Laemmle-Vision: Art, Music, Musings

A Little Denver Context

Dear Evan,

So, a little Denver context. Mom claimed she had a “job offer” in Denver.

She was completely lying, of course. But she knew that this was one of the excuses she could make legally to justify moving out of state.

The truth is, she only had a lease agreement on a space to practice acupuncture and naturopathic medicine. A lease. She was to rent a space from a doctor in Denver. This NOT a job offer.

Grandma and I asked her brother, who was a family attorney and judge, whether Mom could just pick up and bounce.

He replied that if Mom had “compelling reason,” such as a job offer, she could make the case. But he said I should get an attorney in New Mexico.

And again, one of the biggest mistakes in my life was not getting an attorney right there and then. I was just exhausted from having the same argument with Mom over and over again, like I was on some sociopathic merry-go-round.

I also believed that Mom did have a job offer. It wouldn’t be until I talked with Lucca’s father, Todd, that I discovered it wasn’t a real job offer and that Mom was simply making one of her typical deceptive machinations.

Todd would have fought her. But he’d been going this rigamarole with Mom for years. Mom fucked him over in almost every way possible. She’s a vindictive cunt, dude. You may never realize it, but she is. You may never experience, but believe me, other people in her life constantly have. I’ve learned a lot of dark shit about Mom over the years. Things that make my toes curl. She is not a normal human being. And I worry all the time about how she is going to muddle your mind.

So Todd, exhausted himself from years of dealing with Mom’s insanity, figured he’d just it play out. Lucca was in high school and would be eighteen in a couple of years. He planned on resuming his relationship with her at that time. Many a dispossessed father is forced into this calculation when dealing with a psychopathic bitch.

But, and as Todd pointed out to me, you were young. And that it was still worth me fighting. You were only two years old at the time, I believe. Going on three.

And so it was Mom moved to Denver and sat around in an empty doctor’s office with no clients for six months. Simply retarded sociopath stuff.

I still shudder that I didn’t get an attorney. But in some ways the relationship seemed “stable.” I didn’t want to go through the horrors of family court, which I’d heard many terrifying tales about. The father always gets fucked in the end. Especially when dealing with a banshee like Mom. They will make your lives a living hell.

They will make everybody’s lives a living hell.

Love,

Mom in Santa Fe

Dear Evan,

Mom was living in Santa Fe. You were thriving. I forget the street your place was. Somewhere off Agua Fria. I was working at the Lab.

I was living with my parents, saving up money to buy us a house.

I would come down on weekends. Mom kept pressuring me to move in with her. I resisted, reminding her that the last two times I’d tried to move in with her she’d lost her fucking mind and thrown me out. Literally throwing all my things on the lawn like some psycho.

I told her that we would move in together when she moved into a place I owned or held the lease on. I needed stability. I’d made a lot of moves and been rather fortunate in securing a position that allowed me to be a provider for our family. I couldn’t put that at risk to her ridiculous and insane whims.

I was still recovering financially from my long road trip, and making all the necessary moves to put myself into a good position for our future. Mom was sitting on a pile of money from her sell of the house on Ninita.

To me it seemed like a no-brainer. I was making great money, but had no savings. Mom was making no money but had a pile of cash in the bank. Let’s get a house in Los Alamos and start our lives together.

But for whatever bizarre reasons Mom clung to her stubborn and irrational ways.

She kept insisting that Lucca needed to stay at Santa Fe High School until graduation. I didn’t really buy this explanation. First of all, the only reason Lucca had wanted to go to Santa Fe High School was so that she could be with her friends. But it’s a big school and she literally never saw her friends. Didn’t have classes with them. Didn’t have the same lunch period as them.

The whole thing was absurd. I figured Lucca could transfer to Los Alamos High School and do extremely well there. It’s one of the best high schools in the country, and she’d surrounded by the children of scientists, engineers, and other highly intelligent people. We could take weekend trips to Santa Fe and drop Lucca off with her friends on the weekends.

And yet, Mom resisted. And I had to hash this out every single weekend. It got so fucking old. But this is something bizarre about Mom’s mind. She gets an idea in her head and it simply doesn’t shake loose. So one has to have the same conversation ad nauseam. Over and over again until you want to pull your hair out.

It got to the point where it seemed like this was the only conversation Mom and I had. She just wouldn’t drop it, and forced us through the same exact script every time. And I couldn’t have a conversation about anything else with Mom. You never knew what would trigger her and send her into a narcissistic spiral.

I was so exasperated after over a year of this that when she announced she was planning on moving to Denver, I almost felt relieved. Of course, I should have hired a lawyer exactly at that moment and fought her in court. They never would have let her move to Denver, as I’ll explain in another letter.

I figured I’d let her move with you to Denver and still maintain the relationship. When I finally bought a house I could have you all come down and we could achieve familial stability. This actually turned out to be a great plan, and eventually worked out exactly as I’d calculated. But that one mistake of not resisting Mom made everything go sideways.

So, Mom moved to Denver. Guess it wasn’t so important Lucca finish at Santa Fe High, eh? I always knew it was bullshit from Mom, but I had to shake my head at her predictability. The good thing about sociopaths is that when you recognize their patterns they become easier and easier to spot. That doesn’t make them any less destructive.

When you call a sociopath on their bullshit, it really upsets them. They hate when other people can see through the mask.

Love,

Mom in Santa Fe

Dear Evan,

Mom was living in Santa Fe. You were thriving. I forget the street your place was. Somewhere off Agua Fria. I was working at the Lab.

I was living with my parents, saving up money to buy us a house.

I would come down on weekends. Mom kept pressuring me to move in with her. I resisted, reminding her that the last two times I’d tried to move in with her she’d lost her fucking mind and thrown me out. Literally throwing all my things on the lawn like some psycho.

I told her that we would move in together when she moved into a place I owned or held the lease on. I needed stability. I’d made a lot of moves and been rather fortunate in securing a position that allowed me to be a provider for our family. I couldn’t put that at risk to her ridiculous and insane whims.

I was still recovering financially from my long road trip, and making all the necessary moves to put myself into a good position for our future. Mom was sitting on a pile of money from her sell of the house on Ninita.

To me it seemed like a no-brainer. I was making great money, but had no savings. Mom was making no money but had a pile of cash in the bank. Let’s get a house in Los Alamos and start our lives together.

But for whatever bizarre reasons Mom clung to her stubborn and irrational ways.

She kept insisting that Lucca needed to stay at Santa Fe High School until graduation. I didn’t really buy this explanation. First of all, the only reason Lucca had wanted to go to Santa Fe High School was so that she could be with her friends. But it’s a big school and she literally never saw her friends. Didn’t have classes with them. Didn’t have the same lunch period as them.

The whole thing was absurd. I figured Lucca could transfer to Los Alamos High School and do extremely well there. It’s one of the best high schools in the country, and she’d surrounded by the children of scientists, engineers, and other highly intelligent people. We could take weekend trips to Santa Fe and drop Lucca off with her friends on the weekends.

And yet, Mom resisted. And I had to hash this out every single weekend. It got so fucking old. But this is something bizarre about Mom’s mind. She gets an idea in her head and it simply doesn’t shake loose. So one has to have the same conversation ad nauseam. Over and over again until you want to pull your hair out.

It got to the point where it seemed like this was the only conversation Mom and I had. She just wouldn’t drop it, and forced us through the same exact script every time. And I couldn’t have a conversation about anything else with Mom. You never knew what would trigger her and send her into a narcissistic spiral.

I was so exasperated after over a year of this that when she announced she was planning on moving to Denver, I almost felt relieved. Of course, I should have hired a lawyer exactly at that moment and fought her in court. They never would have let her move to Denver, as I’ll explain in another letter.

I figured I’d let her move with you to Denver and still maintain the relationship. When I finally bought a house I could have you all come down and we could achieve familial stability. This actually turned out to be a great plan, and eventually worked out exactly as I’d calculated. But that one mistake of not resisting Mom made everything go sideways.

So, Mom moved to Denver. Guess it wasn’t so important Lucca finish at Santa Fe High, eh? I always knew it was bullshit from Mom, but I had to shake my head at her predictability. The good thing about sociopaths is that when you recognize their patterns they become easier and easier to spot. That doesn’t make them any less destructive.

When you call a sociopath on their bullshit, it really upsets them. They hate when other people can see through the mask.

