02 - Realization and Coming To Terms

© Miriam A. Mason, 2014

Dear Father, what you coveted most in yourself is what you stole from your children, a unique individual voice, with unique individual opinions, separate from yours, valid and worthy. Children were to prove their worth, earn your respect, and do as they were expected. Deviation from this was not acceptable. You convinced us that only your opinion and responses to anything in the world mattered. And we were to always be good extensions of you.

“I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.”

― Sylvia Plath

I am writing about my father, a poet and University of California professor; and about my mother, also a writer and teacher. Both have passed away in the last decade. Know that I am not writing with the purpose of revenge, or attack, but from a place of light and truth, even though it may go into unpleasant places. The wound heals when exposed to the light.  I am writing this in order to heal myself, to put thoughts, feelings and experiences that I have shoved deep inside for half a century into written form, and to share my story with others, those who struggle like myself and for those who believed we were the picturesque family we claimed to be.

I also realize I will potentially be attacked by other immediate family members who are still living; mostly by those who have gone even further into what I perceive as the delusion my parents created -- the "Family Illusion" -- of our perfect intellectual superior entitled family. The thing about these particular critics is that they weren't there, the ones who knew me and the ones who didn't. They can't deny my stories hard as they might like to, because they were simply were not present in my life in any real coherent fashion, so everything they have to say about it is no more than conjecture and hearsay, wishful thinking to continue to feed an illusion that would be best starved to death. 

Even in the face of these possibilities, I will tell my story and my truth anyway, because it is mine, and there isn't anybody alive who can tell me I haven't the right to tell it.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/LoveSexIntelligence

[For the critics who don't know me, unkind comments will be removed. Growing up, I received hours of lectured criticisms each and every day, so thank you, but no thank you, even to kind critics, I don't need you to help me be fixed. You know not my journey nor my truth. And this is about speaking personal truth.  If you think I should be grateful to my parents, sight unseen, then please stop here and don't read further.  This blog is not for you, unless you are willing to open your eyes and hear another perspective no less valuable than your own.  I am not grateful for what my parents did, because it was unnecessary and unhelpful and created a world out there that I felt was ready to sabotage me at every turn.  I watch it happen now to my younger friends, and their unwittingly narcissistic shaming parents.  This is very serious and something that needs to be aired. Things could be so very different for so many if it were not for the shared cultural idea that children are not full human beings.]

Anne Lamott got this completely right in the quote above, just below my blog title.

There were some good moments, being in The Family. At least I think they were good. It all clouds up when I ask myself that question, because good, according to my parents, was what my parents thought was good. And a lot of the fun was being what my parents would think of as not good, and we all know that story growing up, don't we?

The most fun I had being a Family kid was the summer I was 11 and we went up to Quincy, California for the month of August and I played with my (supported and consequently supportive) friends wild and free on the rivers and streets of the small logging town. We climbed on rooftops, created our own secret spy club complete with secret names for each of us, we caught water snakes and crawdads and fish, and learned how to speak Double Dutch super fast. My skin turned a deep brown like a bear from spending every waking moment in the sunshine. And mostly, I was away from my mother, and she was pretty much fine with that.

Photo by my sister.

 At other times, there were moments of shared laughter, and moments of happiness, but they were overshadowed by something insidious and unspoken, well hidden under the guise of a happy family.

We were not a happy family. Not for as long as I can remember.

We presented quite well on the outside for the most part, as we were supposed to. A pretty family, all together (although not really). To my parents friends, we were just another great academic family. Because presentation was what it was all about.

'Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people's standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question "How do I look?”'

― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

My parents were narcissists. They were not so much visibly narcissistic to the outside world, but towards their children directly. The behaviors and actions they took may have seemed small when taken one by one, but when added together, they amount to nothing short of abuse. Not intentional, of course, but even the road the hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. They knew not what they did and they never wanted to know.

I am coming to terms with the knowledge that I am the adult child of narcissistic parents. It has become very empowering. My parents were afflicted with a level of psychological self-importance that lacked the balance of emotional maturity so much so that it dwarfed any lesser being's emotional needs, especially their children's.

Because my parents were not emotionally developed people in many ways, they were utterly unable to relate to their children's emotions, needs and upsets. And even less able to cope with them as parents. Our upsets and temper tantrums and emotional challenges would upset my parents to the point where we were physically punished, slapped, hit, if not told we were worth nothing, it was certainly clearly implied. My parents quite literally panicked at every one of our strong emotions. And I was a child with strong emotions. A sensitive child. This never made me a "bad" child, unless you were my parents, then we were all bad kids, especially if we were emotional and sensitive.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/TaoZen2012

 As I said, I do not believe they were malignant (intentional) narcissists, at least not consciously aware of it. Although when I look back at my mother's behaviors about me, it's hard to conceive that she would not have been aware on some level of the sabotage she created. I do think they each suffered a variety of childhood trauma which they never addressed, and in fact, were very fearful to even admit it. Although my parents often functioned as a single unit when expressing anger/disappointment/shame to their children, each parent had a different story and a different degree and type of narcissistic behavior that caused it. They played off one another very well, in fact, but it was complex. In the end it was their own fear and shame that created it. And always had been.

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