Morning Thoughts - Part 1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay. Hello. Hope everybody is doing well. It is the 24th, I think. Yeah, the 24th of July. And the last time I was on here was June 30th. So it's getting, you know, it's been at least like around three weeks plus. And I don't know what I said in that last podcast because there are a lot of rants lately. And instead of any actual thought, and really, you know, it's just my random thoughts. And so I'm not sure exactly where we're at, but I'm just gonna just head into it. And if there's spots or holes, there are spots and holes. You know, that happens in life. I'm in my backyard drinking my coffee. It's an early morning. Right now, where I'm at is I want my husband to file for divorce because really he's the main reason all this is happening. He doesn't want to do counseling, he doesn't want to spend the money, he doesn't want to spend the time. As he said, I don't want to work. He thinks marriage shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be difficult. Yesterday on the phone, he called me a narcissist, which I actually, when my kids first called me it, I was like, I gotta make sure I'm not because I care. A narcissist wouldn't care. Uh, anyways, I went to my a therapist and a psychiatrist, and they both said, No, we all have narcissistic, you know, tendencies and issues, but no, you are not. But the reality of him saying that on the phone with me was he's listening to our kids' therapy language or whatever. And he's like, Yeah, I looked it up on the internet. I said, Oh, so you're an expert, you're a therapist, you're a psychiatrist, whatever. It's just very, very, very contentious and argumentative and defensive, and we're literally getting nowhere. The other day, and I, you know, I'm embarrassed to say it, but it's true. The other day I told him that he was the biggest disappointment in my life, which has got a hurt and sting. And when I said it, I said it in the heat of an argument. Is it true? Yes, for sure. Him and my where my kids are the way my kids are treating me and the way my family turned out. Yeah, this isn't what I signed up for. This isn't what I wanted. I thought things could get healed and repaired and fixed after my CPTSD almost four years ago, you know, at Christmas time. So, but instead, my husband, instead of saying, Hey kids, let's all get together, let's do a Zoom call, let's read, let's help mom, let's work on our family, let's do therapy, he said, Oh, your mom's angry, so you can't talk to her. So he really facilitated and kept up with whatever the kids have said with this estrangement. And I think that they've manipulated him and convinced him and believed him, and he's never really listened or cared to me. He's always come down with, if you say this, if you do this, if you and if I didn't fall in line with what he wants me to do as usual, he gets really upset, really angry, you know, like if you would just say this, if you would just do that. Well, I'm a human being with my own feelings, my own emotions, my own thoughts, and I get to have feelings, emotions, and thoughts. And and they don't have to always align with what you think they should. But instead, he's uh been controlling the strings and the narrative and all of it. And I'm sure I said and did things, at least they say I did, according to him, throughout life, and especially at the beginning when I had CPTSD. Do I remember everything? No. Will I ever remember everything? No. Can somebody have one car wreck and people see it very differently and interpret it very differently? Yes. Is history subjective? Yes, you know. So I it it's it's a difficult situation. But either way, this beautiful family with six kids and a family of eight that could have grown to grandkids and and son-in-laws and daughter-in-laws, and continued to be beautiful and be one of those amazing pictures that you see with the multi-generations and everything, has stunted its growth, collapsed, and been severed like with a you know, chainsaw and some massacre, and nobody gives a shit about putting it together again, to the point where one of my kids is 19 and he is at his sister's in California right now, and he's actually coming back today. I don't know what time. He was very rude to me for one minute on the phone. Um, I had texted him and said, How's it going? And he texted me early in the I mean, he called me early in the morning and he was kind of rude and and abrupt and quick and and whatever. And that was not my normal kid. And I asked, I was like, What's the deal? He's like, Oh, and I was like, Well, why are you calling me if it's too early and you're cranky? And what, you know, you don't call people and and not want to talk to them. When you call somebody, you want to talk to them, just you know, basic conversation one-on-one. And he hung up on me. And I thought, who knows what his sister is convincing him of and what he's believing, and whatever, you know. And it just it takes me back to my original thoughts when this all happened with CPT back, you know, almost four years ago, where I felt attacked. And that's really how my