Seeking validation from psychopaths

I was pondering this on a white wine hangover after a boozy afternoon with my ol’ ma.

Grandma Kat – (it’s not her real name, she changed it when she moved to Florida, to a ‘retirement community of sprightly seniors’ and wanted to relaunch herself with a name she preferred to the one her own mother gave her – a dubious, ex-man’s name, like Hillary or Tracy, so I can’t blame her really.  But in general, I do change names to protect the innocent – and the guilty) but Kat she is, and Kat she will be, not least because kitteny Ava is happy enough to call her it.

Kat had returned from said community, on her annual summer migration, and to be honest it was a fucking relief to see her.

Things reached a head last week, and I did something stupid; well, more than one thing, but I can’t go into details here – but just let’s say I woke up in the wrong person’s bed, walked out of the wrong room, and nearly, nearly wrote the wrong letter.

I miss my mum, but she’s got her own stuff going on, and when I see her, it’s like nothing’s changed despite six months under the bridge. We cracked open the wine and sighed as a winter of discontent eased under each other’s comforting, familiar gabble.

But sometimes it’s coz she’s not there that I struggle so much. God, I don’t want to complain – among the other reprobates, two of them have lost their mums, and by god they never get over it, although time may superficially heal the wound, the canker of misery and loss broils just beneath the surface, as I have seen close at hand with both of them.

But my mum left me as a baby, and there it is, an irrevocable fact that I cannot ever quite recover from. She had her reasons, of course, but I will never completely know them, although they undoubtedly involved her own mother (beautiful, OCD, spent two years of my mother’s childhood in a sanitorium with TB), and my father (eight years younger and undoubtedly on the spectrum), who apparently broke her nose – but whether or not this story has transmogrified from the story of my mother’s mad Hungarian first marriage, which may or may not have lasted all of three weeks, it’s hard to say, because time plays tricks on the mind and memory. And embellishment runs in the family.

But as I lay awake with hungover thoughtfulness and an empty bed – Tom had gone to the pub with Kat’s newish partner Keith – I thought about the things I allow people to say to me.

I’m attracted to cruelty, like a moth to the flame. There is an element of masochism in it, the same sort that attracts my mother to bullies perhaps, so maybe it runs in the genes? Or maybe it’s because I like men like my father? But who would want to be that much of a cliche?

But this week, two people I used to love have taken it upon themselves to tell me what they think of me, and none of it has been kind. But as I am the type to want to change peoples’ opinions, back I go, needling and obsessive, to try and make them like me again.

But I forget that other people are as mad as I am, sometimes worse; and as much as I can be self aware, other people are not. There are those who enjoy watching others suffer and play disturbing mind games to watch others implode.

They are charming, and well liked, and take pains to ensure that no one sees it when it happens. And there is nothing I can do to make them understand that they have hurt me, because they don’t care, they never will and they take pleasure from watching me squirm – but then, they can’t help the way they are any more than I can.

So onwards – upwards seems a little too optimistic for me – but that’s probably just this week. But I resolve to stick to people who are nice to me every time, not just when they want something. Because people can’t fundamentally change, so there’s no point trying to make them, or even trying to understand them. Except Jonah. Because I’m his only chance of  turning out okay. So it’s okay to be a little obsessive about him.