I hate going down to Port
May. 24th, 2025 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omaewokorosuGoing down to Port Jervis sucks the energy from me. The drive down is long no matter what way we take, though we've found a better route down that bypasses PA completely (I-86/NY-17 all the way down to exit 104, then NY-17B, then NY-42 aaaaaall the way into Port Jervis) that is only a few minutes longer, maybe. And we get to go through areas of NYS that we wouldn't normally (and lose all cell signal upon entering Orange County from Sullivan County, because that's the sticks, I guess, of Orange County). It's a bit more direct that way and it avoids the Mid-Delaware Bridge (they're doing shit with it so traffic would be a nightmare).
There was no one parked on the street. I don't think anyone was home at #3 or #7 (the houses on either side). The house looks virtually the same as it always does. There were two pieces of mail in the mailbox, both addressed to my wife lol. One was a credit card offer (junk mail basically) and the other was from Bon Secours/Westchester Medical, notifying her that our doctor was leaving the WMC medical group and all of our medical shit would be transferred to the doctor they'd listed, or whatever one we opted for if we didn't want that one. Which we wouldn't, because we try to avoid male doctors when we can, and also, we no longer live in the area, so it doesn't matter. Up here we can choose between Guthrie Clinic and Arnot Health. Down there...you're stuck with Westchester Medical. We would've been fucked.
Luckily we're not, because we no longer live down there. We were on the "Just Visiting" side of the JAIL space on a Monopoly board.
So in we went. Reluctantly.
Our first discovery: the power is still on, so either O&R got paid or they just haven't shut it off yet. In any case, it meant I could put my Mountain Dew in the fridge, because I knew I would need it later, but not right then because I was still queasy from anxiety. We put our stuff down and got to work, starting with the kitchen.
We took pretty much everything and set it on the kitchen table. Vintage Corningware (!!!), vintage PYREX (!!!), Waterford crystal (!!!), Campbell's soup bowls, all sorts of fancy things... We took them out. The Corningware and PYREX were Julia's (Father's mother), they're from the 1950s. I wanted them so I could use them. We took the flatware. We took the batteries. We took EVERYTHING. Cooking utensils. Knife blocks.
Into the laundry room. My dad's tools. His Plano full of spare hardware (nails, screws, etc). A utility bucket. Extension cords (both indoor and outdoor) plus a surge protector. Cleaning stuff. Gardening stuff. A lot of things weren't even used (like the cleaning stuff).
Bedroom. I took whatever jewelry was left, which wasn't much (a money clip and watch from my dad, a watch from Egg, Egg's wedding ring).
I took a detour upstairs. I wanted the light switch cover plates that I'd purchased, because they were mine. Do you want to see something "cool"?
The bead is supposed to be in between those two black lines right in the middle, to show that the surface is level. The stairs going to the second floor are the complete opposite of level by the railing. It's level by the wall, but then the further away you go, the more unlevel it goes, until you get that. The solution: walk along the wall, because you're less likely to stumble.
So I went upstairs and took the cover plates: the one in the upstairs hallway, the two in my old office, the one in our old bedroom, and the one in the bathroom. Would you like to see something else that's "cool"?
That's not up to code. That light switch is supposed to be in a box (to keep the hole in the sheetrock/drywall from collapsing and to provide an anchor point). It's not. That whole isn't big enough. It's just shoved in the wall. It's not even screwed into anything, but they put screws there to make it look like it is. Like listen. The electrical isn't up to code in my house either, some of it is literal cloth insulated wiring, which many consider a fire hazard. (Ours is very well taken care of, from what I've seen of it!) One of the light switches is likely done by one of the previous homeowners, using wire connector knobs like my dad used for DIY electrical connections lmao. Is that up to code? No. Probably not. But it was done in a very neat and tidy way. Unlike all of the DIY in the house on New Street...
I took all of the cup hooks that were still left, leaving just two to hold up a curtain. Two black plastic garbage bags serve as a blackout curtain for the other window in the back room. Serena joked that, "for someone who kept saying she wasn't white trash, this is very white trash of her."
She once said Port Jervis was "beneath her" and she "deserved better". I'm sure you have a mansion in Hell now, Egg :) Enjoy :) :)
I took the nightlights. I even took the little mirror decals from my old office.
