I know I've referenced this before, but it's worth noting again. I am a highly sensitive person. This makes me neither a failure or unworthy. It makes me sensitive, intelligent, perceptive and emotionally tuned in, easily overwhelmed, deeply empathetic, and at times, withdrawn. It also made me an ideal subordinate, because in order to avoid the things that deeply hurt me, I would try to jump to fit into the roll of everybody's wishes. I took the lowest rung of the family just to fit.
I have been told by members of my immediate (and sometimes extended) family, to just suck it up, get over it, grow up, you're too sensitive, what a drama queen, you're a "difficult" child, I love you but I don't like you right now, your name is mud and "stop crying or I'll really give you something to cry about." (From my parents, this last one was always backed up with physical punishment unless I stopped crying immediately.) The general message was don't get upset about anything in your life because we can't handle it. And tough if you're sensitive, we don't care, it's not important, in fact, toughen up, because sensitivity and emotion are inadequate and you are unworthy because of it. Yes. I got this message. Loud and clear. Over and over and over again.
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sensitive-Hearts/127839093974385 |
There just didn't seem to be enough room in the world for me to take up any space. So I made myself small and compliant within The Family as much as I could, apologizing for every last thing. An inner part of me rebelled in anger, but always kept it secret because to do or say otherwise was to step out of the acceptable parameters, to be violently slapped. To always jump to please was considered polite in my family, especially from me. But I didn't expect after my parents died that my other family members would adopt the same pecking order. I soon realized that being equal to my brother was simply not realistic, because he, too, demanded silence and obedience, just like a narcissist.
It was a natural role for me. Because I was the youngest and extremely sensitive to boot, I learned to eagerly subordinate myself to everyone in the family and to absorb most of everybody else's judgments and commentary without showing any of my real responses to them. I wanted my parents to love me and I wanted my brother to at least like me, spend 5 minutes hanging with me. This didn't happen until I was a young adult, and even then, I was never going to be an important enough person to really hang out with.
My lack of importance on a human level to my brother (I am not talking about money, that is separate and should not be confused for respect, worthiness, goodness, deservedness) was brought home when he took me to New York. We stayed in the Waldorf Hotel (his choice). We ate at quite expensive restaurants (also his choice). Later, when he asked for payback, it never even occurred to me to point out that I hadn't asked for star treatment, I would have been happy with a modest hotel, and modest food, because it was New York for cripes sake. I spent quite a lot of time alone on that trip, while my brother was off doing whatever it was he was doing. One night, during that stay, he said "Miriam, order up a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, and I'm coming over in a little bit and we'll drink the bottle together." Oo, expensive wine and time alone with my big brother.
I was so excited that finally, after all this time, my brother was going to sit down with me and drink this bottle of wine and we could connect and talk and maybe get a little bit close. I waited... and I waited. At about 11:30 pm, I realized my brother was going to be my brother and not show. I drank the whole bottle myself (I was 17). I watched the streets of New York from my window, grinned at myself in the mirror some, wrote in my journal then turned on the television and fell asleep at about 2 am, a tiny piece of me wishing he might still show up. I can't count the number of times I wished for us to have some time and get close. If it happened at all, it only happened on his schedule, and clearly, I wasn't very important that night.
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| Source: http://www.facebook.com |
The pecking order was clearly enough communicated through The Family that a completely non-blood relative, my sister-in-law, would continue that same line, regularly indulging in the fine tradition of minimizing me and maximizing herself and my brother.
Said sister-in-law told me that her son might possibly have an eye problem and could potentially suffer a loss of vision in one eye, and then she said meaningfully, "I know it's his eyes, but you know… it's *everything*" with great profound emphasis. Her worry and fear about it were tangible. I'm sitting there, listening to her, offering her empathy and understanding and in my inner self, I'm thinking "Seriously, she's telling me that?" I'd spent the last 3 years realizing and coping with the fact that my older son has autism. At that stage, nobody knew if he would ever develop language, like... say hi, or I love you, and stuff.
My reality at the time was that my child shrieked in extraordinary pain when someone tried to sing to him, smacked his head against the floor, lined his cars up, didn't enjoy touching or being touched and had no words at 3 and a half. It was just 10 months after my second was born and I began to see similar stuff from him. My heart sank because I knew I would now be working double time to help him heal, too. I would discover 8 months later that my younger was born with a brain malformation, which is closely related to tethered spine and spina bifida. I was treading water trying to keep up with everything and still trying desperately be deeply present for my children, but I could take a moment and offer empathy. That was my role after all.
Why is it that I felt trying to tell her any of the hard stuff that was going on for me would simply be met with criticism and judgment, as though it were my fault or somehow it had "served me right?" Probably because my family doesn't practice empathy. I leaned most heavily on my amazing chosen family and friends during those hard years. They listened and they heard and they helped me to find not only deeper empathy for others, but empathy for myself, which I had denied myself up until then. My dear friends had so many great ideas and they supported me immensely through the process of healing from the injury that autism is.
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| Source: http://www.facebook.com |
I don't mind giving my sister in law empathy. It's the total lack of anything in return that makes it a completely unbalanced exchange. I wonder if she'd hang on the cross of martyrdom had she had to cope with two non-verbal kids on the autism spectrum and one who needed brain surgery at 20 months old and could well again into his teens.
Because I don't complain about it to her does not mean it's easy.
My sister-in-law's everything is far more important and relevant than my anything. She remains utterly and completely clueless as to the nature of my life, or how I conduct it, instead preferring to retain the Family Illusion of me as someone who amounted to nothing and whatever other unpleasant things she thinks of me, and my brother as a "prodigy." And all of this is based on money, not on character, or kindness. In my family, you can be cruel, as long as you have money.
