How to start a weed wacker

“They’re finally here! Now we can actually do gifts,” she announced the moment I opened the door to my in-law’s house.

The usual overabundance of random useless junk she found on clearance. She often tried to prove her love through material goods, but this year was different. She was known to keep price tags on her gifts and brought special attention to the clearance sticker on mine this year. She proudly announced how well the decluttering of the house was going by telling everyone she found my gift while cleaning out the garage. The subject of decluttering had re-emerged as a topic again over the last few months, and it was going better than it ever had in the past. I guess she was doing it for real this time.

I looked down at the gift suddenly in my lap and I saw a fireplace starter kit from two seasons ago. She spotted it at a post-holiday clearance sale at a chain store and explained to everyone that she couldn't pass it up. This happened a few years ago, and she had been hoping to use it in their fireplace but never got around to it before the winter ended. Then, it got lost in the mess.

It looked incredibly ratty, being covered in dust, and parts of the wax-covered pinecones were chipped or completely missing. Receiving gifts from the clearance bin was nothing out of the ordinary, at least the gifts I was given. Seeing how sad they could get me in a controlled environment became a game.

I'm not a stranger to clearance shopping, and it's rare to find something you actually want at a reduced price before you cross that line into clutter. I've since learned that buying something close enough puts us on the edge of the danger zone of becoming a waste of money. This depends on what it is and how well it integrates into our lives. If excusing its perfection becomes too much of a hassle, it is a waste of money.

I also noticed a trend when either of them gave me a gift specifically selected for me, the way gift giving was designed to be. If they were feeling guilty for committing some form of betrayal, needed me to do something for them, or required total compliance from me, I got thoughtful gifts they spent time and effort selecting. It was always in the privacy of the home with very little emotion attached, never on gift-giving occasions. He would deliver gifts casually passing through the room on the way to another. Opening a well-thought-out and sentimental gift on a holiday or birthday was far too much happiness to experience.

Just as I finished trying to cover my sadness with a forced smile, I heard my then-husband say, “Oh, wow, this is perfect! Thanks, Mom!” I turned to see what he got and saw him holding up a sweater similar to the one I had given him at our own gift exchange. Suddenly, it occurred to me why she called me last week; she never called me, and she suddenly wanted to have a meaningful conversation with me. She was just calling to find out what I was giving him and decided to buy the same thing.

Trying to hide her sly smile from seeing my reaction, she sprang up to put dinner in the oven and announced from the kitchen it had to bake for three hours. Being notoriously late for everything, I understand she has a time management issue, or so she wants everyone to think, but making a holiday dinner late to the table was a whole new level for her. At least the bake would cover up the smell of the rotting food she was hoarding. A hoarder of books, clothes, and trinkets is one thing, but food? Gross.

Why was she so obsessed with getting a reaction from me? Even when I try to help her out and cook a dish for a family meal, she makes an issue out of it. I brought a side to a gathering a while back because she said she wouldn’t have time to make as many as she wanted. There was nothing special about it, but she often cooked the same meals, so the new dish just got a lot of attention. My father-in-law enjoyed it, asked me to give her the recipe, and mentioned he wanted me to make it the next time we went to the mountains. She took great offense to this, proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions about it, and then found her own version. Her recipe uses yogurt, not sour cream like mine. It wasn't my recipe, and I found it on a popular social media post, so why was she getting so defensive? She doesn’t allow me to cook for the family anymore and is sure to include her version of the cornbread at family meals, especially in the mountains.

“Dinner... Everyone sit down!”

Her favorite part of family gatherings is the meal. She has everyone’s attention and can fling passive-aggressive statements at me as she pleases with a much larger audience. Though, I was somewhat relieved because it had gotten so late due to the ridiculously timed three-hour bake. Our departure was growing near, which she was desperately trying to push back.

“Charles de Gaulle Airport is huge! I walked the entire length of it a few times on my first trip, looking for the shop selling the marionettes. Not anymore! I know where everything is now.”

No family meal was complete without hearing the same three Paris stories. Apparently, marionettes are a big deal in Europe. She brought a few back from her second trip… you know, the trip where she walked all over the city, in the rain, with a broken foot. She selected the perfect one and gave it to my five-year-old son as a gift. Her rudeness and immaturity were no longer a surprise, but I had no idea I was dealing with an abuser brave enough to gift a marionette to someone they were manipulating.