There is old dried vomit on the one windowsill in the closet of what used to be Serena's office. It's from Sadie, the cat Egg hated. I hope it stays there as a permanent mark on the house.
The walls on the second floor don't seem to be made of drywall. They seem to be made of chipboard. Cheap. Awful. Like everything else that makes up the structure of this house.
Outside of the paint job and some wall decals, you would never know anyone lived upstairs at one point in time. I find it sad. I find it deeply, deeply sad. She tried to erase all evidence of my existence up there. Never did she ask why the upstairs looked the way it did. She didn't care. It was easier for her to call me a hoarder than it was for her to ask any genuine questions. My living space was the way it was because I was deeply depressed. She was hoping I would die.
Downstairs again. Took some of the first aid stuff from her med cabinet, decided to take the rest of the first aid stuff next time we were down. Took her pill cutter, because you never know when you need one. Took all of her spare toothpaste and extra toothbrushes. All the extra floss because it's one we use. We will probably end up taking all the Dove soap (we use Dove), and the paper towels. The TP can stay, because we use Wegmans 2-ply, not sad Scotts 1-ply. There are other things in the linen closet I need to take, but all in good time.
IN EGG'S OFFICE NOW. There's a bunch of office supplies I will end up taking (cellotape, envelopes, paper, pens, etc) but I only took the letter opener, the guillotine style paper cutter, my dad's beer steins, and the paper shredder. I also took some books. I'll take the rest eventually, but for now...
I'll come back to the paper shredder later.
The whole time I'm going from room to room, back and forth and back again, is because I am looking for something in particular: my wedding picture. I put it in a nice frame and presented it to Egg not long after I was married. All of our loved ones have a copy. It was always on the folding table in her office by the Thomas Kinkade puzzle I am trying to complete again after the cats caused it to fall apart. Me, trying to think the best about the worst person, thought maybe she'd moved it or put it away in some dark corner she'd never look at again. Something.
No frame. No picture. Where the fuck could it be? I grab more things or note other things that I'll take eventually. (Cane? Now. All this art I can hang in my house? Next time. Suncatchers? Next time. I'll take back my wind chimes. Kobalt batteries? This time, so I can use them in my new mower.)
I make a note that I will likely take her aloe plant if it's not dead by next time. It's looking very sad due to lack of maintenance, because why the fuck would Egg ever take care of something living when she barely took care of herself? She had two cans of fruit with two boxes of instant rice, a box of Cheerios, and a thing of cinnamon and unopened creamy French salad dressing. That was all that was in her cupboards and it was fucking sad.
It comes time to move the paper shredder so I can put it with the rest of the stuff I'm taking today. I don't want her paper shreddings so I remove the plastic bag from inside the canister...and I see what looks like shredded bits of my wedding photo, something she's done to other pictures of people she doesn't like or otherwise can't stand. There are so many family pictures I have where most of my dad's side of the family (Egg's in-laws) are cropped out with a paper cutter or scissors, their picture now sent through the shredder.
I don't know what I'm filled with more: sadness or anger. Or option C: a little bit of both.
"Who does such a thing?"
Egg.
"But why? That's your wedding picture."
Because she hated my wife that much and that was the easiest way to get rid of any evidence she existed and was part of my life. My senior school photo was something worth keeping to her, but the picture capturing the happiest day of my life was not. And if I'd known she didn't want the picture anymore, I would've just taken it from her on my way out the final time. I could've taken that frame, and that picture, and put it up in my own house, or just used the frame for something else and sent the picture to my brother, who wasn't there when I got married, and because of her, I didn't get to see him get married either.
Is it that unexpected? Yes and no. That's such a low level to sink to, to destroy a picture representing the happiest day of my life.
I kept quiet initially, and shoved all of that to the back of my mind because I still had work to do and a car to pack. Aleks could tell I was upset and stressed out and overwhelmed from everything, so he took over and loaded everything up with Serena's help.
The backyard is an absolute jungle, all of the grass completely overgrown, worse than what ours was after three weeks straight of rain. It's not my problem. Code Enforcement or whoever can write up a complaint no one will give a shit about and the City of Port Jervis can take care of it themselves. Sure, it'll mean a lien on the house (that will be paid of course by her estate), but whatever. It's not going to be maintained by anyone. The lawnmower in the garage will just continue collecting cobwebs and dust since I took the batteries and chargers to use with my own.