nervous system broke, and I felt attacked. And I get that there is, you know, comfort when you're with other people who are doing the same thing and believing the same thing because you feel validated and you feel like you're understood and misery loves company and whatever. But it it felt like to me, and this is how I described it, that it was a scene from Lord of the Rings where little Piggy in the first Lord of the Rings. I haven't seen the new one, but the little fat kid Piggy is being chased down literally to be murdered by, you know, these kids who were basically his family at a private school, and now they're lost on an island and they wanna they want to kill him, they want to destroy him, they don't give a shit about what he says, what he thinks, what he does. They literally want to murder him. They're tracking him down and killing him. Really, truly, from a Christian standpoint, what my kids have done with this parental estrangement, um, emotional abuse, the the way that they've done this, it is murder. If you go back to the Bible, you know, wanting to kill somebody and destroy them and not have anything to do with them and take them out out of your life completely, that is murder. This isn't a, oh, I've decided until you do exactly what I want and say exactly what I want, whatever. Either that is, you know, blackmail and manipulation and control, or they just, you know, cut cut you out of your life completely. There, there was no boundaries of, hey, let's sit down and talk, mom. We don't like the way that this went down in our childhood, and we really would like you to discuss this. There, there was no maturity. And I get that I was the adult and that was scary when I had CPTSD. And I get that they didn't have the maturity and the emotional bandwidth just like the kids in Lord of the Rings. You know, they were kids to be able to handle that and and you know, interpret that right and process that right and have enough grace and compassion, mercy, sensitivity, communication to work on it. You know, I I get that that's where they were, you know, four years ago, but they don't really have that excuse anymore. And my daughter is 29 years old. She had a third grandbaby without even telling me. I found out like 10, 12 days later from my mom. I didn't even remember the kid's name because I was so stressed out with even hearing it. I found out recently again, and but I don't know what he looks like or anything. And not only is it sick and twisted and very Jerry Springer, all of this, but my daughter wants to be so controlling, so vindictive, so hurtful, so hard-hearted that even when I have called her and cried and begged, hey, could you please whatever? I did that twice. I said, I'm I love you, I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your siblings. I this isn't what I wanted. I just want to see you. I want to see the grandkids, I want to repair and restore things, I want to make things better. Did I write a script and write it perfectly? No. Did I say a word in there like interesting when when I was struggling to find some other things to not say? Yes. Is she probably only fixating on the one word interesting instead of I love you, I'm proud, I want to receive, you know, whatever. I don't know. I only had an answering machine with three to four minutes on it twice, where I was just, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, as fast as I can. That's a lot of pressure. And I was emotionally hurt and just begging, you know, can we please make things better? And instead of her going, Oh gosh, this woman, forget the fact that I'm even her mom. This human being in the planet is really suffering, and I can hear her pain through the phone. And I can help alleviate that by just picking up the phone. She blocked me. I was texting, hey, the ball's in your court. You know, I'm really hoping and praying things are gonna get better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I went to send it and she had blocked me. So the amount of control and vitriol and punishment that it's like coming from that is just honestly, it's it's it makes me sick. It makes me like almost physically sick when I think about it because I do feel like it is spiritual warfare. I don't think this is coming from God, Jesus. I don't think that's, I mean, he's allowing it to happen. I I got that, but I don't think when God, you know, who God is, this is not righteous justice that they have. They haven't even talked to me. Maybe they talked to me when I was totally not altogether there because I was going through CPTSD, and I admit I was not with it. I my nervous system broke down. I don't remember chunks of time and things that happened. I remember, you know, little bits and pieces here and there, but not the full story. And I totally believe that I did and said things that were wrong, and I should apologize for and I should get a chance to say that and speak that and have those conversations. But you can't do that. You can't reason with the unreasonable. You can't just like they couldn't have talked to me and sat down and had a normal conversation with me at that time as I