Love,

Hints of Something Wrong

Dear Evan,

The first time I realized there was something deeply disordered in Mom’s mind was only a couple months into the relationship.

We’d had a wonderful couple months falling in love and having little adventures around Santa Fe.

Mom wasn’t the perfect match. She didn’t really “do” anything. Her only interests were in going to new restaurants.

She could ski, but didn’t do it regularly like I did. She rode a bike but didn’t bike regularly. She was into the arts and I think enjoyed the fact that I was the director of one of Santa Fe’s best galleries. We had huge openings, filled with live music, an open bar, and often hundreds of people meandering through within a couple of hours time.

I still remember we were on a date to see one of the Planet of the Apes movie remakes. We stopped at Doctor Field Goods for a bite to eat. She told me she had a trip planned to Europe. Ireland and France.

She asked me what the expectations were. It was early in the relationship and neither of us could have anticipated what was to come. It seemed a little early to be fully committed, though I was quite certain that I was one hundred percent on board.

Much later, Mom had told me she and her cousin had planned on “fucking Europe.” The entire point of their trip was to meet European men and sleep with them. Obviously one of the attractions for single people to go to Europe is to have romances with foreign women. Heck, I wrote an entire album about traveling, where one of the primary motives was meeting foreign women. Museums and outdoor adventures, but also women.

So would I be a hypocrite if I judged her for doing the same?

Regardless, we came to the conclusion that we weren’t yet at a point where there could be expectations. So Mom went to Europe and slept with some Irish guy in Galway and a French guy in Paris. I was able to read her journals from this trip, and most of it is about sleeping with a fellow named Eduardo but while thinking about me. Flattering, I suppose.

When she returned I didn’t immediately ask her anything about Europe. It was her business. We’d made an implicit “agreement” that her time there wouldn’t affect our relationship, and I was comfortable with that. However, I was so enamored with her that I didn’t dare do anything that might risk what I intuited as our potential as a couple going forward.

When Mom returned, she found a pair of women’s underwear at my house. I’ll go into the details elsewhere. I hadn’t been with another woman and told her so. I don’t know whether she believed me or not. But I asked her then about what had happened in Europe, and she admitted to sleeping with Eduardo in Paris.

I was disappointed, but couldn’t really chastise her. She’d had the conversation. Moreover, she said she’d had the opportunity to sleep with other men she’d met and turned it down due to what might be going on between her and I. This seemed like a good sign that maybe Mom could be faithful.

A couple days later we went to dinner at Rio Chama. We had a conversation about what was going on between us. There had been ambiguity, but I didn’t want ambiguity going forward. Seemingly she didn’t either, but that turned out to be completely incorrect.

We assured each other that we would focus on this relationship and take it seriously from that moment on.

Yet, a couple days later we were dining on the patio at The Inn of the Anasazi. Mom told me she was headed to Denver to spend the weekend with her friend Kelly from Farmer’s Branch. She said they were throwing a huge birthday party for Kelly’s husband, a dyed-in-the-wool frat boy. All his frat boy friends would be there.

I forget exactly how it came up, but this was one of those “mask off” moments I’d had from time to time with Mom. Those times when she exposed herself for the true sociopath she really was. It was a look in her eyes. The slightest change in her facial features.

With a sort of gleam in her eyes that I would later come to recognize well, she indicated that there was a man who was interested in her, and who she was interested in.

I was dumbfounded. We’d just had the conversation about being exclusive and taking our relationship seriously. About building on the obvious chemistry we had. About taking things to the next level and seeing where this could go.

She acted like we’d never had the conversation.

I said to her, “So if this issue didn’t come up right this moment, you might have slept with another man.

She acted like I was crazy. Of course she would. She was a single woman.

This was another sign of Mom’s sociopathy. This sort of inappropriate disclosure or conversation. Something she thinks is normal, or even “cool” or “admirable,” that her audience thinks is completely fucked up behavior.

I’ve heard about a lot of this since. Mom says things in some twisted effort to brag or boast about something she thinks, or about her behavior, or about the things she’s done that she believes to be “girl boss moves,” but really just come off as pathetic and gross to normal people.

Much more of this to come.

Love,

Where to begin?

Hey Evan.

I love you, bud. And I can hardly express how much I miss you. I’ve written to you about all this stuff before, but am compelled to do it again. I have to reiterate it, over and over. Redesign and retell the narrative. It haunts me. I dream about you every night. I wonder what you’re up to. The person you could have become had Mom not intentionally cut you out of my life.

It’s a dark story, and seems to imply something grander. Something extrapolate from. A real life’s lesson, in the most profoundest sense. Unfortunately, it has to deal with the evil heart of darkness beating, or not, inside the chest of your mother. It’s a darkness I chew on endlessly, as I say, because it played out so intensely in the real world. It wasn’t theoretical. Mom made her evil manifest in the real world.

And believe me, I’m not the only one who thinks Mom is evil. Many people do. Many people have recognized her. Is she evil in a supernatural sense? Or is she just a sociopath? I’ve never been too invested in the supernatural, so I think there must be some biological root to her evil instincts and her evil behavior. Her grandmother was apparently crazy as a shit house rat. I would have liked to have met that lunatic.

The current understanding is that mental illness is rooted in biology and genetics. One is born with a genetic predisposition towards mental illness, and then the environment either activates or suppresses that predisposition. So my thinking on the subject is that Mom was born with a predisposition towards pathological narcissism, and then her environment activated it. It makes sense.

Briefly, she was born extremely attractive. She was born as the eldest of three siblings. She was born into an environment of extreme narcissism: Dallas, Texas. And then she had an illness. She was born club-footed and I believe had to wear casts on her legs for years to reorient her bone development. Then, allegedly, she was sexually molested. Either by a family member or a babysitter. Or both. The rumor is that it was her uncle. The artist and reprobate. But that is unclear. Mom could have just accused him of molestation. I would believe either to be the case.

Also, it should be said, that Mom has rather unique physical characteristics that are rarely seen in other women. The insanely thick wavy hair. The cobalt blue eyes. The lightly olive Mediterranean complexion. The thick lovely lips. Yes, Mom was a specimen of beauty. And in reality, she probably could have been a much more evil bitch than she actually turned out to be. I’ll credit her that.

I hope one day in the future you’ll be able to read these messages and know the true story of what happened between your mother and me.

You’ve become my muse. That sucks. I would have rather been a father. But through the machinations of human relationships, things turned out differently.

Thoughts of you never leave my mind, and so I’m always compelled to explain things. To recount the events of your life honestly, and hopefully piercing through the fog of bullshit that Mom has now doubt infected your mind with. As many people have told me, they believe her behavior to be truly evil. And I think that is the best word to use when

Mom is a sociopath. And I hope she doesn’t do any permanent psychological damage. It’s difficult knowing where to start with Mom. So forgive me if my mind wanders here and there. I’m riffing, so to speak.

I just want to let you know something you may already be suspecting. Mom has a personality disorder. It will be easy to research these in your day. They are called cluster B personality disorders. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I have done an extremely deep dive into these personality disorders when I realized Mom was a sociopath. And the thing they hate most is when people see them for who they really are. When the mask falls off and they are revealed.

If you think I’m being exaggerated out of bitterness, believe me I am not. I have spoken with many people who have the same opinion about Mom, and who have come to their own conclusions independently.

I just had a few nights with my good friend Adam about this. You will probably remember him. He had the long red beard. He actually described Mom as evil. He thinks she’s evil. And she is. And he is not the only one with this opinion. I have described Mom as evil myself many times.

Mom has done a lot of evil things over the years, and the most evil was of course taking you from me and rest of you family. People who love you and would have done anything for you. Mom did this deliberately and psychotically. You’re going to hear all the details here. I think it’s important that you know Mom has consciously chosen to deprive you of uncles, aunts, parents, and grandparents who nothing but your best interests in mind, and who loved you with all of their hearts.

It was interesting. I learned that everyone I assumed was on Mom’s side and believed her lies has abandoned her. She lost all the friends she had made in Los alamos and elsewhere. I couldn’t beleive that Adam would use the word evil to describe her. His girlfriend Jess and your Mom used to be friends. They aren’t any longer, and Jess knows some things that even I don’t. Mom used to brag to her and other people in town the evil things she’d done to me, as if it was something to be proud of.