“No! First, you prime, then you pull the cord!”

What did I miss? Is she talking about a weed wacker? Is she that desperate for attention? This is a level of boring and ridiculous showmanship I have never experienced. Does she even own a weed wacker or know how to use one? Maybe it’s in the garage, not that you could really tell the difference between the house and the garage. Just another reminder, this is the environment my ex-husband grew up in; it’s like he was raised in a barn. He leaves a trail of destruction and mess, just as his mother does. At least she’s done talking about Paris.

When we got home from any event with his parents, I was always utterly exhausted. Having been one-upped, challenged, abused, discarded, mocked, and blamed for just about anything that happened, anyone would be. I put my son to bed and decided to go to bed myself. As I headed to the bedroom, I noticed the light on downstairs, which meant he was going to be there for a while. I was never sure what he was doing. He has always been a bit of a night owl, creating some friction in our relationship. My son is still a light sleeper and an early riser so I wound up being the one who got up early with him most mornings.

“Can you get the stain off of these pants?”

On his first day back to work after the long weekend, he had nothing to wear. I got the stains off all his clothing, even the ones he didn’t ask me to do because he expected me to. This time was different; he wanted me to do it right then so he could wear them to work. He was leaving for work in ten minutes, and his work schedule was usually flexible enough to be a few minutes late, but not on school days. He needed to drop our son off, and I was in the middle of trying to motivate him to eat his breakfast while making and packing his lunch.

I was willing to get the stain out, but it would have to wait. He usually spent most of his mornings getting ready upstairs while I was getting our son ready downstairs and would join us just before he left. This morning, he arrived, giving me just enough time to get the stain out.

Word salad was his primary approach to arguments or when he had something to hide. You have an exchange of words but no actual exchange of information. We went back and forth for about eight of the ten minutes remaining because he was repeatedly unsatisfied with my answer. He couldn't demand it because he didn’t want me to realize he was manipulating me. Instead, he carefully phrased it in other ways, stirring up different emotions like blame ("Seems like you might be a little behind on laundry."), anger ("Some stains are harder to get out than others. This should be an easy one."), desperation ("I have a really big meeting today, and these are the only pants that go with my lucky shirt."), and sympathy ("Please, I've gained so much weight; this is one of the two pairs that still fit me. The other ones are still in the dirty clothes basket."), all the while being charming as usual. It is a skill he has been honing for years.

That morning, I was in a mood, and I paid attention. I questioned him and pushed back on what he was saying. I challenged him and began wondering what he was seriously even talking about. We were discussing a stain on a pair of pants. This is not complicated.

All he wanted from me was immediate action, and up until that moment, I never put two and two together. I told him to put the pants aside I would get to it later. This clearly angered him, as I wasn’t doing what I was told. He surrendered in the battle because, for the first time in the history of our relationship, I stood my ground. They were only stained because they spent their life on the floor in the first place.

I’m sure if he had a choice, he would spend most of his waking hours in the nighttime and seems to have embraced it even more since we've split. Coming to my house for gift delivery at 3 a.m. is extreme, and I only know this because his car door woke me up. I was watching him walk away with his head down, and it became evident to me he understood what his life had become. Reflecting on the barn-like environment my ex-husband steadily maintains, combined with the fact that he is notoriously known to be a creature of the night, I can't imagine his spirit animal is anything other than a barn owl.

I have done the work on my house that I have the skill for, which isn't much. He promised he was motivated to do most of it when we bought it at the start of our marriage, our little fixer-upper. Months and years went by, and I was still cooking in the unfinished kitchen, sleeping in a bedroom with cracks in the ceiling, and walking up a staircase covered in stained pink carpeting. The house is well-built. It just needs cosmetic work. Moving forward with any remodeling and redecorating was a stress point in our marriage because he established early on that he oversaw all the decisions, which meant no decisions ever got made.

