Coping with Cognitive Dissonance

Chrissy, Joey, Me, GC Linda

My grandpa would die this summer.

This is the Easter scene at our Grandma and Grandpa's farm house in Nichols, NY.

I am two here holding my ears. GC has nothing to ever worry about as she boldly glares into the camera's lens. Joey, as usual, removes himself by looking down. Chris here is just a normal little toddler - the son of my Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Andy.

Debbie, is about to be born in just a week or two if this is Easter Sunday.

NM got it together enough to make us all look well cared for though.  Here I actually have socks, a cute dress and a sweater.  Joey, too, looks very cute and well put together. It's all about what it looks like. My dad worked hard and brought home more than enough money to clothe his children. But, unless it was a case like this where NM would be measured next to others, we were left without socks and clean underwear ... no pajamas .. dirty bed sheets.. you name it.  Neglect.  That would be me, Debbie, and Joey.  Linda, on the other hand, the golden child, had everything a child ever needed, could ever want.

With the above description you would think our house was unkept, but, the main house, Linda's room, and my parent's room were immaculate.  I do mean immaculate.  And we were forced to slave over it, helping to keep it that way.

It was easy for the NM to neglect the rest of the children, and only close the doors to their rooms should company arrive.  This, too, was an unlikely occurrence since unless NM had use for them, people weren't really welcome in our home - nor made to feel so.

We all played along very well.  No one brought home friends or gave out our phone number.  I remember being a teenager and the phone rang for me once, being glared at by our dad actually.. seemingly that the phone was for me. I quickly hung up. Could be he was glaring about the NM - some drama she perpetrated that day or even the day before - always about the kids being rotten children, but I saw him glaring at me.

I did however earn favor in my later teen years by stepping in for the golden child who left the house to hitch hike across country with hippies. I was now the stand in GC working in NM's business, and doing her dirty work as every single morning began with "Good morning mom." Followed, instead by, "Make my bed."  Yeah, I always thought to myself...  nice... really nice way to answer such a greeting every single day.

Anyway, since during this time period I was the GC, I fell right into the role and so figured my friends might be welcome so I brought once in a great while my girlfriend Karol home. NM was nice to her. I mean civil. Not exactly overly nice. For the most part though I still didn't make this a habit. Karol and I spent more time at her house when I wasn't working for the NM.

My father was the typical co-dependent (emotionally only) as in he didn't notice or allow himself to see what was happening. When he wasn't working outside the home, he was remodeling her homes - doing every single thing she wanted from remodeling to actually building a whole new home.  In these early years we were in our first home, he was remodeling during the years spent there.

I don't know how that goes, exactly. How the codependency provides the glossing over of the truth of the most serious situations of one's life with his children, himself, and his wife, but, it certainly does. There eventually is some kind of substance abuse in order to keep up the glossing as the abuse gets worse, and to stand the pain of what's beneath the glossing while the years press on.

The years she kicked out our brother and signed our little sister over to the state for nothing were the worst for our dad. I saw him using big time to cope. He never once stood up to her, instead over endless all night discussions in their bedroom, he'd allow her to shape his own mind and thoughts as to why it was necessary to eliminate their own children. The cognitive dissonance and pain nearly killed him. If it wasn't for the alcohol he would probably not have lived.

Strange how I just wrote about living.  Actually, Dad wasn't living during is lifetime - he didn't begin to live until his last few weeks of life, when he realized it was all lies about his children the NM filled him with for 50 years. He lay there finally putting it all together in a state of shock as each and every one of the rotten good for nothing children came from all over the country to surround him in his darkest hours. He accepted this love because he knew love - and for once the NM couldn't take it away. Oh, she tried. Right up until his last breath as she screamed aloud that my brother was a liar.

This was of course as you all know when my brother finally turned NM in to authorities for withholding Dad's morphine. He and his wife were the ones not yet kicked out of the home, and allowed to be there - so they were the ones witnessing this torturing masked as NM's own brand of palliative care.