So where to begin?

Let’s start around the middle, with Mom’s pregnancy with you. First, let it be said that you were an accident, albeit a happy and welcome one. But allow me to explain. I had been working as a gallery director for many years in Santa Fe when I decided to resign from my position and take a road trip. I had realized that Mom was not a good person and my need to escape had a lot to do with her.

While on my road trip Mom and I were in regular contact. I still loved her but was just utterly confused about the relationship I’d had with her. The road trip was in part to clear my head from the year or more of psychological mnaipulation I had experienced at her hands.

The final straw was when she emailed me while I wason a trip with grandma and your aunts and uncles in Ireland. She sent me an email the night before we were to enter our ancestral Irish villlage where our family had come from, Ballydonegan. She had broken up with me several weeks before for the stupid reason of looking up the hacked photos of Jennifer Lawrence. I had spent literally about sixty seconds googling them

Mom always used her sexuality and willingness to cheat as leverage to control men. She did this specifically with your sister’s father, Todd. She was nurturing an affair with a coworker, the man who would eventually become her third husband. She was working as an administrative assistant at Saint Vincent’s hospital, and started up a “workplace affair” with a doctor who had taken a fancy to her. She stopped wearing her wedding ring to work and would bring home expensive gifts of wine and scotch.

Todd said he used to laugh and drink the wine and whiskey Mom would bring home. He understood what was going on quite clearly. These so-called innocent affairs always lead to an actual affair. Mom claims she never actually had sex with Craig, but it was clear it was going to happen. That’s how these things always go.

I would later speak at length with Todd, and he had spoken with Craig. He said that Craig would never have started an affair with a married woman, and Todd believed him. I know many people who know Craig, and they all think he is a good guy. It’s doubtful that he thought Mom was married. Or perhaps she told him she was separated or had already left the relationship. One day Todd had enough and walked out on the marriage. He later remarried a woman who had three sons, and Mom accused her boys of sexually molesting your sister Lucca. But more on this later. It would be a long time before I would get the story from Todd.

So anyway, while I was on my trip with my family, Mom emailed me to tell me she had gotten pregnant by the new man she was dating, and older surgeon at University of New Mexico hospital. The way Mom does it is this: she starts nurturing a relationship behind the back of whatever man she’s dating, then when things are set up she leaves whoever she is with. That is cheating, no matter how you slice it, and Mom does this habitually.

So she was pregnant by this man just a few weeks after breaking up with me, ostensibly for looking up the hacked photos of Jennifer Lawrence. There was really no excuse to be telling me this, especially not while I was on one of the most important travel experiences of my life. She used the excuse that she had run into a colleague of mine while shopping at Sprout’s, and he had noticed her baby bump. This is ridiculous. It would have been impossible if she were just a couple weeks pregnant. She wanted me to know for some reason.

I asked her if there was any possibility the baby was mine, and Mom was adamant that it was not. She told me she’d had her period two weeks after we’d last been together. So the matter was settled. I was heartbroken and disturbed. I’d always wanted to have a family with Mom even though I already knew there was something off about her.

So on the shores of Ballydonegan I watched the waves of the Atlantic crashing against the shore and came to terms with the fact that my relationship with Mom was over for good. But I still yearned for her and the possibilities our love had for the foundation of a family. It was a painful time in my life. Extremely painful. But I knew I had to get through it.

The man Mom had gotten pregnant by was named Charlie. A few weeks after she announced her pregnancy to me, the relationship with Charlie fell apart. Just as all Mom’s relationships do. She claimed it was because while on a weekend up in Taos she discovered he’d been lying to her about his age. He claimed to be 42 when he was actually ten years older. This is Mom’s claim. Who knows if it’s true or not.

Regardless, when Mom’s relationship with Charlie fell apart she began to claim that the child she was carrying was actually mine. I smelled a rat on it immediately. However, it was just plausible enough that I wondered. That’s how Mom lies. She operates in the realm of plausibility and plausible deniability. That’s how she keeps people guessing. I’ve come to realize it’s actually a tactic of hers, whether conscious or subconscious.

Instinctually I knew Mom was shining me on, but I begrudgingly gave her the benefit of the doubt because I loved her. Even if the story she were telling me were true, however, it was still a pretty messed up situation.

Mom says that she told Charlie the baby might not be his and he blew up with rage. He called Mom a whore. The relationship was over. I was in Seaside, Oregon when Mom told me the baby was actually mine. I told her I wasn’t buying it. So Mom got an abortion, and claimed to the whole world it was because it was an ectopic pregnancy. That’s a dangerous situation where the baby is growing outside the uterus. There’s a medical need to terminate the pregnancy.

My guess is that Mom was lying about that so she didn’t look like a whore to the entire world. She didn’t know who the father was. But Mom wasn’t going to let that out to the people she knew. It would look “trashy,” to use her terminology. So Mom took a bath, lit some candles, and had one of her ceremonies, asking the baby to forgive her for aborting it. She had named it Enzo. Which is sort of another pretentious thing of Mom’s. She had to give her aborted baby an Italian name. She fetishizes Europe in a way that is truly bizarre, even going so far as to pretend to foreign accents. It’s part of her sociopathy.

There was enough ambiguity in the situation that I forgave Mom though. In my heart I saw this as a possible turning point in our relationship. Believe it or not, I came to think of it, at least potentially, as an opportunity for Mom to change her ways and for us to realize the potential of the love we’d felt. Or at least the love that I felt for her. They say it’s basically impossible for someone with a personality disorder to change in any genuine way.

Mom even came to visit me in Bend, Oregon while she was pregnant. We had a lovely time visiting there, Mount Hood (where we stayed at The Shining hotel Timberline), and Portland. But in the end I told Mom that I couldn’t be party to this relationship any more. That I couldn’t commit because I didn’t know if she was lying to me or not about this situation. I think Mom was hoping that her traveling to visit me would convince me that she was being truthful about her pregnancy. There were too many nagging questions though. Mom left in tears that I now look back on and understand as crocodile tears. Mom has a way of crying on command and for effect that is absolutely the sign of a sociopath.

Mom also lied to me about how she met up with Charlie. It might seem inconsequential, but it’s just another example of how Mom’s stories are always changing. She told me she went onto the dating site OK Cupid, the one one which we met, to see if I had put up a profile. And there, she claimed, she came upon Charlie’s profile and so touched base with him. Later she told me that she met Charlie at a dinner gathering comprised of medical professionals. Why lie about this? There’s no logical reason, and it just goes to show that Mom cannot tell the truth. Even about unimportant details.

The final destination on my road trip was Utah, where I planned on staying for a while in Helper to study painting under an artist I’d represented professionally. Mom and I were still in communication, and I was still torn as to what the best course of action was. I still loved Mom, but the more I thought about her behavior the more troubled I was. I hadn’t even considered she was a sociopath yet. The word hadn’t even popped up in my mind. But I knew something was deeply wrong. Her behavior was just “off,” so to speak. It wasn’t normal, and I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why.

I’ve come to understand that this is typical of people in relationships with sociopaths. The behavior they encounter is just so befuddling and outside the realm of normal psychology that it puts a normal person on their back foot, asking themselves if they’re the ones who are crazy. And it doesn’t help that the sociopath is constantly gaslighting them into thinking they’re crazy, or that they’re imagining things. It’s a stunning use of projection and manipulation.

I went back to New Mexico for the holidays and ended up spending a lot of time with Mom. It felt good. I still had all the love for her I always did. We spent New Year’s Eve together and I participated in one of Mom’s ceremonies. It was a forgiveness ceremony, and it really felt like we as a couple might be over the past. We made love, and this was the night you were conceived.

The next night proved disastrous though. A large group of us went out to Duel Brewing in Santa Fe (since closed). Mom invited a couple of her friends from acupuncture school, including an older gentleman named Andrew. I’d always liked Andrew. I invited my cousin Marla, her wife, and they brought along some friends visiting from Iowa. I also brought along my good friend Michaelene. Mom was sitting at the far end of the table, and when two of her friends left it made sense that she would come sit closer.

