#laemmlevison

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.