As previously mentioned, Big M started hating me more after I hit puberty and her rantings progressively got more and more outrageous and abusive. As a result, I started breaking out in shingles very frequently – nearly every 6 weeks. My parents say I was born with a scar on my left cheek, just near my eye. Over the years, I would get blisters that would scab over. When I was 12 or so, a pediatrician took a SCRAPING (yes it hurt like a MoFo) and it came back herpes. My father told me my mother gave me herpes. Ironically, my mother has never even had a cold sore… Jackass gets cold sores all the time… so, if herpes is coming from anyone it’s him. After that diagnosis, Big M took me to Toronto to see ‘her’ doctor who diagnosed it as Herpes Zoster. I was prescribed Zovirax tablets 5 times a day for 7 days when it broke out. Ironically, stress is the trigger.
During my first two years in high school, Big M either hated me or tolerated me while trying to drive a wedge between my sister and I. Roxanne and I were far smarter than she gave us credit for, we saw her little mind game tactics and let her believe she won. Meanwhile, when we took a break from working, we sat in our little hiding spot, exchanged notes, and planned our next move in our game of chess. To this day no one ever saw us there – sitting on a platform above the stairs on the 3rd floor, accessed only by sliding our feet along a tiny 1” piece of shoe molding on either side of the wall above the stairs – everyone just focused on looking down as they descended. We had dad’s Bed-warmer figured out pretty quickly, she hated one and love-bombed the other one, sometimes for weeks at a time. If I needed jeans, or a new shirt, and well, let’s face it she hated me more often than Roxanne, my sister would pretend she was the one who needed it and Big M was very happy to oblige. We owned so many clothes that Big M could never keep our wardrobes straight anyway.
When Maeve ‘hated’ me, my sister felt even worse I would imagine; I know I did when the situation was reversed. It meant watching your best friend, your only person who truly understood, the one who was in the foxhole with you; be treated like garbage, worse than Cinderella was treated. You were expected to go along with it, step in to it, and participate. I understood the game, my sister on the other hand found this part of the mindfuck tricky, but she is also younger than I am by 26 months. I understood she was doing what she needed to survive, to not be screamed out, to not get grounded to her room, or ridiculed in front of people. I was used to the treatment, it didn’t make it easier, but it definitely made it easier for me to provoke her to make her look like a complete lunatic. I mean, I was literally grounded every single day, what was she going to do? Hit me? Ground me more? I really didn’t care. Her freaking out was me winning and then I got to walk away while dad got to hear what a bitch I was and how much she hated me.
My entire life, the one message that was drilled home was that work comes first. Always. To this day I have a really hard time relaxing; I’ve made significant improvements in this regard, but for years, I worked a full time job and one to two part time jobs well into my late twenties. I assure you, my work ethic is pretty strong; I have a very strong sense of responsibility; and a strong desire to please for a pat on the head. I cannot take criticism in any form without ugly crying in private later. When I was complimented by Big M, it was almost always a backhanded compliment or something sarcastic unless it was about my baking or cooking skills. I try so hard to be my best, be a good employee, wife, mother and when I fall short I take it like a stab to the chest and convince myself I’m a piece of shit (I'm getting better at not calling myself a PoS).
Prozac wasn’t really helping my depression, in my humble opinion, but it did make me more determined to be 1990s model thin. Living in that house was like being a prisoner, your choices and decisions were illusions, unless you selected the choice the Narc Duo wanted you to choose. Having zero control over my own life led to me make very drastic and unhealthy choices. At 15, I became dependent on laxatives as a means to control my weight. I had tried forcing myself to vomit, but I’m not a puker so that wasn’t an option, and besides, my library research on bulimia had indicated that the stomach acids would ruin your enamel and I did not want to be discovered. I was down with anorexia, but I worked out pretty hard, I was always on the go, I was already mocked when I was hungry, and not eating used to make me lightheaded and caused my hands to shake … and I like to eat. Laxatives would have to do so I could eat and not gain weight. My cocktail of preference was Milk of Magnesia and a couple squares of Ex-Lax. Later, I added Ephedra, an appetite suppressant, and caffeine pills to my regimen.
Picture this: An un-showered dark-haired Irish woman wearing a muumuu, unruly bedhead hair, unwashed large moon shaped face, weighing 400 pounds preparing her breakfast plate at the stove as she shuffles over to sit down in front of you at the kitchen table; making the chair creak. She likes to cook her own meals rather than eat the healthier option served to the residents upstairs. On this particular morning, she has deep-fried a pound of bacon, her eggs, leftover potatoes; and she has toast slathered in a thick layer of hard butter topped with marmalade. After adding sugar and milk to her tea, she picks up her fork. Looking down at her plate would make any normal person want to vomit at seeing food floating in grease, but not her. Once her meal has been packed in, she notices that much of it has ended up on her muumuu and in one swift motion; she picks up her butter knife and runs it all along the front of her mu-mu before putting the rest of her breakfast in her mouth. She won’t change yet, now she’s tired and has to go to bed so “Margeaux! Clean that mess up.”
Of course, she’ll feel very sick in a few hours and blame it on Diverticulitis. Self-diagnosed. She likes to call everyone else a hypochondriac but she always has to have the last word and best disease. She loves to visit her in-town doctor because he also writes whatever prescription she asks for after a self-diagnosis - she's a nurse don't forget. Maybe, had she not single-handedly decided what was wrong with her for years, they would have found out she had Lupus sooner.
When I saw Danny DeVito’s performance of the Penguin in Batman Returns, I immediately saw the resemblance to my father’s concubine and it’s something I can NEVER un-see. She wears a fleece green and purple muumuu, she has a very pointy nose, yellow teeth from being a heavy tea drinker, she always walked hunched over, breathing heavy, and waddling from side to side. The funniest shit I’ve ever witnessed.
Just joining me? Start at the beginning:
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