Even though there were several available chairs, Mom decided to sit on Andrew’s lap. As I said, I always liked Andrew and this didn’t bother me in the least. I didn’t suspect there was anything going on between Mom and him, and the tenor of the evening was festive. But after a while Mom began bizarrely writhing on Andrew’s lap. It wasn’t salacious per se, but just awkward. And it just kept going on and on. Things got weird and everybody noticed how tacky, indeed “trashy,” Mom’s behavior was. It was humiliating to me. I’d been so proud to introduce Mom to my friends and family, and for her to act this way in front of them was scandalous.

I started the timer on my phone in order to see how long Mom would make such a scene. It went on for nearly thirty minutes. My cousin’s friends looked at me curiously and asked, “Isn’t she supposed to be dating you?” So you see, it wasn’t just my imagination or jealousy involved. Everybody was embarrassed to be witnessing Mom’s behavior.

I turned to Michaelene and asked, “This is fucked up, right?” I wanted to make sure I wasn’t overreacting. Michaelene agreed that it definitely was, and we decided to get up and leave. My cousin, her wife, and their friends agreed that they couldn’t be bothered to sit around watching this either. So we all stood up and grabbed our coats. We walked toward the door. Mom was somehow shocked that we were leaving and she ran up to me, crying. She was asking “What did I do? What did I do?”

It was such a bizarre scene. Andrew even came up to me and asked what was wrong. He said nothing was going on. I told him it was just a matter of Mom’s hypocrisy. That if I had made such a scene Mom would have flipped out completely and lost her mind. But it was more than that. I couldn’t explain it all to Andrew in a moment. I couldn’t say Mom had never been faithful, that she’d tried to convince me another man’s baby was mine, that we’d had a forgiveness ceremony just the night before. And that in some ways this evening was to celebrate her and I being on new footing.

That is the end of this tidbit. Stay tuned for volume two of these matters.

Love,

Some of Mom's Pretentious Foibles

Dear Evan,

In our last letter we were having a discussion of the unknown (to me, at least) reprehensible things Mom did after she found out Sari was pregnant. We discussed Sari and Uncle Henry mentioning it to me.

But we haven’t mentioned Jess yet. The girlfriend of one of my best friends. We’ve since become slightly estranged, with Mom at the center of it all, of course. We’ve since reconciled, but our friendship hasn’t recovered by any means. It makes me sad. It’s hard to make close friends at my age, and Adam was one of my closest. I’ll tell you the tale here in a moment.

Mom and Jess had become friends. I’ve mentioned before that Mom encouraged Jess to date around, probably sleep around, given that apparently Jess had expressed some dissatisfactions in the relationship. Adam had his own dissatisfactions. But all relationships have dissatisfactions. There isn’t a relationship in the world that doesn’t. It’s natural. Everyone has gripes about their partners or spouses, and we vent about them to our friends. It’s conversational.

For Mom though, being a sociopathic floozy, this meant that she needed to start seeing other men. Jess took the advice. I always liked Jess a lot, so don’t take this the wrong way. But Jess has lived in Los Alamos all her life. To my knowledge she’s never done much traveling. Her family is from here. Her friends are here. She got pregnant young and her girls are in school here. To a woman like Jess, and there are many of them, Mom can sometimes appear more worldly.

Even though Mom can be a pretentious ignoramus, and usually is when it comes to her naked attempts at inflating her sophistication, a lot of people don’t catch on to this. They believe Mom’s hot air and boasting, and are sometimes even impressed with it.

Mom has traveled widely in Europe, pretends to be a wine connoisseur for clout, and has half-informed opinions she presents as profound and unconventionally insightful. Most of this probably has to do with the fact that Mom is very physically attractive. Good-looking people get away with a lot. It’s just a fact of life. People will frequently defer to them. If Mom was less attractive, I think people would more easily catch a whiff of her bull-crap.

It’s all very cringe, and makes a person like me want to roll my eyes. But a person with little worldly experience can often be taken in by it. Even her social observations tend to be mentally retarded.

I remember some of her stupider posts talking about her travels in Europe, when she first took you there. You guys were at an AirBnB somewhere in Italy. She heard a couple in a heated argument in the street below. They were yelling at each other in Italian. Then they made up and started talking lovingly to one another. Mom ended this post with, “I’m definitely not in the United States anymore.”

Isn’t this goofy? Doesn’t it make you want to roll your eyes? I’ve heard couples arguing outside my hotel windows before. I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I didn’t derive some pompous, muddle-headed observation about it. And then she wrote a post in sophomoric adulation for the fact that there was a trend in Paris for women not to wear bras. This was, to Mom, a sign of their inherent sophistication.

So some fashionable young women aren’t wearing bras in Paris. Who cares? I don’t mind seeing a woman’s breasts freed. In fact I probably prefer it. But to acknowledge that doesn’t make one a high-minded sophisticate. It’s embarrassing that Mom would believe it does. Just “cringe.” There’s no better word for many of Mom’s habits.

And this pretense she has to sophistication. Mom is probably more sophisticated than a lot of women. But she’s not that sophisticated. She just puts on airs about it to inflate her insecure, narcissistic ego.

Though it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere, Mom tried to start her “home styling” business. I’m not knocking Mom for being ambitious. It didn’t seem like a bad idea. But I would have done anything in my power to help her build a small business. She’s good at nesting and using a few simple concepts to make a house look good. I’ll give her that. She’s got a talent for it. I don’t know that she a “professional level” talent for it, but so what. Practice makes perfect.

But, and I don’t mean to make fun of her, but the one painter she glommed onto for partnership, doubtless some rich Parisian twat, is terrible. I don’t say that with any pleasure. I’m actually very forgiving when it comes to painters. Far more forgiving than most people I know who work professionally in the arts. But this chick appears to have no sense of composition, a terrible sense of coloring, and apparently absolutely no talent or imagination. Good luck selling that garbage. I’m sure Mom was absolutely amazed by it.

I have very good friends from periods throughout my entire life who have lived in Europe. Who are from Europe. Who speak many languages fluently. Who are highly knowledgable in the fields of arts and culture. Music, painting, cuisine, visual art, you name it. None of them are pretentious.

I’ll give you an example. One of my best friends, Lotte, is French. I met her in Santa Fe and she became one of my favorite people. She was from a wealthy, aristocratic landowning family in France. Her father, an American, was from a very successful family in Los Angeles. She had countless friends who owned massive ranches in Telluride, luxuriant compounds in the middle of Boulder, and estates all over Europe.

She was a sommelier, a wine expert. Whenever she served French wines, however, she flatted her French accent. She Americanized it because she knew that to accentuate the French pronunciations would be off-putting, arrogant, and dimwitted.

Contrast that with Mom. She would always do the same thing when we were out to dinner. She would ask for two, sometimes three tasting glasses of wine before ordering. I think she must have thought this behavior was very erudite, but believe, servers hate this kind of thing. Mom has every right to do this, but come on. Let’s get real.

Then Mom would make a choice, either Italian or French, and completely butcher the pronunciation of the name. Putting on a ridiculous accent all the while. The servers would resist rolling their eyes in contempt, and repeat the name to her with the correct pronunciation, and again, like Lotte, flattening and Americanizing their pronunciation.

This isn’t just to be disparaging towards Mom. But these foibles were so bizarre and out of place, and sprung from a place of Mom’s profound lack of self-awareness.

When combined with intense conceitedness, it can be a real turn-off to the average person.

But we’ve drifted far astray from what we at first set out to discuss.

Unfortunately, my dude, we’re going to have to end this letter here, and make another attempt to address Mom’s dark secrets in the next installment.

Love,

We Have to Talk About Mom's Gaslighting

Dear Evan,

All right, let’s back to business. Mom’s dark secrets and the disgusting things she must have done after finding out Sari was pregnant with your sister.

As I said, Mom had become good friends with Jess, my friend Adam’s girlfriend. At first I’d been happy about this. I wanted Mom to have good friends when she moved to Los Alamos. She didn’t know anyone but Aunt Titty when she eventually also moved here. And the fact that Adam was one of my best friends indicated there were lots of couples activities we might embark on together.

Well, Mom made some revelations one night while having a drink with Jess and her Mom. When Mom stepped away from the table, Jess’s Mom advised Jess: “Stay away from that one.”

Jess had told this to Adam. Adam relayed it to me. This probably would have gone on indefinitely, with Jess confiding in Adam and Adam passing the intel to me. I had to open my big mouth, though. I asked Mom what terrible admission she made to Jess and her mother that Mom thought was so groovy and cool. She’d said it in a boasting way, as if she was quite proud of herself. Yet it had struck others as shameless and disgusting. Again, Mom’s lack of self-awareness rears it’s ugly head.

