The Case for Cutting off Your Entire Family and Other Toxic People
I was raised by two of the biggest toxic pieces of shit I will ever meet in this lifetime. Society would refer to these abusers as my “mother” and “father” but they are not my parents in any way shape or form, blood be damned. Hence, my more appropriate name for them: the wardens.
What made it so difficult to get away from the wardens was that they made me reliant on them. I didn’t realize that I was reliant on them though. When you grow up in an abusive family, you don’t know how bad it is because you don’t have anything to compare it to. That also makes it easier to be manipulated.
The female warden loved to infantilize me to make me reliant on her. I fell for it because I thought it was love and I wanted to be loved. I slept in the wardens’ bed until I was nine years old. I had no idea that it wasn’t healthy. The only reason I started sleeping in a separate room was that she pushed out two more kids to suck the energy out of. Lucky me.
When I was a teenager and trying to learn how to drive, the male warden would “teach” me by yelling at me and freaking me out before I drove an inch. To this day, at thirty-seven years of age, I don’t have a driver’s license. The times I did attempt to drive, it stressed me out too much. I’d rather just get a taxi or walk. Taxis are cheap in Thailand thankfully.
I was also financially reliant on my parents. I tried to find a job, but other than becoming a prostitute and selling drugs, I did not come across any job opportunities for an underage teen. It was totally possible for me to be like a white kid with a good family and set up a lemonade stand or some shit, but I lived a very poor area of Los Angeles with a high concentration of Latinx and Asian gangsters. The lemonade stand wasn’t going to go over well there. In that kind of neighborhood, your options are stealing, selling drugs, or fucking for cash.
Call me lazy or not having enough of an “entrepreneurial spirit,” but I just didn’t want to do all that. Plus, I didn’t have parents to encourage me to be independent, so any thoughts I had of getting a job were immediately knocked down. So I dealt with more years of emotional torment and abuse from the wardens until I could be legal and get a job.
When I was nineteen, I finally did get away. I found a cheap room in a Vietnamese family’s apartment through an ad on the PennySaver. I also got a minimum wage job at the clinic at my community college and I got out of that hell hole. I lived on ramen and peanut butter sandwiches and it was the best ramen and pb&j I had ever tasted since I tasted them as a free, autonomous human instead of the property of two sadistic jailers.
When I moved out, the female warden immediately busted out with the crocodile tears. “I miss you.” “Come back.” “I promise it will be different.” “I talked to him, he said you can have a computer in your room so you can masturbate to lesbian porn in the privacy of your room! Isn’t that wonderful?” That bitch tried everything to suck me back into the Abyss like one of those harpies in the Odyssey.
It didn’t work though. I told her that was quite alright, I was very comfortable with the Vietnamese family. They minded their own business and I minded mine. That’s exactly the kind of arrangement I had been asking for since I was six years old.
But even though I had moved out, the toxicity of the wardens was still having an effect on me. I didn’t realize this until I completely cut them off, but that wasn’t for another six years!
I gave them more chances because I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do. I thought since I wasn’t in their house anymore, things would be different. But of course, things didn’t change. The male warden couldn’t break into my room and call me a whore anymore, but the female warden was still able to pick on everything about my life that did not meet her standards.
Binging on alcohol and becoming a stoner was the only way I could see dealing with what was happening. I even got married at twenty to someone I didn’t love, but who loved me, just to get the wardens to stop thinking I was a whore and get them off my back. At the time, I still cared what they thought. I was still stupid and being manipulated by them.
I thought I was being independent and free, but I was still the same lost teenager but with bills to pay, a job I didn’t like, and a marriage I didn’t want. I traded one prison for another one that wasn’t as bad.
Growing up, I thought the male warden was the evil one and the female was at least neutral. But in hindsight, she was just as toxic, but differently. Her brand of abusive behavior is the hardest one to see because it’s so subtle and calculating. She knew exactly what to say to make me feel bad and suck up my emotional energy without my realizing that’s what she was doing. Those kinds of abusers are known as narcissists, I like to call them “slow poisoners.”
It’s easy to spot the “monster” type of abuser: they’re typically an alcoholic or abuse drugs, yell a lot, throw things, slap you around a few or more times, sexually assault you and deny it happened, etc. That’s CLEARLY abuse! The male warden checked all those boxes and I was fully aware he was a monster.
But what about the “slow poisoner?” The one who smiles as they put cyanide in your birthday cake and act surprised when you start spitting up blood? Those are the ones to really watch out for because you don’t even know they’re poisoning you and you might be an idiot like me and think they love you when they only care about hurting you for their pleasure.
