Quiet Little Mouse: How My Lying, Cheating Husband Awakened My Inner Warrior

By Mali Ponday

She bought a gun, shot my father once in each knee, then shot herself in the head.

Mali Ponday learned of the suicide during her senior year of college. Her beautiful, loving, complicated mother died instantly. Her father survived, but Mali's own spirit had died long before.

Or so she believed.

Raised by a diagnosed narcissist, Mali had trouble imagining any future for herself. Like many such children, she suffered from a sense of learned helplessness, unable to trust her own gut or act on her own instincts for self-preservation no matter how hard they screamed at her.

Feeling profoundly unworthy of love or even friendship, she married a man who would cheat on her and lie to her for almost two decades. Every time she discovered the truth, she forgave him and repeated the cycle.

Until she finally found the courage to stop.

Quiet Little Mouse tells the bold, poignant truth about what it really means to trust yourself, sharing one woman's lifelong journey toward three simple words: "I belong here."

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781544519234

Book preview

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Copyright © 2021 Mali Ponday

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5445-1923-4

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This book is dedicated to those who may find themselves in a similar situation, saying What just happened? and finding no answers. It is for those who are searching for that inner voice but haven’t found it yet. It is for those who are on the brink of becoming a badass but just need a little nudge.

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Contents

Part 1: Childhood, Privilege, and Walking on Eggshells

1. So, What’s It like to Have a Narcissistic Parent?

2. Life Moves Forward

3. A Romantic Match or a Mismatch?

4. Do You Take Me to Be Your Lawfully Wedded Quiet Little Mouse?

5. Busy Bees, Gentleman’s Clubs, and a Bundle of Joy

6. Cheaters and Babies and Bears, Oh My

Part 2: The Messy Middle

7. A Happy, Bustling Household

8. This Ain’t My First Rodeo

9. From the Tip of the Iceberg to the Dark Cold Deceptive Water Below

10. The Truth Wrapped in a Turd

Part 3: From Rock Bottom to the Beginnings of a Badass

11. Rock Bottom

12. Therapy, Romance, and Cognitive Dissonance

13. Marital Separation

14. The Blonde that Broke the Camel’s Back

15. The Private Investigator

16. Rock, Rock Bottom: Finding the Warrior Within

Part 4: Get a Divorce, Get a Life

17. I Filed for Divorce, but You Made Me Do It!

18. Mommy and Daddy Are Getting Divorced

19. Connect, Like Legos, to Keep It All Together

20. Tick Tock, the Divorce Clock

Part 5: Life Is Good

21. The End

Resources

Personal Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Disclaimer: The names and locations in this true story have been changed to protect privacy.

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Part 1

Part 1: Childhood, Privilege, and Walking on Eggshells

Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in the world. Risk being seen in all of your glory.

—Jim Carrey

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Chapter 1

1. So, What’s It like to Have a Narcissistic Parent?

In 1992, when I was a new college graduate living in my parents’ big, beautiful home in Virginia, I pictured myself one day homeless and living under a bridge.1 I was completely unable to look at my life and see any kind of secure future.

I had moved back home from my college dorm in a hurry because my beautiful, loving, complicated mother, full of pent-up rage, had done something unspeakable. She bought a gun, shot my father once in each knee, and then shot herself in the head. She died instantly, and my father survived and went on to recover completely.

I had been in my fourth year of college when I got the news, just before the holidays and final exams. On that clear, bright Saturday afternoon in November, my older sister called my dorm room.

Hi, Mali…how are you? I bet you must be studying. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m calling with bad news. Please put one of your roommates on the phone. Please, just do it.

Why? What? Just tell me what happened. Are you okay?

Just do it. Please. Please just do it now.

So I put Denise, one of my four housemates, on the phone and I watched her face turn different colors and her eyes become huge as she listened to what my sister was saying. Denise would be the one who would deliver this news to me. My sister wanted me to have immediate support with this news, which was kind and thoughtful of her, especially given what emotional state she must have been in already.

