Day 2

 I'm not going to worry too much about timelines at this point, but rather just go with what's here at the moment and it will all get out eventually.

I would like to talk to Adrian's mother, Dorothy. I would love to hear her side of the story. For four years, I heard almost nothing good about her. Every time Adrian talked about her and shared an experience he had how he remembered it, it was always very one-sided. There was never ANY consideration of her as an individual human being, and what she may have been going through, or what her motivations may have been for the choices she made. I had a hard time seeing Adrian as this total victim as he portrayed it to be, because I know that there is always another side, another person involved, and their entire makeup of who they are, their experiences, their resources and examples that have influenced them in life, their preferences, their physical makeup, injuries, relationships with other total individual human beings.. 

There's just so much that goes into one human being's experience that contributes to who they are. It never made sense to me to not consider at all, the 'who THEY are', (or were), within the memories, within what is experienced. Thus I would often, at first, bring this up for consideration, because I would have thought that the point of going through our past experiences is to come to a better understanding. To take things less personally. But this was usually shut down or ignored. The focus had to be only on him and what he experienced and how that made him feel. The other person was never considered, as an equal. 

So for years and to this day, I wonder. I witnessed an argument between them one time when we were staying at her house in Ontario. One thing that struck me about this visit was his entitlement. This expectation that this person was to open her home, and share meals and her space and time with us, and there was no reciprocation on our end. He claimed that she would always hold these things against him, like cooking for him, and was always manipulative about it. Maybe all this is so, I'm not saying there's nothing going on there. BUT, what WAS happening in actions, was that this woman opened her home to us, gave us her bed to sleep in, made food for us several times, cleaned. It's not nothing to have guests in your home. But the way he disregarded this really struck me. It didn't matter what she did. Then one day, an argument started. Mostly it was Adrian bringing up the past and berating her. When she tried to defend herself, he shut her down. She was not allowed to speak. At all. She was to SHUT UP AND LISTEN. I felt so uncomfortable there, I wanted to say something but didn't feel like it was my place. I don't actually know their history, everything Adrian had said up to that point made her sound really awful. So I really didn't know what to do in that moment, but sit through it. I thought this was something that Adrian needed to 'get off his chest'. 

But it just didn't feel right that she never had a chance to speak for herself. And when she tried to, he would claim that she's making it about her, and invalidating how he experienced it. But just because someone else had their own motives, their own experience, their own side of things from their individual experience, doesn't invalidate your experience. I was waiting for her chance to tell her side but it was never allowed. She was to just accept his version of things as all there was to it. 

I wish I could reach out to her. I keep being tempted. Especially with where I'm at now with understanding these types of behavior patterns. And for Nika. In case Dorothy is not the evil person he makes her out to be. In case there is someone their with a beating heart and caring spirit, being the version of events I was given. But I don't know. And after what I read in her witness statement.. I can't go past the line I've drawn for my own peace and health and safety that know says it's not at all worth the risk. Even if she was just being used as a 'flying monkey' by her son, who of course they were suddenly seemingly 'buddy buddy' after I left, the things she said about me were extreme to say about someone you don't really know. It would be very hard for me to get past that. It's pretty much a point of no return that was crossed. That as a mother I wouldn't want my child exposed to that kind of maliciousness, beneath an overly 'positive' exterior. Reading 'her' words (she couldn't have known most of the things she claimed, they were obviously lies told to her directly by Adrian) makes me think that maybe she was as awful as he made her to be. At any rate, it seems like she is a person who, like Adrian, must be loved from a distant. Your own worst enemy in disguise of your closest 'loved ones'.

I'm so sorry Nika. I'm sorry these kind of people are in a way a part of your life. I don't know what the future holds. But I'm doing my best to cut out the harmful toxicity. We don't need to go through that. I've lived a life of trauma and I will do whatever it takes to prevent that for you. I wish everyone was healthy and genuine, but we are not there yet.