[FearNot]

Congrats on your raise. I am glad that they realized you are worth it! and good for you for going after it!!!

It's nice your D is back, regardless of the challenges.  You should probably the naked dance in the hallway, you haven't lived if you haven't done that. Jk!

[terra]

OffRoad, CONGRATS on your raise! Well done, you!

I missed your July update, so I’m glad you revived your thread; I think yours were among the first that I followed when I returned here (whenever that was). And it’s good to hear that your D will be home again, that the two of you have what sounds to me like an easy-going and naturally respectful, intuitive, witty and understanding dynamic. I wasn’t able to be at home at any point to save for a house, so I don’t own one. I have always known I will leave this option fully available to D no matter what, and thus far whenever I’ve said so to other parents, they’ve sort of rolled their eyes a bit or stared, as if living with progeny after that progeny has come of whatever age is just not normal or the least desirable or tenable.

I think it is probably normal, desirable, and plenty tenable for many families. And in any case, pretty practical, especially now during C19 circumstances. I’m grateful that I’m not the only mom who is willing to welcome an adult child’s return, and I’ll be happy to follow along with you in support here, and when you need a cheer section.

Super thrilled for you on that raise. That seems like it is several accomplishments all at once!

[stillbaffled]

OR - better get the materials you need to build D a sit and stand desk!  I bet she's going to be envious of yours.   

[OffRoad]

Thank you Fear not, Terra. And yes, SB we got her a sit and stand desk.

Updating my thread. My D has come back to live with me for a while while she saves up money for a house. I have no issues with that as we get along very well, though it's been challenging getting everything sorted for her.

I still had a considerable amount of items from my Mother's house sitting in my D's old room. Her room was one with a 12 foot ceiling in it that she and I had put up 2 twin loft beds, installed in the walls, back  in 2010, when we had a friend living here with her. (My best friend's D who was also my D's friend, because BF and her family were moving to another state and her D wanted to stay). So  we boxed up the multitude of photos and such, went through everything else which we decided to keep or go, and proceeded to move all craft items into the spare room that is used for guests. Then we made the two Twin beds into a Queen platform for D's Queen bed, bought a solid aluminum marine ladder to hang off the side over the window seat (due to certain restriction in the room, there was nowhere to put a floor to ceiling ladder once the Queen platform was in), add new side rails so she could not roll out of bed. So it's step up on the window seat and climb the ladder into bed. If she gets a boyfriend, we might be in trouble.

Getting the mattress up was a challenge. I have no ability to walk like a normal human anymore, but my arms still work just fine and once I plant my feet I'm fairly solid, so D and I are wrestling this foam queen bed up onto the platform, through a hole that is just barely big enough and we aren't  quite tall enough to reach. So I turn and grab one of the old side rails and hand it to her, then grab another one, and we wedge them under the edge of the mattress and push it right up onto the platform. D and I work well in tandem.

We then hooked up the swag light to a pully so she could raise or lower the light to the top floor or bottom floor, added a sit and stand desk, two monitors and a chair to the space below and Voila! Work room and existing storage below, Bed and new storage above.

Don't ask about the spare room, though... Or some of the other living spaces. One thing at a time.

Next post, revelations.

[OffRoad]

I mentioned this on another thread and thought I should add it in here. After D moved in, we were in the middle of a conversation regarding relationships in general, and out of nowhere D said "Dad never cheated on you." I was not surprised, because for the longest time, I had seen no tangible evidence of that, and only in the past few years found items that pointed toward him actually having an Ow. So I said, "Why would you say that?" And she said "Because he told me he didn't. He said (first girlfriends name) wasn't even in the country then. He knows I wouldn't have ever spoken to him again if he had." Lights are going off all over, because I knew this to be untrue. I knew he had met with this high school girlfriend, at his parents house, on his birthday three months before BD, and I said so without thinking. Conversation ensued, and suddenly things that hadn't pointed to him cheating on me linked up to exactly that in the light of facts and lies he'd told the kids and me. In point of fact, I had specifically asked about this person because not only had he met up with her, and I found a card to him from her, but her name was on his business on a website that referenced who got contracts at which companies AND her name was associated with the house he was living in. He had said he wasn't with her and gave me a different person he was "now" with. It was a lie from start to finish. Anyone surprised? I didn't think so.

D said " Why would he lie?" And I said "You said it yourself, if he'd told you the truth, you'd never speak to him again. But you will and it doesn't matter. All I care about is that you don't buy the garbage that this 'just happened'. He planned it, he executed it, he chose it. It's the difference between dropping an egg on the floor and throwing an egg on the floor."