The female warden is a slow poisoner. She did things to egg on the male warden, especially when it came to blowing up at me. She told him everything I was doing that would add more fuel to his creepy, incestual fire. She got off on it as much as he did, but I didn’t realize it until quite recently when I started writing all this shit down.
The wardens wanted to control me in every way possible and enjoyed hurting me. The male one liked hurting me by calling me names, destroying my stuff, and threatening to physically harm me. The female warden liked emotionally hurting me and taking away things that I loved.
All my animal companions disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances when I was trapped with the wardens: fish, hamsters, birds, a cat, and a dog. The animals either died during a rare moment when I was not in prison or “a nice old lady with a big ranch took them in.”
With my dog, an adorable Akita/German Shephard mix named Wolfie, I finally got them to admit they put him to sleep because they didn’t want him to destroy the new house they bought. None of my animals died of old age. They were killed before they could get old. But I didn’t realize it until Wolfie was killed. He was the last animal I would have while in that torture chamber. That’s how blind I was to the Slow Poisoner. I really thought my animal companions disappearing was just due to random circumstances. That’s how fucking stupid I was.
The mother of the warden used to kill my grandpa’s animal companions as well. She would get jealous of the attention he was giving them. And I know this since the warden told me. Reflecting back, she had told me this with a smile on her face. I thought she was just laughing about how insane that was but she was just giving herself more ideas on how to torture me. It was a hint, but I was too busy eating her cyanide spaghetti to pick up on that.
So the female warden inherited that crazy fuckery from her mother. The male warden inherited being a sadistic monster from his father. His dad used to beat the shit out of him and stab him with knives and then play the violin after his rampage.
Mental illness doesn’t run in my family, it soars on a rocket ship through all the generations on both sides.
That’s the “blood” I should be holding dear to me! For the record, I don’t have human kids (just cat kids) and I am never having them. Fuck continuing that madness!
It wasn’t until I moved back in with the wardens after having moved out successfully for a few years, that I saw things would never change. The female warden had “encouraged” my husband and me to quit our jobs and move with them to Atlanta. She promised she would buy us a house. The offer sounded too good to be true…and it totally was.
This is that slow poisoner technique. Make your victim reliant on you. I was too independent and slipping away from that bitch’s talons. I was married, had a good-paying job for an evil bank, (they’re all evil) I had my own place, I even had two cats that the warden couldn’t euthanize when I wasn’t home, life was good!
But the bank job was stressing me out. I was doing customer service for the credit card department. Imagine having to answer over a hundred calls a day explaining to belligerent customers that the way they were getting fucked by the bank was legal and “just policy” and “sorry we cannot wave that fee even though you are now at -$1,000 in your account due to bank fees. Sorry Sir or Mam but have a lovely day! Nope, sorry, lube would be an extra $100 that you don’t have. We’re going in dry.”
The poisoner, knowing that I was a creative person who would not take to slave duty at a bank for long, decided that offering to help me financially and buy me a house was the perfect way to get me back into relying on her again. And it worked. I happily quit my job and so did my husband.
But a few weeks before moving time, my husband, who had not had enough of the poison yet, was smart enough to see that harpy’s trick. He said he didn’t think going to Atlanta to rely on the wardens was a good idea. I instantly snapped out of the spell I was under and immediately agreed with him.
We didn’t go to Atlanta but we had a hard time finding another job to replace the one we quit. So we had to rely on my husband’s family which was awful since my husband has an evil cunt mother and two evil cunt sisters. We fought constantly.
Atlanta did not end up going well at all, and the harpy and her monster lost a bunch of money and returned to Los Angeles. I asked them if I could stay with them for a bit since living with my husband’s family was so bad that going back to jail looked better. Of course, with an evil grin, the slow poisoner said that would be fine.
Cut to a few months later, the monster is on one of his drunk rampages again. We’re outside the wardens’ house that the female warden paid for since the monster is always out of work and when he does get work it’s minimum wage shit that barely helps. He is slurring his words and saying I owe him $5,000 in rent and that I am a whore who fucks everything (this again) and I dress like a Chinese prostitute. (oh, that’s a new one at least.)
That’s when I let him have it in a way I hadn’t before. I called him a fucking monster, a rapist, a disgusting, worthless pig, an abuser, a lowlife, and everything I could come up with. He replied by slurringly saying that when he died, I would regret telling him those things and I responded with “I can’t wait for you to fucking die so I can dance on your grave motherfucker!” And I did a dance in my Chinese whore outfit to demonstrate.
