This is embarrassing af.
But this has been bothering me for a long, long time because I’ve never really told anyone outside of my husband.
I’ve ALWAYS loved a hot, soaking bath. Always. It was where I could go without being yelled at, could disappear in a book or whatever. Didn’t have to deal with Susan, and dealing with Susan was far from a walk in the park.
However, I'm now OBSESSED with baths. And cleanliness. I take 2-3 baths a day and change my underwear for fresh each time. Here’s why.
I moved out of Susan’s house at 14 and into my dad’s house. By the time I was 15 and had a driver’s license, Susan had made buddies with my school’s guidance counselor and apparently was inviting her and her daughter, who was my age, over for chats and snacks. It was also around that time that I’d gotten a boyfriend, I was a cheerleader, I was on the debate team, danced with a company, and was just all around busy and going to see Susan so she could bitch about my weight, my looks, my clothes, and my lack of interest in her was LOW on my totem pole. Heck yes, I would much rather be riding the boulevard on a weekend with my friends instead of listening to Susan tell me “the truth for my own good”.
Well, this perturbed Susan pretty bad and she tried to ground me and force me to stay home, and I just ignored that, because she literally had done nothing for me or had any say over me as I didn’t live with her and the vehicle I was driving wasn’t hers to begin with. When that didn’t work, she tried to harass my dad and aunt into grounding me and making me stay home, for the soul reason I wouldn’t make time to go see my mother. That went over like a lead balloon because my dad had zero interest in making me sit at home and do nothing. So, she did what she knew would work: she was going to make sure I didn’t have any friends left.
She started by telling the guidance counselor, in front of her daughter, that I was smelly and gross. I didn’t wear deodorant. My “downstairs” smelled like rotting, dead fish and she couldn’t force me to bathe (even back then, I wasn’t going more than 1 day without a shower or bath. I ENJOYED my bath times). She was afraid with just how bad I smelt, I must have a STD or something. And on, and on, and on.
Now, what do you think a 15/16 year old girl who was already pretty annoyed at me, for dumb reasons (she’d been with the cheer squad longer than me, though I had more time cheering, just not at that school, and we’d both tried out for UCA Allstar and I’d gotten it and she didn’t), was going to do with that information?
If you guessed spread it all over the school... You are correct. That fucking rumor made my life a living HELL. To the point where the teachers got involved and reported me to the school nurse (That the students were saying I must have an STD, I stink, though they couldn’t smell anything so maybe that ideal was coming from the locker room or something?) and for freaking 6 months I had to visit the damn nurse daily so she could sniff me.
After about 3 times, the nurse was baffled, too. She’d normally make me stop the sniff tests, because she DIDN’T smell anything except a spritz of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton perfume and a stick of Teen Spirit, but it MUST be founded because she’d called my mother and my mother had said the EXACT SAME THING. And why on earth would my mother lie?
The obgyn I saw every three months (for endo, even that young) was absolutely baffled, too, since she’d received a call from the school nurse asking if they’d ever tested me for STDs because rumor and my mother was very concerned. The Obgyn was doing pelvics 4 times a year, and she said “I don’t understand. As a doctor, something like that would be for me to help you correct, but there is nothing to correct!”
The crazy finally died down a few months later, but I still have nightmares about cheering on Friday nights and this little group of 5 girls (including the counselor’s daughter, who’d quit cheer by then,) would make up chants about my smelly vagina. I’m 29, so it was rough.
I was diagnosed with PTSD shortly after my middle kid was born based on her birth and some childhood things, but as often enough as the therapist and I chatted about this whole incident, we were never able to work through my 2-3 daily baths and 2-3 fresh pairs of undies daily.
I confronted Susan about it, ONE time, shortly before the cut off, and she laughed and said well she hadn’t seen me in a while, she HAD TO DO SOMETHING, and besides, I was living with my dad so she could guess I wasn’t cleaning myself. Because mother’s intuition (Says the woman who bitched frequently about me bathing at HER house when I lived there because her Golden Child was too lazy to walk downstairs to pee and started peeing in bottles and hiding them.
So... There it is.
I haven’t admitted that publicly, ever. It still haunts me. I can see the pure EVILNESS behind it now, especially since I had my own daughters. I still deal with the consequences of her actions with my own insecurity over it (Side note, I’ve been married twice since then and had numerous boyfriends. I’ve seen many different OBs because I’ve had 3 kids and multiple pregnancies in different states. I’ve point blank asked some of them if anything was “off” since my mom seemed to think so, and they always told me no and looked at me like I was crazy. It definitely wasn’t a thing. It was Susan being a jealous cow).
But there you go. That is the length of crazy Susan will resort to, to try and get her way.
