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Those three pointing back at me? Yeah you know, the ones that point your way while your hand poses to point at antoher. Those are the ones. They have been after me to look at my own behaviors.
Don't get me wrong here. EVERYTHING I've written so far is true and I still believe needed to be recorded here - if not only for me, for others who are still searching.
So to begin,
I know I've mentioned the fact that as a child I followed the lead to persecute my little sister, but I took it further than following what the NM and golden child did.. I HATED her (my little sister.. not the golden child).
Sure she was only a couple of years younger than me, but I saw us as a decade apart and her as a nuisanced rotten little brat that didn't belong. When the Truth is she was severely abused and neglected by the NM - Even so, she was just a little kid. She wasn't evil or rotten at all. WE all were that for isolating her.
I have already told her a million times how wrong this was and how I wish I could go back there in some way and hug that child or even her and squeeze into her the love I have for her now - BUT yeah, somehow that wasn't so appealing to her as it was to me. I get that though.
The fact is even while I was still in contact with the NM I was also complicit in the NM's destruction. I listened to the endless lies and complaints about all other family members and often chimed in. (I sit here shaking my head).
I mean, if you are in any kind of contact with a narcissist you MUST be complicit. Really that's it plain and simple or they have no use for you. This is very clear and you all know it. Man I hate writing this.
I was a total BITCH to my first husband. I could tell about him but I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to make excuses for me being verbally abusive to anyone. Divorced him.
I was a BITCH to Khaled too. It's so easy coming from a narcissistic family to see an overall picture as never good enough. BUT, the difference here is Khaled told me he wouldn't allow anyone to speak to him with disrespect. And that my friends, was the first leg of my awakening!!
Sill, I smothered my babies. OMG I loved them SOOOOO much of course .. BUT I know I smothered them with love, clothes, toys, parties, hugs, kisses... TOO MUCH. And , again, nothing was good enough. I was a demanding mother. :(
All those years, I was dragging my kids every week on a three hour ride to the NM's house where she ignored them completely and of course forced me to listen to endless shit about my siblings and father. AND also to be her slave.
I started to put up some boundaries and things between us became strained.
The first one was I was no longer her slave. In fact, after one of her rages about how I took out the garbage, I decided to NEVER touch another chore in her home again. And I never did. That was noticed and didn't go over very well .. Until the final contact and confrontation with the NM she told all the others how "Lazy" I was.
A major kick-out of the family was because of one of these boundaries. I was fed up with my kids being forced to eat outside on our visits, and surely I was just as fed up with myself for being too cowardly to insist to let them in. I still shake my head.
Anyway, when the NM moved out of the home my father built for her and she and my dad moved into a mobile home in Lowman, NY, I saw an opportunity to stop bringing the kids. I couldn't force the NM to be a grandmother, BUT I figured I could be a mother and leave them home.
WELL!! That bitch had a fit and forced me to tell why I didn't bring them anymore, and when I did she totally exploded. Told me she couldn't wait to see what kind of a grandmother I would be and that I was CRAZY and so crazy that she and my dad (he sat right there and she aways spoke for them both) would be way better off not seeing me for at least five years!! In those years away, she said, she expected me to find therapy for being crazy. You know what? I told her that's a great idea! If you pay for it, I'll go this minute. Yeah. Not a word.
(btw they were not destitute. It was NM's idea to downsize in retirement. Half the year in NY and the other half on the beach in South Carolina).
Anyway, the point is she was right I was in need of therapy. Narcissists don't care about you though. She didn't suggest therapy to help me lol... that was said in anger to hurt me. But they forget that we don't have the ego they have. Whatever.
I left the visit that day and was gone for the next eight years at which time I earned a Bachelors degree at Wilkes University in Wilkes Barre, PA by 2003. I was doing fine. Well much much better. And without therapy, however, I would have welcomed it had I been able to find what I needed.
The simple fact is that people suffering from the abuses of narcissistic and complicit parents experience the greatest chunk of improvement just by going no contact with them. Therapy then is also needed, which you all know I did find in the end.
In those years though my dad thought and though about her kicking me out and what I had said and she said and he told her he was done. He wanted to divorce her!! I was still NC. I wish I knew about this!! I would have supported him, but as you may have figured narsissists always have an ace in the hole. She promised to become Catholic if he would stay and take her to classes. If anything would do it, that would. Since his whole married life, he had to practice his religion alone after she ridiculed him and it and told him she wouldn't have it in her house.
He was amazed and figured maybe God could help her. Poor guy.
Yeah this monster became Catholic and made this the new connection with our dad and renewed their whole marriage. In this time, NM wrote me asking for me to return. That "Your father and I regret how things went last."
My god. I know.
First I wrote this blubbering letter going on and on about how grateful I was to ever hear from them again since I wrote many times and send cards and gifts, never hearing from them back.
Then, my girlfriend read the letters, NM's and mine, and told me "Are you crazy?? Rip that up and tell them NO." lol
I thought about it and she was right. I was going to give this bitch licensee to begin the destruction once again with this clearly vulnerable (STUPID) response. I did rip it up. I rewrote it, saying no thanks.
NM STILL talks about the many poison pen letters that I sent her in the years she kicked me out. I guess all the cards, letters, and gifts were conveyed as poison.. and then when I did send that last letter saying UH NO THANKS... She may have showed it. This is how they authenticate their lies.
Anyway, I thought about this and even Khaled said that maybe I should write back and tell them that I do forgive them and I just needed a little time to digest hearing from them.
So by the mere fact that first I write a thank you letter blubbering, then I rip it up and write a refusal letter, then I write again... Shows confusion. I needed first of all NO contact forever, and secondly, for that confusion, I really needed therapy.
But like my psychiatrist told me recently, I must not have been totally ready then for the healing that I have now. Simple as that.
But without the therapy, I was missing the key element in my emotional evolution. Self love and self care. Two things I limped along with and without for my whole life, which affected every single thing I ever tried, did, or accomplished. I'm sure that every person I ever met saw this in me as a first impression. It is carried with you like a weighted picket sign. Plain as day.
My poor kids and husband. They have been through it. But we all survived ... and survived well, I say with the knowledge of my great fortune.
So there it is... only a smidgeon of what was under those fingers pointing back at me. More next time .. Peace.....
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