I've come a long way and am not there yet

Though I haven't written anything in quite a while, I sometimes drop by to see what people dear to me are doing.

I think about upsi - what HAS happened there? I also wonder about Kiki, whose blog is gone as well.

I like to see Jonsi get back in the saddle and shoot. Where she seemed extreme (as not polite enough by my FOO standards) in the past, I now smile at all she has to say. In some ways, I have grown.

I love seeing what Mulderfan, Ruth, Jessie, Q and others are up to.

My father is getting - old. Less interested in us, less energetic and thus less pugnacious, less invested in anything. He's been barely noticeable lately, which is, naturally, a good thing. I've also been able to swap apartments with him, which means I now own the place where we live and he owns the place that he rents out and no one can hurt anyone in any real way. So stuff is good.

I allowed myself to complete my dissertation. Even though he is proud and boasts about it, I am still a PhD. It's a practical thing I did for myself and my FOC, and him being there at the defense is something like collateral damage. He didn't do much damage, actually - he only talked to ONE of the professors, also narcissistic, and I giggled to myself that they were perfect company for each other.

I also have a third child now - a boy this time. This was something I'd feared - that I'd treat a boy differently as a result of having a dominant narcissistic father (both better AND worse) - but I was over it before he was born, thankfully.

In many ways, I have the perfect life. By what the world values, I am successful because I have a PhD and three children of both sexes.

But I'll always be an ACON, I now see - never quite good enough, never quite happy, never quite at home. And it's OK. I don't know if others can really get "there" - be really content and happy and fulfilled. If so, good for them. But this level of "not being there" is something I personally will always be able to live with in honesty and authenticity. One of my most precious life goals is writing fiction - novels and stories - and this is where I can be in truth for the rest of my life, if I can but pour this truth into a novel.

All the best to everyone and keep fighting the good fight!

Engulfing to Ignoring

I think I pinpointed the moment my father went from engulfing to ignoring.

To begin with, he never managed to be truly engulfing, just overly controlling on the outside. There never was classical enmeshment in my family. But he was always there, a cold, silent, towering dictator.

This was when I was a little doll, then a stubborn little kid, then a preteen who was involved in and successful at many activities - the piano, ballet, gymnastics, choir, acting - all of which he took me to and talked to the teachers and boasted about it all to others and proved he was an involved father of a gifted child to everyone who'd listen.

Then I dropped all these activities, one by one. I took to reading and listening to music in my room. He was upset and tried to talk me out of it. When this failed, I basically dropped off his radar. There was nothing public left for him to "do with" me - and that was all that existed before, anyway.

Really, when I think about it, he never was engulfing, it just felt that way. He wasn't capable of that. He was just around a lot, getting narcissistic supply from public figures.

And his narcissistic parents, to whom all the diplomas and awards were dutifully and ceremoniously presented for approval.

When that was gone, there was nothing left.

Parentification

People who never had real parents tend to parentify their children. This doesn't just mean that they want their children to take care of them emotionally (and sometimes physically) the way their parents should have.

This is common, but there are other ways to parentify and mess up your kids.

You can treat them like your messed up parents wanted to be treated, thinking misguidedly that this is simply the best way to treat human beings.

You can try to do anything not to upset them. You can try to leave every decision up to them. You can  allow them to walk all over you (sometimes literally) thinking it's your duty to just bear it. You can fail to have any boundaries. You can treat their every wish as your command.

I've been guilty of this. And then I've sometimes snapped and said "What do you want from me?"

Authoritarianism and permissiveness are two sides of the same coin - a parent who doesn't instinctively feel where sane boundaries lie because his or hers were violated in childhood.

Sometimes even infantilization is actually a form of parentification. My father did many age-inappropriate things for me and sometimes behaved as if I were a princess and he were my servant (but there was sarcasm involved). For instance, he'd ask me if I wanted something to eat in my room, I'd say "OK", he'd bring it to me and I'd finish it and then go on reading or whatever. He'd come in, see the empty plate, and sardonically say "May I remove Your plate now, your Majesty?" or something like that. There was no right response. He was resentful about doing something I never asked him to do. I'd mumble "Yes" or try to take the plate back myself - he'd never let me.

He and his sister had to serve their narcissistic mother as the Queen she was. So he did the same for me, because I represented her somehow. She demanded this sort of treatment, I never did, I was deeply embarrassed by it.

I'm a bit down now and feel like whatever I do with my kids, it will somehow be wrong because I'm broken and can't get it just right. I'll just do the opposite of what my parents did, and the cycle will go on.