The conversation was great. And my worries about my kids were lifted.  Whether D believes me or her father doesn't matter. She knows that he might or might not be telling the truth.  Knowing what he does allows them to have a relationship but still know he could be lying to them. It protects them from listening to things he tells them that are patently untrue, while making them out to be the crazy one for saying different (gaslighting also came up in the conversation). D also seemed relieved, as if something she suspected had been confirmed.

And right then, I reached "meh".  I knew he had unfinished business with this old girlfriend, because I asked him way back when "Why did you break up with her?" (He always went on and on about how great they were together). He said it was because they were leaving high school. I later found out his parents didn't really like her. So it all makes sense in that screwed up MLC way. She is beyond an affair down, but as long as she is nice to my kids, whatever. Although during the conversation D said "It's obvious this is a mid life crisis for Dad. If they ever break up, she'll take him for all he's worth." And this explains why he is so paranoid about my coming anywhere near the house  he and S21 live in. Because she is there and if I see her, he knows I know he lied. And he still can't seem to handle that.

I was one of the lucky ones, if such a thing can happen in this mess. With the exception of BD, almost everything else came to me when I had had time to adjust to whatever level of acceptance I was on.

Next post, early Christmas

[OffRoad]

So the original plan before D moved out here was for D to to pick up S on the way home, work for a week here and we'd have early Christmas here, then they'd head back for "big family Christmas" at their father's house. But then....

D decided to take a different job here. Good choice since her company lost a  big contract and laid off 22 people the week after she left. She came here and was livid. Her grandparents (XH's parents) had decided not to go to AZ because their doctor recommended against them traveling with Covid (mind you, they traveled with Covid all year up until now). This was a sore spot for D because her grandparents canceled out at the last minute on traveling to see her graduate from college, and they did cancel for a very silly molehill reason that Grandma made into a mountain, as she is wont to do. (I don't ask why XH had an MLC, I often wonder what took so long). So no Grandparents for "big family Christmas". The Universe. It's a fascinating thing.

D travels back to pick up S, stays for a week and works from there as best she can, brings S home (Covid hair, ahhhhhh......) and we go to town. We go out searching for a tree at Home Depot. It's a thing, it's like going through a line at Disneyland. There is only one way in and one way out. You can't go backwards, only forwards, so if you like a tree, you have to drag it along with you in case you find one you like better. And there are shade cloths everywhere, so if you are in one cubical of trees, your sneeze won't make it to the next cubicle of trees. Follow the footprints on the ground, around the corner between cubicles, through the maze. I wish I had taken pictures. And I was once again reminded of how not disabled friendly most places are. Want to pay for that tree?  Go walk way over there to the store to pay for it. You don't see how the "disabled" features are not so hot until you really can't move around very well.

This year, it's the Raider's of the Lost Ark tree (Staff of Ra at the top, hat, bullwhip, snakes, little tiki god, treasure map as a tree skirt, that kind of thing), but D wanted a short tree to put up on a box so we could wrap the biggest boxes we could find and fill the base of the tree with boxes. Did you know a shower chair makes a good base for a 5 foot tree? Found something to do with one item from  my mother's house. It was exactly what we wanted. And as it happened, I had purchased a new MSI Raider laptop for each kid, so we had big boxes to put under the tree already. It didn't stop D from re wrapping the Halloween lizard skeleton I keep on my desk and putting it under the treehttps://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-10-in-Animated-Skeleton-Lizard-8342-10214/312516219. She wrapped each joint separately so it kept roaring even in the paper. Everyone was re gifted at least one item. I got 14 Exit games. Because.

We watched Phantom of the Paradise (it's an experience), and Lost in Space and Castle, and played Exit games and the Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle (I like cooperative games-I'm all about being on the same side against the truly evil) and ate so much crappy food none of us want any crappy food anymore. And I cut S's Covid hair. Red curly surfer hair everywhere.

And yesterday they left for the next Christmas gathering. And it's OK. Ish. It's the first Christmas without the kids on Christmas, and I think having it before (instead of after) made it OK. I'll be going to my sister's house tomorrow where there will be five people only sitting in the back yard, six feet plus apart trying to figure out how to pass out presents. It will be another experience.

Happy Holidays to all who celebrate them!!