Within the hour, my housemates hopped in a car and drove me seventy miles to my hometown, to the hospital where my father was undergoing surgery. We blasted music, rolled down the windows, and smoked a pack of cigarettes the whole way. I wasn’t even a smoker. I cried and cried, but we also laughed together, in that moment of insanity.

It struck me how awesome my roomies were. Why had I kept my distance from people who were so kind? I knew the answer—because I felt deeply unworthy and insecure. I regretted not making closer bonds in college. But now, that college experience was over.

My parents’ home was a crime scene until the detectives finished their investigation. They had to rule out foul play, which they did pretty quickly. It was all over the news, and I remember wondering, Am I living in some sort of a movie? How could this be real?

***

Those first few months, we grieved the deep, complicated grief of the tremendous loss due to suicide. My mother’s funeral was attended by so many people, they were overflowing into the reception area.

I had vivid dreams of my mother every night. I’d catch her out of the corner of my eye, walking in the backyard among the tall trees and hammock. But of course, she wasn’t really there. It was so real. Maybe she was really there? She was everywhere. I’d sit on the carpet in her big closet with her nice things all around and smell the perfume on her clothes.

Neighbors and friends would come over in shifts and bring us food and help us clean out the pantry and fridge. My mom’s delicious food was still in the fridge. I remember one of my mom’s friends had to gently but firmly pry the Tupperware out of my hands and throw the food out. It was moldy but I couldn’t let it go. Throwing it away meant I would never taste my mom’s cooking again. Why didn’t I learn to cook with her? Why hadn’t I paid better attention? Why couldn’t I have helped her more? Why did she have to give up? Why was she so angry?

The Back Story

Both of my parents grew up in India, so I only met my grandparents a few times. I have fond, fleeting memories of my maternal grandfather. He was tall and extremely handsome, funny, smart, and charming. I also heard whispers that behind closed doors, he was domineering, a perfectionist, controlling, and physically abusive towards my grandmother and possibly towards his five children as well. My mother was the eldest daughter, and I had heard that she was her father’s favorite, the golden child.

Years before she shot herself and ended her life too soon, my mother had been diagnosed as narcissistic by the head of psychiatry at a major university in Richmond—years before this diagnosis became the popular catch phrase it is today.2

My mother was a gorgeous, charming, popular social butterfly, and she could be a lot of fun. She sang like an angel, cooked like a gourmet chef, and loved to get dressed up and throw big parties. When we landed in India once, I remember people pointing at my mother and asking her to stop so they could take her picture. She looked like a movie star, gliding through the crowded airport with her small children and luggage in tow. I have so many wonderful memories of her. She was good at showing me how much she loved me.

For example, she once told me, when she was home and recovering from her many surgeries for various problems, probably hypochondria—back and shoulder pain, abdominal surgeries—that she always knew it was me when I’d come to her bedside and rub her forehead and her hair. She said she didn’t have to open her eyes to know it was me, because she would feel the love and care in the way my hand would stroke her forehead. She’d talk to me about our souls and how being an upright, kind person who does good deeds is a way to keep your soul intact. She would tell me how special it is to be a girl, and how women are the ones who can create life. She would tell me how amazing it was to become a mom. I loved my mom very much.

But my mother was also depressed, critical, and very difficult to live with. She was a perfectionist. Nothing was ever her fault. Her mantra was never apologize. If you’re perfect, you won’t make mistakes. Her reaction to life’s inevitable ups and downs was to say, I will just die. Then you can do whatever you want.

She could be a Jekyll and Hyde.

I’ll Just Sit Here Quietly

I tried so hard not to be like my mother. Instead, I tried to be a quiet little mouse. How does a quiet little mouse live? Well, I will share a few memories of growing up in my home.

When I was in high school, before the internet, I sometimes needed to get books from the library for school research papers and projects. I instinctively knew I couldn’t ask my mom to do such a mundane thing as take me to the library. This would be a monumental burden that would upset her in ways I could not predict. We didn’t have many books in our home, which was ironic because we were a middle- to upper-middle-class Indian immigrant family living in the best school districts, and we valued education highly.

