’t have a real family.
Don’t get me wrong - I still think that house is haunted. But I believe more so now that all Don’s anger started at the bottom of a bottle.
——
I’m still the same person. I just want to be loved. My ‘tism keeps me even tempered for the most part. My empathy makes me feel deep pain for others.
—-
June 2023
Don was hallucinating for months. Seeing monsters and men walking around the house. A visibly dead man sitting on the tv pointing a gun at him. He would see multiple versions of my mom around the house. Forget where he was.
My mom called the ambulance - several times. Because Don had a reputation for being the town drunk - they would argue with my mom, and he would argue, and they wouldn’t take him.
He pulled a gun on nothing and shot through the wall. Saying there was a man threatening him in the corner.
No one was there.
I said, “Mom there is something wrong he needs to go to the hospital or you need to leave - if he is shooting guns at the wall it is not safe for you.”
“Oh, Meg, I’ll be fine. They won’t take him. He won’t go. I’ve tried.”
Then in the evening weeks later I got a call from my mom frantic. “Don fell! Don fell out of the bed! He is not waking up.”
“Mom, did you call the ambulance?”
“They’re standing outside laughing saying he is drunk and won’t take him. The neighbor came over he is trying to convince them.”
The ambulance came again and stood outside for 30 minutes telling my mom he was drunk and needed to sleep it off.
They didn’t even bring anything to the house call. I guess when they saw my mom’s address they took it as a joke. They carried him out on a bed sheet. If my mom’s neighbor wasn’t there to also beg them to take him they probably wouldn’t have.
He was dead by the time they got to the hospital. Brain aneurysm. He didn’t fall out of the bed. He probably very likely fell just standing up.
He died in my childhood bedroom, now my mother’s room. She won’t sleep in there ever again. I can’t say I blame her.
She carried a lot of guilt. Thought if she could just convince the ambulance to take him faster - thought if he had went upstairs when he called for her a couple hours before that.
I think it was probably too late. He was actively dying for two years at that point. A 57 year old man doesn’t hallucinate unless there is something wrong with his brain.
—-
The energy after he died in the house was chaotic the first week. It was like there was tension but it couldn’t find a home. I don’t know how to explain it. Like something negative was hanging over us as I told my mother over and over again that it wasn’t her fault - he knows that. That she needs to forgive herself for not being upstairs when he fell. That there was nothing we could do. He was a grown man that would not get help.
The house is lighter now. No negative presence or constant pressure. The air is breathable - not thick and uninviting.
I don’t know if that is because Don has fully left or not.
—-
I think my sadness is empathy for my mom. I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive Don for not letting me have a good relationship with my mom. He had to stand between us and pit her against us at every junction. I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive Don for the trauma. For hurting my mother, my brother, my sister. For the nearly 11 years of fear until I moved out for good.
I am not happy he died. But I am happy my mom gets a few years of her life back. Gets to work on focusing on herself.
—
It’s been a better year.
Shawn brought me coffee at 3PM and now it is 4:30 am and I can’t fall asleep.
Here is some stuff about trauma and traumatizing events interwoven with funny stuff - for like levity or something.
Night thoughts 1.21.24
On trauma, autism, cptsd:
I didn’t have it so great. Growing up, moving into my teens, young adulthood - my life was rocky for a long time.
Some can be accounted to growing up with autism and not knowing it. Not being diagnosed until 36 and spending 35..? years learning to hide, trying hold on, always censoring myself. I’ve only ever wanted to be just like everyone else. I never understood why I never could be.
I tried for a long time in my teens to make myself smaller, so small that I would dissolve into nothing. So small that no one would be uncomfortable with my presence.
My mask comes up in most situations - the one I only recently realized I wear. Gotta be on the phone with a stranger? Mask. Meet a new person I think is really cool? Mask. Be in any situation without headphones in my ears? Mask.
When my mask comes down - when it came down in the past - I was letting my guard down and trusting people would accept me. Only to find even people I was in love with, cared about, and/or would have done anything for - were so put off by me they started to hate and dislike me. Men mostly - when I stopped being this “manic pixie dream girl” and started being “actually autistic” they would turn against me.
I guess I can’t blame them for not trying to understand me. I didn’t understand myself until this past year. I just thought I was fundamentally broken from the way I grew up. Broken home, people fighting, me constantly competing for attention - maybe it played a role but not the whole play.
