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Lost desire for addictive crutches to cope with hopelessness, not knowing, and the confusion of puzzling persons that were in my life.
Each new realization about this shift in my own behavior rests contentedly on the ledge of the last leg of my journey.
I almost lost my life in all of this seven years ago, so if I can get this far in recovery, anyone can!!
It was all so impossible for a very long time that finally I gave up. There wasn't a single soul on this earth that understood that it was the NM pitting siblings against each other and pitting all of us against our father - and he against us.
Only he and I both believed her AND forgave each other over and over and over, keeping our relationship over all the years he was still alive. This was the biggest thorn in NM's side, our love for each other no matter the lies she manufactured.
UNTIL the last year of Dad's life. Then, NM accomplished her goal in kicking me out and getting Dad to actually either believe her version or he was too weak to dispute. For once he didn't stand up for me after I left, neither in thought nor deed.
When I think, five years ago this month I was just a week out of the hospital with bi lateral pulmonary emboli, and the phone next to my bed rang. It was my little sister calling to tell me our dad was dying and asking for me despite NM's objections.
Without a second thought I said I'd be on the next flight to Florida. I hadn't been out of bed for over a year, but I got up and shuffled to the shower where I stood under the water, barely able to wash my hair. I told myself I could do this, and if it were him, he would do anything for me. I went downstairs and told Khaled, and he called the airline. I was on the next flight.
They issued me a wheelchair because I couldn't walk any distance. I had a layover that lasted an unbelievable ten hours in that wheelchair, and when it was time to board the pilot had me get on first. I think it was with other layovers, a total of 24 hours by the time I arrived in Florida, being pushed to my waiting sister by an attendant. She was appalled by my condition.
The four years prior were spent mostly in bed, but that last year I was in bed 24/7... I had minor bedsores, missing molars, long unkept hair, and had gained two hundred pounds in the last 5 years.
My sister was alone although everybody but the NM knew for sure I was arriving. My little sister was kind to me, and didn't let on her astonishment about my condition. She said it was alright and after seeing Dad I would begin to get better. She knew the NM threw me out of the family again the year prior and that after that I gave up on my last hope of ever being good enough, ever walking on enough eggshells to belong. I was finished with NM's controlling behaviors but at the same time I was finished. Period. It was a lifetime of absolute hell with this family, and now my dad who was so precious was going to die.
But, that was then and this was "now." Debbie pushed me to the car and loaded my bag. At her house we settled in and talked about the last kick out, and what's happening now with Dad. He was preparing to leave the hospital to go home to die.
It had been an awful whole last year as his illness progressed. NM was worse with the more attention he got. She expected the golden child/narcissistic daughter to care for his personal needs while NM watched in approval, and then she demanded the same GC care for her imagined illnesses. If they weren't showing enough she'd force herself and her body to show swelling in her legs and other
visible faux ailments. Linda went from Dad to Mom and from Mom to Dad with the doting. NM approved with a fixed pathetic expression.
At this time, my little sister wasn't aware of the truth about the all of the kick outs the NM did to me, or really anything else that occurred. She only knew the lies and twisted versions NM told over and over, but still she was curious to hear whatever came up in conversation that first night.
She'd made us dinner, and I couldn't eat. I picked at the food with pain in my back and in my intestines, but she ate and we talked there at the table in her Florida home. This was a time when she had left a big job in NY to move to Florida and be there for our parents, so she had much to tell about her new life and what they'd all been through. She had some touching stories about getting to know dad for the first time in her life in a sweet way - all the while he was getting sicker. She'd cooked for them very much and delivered the meals to NM's and Dad's house, where while they'd eat, NM would lie about me and the GC, btw, at that time. Dad wouldn't say anything. Finally my little sister told her it wasn't nice to trash me while I wasn't there to defend myself, and Dad right away agreed. I liked hearing that part.
I think it was for them like it was for me with the NM. You just listened to her trash lies and you both believed her and couldn't believe such things all at the same time. NM doesn't let up until you agree or change the subject in a clever way to validate her in some way.
