If you want to understand this woman? You can’t start with the marriage. You can’t start with the divorce. You have to go back. Back to the source code, the original sin. You have to understand that she wasn’t born a monster; she was forged into one, piece by miserable piece, in a crucible of inherited madness. Her life isn’t a story of one woman’s choices; it’s the final, ugly chapter in a book of generational poison, a legacy of ruin passed down from mother to daughter like a cursed heirloom.
~
Her story begins not with a loving embrace, but with an escape. Her mother, a woman who was by all accounts a bit of a loon, married some Canadian and fled north, thinking she’d hit the jackpot with free medical care. She popped out the baby—our subject—and then scurried back to the States, minus the husband, a ghost already haunting her daughter’s birth certificate. This mother, she was young once, with the kind of blonde hair and pretty face men wreck their lives on, and she knew it. It was her only currency. She traded it for a Navy man, for the illusion of security, and got two more kids—Cassidy and John—out of the deal.
That house was a goddamn psychological war zone. With the husband out at sea, playing soldier, the mother became a tyrant, a petty god in a kingdom of linoleum and cheap furniture. Her brand of motherhood was pure warfare, a masterclass in pitting her own children against each other to maintain control.
Our subject, the oldest, the pretty one, was anointed the Golden Child. Her looks were her shield. She learned early that a pretty face could get you a longer leash, a blind eye, a pass. While her sister Cassidy, the smart one, the one who could see the rot for what it was, got the back of the hand. The story of the mashed potatoes tells you everything you need to know. The mother makes some slop so salty or garlicky it’s inedible. Our subject, a child, can’t eat it. A normal mother might sigh, might throw it out. This one? She sees defiance. She sees a challenge to her authority. She grabs the kid by the hair to force-feed her, and when she finds knots, the whole war pivots. It’s no longer about the food; it’s about the hair. “If you can’t take care of your hair, you’re not mature enough to have it.” Out come the scissors. Hacking it down to the scalp. It wasn’t a haircut; it was an execution of spirit. A lesson in breaking things.
And where was our subject during all this? Standing by. Watching. Maybe even chiming in with the chorus of derision aimed at her sister. Because in that house, survival was a zero-sum game. Every blow that landed on Cassidy was one that didn’t land on her. She wasn’t just a witness to the abuse; she was a quiet, self-serving accomplice. She learned the first and most important rule of that family: side with the tyrant.
John, the boy, he just got smothered. “Momma-nized” into a soft, useless creature, his spark extinguished before it could even catch. He became a ghost long before he ever picked up a meth pipe.
And just when you think the forging is complete, the world throws another log on the fire. Things get so bad at home that the authorities step in, and she’s shipped off to foster care. A “heavily Christian” home, full of Bibles and values. And there, in that house of supposed salvation, she was molested. Repeatedly. By the caretaker’s own son. The ultimate hypocrisy. The final lesson: there are no safe harbors. Not at home, not with God. The world is a dangerous place full of smiling predators, and the only person you can rely on is yourself, and the only weapon you have is the face you show the world.
Then comes the next chapter in her education. The “bad boy” phase. A 21-year-old exchange student shacking up in their house of horrors. She’s sixteen. Was it love? Lust? Or was it just the first available escape hatch? The details are murky, but the outcome isn’t: a pregnancy, followed by a quiet abortion. Another secret to bury. Another lesson learned: your body is a tool, a key that can open certain doors, but sometimes those doors lead straight to a back alley with a man in a cheap suit who makes your problems disappear for a price.
That’s the woman who walked out of her childhood. Not a person, but a collection of scars, survival tactics, and a deep, simmering rage, all hidden behind the beautiful, well-rehearsed mask of the girl next door.
~
When she met you, she wasn’t looking for a partner. She was looking for a project. An escape. She’d just come off a failed engagement with the boss’s son—another attempt to use her looks to climb a ladder that broke underneath her. Then you came along. You weren’t a rich boy, not polished. You were a raging alcoholic from the shipyards, a piece of white-trash with ambition. A “thoroughbred.” You were dangerous, which was exciting, but you were also smart and driven, which meant you were her ticket out. You were the perfect mix of chaos and potential. You were two refugees from two different shitholes, and you made a pact.
The move into the Mormon church was a masterstroke of her performance. She wasn’t a true believer. You were the one who got hungry for it, the one reading the books, trying to stitch together a new soul for yourself. She just saw the costume. It was perfect. The structure, the rules, the built-in community, the squeaky-clean image—it was the best mask she’d ever found. She could play the part of the Good Mormon Wife, and everyone would applaud. She could finally be the person she’d been pretending to be her whole life. And you, in your own desperate attempt to escape your past, you bought the whole damn show. You baptized her. You put her on a pedestal. You thought she was the most honest person you’d ever met. Of course you did. You were the audience she’d been rehearsing for her entire life.
~
A performance like that can’t last forever. The mask gets heavy. The smile starts to crack. And one day, over a broken goddamn garbage disposal, the real person underneath clawed her way out.
That rant, that wasn’t an argument. It was an unmasking. It was the moment the actress got tired of her lines and decided to burn down the whole goddamn theater. The venom that came out of her mouth wasn’t about the sink, or your mother, or money. It was about everything. It was years of resentment, of feeling trapped in a role she’d chosen but now hated, of looking at you—the man who was supposed to be her escape—and seeing just another warden in a different kind of prison. The factory default settings, the programming she’d inherited from her own mother, kicked in. The tools she reached for weren’t communication and compromise; they were character assassination, manipulation, and pure, undiluted rage.
