My brother began to assume the role of patriarch of the Family when my father was becoming the most ill with Alzheimer's. While my dad suddenly became loving and supportive in a way he had never been before, the family dynamics shifted and I now suddenly was even more subordinate to my brother.
During the times I was able to communicate with my father as he grew sick, he now told me often and easily how proud he was of me for being the mother I am to my children and for working so hard to understand and make the world better for them. When he saw me after the illness he often told me how slim and lovely I looked, despite my being heavier post childbirth than ever before.
He no longer criticized me about my life, my weight, my choices but instead offered inspired and supportive words, heaping me with approval for the way I am living my life.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
This was suddenly the father I had looked for my entire life long, and here he was dying. Everybody else said he stopped making sense, and I understood how hard it must have been to care for him. My mother was certain to tell me when he had become incontinent, because, you know, dealing with shit isn't fun, but it was also her way of justifying to herself that she was unable to care for him any longer herself. It would have been fine to say that she couldn't care for him any longer. But leave it to my mom to drive a fine point home so she could feel better with herself.
My dad, in his childlike way, seemed to realize in the end the most important thing he could give me was unconditional love. I was mortified he came down with Alzheimer's, an academic who used his mind as his prize possession, it seemed surreal. But I am deeply grateful for those last captured moments with him and the way his love changed. As hard as Alzheimer's was, it was the first time in my life I really believed my father loved and supported me for being exactly who I am, just for being me. It was so deeply moving to me. But nobody else in the family saw it, or if they did, it was just dad being sick.
His last words to me were "You are doing an amazing thing with your children and I am so proud of you. I love you and am wrapping you up in my arms." I am so grateful for those being his last words. Given our history, and his former self, I fully expected things could have been so very very different. These words still bring tears. I'm so glad he said them and that they are the last words I can remember him by. Those were the words I wanted to let sink deep into my soul and wrap themselves around me in a warm loving hug. I'm incredibly grateful for that.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/marilynwefel.schmidt?fref=ts |
I wonder that it took such an illness for my father to acknowledge and be at peace with his emotional side. Perhaps he forgot his own trauma that caused him to become narcissistic in the first place, or perhaps he felt a kind of compassion for being alive and connected that finally reached deeper beyond his earlier purely intellectual take on life. As I have referenced, before his illness, to him, despite his impatient angry outbursts, he often lectured about how emotions shouldn't govern one's intellect. Emotions didn't serve well in an argument and arguments were something my father did really well before he got sick. That and criticism and judgment.
"Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist." ~ Michael Levine
Although I do not seem to be able to dig up anything but anger still (indicative of fear), preferring the more honest emotion of sadness, I cannot say the same thing for my mother. Down to her last dying day, she continued to betray any love or trust myself and my sister had for her. She triangulated, projected, sabotaged, betrayed, gossiped about and rejected her daughters. Everybody was so surprised when my sister left. I think it saddened my mother, but she still blamed my sister (and her husband).
The hurt was deepened further when my mother refused my presence at her deathbed. I offered to fly down to be with her. She said no. I can only guess at her reasons, but I'm going to assume that guilt was one. Although she said I should be here with my kids, she knew well it would be the last time I could touch her and say goodbye. Maybe she was afraid of my ability to be emotionally open. She was always uncomfortable with her own strong emotions. And mine challenged her to feel her own.
But what made it far worse still, my sister-in-law told me with a peculiar prideful glee through her tears of mourning the day before my mother's memorial of how in the last few conversations they'd had, my mother told her that she was the daughter she'd never had, and that neither my sister nor I were her daughters, really.
My sister-in-law felt it was completely appropriate to say such a thing to me directly before my mother's funeral. Sister in law held it up like a big wavy flag.
The woman who *actually* gave birth to me, and who I observed in intimate proximity for 17 years of my life -- which is longer than my brother ever lived with her -- was not my mother.
