Reading back through some of the postings in Anna Valerious' blog and I came across her entry entitled "The Family Tyrant." In this post, she talks about how narcissists try to keep "outsiders" away. In my family, the outsiders were the healthy people in the family. After my NF's parents died, NF told his (normal) brother and sisters that now that his parents were gone, he was done with them. That fucking coward knew that his parents wouldn't put up with that behavior, and they were the bright, shining spot in my sisters and my youth, so he waited until they were dead and couldn't stand up for us, and then BAM.
After that period of time, the only contact I remember having with my favorite aunt, NF's sister, is when my mother would take us to see her a couple of towns away. This was invariably when dad was out of town for work.
Dad would think nothing at all of inviting the skeeviest fucks to our house to eat dinner (and criticize mom's cooking) and spend the night in the room next to mine, but we couldn't have contact with the only normal members of our family. I could fall asleep at night with a steak knife I horked out of the silverware drawer because I didn't have a lock on my door, which didn't even shut properly anyway, and the only thing separating me from a creep would be a wall while my sister and parents' bedrooms were at the other end of the house. We could still go visit my mother's crazy fucking mom, and we did, almost every weekend - hours and hours of sitting in a dark house while she commandeered games of dominoes and talked smack, sometimes about me in front of me, without my mom or dad standing up for me. God forbid we got to communicate with healthy people who could really see what was going on.
I will never forgive my father for trying cutting us off from the only healthy family members we had. I can't forgive my mother for allowing all his stupidity and allowing her N-mother to treat us the way she did.
Fuck them.
Now I can talk to my favorite aunt at my own leisure, but without having in essence known her from the age of 8ish until I was an adult, I feel awkward. She's always so good and kind to me and my kids. I was cheated. My sister was cheated.
Again, fuck them.
It's getting on toward the holidays, and I think the time will come when I'll have to be see mom again at a family function. I can feel the poison now. Now that I've had space, I can really see how wound up and angry I get just at the thought of seeing her and her doing her "What???" routine. "God forgives me, why can't my girls?" Your god didn't save me from you and him, mother.
My belief system operates on a different set of rules, the primary of which is protecting and nurturing my kids. I will never allow them to be in danger when I can prevent it. I will only surround them with healthy people. I never want them to know the helpless, sick feeling.
Anna's Blog Entry: http://narcissists-suck.blogspot.com/2007/05/family-tyrant.html
I regret not protecting my daughter earlier on. Good for you! You've broken the cycle.
ReplyDeleteMy eldest son got to see some of the madness, so I guess I can't say, "I will never." I should say, "I will never again." I regret not seeing sooner, too.
ReplyDeleteThis was really true of my family also. My mother deeply distrusts outsiders, which are basically everyone except her and sometimes my dad if dad was 100% with her.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize how abnormal my family was until college, when I realized other people's families were not at all like mine.
Really, until I got out of the house and got separated from the addicted ex and started to get a real life, I didn't see how really weird my family was either. In hindsight, it explains so much. Just years and years of WTF with a side-order of mashed potatoes.
DeleteMashed potates topped with, "Are You Fucking Kidding Me?"
DeleteGo Bess! I also felt the isolation-there is little to nothing I can tell you about the extended family EXCEPT one Uncle (Psychob's brother) and his wife, my Aunt (who I have contacted within the last few years and despite her aging, is one neat LADY, just as I remembered her and Uncle) and my numerous cousins courtesy of Aunt and Uncle's decision to have a lot of kids. They did, and those "kids" are all great people. The traumatized "me" spent the summer between 8th and 9th grade with them and they changed my life forever. If I could have lived with them for the rest of my life, I would have and it wasn't just because they lived in a distant city geographically: They lived in a different WORLD in every and the best sense of the term.
ReplyDeleteBess, regrets for all our lost opportunities are grief-in-a-nutshell.
Yes, FUCK THEM. SHAME on them. As long as we're alive and breathing new opportunities for growth will come our way. In that respect, we bring our past into the present and the future. Instead of a "Life Sentence," we have a LIFE. And our lives intersect with others.
As a result of your professional world, you may not "see" the profound effect you're having for years. You'll feel despair, helplessness, hopelessness, futility and WTF? But some time when you least expect it, a letter or a person whose life you touched maybe years before will come your way and say, "THANK YOU FOR CARING." In the meantime, believe you-and every last one of us-DO matter, DO influence, Do Help in ways we could never imagine.
Just look at your kids. Despite the challenges, they're GOOD PEOPLE. As a parent, IMO that's the greatest "achievement" we could ever envision. Then look at YOU: Could you ever have imagined when you were living in all that hell you would ever survive-never mind thrive?
I didn't. And I'm betting I'm not alone with that realization ;)
TW
TW
It's funny but my mother acted like she was more trusting of outsiders than she was of us. Until they were gone. Then she dogged them out to the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteHell my mother went any way the wind blows.
Dad trusted any shitbag outsider, at least for awhile, but he didn't trust any of the good people. He was a shitbag magnet. The king shitbag, if you will. He'd think his shitbag minions walked on water for a week or two, and the minute he disagreed with them or they took a drink of his Yukon Jack without his permission, he would dog them like mad. Disgustingly two-faced.
DeleteI'm sorry. Mashed potato's topped with "Are You Fucking Kidding me?"
ReplyDeleteA star is born. That's the funniest goddamn thing I have ever heard.
Well, you know, sometimes you see something that looks and smells tasty, then you try it. Bitter disappointment follows.:)
DeleteYeah.
ReplyDeleteAs if "presentation" wasn't important-MON DIEU, is it EVER.
They have THAT "part" down.
It's the substance, the taste that sez, "Ahhh, no, it's RANCID."
TW
We never EVER met any extended family. I found out my father's MOTHER died in 1985 or so - that would put me in my 20's. I had never even known she existed. I didn't know cousins or uncles or anyone. NEVER were we introduced to dad's friends. He would host poker parties at someones elses house - then bring home the leftover food.
ReplyDeleteAll of this was so that he could tell his story out there, and nothing about the pesky TRUTH would get through. My NM even stopped going to social events with him because she said she could never remember which lie was which.