was healing and getting better. You know, they could have, you know, texted me, hey mom, we love you. We know you're going through a rough time, but we're here for you, you know? And instead, what they did at some point is they wrote me a letter or a text or whatever, and it was more you're bad, you're wrong, you did this, whatever. And I I don't know what I said, I don't know what I texted, I got rid of that, but I know it upset me because once again, I was it was like Lord of the Rings, um, not Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Flies. And I felt very, very attacked and very, very hurt, very abandoned, very lost. And my nervous system, my cortisol levels, my hormones, everything were bad. And let's just throw, you know, perimenopause and menopause into that too. Of course, you know, nobody thinks about, you know, poor old mom and all that she's going through. It's all about them, and that's fine. That's you know where you're at as a kid. And blame is the easiest thing you can do, right? You know, anybody who is immature, who doesn't know how to communicate, who who struggles with seeing other perspectives and listening to other people, they blame, you know, blame, blame, blame. I as a kid, I blamed my mom. I wish my mom had done this differently or she had done that differently. I've blamed my mom, my dad, God, because that's what you do when you don't know any better. It's just it's you're trying to find right and wrong in the world, and it's hard to see gray. I mean, for years and years in my life, I just did this black and white thing. Everything is either right or wrong. There were, there was no gray area. And it took me going to do ketamine and getting out of my loops and learning a lot of things and relearning things for me to get out of realizing that, you know, yeah, mom might have done things wrong in their eyes. But I also did a hell of a lot of things right, and that's the gray area, right? It's not all you're bad, all you're good. There's good and bad in all of us, and we make good choices, we make bad choices, but humanness as a whole, it's messy. We're not all perfect. We say and do and and and make mistakes and good choices and bad choices, and that's that's life, you know. But when you have shut down a whole human being, their opinions, their thoughts, their feelings, their actions, their wanting to repair, restore, come together because you want to have control, you want to control the narrative. And in your head, you built it up to be this horrible, horrible thing. Like I'm a monster. They villainized me so bad. It's horrible, it's sad. And I know I'm not alone. I know it. It's up like 65% since like the last year or three years or something, this estrangement thing. And I know so many people. I mean, hell, I was at my bank yesterday, and the lady who does my banking has the she's on listening to estrangement books and podcasts because she just doesn't know how to deal with this situation. And she's not even a hundred percent cut off like I am. So, but wherever I go, whether it's the maid, whether it's the banker, whether it's a friend that I just met, so many of us are going through this, and I just I feel like it's a sign of the times. It's in times. No, I do not take all this, you know. They can blame me, that's fine. But I know the truth too. Their narrative is mom's just terrible, mom's just bad. That's not the whole story. That's a tiny part of the story that yes, I did or said, or acted in a certain way that wasn't to the level I would want it, because I'm human and I make mistakes, just like they're human and they make mistakes. So I wish things had gotten better with our kids and the relationships. My husband never gave a shit really about it. You know, he says he did, he's I've I've I'm here. Well, just because you're in the same house doesn't mean you're treating people with consideration and respect and listening to them and and whatever. And he has for years just shut me down. You know, if I'm not saying it how he wants me to say it, thinking it how he wants it there, it's just shut down. There is no grace, understanding, sympathy. It's just you're wrong, you're bad. No wonder the kids think this, you know, you're upset because there's no room in this marriage for me, my feelings, my emotions, my thoughts, if they don't a hundred percent line up with what he thinks they should. And I'm like, how interesting that that's how my daughter is being too, you know, or my sons or whatever. They, you know, if if mom's not Mary Poppins, if mom's not that chick from Enchanted, then there's no worth and value there. There's no reason to be in a relationship with her. She's just evil and bad and whatever. And I think uh it's a sad, sad situation. And I'm talking about it really matter-of-factly right now because I've been dealing with this for so long and I don't think I can ever change them. I think this is gonna have to be their relationship with God if God ever gets to their hearts, and I've I've been praying for that, but I know I can't control them. I know I can't change them when my daughter won't even I mean, it's so bad that my