Still shaking after a whole day

Here's something that still has me shaking after a whole day. I couldn't fall asleep last night. I am trying to figure out why exactly that is - because I'm so terrified of government institutions because I'm an ACoN and my NF was so much into doctors and teachers and all these authority figures; or because I'm so vulnerable and defensive about my parenting because I know at a deep level that I can never be an adequate parent. Anyway, feel free to point out my craziness out to me. This is what I wrote about it on a parenting forum:



So, I live in a post-Communist country. Public schools and certain medical check-ups for children are mandatory (and free, by the way; but still mandatory).

Today I had the pleasure of taking my 2.5 yo daughter for a first check-up with a speech therapist and defectologist AND getting information from them about my 5 yo's check-up that was conducted in her preschool class.

It was a real treat.

I was told my (wonderful, sweet, smart, almost bilingual, introverted) 5 yo is "socially impaired" (because she's shy in large groups and with strangers), "behind" (because she apparently didn't know all the arbitrary things expected from her at that age), and needs help from them.

The (pretty mean-looking, intimidating, crabby) lady told me it was obvious my daughter wasn't used to a "collective" - she'd been at home with us all her life before preschool and never went to daycare, something they obviously saw as neglectful and somehow evil - and she needed institutional help so she'd catch up with other, "socialized" children.

When I asked exactly what techniques and methods she thought she could use to help my daughter adjust to a school setting with more ease, the woman frowned at me and said "That's for me to know!" I replied: "I can't give my consent unless I have information on what you propose to do to my child" and she still wouldn't tell me! So I declined - the lady was giving me, a grown woman, the creeps, I certainly don't want to expose my sensitive child to her!

She said my child had cognitive issues. When I asked for examples, this is what I got:

- "She couldn't name all the body parts"
"I find that hard to believe," I replied. "Which ones couldn't she name?" I asked and got NO REPLY. My kid knows how to name body parts in two different languages and this was absurd.

- "She couldn't count to ten"
"She can count to one hundred," I replied. Perhaps she was terrified of this lady.

- "She couldn't name the days of the week."
OK, this one is true. My kid doesn't know the names of the days of the week. Those are seven words that she can cram by heart in two minutes, but what's the point of it in a 5 yo's life? She's just never been interested. She can tell time, though, but that doesn't matter, because the guidelines say that a 5 yo must know the days of the week or be deemed cognitively impaired. (Added: I actually taught her those seven words yesterday and it took all of 90 seconds.)

I said my child was fluent in two languages, and she reprimanded me for that, as it is bad for a child to be bilingual - a child must first learn her own language well before she's exposed to another one. I immediately got scared and defensive and said I couldn't prevent her - she just picks up languages effortlessly!

(And, only after writing this, I actually find the courage to say that this is baloney! I studied language development in uni and there's nothing wrong with being bilingual!)

Then it was my baby's turn. She was, to begin with, speech impaired - yes, she develops verbally a bit slower, but she's got a good ear and is catching up quickly. She just started showing an interest in learning words later. She's more interested in her motor development. (She speaks more than 200 words at age 2.5, and is learning new ones every day.)

They were concerned and seemed to blame me for not "working with her" enough. See, I have to actively teach my child speech, not just talk to her in a normal way.

One horrible oversight on my part is not teaching my children onomatopoeic words. You see, a child will never learn how to speak and will forever lag behind if you don't drill into her when she's two years old that a doggie says "woof" and a cow says "moo" and a sheep says "baa". Or whatever. I told them I wasn't sure I knew them all and I am a language and literature teacher at a university.

(I just remembered - she does know that a mouse says "click" )

It was problematic that my 2.5 yo was still not "part of a collective" - i.e. at daycare 8 hours a day. (I have no reason or desire to put my child in daycare).

And it was shocking to them when my toddler asked to nurse. They asked me why on Earth I was still nursing her. I answered "Because the WHO encourages it until at least the age of 2, and then further if both mother and child are happy with it," to which I was given a lecture about the bad quality of my milk.

My milk has great quality, by the way. It has just been used to cure conjunctivitis in my toddler and myself, and has warded off strep throat for my toddler.

Then she said I was attaching my toddler to myself by nursing so long, and she won't be able to be a part of a collective and learn well in the future because of it!

I asked her what research she has to back that claim up and mentioned that experiments in attachment psychology (Harlow, Ainswhorth, Bowlby and others) have demonstrated that securely attached children actually do a better job exploring and learning.

To which she replied that I can have my theories, but it was her job to tell me what the consequences of my actions were.

