5. Mendacious
Mendacious
[men-dey-shəs]
Adjective: Frequently dishonest or deceitful
We need to teach kids to recognize and call out mendacity, evil, and schadenfreude when they see it. There are clues--overly cloying behavior, approval-seeking, and words that don't match actions.
God I shudder at how many people have seen me that way. I have been mendacious and approval-seeking. I hate that. I have to approve of myself to not be seen as mendacious I think.
God I shudder at how many people have seen me that way. I have been mendacious and approval-seeking. I hate that. I have to approve of myself to not be seen as mendacious I think.
That's why students don't trust teachers and other authority figures sometimes, even when they're being authentic.
This is why I didn't trust my mother for so many years and why I still struggle with it. She left us for eight years because she was an addict. She went all over the country, being controlled and brainwashed by some abusive psychopath. I have more compassion for her now but it's still hard to trust her. I know she went through childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Her alcoholic mother didn't believe her, and even punished her. Grandma Adrian herself was probably numbing the pain of being a woman born in 1933, poor, and abused herself. It was Illinois. Bleak poverty, economic depression, and fixed gender roles. So I forgive my mom and love her, but I can only take her in small doses and I still have trouble trusting her. She once had such a lacking of self love that the mendacity she learned to survive died hard, and is still dying. And so is mine.
When I lived with her during my first quarter in grad school, she needed so much from me and I wasn't ready to give it. I wasn't emotionally or mentally able to be her best friend, confidant, mother, sister, whatever. I needed someone else to do the emotional labor, and for me to do my own and stop pushing it on my new friends in my cohort.
She'd get jealous if Rodney and I went for a run or anywhere. Well, I needed to run! She could've come but she was smoking and stewing and taking care of us in ways she liked to and probably putting too much on herself and not getting her needs met. I didn't thank her enough for all those meals.
I digress. I moved out of the house because it reached a breaking point. She forgot to pick me up from work when she said she would. She had been gambling all night. She went on a bender and drained she and Rodney's savings. And that was the beginning of the end of their relationship, and why she went into a very dark place with another abusive psychopath who almost killed her. Rodney was a loving, smart, and amazing human who loved her and cared deeply for her. Deep down she didn't feel she deserved it so she went back to the dark place. Flittering between light and darkness is exhausting.
The psychopath she was with broke her ankle by stomping on it, and he had Sasha (she and Rodney's beautiful black and white Australian cattle dog) sent to the pound and probably killed. Because Sasha didn't trust him and he wanted her gone. I could cry for hours thinking about it all. He controlled and manipulated her so much that she wouldn't let me come over. They were high on painkillers or high on something, and I demanded to be let in. I yelled at him from the window "I know you're in there you psycho!" He barged out and yelled at me, "This is our property and you're trespassing!" My mom came out and said, "You uppity bitch! You think you're so smart but you don't really know shit! You don't know how the world works! You're such a dumb bitch!" In that moment the psycho demanded that I leave her old car there--the Toyota Tercel she'd given me for grad school. "How will I get home?!" I screamed. I had driven up from Olympia. This wasn't happening again. My caregiver wasn't abandoning me again! Not again. I thought we'd been through this. I thought this was over. I'd made it to my 30s. She'd made it through nursing school and into home ownership. "She never signed the title over to you, bitch!" laughed the psychopath. Her neighbor Rob heard the screaming and came over to help. Cops were called. They calmed me down and told me to leave them and the car. Rob drove me back to Olympia. It was another dark night of the soul for me. How could I trust her again after that?
I keep her at arm's length because she talks incessantly, even interrupting to show what she knows or share some paraphrase of something that was already said or that is obvious. She's painfully insecure, or just in pain, and her mind just won't stop the chattering. She's bossy, she tells you how to live, she wants to be seen as competent, or seen at all, because so few in her life have actually seen her.
The mendacity of psychopaths is how psychopaths can play with other peoples' trauma. I daily watch the president and his minions abuse Americans, many of whom are so comfortable with the abuse that they see him as a savior. That's all my mom really wanted in all her fucked up relationships, someone to see her, and save her. I've wanted that too. It can be dangerous to want that so much--it makes you willing to compromise on basic dignity.
She'd get jealous if Rodney and I went for a run or anywhere. Well, I needed to run! She could've come but she was smoking and stewing and taking care of us in ways she liked to and probably putting too much on herself and not getting her needs met. I didn't thank her enough for all those meals.
I digress. I moved out of the house because it reached a breaking point. She forgot to pick me up from work when she said she would. She had been gambling all night. She went on a bender and drained she and Rodney's savings. And that was the beginning of the end of their relationship, and why she went into a very dark place with another abusive psychopath who almost killed her. Rodney was a loving, smart, and amazing human who loved her and cared deeply for her. Deep down she didn't feel she deserved it so she went back to the dark place. Flittering between light and darkness is exhausting.
The psychopath she was with broke her ankle by stomping on it, and he had Sasha (she and Rodney's beautiful black and white Australian cattle dog) sent to the pound and probably killed. Because Sasha didn't trust him and he wanted her gone. I could cry for hours thinking about it all. He controlled and manipulated her so much that she wouldn't let me come over. They were high on painkillers or high on something, and I demanded to be let in. I yelled at him from the window "I know you're in there you psycho!" He barged out and yelled at me, "This is our property and you're trespassing!" My mom came out and said, "You uppity bitch! You think you're so smart but you don't really know shit! You don't know how the world works! You're such a dumb bitch!" In that moment the psycho demanded that I leave her old car there--the Toyota Tercel she'd given me for grad school. "How will I get home?!" I screamed. I had driven up from Olympia. This wasn't happening again. My caregiver wasn't abandoning me again! Not again. I thought we'd been through this. I thought this was over. I'd made it to my 30s. She'd made it through nursing school and into home ownership. "She never signed the title over to you, bitch!" laughed the psychopath. Her neighbor Rob heard the screaming and came over to help. Cops were called. They calmed me down and told me to leave them and the car. Rob drove me back to Olympia. It was another dark night of the soul for me. How could I trust her again after that?
I keep her at arm's length because she talks incessantly, even interrupting to show what she knows or share some paraphrase of something that was already said or that is obvious. She's painfully insecure, or just in pain, and her mind just won't stop the chattering. She's bossy, she tells you how to live, she wants to be seen as competent, or seen at all, because so few in her life have actually seen her.
The mendacity of psychopaths is how psychopaths can play with other peoples' trauma. I daily watch the president and his minions abuse Americans, many of whom are so comfortable with the abuse that they see him as a savior. That's all my mom really wanted in all her fucked up relationships, someone to see her, and save her. I've wanted that too. It can be dangerous to want that so much--it makes you willing to compromise on basic dignity.
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