We're home, enjoying sandwiches we got from Wegmans and watching a Hoarders marathon. Home to our house with normal stairs and a normal basement and so much natural lighting and no insects. Egg has fucking cave crickets with are absolute units when it comes to crickets, my god. They're huge. And harmless as fuck but scary as fuck to look at. I wanted to crawl out of my skin at the end because there are rodent traps (the snapping kind) and glue traps (for insects I am hoping because that would be sick for rodents) in every single room. She has a severe pest problem, which she probably blames me and my wife for, even though there were rodents in the walls when we'd moved in.
I will have to go back again at some point to take more things and sort through more. I will get overwhelmed again and hate her again and start cursing her existence again. Sad. Disgust. Anger. All of these feelings co-existing and me not knowing what the fuck to do with them.
She tried her damnedest to completely erase me and any evidence of me living in that house with her. She likely thought, in her mind, she was making it known to the universe exactly what she thought of my marriage. I felt like writing on the walls YOU CAN'T GET RID OF ME THAT EASY, BITCH but I didn't have anything to write with so I'd have to scratch it into the chipboard (lmao) with my EDC knife.
I told my wife the fate of the picture. I told my brother as well. They both said that that was a fucked up thing for her to do.
I made a r/raisedbynarcissists post, which can be found here, and it kind of blew up. There were even two hate/troll comments that have since been deleted because the mods are quick on their feet, but I can tell you what those two comments were, more or less.
One comment suggested that she got rid of my wedding picture because she'd spilt something on it or drew mustaches on our faces and then decided it would be better to just toss the picture. Stupid, low effort troll attempt imo. I gave them back as much effort, tbh. Like you're a fucking idiot, but I can't say that because it's against the subreddit rules lol.
And then...there was this comment:
And then I'd reported their comment to the subreddit mods and they took it down :) Why would I "keep my wife out of it"? You don't know my story even though all you had to do was look through my past posts in that subreddit and other narc subs. Then you would've known that my wife is also the victim of Egg's abuse. To say that I gave Egg "power" over her is turning me into the perpetrator of all of this and holding me accountable for Egg's actions...when I'm not responsible at all. Which is victim blaming, in a way. (First rule of the subreddit: no victim blaming.) I'm not the one who brought harm onto her though I certainly have a whole slew of guilt for asking her to live with me that you're just making worse so thanks for that :) Why are you here? Fuck off if you can't be supportive keep fucking scrolling dickshit.
There was no one parked on the street. I don't think anyone was home at #3 or #7 (the houses on either side). The house looks virtually the same as it always does. There were two pieces of mail in the mailbox, both addressed to my wife lol. One was a credit card offer (junk mail basically) and the other was from Bon Secours/Westchester Medical, notifying her that our doctor was leaving the WMC medical group and all of our medical shit would be transferred to the doctor they'd listed, or whatever one we opted for if we didn't want that one. Which we wouldn't, because we try to avoid male doctors when we can, and also, we no longer live in the area, so it doesn't matter. Up here we can choose between Guthrie Clinic and Arnot Health. Down there...you're stuck with Westchester Medical. We would've been fucked.
Luckily we're not, because we no longer live down there. We were on the "Just Visiting" side of the JAIL space on a Monopoly board.
So in we went. Reluctantly.
Our first discovery: the power is still on, so either O&R got paid or they just haven't shut it off yet. In any case, it meant I could put my Mountain Dew in the fridge, because I knew I would need it later, but not right then because I was still queasy from anxiety. We put our stuff down and got to work, starting with the kitchen.
We took pretty much everything and set it on the kitchen table. Vintage Corningware (!!!), vintage PYREX (!!!), Waterford crystal (!!!), Campbell's soup bowls, all sorts of fancy things... We took them out. The Corningware and PYREX were Julia's (Father's mother), they're from the 1950s. I wanted them so I could use them. We took the flatware. We took the batteries. We took EVERYTHING. Cooking utensils. Knife blocks.
Into the laundry room. My dad's tools. His Plano full of spare hardware (nails, screws, etc). A utility bucket. Extension cords (both indoor and outdoor) plus a surge protector. Cleaning stuff. Gardening stuff. A lot of things weren't even used (like the cleaning stuff).