So I was cut off from getting third hand intel from Jess, and there was much she would not tell Adam about Mom’s bragging witlessness.

I later asked Jess if she would tell me what shameful things Mom had confessed to her. She was still friends with Mom at the time, so wouldn’t spill the beans. She’s not friends with Mom any longer, so maybe I can ask her.

I do believe she finally did tell Adam. We hadn’t spoke in some time for reasons I’ll explain later. It all had to do with Mom, as you have surely already guessed.

We were having a beer. Unfortunately, Mom so marred and complicated our friendship that Mom remained the focus of our conversation. There was so much to be unpacked. Apparently a lot of people hated her, and intensely at that. He said she was vindictive and “evil.”

I have heard so many people describe Mom as evil that it’s a little troubling. What are they seeing in her? Apparently she ruined all the friendships she’d made in Los Alamos. She blamed somebody else, of course, when everyone knew it was only Mom to blame.

Of course, Mom was never really a good person. I’d known that for years. It was solidified for good the weekend she became pregnant with you. That’s when the scales fell off my eyes and I saw who she was behind the mask. I still loved her. That would never stop. But I also felt genuine and profound contempt for her. It was an uncomfortable commingling of emotions, and I was never able to root it out of my system.

If Jess did tell Adam the dark, disgusting things Mom did in order to take “vengeance” on me, I might ask him to tell me one of these days. I’m not even sure there’s a point any more though. If Adam and I do have a future as friends, it would probably be best if we got past having to discuss Mom every time we get together.

Another thing that irks me about Mom going around to everyone she knows, including in Los Alamos, boasting about her diabolic behavior, is that I know she was telling people that I cheated on her. Hell, she spent a year trying to gaslight ME into believing I’d cheated on her. It was dumbfounding. Whenever the issue of Sari and Eden came up, she would say that I cheated on her.

I would have to remind her that, no, I hadn’t cheated on her. That a month after she punished me for going on that trip to Belize with my friend Rob by sleeping with Brent, she was telling me she was going to remain for her remaining time in Denver, and posting pictures of her hanging all over another man at a bar on Valentine’s Day. A man she’d lied to me about. Remember good old Raja from an earlier letter?

Did Mom really think that through mind-numbing repetition she was going to convince me that I had cheated on her with Sari? It was baffling behavior, to say the least.

My only question is, did Mom really believe this? Had she convinced herself that I had?

I find that hard to believe, my dude.

Mom was using a typical sociopathic tactic. As long as she put on the APPEARANCE of believing it, she gave herself permission to behave in any despicable way she wanted. She could sleep with another man any time she liked, because after all, I had betrayed her trust.

Obviously this wasn’t my first rodeo with Mom. This was her standard operating procedure for excusing her terrible treatment of other people.

This is sick stuff. If it sounds like I’m bitter it’s because I am. I had suffered so much insane mistreatment at Mom’s hands. It was startling that I’d had the endurance for it.

So Mom used a lie to excuse her vindictive and sleazy behavior, and then used that lie to besmirch me and try to ruin my reputation. It was also unfair to Eden, suggesting that she was basically a child of adultery.

I’m sorry, my dude. Mom is a psycho.

I hope she doesn’t ruin you for the rest of your life.

I fear it every day.

We Need To Talk Even More About Wes

Dear Evan,

I don’t mean to jump all over the place in these letters. But I do not want them to be stylistic and freeform. Sometimes a fresh idea pops up in my head and I have to take it where inspiration leads me.

All this to say that I took a brief detour while discussing Wes.

Wes represents only one of thousands of things Mom did to destroy her’s and my relationship and our family, but Mom’s affair with him stands out as being especially destructive.

Maybe it was just the timing of it all. Maybe it was that Mom was indeed far more deceptive about her tryst with him than she had been with anyone before.

Maybe I was just finally exhausted by all the manifestations of Mom’s sociopathy. Maybe I’d come to my rope’s end.

Mom’s narcissistic personality disorder certainly has grown worse into the years. It was always there, but has evolved as she’s aged. This is no mystery. This is what happens with sociopaths. They get worse and worse, a little bit more day by day.

From the stories that have been told to me by people who still spend time with her, it seems especially bad these days. I haven’t seen Mom in two years, and things don’t sound too good. It worries me, for your sake.

As I’ve said before, that’s why I write these letters. One of these days, I believe you’re going to want, even need, some honest perspective on her character, personality, and motivations.

You’re only in the third grade. Mom has many, many years left to warp your mind. And in many cases, the damage done by sociopaths to their children remains lifelong. And it can be a life’s struggle to wrestle with the demons they planted inside the minds of the vulnerable youngsters in their care.

A big cause for the dissolution of Mom’s and my relationship is that, once I realized she was a malignant narcissist, I knew how to recognize when she was trying to manipulate me. I resisted. Sometimes not in the healthiest ways. Sometimes in anger.

But even just pointing out to her that I knew what she was trying to do, it was a challenge. You have to have boundaries, and you always have to be on your toes.

It gets exhausting over the years. Even when it’s someone you love, it’s hard to keep putting up a resistance year after year and incident after incident.

I don’t know for certain that Mom and I would still be together of the “Wes situation” had never occurred. I’m sure something else would have come up. It always did before.

And even the Wes situation didn’t put the final nail in the coffin. I forgave Mom and we soldiered on for almost another six months or so.

But with Mom’s last affair (to my definite knowledge, anyway; there were other incidents that raised a lot of suspicions) the death knells definitely began to toll. We’d rebounded after so much betrayal from Mom, but the rebounds were a little more fragile with each reconciliation.

Trust between us was already fragile, and Wes might have been the final serious blow. Not the last one, to be certain. But a powerful one.

It all unraveled, coincidentally enough, at Sawmill Market. Fate screwing with me again.

You were with me, Grandma, and Grandpa in Albuquerque. If you recall, Sawmill Market is that great place in the Sawmill District. There are tons of great restaurants and many boutique shops. It’s always bustling, and is one of the city’s hottest spots.

You were learning to read and your skills were coming along nicely. You liked to read signs on the wall to show off your progress.

On one of the walls was the word WEST, indicated the west end of the Market. You read the word aloud to me. And then you said, “West, just like Mommy’s friend.”

Hmm, I thought. I’d never heard the name before. It was all but certain Mom was sleeping with him, or had been recently. You said he brought you a Lego cat kit for Christmas. It was really a Batman head, but I could see how you thought it looked like a cat, what with the pointy ears and all.

It was a little puzzling. As I mentioned before, Mom and I had been back together since the first week of January, and it was now the fifteenth or so. And we’d been together in November until Thanksgiving. If Mom was having an affair, it would have all had to have taken place in the month of December.

I guess Mom and I weren’t technically together. Certainly not according to her. But we’d been talking, and I’d assumed Mom’s usual pattern of breakup and reconciliation would soon be manifesting.

I mentioned earlier that Mom had spent the weekend with Aunt Titty in Red River. It wasn’t immediately suspicious. Mom and her family had gone their almost every summer when they were growing up.

Perhaps they were just feeling nostalgic. Now I figure Mom must have already been in regular contact with Wes, and that’s why Mom and Titty went there. In all the years I’d been in a relationship with Mom, on and off as it was, she’d never once mentioned a desire to visit.

Mom was so pretentious at this point that after I found out about Wes, I told her that I would never want to vacation with you there because I was bound to run into Wes given the way the universe always screwed with me. It was sad, because Red River is great for families and Grandma and Grandpa had always wanted to take you there.

But Mom basically ruined it for me by her promiscuity.

I recalled her bizarre bout of weeping the first weekend of December when I took you to Las Cruces. It seemed like something more malevolent may have been going on.

You may not want to read this because kids don’t like hearing about their parent’s sex life, but this added another clue toward solving the mystery of who this fellow “West” might be.

When Mom I got back together in January, she started her period. We would often have sex while she was on it, as long as the flow wasn’t too heavy. We’d just lay a towel down on the bed and go to town.

This time, however, Mom was on her period and it was a heavy flow day. But Mom had learned some new tricks. She grabbed some grape-seed oil, lubed up her buttocks, and told me to have intercourse with her butt cheeks. So I did

I admit, it was pretty hot. But it had never occurred to me to do so, and I would bet my life it had never occurred to Mom. We had a vibrant sex life and certainly we would have found our way to this maneuver at some point.

