Tag: Go count your wrinkles

Back-to-School Tradition

Today is the first day of school around here. I told my husband it feels so odd for this day to hold no special significance for us anymore. For over 18 years, the first day of school has kicked off a flurry of activity: jotting schedules and events onto our calendars, juggling orientations and open houses for four kids, looking forward to football games, meeting new teachers.

The first day of school is still exciting, though, even with no kids heading back this year. Back-to-school is a time of new starts, a new year, change, anticipation.

At least, that’s how it feels for normal people. For Psycho, a new school year revolved around something far more important to her than the kids have ever been: herself! Why waste precious time pondering the kids’ new opportunities, learning, or any of that meaningless nonsense when it can be all about her?

Yep, a new school year was her trigger to swing into action. There was a fresh crop of un-brainwashed teachers, just waiting to hear the latest rendition of Psycho’s victim story and wondrous tall tales about me and the kids’ dad. There were school events to hide from us and warn the kids not to mention to us. There were tantrums to throw about me volunteering at the schools, because who would believe her asinine lies if I kept showing up in person and showing her up in the process?

Without fail, a new school year also meant trying to remove me from the kids’ online school accounts, because what kind of mother wants a stepmom who (*gasp*) monitors the kids’ grades and attendance? Well, not a mother who doesn’t care if the kids fail a grade or receive truancy letters, I can assure you from experience.

It’s become such a heartfelt new-school-year tradition! Awww, I almost miss it today.

Psycho never seemed to think about how it made her look, though, not to me and my husband (who already know she’s a useless heifer), but to the school staff who had to deal with her petty request. And since I had to talk to them each and every year, thanks to Psycho’s unwavering immaturity and jealousy, I know full well what they ended up thinking of her.

Last year, when my youngest stepdaughter started her senior year, I naively thought that just maybe, Psycho would give it a rest and let one school year go by without her idiotic display of envy and resentment. Nope, Psycho stuck to her bitter guns and once again lashed out with a request to delete me from my stepdaughter’s online account:

Hmmm, another denial. Go figure. Well, at least Psycho has that going for her these days: given that denials, dismissals, rebuffs, and turn-downs are her only constant bedfellows…she should be more than accustomed to rejection in all its glorious and much-deserved forms by now.

Happy first day of school!

Can I Blame Her?

There are less than two months left of this school year. After helping my husband raise four kids for so long, it seems unreal that monitoring grades, asking about missed assignments, emailing teachers, and following school calendars are rapidly drawing to a close.

My youngest stepchild is a senior this year. The kids have always been my husband’s ex-wife’s built-in mechanism for forcing contact with him, and she seems to be acutely aware that the sun is setting on her long-trusted gimmick.

Recently, out of the blue, my husband was invited to dinner with my youngest stepchild, and oddly, with Psycho. Mind you, for 17 years, Psycho has made a career out of militantly withholding information from my husband, coercing the kids to lie to him and hide things from him, requiring an act of Congress for the kids to spend any time with him, and badmouthing us like she gets paid for each ridiculous, jealous rumor she concocts, yet now we are to believe she has spontaneously sprouted basic thoughtfulness and manners…yeah, nope.

Could it be any more obvious? Her days of extorting contact by using the kids are dwindling, and she is desperately flinging out anything she can to beg for scraps of attention before that window slams shut.

I know my husband. He will go, to be with his daughter. He will joke around, put everyone at ease, make everyone laugh, include everyone, so no one feels left out.

And I know Psycho. If he smiles, laughs, or casts even one casual comment in her general direction, she will greedily lap it up like a stray dog slobbering over wayward crumbs. Her narcissistic delusions will ratchet up to full blast, convincing herself of covert meaning where there is none.

My husband is nice to everyone. But after being disappointed and disgusted by Psycho for so long, he interacts with her much the same way he does a stranger in a store or someone randomly passing by on the sidewalk: generic politeness. That is all she warrants (and more than she deserves), by her own choices and actions.

