Self-Gaslighting
The Continued Chronicles of Divorcing a Narcissist
After the kids moved away B and May continued on with all the usual things I would expect from them. Giving the kids limited access to their phones so we couldn’t talk or text. Blocking my access to the school and medical providers. Actions that went against the terms of the agreement but tracked with B and May’s typical behavior. They had all along accused me of the very things they ended up carrying out.
What difference did it make whether or not I knew what my kids’ grades were? Or what teachers they had? Or what medications my son was taking (or not taking)? Knowing these things would not bring them back.
I tried to put in enough effort to show I was not complacent but not enough effort that I was stuck in a continued web of engaging. In November I requested notes from my son’s last “doctor” appointment with his naturopath. In these notes I found out my son would be going for a psych eval at the local hospital. When I emailed the naturopath for more information, B responded on her behalf.
“We are requesting additional support for our son’s on-going behavioral challenges and mental health.” When I asked what behavioral challenges, he responded, “The behavioral/mental health issues that we were experiencing during the last year have been ongoing. We were hopeful that therapy would help but it appears his emotional state has been damaged beyond what simple therapy can help with. This was an ongoing concern for us over the past year.”
Meaning my “parent alienation” did damage which was continuing to escalate his anger. It couldn’t possibly be that they called the police on him which started a chain reaction that would never stop. I was nervous but I had hope that if someone evaluated my son, maybe he could get some actual help.
A month later I got a call from my daughter. B and May had dropped her at a neighbor’s house on the way to the hospital. She wanted me to know that her brother had been taken to the ER. There had been an incident at the house that ended in May being injured.
I reached out to B to ask what was going on. He said our son had hurt May’s hand and was being taken to the hospital for a mental health evaluation. At this point I hadn’t had a text or video call with my son in two weeks. I found out later that his phone had been taken away for “bad behavior”. I asked B if I could speak with him, but he ignored my request. I asked to be included in doctor conversations, B ignored my request.
Everything I had pushed down in the previous four months was coming to the surface. The fears I had about sending them to live with their dad were all coming true. My kids were scheduled to visit me in one week for Christmas break, our first visit since they moved away. I needed to get my eyes on my son to make sure he was ok.
A few days later, he was set to be released and B still hadn’t let me speak to him. Then a request came in that I was to be on a call with the psychologist from the hospital. B put me on speaker phone with an entire team of doctors and of course May. I thought I was finally being looped in until I realized this was a call of concern. Because our son would be staying with me immediately following his release, they were worried based on the narrative given by B and May that things would get even worse. They told me I was to hide all sharp objects. To have my son on 24/7 monitoring. That he was now dangerous and violent.
By the time I was driving to the airport to pick up my kids, I was a full-on insomniac. Everyday felt like a tunnel I walked through to get to the night. The night was cruel to me. It knew exactly what I was afraid of and projected it to the backs of my eyelids. All I wanted was an escape from reality and much needed sleep. The darkness laughed as the minutes danced by like an evil parade.
Then morning would come and wrap me in its soft light. It kissed my forehead and rocked me gently, trying to lure me into another hour or two of sleep. Let me show you all the possibilities of the world. Just close your eyes. I had to force myself to get out of bed and walk another day through the tunnel.
If a narcissist is good, they will have you doing their work for them without ever lifting a finger. I had been using gaslighting to shield myself from the reality of losing my kids. I told myself that maybe they were better off there. Maybe I was wrong all along. Maybe what the guardian wrote about me was true. My son’s “mental health crisis” brought it all crashing down. I knew in my gut that he was fighting, rebelling against injustice.
I had prepared the house for Christmas. The tree was decorated, the presents were wrapped. Adding to my prep this year, I also gathered the knives, scissors, razors, and pills. Anything “dangerous” I took to the basement to be locked away. By the time my children came to visit, I was pulsating with adrenaline and cortisol, worried about what I would be facing.