Bedroom. I took whatever jewelry was left, which wasn't much (a money clip and watch from my dad, a watch from Egg, Egg's wedding ring).
I took a detour upstairs. I wanted the light switch cover plates that I'd purchased, because they were mine. Do you want to see something "cool"?
The bead is supposed to be in between those two black lines right in the middle, to show that the surface is level. The stairs going to the second floor are the complete opposite of level by the railing. It's level by the wall, but then the further away you go, the more unlevel it goes, until you get that. The solution: walk along the wall, because you're less likely to stumble.
So I went upstairs and took the cover plates: the one in the upstairs hallway, the two in my old office, the one in our old bedroom, and the one in the bathroom. Would you like to see something else that's "cool"?
That's not up to code. That light switch is supposed to be in a box (to keep the hole in the sheetrock/drywall from collapsing and to provide an anchor point). It's not. That whole isn't big enough. It's just shoved in the wall. It's not even screwed into anything, but they put screws there to make it look like it is. Like listen. The electrical isn't up to code in my house either, some of it is literal cloth insulated wiring, which many consider a fire hazard. (Ours is very well taken care of, from what I've seen of it!) One of the light switches is likely done by one of the previous homeowners, using wire connector knobs like my dad used for DIY electrical connections lmao. Is that up to code? No. Probably not. But it was done in a very neat and tidy way. Unlike all of the DIY in the house on New Street...
I took all of the cup hooks that were still left, leaving just two to hold up a curtain. Two black plastic garbage bags serve as a blackout curtain for the other window in the back room. Serena joked that, "for someone who kept saying she wasn't white trash, this is very white trash of her."
She once said Port Jervis was "beneath her" and she "deserved better". I'm sure you have a mansion in Hell now, Egg :) Enjoy :) :)
I took the nightlights. I even took the little mirror decals from my old office.
There is old dried vomit on the one windowsill in the closet of what used to be Serena's office. It's from Sadie, the cat Egg hated. I hope it stays there as a permanent mark on the house.
The walls on the second floor don't seem to be made of drywall. They seem to be made of chipboard. Cheap. Awful. Like everything else that makes up the structure of this house.
Outside of the paint job and some wall decals, you would never know anyone lived upstairs at one point in time. I find it sad. I find it deeply, deeply sad. She tried to erase all evidence of my existence up there. Never did she ask why the upstairs looked the way it did. She didn't care. It was easier for her to call me a hoarder than it was for her to ask any genuine questions. My living space was the way it was because I was deeply depressed. She was hoping I would die.
Downstairs again. Took some of the first aid stuff from her med cabinet, decided to take the rest of the first aid stuff next time we were down. Took her pill cutter, because you never know when you need one. Took all of her spare toothpaste and extra toothbrushes. All the extra floss because it's one we use. We will probably end up taking all the Dove soap (we use Dove), and the paper towels. The TP can stay, because we use Wegmans 2-ply, not sad Scotts 1-ply. There are other things in the linen closet I need to take, but all in good time.
IN EGG'S OFFICE NOW. There's a bunch of office supplies I will end up taking (cellotape, envelopes, paper, pens, etc) but I only took the letter opener, the guillotine style paper cutter, my dad's beer steins, and the paper shredder. I also took some books. I'll take the rest eventually, but for now...
I'll come back to the paper shredder later.
The whole time I'm going from room to room, back and forth and back again, is because I am looking for something in particular: my wedding picture. I put it in a nice frame and presented it to Egg not long after I was married. All of our loved ones have a copy. It was always on the folding table in her office by the Thomas Kinkade puzzle I am trying to complete again after the cats caused it to fall apart. Me, trying to think the best about the worst person, thought maybe she'd moved it or put it away in some dark corner she'd never look at again. Something.
No frame. No picture. Where the fuck could it be? I grab more things or note other things that I'll take eventually. (Cane? Now. All this art I can hang in my house? Next time. Suncatchers? Next time. I'll take back my wind chimes. Kobalt batteries? This time, so I can use them in my new mower.)
I make a note that I will likely take her aloe plant if it's not dead by next time. It's looking very sad due to lack of maintenance, because why the fuck would Egg ever take care of something living when she barely took care of herself? She had two cans of fruit with two boxes of instant rice, a box of Cheerios, and a thing of cinnamon and unopened creamy French salad dressing. That was all that was in her cupboards and it was fucking sad.
