The Heist Of My Life

"Dad, have you still got those tapes?" my daughter asked me.

Sophie was referring to presumed audio tape recordings of her mother's phone calls. My answer to her question was "Why don't you ask your Mom....."

"Why after thirty years are you still worried about what might be on those tapes, Mom?"

I knew the answer. Mom was not worried about audio tape recordings of chit-chat about the weather and the price of sausages. What Mom was having sleepless nights about was the power any such tapes would have, to reveal the real Mom.

Back in the day, Mom had narcissistically, portrayed me as a mentally unbalanced loser, a freeloader, a drunkard, a drug addict and an uneducated fool. None of that was the real me, of course. It was the poisonous venomous portrayal by an embittered wife.

In a nutshell, my life had been well and truly heisted, repackaged and spoon-fed to gullible children, her family and friends, and the world at large. It was personality murder. Worse still, there was a sinister plot to physically murder me.

To steal myself back and stay alive, I left forever and disappeared. I heisted the real me right back off her.