Saturday, September 29, 2012

When I was 3 or 4

I didn't want to write this post before I could find the post at Roots to Blossom that inspired it, but I just can't seem to be able to locate it.

She writes about how when she was around that age, her narcissistic, incestuous father poisoned both her and her mother's minds so he could turn them against each other and have little roots2blossom all to himself. The mother was told she was incompetent and couldn't take care of her daughter, while the little girl was told her mother didn't love her.

My father wasn't a sexual molester, but when I read that post, I had an intense emotional reaction and I knew something similar happened in our family.

3 or 4. That's when I started biting my nails. That's when I stopped wanting to cuddle, ever - and my mother was the only one who even ever wanted to hold me. I think I sat in my father's lap exactly once and it felt stiff and forced.

Until recently, I thought kids just stopped wanting to be held around age 3. And my 5 year old still sits in my lap and wants to be held and hugged and kissed. Until recently, I thought my mother just wasn't the motherly type, and that's why she didn't have anything to do with me when I was growing up. But I learned from other people that she was told she was incompetent by my father and that she wasn't happy about that at all.

I wonder what lie I was told that made me start avoiding my mother.

I don't remember it, but there must have been something.

I told other kids at school my mother was dead. I didn't want anything to do with her. That doesn't just happen, right? Somethings prompts that kind of reaction in a kid, right?

For the longest time, I felt like I killed her by rejecting her to please my narcissistic father. And it's easier to think that she'd already been dead, her soul crushed by a narcissistic mother and a long barren relationship with a narcissistic spouse, voided and made narcissistic, albeit passively so, by them.

6 comments:

  1. I am not comfortable with being touched or cuddled and was accused at a young age of being cold. I don't know what caused it or if it was a series of behaviors by my parents (father having no respect for boundaries, mother cold and mean).

    My son didn't stop wanting to cuddle until he hit high school. Now I wish I'd done it more with him before then.

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  2. I'm like VicariousRising - I only like to be touched by a select few people (people I trust). I didn't get cuddled or hugged. I was there to provide my parents with the rare hug at their request. Always giving love, never receiving it.

    When my NM touches me now (always from behind, so I can't prevent it), my skin crawls and I squirm away involuntarily.

    Some touches do not communicate love. Some just make your skin crawl. I don't know what's behind the latter, but it isn't love though it masquerades as such. It's 'tainted love', the worst poison of all.

    I'm sorry your father 'poisoned' you and your mom. I'm also sorry your mom didn't fight back on your behalf. That was her job to do, not the child's.

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    1. "Some touches do not communicate love. Some just make your skin crawl. I don't know what's behind the latter, but it isn't love though it masquerades as such."
      It's because it's about pushing your boundaries. It's MEANT to make you feel uncomfortable. To let you know who's in charge. Like, I can touch you whenever I want. It's when the touch is meant to convey some alternative message or relay some sense of phoniness or control that you get that feeling. At least that's the way it is with me.
      My NM loves to push physical boundaries with me (and my kids.) Demanding attention. Making me uncomfortable. She used to insist that I "snuggle" with her. Grossed me out. Funny thing is, my DH also says it's so weird that when he tries to hug her, it's like hugging a brick.

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  3. Hi PA,

    That's so creepy that your father did that. My father sort of did that, too, on a smaller scale, and even though he wasn't a sexual molester either (at least not that I can remember), his boundaries were terrible and he projected a sense of ownership over me and my body that to this day makes me cringe. His touch was always "icky" and somehow sexualized even if it wasn't overt. Anyway, I just wanted to say that by poisoning your young mind against your mother, he made you the "victor" in the whole Freudian Oedipal complex thing, just as mine did in different way. It's a terrible thing to do to a kid, especially when the other predominant message in the family is that you don't really matter except as his possession. It's a huge mindfuck, and I know that to this day I struggle with touch in general and sexual issues in particular.

    I'm really sorry you had to go through that. And I'm sorry for your relationship with your mom. It's all truly awful and sad on so many levels.

    Kitty

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  4. Hi PA,
    My NM poisoned our entire family against my father. We saw him as a weakling and the cause of all our family problems(until mom started scapegoating me). We all mistreated my father and felt superior to him. My older brother(GC) was ill and made all his post death arrangements and left out my fathers name in the obiturary. That really pleased my mother.
    I'm sorry you had a NF who was so selfish and cruel.

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  5. *sigh* - so many of us have memories where we stop and say 'hey - other kids didn't act like that. I was the only one...' The mind fuck never stops. Somebody (one of us, I can't remember!) said they felt like a 'dirty onion' - peeling the layers away and each layer is full of muck. The more you figure it out, the more there is to untangle.

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