So of course I knew she’d learned this from some other man. At the time I could only assume it had been Chad. It was as plausible an explanation as anything else.

But later after Mom had admitted to her affair, I thought back to Mom’s weeping. It was nothing, she said. She was just on her period. Suddenly it all made sense. Mom had been on her period when she went up to Red River. And being in such a state, Wes must have had sex with her butt cheeks all weekend.

Maybe that’s why Mom had been sobbing so heavily.

It stung. No man likes to imagine their woman, especially the mother of their son, enjoying having her butt checks fucked by another man. And Mom must have really enjoyed it, because she was oddly enthusiastic about me doing it. She practically leapt up off the bed to grab the grape-seed oil from the bathroom.

And then there was the Batman Lego head in your room. A gift from “Mom’s friend West.” That meant he had been in Los Alamos. And indeed he had, though Mom denied that you were ever introduced to him.

When the cat was finally out of the bag on Wes, Mom said she must have learned your name from overhearing her and Aunt Titty talking about him in the living room.

But I would later learn that Wes did in fact visit Los Alamos. Mom had met him one night when she took you home to the Hill Apartments. This was in December obviously, and Mom had just introduced him as her friend. Mom was pretty onto Mom’s deceptions, so she probably knew the truth.

That’s why she didn’t mention him to me. She probably thought it would enrage me. And it just may have.

But there’s much more to say about Wes. We’ll try to cap the story off in the next installment.

Love,

Letters to My Son; Part 30

A Horrible Thanksgiving Holiday

Dear Evan,

So there we were. Mom and I were estranged. She’d made the witless decision to uproot you once again, and there we were once again stuck in a quagmire.

And yet, the look Mom and I had shared. Meeting eyes and recognizing that we still loved one another. Our trip to Las Vegas. We were back together.

And then came Thanksgiving. Mom and I had been reconciled for a couple weeks. And then the kickoff to the holiday season. I was hoping Mom and I would spend the holiday together with you. As a family. As a moment to remember what we were thankful about, even in the midst of this infinite swamp.

Along came Friendsgiving at Bathtub Row Brewery, where Mom had basically become a barfly. I had friends who were regulars that joked with me that you had a cubby hole where you slept beneath the bar. That’s how often Mom was there. Which, fine. But it was indicative of something larger and more insidious.

Aunt Titty had of course been a long resident of Los Alamos at this time. We haven’t discussed the ramifications of her move to Los Alamos, but we will. Aunt Titty is also a barfly who didn’t really have any hobbies. And with her massive stretches of time off when not working on a film set, she was another barfly of the Los Alamos bar scene. Now I’ve always liked Aunt Titty and gotten along well with her. She’s much more down to earth than Mom, and much closer to a normal human being.

If Titty were as attractive as Mom I doubt she would have been as relatable as she is, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I didn’t love the affect she had on Mom. Mom and Aunt Titty had a narcissistic sibling trauma bond, and each of them would frequently bring out the worst impulses of the other.

I suppose I didn’t really fault Mom for going to Friendsgiving. But there was something telling about the fact she didn’t invite me. I knew a bunch of the people who worked there. But I wasn’t invited. Mom didn’t even suggest we should do our own little Thanksgiving when Friendsgiving was over. And isn’t it funny? How does a customer at a bar get invited to a private holiday celebration amongst the staff?

I assumed there would be people there that Mom had slept with or dated. She’d been going on all kinds of dates with local single men. She claimed they were mere “coffee dates,” and maybe that’s true. At the time the Bathtub Row Brewery was selling coffee in the mornings. But why was Mom running around dating locals? Even if just for coffee, if it was even true. It was the nightmare I knew would unfold when Mom moved to town. It was so profoundly disrespectful, and I was shocked at myself for even being surprised any more at Mom’s behavior.

I asked Mom who was going to be in attendance at her Friendsgiving. And tellingly, she refused to tell me. Why? What was the big deal? If it was all innocent fun, why be so shady about it? Why be so deceptive? What was going on? Obviously Mom had been involved in some kind of romance with at least one man who had been in attendance.

It is possible that she had just been talking shit about me to anyone who would listen. That’s likely. When we got back together she was nervous about being seen in public with me. It’s typical of sociopaths to try and destroy their partners reputation, and this was Mom’s stock in trade. I don’t doubt she’d badmouthed me to half the people in town, painting herself as the innocent saint who could do no wrong. No doubt some people saw through her bullshit, but I don’t doubt that many people did not. Or chose not, because they were trying to sleep with her.

You spent that Thanksgiving with me, Grandma, and Grandpa. It was quiet, and for me marred by Mom’s repulsive and treacherous antics. She dropped you off and I wasn’t in the best of moods. Mom was dolled up, of course. Looking hot, yes, but was she dressing up for someone in particular? It was always hard to tell with Mom. She liked to look her best even when there was no real reason for it. Standard for a pathological narcissist. But it’s also respectable that Mom would care about her appearance. She refused to appear in public in a slovenly manner.

Yet, I was suspicious. This was that period when Mom had dyed her hair bleach blonde. We’ll get to Mom’s psychology regarding her hair later, but believe me this was a peculiar choice for her. What was the psychology behind it? The thoughts and the insecurities? It was a strange period in Mom’s life, and I really couldn’t tell you for certain what it meant. Her natural hair was gorgeous and striking, so why did she want to present as a blonde bimbo just now? She used to mock the average Dallas chick for running around with fake blonde hair, and now here she was doing the exact same shit she used to make fun of.

Something about it didn’t sit well with me. Something was off. My Spidey Sense was screaming at me. So when Mom came by I was a little upset. I told her a few times in a harsh manner to have fun at the bar. But we were still together as far as I was concerned. We were having a spat. One in which I felt justified in how I felt. But she had a point as well. She said she didn’t feel comfortable spending prolonged periods of time with Grandpa just yet, given the dramas I’ve discussed earlier.

I couldn’t really challenge her on that. Certainly there was truth to it. But it still didn’t pass the smell test.

And just a couple days later, good old douchebag Wes would enter into our lives. I certainly didn’t need him in my life, and I definitely didn’t need him fucking Mom. It wasn’t good for our family.

And so let’s explore this phase of our lives, shall we?

Stay tuned for the next installment.

We Have to Talk About Mom's Gaslighting

Dear Evan,

All right, let’s back to business. Mom’s dark secrets and the disgusting things she must have done after finding out Sari was pregnant with your sister.

As I said, Mom had become good friends with Jess, my friend Adam’s girlfriend. At first I’d been happy about this. I wanted Mom to have good friends when she moved to Los Alamos. She didn’t know anyone but Aunt Titty when she eventually also moved here. And the fact that Adam was one of my best friends indicated there were lots of couples activities we might embark on together.

Well, Mom made some revelations one night while having a drink with Jess and her Mom. When Mom stepped away from the table, Jess’s Mom advised Jess: “Stay away from that one.”

Jess had told this to Adam. Adam relayed it to me. This probably would have gone on indefinitely, with Jess confiding in Adam and Adam passing the intel to me. I had to open my big mouth, though. I asked Mom what terrible admission she made to Jess and her mother that Mom thought was so groovy and cool. She’d said it in a boasting way, as if she was quite proud of herself. Yet it had struck others as shameless and disgusting. Again, Mom’s lack of self-awareness rears it’s ugly head.

So I was cut off from getting third hand intel from Jess, and there was much she would not tell Adam about Mom’s bragging witlessness.

I later asked Jess if she would tell me what shameful things Mom had confessed to her. She was still friends with Mom at the time, so wouldn’t spill the beans. She’s not friends with Mom any longer, so maybe I can ask her.

I do believe she finally did tell Adam. We hadn’t spoke in some time for reasons I’ll explain later. It all had to do with Mom, as you have surely already guessed.

We were having a beer. Unfortunately, Mom so marred and complicated our friendship that Mom remained the focus of our conversation. There was so much to be unpacked. Apparently a lot of people hated her, and intensely at that. He said she was vindictive and “evil.”

I have heard so many people describe Mom as evil that it’s a little troubling. What are they seeing in her? Apparently she ruined all the friendships she’d made in Los Alamos. She blamed somebody else, of course, when everyone knew it was only Mom to blame.