Nope, sister-in-law was so proud that she was the golden daughter on the deathbed. And she just let it rip right off after a few of their supersized martinis. The level of dismissal of who I am and my boundaries and feelings continued to grow and the gap between myself and my brother and his wife grew into a canyon. Which for my emotional safety I kept to myself.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
The interaction with my astonishingly narcissistic sister-in-law did, however, make giving my mother's memorial piece the next day a great deal easier.
No tears. No need. She was not my mother, because I was not her daughter. She'd said so herself. And just like always, sided with someone else "against" me. I had written an extremely respectful piece about my mom and did read it despite what had happened. But not a tear. Not anymore.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
She was disappointed with my sister and myself to the end because we were not a perfect reflection of who she thought we should be. Whoever that was supposed to be, it was impossible to achieve. And because we wouldn't play along with the grand Family Illusion. And that reflection changed at the convenience and whim of my mother and often my father, too.
My sister-in-law was just the latest in a long long long list of favored-at-the-moment people. My sister in law's no more my mother's daughter than I am my mother-in-law's daughter.
I would like to note here that my mother-in-law is a functional person and would never say something so cruel and narcissistic to her real daughter or to me. She is one of the wonderful people I know now, and has provided an enormous contrast for my experiences with my own parents. I love you, Mother-In-Law. It would never cross her mind to be cruel, even unkowningly so. There's real love there, not the conditional stuff.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sensitive-Hearts/127839093974385 |
The extent of the damage to both the daughters of the Family household -- who actually grew up living with them instead of out of the house doing drugs or hearing the fond stories my parents loved to put out to friends -- we may never know. I know what it has done in ways that I can see, but the ripples outwards are hard to fathom, and there are ripples, most assuredly. For a long long time, my own difficulties have been extremely hard to understand. This is how the narcissist wants it. They want you second guessing yourself, so you don't turn around and confront them and you stay scared through fear.
But it all is so very clear now.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
Given that the daughters had a much harder time pleasing my parents, it leads me to me wonder if there wasn't an element of sexism in there. My older brother, despite being an early disappointment, still became the Golden Child, even when he was doing drugs, because he was successful at it and making a lot of money at it. He was the son, after all, the one who had shown his big talents early on. Instead of being the artist he was born to be, he dropped his pen because of my parents, and picked up a needle full of heroin for long life of drug use until being arrested and imprisoned in Thailand for a year when he was well into his 30s. That's his story to tell, should he ever decide to tell it. How it affected my life is my story to tell.
When I did things my parents liked, I became the Golden Child, too, for a time, but it never stuck; in dance or theater or occasionally in my writing. It was all about what I did, what I produced, not who I was. It was never about who we really were, we daughters.
My sister was almost never the Golden Child, and then when she became a Doctor and could have been considered for the role of Golden Child, she moved out from under my parent's influence and control and isolated herself. I know now why and while I don't agree with everything she's done, I certainly understand it. And, since my brother and his wife were there being the Golden Children at the end of my parents' lives the rest of us were just horrid people, shirking responsibility, being selfish. Especially to my mother.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
The reference my sister in law made about my bother as "your prodigy" was to my very ill father during the one horrific visit I made to them with my children. Yes, Brother was the Golden Child, and the Family Illusion could continue as an extension of my father's "greatness."
Even if my father had given up caring about his image and how he looked to the world at that stage of his illness, passing the family torch, illusions and all, became, it seems, even more important to my brother and sister-in-law.
Both of them refuse to discuss family issues unless they are in accordance with the Family Illusion. There is no dysfunction in our family, that's bullshit, according to them. Nobody needs help, everything is fine and money and money. Oh, and money.
They seem to want the story to continue as some fond novel about a great family who left a successful legacy in the world. They appear to me to want to be the *best* of the kids according to my mother's and earlier father's idea of what was best. They gladly stepped into the role of dominant male and female. I hope they are happy with it, for it is a shallow and empty role to have assumed, especially the way they have decided to do it.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
At this stage, with my brother in his 60s, I have no idea what the motivation behind it is, other than fear of learning that their stories are not truthful. Fear of breaking the illusion. Fear of looking bad and shameful to the outside world. Deep, buried personal shame. And so the cycle of narcissism continues. It is a fact, their stories are not true for all of us. And never were.