The only person I think who ever really understood me - mask off and all was my father. No slight to my long time friends, current partner, past loves, and family but my dad saw through everything. You just had to know us to know. He was my anchor. After he died I tried so hard to replicate that stability and connection. Meet someone, buy my own home, get another degree - that anchor could not be replaced. Nothing I do or have done can bring back how I once felt.
I learned that the hard way.
I am scared to be abandoned. I always have been. I used to have this dream when I was a kid where everyone I love died before me and I was left standing there. Alone. Always alone. Or dreams where I was in a room full of people that I loved - a tornado the size of 15 football fields is coming up the yard. I am screaming for them to run - blocking the door with my body - trying to protect my people. No one hears me. I am ignored. Always ignored.
All my life I have gotten the impression that I am hard to love, not worth staying for, hard to befriend, easy to leave. And every bad dream and real life nightmare fed into these thoughts until they are such significant phobias they did and still do effect my everyday life.
I’ve fought with these fears a long time. Every day is a battle. Sometimes at night - 3 in the morning - I can’t sleep because I am so afraid that everyone I love will die before me. That I will be alone. That if I let my guard down, if I let the mask down, I will be hard to love, hard to understand, easy to leave.
And we can say it’s not true all night long. We can blame others for providing me with situations that fed into this confirmation bias of mine. But it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help to say, “oh that person is just an asshole,” “oh, that person was just an abuser…” most everyone in my past has hurt me and blamed me for that hurt. Now I blame myself. It’s my fault you hurt me, it’s my fault you left, it’s my fault you died and because it’s my fault - you’re not coming back.
I don’t know I am feeling introspective tonight. Maybe someone can relate so I don’t have to be alone in this.
——
Night thoughts 12.29.23
The shadow of loss always lingers over me during this time of year.
I feel Matt’s presence ever so briefly, the sharp sting of memory. Nostalgia followed by guilt.
The longing for holidays to rewind, go back to before. My dad to be there, for everything to be back in place. My grandmother’s voice on the other end of a phone.
My life is so different. But I am not different at all. I still grieve. I still have holes in me where people used to be. I am still scared and feel abandoned. I still cycle through the stages of grief like a carnival ride that won’t stop spinning.
Denial, let me off. Anger, let me off. Depression, let me off. Bargaining, let me off. But the acceptance never comes. How could it? How could anyone accept losses so unfair?
I cry more than usual at night this time of year. My thoughts spinning and I try to keep balance - it’s been years but feels like only yesterday.
Does that ever go away? Does it ever feel more like a pinch rather than an anvil falling from the sky like I am the character in some cruel cartoon?
No amount of therapy, no amount of lexapro, no amount of good can bring back what was lost. Nothing can replace what was.
So here is to another year. Another poetic turn of phrase. Another year without. Another year of change. Another year where I carry with me the memories of people that weigh so heavy on my heart. I don’t know where we are headed but another ride has to be up ahead.
—-
Shawn: those are some frilly sleeves. (Points at the bell sleeves hanging out of my leather jacket)
Megan: yeah! I have to fold them up to get them through the jacket.
Shawn: you look like Astarion.
Megan: I am Astarion, we both have emotional trauma.
——
[At Chilis which is just Tex-Mex Applebees]
Shawn: I thought about telling the waitress it is your birthday…
You would be so mad.
Megan: I would leave. I would take your car and drive it right into a brick wall.
Shawn: I would cackle.
Megan: You would never see me again. I would leave and tell everyone we broke up because you had people sing to me in public and they would be like, “yeah that makes sense.”
——
Shawn: You should make your dark urge character a barbarian.
Me: She’s a halfling bard.
Shawn: … that’s an interesting combination
Megan: Yeah. I named her Violet
(points at our tiny cat with a complex, Violet)
Shawn: That tracks.
——
[driving to get sushi and showing Ciara cheap houses in Ohio]
Ciara: oooo I like this one. It’s in Euclid [pronouncing it YOU-SLID]
Megan: Euclid [YOOK-LID]
Ciara: [continues without registering] Hello, I am Ciara from YOU-SLID. I could live there. That sounds nice.
Megan: Promise me if you buy that house you won’t go telling people you are Ciara from YOU-SLID.