sons, both of the sons who live with me and my husband, won't show me pictures of my grandkids when I asked when I came back from ketamine. Before I couldn't even see them because it hurt me so bad. I was so devastated and heartbroken. And to know that there's human beings that are related to me that are my blood that would not be in this world if it wasn't for me birthing that daughter and you know, all of the things that whatever, it's it's hurtful to such a level that it's unless you've gone through something like this, it's probably incomprehenible, especially if you're a woman and you're a mom and and you've given everything to your kids, which is what I did. I I did. I worked my ass off. I was a good mom and I gave a lot to my kids. I stayed at home with them, I homeschooled them, I started programs for them, I made sure that they had their classes, I made sure they had their food, their doctor's appointments, their dentist appointments, and I managed six kids without having any history of that. I have one brother and a dysfunctional family. My husband is an only child with a dysfunctional family, and I did all that and fostered and took in French Exchange students and went through breast cancer. And the list goes on and on and on. And I am so freaking proud of myself for everything I did and accomplished and held together emotionally and mentally and physically. Yeah, I'm I'm a badass. Like I now I didn't think this before I went to ketamine and saw it and really looked at the whole overall picture. But people have been telling me forever, Carrie, you're you're you're amazing. You know, you're Wonder Woman, you're awesome. It's amazing how you can you can be so resilient and get back in the game and you can do this and you can do that. And whenever they would say that, I would feel like I wasn't deserving, I wasn't worthy. I, you know, was like, no, God, you know, I don't deserve a vacation. No, I don't, I don't deserve a better husband. No, I don't deserve, you know, my kids to be nice to me. I always just would put myself down. And I think that was Satan. I think that was my own insecurities. I think whatever, I would say, I don't deserve things better. And I would say life is about self-sacrifice and suffering, and that's just what it is. And now I'm in a different place. I I believe that there can be joy, and I believe that things can be good, and I believe that I'm gonna make it and and go on and do good things, and I was so fearful for this before. And I mean, I talked to a friend yesterday, actually, it's the same friend that told me about going to the ketamine place, and I talked to her for an hour yesterday, and she she was in a bad place again. She was in a funk, and I'm like, What? Why are you upset? And she's like, I, you know, I don't know. I just I feel like I get overwhelmed and stressed out, and you know, we just kind of talked, and I was the you know, the cheerleader. I was like, but you know, you're strong, you're capable, you're smart, you know, you need to block some time out for yourself. And I do that with people all the time, you know, like I help people, I help communicate, I help them think about things. I I I the other day, my friend, you know, she was bad mouthing herself and talking bad about her. And I've always been able to do that, even if I was in a bad place, you know, lift people up, cheer them up, help them and communicate, you know, and say, hey, all the positive, beautiful things about that person. Apparently, no. So my friend, she was like, Oh, well, I'm upset about this and whatever. And I was like, You're this is bullshit. I just like I laid it down. I was like, I talked to you two weeks ago when you weren't like this. You need to reframe where you're at and what's going on and everything. And after talking to me and you know, having a dinner, if we were there for four hours, you know, she was in a better place. And I love that. I love helping people, I love communicating with people. I love, I love the growth and the learning that can happen from deep conversations and different perspectives and and all of that. And so, in that, I'm I'm all over the place, as I'm thinking about going forward with this divorce, hopeful, hoping, you know, Mark last night, I gave him a I gave him a name of a lady who does kind of like a one-stop shop. She for like $6,500 to $7,000. She will do the counseling, they do the mediation, they write up the paperwork, the lawyer files it, like it's the whole thing. And it's about $7,000 or less, is the way it's all supposed to be. And I sent him her information yesterday. I waited till the day after his birthday because I didn't want, you know, stress him out. And he was like, Well, I gotta check out her email, you know, internet, whatever. I was like, just call her. You will like her. Please call her. Finally, towards the end of the day, he calls her. He likes her, he says she's quote, nice enough. And so then he comes home last night because he told her that that we were gonna talk tonight, and he told me that he told her. And so I'm like, we don't talk, it just escalates, it elevates, it's in a