Finally Figuring It Out
When I was much younger, in the late 60s or early 70s, I really wanted to live on a farm or country place. I knew a lot of post Haight-Ashbury hippies had found old farm houses and move in as a group. So my boyfriend and I went looking for these groups out in the country in California. And we found several of them but our times at them never seemed to last for more than a month or two.
It's taken me all this time, into my old age, to figure out what went wrong at all those beautiful country hippie houses. The stories of what happened at each one were so much alike. And I always wound up as the bad guy (or gal) of the story. It's taken me all these years to figure it out.
Here is what would happen to my boyfriend and I about once a year.
We would locate a group of country hippies and show up requesting to join them. They would generously agree.
On the first day I awoke there, I would ask them why they didn't have a vegetable garden, or even a flower garden. Everyone would shrug and say that no one was interested in having a garden.
I would talk to each person about how good fresh veggies taste, and pretty a garden can look, and each person would either express complete boredom with the idea or even outright hatred ("I grew up on a farm and my parents used us kids for slave labor; I'll never plant or harvest anything ever again!") Finally, I would realize if I wanted a garden, I'd have to plant it myself, alone, working in the hot sun with NO help or encouragement.
So that's what I did. Eventually, the plants came up and mostly all I had to do every day was water it.
Then...the head of the group would come to me and tell me that I had to leave because someone in their group said she hated me and so did her husband and they were threatening to leave if I didn't agree to go. This would stun and amaze me since it was always a couple I barely knew, so why did they suddenly hate me? I was told they both refused to speak to me and no one seemed to know why they'd suddenly started hating me.
On the day I left, I would ask everyone if someone would be watering my garden. Everyone told me no one wanted to water it. No one but me, after all, had ever wanted a garden anyway. My garden would die. I felt sad about this, but I still had to leave.
Years later, maybe 5 or 10 years later, I would find out two things that surprised me. First, the reason for the hatred of the couple that forced my expulsion from the group. It was always the same. Someone had told the woman of the couple that I was making a play for her husband. Never, ever true. For one thing, I am, always have been, way too unsure of myself and insecure to try and compete with a wife for her husband. And I consider myself essentially ethical and a classy person, not someone would try to break up a couple. It just wasn't, still isn't, my style to try to do something like that. Furthermore, just by chance, these men were not attractive to me, either physically or emotionally. So the whole idea seemed ridiculous to me and it amazed me that people actually believed it apparently. That was why I'd had to leave. And my boyfriend with me.
So I left for what seemed like mysterious reasons knowing my garden would die of thirst because no one but me cared about it. Very depressing. My boyfriend shrugged it off as fate and moved on easily and happily. We drove away in our van and never returned.
Years later, when I talked to someone who'd lived there and was finally told why I'd had to leave, I was also told that my garden had been watered and maintained and that everyone ate veggies out of that
garden for months. I was told about barbecues they'd had with lots of the corn I'd started roasted and enjoyed by everyone. In some cases I was shown a photo of the garden filled with the sunflowers I'd planted blooming, and other flowers blooming all around the thriving veggies. My reaction: I was happy the garden had survived.
By now you've probably figured it out. But it took my old age, post retirement, to add it all up. Since all these stories were so alike, comparing them told me a few obvious things.
Basically, these people wanted to enjoy living in the country without having to do any work. When they got me there, they had a free gardener. I put in the garden they were too lazy to put in themselves. They didn't really want me or my boyfriend to live there but they loved the idea that I could, and would, create a garden for them. They pretended indifference but that was just a pose to get out of doing any of the hard work. And once the garden was up and thriving, all they had to do to get rid of us was to tell the most insecure woman on the place that I was after her man. In order to assure her he was true to her, her husband would have to take her side 100% on the issue of my remaining there. So they had a good excuse to get me and my boyfriend to leave. Years later I would find they'd all got a lot of food and fun out of the garden I'd planted.
I have a hard time with manipulators like that. They used to get the better of me and they sometimes still do though I'm much more cynical and less naive than I was back in the day. But complicated liars are hard to unravel, at least for me. I just don't see through them easily. And they seem to know just how to play me. Thinking about it makes me feel stupid. I guess it's hard for me to relate to that much complicated dishonesty. Isn't life tough enough without that kind of craziness?