Anyway, we moved from the dining room to the living room and my little sister told me that NM still didn't know I was there, but that Joey and Linda did - still they didn't show up to welcome me - and even after knowing how sick I had been. Nothing. OH. I forgot. I was five days in withdrawl from mood stabilizers and Klonapin, which were also largely responsible for the years in bed. Just five days before the phone call from Florida, my son convinced me to stop these medications cold turkey. It was that or face certain death. It really was.
So I was seeing flies that weren't there, feeling queezy, and I had insomnia. My head was banging in pain, and behind my eyes was a constant snap/pow!! Turns out the mood stabilizer affects the optic nerves and when taken away the nerves are suddenly no longer numb.
I didn't eat or sleep the whole three days I was in Florida. But this first night, I found myself after my little sister went to bed, crying all night long. I mean both my brother who I hadn't seen for 25 years and my sister the GC Linda were right there and never called or came to see me. I knew neither of them had anything against me so NM was behind it. Whatever she'd been telling them since my brother's arrival in Florida and her years with the GC had to be weighing against them coming to see me.
I wonder if Dad knew that I was thinking maybe he and I would die the same year as I lay in that bed in Pennsylvania. I wonder if that's why he called for me. I wondered what he wanted to tell me. I couldn't sleep. And I didn't sleep.
All of the sudden the sun started coming up and I sat there a couple of hours more ... thinking. Then my little sister got up and made coffee and we took back up with the conversation where we left it off the night before. The morning passed to noon and nobody called.
Turned out they were all shunning me. At the hospital, we were in a waiting room while dad got a bed change, and NM called on my little sister's phone. She heard my voice. The jig was up. She insisted on speaking to me and planing to see me. Only I had no intentions of ever going to her house again. She could see me at the hospital she said because she was coming later anyway. Gawd. My face fell. The room filled with toxic energy seeping from the phone. We felt sick.
BUT. True to form the NM put on a mask for Joey and his wife and the GC. She pretended to be welcoming of me. They had permission, then, to see me. By the third day and evening they both came to my little sister's house to see me. GC stopped in for a moment and left, and Joey stayed late, wanting to catch up and talk.
The next day I was leaving and my brother's wife brought me a lunch she'd made at NM's. So that's how it goes. While you don't know how the NM really feels you ignore family members - even very ill ones you've not seen in decades. When you get the vibe that it might be okay, then you include them... (some).
All this but the NM was not welcoming at all. She only played the part of a mother for a moment in front of GC and my brother on hearing I was there. The night before she lay her head over my father's chest, crying the entire night. (It was because she didn't get her way and I was getting to see my dad before his death, even after her kicking me out). Dad told my little sister that he asked NM why she was crying so uncontrollably, and she said because she'd been talking to Joey (my brother). Dad told my little sister that this just didn't make any sense. Yet another confusing NM lie. She didn't have enough time to plan a bait and switch lie about me because I'd sprung up on her. NM needs time to plan her best most evil manipulations and lies. So she was like a child that was told no. Of course she couldn't tell Dad the truth.
I've told you all before about the healing I received by the precious visit I did get with my dad that second afternoon all alone. He was a really special person, and the best dad he could possibly be under the circumstances. Had he ever been able to leave her he would have been even more wonderful, but being the kind of decent man he was, when she begged him to stay using religion, he did.
Although he was co-dependent in a special way until the last three weeks of his life, Dad still managed to love his children. He somehow managed as I did to have a relationship with the NM and with us no matter the lies, triangulation, and manipulations. To do this requires a giant heart for constant forgiveness, and too, a kind of attitude that no matter what the NM said that so and so said about you - you accept it and kind of agree it could be right. You end up forgiving yourself and forgiving others all for something that was never said - never happened.
So if I can be bedridden with a black depression, in hospital with bi lateral pulmonary emboli, in intensive care, unresponsive another time for days, gain two hundred pounds on mood stabilizers, and still find my way to where I am right now - ALL of you guys can too.
I have since studied at least 8 hours a day 7 days a week for five years about psychopaths, narcissists, and sociopaths... also, borderlines. I have learned about all of the parts of the brain and body and their functions - and also how nutrition actually feeds the cells of our bodies to perform best.
I have been writing for about five years almost everyday, and spent most of those days deciphering the puzzle of my family of origin - myself - all of my siblings - the NM and our dad. Also I've studied our ancestry and personality disorders that have affected all of us.