My son seemed completely fine during his visit. He didn’t seem violent or out of control. I felt so embarrassed that I had been afraid of him. Preparing for his visit like I was housing a fugitive. I tried to talk to him about the hospital incident. He said his step mother was yelling at him and followed him to his room which is when he slammed his door. She put her hand up to stop him which resulted in her getting it caught when the door slammed. He hadn’t intentionally hurt her like B had insinuated. He told me he felt like his other parents were abusing him. His dad was shoving him around a lot more. I asked him if there was someone he could go to back home if he ever felt unsafe. He said no one would believe him over them. I could totally relate.
A few days after my kids landed back home, my son was taken back to the hospital. I received a message from B four hours after my son had sent me an audio clip of a discussion he was having with his dad. In the clip my son was accusing him of abuse. I could clearly hear B respond saying he knew where the line of abuse was and there was way more he could do to him before he crossed it. The clip ended with his dad screaming that my son needed to go to his room and when he refused, B started counting and the audio clip abruptly ended.
I was paralyzed. I knew my son was on a mission to get out of that house. B would not give me the details about what had happened in those four hours that landed my son in the hospital. He emailed me saying he knew my son had sent me the audio clip and wanted to know why hadn’t I reached out to ask if he was in fact abusing him. He went on to accuse me of orchestrating this “stunt” during Christmas break. Lining it all up in the short time I had with him to execute when he returned.
After the hospital stay, B sent my son to a week-long stay in a behavioral inpatient care facility. The group home gave me more access to my son than B was giving me after reading through our legal agreement and noting that it stated he was to have daily access to contact me. On one phone call during his stay there, he told me he would live in the group home then go back to his dad’s house.
The group home stay didn’t change much besides increasing the dosage on some of his meds and adding an antipsychotic to the growing list of things he was on. Basically they were sedating him into accepting his reality. Family therapy was also suggested. But after just one session there was another round of escalation at B’s house and my son ended up back in the hospital. This time CPS was called.
There were no more hospital stays after this episode. I assumed it was because questions were being asked about what was going on in their home and B and May didn’t want the extra attention it was bringing them. I knew the incidents continued because my daughter would tell me about them like they were ordinary family events. Their step mother threw a book at my son’s head. His dad shoved him off his bed so he hit his head on his night stand. You know, ordinary family stuff.
Somewhere during my son’s repeated hospital stays, my access to doctor’s notes and hospital paperwork was completely cut off. I kept trying to contact his providers for medical information without success. B was doing a very good job of covering up whatever was going on over there. B would only email me with medication changes without any information as to why. I decided to contact my lawyer to file a motion for access to my son’s medical records.
The motion didn’t really help. The only provider that voluntarily released their records was his therapist. The notes were vague but showed that my son was having issues with both of his other parents but his step mother in particular.
B refused to sign releases for any of the other providers which would mean I would have to take him back to court to obtain their records. I had to consider what knowing more would bring me.Taking B to court this early in the game would make me appear bitter and vengeful to the judge and it certainly wouldn't bring my kids back. I felt I had enough evidence to prove that B was indeed blocking my access if ever I needed to make the argument in the future. And B had done enough to show that things in his house weren’t going as well as he would like everyone to believe.
I cannot describe how helpless I felt during this time. Knowing my son was in crisis in B’s house was eating away at my sanity. The times he was in the hospital would trigger another cycle of anxiety induced insomnia. I would pace the floors at night picturing him in a hospital bed being monitored by an angry B, telling his false narrative to anyone who would listen to pave over my son’s own experience. I felt like I was failing him all over again. He was fighting so hard and I wasn’t fighting at all anymore.
Spring break was the next time the kids came to visit me. This visit highlighted the dynamics at B's house. It was obvious they were being pitted against each other by the way they were treating each other. My daughter blamed her brother for not complying, for making her life harder, complaining that he had stolen all her great moments with his fits. My son called my daughter a traitor, a suck up, their step mother’s pet. He accused her of being two people, one when she was with me and one when she was with her. He told her if she fought harder, they would be able to come back to live with me.