[Seahorse]

OR -
Catching up and following along...
It sounds as if you truly did make salsa out of those lemons!
The tree sounds terrific, despite the shenanigans you had to go through to get it.
I'm happy that you were able to celebrate with your kids early (as was I).  Which is way better than the alternative of not celebrating with them at all...
Enjoy your time at your sister's today, albeit socially distanced and outside...

Sea

[KeepItTogether]

OR--I was literally smiling ear to ear reading about your Christmas with your kids. How fun are you guys?? I love it all. And I am a huge Raiders of the Lost Arc fan. Maybe you can post a pic of the tree??

On that conversation with your D. So great and cathartic for you both. Guaranteed she knew he was lying, or at the very least, he wasn't telling the entire truth. So funny he is still hiding his life from you in some vain attempt to maintain that "good guy" status they all seem to want, while doing the most hurtful things. It is such a strange  thing this MLC.

Merry Christmas.

[OffRoad]

Thank you Sea and Kit. I seem to have a habit of losing my own thread.

I went to find it because I once again had a fascination conversation with D. Some background for those new to my thread. Xh has dyslexia and dysgraphia which was passed down in different ways to each of the children. He also had, imo, several undiagnosed differences, one of which had to do with hearing everything in the room as if it were the same level and right next to him, and the inability to remember short term--he relied on lists. S has my elephant memory, but D has similar issues as her father. The difference between D and her father is that XH tried to pretend he was "normal", but would get angry because he wasn't, but the rest of the world didn't know and couldn't know how much excess noise actually left him out of conversations or realize he did not remember what he did last week, and D recognizes and acknowledges her differences so people get it.

The other day D said to me, "I can never tell people my experiences or memories." I asked why. D explained to me that she cannot trust her memories. That someone will tell her a story, and then it gets stored in her mind. At some point,  she might tell the story to the same person who told it to her as if the story were her own. It's embarrassing for her.

Once again, this would explain a lot of things about XH'S behavior. He was often taking credit for things I had done in front of other people. When I would ask him about it later, if he realized he wasnt even there for the event he took credit for, he'd get angry and tell me I was wrong (gaslighting). I KNEW  I wasn't wrong and could most times even prove it, and I didn't understand why anyone would do such a thing. UNLESS as D said, he really didn't know until someone told him different.

I asked D how she knew that was her issue, was she sure it wasn't someone else gaslighting her, but she said it had happened with enough people that she was pretty sure it was her.

We have since worked on memory mapping for her, so she better knows what is hers and what is not, but she will likely always have limitations. But she brought up an interesting point. What if your memories are lies? In my mind, a memory is the persons interpretation of the event at the time it happened.  Everytime you access that memory, you can reinforce it, or change your perception of it. And the feelings that go with that memory might stay the same or change, much like how music or art can invoke a feeling or thought process and that can stay the same or change.

My take aways from all that is that:
You cannot be expected to understand people who won't tell you that they are different if they choose to hide it.
Not everyone who sounds like they are lying actually know they are not telling the truth.
If someone tells themselves something often enough, they can think it is truth.
Someone else's "truth" is not necessarily MY "truth" and is often no more than a different perspective.
If someone is determined that theirs is the ONLY truth and nothing is going to change their mind, ain't nothing I can do to change that.

For those that might have similar problems as my D, might their personality change based on whom they are with and the stories they hear, especially if they do not know or acknowledge that they take on others experiences as their own? Was my XH only what he appeared to be because of my OWN stories that he absorbed as being his? It would explain so much......

[HeavenlyFocus]

My take aways from all that is that:
You cannot be expected to understand people who won't tell you that they are different if they choose to hide it.
Not everyone who sounds like they are lying actually know they are not telling the truth.
If someone tells themselves something often enough, they can think it is truth.
Someone else's "truth" is not necessarily MY "truth" and is often no more than a different perspective.
If someone is determined that theirs is the ONLY truth and nothing is going to change their mind, ain't nothing I can do to change that.

For those that might have similar problems as my D, might their personality change based on whom they are with and the stories they hear, especially if they do not know or acknowledge that they take on others experiences as their own? Was my XH only what he appeared to be because of my OWN stories that he absorbed as being his? It would explain so much......

Fascinating post OffRoad.  My W has continued to Lie and has not admitted to her inappropriate relationship. What’s interesting is I think she has been dealing with darkness and hidden problems since her near death experience over 10 years ago.     It makes wonder what she is hiding as she has said occassionally that she feels numb since getting real sick.  Ultimately she has her truth and i have mine. Tough to see her struggling but all I can do is let her go.  Thanks for the insightful post.