A Ghost Called Truth In A Cupboard Full Of Skeletons

Many many years ago my first marriage came to an unseemly end, due to an ill conceived and even worse conducted extra marital affair on the part of my “Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth“ liar of a wife. This deceipt was augmented by a degree of madness and perverse narcissism of as unbalanced a woman, buried up to her armpits in denial, you could ever wish not to meet. I was sadly cast asunder by all and sundry. Most notably by my three children. That was twenty five years ago, and the rift remains to this day.

This unsavoury episode in my life has left life changing damage that resonates through me to this very day. I, my family, her family, friends and acquaintances were gaslighted by her in grand style. Such were her pathological lies that the effects drove me as close to a complete breakdown as is possible without actually crossing the line. It was a close call I can tell you. It took years to get over it.

Dark Days

My memories of those dark days are not pleasant ones. My father in law was nothing more than an arrogant, self serving, manipulated and manipulative bully. A man who, due to the appalling lies he had been told by the apple of his eye, once threatened me with a big kitchen knife in front of my youngest five year old daughter.

This coward of a man swore that I would never see my children ever again. And to this day, despite many years of trying to keep the contact with my children going I don’t have any contact with them. My ex ,now deceased, mother in law, an imbecile of gigantic proportions and full of highly toxic poison, played her part in alienating me from my children. The woman never lost an opportunity to bad mouth me to my offspring throughout their entire childhood. I never expected anything different from a two bob millionaire of a woman who did nothing but put me down from the day I met her.

Denial and Truth

Many years later my children, by now young adults, began to make unsavoury comments to me based on their mother’s lies and their grandparents’ bad mouthing in order to belittle me in front of a friend. I decided it was time for the truth to be told. It did not go down well. It was too, too late, they had already spent their entire lives listening to lies about me and didn’t want to listen, they simply couldn’t accept the truth. It has been ten years now since we had any meaningful contact. They are as buried in denial, as I am in truth. And never the twain shall meet.

These days I follow them a little from a distance via the social platforms they are on. And it appalls me that, my eldest son at least, sees his grand father as a hero who taught him how to jump (with supplementary coaching in parental alienation). He sees his grandmother as a sweet as pie, harmless old woman who served him his favourite stew (served with a side dish of lies and loathing). His mother fares even better. My ex monster of a lying, cheating lunatic, ably abetted by two pretentious, self aggrandising charlatans I shall refer to as Pillock and Crackpot, is seen as a mentally tough legend.

Me? I never get so much as a mention in passing. I simply do not exist. I am seen as somebody with issues, somebody who just won’t let things go. Somebody to be avoided at all costs for fear of being exposed to the truth. A ghost to be kept hidden away in a cupboard full of skeletons.

And I fear that that is exactly how it will remain to my dying day. I steadfastly refuse to broach their mother and her family’s lies and my children equally won’t hear of the truth. The plurality of our perceptions of the past are not only what tore us apart, but is also what will keep us apart. And that is sad, so very sad indeed. But it is what it is.

Entrenched Cupboard Love gifted by Magnanimous Heroes or Devils Incarnate

I venture to speculate that part of the problem is that it was their mother that fed and clothed them, albeit with the help of an over generous divorce settlement and my child support money. It is nothing more than entrenched cupboard love. They are loyal to the one who they see themselves to have benefitted from. And they are alienated from the one who they have been led to believe, with all their hearts and souls, did nothing for them.

The Full Fridge Syndrome

I have a friend in Spain who once told me over breakfast that people behave according to how full or empty the re-fridgerator is kept by the one who professes to love them the most, even if they don’t love them at all. That is everything pretty much in a nutshell.

We love and support and defend and excuse to the hilt the animal that feeds us. And we hate, despise and reject that which we have been led to believe has denied us. Lies have been presented as truth and become embedded in the hearts and minds of those who are manipulated. Truth is presented as lies and become equally hardwired into their hearts and minds. It is the way it always has been and it is the way it always will be.

Somebody once said that if you tell a lie enough times eventually it becomes a truth. And that I'm afraid is the real truth of the matter. Gladly I have long since sailed away from those dark days and bathe in the love of my lovely wife, a woman who would rather slit her own wrists than hurt me.