All this time, they were talking to me and asking me questions, never even looking at my toddler. The poor kid noticed toys in a box and tried to get them, which I attempted to bring to their attention, but they ignored it, and she gave up and headed towards the soap on the sink. I got up and took the soap away from her, as it looked yucky, and the speech therapist had the nerve to reprimand me for not listening to her, but paying attention to my child instead!

I've been sad, angry, crushed, all day long. My husband told me we should just ignore it all and keep doing our thing. But I can't help feeling both reprimanded as a bad mother AND afraid for my child in the future, if people like this ever get to her. Trying to turn her from an introvert into an extrovert. Trying to make her into a neat case with all the right boxes ticked. Knows days of the week? Check. Detached from parents and adjusted to the collective? Check. Fully "socialized", i.e. institutionalized? Check.






Really, feel free to comment honestly. Am I being overly narcissistic and defensive? Part of me believes I truly am an inadequate and neglectful mother and that my children really are better off with anyone else; and part of me wants to protect them from these people; then the other part of me tells me that's because I'm trying to keep them for myself and from the people who'd love them more and do better by them because I'm a neglectful narcissist; then I go insane.

The Bad Heart

I recently realized what the "bad heart" my father's family suffered from meant.

I'd worried I'd inherit their cardiology issues - my N Grandma, SG aunt, and NF all had "bad hearts."

Except that my N Grandma spent several decades trying to fill the black hole in her heart with junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes and died of a fourth heart attack, after she had used her "bad heart" to manipulate her husband and children into quivering obedience.

Except that my aunt never had heart issues - when she claimed she did, she was just blind drunk. When she claimed she couldn't have kids because of her "bad heart," she just meant that her evil mother had forbidden her to have any other children to care for but her and that she had made her abort the child she'd conceived with the man she loved but wasn't allowed to marry. She died of cirrhosis of the liver after several decades of trying to fill the black hole in her heart with alcohol and cigarettes on an empty stomach.

Except that my NF just suffers from manageable high blood pressure after several decades of trying to fill the black hole in his heart with junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes. He's actually surprisingly healthy for his age, activity level, and diet.

The bad heart transmitted in my family is a metaphor. It's the heartlessness of the parents and the broken hearts of the children. None acknowledged, none made conscious, none properly mourned.  


 

Poor Little NF

I have my father's childhood photo album. He is not interested in having it, I am.

One of the first pictures shows him as a chubby, happy, smiling baby. In the next picture, he's pouting. In the last, he's weeping.

The cute story behind it? He was such a happy baby and always smiled. They had no photos of him crying. So they shouted and yelled at him and told him he was a bad boy until he broke into tears.

So cute, right?

In the next several pictures, his smiling grandpa is letting Little NF ride him. When I asked NF about his grandpa, looking at these photos, all he had to say was, darkly, "He was a strict man." It sounded eery. Wasn't he a darling, playful, sweet old guy? I mean, look at the pictures! Apparently, far from it.

He had lots of people to teach him how to stage a perfect family photo shoot. How to manipulate reality and emotions. They started when he was an innocent little baby.

He was sweet then, you know. I feel perfect love and empathy for that poor little baby in that old photo.

Revisiting Mother. Again.

When I first started this blog, I had a black-and-white world in my mind. I was horrified at what I'd discovered about my father, and idealized my poor dead mother - although I could feel and remember very little about her.

Then I started remembering some things slowly. Now I feel the need to reassess some of the things I'd written before.

I remembered that, contrary to what I said in The Torture Chamber for Babies, my mother never took that incriminating comic - in which babies were being brutally beaten and whipped to teach them not to cry - to her colleagues. My poor brain imagined that one.

This is what happened: I drew it while I was at her work. I remember that distinctly now. I suppose I felt safe enough, at a public place full of psychologists, to create a cry for help, however veiled. The scene that I remembered came after this: slightly concerned looks, and complimenting my drawing abilities - and that was that. I'd given my mother too much credit. Of course she wouldn't have shown this voluntarily to anyone.

When my father slapped me repeatedly for "offending" him when I was 8 - and the physical part of it was actually minimal: the look of disgust, hatred, and contempt that was behind the dropped mask was the scary part - I told my mother "Now I love you more." I guess it was a plea: "Please accept me, please be on my side, I realize he's insane, won't you show to me that you do too?" She rejected this plea. She looked scared, anxious, guilty. Later, I heard her feebly say to him "You may have gone too far," and he just told her to shut up. And that was that.