very, very, very unhealthy situation now. And there's no working it through because you have to take two people who want to work through it. That's why I don't have a relationship with my kids because they don't want to be the other part that wants to work on it. So I'm I'm fine with that. I can't control it. I'm at peace with that. Do I want it? No. Is it what I signed up for? No. Is this what no? I yeah, of course, it's horrible, it's awful, it's not what I would want. I I thought when I stood up and married this man that we would grow together, we would work together. We would communicate together. We would fight for each other, you know, and instead we're fighting with each other. And just like I, you know, he called me a narcissist and I told him, he's the biggest disappointment of my life. I mean, those are mean, hurtful things. And I am not happy that that's where we're at, but we're there. So we're not communicating. In fact, I don't even want to really see him. He's, you know, he leaves really early in the morning. He comes home really late at night. But when he's home, you know, basically he changes into his clothes, sits and watches TV for an hour, an hour and a half, and then he goes to bed upstairs. Boom, done. I'm trying to stay as far distanced and removed from him as possible because he brings out the worst of me. I'm sure I bring out the worst in him. Like any marriage, you know, in a marriage, you see the best and the worst of that person. But for some reason, he can't remember any of the good, I guess. Or he's just, you know, just like the kids, you know, just let's stick to the bad narrative. And he's not willing to work and communicate and listen and do all that. And since he's not, he has to move forward with this divorce. And since that's the situation, we've got to find somebody to do this mediation, or we're gonna have to get lawyers and spend tens of thousands of dollars fighting and escalating it even more, which I don't want to do. I don't think he wants to do. He's had friends recently get divorced. I've had a friend recently, well, friends get divorced, and we just don't want to do that. But he's like, Well, why don't we just write it all on a piece of paper, take it to her, and save the money, you know? And I'm just like, Well, because I don't even know what's on the table. Like, you know, I the honesty factor is missing from this. So we we need to figure, figure out what's on the table, what everything looks like, and what we're doing. And most likely we're probably gonna, uh he says, have to sell the house. And then I'm like, well, if we're selling the house, what's the point of me even staying in Texas? My kid's almost 17, he'll be 18 in a year. And yes, it sounds horrible for a mom to leave her kid, and it's not, trust me, this is not where I was. I was fighting for him. I wanted to stay in the house, I wanted him to be able to work where he works and go to homeschool classes down the road and keep his life as stable and as good as it is. I was willing to do that till he graduated and stay with Mark just for that self-sacrifice and suffer with him just for my kids' sake. And I that was where I was. But now that I'm looking at it, if I'm not gonna get to talk to my kids, if my husband's not gonna respect or love or communicate with me, if this is where I find myself and I'm thinking about the future, what do I have to hold me here anymore? Well, really nothing, you know. Like I have friends, sure, but I can still be friends with them. And I'm a friendly person. I can make friends wherever I go. And I definitely want to date and remarry and and get to another place and another relationship and have hope. And and I don't anymore with him. My there's no hope at all. And I've pretty much given up hope with my kids at this point. I mean, I hope maybe, you know, someday they'll see an Instagram video with a friend. I just actually saw an Instagram video with a lady who hasn't had a relationship with her dad for 24 years because she got in a fight with him when she was 21 years old or 18 years old or something. And I was just like, how dumb is that? And now she's talking. Well, actually, it's 27 years. She started to think about it after 21 years or something. Anyways, he's coming to visit her and her family for 10 days, and they've been talking for two years. And I just thought, how dumb is all of this? Just like, how stupid is all of this? How stupid is it that my husband won't spend, you know, $7,000 going to intensive counseling with his wife after 30 years, 30 plus years, you know, 31 almost. How is it possible? How stupid is that? You know, how stupid is it that my kids won't have a conversation with me? There's this part of me that's just like, this is so dumb. This is so petty, this is so ridiculous. Because our family could be good, we could work, we could try. There, that's the cognitive dissonance that I've had that hope, hope, hope, wish, wish, wish, dream, dream, dream, pray, pray, pray. And the reality is, you know, I it's not always going to be the way I wanted it, envisioned it, hoped it, planned it. You know, it's falling