Something Crazy

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

I see a pattern starting again. One of accusation not for the reality of that thing happening, but for the reality of hoping you will appear to be better in other's eyes. Why? Your mind is slightly twisted, your thinking slightly warped. Warped from the past abuses that only you know of. That is not my reality and yours appears crazy to me and crazy to others. Crazy in that the craziness is co crazy that it results in life changes.

"Church crazy" started some years ago. 95 or 97 or so. I can't recall the exact date. Just the circumstance. It started with the phone. Calls. We never knew who was calling. We never knew if it was male or female. We only knew a caller. Private. Requiring privacy for you. I thought friend. You never really had any real ones all my life so I thought this was great.

One day you talked to me about how you had chosen the wrong one to spend a life with. You told us that only you could go to church anymore as you had made a decision to be with the pastor. Why, he is married. Very, it seemed to me. Only you, so that the church could see a separation in the household. After a month I was to attend again with him so that I would be seen as supportive of him. That is your husband. My dad. Why am I now mixed up in the crazy. Why could I not attend church for a month and only go again with my dad?

Shock. Hurt. I knew you had lost your mind. Dad looked so sad. This kind of crazy I have know well and in the past. It is not real. The situation is not real. It is in your mind. All made up. You even wanted to move in with me. To get out of your house. You wanted me to get rid of my animals, my sofa, my freedom. My sanity. You wanted to live in my livingroom on a sofa bed. Oh HELL no! I got you an Apartment Finder. Your life was not with me. It would be the death of me. It would be the death of my sanity. I gained it back from all the years of crazy I endured when I was a child. I was not reliving it as an adult.

I waited. I watched. I knew that the crazy would finally end. Months later it did. You refused to sit on the same church pew with him. Dad. Still trying to show a separation. Yet you lived in the same house and rode in the same car. Daily. I waited. I watched. I refused to go to church. When I did go I had to listen to how you heard secret messages from the pulpit just for you. It was in your mind. Just as I knew it always was.

You became angry with me as I refused to give up my beloved sofa, my living room and my pets. You yelled that my cat was more important than you. It was. It was my sanity that was in my cat. In my sofa and in my livingroom. There were plenty of condos and houses and aparments out there. And you had money. You could live anywhere you wanted. Unlike me who was not as financially set. It was in your mind.

Soon other members began to snub you and talk about you and were envious of you. Or so you said. It was in your mind. I was not there to see, so I do not know what was real. From past experience, most of it was not, could not be possibly true. I waited. Soon the messages from the pulpit began to turn on you. You said they were all about you and against you. The enamorement changed to hate and ridicule. You accused him of talking about you from the pulpit to us. The crazy was only with us and we were sick of hearing about it. It was in your mind.

Soon the crazy took a public turn. You began to go to the church to have meetings with the pastor about the messages you were getting from the sermons as he spoke. I was there a few times. I heard just general statements to the congregation as it related to his sermon. I heard no secret messages. Finally after the 2nd or 3rd meeting, he convinced you that he was indeed speaking in general terms and no secret hidden messages were being delivered from the pulpit. You admitted to getting things all mixed up in your head. Finally. He was not leaving his wife for you.

That clarity was short lived. Now instead of positive messages, secret messages, now you heard negative ones. Sundays are supposed to be peaceful and full of praise. We had to heard a litany of this, that and the other for the rest of the day on Sunday afternoon. I learned not to come over on that day. It still was all in your head.

A big day came. A big day of crazy! You accused the pastor of staring at your breasts and at your feet and of having some sort of foot fetish. And of sending you mixed sexual messages. He is a man so who knows how much of that was true. I do not think any, as his wife and he were a very unified force as always. Our membership at our family church that we had been attending for four generations would soon be like so much dust in the wind. And all for something that was all in your mind. We stopped going for about 6 months and went back. The messages from the pulpit began again and every word he said was somehow all about you. It was all in your head. There was one last blow up that you told us about. You vowed never to go to that church again and demanded that noone else go either.

Now that did not sit well with me. I was not involved in any of the craziness. I just heard about it. Why could I not go to church? I went and it was hell with you. You saying that I was not being supportive. I disagreed. Everything with me and the church folk was just fine. Or so it seemed. I did notice that the immediate cronies of the ministers wife was no longer speaking to me and mine. That was uncomfortable. There was no fixing it either. I tried. It was because of you. I and mine did not go again. It was all in your head.

I looked around and found a new church. Me and mine attended for about 6 months. You jumped on the bandwagon. I was not pleased. That baggage, that garbage is still in your head. It has been 2 months since you joined. Accusations have begun against me publicly. Why? It is all still in your head.

The first was with a bible study. I had been going for months and you decided to attend the morning one. That was good. I was going at night. Well one day, you had not done your lesson in the booklet ahead of time and I guess was embarrassed in class. You called me that evening before mine and said that the minister would be talking to me. What? About what? Taking your book. Well, I have never seen your book or taken it. I have my own to do and complete. Needless to say the minister did not say anything to me. As it turned out she had done one page, several pages were stuck together and she had done several pages in another chapter. I had not taken your book, you had messed up your own and did not look at the page numbers. It was all in your head.

I am sure that ministers talk and so do ministers wives. The ministers wife of this church works with the ministers wife of our old church. I am sure that they have been told all the craziness. I cannot imagine that they have not been told. It is funny because sometimes when we are leaving and shaking all the hands after service, she will say, "minister, I need to talk to you." You can just call on the phone or talk to him at your bible study. It seems a way for her to feel like she is a part. She feels she has to have the ear of the minister. It is in your head and trying to get out.

I did a project that got congregational recognition. It ate you up inside. I was the reader last sunday. You asked how much notice I had, like it was a spur of the moment thing. My name was printed in the program. It was planned. I guess she will be trying to volunteer for that. She can't be left out, you know. I wrote a devotion that was used for the entire congregation. It was great and was used. She was asked to do one but it did not turn out well and was not used. She questioned if I actually wrote mine. She knows I did. It is what I do. Write things.

I attend a monday night ladies circle group. It kills her that I have a relationship with those other ladies that she does not have. I can tell. She is jealous. So jealous that it is making her crazy. I attend an adult sunday school. She has been hinting for about a month or so that she wants to attend. Thank god there are 2 other adult classes to attend. If she goes into mine, I will be moving on. It is all in her head and waiting to come out. She was having trouble with one of mine and was giving them a needed lecture. That was enougt. Her next thought? She was going to tell the minister and all her church mentors what a bad person sh e was. Do you know how crazy that will look? Here is a grandmother just walking up to various people and telling them bad things about her own grandchildren. And it would not even be true.

She said she was going to tell them that her grandchildren hated her and treated her mean. Why? A tween was being a tween...just a little attitude. Nothing out of the norm for a tween and nothing serious. What was the actual scenario? Refusing to do math when told. Does that warrant telling numerous people in your church congregation that your grandkids hate you and that is not the case? What will they think of our family? Mine?

I see it as a way to make others think less of me and mine and what I am doing in the church and to put the focus on her. Sick! It is all in her head. I immediately had to jump in and tell her that she was totally out of line and inappropriate suggesting that she would just begin to talk about her own family negatively. She then stepped into the poor old grandmother mode, trying to help a child who is ungrateful and how she did not deserve to be talked back to. All for not wanting to do math.

Something is building. Something bad. Made of jealousy, greed and negative attention. Something crazy. Something unreal and not based in any reality. Something all in her head. Something. CrAzY!