Of course, Mom was never really a good person. I’d known that for years. It was solidified for good the weekend she became pregnant with you. That’s when the scales fell off my eyes and I saw who she was behind the mask. I still loved her. That would never stop. But I also felt genuine and profound contempt for her. It was an uncomfortable commingling of emotions, and I was never able to root it out of my system.

If Jess did tell Adam the dark, disgusting things Mom did in order to take “vengeance” on me, I might ask him to tell me one of these days. I’m not even sure there’s a point any more though. If Adam and I do have a future as friends, it would probably be best if we got past having to discuss Mom every time we get together.

Another thing that irks me about Mom going around to everyone she knows, including in Los Alamos, boasting about her diabolic behavior, is that I know she was telling people that I cheated on her. Hell, she spent a year trying to gaslight ME into believing I’d cheated on her. It was dumbfounding. Whenever the issue of Sari and Eden came up, she would say that I cheated on her.

I would have to remind her that, no, I hadn’t cheated on her. That a month after she punished me for going on that trip to Belize with my friend Rob by sleeping with Brent, she was telling me she was going to remain for her remaining time in Denver, and posting pictures of her hanging all over another man at a bar on Valentine’s Day. A man she’d lied to me about. Remember good old Raja from an earlier letter?

Did Mom really think that through mind-numbing repetition she was going to convince me that I had cheated on her with Sari? It was baffling behavior, to say the least.

My only question is, did Mom really believe this? Had she convinced herself that I had?

I find that hard to believe, my dude.

Mom was using a typical sociopathic tactic. As long as she put on the APPEARANCE of believing it, she gave herself permission to behave in any despicable way she wanted. She could sleep with another man any time she liked, because after all, I had betrayed her trust.

Obviously this wasn’t my first rodeo with Mom. This was her standard operating procedure for excusing her terrible treatment of other people.

This is sick stuff. If it sounds like I’m bitter it’s because I am. I had suffered so much insane mistreatment at Mom’s hands. It was startling that I’d had the endurance for it.

So Mom used a lie to excuse her vindictive and sleazy behavior, and then used that lie to besmirch me and try to ruin my reputation. It was also unfair to Eden, suggesting that she was basically a child of adultery.

I’m sorry, my dude. Mom is a psycho.

I hope she doesn’t ruin you for the rest of your life.

I fear it every day.

We Have to Talk About Lucca

Dear Evan,

So Mom was lying to everyone around her that I had cheated on her with Sari. I’m sure she told Nona and Papa that I did. I wonder if they believed her. Unless they’re sociopaths themselves, I would think they’d be aware by now that their daughter has a personality disorder.

She also told Lucca that I cheated on her, and this has caused a lot of problems.

Through Mom’s gaslighting of her own daughter, I believe Lucca came to blame me for all the instability and chaos in her life. This is preposterous, of course. Mom had imposed all this chaos on Lucca’s life. It was always Mom who destroyed Lucca’s life.

First of all by more or less forcing the divorce of Mom and Lucca’s father Todd.

Lucca was only eight years old, and I think it must have destroyed her. Lucca has always come across as emotionally traumatized, and I have no doubt the divorce was psychologically destructive for her. Probably irreparably.

Then Mom took Lucca away from her friends and moved back to Farmer’s Branch. Then Todd moved to Dallas to be near Lucca, and Mom disappeared in the middle of the night without telling Todd and moved to El Dorado.

She enrolled Lucca in school at El Dorado, then divorced Craig after just a year of marriage and moved Lucca to downtown Santa Fe, and enrolled her in another school in the Railyard District. Kids she didn’t know whatsoever.

Then she got Lucca involved in a case against her own father and his new family by accusing Todd’s new wife’s sons of sexually molesting her. She had to be interviewed about the matter, as did everyone in the family. From what Todd and his wife told me, it was a truly harrowing experience for all of them.

Then Mom moved to Denver and took Lucca out of Santa Fe High School and had her doing online high school in complete isolation from any peers or friends. Then Mom moved Lucca back to Farmer’s Branch. Then dropped her off to live at a friend’s house when Mom moved to Loveland.

And Mom convinces Lucca that I cheated on her? It’s sick.

Truth be told, I never really connected to Lucca. I made a serious effort for awhile, but got nowhere. She was always quiet and shy. I wasn’t accustomed to children her age being so withdrawn.

Mom had wanted me to get to know her when Mom and I started dating seriously. I took her to lunch and she spent the whole time staring out the window. She literally didn’t say a single word to me. Strange business, but I don’t blame her. Lucca’s problems lay squarely at Mom feet.

It was unfortunate, but it was what it was. However, I wonder now whether Lucca didn’t inherit Mom’s sociopathy. It’s well understood that there is a genetic component in addition to an environmental one.

As they say, genes load the gun and environment pulls the trigger. Typically sociopathy is triggered in a young child when they experience serious emotional trauma.

It happened with Mom when she was sexually molested as a young girl. Presuming she really was, of course, and wasn’t just lying about it to get attention. But that would be sociopathic too, wouldn’t it. And Mom’s grandmother was insane, so there you have it.

I suspect Lucca of having malignant covert narcissism because of the following events. This was after Mom cheated on me with Wes (and yes, I do consider what she did cheating). If it wasn’t cheating, it was as close as you can come to it without crossing the line.

Let me tell you the tale. During the Covid pandemic, my friends Stout, Adam, and I would go to Tesuque Village Market at least once a week. The food was good. There were always pretty young women there, both customers and servers.

It was one of the very small handful of restaurants that could still operate because they had a large patio. Indoor dining was restricted. The whole thing was idiotic, but that’s how it was in those days.

One night while Mom and I were broken up because I’d found out she’d been lying to me about her affair with Wes, I went on a date. A friend of mine said she knew a woman I might like and set us up. I’m not really all that into dating and very rarely do it, but I thought it might be fun. It would kill time at least. It would be, as Mom always said of her promiscuous dating, that it was about chasing distractions.

My date’s name was Kristyn. Spelled just like that. It’s sort of goofy how people need to have ridiculous spellings for their children’s names. That is a trend that really needs to die.

Kristyn suggested we meet at Tesuque Village Market. The Covid pandemic was long over by then, so we could sit inside. Still, this was once again a case of Fate screwing with me. I was happy to meet at TVM, as we’ll refer to it from now on.

To my surprise, Lucca was working as the hostess. It sure was a random coincidence. I stopped to talk to her. Kristyn saw me from the back of the room and came up to introduce herself. “You must be Michael,” she said. “You must be Kristyn,” I replied. We either shook hands or hugged.

It was kind of awkward exchange to have in front of Lucca, but whatever. She would know that I was on a blind date. We took a seat inside and ended up having a really wonderful time.

It was a fun and fluid conversation, and we must have been there two hours, if not three. We might have seen each other again, but she was literally leaving for Spain the next day.

Kristyn would be in Spain for three months. She was one of the these rich women who live off their trust funds in Santa Fe and teach yoga. They’re a dime a dozen in that city.

I think she was going to be teaching stretching in Spain. After three months I didn’t really have any interest in following up with her, and I didn’t hear back from her. All good. The idea of trying to date sounded exhausting to me, and I was probably back with Mom at that point anyway. It’s so hard to keep track of.

Lucca told Mom she’d seen me on a date, and that it was completely awkward and uncomfortable and that it looked like Kristyn was miserable. It was so ridiculous. I’m not so socially unaware that I don’t know when a date is going badly. This date had gone extremely well.

So why was Lucca reporting this to Mom? What were her motives in characterizing my date like that? Was she just trying to badmouth me, or did she actually think it was a bad date? I don’t doubt that Lucca has some deficiencies when it comes to reading people and their body language, so I suppose it could go either way.

Then perhaps two or three weeks later, Mom and I were back together. I was in Santa Fe running errands. On my way back I decided to stop in briefly and have a drink and a snack at the bar at TVM. I sat at the bar by myself.

Across from me were a man and a woman, about my age. We struck up a conversation amongst the three of us and sat there talking for awhile. Eventually the guy left and I continued speaking with the woman for ten more minutes or so.