She betrayed me. She showed me I could never count on her, I was always to be on my own.

And when I was 20 or so, and she said to me "You're growing up to be a really decent person" - well, that wasn't the whole scene. I censored it the first time I wrote it down. She said: "I was so worried for you, but you're actually growing up to be a really decent person after all." I had no idea what that meant, but it made me uncomfortable at the time. Why was she worried? Because she knew I was growing up amid dysfunction? Or because I drank a lot as a teen - she complained about this to my aunt at the time, worried about me? And how did she know I was becoming a decent person? That also made me uncomfortable at that moment. What did she know about me, apart from the fact that my grade average was good and I was the student representative? Nothing.

Right now, I'm angrier at her than at my father. She Saw something was wrong, but was too weak to protect me. Instead, she sacrificed me and used me as a shield.

She told a colleague I'd "saved" her from having to visit her awful MIL every night, and she was happy my father, her husband, now finally seemed more interested in his FOC.

I wasn't born to save anyone or any marriage.

I wasn't born to live silently on a shelf at home and perform for others in public as the happy, vivacious, spoiled rotten child. No wonder I was sometimes too loud and sometimes too shy - I had no idea what was expected of me and how to accomplish just that.

I was born to live.

What I didn't have

More homework I got: list the things you never had as a child. And try to feel it, too.

1) I didn't have a strong, supportive, gentle mother. I didn't have a mother who really loved me or liked me or seemed interested in me or talked to me or supported me emotionally in any way.  Instead, I had an absence, a weak woman who might have had some feelings for me at some point, but I'll never know because she betrayed me and sacrificed me to her extremely narcissistic husband for the sake of peace.

I didn't have a mother I could trust or feel safe around or look up to or feel warm about.

I can now imagine people like my aunt or Ruth or Tundra Woman in this role and tear up at the recognized difference. Now I don't have a mother who might talk to me and offer advice, wisdom, support; who might be a good grandmother to my kids and babysit and help out sometimes. I don't know if this would have happened had she stayed alive, but somehow I just can't really imagine it.

2) I didn't have a kind, understanding, wise father. I didn't have a father who really loved me for who I was or was interested in finding out who that might be. Instead, first I had an insanely controlling father who demanded nothing short of worship from me while appropriating all my achievements, and then I had a totally rejecting father who had had enough of me and couldn't show me off any more and discarded me before I could reject him. Now I don't have a father I can count on to want me good and not harm me or my family if it should happen to suit him. He will sometimes give us money or material things.

I didn't have a father I could trust to love and protect me and be proud of me and one I could be proud of.

I now allow myself to imagine all the older men I've liked and respected over the years in the role of my father. Crazily enough, I sometimes even "accused" myself of having a crush on them - although it wasn't actually true - because that was safer than realizing I was looking for a good father figure because the original sucked.

3) I didn't have unconditional love from my parents - the safe knowledge that whoever I was and whatever I did, my parents wouldn't stop loving me. In fact, withholding love was my father's favorite weapon, and I never even thought my mother loved me. My mother had many problems with how different and unladylike and awkward I was, while my father had problems whenever I wasn't interesting, original, or smart enough to impress the commoners all around us. Either way, I couldn't win and the pressure was high, but I still chose my father's rules because it meant I could be dark and eccentric and drink.

4) I didn't have ownership over my own body and possessions. And no right to privacy, if they didn't feel like it. My diaries were read, my room searched. If they felt like it, however, I could be alone in my room reading for hours every day. Or out until 5AM drinking. Bliss. It depended on their current mood.

5) I didn't have permission to express or even feel my own feelings. I was forbidden to cry as a child because it a) showed their parenting in a bad light and b) bothered and irritated them. If I cried, I'd be given something to cry for, and then I a) again wasn't allowed to cry and b) realized the only way to "win" and find a semblance of peace and freedom would be to never react to anything in any emotional or "weak" way. I believe my father stopped beating me with a belt when I stopped showing any reaction to it.

6) I didn't have unconditional support for any good thing I might choose to do with my life. I had lots of open "support" in public places where my father could show off (taking me to classes, being at recitals, school board, thesis defense) and little outside of that.

7) I didn't have permission to attach to other, sane people. My father, who was utterly incapable of even faking closeness and love, was insanely jealous of me loving anyone else. Luckily, while he was at work, my mother's stepfather often took me out to tag along with him, at the behest of my grandma, who was the one officially babysitting me - but she was also quite narcissistic and grew tired of me quickly. He didn't. He kind of liked me. And I adored him. I even had the courage to list him as the person I loved best when people asked that silly question. I seem to recall my father shooting a look of hatred at my grandpa on one such occasion.