Ciara: Why?
Megan: Because it is pronounced YOOK-LID. They won’t think you are Ciara from YOOK-LID they will think you are an alien… from outer space.
Ciara: (dying of laughter)
[later]
Megan: here is a cute place in cleveland heights or as Ciara would call it Sleeve-land Heights.
Ciara: bahahahaha
——-
Shawn: IS OUR WEDDING BYOC?
Megan: No, it’s not bring your own cat. The venues won’t like that and don’t ask them that when we visit because they won’t have us back or will ghost us.
Shawn: I am going to ask them just because you told me not to.
Megan: Well, this marriage is off to a great start.
—-
Shawn: You never acknowledge when I am right.
Megan: I nod and agree with you. What do you want me to do? Go, [bows down] “Oh a cis white man is right about something.”
——
Shawn: Girls who were into Inuyasha like emotionally abusive men.
Me: I liked Inuyasha.
Me: ... A lot of my relationships are making sense all of the sudden.
Shawn: If you were into SesshÅmaru then you probably have relationship trauma.
Me: I liked the monk.
Shawn: Oh. So you just like horndogs.
Me: I like you so...
—-
Traumatic roommate story from October 2019 - August 2020:
I had some old roommates. A female coworker and her boyfriend who had been in and out of jail when he was younger (late teens 18/19) and had a recent issue at 24? 25? ( I don’t remember) regarding marijuana possession. I was told he was trying to “change his life.” I am also the least judgmental person to everyone and trusted my coworker to have a good sense about her. I’d known her for 3 years at this point. They were both younger so I did try to extend some grace to her boyfriend that we make dumb decisions when we are young.
In the few months they were living with me with the plan they would save up to get a place together. Then she got pregnant, he basically started trying to mentally and verbally abuse the both of us, and she lost her mind a bit.
He pathologically lied and gaslit me constantly. She started doing it too at first she said because she was afraid of him and he was telling her to lie to me (or else) but then she started getting mean.
One particular lie I found stupid and called him out on was lying to his probation officer with how he knew me. The officer, she was a perfectly fine person, came over to my place and was asking me what my job was. I told her where I worked, how I met the coworker 3 years ago, she started dating this guy about 6 months before. That they were staying with me for a brief time to get their shit together.
The officer was like… “I thought you worked at (blank) steakhouse. He said he met you and (coworker) there.”
“No? I met coworker at (portrait studio) three years ago. I don’t know how they met all I know is her parents don’t like him and kicked her out of their house and she begged me to stay here for a few months until I relented because I didn’t want her living in her car.”
The officer then said, “he lies constantly and for no reason. Absolutely no reason to lie about how he knows you.”
I just nodded and said I am definitely seeing that.
Neither could keep a job and were super behind on paying “rent” which was basically splitting utilities to me to help out with my bills for the few months we agreed upon then being there.
I kept forgiving and forgiving. The guy would go on and on about how “he was a real street gangster” (his words) and didn’t have to work. They basically started living off food stamps and would spend the whole $600 in food stamps when they got it essentially taking up my entire small kitchen with their food and throwing mine out. This happened consistently despite my pleas for it to stop as it was wasting my money too.
They would argue constantly to the point that he was threatening to kill her and she was crying. If I got involved he would come after me and threaten to kill me and hurt my cats. They broke a door frame in my house, he stole and pawned my 3DS, games, and the guest room tv in the room they were staying in. (Did not know know about the pawning until after they moved out. Never got that stuff back.)
Finally I could not take it anymore. At one point he brought some rando into my house and left me alone in there with him for 30 minutes. Don’t know why. I know he was rando because I heard him -introduce- himself to the rando as I was getting out of the shower. At first, I thought he was FaceTiming with someone. Then I heard the male roommate outside and someone roaming around downstairs. Roommate came back in after a while as I was hiding in my room. I came downstairs and confronted him for leaving someone alone in the house that neither of us knew. He said, “nah this (rando) is my uncle. You ever hear of reintroducing?”
I said, “do you think I am stupid?!”
The rando guy ran off.
He got all upset and I heard him later talk about how this guy on the street he just met was supposed to smoke with him and I scared him off by being a “bitch.” Which, I said, when you get your own place you can invite any weirdo off the street inside your own home as you want but you won’t be doing it at mine. In response he and my coworker attempted to gaslight me about that not being bad and that I was overreacting.