I have taken a candid look at my own thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes - and I have adjusted them all.
First order of business: Rid myself of NM and all toxic relationships. Set boundaries. Take exceptional care of myself - learned to truly love myself and my inner child for the first time - and I have gained self respect. These are all the changes made in my life that have brought me to this healing.
Along the way, I lost 90 pounds of that two hundred I'd gained in bed, without even trying. I have discovered that other things have also fallen away. All vises no longer appeal to me. I have no need or desire for a crutch of any kind to get me though the day or to relieve the anxiety that made me want to jump out of my own skin.
Anxiety was my biggest problem. It was the cause of all of my physical illnesses, all of which I am working to eliminate now. I say "was" because I no longer suffer from anxiety.
I never EVER thought I would be able to say that I no longer have free floating anxiety.
My current medications are Lotronex for IBS, Cymbalta for depression, and Adderall for ADHD. I am seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist for now, and I think I soon will be finished with the therapy.
I would have loved to have learned to live this way decades ago but I am living now anyway in peace and contentment. I enjoy my husband and children without being preoccupied with the underlying anxiety which consisted of all the unanswered questions about why no matter what I did for them or sacrificed of myself, my family of origin frankly was never going to love me. It was a puzzle I couldn't stop working on until the last piece was in it's place.
I finished that puzzle with the reality of my own disillusionment about this family of origin.
There was no mother. There was a thing with a mask that enjoyed using the objects in her life that happened to be our dad, me, and my siblings. NM has no capacity to love and zero empathy. Period. Some of the siblings' idea of love is also more a conditional than real love.
About myself, I also had love distorted. I loved too much .. I feared too much... I gave too much. But, I didn't love myself, and I rarely gave to myself. I didn't take care of myself, but I took good care of my little children. Everyone came before me, and in the end, that, and my reaction to the NM's evil deeds, took me down.
I know if you fear, you don't love, so I don't know how I loved so much, yet feared as much, but I remember doing so. Maybe the kind of love I gave so freely while I was in so much fear, wasn't the same kind of love I have now for myself and for my husband and children.
I set myself free and you can too. I no longer have fear and anxiety. Yours will leave you also. I am kind to myself. I speak kindly of, and, to myself and others. I set boundaries with myself and others. And best of all, I know how to avoid having toxic people in my inner circle. I am confident in my feelings.
Trust your gut.
One other thing. We as empaths and adult children of narcissistic parents tend to attract and be attracted to narcissists. This is because our brains do a dance with theirs right off the bat and it's familiar. It's what we knew since birth, mirroring the NM. It is possible to be cognizant of this, though, when relating in the future. Now that we are aware, everything we do will be with confidence. No second guessing, either, about those with whom we relate.
Now, we know who we are, and likely what kinds of people with whom we relate. These are all people with whom we never have to walk on eggshells, we never have to be dishonest, and we never have to allow them to be controlling.
Of all of the behaviors of the narcs, the one I despise the most is the controlling behaviors. I hate control. I hate the tone of voice control commands, I hate the manipulations control uses, and I hate both the covert and the overt means of control.
If someone calls you 6 times everyday to say they love you, that's control. If a person micro manages you in their home, that's control. If a person devalues you it's control. If they ignore you with the silent treatment, that's control.
Now that I am healing and so much better, I can feel control and all it's counterparts from a mile away. I recoil in disgust and disengage immediately. I am not interested or concerned in the least with the person who is controlling. And I do not suffer anxiety in dealing with eliminating the controlling person or the possibility of having a controlling person in my life.
It feels good to be able to love, respect, and take good care of myself. If a narc wants to get to my inner child, now they will have to come through me first and that's just not happening.
We don't need others to help us navigate in life any longer. I know for years I depended on Khaled's healthy attitudes and likable personality to get me by in so many situations. Now, I depend on myself.
Getting to this point requires work. The work is in the growing. Becoming emotionally aware of ourselves and others - the reality of what is. Learning to listen is key in healthy relating. When I hear what Khaled is saying.... NOT what I imagine he's thinking, relating is a pleasure because I hear more of what he actually says.
I learned to stop reading minds and expecting others to read my mind. A habit learned in the FOO.
So it's no expectations. Emotional awareness. Being reasonable. Listening to understand.
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