apart. It has fallen apart. And I have to not have cognitive dissonance. And, you know, as the lady, and I don't know if I said this in the last one, you know, putting your pail down because you're really thirsty and you want water. So you go to a well, you put the bucket down, and you're pulling it up, hoping for fresh, clean water to help you and to relieve you. But over and over and over again, you put that bucket down and you don't retrieve any water. Nothing is coming out of that. And that's like my relationship with my husband. I am not getting any good out of there. There's nothing coming out anymore. It is dry, it is dry. And I that's the cognitive dissonance. When you believe and hope, and trust and wish and want things to be a certain way, but you're by yourself and you can't change the other people, then that's that's the rub. And so if that's the situation, and I've got one kid who hung up on me recently, so I'm down to like five kids who have been disrespectful and rude and whatever out of six, and don't don't, you know, go, oh, well, she must have really effed them up. Surely, of course. But I don't think I'm definitely not taking a hundred percent of this blame because they also have free will, they also can communicate, they also have had social media. This is a trend. This is not just me. There is another lady who homeschooled, she had seven kids. Six of her seven kids don't talk to her anymore. So I I really do think this is in times. And and, you know, you can't know what happened in my family, but I was a good mom. I read to my kids, I cooked their meals, I cut their nails, I brushed their hair, I took them to the doctor, I I, you know, tucked them in at night. You know, I did a good job. I sang them songs, I gave them siblings, we we always tried to live somewhere where it was healthy and safe, and they had their rooms and we decorated. And the list goes on and on and on. And I tried and I tried my best. And I am very proud of that. I didn't get addicted to coke. I didn't murder somebody, you know, like I'm not saying worst case scenario, but yeah, when people came to my house, I remember them standing at the door saying, You have the best mom. She is so kind, your mom is so great. And I remember my girls looking up at these ladies and going, Yeah, thank you, and hugging my, you know, hugging around my waist or hugging my legs or what however tall they were, and going, Yeah, you're right, you know, and being in agreement with that. And now it's like I'm the demon himself. So this cognitive dissonance thing really sucks. But once you realize that that's where you're at, you've got to change it. You've got to move on. So now I'm thinking, why would I stay in Texas? I'll just leave this last kid here with Mark. I won't, I won't fight with that. Where he wants to go to a pilot school or something, he wants to go to this same church, he wants to have consistency. Is it what I chose? Is it what I want? No, I would love to be with my kid for the last year. I'd love him to stay in the house and all this and that. But it's like, at what point do you just stop fighting for this? You know, like why did I call and cry to my daughter? I've done that before, you know. She doesn't give a damn. I I don't know how else to put that. You know, why keep barking up the same tree? And that's where I'm at. I think I just have to move on with my life the way I can and the best I can with people who give a shit, who can care, can have empathy, sympathy, communication, understanding, and forgiveness, obviously, and want to have maybe ruptures and be willing to repair and restore. And so I'm like, I don't want to live in Texas, so I'm thinking about moving somewhere else. I'm I'm actually thinking about going somewhere in a day or two, honestly. Getting a I've got a credit card with $4,000 on it, and I'm thinking about taking that money and spending about $1,500 to go for five days, four nights up to a certain area. I'm considering living and, you know, looking at cities, looking at jobs, looking at the environment, and finding a place I want to live, not basing it on who's there and what they can do for me and how they can provide. No, I need to do what feels right and is right and through prayer, and uh, and I really feel like God has been directing me to this place probably for at least eight, nine months between two places and now more really one place. And so I'm thinking I'm gonna do that and head that direction and yeah, see where it goes. But I'm trying to be positive every day. I I self-talk myself, I say, you know, some the the prayer, you know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I can't change my kids and how they react to me. I can't change my husband and how he reacts to me. I can't change the world politics or the fact that this is going on throughout, you know, especially America. I can't change social media and certain narratives and what they've built up in their heads and what they've said. I can't change that. You know, only they can change their hearts, their minds, their decisions and choices. And okay, I'll come back. I'm gonna finish this up.