On the rare occasions when I managed to go and check some books out, I was then faced with the next daunting challenge—how was I going to return the books once they were due? I didn’t dare ask her. Instead, I did nothing. The books became overdue and the fines accumulated.

Back then, in the 1980s, our town library had an actual book collector come to your house to collect the books and fines. At one point, we had hundreds of dollars of overdue fines.

One day, I saw a man in a suit and a hat at the door, asking for the books. I hid from view of the window, like I was hiding from the mafia coming to collect on gambling debts. I felt ashamed for causing my mother any grief, and I wanted to protect her—and protect myself, really—from this man at the door who would disrupt our tenuous peace.

***

I believe my mom put a lot less pressure on us children to be perfect than her father had put on her. She moved across the globe when she was newly married at age twenty-one, and left her family in an attempt to make a better life in America.

She seemed to direct her unmanageable anxiety at my father, and he would have to pay the price for all of our bad decisions and personal requests. As long as my dad was there, he served as a scapegoat, protecting us kids from her wrath. If we needed books or had overdue fines, it would be because my dad hadn’t helped my mom enough, and therefore she was overwhelmed and too depleted to now have to manage this book situation, and so it was all his fault.

I didn’t want my peace-loving dad to have any more blame than he already had for everything that was wrong with my mother’s life. I didn’t want the already tense atmosphere in our home to escalate because of me.

***

My sad social life is another example of living like a quiet mouse. When I was invited to a friend’s birthday party, I’d hem and haw until I eventually built up the nerve to ask my mom if I could go. This was a complex problem because it would require a ride there and a ride back, and it would also require the boldness of asking to buy a birthday gift.

I had to ration my requests. I’d bargain with myself, Okay, I’ll just ask if I can go to the party, but I won’t ask if I can buy a gift. I’ll figure something out…Maybe I’ll make a gift.

On the rare occasions my mother actually said, Yes, you can go to the party this Saturday, I would RSVP, but I’d have to cautiously temper my best friend’s expectations. My friend knew the drill. Sure enough, by Saturday my mom would have forgotten that she gave me permission to go.

I’d have to rearrange all the things I have to do! my mother would complain if I brought it up again. How can I possibly take you there and back when I have so many things on my plate? Don’t you know how much my back hurts?

After that, she would take my father into their room and close the door so they could discuss their problems for hours. Our Saturdays often just ended up with my parents in their room with the door closed and me on the other side of the door, listening to my mom cry with a sinking feeling of dread and guilt for contributing to the disharmony in our home.

I learned not to get my hopes up and not to look forward to having time with friends. I learned to ask for the bare minimum.

***

When my mother planned her own beautiful parties, she would make several trips to the store and we’d all get involved in the planning. We’d all get dressed up and show our best shiny, smiling, charming selves. No one in the community knew the truth about our home life. What would I say to people anyway? Help, I can’t spend time with my friends, and I have some overdue library books? It didn’t seem that bad. We weren’t abused, we were fed and clothed, and we lived in a nice home. I told myself I should be grateful for what I had.

***

Another time in December when I was a seventeen-year-old newly licensed driver, I was excited that I had been given permission to drive to school one particular day instead of having to take the bus. I was embarrassed that I had failed my road test twice, simply because I couldn’t find anyone to take me around town to practice. As I tried to reverse down the icy driveway, the wheels spun. I got out of the car, got down on my knees, and I tried and tried to remove the ice from around the tires with an ice pick, but the wheels kept spinning. My knuckles started bleeding from scraping the ice. In my inexperience, I didn’t realize that the emergency brake was on and that’s why the car wouldn’t roll.

I was stuck. My dad had left for work, my mother was still in bed, and the bus had already come and gone. I thought I would just have to stay quietly upstairs, and not let her know I was even home. It was my