From that day forward, the woman you thought you married was dead. In her place was this new creature, this bitter, jaded, manipulative stranger who looked like your wife but spoke with her mother’s voice. The gaslighting started. The lies. The constant, grinding crazy-making. You could never pin her down, never get a straight answer, never an apology. It was a rollercoaster designed to make you question your own goddamn sanity.
And the binders. My God, the binders. A normal person has a fight, yells, maybe throws a plate, and moves on. She? She took notes. She became a goddamn court stenographer for every perceived slight, every argument, every mistake. She compiled dossiers on her own children, on their boyfriends, on her friends, on you. This wasn’t about memory; it was about ammunition. It was the pathological need of a deeply insecure person to control the narrative, to have a file cabinet full of evidence to prove that she was always the victim, and everyone else was always at fault. She was already building her legal case, years before the first lawyer was ever called. She was preparing for a war you didn’t even know was coming.
~
When you finally retired at thirty-five, thinking maybe if you were home more, things would get better, you sealed your fate. Your presence robbed her of the stage she performed on for the outside world. It forced her to live with the reality of the miserable, two-faced life she’d created. She hated it. She hated you for it. Your success, your freedom from the 9-to-5 grind she was still trapped in mentally, it became another thing to resent.
The divorce wasn’t a separation; it was a campaign of total annihilation. It was her masterpiece. The new man, the fat, passionless guy from the computer store, he was just the “whistle in her ear,” the little devil on her shoulder telling her what she already wanted to believe: that she deserved more, that you were the villain, that she should burn it all to the ground and salt the earth.
She didn’t just fight you in court; she fought you in the court of public opinion. She weaponized your children, turning them into little soldiers in her war. She launched a smear campaign that hit the PTA, the Girl Scouts, the church—anyone who would listen. The narrative was simple and effective: she was the abandoned mother, the saintly victim, and you were the monster who ran off with a million dollars, leaving them destitute. It was a brilliant performance, her final and greatest role.
She didn’t want to win. She wanted to destroy.
~
So, who is she now? Look at the picture. She’s a multi-millionaire living in a two-million-dollar mansion that’s paid for. She won the war. She has the money, the house, everything she thought she wanted. And she’s miserable.
She’s alienated from her entire family. Her mother, the source of the poison, is still alive, still crazy, and they don’t speak. Her sister, the one who saw the truth, is a ghost to her. Her brother, the one she helped break, only calls when he needs cash. Her own children? The oldest fled and never looked back. The middle one, the one she tried to break, maintains a careful, guarded distance, a relationship built on the landmines of past trauma. The son, the soft one, is still under her thumb, but he’s planning his own escape.
And her great prize, her new husband? He’s not a partner; he’s a subject. A fat, older, impotent man she can control. He’s the opposite of you in every way, and that’s the whole point. He’s safe. He’s not a challenge. He’s a warm body to fill the empty space in a cold bed, a willing accomplice in her quiet, joyless life. Her working at his little computer repair shop isn’t about money or passion. It’s about control. It’s another cage, but this time, she’s the one holding the keys.
What’s her future? It’s already written. She will continue to push away anyone who gets too close to the truth. She’ll use her money and her victimhood as both a shield and a sword. She will likely die alone, just like her grandmother, in a beautiful house full of expensive things, clutching the one thing that allows her to survive: the single, solitary, all-consuming lie that none of this was her fault. The poison has come full circle. She escaped her mother’s burning house only to become the lonely, bitter queen of her own ashes.
Author’s Note:
I remember it clearly. I was in Hawaii, of all places, thousands of miles away, the ocean right there, but the old ghosts were still rattling their chains. I found myself texting my mother-in-law on Facebook, of all goddamn things. The booze was flowing just right, giving me that cold, hard clarity. And I asked her, point-blank.
I laid it all out. After all these years, after all the people you’ve damaged and hurt, after you’ve pushed everyone away and now you’re just this isolated old woman that people stare at—not because of your beauty anymore, but because you act like a goddamn nutcase. After the child abuse, the hatred for men, the way you turned your own kids against each other and watched them grow up as broken as you are… after all that, do you have any goddamn idea what is wrong with you?
Her answer came back quick. No hesitation. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she wrote. “Are you talking about my daughter? That’s all her. That’s all her fault. She’s the liar. She’s the illusionist. She… she… she…”
It just went on. A waterfall of blame.
So I tried again. I pleaded with her, almost. “Look,” I wrote, “I’m not asking to be an asshole. I’m asking because I don’t want my own kids to end up like that. Is it a disease? Is it something that happens when you turn twenty-eight, you just turn into a goddamn whack job? Tell me. My kids all seem normal now, but I need to know.”
And again, just pure denial. She didn’t have any problems. The world had problems. Her daughter had problems. But her? She was clean.
Right then, I knew I’d never get a straight answer. But after getting all this shit down on paper, writing it out, looking at the whole ugly map of their lives… I’m confident now. My children won’t be anything like their grandmother—the woman who took a perfectly good blueprint and built a ruin, the woman who ruined their mother. That poison stops here. It has to.