The couple of weeks before that, I'd flown down to say goodbye at the hospital, and NM tried to derail my intentions with dad also... but he did not believe her any longer at that point.  The week after I left for Pennsylvania again, NM basically kicked out my little sister, she was being turned away at the door - not to enter the home to be with dad.  This is operation as usual for the NM - we could have predicted this behavior to come after Dad was dismissed from the hospital and sent home to die.

It's a step by step process..  Here, the NM was grooming our brother for the new role of golden child since for some time NM had been suspicious of GC Linda who is also a covert narcissist.  Living in Florida near each other and seeing more and more of each other - they were in a war for power and control. One as desperate for it as the other. Seeing my brother and his wife relocate then from Ohio to Florida gave NM hope for a more malleable GC at that point in her life. The plan was in the works until he turned her in in the end.

The grooming of my brother is what kept him from turning her in sooner.  A normal person seeing their father suffering, calling for help for three weeks would have lost their mind. Most in three hours - but this lost child who only ever wanted his mother's love sees this grooming as love, and will do almost anything to keep it.  Almost.

I saw this in Joey when I saw him in Florida. He was looking mighty contented being groomed by the NM, and while I knew what was happening, a part of me was happy for him. To see him finally "feel" loved.  Only I knew it wasn't love. NM's have not love. He thought it was and that's what mattered.

Debbie and I tried to warn him that NM is dangerous and he would be hurt in the end, and I remember before his walking away from us for the last time there in that Spanish Oaks Trailer Park in Ocala Florida, the look on his face and with the same knitted brow of confusion that surely if you could see his little face up here in the photograph, you would know what I mean. Cognitive dissonance.

The glossing over. Joey was glossing over all NM's lies about me, Debbie, and Linda while being groomed for next in line. He also was drinking and smoking pot. This he'd been doing his entire life instead of sorting out the childhood trauma. But, then, it was good for numbing and the glossing over of all of the confusing triangulation discussions, manipulations, and control the NM was doling out along with the lunches at Terry's, and the late night shrimp cocktail snacks.

Even after turning the NM in and all of the abuse she perpetrated on Dad, Debbie, and I, Joey fell for NM's slithering back into his heart. Joey's sad sad co-dependent heart.  At first he told Debbie he never wanted to see NM again after burying Dad, and then NM came up with a winner.

She told Joey and Linda that she was the victim of elder abuse by my little sister and me. That we went to her home and accused her of killing our dad three weeks after his death. Of course he believed her and took her back. Now he was going to protect her from ever having to see us again.

NM was doing right then with our brother what she did with our dad their whole lives.

She would tell dad something totally outrageous like that about one or all of the kids, eventually, and he would believe her.  Always ending up with someone being kicked out by the NM and it having to be okay with dad. In this case it was fine with Joey, in fact he was wanting to take measures to go to any lengths to see that we would never be able to enter her home again. (No problem there - we were done and no contact anyway).

On that last meeting with Joey we told him it wasn't true but he was not listening - he was screaming at us.. until further on in the discussion he did listen some and became pensive, thoughtful.. confused. Sad. Finally weary.  We told him the truth - he experienced only pain and confusion.  Cognitive dissonance.

Co-dependents want to believe the NM's but they don't want to think the worst of their loved ones... all at the same time. This always adds up to experiencing cognitive dissonance, and you can see it all over their face until they use some kind of substance which gives them a break from the pain. The next day they begin again.  The NM reminds them of where they'd left off - how rotten so and so is...what all so and so did to her. And for no reason. Adding, "Oh, I thought tonight we'd go to Terry's for dinner. What do you think?"

Golden child invited also to join the grooming child and his wife, they pull into the parking lot of Terry's restaurant in Ocala. Inside, everyone sits there in the darkened booth. All experiencing a measure of cognitive dissonance, but the NM. But, hey, the appetizers are great and the beers keep coming.