Narry from either herself or my brother has come a single word of support or understanding for my situation. A virtual vaccuum. They genuinely do not know how, especially toward me. Narcissism runs deep in our family. When people don't look at why they are hurting others, the cycle of dysfunction will continue on down the line.
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sensitive-Hearts/127839093974385 |
I no longer am in contact with my brother or his wife. The reason for this is that I posted on my wall on facebook a year or so back that I wish my parents had more emotional maturity, which is speaking my truth. I said my dad was about 7 emotionally and my mom was about 12. This is honestly how they appear to me in terms of functionality within the family. I wasn't commenting on their intellects at all -- they were giants intellectually. Merely on their emotional development, which in both cases, was deeply stunted, and in fact arrested entirely.
My nephew saw this post and unfriended me and then went about in the traditional "Family" way of "telling on me" as though I am supposed to fall directly in line, shut my mouth and hold up their fiction. Oh, look! Let's get the 50 year old lady "in trouble" like she's freaking 12 years old again.
Um, no, I don't think so. My wall is my virtual front room. Sister-in-law came to my wall and posted publicly to tell me I'd upset her son and demanded of me what is going on? I told her I was speaking my truth, this is how I see things. She then proceeded to try to take me down -- face on the floor -- by having my brother post in her name listing a bunch of half-truths in order to try to shame me on my own wall. (Coming from my brother, the former heroin addict, this was something else.) It was a stunning example of null/void/zero boundaries or respect, like I was supposed to apologize for ever considering any type of criticism or observation from my position. Who cares if my parents' emotional immaturity hurt the daughters of the family. Heroin, drug addition and every day use of large amounts of alcohol all point to the fact that it also hurt the son of the family, like it or not. When you don't deal with your pain, you deal it outwards to others. The word for that is projection.
The best part of it (and I do not say this with irony) is that at this stage, I have surrounded myself with the most amazing, powerful, empowering, loving, nurturing people. These lovely people went ahead and proceeded to peacefully clobber any efforts my brother and his wife were making with some simple basic truths and comments about boundaries. As my brother copped his line "they did the best they could," one of my friends asked him if that was the best he could do. No response, of course. My bother and sister in law petered out of the thread, leaving with a "get over yourself" final comment as an attempt to shake their fingers at me.
I think it shocked and surprised my brother and his wife that both myself and my friends didn't react as he had anticipated to his attempts at shaming me. I have to admit to that being deeply satisfying. It went down just the opposite of how my brother and his wife thought it would.
After they stopped posting, my friends stayed to discuss the amazing breech of personal boundaries that had taken place on my wall and they made sure to surround me with love and support. I even got support from a 19 year old who understands boundaries better than my 62 year old brother does. I have the whole ridiculous conversation saved as a remembrance of the way they speak and interact with me. Just in case anybody wonders. That was the proverbial last straw.
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| Source: http://www.facebook.com |
I have since blocked them, because this dysfunctional variety of drama and lack of communication is deeply unhealthy for me, and because they are incapable of treating me as a human being. They live for shame and they must live in shame, too. Shame is their weapon of choice.
A few months later, I felt the strong need to cut off my extended blood relatives as well, for there are some boundary issues there, and knowing how cruel my brother can be behind people's backs, it's more than likely he's shitted all over me to them. I don't need any of that. None of it matters anymore. It's none of my business what they think of me. And I like it that way.
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sensitive-Hearts/127839093974385 |
It was this final cutting off of my family that has been the catalyst for some of the most nourishing healing I have done, for my growing courage to speak my truths and write this blog in order to process them.
My remaining family can no longer harm me, or use me to gain narcissistic supply. It has set me free.
The actions of my brother and his wife are very much an extenuation of how my parents functioned, only in this case, it is without the love that my parents did feel for me, despite the narcissism. There is no love between myself and my brother and sister-in-law. So it's much worse and more ludicrous and more noticeable when it comes from them. They are ill equipped emotionally to be doling out such absurd judgments on others. They haven't bothered to examine their own issues, they can't possibly be competent to examine anybody else's.
If shame is their weapon of choice, certainly insults are another weapon in their arsenal. I recall a time in which I overheard my brother speaking about a 22-ish year old woman he had sort of adopted as his "sister/daughter" and who shared his nickname. According to his wife at the time (not the current wife), he loved this girl and they cared for her. They seemed to share a very special connection, I was told, an unspoken understanding of one another.
But when she came out to them as a lesbian, the whole game changed. I was friends with her and was supporting her and after she told my brother and his wife, they were not supportive at all. In fact, once when I was over, my brother spouted out in front of several of us, "Oh, I think ___'s lesbo shit is temporary, and she'll come around and drop all that lesbo shit." (These words stuck in my head, obviously, for years and years and years.)
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
"Lesbo shit"? Really? I thought to myself, here is a lady you are supposed to be fond of, supporting, feel some sort of deep connection to. And she's getting called a fake, insulted with a derogatory usage of a term that should not be an insult at all, and dragged through the mud in front of mutual friends, all behind her back. Again, this isn't support. It's the opposite of support. If my brother likes her so much, and he's not nearly so fond of me, which was pretty clear given the his overall lack of human investment in my life, then what on earth was he saying behind my back?
It is mind-boggling to ponder. As an aside, it would seem, coming out *was*, in fact, coming to her senses. I am still slack-jawed that he is like this. How could I possibly trust someone so willing to stab a close friend in the back, effortlessly. As though he does it all the time.
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/PPAAlife?ref=br_tf |
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