Didn't mommy and daddy show you enough attention - when you were a child!?

When I was twelve years old, we had to move out of the 1156 Sherwood Ct address. The landlord wanted to make the house available to his or her adult child. I don't remember if the landlord had a son or daughter, but a husband and wife came to the house as we were preparing to move. One of them was the landlord's kid. I was with my mom in the family room as she spoke to the couple. She mentioned to them that Allie, my younger sister, had been born in the house. This confused me, so I spoke up and said something along the lines of "No, she wasn't. She was born at Good Samaritan Hospital." Mom denied this and I responded in reaffirmation. She smiled dismissively and said "What do you know? You were with your dad at the time."

How could she have misremembered such a thing? She was wheeled out the front door in a wheelchair and we got into a limo which drove us home. I have a picture of me in it, grinning triumphantly. It was in this instance that I became aware of my mother's habit of lying... constantly... about everything. Everything.

As the years passed, her dishonesty either became more pronounced or I just got better at detecting it. Either way, her inability to tell the truth was more than habitual. It seemed compulsive and I began to question whether or not my mother was at all in touch with reality. I would watch and listen as she would have amicable conversations, showering others with compliments, and then literally the moment the other person was out of earshot, my mom would unleash torrents of insults. She did this with everyone. Everyone. It was in my late teens when I realized she was probably doing it to me too. I began having to question whether or not my mother's continual I love yous were just lip service. They were just that - designed to ingratiate.

This was eventually confirmed by the woman I was dating in 2012. I was thirty-two at the time, at the lowest point in my life. I thought Tina leaving me was the worst thing that ever happened to me. No... it was living with my mother again. I moved back into our family home in Palo Alto to try to save up some money for school. It was a nightmare. The hoarding. Navigating the filth. The hours and days of cleaning that were undone in moments by my mother's potential as a living conduit to the garbage dimension. It was just like being a child all over again.

My girlfriend was there at the house but she had to go to work. Instead of me driving her, my mother took her to work because she happened to be going that way anyway. Mom showered us with I love yous as she walked out the door - the way she always had for as long as I can remember. My girlfriend later recounted to me that the moment they got in the car, my mother asked her "How can you be with that loser?" My girlfriend described it as my mother flipping like a switch, which terrified her. My girlfriend hid this from me for a long time, afraid to hurt my feelings. I laughed a little when she finally told me, because I had already pieced it together a long time before that and had just accepted that my mother didn't really love me, but that she had always used me as a method for validation.

I have honestly never felt loved by her. Not once. She's like a robot. Trapped... somewhere... where authenticity does not exist and every part of your personality has to be poorly fabricated and unconvincingly integrated. Life is a bad movie with major continuity errors and you think everyone is an extra and simply won't notice. I can't imagine how lonely it must be. She reminds me that it is important to constantly seek reality and to, above all, be honest with oneself. I would rather live in the bleakest and loneliest of realities than ever entertain a fantasy of wealth and power.

I followed my mother's example for a long time - being a liar. Being a thief. Being a fraud. Being a drug addict. Destroying my own friends' lives. I told a desperate woman that I loved her, then pulled the rug out from under her as soon as it was convenient. She killed herself. I abused the love of my life, Tina, like an object. I was so mired in my mother's example. My choices will always be my choices and I live their consequences every day. I'm glad I eventually saw the light and came back to reality; I just wish the worst thing I'd ever done was break into a few houses and construction sites, not treat the people who loved me for me like such shit.