As the final day of the school year approaches, I anticipate there will be even more of these calculated and hopeful invitations, strategically presented as can’t-miss father-daughter moments, with Psycho just coincidentally and inexplicably tagging along, tail and tongue wagging with eager delight. She knows my husband will do anything for his kids, and she will shamelessly milk that dry to her own advantage.

My youngest stepdaughter was quite little when I first met my husband. Here she is, ready to graduate high school, and Psycho obstinately, absolutely refuses to move on and get a life.

The fact is, I realized, Psycho can’t move on. All these years later, and she has nothing to show for it but a string of annihilated relationships, a ratty borrowed trailer, even more desiccated furrows in her moth-eaten leather-flesh, and a pitiable existence, clinging to the kids’ achievements for attention because she doesn’t have any accomplishments of her own. Every breathing creature in the tri-state area is comically aware of her pestiferous reputation, her classlessness, and her attention-whoring instability, so she needs airfare and chloroform to rustle up any semblance of a viable dating pool. Where can she possibly sink from there, besides the grave or an asylum?

I can’t fault her for clinging to my husband, actually. He loves his children and is a tremendous father. He’s an adoring husband. For all of our many and indisputable differences, this is one thing that Psycho, despite herself, and I apparently agree upon: my husband is a damn good guy.

I suppose I can charitably spare a dinner or two. Let Psycho pretend what she pleases. I can graciously indulge her puerile games and adolescent fantasies. It’s sad that she still uses the kids this way, but let’s get real, she was never in danger of being mistaken for even a passably decent mother, and this is obviously the only way she can con anyone into passing time with her. Maybe she can manage to corral her crazy just enough for my husband and stepdaughter to at least enjoy some time together. While Psycho’s ego, delusions, and selfishness leave no room for consideration of anyone else, least of all the kids, my husband never forgets what truly matters. Can I blame her, then, for desperately–yet so futilely–missing him?

Happy Valentine’s Day, Psycho!

I laughed at this meme, because I have never actually known anyone who sent themselves a Valentine’s Day gift and pretended it was from someone else.

Until yesterday.

Over a month ago, Psycho (my stalker) ordered a gift box of wine, strawberries, and roses from a seller on Facebook. Yesterday, Psycho happily posted a photo on her Facebook page, with a gift box proudly arranged just-so on her cluttered dining room table, consisting of exactly the same wine, strawberries, and roses that she ordered herself back in January. It was conspicuously staged next to a small, heart-spattered gift bag, obviously to look like someone else had given it to her.

I am not the only one who knows it was a fake gift purchased by herself, for herself. Many people know. How do I know that? Because they told me. Because they laughed, or made jokes, or just felt sorry for her. It’s a small town, and she has lied so much, been caught lying so many times, that only the most imbecilic twits still believe her absurd theatrics and bizarre fairy tales.

It says a lot that over a month before Valentine’s Day, Psycho knew she had to set the stage for having no one with which to share the day, no one willing to be by her side. It’s not a crime to be single on Valentine’s Day. That’s not what I’m saying. But somewhere, even in the cobwebs of her self-deception and masks and lies she chants to herself, she already knew no one wants to be with her. And she had to start planning her fake Valentine gift.

Sad? Sure. But also deserved. Someone who hatefully uses her own children, accuses innocent people, and harasses people who wish she would just scurry back to her roach hotel deserves nothing less than a fake Valentine gift, pity likes on social media, and a bed as empty and dark as her fetid heart.

I felt a brief twinge of pity. It didn’t last long. She has never shown me any sign of being even a somewhat good person. All I have seen is her raging, seething, pathologic jealousy of me and my husband finding so much happiness together. It’s a never-ending cycle for her: she is always angry that we have what we have, and she remains fixated, obsessed, because it is something she will never have. She can’t make herself stop wanting it for herself, but she is incapable of loving anyone but her own loathsome self.

My advice for Psycho would be: go ahead and start planning now for your fake Valentine gift for next year. Because even if she manages to deceive and manipulate some hapless victim into dating her by then, it will still only be a sham, a shallow, bogus relationship with who he thinks she is, who she pretends to be, which can only last so long. Everyone who finally sees her true self walks away. Far, far away. There’s a damn good reason for that.

