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| I no longer knew where the rain ended & I began |
Even years after this event I have no clear insight into this beyond the devastation this event created in me.
PAN and I had been friends for a while, after meeting in 2011, and it seemed to be a friendship based on a commonality of abuse in our past, a sense of shared experiences and relatability. With these feelings in place we adopted a sisterhood and built on these elements of commonality into what appeared to be a deep and abiding attachment.
I did not know I was being drawn in when the tales of woe began. Soon it was constant stories of neglect, abuse, stalking and affliction. Phone calls steeped in noisy crying, sobbing as her world was ending based on the doings of a room mate, a media darling white witch, an energy practitioner, parental units, all of them apparently bent on bringing her down and destroying her spirit.
The stage was set when the call came. Her house mate was leaving her with a rent she could not afford, she had no one, she was isolated, no friends, no family, no ties, no supports ... so could she come and stay until she found something closer to me? The only answer, in my mind, was "of course".
My home is a tiny three bedroom cottage and already resident are four people each afflicted with a variety of illness and conditions that make our life "interesting". We are a family unit each supporting each other as needed and collectively we have Autism, Intellectual disability, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Chronic Pain Disorder, C-PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, Insomnia, Diabetes, Anxiety, Adjustment Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, uncontrolled Epilepsy, Migraine, Sleep Apnoea, and hypertension. I made the offer of a temporary place to stay based on the understanding that we are a collective of issues and our routines are fairly set to accommodate the needs of my youngest with autism as he is at school and coped best when his routines are set and kept.
As a family we rearranged our itineraries to include her and she was added to the family calendar and notifications. My partner and I had an interstate trip made necessary at very short notice, due to a terminal illness in the family, and we invited her to road trip with us so she could connect with friends as I was keenly aware of her supposed isolation. Everything we planned, we included her because we made the effort and had every reason to believe she wanted family and inclusion.
After the road trip which was scheduled just after she moved in I was promised room and board because I was now paying bills for a family of five, buying meat for five, shopping for five, buying take away for five, even driving for five. Not a penny was forthcoming.
The small space we had was quickly rearranged to include two corners made over to her comfort and stacks of additional stuff in the garage. Furniture was installed and personal items arranged without consultation, but I said nothing, hoping that these accommodations would help make this easier.
Then my housekeeping was criticised, my shopping habits found wanting and my cleaning products denounced as no good. Even after I explained on more than one occasion that a particular dish washing liquid was no good to me as I was allergic to it ... I still found it replacing my preferred brand and I still had to do the majority of the washing up.
Then, one morning as I was supervising my 15yo in his morning routine getting ready for school, I was snarled at because it was too loud. Our known routine, our accepted routine, our necessary routine, was too loud for her comfort. I had to feel like I was doing something wrong as I continued to see that my child with autism got to school happy, fed and ready to take on his many challenges in a good frame of mind whilst having a shit storm directed at me and my partner because our common living space wasn't to her liking. We had changed nothing, but what we were doing was no longer acceptable.
My partner and I started feeling uncomfortable in our own home, our house guest was throwing tantrums because we were not doing enough to make her comfortable. After a day and a half of silent treatment, hysterical crying and cold shoulders, then the tables turned and all of a sudden we were expected to just ignore the behaviors and be told it wasn't about us ...
Here is where I believe the divide and conquer project started. My emotional instability started to play out. I was hurting the ones I loved, especially my partner and she was encouraging me in my instability, pressuring me to speak out unkindly and to be intolerant of little things that usually were not an issue to me. Unbeknownst to me similar whisperings were being inflicted on my partner to be intolerant of my issues and emotions. On two separate occasion this triggering and destructive behavior pushed me over the edge and I melted down, screamed obscenely, ranted cruelly and ran away.
What wasn't planned for was our deep, undying, unrelenting, unconditional love and support of each other. We knew we were more together and that we valued, beyond price, what we had together. When we made up and talked into the night, reopening channels of real, honest communication, we were met with hostility, silent treatment and increasing resentment.
In the planning stage, before the move, I had mentioned that I had thought we could make some room in the garage to allow a bit more space, but when the topic came up all my simple, make room, suggestions where squashed and after much discussion a full blown renovation I could not afford was decided on. With major medical expenses coming up I said no. Well that was the end of any emotional peace I could possibly have had.
The major medical expenses was a 5 day outpatient procedure and several tests in Sydney, 5 hours away. Our PAN had been included, at her request, so she could see practitioners she couldn't access on the South Coast where we lived. To accommodate her, and allowing for her lack of privacy at home, I booked a two bed apartment with 2 bathrooms, fully 50% more expensive than we could have had, had we gone just us two. Again I was going out of my way, and out of my financial comfort zones for her. I was trying everything to fix what I didn't know how I was breaking. After I had paid the deposit and after two weeks when the full payment was due, she decided that the atmosphere was too hostile and that she was no longer coming. I broke down and when I tried to explain that I had placed myself into a financial hole for her she screamed at me that she was putting up walls and that she was no longer going to discuss it. My distress was impotent in the face of her refusal to face the position she was putting me in. I had to suck up this financial abuse, on top of the weeks of unpaid room and board, because SHE was not taking any responsibility and making all the allusions of poor behavior to be on my part.
I no longer cared how many personalities she had now, because every single one of them was a spoiled, narcissistic brat. I was beyond distraught as the following weeks were nothing more than cold shoulders, silent treatment, ignoring meals prepared for her, and any conversation directed at her. Her days were spent at the beach without any word when she was coming or going, but when home there was slamming things, hysterical day long sobbing and then to top it off, two days of hunger strike before we left for Sydney.
The whole hysterical tantrum thing when my partner and I were around was in stark contrast to the laughing and Netflix watching done when we purposefully absented ourselves from our own home to find some peace and drama free venues. We wasted more money on cafes and driving miles to get away from the toxic atmosphere that had taken over everything in our lives. We would come home to three people obviously enjoying the comforts of us being absent and each others company, but as soon as we intruded, it seemed that we were to be punished for doing so and the toxic behaviors reappeared almost as fast as we did. I was supposed to be accepting of an excuse that she was too distraught to speak, but she could text other people all day, just not me. She could giggle and be somewhat normal with my sons, but revert instantly to non verbal in my presence. I know selective mutism, but this was just vindictive and punitive. One brief private message even told me I could go to my room. ME, sent to my room, because a guest in my house said I could, implying that I had no right to the common areas in my home. What the actual ...?
Then while we were away she moved out. We had been threatened with the move like it wasn't part of the original plan. The message that she was going to move out was such that we were forcing her hand due to our hostility, making her feel unsafe. Two weeks later, after eleven weeks living on my purse, she up and left without a word. The only acknowledgement of my existence was social media defriending and a coordinated mass exodus of mutual friends. Blocked and defriended even though I was silent on all these capers I was being socially punished because I would not change my whole life and routine for her, didn't follow through on costly renovations she expected and happened to have a strong, fulfilling relationship that she couldn't sunder. I don't know what the end game was she was trying to engineer. Was she determined to end my relationship to make room for herself in my life and my home? I have no clue, but a more insidious, hurtful, despicable motive is not in the realms of my imagination.
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| my corollary |