8) I didn't have warmth growing up. From anyone. Those who could have given it to me weren't allowed to.

9) I didn't have permission to share anything negative about my family with anyone. Including myself. This made me detach from myself. This prevented forming actual honest relationships with others.

10) I didn't have the right to be myself. Not only were they unable to love me for who I was, but, as they had no idea who I really was, I was constantly treated and talked to as someone else - weird, inexplicable characters accused of weird, inexplicable flaws, thoughts, and feelings. I remember constantly feeling shocked at who they seemed to think I was - and this changed in a matter of seconds.

Hard Work vs. Easy Work

There are two ways to break the cycle of narcissistic abuse in your family.

You can do the hard work - realize your parents were abusive in some ways, understand how this has affected you, take a long deep hard look at yourself, your thinking, your feelings, your relationships, change, stop defending, start truly loving. It takes years of being bare, exposed, helpless, lost. You're likely to carry some problems and some fleas forever, but you're determined to be open and honest and vulnerable about this.

Or you can do the easy work - realize your parents were abusive in some ways, do things differently because you're better, feel good about yourself as a great parent because you don't even do x to your kids, and your parents did xyz to you. You're still largely narcissistic, although not as abusive as your parents.

Only today did I realize that I didn't have to think of these two "options" in black-and-white terms.

Both actually deserve credit - to differing degrees.

My parents consciously refused to engage in some forms of abuse, manipulation, and parentifying that their parents used liberally. I remember this. I picked up on it. I can now give them some credit for this.

Which doesn't mean they weren't narcissistic enough to majorly screw me up. But I'm still happy I didn't have to be raised by exact carbon copies of my extremely narcissistic grandparents.

motherless daughters

She lost it again. She was in her daughter’s face, having a toddler-like temper tantrum. Except that she was thirty and a mother and should be able to control herself. And should be able to control her daughter’s behavior, at least a little bit. This was all she had left after about three hours of reasoning, begging, and sternly, but unpersuasively saying “Calm down. Now.” Three hours of threatening, pleading, and even hitting her. Twice.

The little girl was angry. Or scared. Or both.

“You’re not my mother. You stole me from my real parents. Admit the truth!”

Poor little Rapunzel. Seeing mother Gothel for who she is. At last.

***

Later, at night, her dead mother pays her a visit.

“You know,” she says, “You thought your father was sterile and we used a sperm donor to make you.”

“We did have a donor. We used donor eggs. I’m not your real mother.”

She’s smirking cruelly as she says that.

***

I don’t remember that cruel smirk from when she was alive.

I do realize this now makes three generations of motherless daughters. The sins of the mothers.

My narcissistic father IS my real biological father

I finally did a DNA test - my father is my father. I have no other fathers but him.

The family story my aunt told me must have taken a wrong turn somewhere - I'm sure they did use ART to conceive me and that the "donor" bit got attached to the rumor somehow. Perhaps they used IUI or IVF and then I was born, looking nothing like my father or his family. Could people have thought I wasn't his? Could it have occurred to him too? Some things are still just too bizarre to be explained in any other way.

I spent a year on an emotional rollercoaster for no good reason. I made an absolute idiot of myself.

But there was something good about it: the idea of a possibly sane father out there who might be like me and who might like me enabled me to feel. I gave myself permission to love this non-existent man and grieve for him. I had never grieved the father I couldn't have. I hadn't felt any real emotions towards my father (or mother) for decades. I had blocked all emotions.

Now they came back - for a person who doesn't exist. It proved how vulnerable and, really, pathetic I am. I longed for one man in particular to be my real father - because he was nice and enjoyed my company and liked me and shared my interests and gave me books of poetry and short stories. Which was much more than I ever had with my father.

It was so easy to let myself believe this. To have a tangible reason why he couldn't love me. Why he resented me. Why I had to be sooo grateful just for being allowed to exist (I'm sure they had to use IUI or IVF and I did cost them something - at least, the shame he had to endure in front of the doctors) and why "You look like your mother" was so often thrown at me (I guess that was my entire sin - I didn't have to be another man's offspring to be resented, only not be his carbon copy - I really look nothing at all like him or his family).

I made myself believe I could expect nothing from him or his family - they owed me nothing. This made me remember how cold they were towards me.

But they owed me love and support, no matter who I looked like. My father should have loved me. He owed me that.