In hindsight, I realize he was looking for a deal on a house and called it a fixer-upper with the intention of making minimal changes. The pink carpeting was eventually replaced with gray, but only after our local hardware store ran a promotion for free installation. I continued to hear from him about how expensive it was for months following. Working in a room, I didn't like the color of was affecting my mental health. It was destructive to my self-worth, and he knew it.

After he left with my son and I got ready for my day, I opened the laptop to look up how to remove a ketchup stain, and there was an incognito window open. He had been checking out a marathon I mentioned, which looked like it could be fun for our next run-cation. Somehow, I was still a little bit happy he wanted to go on a run-cation, even if it was after he masturbated to pornography. Play before work, I guess. At least now I knew my suspicion was correct. Most nights of our marriage, he came to bed around 2 a.m. I never asked, but maybe I should have. What’s the point? It wouldn’t be an honest answer.

“Next time you are surfing porn, could you at least close the window when you are done?” My text got his attention. He raced home and wanted to talk about our relationship for the first time ever in the 15 years we had been together. He was spending hours on the internet surfing pornography and seeking out other women, creating his chain of betrayal instead of being intimate with me. This turned out to be a slight diversion tactic, and the cover held me over for a while.

He watched a lot of porn, especially after we spent time with his parents. He had an odd relationship with his mother, which included sexual energy. After I served him with an order of protection, my son told me my mother-in-law was sexually abusing him. As my son discloses more, I am slowly learning exactly how disgusting of a person she really is. I have absolutely no doubt she violated my ex-husband, too, for much longer than my son endured. I later found out his chronic masturbation included child pornography, which resulted in felony charges, likely a result of the sexual abuse.

The mental mess inside of us is the subconscious creator of our environment. If we are unfortunate enough to have been sexually abused as a child, our growth and maturity process stops emotionally. Our cognitive intelligence is limitless, but our emotional intelligence may remain at the age at which the first offense took place. His mother was struggling with the same thing. He continued the pattern, regardless of whether he wanted to or was aware of it. This is a prime example of generational trauma.

I imagine a healthy marriage allows space for our own growth and fruition while also contributing to the other person by being open to feedback and adjusting our behavior within boundaries. This lets our partners feel validated and cared for while also contributing to their development. In the case of a romantic relationship, abusers work directly against this with insults, demands, and negative comments about my day, my lifestyle, or my skills. This is emotionally destructive to their partners.

Abusers have ill intent when it comes to worthiness. He intended to destroy my sense of self, and it worked. He was actively delaying my progress and using me as much as possible. This became noticeable, but only as the damage took its toll.

Explaining the intricacies of covert abuse to someone is very difficult. While it has narcissistic characteristics, it also has borderline characteristics. The one thing that makes it abusive is finding out the person did it intentionally, by doing it intermittently, and circumstantially. The examples always seem arbitrary and innocent and often make the survivor sound very petty because the abuse itself is on that level. This is what makes it so successful. They begin the denial, triangulation, and projection process by acting ashamed of us because of our inability to be the bigger person when in fact, they are the ones driving the drama. Their version of being the bigger person means allowing them free reign to manipulate the survivor, who should simply let it go and move on. This happens when an adult has the emotional stability of a child and knows how to effectively charm others into following their lead.

The nature of abuse, especially covert abuse, is fine-tuned and based on what will affect the survivor. Dog-whistling is when the abuse is delivered under the premise of a random joke or comment by the abuser to someone else and flies under everyone else's radar because it is not recognized as harmful. The abuser makes a remark or offers a compliment to someone on a topic only the abuser knows the survivor is sensitive to, and it becomes a direct personal dig.

Even compliments can fall into a gray zone where we sense ill intent, and the survivor is then criticized for being so sensitive. After all, open and honest communication is what we want, right? Don't try it on them. They will make a scene about how rude and inappropriate you're being. It is not a two-way street, criticism is met with anger and aggression.

To this day, I’m impressed with the tactics they used. Their fatal mistake? They were too proud; they let their smirks be seen after they successfully pushed my limits beyond the edge of my boundaries or successfully got a hurt reaction from me.

We can’t control who our parents are, but we can choose what we do in our lives. We can grow, heal, and move on from the hell we were in as children, and the first step is accepting our parents aren’t perfect. They’re just people with a host of their own problems.