I then went to my room and immediately called the harpy to come to the house and get her deadbeat husband in line before we made the nightly news. I was about to fucking kill him and there was nothing but jail time stopping me from doing so.
The harpy arrived to nag at her life mistake and acted like I was in the wrong as well. She didn’t apologize for his actions, no fake promises to make sure he didn’t do it again. Just the cold shoulder as if she agreed with him but just not in the drunken delivery.
So my husband and I left a week later. We found some jobs and a cheap little apartment in a nice neighborhood. I didn’t talk to the harpy or anyone related to by blood and they didn’t talk to me. Six months later, right in the middle of a stormy divorce with my husband, I get an email saying:
“Pepper is sick. You should come to visit.” It was from the female warden, trying to send more poison in the form of her sick poodle/terrier mix named Pepper. Pepper was a prick and bit me all the time, but he was a dog so I still loved him.
But by that time, all the poison had completely left my system and I could see her trick a mile away.
My reply was something about how it’s sad Pepper is in her care since that will mean he will be put to sleep soon. I wish the dog the best but am not going to go near that toxic bitch again. I remember what she did to all my animals: to Wolfie the dog, Mitchie the cat, Ben and Sally the hamster, Scully, and Sunny the parakeets. I also remember being molested by a fucking monster and the one person who could have protected me from that didn’t. Despite all my please to leave him, she didn’t, and she even egged him on once I became a teenager and couldn’t be controlled anymore.
I even mentioned remembering her getting raped by the monster night after night because I slept in the same bed as them until I was nine. I remembered everything and recounted every last gory detail in that email back to her to show her just how much I remembered. I then ended it with something about how she was never my mother and she never will be. She is a weak, ignorant, and worthless woman, and I have zero respect for her. I also promised her that if she ever contacted me again, I would fucking kill her. She never contacted me again.
Once the abusers were completely out of my life, I was able to start recovering from their abuse. Because I was still abusing drugs and booze to sort out the chaos inside me, it took a while to truly begin healing. I wish I had cut them off sooner but at the time, I did not see a way to do that.
All of this is just to say, that I know how difficult it can be to cut off toxic people who are close to you. It’s not easy but it’s necessary. The effects of this toxic relationship is a broken cyanide tablet that will seep into every aspect of your life. This poison affected my schoolwork, my social skills, my jobs, my relationships, my spirituality, and even my art. I have been wanting to write a book since I was a child but I was too busy fighting a harpy, a monster, and all the ancestral demons they brought with them.
If there is someone in your life, whether related to you by blood, a lover, or a friend whose words and presence cut you down, hurt you, make you feel less than, keep you from happiness, and are poisoning you slowly or quickly, cut them off immediately. There are so many resources out there. You’re not alone. You can get out.
But you have to want help. The female warden never wanted help. So many friends and family offered to get her away from that creep. I begged her from toddler age on up to just leave him already and even that wasn’t enough. She chose to stay with him and lost me in the process. The slow poisoner never loved me and is incapable of love. I was just a poppet for her to abuse, manipulate, and drain of love and affection, while only dishing out strychnine cereal in return.
If there is a toxic person in your life, start taking the steps to get away from them. Get a shitty apartment and a shitty job with some friends. Call someone who isn’t toxic to help you come up with a game plan. Here is a list of international hotlines to call for help. And here is list of international resources to seek shelter from domestic abuse. Please do everything you can to get yourself out of that situation.
No matter how many arguments you have, how many chances you give, how many excuses and promises they give, they will never change.
Ever since cutting off the wardens, I have a zero-tolerance policy for toxicity. If someone close to me starts talking shit or just has a negative presence that is awful to be around, then they are cut off immediately. That doesn’t mean I cut off a friend for having a bad day or bad moment in life. There’s a difference between a good friend having a hard time and a shitty friend just being themselves.
Once you know what the red flags are you can see the difference. I don’t give second chances, if they do something toxic once, they will do it again. The same goes double for lovers and potential lovers. One glint of a red flag and your ass is blocked instantly on all social media. It took a long ass time to get to this point, but I got here!
Know that no matter what the monsters and slow poisoners say, you can leave that toxic relationship. You are more powerful than you give yourself credit for.
You deserve happiness, you deserve peace, you deserve love. Please love yourself and get away from those toxic people as soon as possible. You deserve better and you can have it. It isn’t easy at all but it’s worth it. Trust me, I know.
If you or someone you know is being abused, please check out this resource guide for domestic abuse. Help is out there. You don’t have to deal with this alone.