I might take some time off to process all this. I'd spent a lot of time obsessing over something that wasn't even true. There are other, real things to focus on, and although right now I feel drained and exhausted and deflated, it can only get better from here if I focus on my daily life from now on. I hope.

out of the mouths of babes

My daughter said these things, mostly unprompted, since the watercolor incident:

"I really wanted to let him paint, because I wanted to see what he'd paint - but I didn't tell him not to spend all the paint, because I thought he knew he wasn't supposed to do that." (You'd think, right?)

"I know I don't have to give him anything I don't want to and I don't have to listen to him. I listen to my grandma (my sane MIL) because she's not like Grandpa N - she loves me and I love her and I like to listen to her."

She gets it. On her own. Wow. That's both kind of scary and kind of reassuring.

Scary because it's so obvious he's not like other, normal people who can love and be loved, that a 5-year-old gets it. And I didn't, for so long.

And reassuring because at least I know I haven't conditioned her not to trust her gut. I must have done something right. Or at least better than him.

Sad and sick to my stomach

My "father" came over yesterday evening. We hadn't seen him in weeks and he'd missed us, he said.

Then my kids ate a Kinder Surprise egg I'd bought them and the toy inside was a paintbrush with a tiny amount of watercolors.

My older daughter loves this toy.

But, apparently, so does her "grandpa". So he just takes her notebook and her paintbrush and her watercolors and starts painting with them!

"Don't take that from her!" I tell him.

"That's all right, Mom. I let Grandpa N paint with them." My beautiful, kind 5-year-old says.

"There's very little color there", I insist. "Give it back to her before you spend it all."

"It's OK, I let him." My daughter is persistent.

He doesn't react at all. He's acting like an engrossed toddler.

"Grandpa, let me paint now", she says when he's finally done.

"You can't", he says. "There's no paint left."

She's visibly sad, but says "Never mind."

My heart breaks. But I don't know what to do.

Could I have prevented it? Should I have?

I told her later she never has to give grandpa N anything that belongs to her if she doesn't want to. She repeated that she wanted to.

I'm buying her a real set of watercolors today. Can't shake the overwhelming feeling of sadness about this relatively small incident all day. Like something very important is irretrievably lost and nothing can ever replace it.

Like something died.

Spoiled AND abused... but never loved

So, I realized I needed to lose weight again - I'd been spoiling myself with too much greasy food, beer, and sweets lately, feeling emotional and vulnerable more than usual. It was almost openly and explicitly self-destructive, and I felt with every bite how I'm ruining my body because I hate myself.

But I can only approach this task in yet another self-destructive way - by abusing my body with too little food and too much exercise. Otherwise, there's no motivation at all.

So I wondered why it was hard for me to find a balance and just get healthy. And then it hit me: "healthy" is an empty word I distrust, much like "love," "mom" and "dad."

It's not a simple matter of finding balance between two extremes - it's about loving myself enough to want good things, like being healthy, for myself, in which case there are no extremes to balance. They disappear.

I cannot do that. I can only overindulge or overdiscipline myself to an unhealthy degree.

Much like my parents did to me. Much like all parents who can't love their children do. Extremes of indulging and abusing the child all at the same time. Lavish praise and cruel put-downs, huge expensive presents and going without shoes, being allowed to drink myself half to death until 5AM and not being allowed to opt out of going to a family lunch when sick and in pain.

It's only possible when there's no love for the child. When you're unable to truly love. When you're trying to sing from a sheet of music but you're tone-deaf.

I was just a pawn in his power games

Wow. Just realized this.

When I was born, the daughter of my mother and an unknown donor, a fact no one was supposed to know, my 'father' usurped me. My mother wasn't allowed to nurse me, feed me, bathe me, clothe me, spend time with me. He was the only competent one.

Nurture was all he had, and he wanted to show her that, although I was biologically her child, and she got what she wanted after so many years of begging for it, she could never really have me. I would be 'his' child where it counted - I would be taught to worship him alone. I knew at a very early age I wasn't supposed to love my mother if I wanted to please him - and she never once supported me in any tentative moves I made towards her at moments when it was clearer than usual that he was not a stable individual.

Everyone knew he was the most loving, caring, doting father. This proved he was my real father, and then some. But it also proved to her that she lost the battle he created.

I was his. Not hers. He won. Neener neener.

Then she died.

And it was then I ceased to exist for him, except as a target for abuse. I'd tried to explain this in different ways, like getting married - but this was much later and actually the consequence of his escalating verbal abuse - I wanted to get out as soon as possible.