I tried to explain that neither of them was wrong, that they both had their own ways of coping. That if survival was the goal, they were both doing an excellent job of it. Our summer visit was just six weeks away and I started fearing it more than excitedly anticipating it. I had everyone else’s words rattling around in my head, drowning out my own motherly instincts. I doubted myself and my abilities to make summer fun and tame the chaos that came with taking care of three kids at the same time.
I made schedules, lists, and planned trips to occupy us for the summer. About a week and a half in, after returning home from our first mini trip to meet some old friends and stay at Hank’s family’s lake house, I realized that I had been making myself sick by judging my own parenting. I had once again been doing the narcissist’s job of gaslighting myself. We were all exhausted, Hank got sick somewhere along the way, so I quit trying to force the fun and I completely let go.
I threw away the lists, I canceled our other trips, I let the kids each plan an entire day of their own design that everyone else had to follow along with. For the rest of the summer the kids finally got to taste some freedom. They rode their bikes to the neighborhood pool without adult supervision, they laid around reading piles of books from the library, they played video games together. I focused on what was necessary like feeding them and doing the occasional load of laundry, but instead of exiting with domestic chores, I let the house go and actually hung out with my kids.
Anything they asked me to do I said yes. Jump on the trampoline? Play Minecraft? Go swimming? YES. It was the best time I had spent with them in years. With very little coming from B and May besides the occasional request to FaceTime, we lived in a beautiful bubble. I absorbed every moment of our summer together. It restored my faith that yes we are connected. And yes I am their mother.
At the seven week mark, transition started to set in. My son was getting agitated about going back, my daughter was talking about the friends she missed back home, and we had all run out of ideas for fun things to do. It was time to return to the reality of school and a routine. Putting them on the plane, I wasn’t sure if we would ever get another summer like that. But the eight weeks we had together did a lot to repair my broken heart. I was filled back up with gratitude and love for being a mother.
That isn’t to say there won’t always be bullshit to contend with. Like my son showing up at the start of the visit with two unmarked gallon ziploc bags of medications labeled as AM and PM. Or him being diagnosed with ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) but B not responding to my request for an explanation of how or by whom. Or that my son’s phone had a history of not being touched for weeks prior to our visit, corroborating his story that his phone does get locked in a cabinet despite his insistence that he has “daily access” to it. The summer gave me strength to realize that it doesn’t matter. Even though it might not be fair or just, it’s not my role anymore, but I still do have a role.
I have had very little contact with my kids since they left for the summer. I still send the occasional email to B to confirm that I am not complacent in my exclusion or his breaking of our agreement. I have had one email from the school about my son’s behavior from a teacher who hadn’t yet been told not to contact me. I never heard from that teacher again.
I know my son plays football because sometimes he shows me his bruises on our video calls. I know my daughter plays field hockey because I got added to the parent list probably by accident and I get updated about when she wins a game or how many goals she scored. I know my son is on new meds and off of old ones but I don’t know why.
We have done our best to move on in our old life. My youngest started first grade. He still asks me to homeschool him occasionally but instead I drive him to school and hope I am making the right decision. Hank and I talk about moving, about starting over somewhere else, but he keeps adding more raised beds to the garden.
So it continues. This is our new normal. A unit of three with visitors that grow our family to sometimes five. Our life still has placeholders for their return like the minivan I drive, because we would never fit in a sedan. Or the rooms that remain untouched that wait for their return. Or their bikes hanging in the garage.
I still spend a lot of energy waiting. For the next call, the next visit, the next red flag that confirms my suspicions. But the grief has lifted enough that I can be curious about what will happen now, in the after. Because the bulk of my life will happen between our visits and they will never know this new life I lead without them. But I have to live it anyway which feels anything but normal.