It comes time to move the paper shredder so I can put it with the rest of the stuff I'm taking today. I don't want her paper shreddings so I remove the plastic bag from inside the canister...and I see what looks like shredded bits of my wedding photo, something she's done to other pictures of people she doesn't like or otherwise can't stand. There are so many family pictures I have where most of my dad's side of the family (Egg's in-laws) are cropped out with a paper cutter or scissors, their picture now sent through the shredder.
I don't know what I'm filled with more: sadness or anger. Or option C: a little bit of both.
"Who does such a thing?"
Egg.
"But why? That's your wedding picture."
Because she hated my wife that much and that was the easiest way to get rid of any evidence she existed and was part of my life. My senior school photo was something worth keeping to her, but the picture capturing the happiest day of my life was not. And if I'd known she didn't want the picture anymore, I would've just taken it from her on my way out the final time. I could've taken that frame, and that picture, and put it up in my own house, or just used the frame for something else and sent the picture to my brother, who wasn't there when I got married, and because of her, I didn't get to see him get married either.
Is it that unexpected? Yes and no. That's such a low level to sink to, to destroy a picture representing the happiest day of my life.
I kept quiet initially, and shoved all of that to the back of my mind because I still had work to do and a car to pack. Aleks could tell I was upset and stressed out and overwhelmed from everything, so he took over and loaded everything up with Serena's help.
The backyard is an absolute jungle, all of the grass completely overgrown, worse than what ours was after three weeks straight of rain. It's not my problem. Code Enforcement or whoever can write up a complaint no one will give a shit about and the City of Port Jervis can take care of it themselves. Sure, it'll mean a lien on the house (that will be paid of course by her estate), but whatever. It's not going to be maintained by anyone. The lawnmower in the garage will just continue collecting cobwebs and dust since I took the batteries and chargers to use with my own.
We're home, enjoying sandwiches we got from Wegmans and watching a Hoarders marathon. Home to our house with normal stairs and a normal basement and so much natural lighting and no insects. Egg has fucking cave crickets with are absolute units when it comes to crickets, my god. They're huge. And harmless as fuck but scary as fuck to look at. I wanted to crawl out of my skin at the end because there are rodent traps (the snapping kind) and glue traps (for insects I am hoping because that would be sick for rodents) in every single room. She has a severe pest problem, which she probably blames me and my wife for, even though there were rodents in the walls when we'd moved in.
I will have to go back again at some point to take more things and sort through more. I will get overwhelmed again and hate her again and start cursing her existence again. Sad. Disgust. Anger. All of these feelings co-existing and me not knowing what the fuck to do with them.
She tried her damnedest to completely erase me and any evidence of me living in that house with her. She likely thought, in her mind, she was making it known to the universe exactly what she thought of my marriage. I felt like writing on the walls YOU CAN'T GET RID OF ME THAT EASY, BITCH but I didn't have anything to write with so I'd have to scratch it into the chipboard (lmao) with my EDC knife.
I told my wife the fate of the picture. I told my brother as well. They both said that that was a fucked up thing for her to do.
I made a r/raisedbynarcissists post, which can be found here, and it kind of blew up. There were even two hate/troll comments that have since been deleted because the mods are quick on their feet, but I can tell you what those two comments were, more or less.
One comment suggested that she got rid of my wedding picture because she'd spilt something on it or drew mustaches on our faces and then decided it would be better to just toss the picture. Stupid, low effort troll attempt imo. I gave them back as much effort, tbh. Like you're a fucking idiot, but I can't say that because it's against the subreddit rules lol.
And then...there was this comment:
And then I'd reported their comment to the subreddit mods and they took it down :) Why would I "keep my wife out of it"? You don't know my story even though all you had to do was look through my past posts in that subreddit and other narc subs. Then you would've known that my wife is also the victim of Egg's abuse. To say that I gave Egg "power" over her is turning me into the perpetrator of all of this and holding me accountable for Egg's actions...when I'm not responsible at all. Which is victim blaming, in a way. (First rule of the subreddit: no victim blaming.) I'm not the one who brought harm onto her though I certainly have a whole slew of guilt for asking her to live with me that you're just making worse so thanks for that :) Why are you here? Fuck off if you can't be supportive keep fucking scrolling dickshit.