I was no longer useful as a pawn. He'd definitely won, so he didn't need the pawn any more.

That didn't stop him from telling people everywhere how concerned he was about me, having lost my mother and all. It didn't stop him from making heart-rending statements like "I am now both a mother and a father to her" (he was neither). It didn't stop him from still presenting a sentimental, doting, loving facade to the world.

But he stopped presenting it to me.

Narcissism and Having Children

This is a fascinating issue that is so commonly swept under the rug. What is the role of narcissism in the process of people having children? It's a simple enough question. But it's something no one really wants to ponder.

If you believe - like I do - that narcissism is a spectrum thing and that most people have certain relatively sane levels of narcissism that don't impede their functioning as human beings - then you'll concur that most parents out there are somewhat narcissistic, though they don't have Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder prevents people from being able to actually relate to any human being in any real way. It prevents real parenting, period, whether the child is genetically related or not.

Now, sane levels of narcissism we can all relate to, right? I sure can. Thinking that something is cool about the color of your eyes. Or your aptitude for literary creation and interpretation. Or your musical talents. But that those engineers are just not quite as fun as your kind of people - no offense, right? Can we all relate to this? Or am I really very narcissistic for sometimes feeling this way?


Sane narcissism seems to conspire with genetic heritage in order to help kids get the unconditional love they need from their parents. You love who you are and you love your partner so together you get kids who resemble yourself and your partner. You're likely to favor these kids over other humans out there and invest in them. Thus the species survives. It makes sense.


Now, completely non-narcissistic people who truly love all humans in the world non-discriminately and have absolutely NO preferences at all for, say, their musical penchant over someone else's tone-deaf hatred of all music, will likely make quite suitable parents for other people's children - through adoption or unknown gamete donors (though this will not necessarily answer all the issues these children may face in not knowing their genetic parents). These rare godlike perfectly altruistic people will make perfect parents for anyone.


The rest of us imperfect parents have to concede that we we enjoy seeing our traits, penchants, temperaments - and those of our beloved partner, and our ancestors, and his ancestors - in our children. It's really sweet. It's delightful. Can't help it.


It's a form of sane narcissism. The sort of sane narcissism that has quite possibly allowed the human race to survive.

This is the stuff that compels many people to want to have kids.

That makes people go through all sorts of unpleasant infertility treatments before considering donor conception or adoption.


That makes many people who eventually do turn to donor conception or adoption as last resorts have, well, issues. Natural issues. Issues that shouldn't be suppressed. Issues their (")children(") are likely to have, too, because they will likely want to think of their traits / ethnicity / heritage as good, and valuable, and important. These issues cannot be wished away.


And where does that leave the true narcissist, the parent with Narcissistic Personality Disorder? He will never be a true father to any child, biological or not. But a non-biological child he has to pretend he has fathered so he could present himself as fertile will never ever even theoretically be able to please him.

Now and Then

People will let you complain on and on about your friends, lovers, and children.

But they won't listen to you talk about your parents and their parenting.

Long time ago, let bygones be bygones, water under the bridge.

I don't want to disparage, discount, or denigrate those who are suffering now.

But.

What is being done to formed adults now is something that is being done to formed adults. Formed adults can walk away or fight back.

What parents do FORMS their children. They can NEVER walk away because their parents remain in their heads forever. They can NEVER really fight back because they'd be fighting against a piece of themselves. I'm trying to do that now, but it's so damned hard not to listen to their voices inside me!

So, how come people would listen to me complain about my husband forgetting to throw out the trash but won't be comfortable with me complaining about my parents never loving me?

Mea Culpa

I can't, I mustn't blame my mother for anything, because it's my fault, it's all my fault. If I'd been gentler and warmer and more loving as a child, instead of agreeing to be appropriated by my narcissistic father and pushing her away, she would have shown me how warm and loving she could have been. But didn't dare. Or something.

He pulled me away from her and her away from me. I pushed her away. She just obeyed. It's my fault for allowing it. And now she's dead.

My aunt, her step-sister, is warm and loving and normal. So, she'd have been like that too, if we'd been a better family to her, right? They did have different mothers, though. And lived apart. In very different homes. 

I'm the cold bitch here.

There were a few hugs that were real. Unlike his, which were also rare, but fake, in addition.

But I have to admit.

She criticized me and pigeon-holed me and defined me in negative terms too. She embarrassed me in front of others by revealing private things about me and laughed cheerfully and innocently about it. She expected me to perform in front of others and make her proud - parade my "knowledge" and "talents".
 