Anyone out there ever been a victim of this kind of thing? How have you learned to spot it and deal with it?
It's taken me all this time, into my old age, to figure out what went wrong at all those beautiful country hippie houses. The stories of what happened at each one were so much alike. And I always wound up as the bad guy (or gal) of the story. It's taken me all these years to figure it out.
Here is what would happen to my boyfriend and I about once a year.
We would locate a group of country hippies and show up requesting to join them. They would generously agree.
On the first day I awoke there, I would ask them why they didn't have a vegetable garden, or even a flower garden. Everyone would shrug and say that no one was interested in having a garden.
I would talk to each person about how good fresh veggies taste, and pretty a garden can look, and each person would either express complete boredom with the idea or even outright hatred ("I grew up on a farm and my parents used us kids for slave labor; I'll never plant or harvest anything ever again!") Finally, I would realize if I wanted a garden, I'd have to plant it myself, alone, working in the hot sun with NO help or encouragement.
So that's what I did. Eventually, the plants came up and mostly all I had to do every day was water it.
Then...the head of the group would come to me and tell me that I had to leave because someone in their group said she hated me and so did her husband and they were threatening to leave if I didn't agree to go. This would stun and amaze me since it was always a couple I barely knew, so why did they suddenly hate me? I was told they both refused to speak to me and no one seemed to know why they'd suddenly started hating me.
On the day I left, I would ask everyone if someone would be watering my garden. Everyone told me no one wanted to water it. No one but me, after all, had ever wanted a garden anyway. My garden would die. I felt sad about this, but I still had to leave.
Years later, maybe 5 or 10 years later, I would find out two things that surprised me. First, the reason for the hatred of the couple that forced my expulsion from the group. It was always the same. Someone had told the woman of the couple that I was making a play for her husband. Never, ever true. For one thing, I am, always have been, way too unsure of myself and insecure to try and compete with a wife for her husband. And I consider myself essentially ethical and a classy person, not someone would try to break up a couple. It just wasn't, still isn't, my style to try to do something like that. Furthermore, just by chance, these men were not attractive to me, either physically or emotionally. So the whole idea seemed ridiculous to me and it amazed me that people actually believed it apparently. That was why I'd had to leave. And my boyfriend with me.
So I left for what seemed like mysterious reasons knowing my garden would die of thirst because no one but me cared about it. Very depressing. My boyfriend shrugged it off as fate and moved on easily and happily. We drove away in our van and never returned.
Years later, when I talked to someone who'd lived there and was finally told why I'd had to leave, I was also told that my garden had been watered and maintained and that everyone ate veggies out of that
garden for months. I was told about barbecues they'd had with lots of the corn I'd started roasted and enjoyed by everyone. In some cases I was shown a photo of the garden filled with the sunflowers I'd planted blooming, and other flowers blooming all around the thriving veggies. My reaction: I was happy the garden had survived.
By now you've probably figured it out. But it took my old age, post retirement, to add it all up. Since all these stories were so alike, comparing them told me a few obvious things.
Basically, these people wanted to enjoy living in the country without having to do any work. When they got me there, they had a free gardener. I put in the garden they were too lazy to put in themselves. They didn't really want me or my boyfriend to live there but they loved the idea that I could, and would, create a garden for them. They pretended indifference but that was just a pose to get out of doing any of the hard work. And once the garden was up and thriving, all they had to do to get rid of us was to tell the most insecure woman on the place that I was after her man. In order to assure her he was true to her, her husband would have to take her side 100% on the issue of my remaining there. So they had a good excuse to get me and my boyfriend to leave. Years later I would find they'd all got a lot of food and fun out of the garden I'd planted.
I have a hard time with manipulators like that. They used to get the better of me and they sometimes still do though I'm much more cynical and less naive than I was back in the day. But complicated liars are hard to unravel, at least for me. I just don't see through them easily. And they seem to know just how to play me. Thinking about it makes me feel stupid. I guess it's hard for me to relate to that much complicated dishonesty. Isn't life tough enough without that kind of craziness?
Anyone out there ever been a victim of this kind of thing? How have you learned to spot it and deal with it?
70-79, F