Life experience has taught me to never let anyone in my house that I don’t know - (and with the male roommate here that was also proving to be true again.)
Stuff like this kept happening. Finally it came to a head when they brought their nieces to my house to stay for a week in the middle of the pandemic and didn’t ask me. Or tell me until they were walking in.
I don’t mind them but I don’t live in a kid house and the kids are rambunctious. Under normal circumstances and had I planned for them to come I think they are a joy and would have loved to have them visit. This was a little inconvenient and bordering on really unsafe. At the time, I had an old friend sleeping in the living room (so he could work at door dash during lockdown so his parents would not get sick) and didn’t really have space in my small house for 2 extra humans running around. On top of these two roommates and then the other roommate in the other bedroom. 7 people in a small house is too much. Plus with the virus it was just not the best time and highly disrespectful of me and my space.
I gave them a 30 day when everything went down and he legit told me he was “in charge” because he is a man and this is his house (because he CLAIMED it and “women can’t own anything in the eyes of god”) and I should listen to him because that is my place - under him. I didn’t take a loan out I can barely afford to get a house by myself so a man could tell me what to do in it. I was done. He then said some creepy things while getting aggressively close to me about how if he wanted to hold me down & get me pregnant he could because I belonged to him according to god. Which I calmly and in monotone told him if he touched me it would be the last thing he ever did. He backed off after that - assuming he was expecting me to cower or cry in that moment. But throughout this experience I attempted to remain composed.
At this point it was abundantly clear he was not only wildly abusive but also having some kind of psychological delusion about religion on top of that. This was a really unsafe situation and I was working in the background to remove the both of them.
They both later tried apologizing and trying to say that they would try to get so much money (a few thousand) from back dated unemployment if I would let them stay “for another year.” I said “no, it was too late to apologize at this point - they had to be out in 30 days.”
Then he decided he would bust through my door and literally corner me in my room, “what if we don’t have a place you just gonna throw us out. Your friend is pregnant.”
“Yes. You had 30+ days to find a place. Staying with me was supposed to be for only a couple months, while you found a place anyway. Also I told you when you guys got pregnant that I didn’t want to live in a house with 5 people and a baby either. So you said you would move out in Feb, it is now July!”
Anyway at 30 days they tried to tell me they were never noticed. I noticed them, sent it to their emails, sent it to her parents, and my HoA President so there was no way they could say they weren’t. Then they said “just evict us we will be out in 90 days.”
I was livid. So my hoa got involved. He had threatened to kill her and burn down our condos a few weeks before this and she wanted him out along with wanting a restraining order on him as he has threatened to sexually assault her and her daughter at some point. (I was not aware of this until much later)
She called him with the police chief on speaker. He didn’t know the police chief guy was listening in. He proceeded to threatened to kill me, kill her, kill my cats, shoot up the whole condo etc etc. he was screaming about how he is God, I belong to him, the condos belong to him, he will destroy us all. Etc etc etc etc…
My coworker was egging it on like literally giddy about it for some fucking reason.
The police chief guy got on speaker with him and my hoa and stated if they weren’t out by Saturday (2 days later) they would be forcefully removed. My hoa basically told him to be out by Saturday.
The roommates knew it was serious at this point and then begged me to help them rent a uhaul. I called the uhaul and got the exact price and then gave them $100ish (worth it to have them gone).
They left to get the uhaul and brought all their small stuff in their car.
Never came back. I was told by coworker’s parents they probably were trying to call everyone’s bluff and come back and try to stay permanently again on Saturday and used that money I gave them for a hotel.
The coworker’s dad came by and picked up all their stuff and brought it to her mom’s and then texted her to tell her all her stuff was off my property and they were not allowed back.
(I was blocked by both of their phones at some point because I tried texting too and it didn’t go through)
They came back Saturday (in August) trying to break down my door (I’d changed the locks). Police were called. They tried to say it was their house and not mine. They tried to physically fight the cops and then ran off.
A few months later coworker’s dad sends me this:
Apparently they tried to break into a homeless shelter right before this and the cops were called on them there so they ran off to a gas station and this news story happened:
(It’s mostly cats, let’s be serious.)