She once showed much more concern about what a doctor will think than what I felt before a surgery I had. This was very painful for me at the time. I thought it was utterly unfair.

I might be starting to remember things about my mother.

And they're not too pretty.

They formed a duo of performers when we were out together. Both jovial, jocular, vivacious. At home, though, he was a dark tyrant, and she was a vegetable on the couch. But they had these roles well rehearsed, both of them, together.

She pretended away his insane behaviors and made light of them and excused them in front of me. She was his sidekick. They functioned together.

They shouldn't have had me. Maybe if she hadn't had me, she wouldn't have got breast cancer. Maybe they'd be happy now, in a fake world, together. The abuser and the willing abused, who look so good in front of others. With no one to ask questions.

I shouldn't have been born. I mean, God probably didn't mean for the two of them to even have a kid, right? But they created me and I should be grateful, right? Because they'd have been happier without me.

They should have had a spaniel. Or a plant.

Involved

Narcissistic parents engulf or ignore. They can't have a sane relationship with their offspring. My father was a combination of the two, more controlling when I was a little doll he could exhibit and take credit for, and more ignoring when I grew up and grew a mind of my own. Which felt so much better and made me think at the time that I had great parents who let me do all sorts of stuff.

One of the more annoying aspects of my father's engulfing ways when I was younger was his involvement in my school. Kiki wrote about how her mother didn't volunteer at her school and seemed utterly uninvolved. My father was too involved. But it wasn't about me. It was about him and the narcissistic supply he got from the teachers. He was president of the school board. He was the one who went to all the parent-teacher meetings. Very few teachers ever met my mother. He'd boast about me and ingratiate himself to the teachers, flattering them. It made my stomach turn.

What was worst for me was when he infringed on my times of freedom. The school trips! For a child from a perfect family, I sure loved the freedom from home that the school trips offered just a little too much. Two weeks away from home! Other kids cried and missed their parents. I never did.

During one school trip, he wrote me an elaborately illustrated letter full of silly cliches and with the instructions to show it to my teacher! I was later questioned on how the teacher reacted. The whole thing was beyond embarrassing.

And for a child who was "so attached to her father" as everyone, especially he, kept repeating until it became an unquestioned truism, I sure was horribly shocked and appalled to run into him just a couple of days into the delicious freedom that was the school trip! I was eight and I remember that moment vividly - I was walking down a path, with sunshine in my face, and he jumped out nowhere and stood in my path, blocking the sun. The world grew dark. I had the expression of utter shock. "Dad, what are you doing here?" I asked. "Aren't you happy to see me? I came to help the teachers. If I embarrass you by being here, I'll pretend I don't know you the whole time we're here." I guess, knowing what I do now, that it was supposed to elicit a reaction along the lines of "No, of course you don't embarrass me; please don't ignore me!" Instead, I took him at his word and said "Ok, great. Let's pretend we don't know each other!"

In the days that followed, however, although he dutifully ignored me, he started preying on my friends, acting wonderfully towards them. One by one, he took them under his wing, until I was isolated and alone in ignoring him and not talking to him. In the end, I relented too. He'd won. Everyone was on his side, hanging out with this wonderful, involved dad, not understanding why his own horrible daughter wasn't talking to him, not understanding why I felt betrayed by them. So I started talking to him too.

Only the Blind Can See

It sounds like a paradox, but I'm dead serious. The reason it's so difficult to explain to others what we were missing as children and are still missing now is because it is such a normal, essential thing that those who had it and have it don't even notice it. How can you explain Lack of Love to those whose parents really loved them? How can they understand what it's like never to have received free, safe, unconditional love from those whose duty it was to provide it?

So we talk about the fluff. We talk about their selfish or abusive or lying actions and are told that other parents sometimes do the same. They talk about how our parents raised us, put us through school, bought us stuff. But all this is irrelevant fluff. The issue is Lack of Love. Parental love is something absolutely essential, and yet something invisible, because it's simply taken for granted.

Like eyesight. We don't go around thinking about eyesight all day long, thanking God we have it and feeling empathy towards those who don't. We take it for granted. Only if you're blind, and have known what having eyesight is like, are you likely to See its importance.

When we are told "Well, maybe your parents were unable to really love you, but they put you through school and bought you stuff" it's like telling a person whose parents gouged their eyes out in infancy "Well, your parents blinded you, but they bought you some nice shades, and that white cane they got you sure is neat." 

I was blinded early in my life. And only recently have I begun to realize what having eyesight feels like. And only now do I realize what a difference it makes and how essential it is.