She can go saturate social media with victim status posts now. She can sob about being viciously attacked (even though every word is true). She can fling you-go-girl, independent-woman quotes all over Facebook Land. She can go drive by her other ex-husband’s house until she gives herself whiplash and is delirious from buzzing around in mindless circles. (Yes, everyone knows about that, too.) She can go badmouth me to the kids, to anyone left who will listen, though I suspect that number is dwindling. She can piss and moan and whine and bitch until she passes out.

But most of all — and I mean this from the bottom of my heart — she can go fuck herself.

After all, no one else wants to.

Broken Record

I have set into motion several steps toward positive changes recently, was even offered a new position at work (still thinking about it), have dived back into some hobbies that I let fall to the side, and have been enjoying making plans with my husband and trying new things.

So it is even more baffling and stunning to me when I see people like Psycho, my stalker, still trotting out the same old song and dance, still playing the same mind-numbingly stupid games, stuck forever in one dysfunctional spot like a broken record, on repeat. Never growing. Never changing. And, quite frankly, too trashy to even care.

Psycho has two ex-husbands, and I have learned that she has added the second ex’s girlfriend to her growing circle of stalking targets. I won’t say much about it, since that is her story to tell, not mine. But I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad and pathetic: same tricks. Same tactics. Same obsession.

The first time I saw Psycho’s car in a parking lot as she followed me, many years ago, or the first time I saw her IP address blow up my blog stats, I was shocked. Who does that? Who is loony enough to actually do that and not be humiliated by her own actions? Who has enough free time and absolutely nothing better to do?

I’ve had over 16 years to see exactly who. Someone with no identity of her own. Someone who is severely insecure and pathologically envious. Someone with no skills, talents, or positive traits she can call her own, because she has never developed herself, too boorishly intent on watching someone else. Someone with the emotional maturity of a stunted toddler, quick to tantrums, incapable of adult thought processes, growth, or genuine connection.

I have watched Psycho lie endlessly, shamelessly manipulate her own children, lash out at my husband simply because he is happier now than he ever was with her. She has been married again and divorced again, in and out of sketchy relationships, and brags about sending questionable photos to men on dating sites.

After 16 years of her stalking, obsessing, gossiping, projecting, and bitching, I now just roll my eyes at her nonsense. She is never going to change. She lacks the ambition to even want to be better than the classless fool that she is. I don’t understand it, but I don’t need to and don’t even want to.

Sometimes, when I look at my blog stats, I see that Psycho was humping my blog at the exact same moment that I was completing a project at work, having lunch with friends, taking a steamy shower with my husband…basically, living my life and being happy, while she drools uselessly over a phone her daddy pays for, hoping desperately for a new post from me, something to clutch onto and live through vicariously and pretend, for one moment, that she is something, anything, but what she really is.

She won’t stop stalking me. I know that. She knows that.

I will log off after posting this and go back to work, go back to my friends, go back to making plans with my husband for the evening, talk about our weekend. I will go home to someone who adores me, who will wrap his arms around me, grab my ass with both hands, and kiss me like he means it.

And her? She will read my blog with a tight-lipped, bitchy glower. She will go back to a mindless job, to an inbred hick town where more and more people know all about her, to a dumpy home that isn’t even hers, and fill her time with rage, tapping angrily on her phone, bullying the kids, and harassing the women that her ex-husbands upgraded to and of whom she is devastatingly, endlessly jealous.

I almost feel sorry for her. But she chooses to be the way she is. She chooses pettiness, bitterness, and delusions each day of her empty life. She has earned each deep frown line and sour wrinkle with her perpetual negativity and nastiness.

Life is for living. It’s about change, growth, improvement, adaptation. It’s about enjoyment, love, discovery. Each day, we are given 24 hours to do with what we choose. I choose to wrap up this post, log off, get back to a productive work day, and look forward to heading home for a fun weekend with my loving husband.

And as for Psycho? Well…I already know what she will choose. Some things (and stagnant people) never change.

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