To my surprise, Adam showed up with his entire family. Brother, mother, father, and couple of his nieces. I got up and joined them in conversation at their table for awhile. Then as I was leaving I ran into one of my supervisors at work and her husband, who was a good friend of mine from high school. I sat and talked with them for awhile. I thought it would be rude not to. That made me a little later in returning to Los Alamos than I’d planned.

Mom was livid about it. But thankfully she calmed down. I felt a little guilty. More for my own sake. I was trying to be on my best behavior, and Mom will ALWAYS make a mountain out of a molehill if she can.

But guess what Lucca did? She told Mom that I exchanged phone numbers with the woman at the bar. It was a complete lie. Lucca said that the bartender had given her this tidbit. I wasn’t buying it. I didn’t know who this bartender was. How would he know who I was?

Sure, I came in with friends pretty regularly, but we never sat at the bar. I’d never seen this dude in my life. Even if he’d seen me around, how could he possibly have known about my connection to Mom and Lucca? It made absolutely no sense. The only reasonable explanation was that Lucca had made the whole thing up out of whole cloth.

All of this was pretty annoying, but the third time Lucca told a whopper to Mom really took the cake. It was bonkers.

You may remember when I took you to see the movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. I apologize. It was really long and boring. The first one was good, but this one was garbage. You were just a kid though. You might have liked it.

Since the movie was so unbearably long, we’d gotten out later than I’d thought we would. It wasn’t too bad, around seven o’clock. But it was a little past your dinner time. So I figured we’d stop at TVM for a bite on our way home.

It was a Wednesday and TVM was dead. You and I entered the foyer. There was nobody in line and it was clear the restaurant was half empty. I don’t even know if half the tables were filled.

I said hello to Lucca and asked her to seat us. She told me the wait was going to be thirty minutes. Thirty minutes when the place was empty? Nobody but you and I were waiting for a table, and there were half a dozen empty ones. Lucca was obviously screwing around with me for whatever childish motives of her own.

“Seriously? Thirty minutes?”

It was ridiculous. I didn’t know what she up to. I didn’t care that she was messing with me. I cared that she was fucking up your night. You, her little brother. Lucca had never held a job, so I get that she wouldn’t have good customer service skills, but this was aggravating and immature.

I told her I knew the owner and asked if she could go get him. I wasn’t going to throw her under the bus or anything. I was just going to ask the guy if we could be seated at a table so that I didn’t have to have my six-year-old son sitting in the foyer on their uncomfortable bench for thirty minutes.

What difference did it make if we had to wait on a bench or at a table? Even if it was thirty minutes until we got served, we could sit down and be comfortable. And TVM is also a small convenience store. I could have got you a little snack to tide you over.

Lucca huffed off to get the owner. At that point I just decided that I didn’t need to deal with Lucca’s drama. It wasn’t worth my time and I wasn’t going to spar with Mom’s daughter, who may have been 20 or 21 at that time but was still very much a child.

I blame the Covid pandemic. She and her generation lost two years of ground in building an adult life because they couldn’t get jobs.

So I just picked you up and we bounced. No big deal. I thought Lucca was acting like a childish fool, but I wasn’t too put out. Except for your sake. I couldn’t believe she’d behave this way toward her little brother.

So here’s how Lucca characterized the situation to Mom.

She said that I came in drunk. Total lie.

She said that the restaurant was completely packed with diners. Total lie.

She said that the foyer was packed with people on the waiting list. Again, a total lie. There wasn’t another soul anywhere around.

Lucca said I insisted that she put us to the front of the waiting list. Total lie.

Lucca claimed that when she told me there was a thirty minute wait to be seated, I said: “Are you fucking withe me?” A preposterous lie.

Lucca claimed that I rudely threatened to report her to the owner and demanded she bring him out. Ridiculous lie.

Then she said that you ran after her when she left to retrieve the owner. I don’t know why she lied about this. Maybe she was trying to imply that you were all upset by witnessing such a violent encounter? I assume that must be so.

Regardless, this was also a lie. I just scooped you up and took you home.

I barely even thought about the incident. Or as I put it, the non-incident. So Lucca acted rudely and unprofessionally? Big deal. I would hardly have expected less. It was no skin off my back.

But Mom brought the incident up to me. I was flabbergasted by the way Lucca was characterizing what had happened. Genuinely shocked.

I told Mom that what Lucca was claiming was nutso. Barely anything had happened. Lucca may not be accustomed to handling even the most minor of contentious work actions, but I excused that by her immaturity.

If she couldn’t handle a misunderstanding as negligible as what occurred between us, then she does not have a very bright future ahead of her.

Mom told me that she believed Lucca over me. Of course, right?

Mom is a pathological liar, and it had clearly rubbed off on her daughter. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

Mom demanded I apologize to Lucca. I scoffed. Apologize for what? There was nothing apologize for. I wasn’t going to demean myself and grovel at a child’s feet. Especially when there was zero justification or reason for it.

But Mom has always used a common sociopathic technique. She demands apologies constantly when there is no reason to apologize to her. She has always done this. It’s one of her foibles that always really annoyed me, but which I tried to overlook.

Whatever keeps the peace and gets to shut up about whatever irrational non-issue has put a bee in her bonnet. I’ll have a few stories for you detailing how Mom tried this number. There were so many times though I could hardly be expected to remember them.

And the funny thing is, Mom has done countless terrible things. I could list a hundred awful things she’s off the top of my head.

I told Mom that I wasn’t going to apologize to Lucca. It was absurd. If Lucca wanted to have a conversation about what happened, I was more than happy to do that. Lucca was technically an adult now and should be treated like an adult.

But Mom would not let the issue go. Apologize to Lucca, apologize to Lucca, apologize to Lucca. Mom was like a record on repeat.

Finally I told Mom I’d reach out to her.

So I sent a very friendly and conciliatory text to Lucca, telling her that I was sorry about the misunderstanding. Even that was bogus. I wasn’t sorry about anything. But this seemed sufficient.

I told Lucca that I was happy to talk about it whenever she wanted if she was comfortable with that.

Lucca sent the text to Mom, and Mom shit kittens. She flipped out and said that I was supposed to apologize, which I hadn’t done.

No, I had not. I told Mom that Lucca was basically making the whole thing up. It was a fabrication.

It was a little troubling. This kind of deception and falsehood was EXACTLY one of the styles of lying that Mom frequently employed. She employed all of them, of course, but this was among her favorites.

She would take a handful of plausible details, even true details, and then fabricate an entirely fantastical narrative that didn’t bare resemblance to the truth all.

This is in fact what inspired Uncle Henry to drunkenly call me so long before, intending to disclosing Mom’s evil behavior in Denver and Dallas the she’d been lying to me about. She’d deployed one of these fabricated tales to Nona and Papa, and it had put you in the hot seat. I didn’t get any details about it, but I’d love to hear more about that situation.

It’s a little too late for that now, I suppose.

It was really bizarre, my dude. I showed the text I’d written to Lucca to several friends for their assessment of it. Content and tone.

They all agreed. It was friendly and logical.

I’m sure Mom kept Lucca’s absurd accusations in her memory though.

It would certainly be weaponized against me at some unexpected moment in the future.

And this really makes me worry about you.

Your mother and your sister are both pathological liars.

You’re a smart kid. You’re going to realize this sooner or later, whether you want to or not. But Mom and Lucca are sociopaths, and sociopaths do not change. They will always be liars. And it’s disturbing to exist amongst liars, especially when they’re people you love.

I can’t even imagine being raised by one.

And you having to endure this alone with me or my family helping to offer counterbalance the falsehoods and provide counter-narratives to Mom’s deceptions.

I come from a family of honest people who have integrity.

I pray for you every day. Your mental health and that Mom doesn’t permanently wound you. I don’t know if I could live with the guilt of bring you into this world, only to have Mom poison your mind.

Please stay strong, kiddo. I love you.

And believe me, I know you love your sister. I’m not telling you these nasty things about her to make you feel less about her.

You can love her, but you have to have the armor of awareness in order to maintain your sense of reality in the face of narcissistic deceptions and gaslighting.

Mom WILL make you question your reality, I promise. And you will feel lost and disturbed by, and you won’t know why.

You will resist admitting to yourself that Mom is sick. That she has a personality disorder. Just as I did, and I was worldly man in my thirties.

You deserve to know the truth. You deserve to have the facts. I just hope that you don’t discover them until it’s too late.

Stay strong, my dude.

I love you so much.

Love,