During some email correspondence about our father's death, I tried to write to my brother about our family's dysfunction, I was met with an utterly furious email back stating that there wasn't any dysfunction in our family[exclamation point and don't you ever say that again implied]. That sort of abrupt unconsidered denial is in fact sure sign (read BIG RED FLAG) that some sort of dysfunction does exist.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
It surprised me, too, because during younger years, my brother had been an occasional (like... actually... once) ally against the hidden but powerful tyranny of our parents over each of us. The three of us siblings sat around together on one rare occasion at my sister's house and had a long talk about how my parents functioned... or dysfunctioned. No longer.
I was sad to lose an ally, but it doesn't shock me either. The people in our family serve the needs of The Family, even if that means injuring one or more of its less consequential or important members. Rather like the mob (though not quite as elegant nor effective), the family is kept under control through fear.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
Apparent support can turn on a dime if they register that you are going off the acceptable script for the story of The Family or if you stray from what they perceive as acceptable. Your feelings and personal experiences are irrelevant and are certainly second to the myth of the great Poet Family. Because he was a great poet, means he was a great man and his story is the only story that can be told. The only one that matters. All the rest of us are subordinates, extensions of Him by proxy, not individual beings with individual experiences or valid observations of their own. This is an old and tired theory and I would have considered my parents to have understood at least intellectually it wasn't a good model, and yet they were trapped within it emotionally themselves.
Clearly, I disagree the with this patriarchal model, and with the idea that only some stories matter. Everyone's stories matter. I matter. If The Family hurts you, then maybe we need to examine why The Family matters so much. We're not protecting some hidden treasure in our dysfunction. The wound heals in the light. It's better to work through it than suppress it. You and I, brother, like everybody else, were born equals. We still are.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
Science and psychology show us clearly that children who are respected and supported from day one are happier, more successful, see themselves as whole and complete and grown up and are better adjusted. The most well-studied science illustrates clearly that always assuming positive intent in any child, even when it doesn't appear that way, is the healthiest tack for both parent and child, and most of all, for the relationship between parent and child. It shows us that children who live stressed childhoods tend to be less healthy, and have more mental and physical illness in their adulthood (including PTSD). This is a fact, and one I struggle with in reality every day. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I suffer from chronic illness, most of which I can trace back to my childhood in some way. So very many choices that I didn't get to make for myself, so very little control over anything I was exposed to, and no one to hear the cries of pain from an abused child.
My parents went out of their way to break trust with their young children at almost every opportunity. And this has now passed on to my brother as he relates to me and attempts to take on a patriarchal role. Unfortunately, there's no one left in his life other than his own son and his wife to be patriarchal towards. Neither myself or my sister wants anything to do with the Family Illusion any longer, and for very good reason. And because it is our choice.
My brother has a choice, too, and his has been to attempt to shame me, drag me through the mud, employ controlling tactics, yell and threaten in order to maintain control over my thoughts and what I say. He has no boundaries at all where I am concerned, and crosses mine without a second thought. I'm fairly certain he is not aware of what an actual healthy boundary is, no less how to respect it. And he will not change, will never own it, a common feature of NPD. Very much like my parents, who put up their own set of strict boundaries whenever and where ever they liked, but did not allow their children to have any boundaries as a subset of having their own minds, so has my brother, at least where I am concerned.
People think that narcissism means too much self-love. That's not true. Narcissists loathe themselves deep down, they are afraid and ashamed all the time underneath all the apparent self-importance. They are holding up a fragile illusion of themselves and if you don't reflect that illusion back, you are an enemy. Actual, real, authentic self-love is extremely healthy. This blog is my way of expressing that self-love by speaking the truth of my experiences.
 |
| Source: https://www.facebook.com/GentleParentingUK |
“I do not exist to build your ego with my pain. My tears are not there to cleanse your soul. I now know that without you I am complete and whole!” ~ Roy McWilliams
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment