My Mother--You'd Love Her

Truth is, most of us are impressed by superficialities. It is this truth that many narcissists rely upon and are rewarded by.

Physical beauty, a sophisticated "air", apparent self-confidence, good fashion sense. Most of us form positive first impressions when all of these qualities manifest at once in a person. Add to that the ability to string a few comprehensible sentences together and we are ready to vote them into public office.

My mother embodies all the above characteristics. You'd like her. She makes a great first impression. Even a good second and third impression. For especially gullible and silly people out there, she remains a goddess in perpetuity. To all the characteristics above she adds an air of authority. She seizes authority in any context and most times people surrender to her without a thought. People like leaders. Most people like to be led. Especially if their chosen "leader" has enviable qualities that people wish to emulate or are happy to just be associated with.

She plays to her public. She excites their admiration with stirring speeches and by striking a pose here and there for effect. They wonder if they've seen her in movies. They marvel at the wisdom she dispenses. They are awed by her acts of charity. Her selfless "interest" in their problems inflates their own little egos. They crave her company as they sit on the edges of their seat hoping to receive another sign of her beneficent approval. I've watched her "public" slip into a hypnotized state just by watching her hands as she talks. Her beautiful, graceful tapered fingers. She moves her hands like butterflies as she speaks. Eyes are riveted, first on her face, then her hands. They're transfixed. They're eating out of those expressive, ever-animated hands. People can be so easily impressed.

Those who live with the beautiful and sophisticated narcissist are the only ones privy to what a cruel, selfish beast this creature really is. The poor souls who live with this beast know that not a soul would believe them if they dared to describe her abuse. You selfish ingrate! How could you say such a thing about Saint _______?! You long ago gave up on getting anything more than a crumb of consideration or kindness from her. You don't have anything she wants. You are a slave and she holds you in disdain for allowing her to enslave you. You have earned nothing but her contempt. The more you cower, the more she despises you. You watch her flit off periodically to receive the adulation of her public.

That would be you. Yes, I think you'd like my mother.

Mother's Day and Your Narcissist Mom

Holidays and narcissists. Ripe opportunities for them to grand stand, hold you hostage due to "custom", and generally make your life completely miserable. For those of us with malignantly narcissist mothers I am convinced Mother's Day is the worst holiday of the year.

Narcissist mothers have a death grip on the day. They cling to the expectations of recognition, praise, gifts and adulation with tenacious zeal. This is the day you have to "honor" her. A whole day set aside by the culture itself which means if you don't please your mother on this Day of all days you risk the disapproval of society itself, in addition to your petulant, selfish and bratty mother's persecutions. She makes full use of the pressure of society to conform you to ritual.

Pleasing her on this day is the trickiest of endeavors. Land mines are set for your feet. One miss step and the whole day blows up in your face...and you will be tortured for your failure for months to come. Mother's Day is coming and you are waking up in a cold sweat as to how to do enough to please your bitch of a mother while all you want to do is run to another continent so you don't have to face the obligations this day represents.

Can we stop right here? Mother's Day was not a day to "celebrate" abusive, selfish and evil mothers. It is a day set aside to honor truly good mothers. If your mother is the kind that inspires dread of Mother's day then can you just stop for a minute and realize she deserves no such honor? When you "honor" such a mother as yours it really cheapens the meaning of the day, wouldn't you say? You're an adult now. You can make decisions without asking for mommy's approval. You can do things she positively hates and there is nothing she can really do about it. If she misbehaves because you give her what she deserves then punish her. Punishment by banishment. That is what she deserves.

The only way to get free of the tyranny of your narcissistic mother is to first free yourself of the expectations of society. You have to be willing to endure a disapproving look or statement here or there from people who don't know anything about your life with an abusive mother. You can ease this process by keeping your relationship with your mother mostly to yourself. Don't confide in people who haven't already shown that they would be able to "get" what your narcissist mother is like. You'll have to put up with a lot less disapproval if you mostly keep your mouth shut.

The next step, after you've freed yourself to go against societal convention, is to now act in accordance with how you feel about her. Give her what she deserves on this day. That means different things to different persons and situations. If you don't break out into a sweat in the card section of Hallmark, then by all means, send her a card. If you can't endure the thought of Mother's Day because of what she turns it into no matter what you do...then what she deserves is nothing.

Something I hate about narcissist mothers and this High Holy Day for Mothers is how they never, ever consider that their daughters are now mothers too. I think Mother's Day should be more about those mothers who are still in the mode of day-to-day mothering than those whose birds have all flitted from the nest. Not that older mothers aren't deserving of recognition. Let me try to explain. For example. When my daughter is out on her own and is a mother herself I will not be sitting around waiting for her to dump all her responsibilities at home in order to take me out to dinner, go shopping, or spend money she may not have on me. Since I will have lots of time because I'm no longer raising children, I will pick up the phone and wish her a happy Mother's Day. I will send her a gift, or flowers, or take her out to dinner if geography allows. I will honor someone who is currently mothering her children and not lay piles of expectations for a young mother to accommodate my ego like I've earned some kind of Queen status, like stroking my ego should supersede her life with her own children and husband.

I don't have an mother ego to stroke. A mother's job is to raise her children so they turn into competent and independent adults. If I succeeded at that, then I was only doing what the job required. I shouldn't expect a monument to be built in my name because I did my job. Which is why, when grown children honor a good mother it is truly a gift to her. Not a requirement like taxes. Their kindnesses on this day are not my due. They are a gift. To receive those kindnesses in any other way is to take away the beauty of your children trying to give you something. It spoils and tarnishes the meaning of the gift and turns it into obligation. I don't know about you, but I don't want obligation to be the motivation for my daughter doing something on my behalf. I want to know she did it of her own free will because she loves me. That is the highest gift. Something a narcissist is incapable of appreciating.

The difference between a good mother's attitude and a narcissist mother's attitude about her children is this: a good mother realizes she bears the responsibility of bringing a life into the world and must do everything she can to support and add to that life, not subtract from it. The N mother sees her children as a perpetual resource to support her life. They are there to serve her. To her dying day. A N mother's children are never allowed to actually own their lives. She always holds the deed to their lives and forces them to pay rent on that deed all their miserable lives. A good mother doesn't subtract from her children's lives; she makes sure her actions add quality and happiness to her children's lives. There is no point when a good mother feels entitled to subtract from their lives. She forever bears the responsibility that she brought them into this world therefore she never feels like she can mooch off of a life that didn't get a choice for being born. A N mother turns motherhood from a responsibility to a God-like position. I brought you into this world, so you owe me. She, as your Creator God, exacts worship and obeisance forever and ever, amen. Completely upside down thinking which springs from their utterly selfish world view.

Save Mother's Day for the good mothers out there. Don't cheapen the day by paying homage to a black caricature of motherhood. Be honest with yourself and live honestly with others.

The Early Years with Sister Dearest

Two memories stand out from when my sister was still in diapers. I am going to relate them to you, not because they are earth-shattering or even particularly interesting, but because they are illustrative of what the years ahead were like between sister and me. These two early memories would be not be worth noting except in retrospect they are the early harbingers of what lay ahead. These two incidents would have long ago faded away if the library of similar memories didn't keep being added to the same shelf. I'm not trying to knock you off your seat with some horror story because they are no such type of story. I am just trying to avoid boring you to death by telling a whole bunch of incidents that may or may not be worth telling. These two memories sum up the majority of what screwed up my relationship with my sibling. That they occurred when my sister was still so young is proof of what the real problem was....my mother. My mother imposed her dysfunctional thinking on us which appears to have been set in stone before my sister was two years old. As I tell you these two incidents I am not in any way faulting my sister. She was not the problem at this time. My mother was the problem.

My sister was not a well-practiced sitter yet, as in, she wasn't accomplished at staying upright on her ass. She was still in diapers (they were cloth way back then) which made her ass all the rounder and harder to sit. on. I can say with all confidence that I never physically abused my little sister. I didn't hit her, push her, pinch her or otherwise torture her. I never even felt like doing such things. But because my mother was operating on the assumption that I was in a perpetual state of sibling rivalry, I got blamed for what happened this particular day. We had some company over and everyone was either in the kitchen or the livingroom. My mother had recently brought home a (hideous) coffee table. It was very large, like a dining table, but on short legs so the top of the table was only about ten inches high. My sister was sitting on her rump somewhere close to this table when she rolled back, bonked her head and started screaming. My mother runs out, looks at me who is somewhere far out of reach of my sister, and immediately and angrily accuses me of pushing my sister over to hurt her. My parents knew my sister was frequently dumping herself over. Only this time she hit her head on that stupid table and started screaming like she was being murdered. There was no way for me to get to where I was from where my sister was in the time my mother zipped out and scooped up the screaming baby. No matter, I was immediately tried and found guilty of nastily knocking my sister over. I remember this incident because of the angry and false accusation. I was shocked that I was being accused of something I had never done. I remember feeling a little embarrassed to be thus accused in front of company. (This became a recurrent theme in my life. Getting accused for various shit I had never even thought of doing. If my mother was judging me by her own childhood self she must have been a real big pain in the ass.)

All I know is I was set up to be the "bad guy" from the beginning because of my mother's superimposing on me the sibling rivalry of her own youth. As for me, if anything, I was found trying to get away from my sister and do my own thing. She was a just boring baby at this point in time. If left alone, I could play quietly for hours. I didn't need to entertain myself by tormenting small children. This memory illustrates that my mother's assumption that I felt sibling rivalry was fully operational still. It began before my sister's birth as I outlined in my previous post. When in doubt she immediately jumped to a negative conclusion rather than what the preponderance of the evidence would have told her i.e. baby can't reliably sit on her ass, older sister has no previous record of pusing baby over, and why would older sister do so when there were more people around than usual? A narcissist mother doesn't need logic for moments like this. Only her negative assumptions.

The next memory happened later...maybe up to a year later. I'm about five years old. I wake up early one morning and sneak out of my bed. Little sister is asleep in her crib. I dare to hope I can tiptoe to the closet and pull out the Lincoln logs. Maybe, just maybe, I can play with them for a little while without having to share with my two year old sister.

The rules were already firmly in place. If your little sister wants to play with you then you let her play with you. There is quite a difference in the motor skills and interests between a five year old and a two year old. I had not been able to enjoy playing with Lincoln logs for awhile because a two year old just doesn't get the concept. At least, this two year old didn't. You don't get to build anything when a two year old is involved.

I dared to think I could pull off a few minutes of play time without having to "share" with my now annoying little sister. I remember trying hard to not make a sound as I pulled the Lincoln logs out of the container. I had barely gotten started when she pulled herself up on the bars of her crib, babbling and pointing, and starting to make a ruckus as she shook her crib. This was her way of demanding she get to join in. Monkey see, monkey wanna do.

I can still "see" her. Clad in a diaper and t-shirt, bright rosy cheeks and mussed blonde hair. Objectively, very cute. At the moment, though, I was annoyed and cranky and she was anything but cute to me. The reason this memory stands out so stark and clear for me these many decades later is because of the strong emotions this moment evoked. My mother was immediately in the room because she could hear my sister's demanding babble. "S, let your sister play with you." All desire to play with those Lincoln logs vanished since the whole point at that moment was to play with them without a two year old. Any demonstration of my displeasure would have ended up with a spanking, so I complied.

These moments define the upcoming years of my life with my sister. From before my sister has any memory of it, she was taught that what was mine was hers. Her sense of entitlement to my time, interest and energy was unmitigated by any thought at all of what I might want because my mother made no effort to teach her that I had a right to say "no". I didn't have the right to say no. My sister's will was my command. I'm guessing it was for the convenience of my mother. I was there to keep the little kid out of my mother's hair.

Here are the facts. I was a smart kid. If academics are any proof, I was always smarter than my sister. Put a three year difference in ages, multiply by the fact that I was a brighter kid and you end up with someone who was mentally more than three years ahead of her sibling. A smart parent would know how to balance, at least to some degree of fairness, the reality that the older kid should have at least a few perks for being older. Mostly, I got saddled with babysitting and responsibility. No perks. This never changed.

The concept of "fair" was defined by everything getting perfectly split down the middle. If that couldn't be achieved then nobody got nothin'. I completely disagree with this kind of parenting because the world isn't fair. If you teach your kids that everything must be perfectly fair and split down the middle then you are raising a spoiled brat unequipped to deal with life's reality. In the real world perfect fairness does not exist primarily because we all have a subjective opinion on what "fair" is. Kids should be introduced to the concept that not everything is "fair" when they are young. Here's the deal. When we are kids, we are naturally coveteous. We want what other people have. I do not think that kid's should be allowed to arbitrate what "fair" is. To kids, fair is that I get what you have. "Fair" is the law of the jungle if you are stronger, or the use of a higher authority to do your stealing for you if you're weaker. In Kid World if I can't grab all of it, then at least half should be mine! An adult has a much larger perspective (or should) and can see that fair isn't necessarily defined by splitting things up evenly. Fair isn't always forcing the eldest kid to live and play on the level of a younger sibling. I do think an older sib should be taught to be kind and to make some allowances for the younger, but to be ruled by the younger isn't fair in any respect.

If I wanted to play with a friend I was told to take my little sister if my mother didn't have other kids around to entertain my sister. My friends hated it. Naturally. We were older and had different interests and didn't like having to accomodate the demands of a whiny and demanding younger kid who was physically and mentally way behind us. My friends from school were often older than me by a year or more. This was because my mother seemed anxious to shove me out the door. I was four years old when I started kindergarten. Five when I started first grade. This means that many of my school friends were at least four years older than my sister. A tag-a-long little sister was not anyone's idea of a good time. I had to share my friends, play time, stuff, whatever, at the whim of my mother and/or sister. None of these things were mine alone to enjoy. Everything was on loan to me. Including my person hood. As the years passed both of these females (mom and sister) became a pox on my life. They both seemed to take special pleasure in making my life theirs to intrude on, mock, judge, shame and otherwise wipe the scum of their characters off onto.

The early years with my sibling were largely defined by these two dynamics:

1) My mother's assumption of a bad attitude on my part toward my younger sibling which she ascribed to sibling rivalry. In reality, I became resentful at some point because I lost my autonomy when sister came on the scene. She was forced on me, and if I expressed displeasure in any way I was only lectured on how I was supposed to love my sister. Loving my sister wasnt't the issue, but this was never understood by my mother. All my lifetime my mother has made it a full-time job to assign to me what my motives and feelings are and then judge me thereby. There is never any appeal of her judgments. When I became a little older, my mother stopped ascribing to me the feeling of sibling rivalry because at some point even she could tell that I wasn't motivated by any kind of rivalry. She later simply judged me for "not liking" my sister. This continued well into adulthood. My sister was never held to account for her behavior toward me that merited me not liking her.

2) Most of the time I was held responsible for my sister. Whether that means me having to make sure she did her chores or whether or not I spent considerable time entertaining her...my sister was a boat anchor around my neck. I had no authority to make my sister do anything she was supposed to do, but I could be spanked along with my sister if she decided she didn't feel like doing what my mother had told her to do. My mother never recognized the potential for resentment on my part for this unequitable system. I was only blamed for having the wrong feelings should I ever let them show. My sister learned to take full advantage of this stupid system.

Spoiled and coddled, my younger sister was probably destined to become the noxious person she evolved into. By the time she hit her teens she was a bitch on wheels. More later.

A Few Thoughts on Bullies

I hate bullies. Despise them. I loathe them.

Now that I've been upfront with you on my overall opinion on bullies I'll elaborate a little.

I think we in America have become soft in our attitudes about bullies. We are too often seen trying to placate, ignore or psychoanalyze bullies rather than the only thing that works...confrontation and some ass-kicking. I'm talking about effective confrontation and ass-kicking which means you apply some old-fashioned pain.

There is no doubt that my attitude on bullies is the result of being a recipient of it for far too long by the narcissists in my life. Being raised by a narcissist, I was taught from my most formative years that it is wrong to resist. It is wrong to get angry when bullied. It is not "nice" to try to defend oneself.

Bullies are terrorists. Like a terrorist, the bully looks for your weakness, or your soft spot, and attacks you there. They attack you when your defenses are down. They pick on you when they are least likely to get caught. There is no such thing as a fair fight. They are underhanded and sneaky in their tactics whether it is an emotional or a physical attack.

Perhaps not all bullies are narcissists, but I know all narcissists are bullies. Both bullies and narcissists pretend they are big, strong and invincible by picking on someone smaller, weaker, vulnerable. Somehow they prove to themselves they are godlike as they crush the bug (that would by you) under their shoe. The narcissist bully lives in their alternate universe where such ridiculousness passes for sense. Bullies also interpret kindness as weakness. Beware.

Bullies are, above all else, cowards. Which is why they only attack those whom they perceive to be weaker in some way to themselves. Narcissist bullies specialize in emotional terrorism. They have keen perception of human nature and are very quick to hone in on your vulnerabilities. I have stressed before the necessity for you to introspect, to really know yourself, to be unafraid to identify and acknowledge to yourself what your weaknesses are if you are going to be able to keep the narcissist from using your weaknesses to control you. Just because you can ignore your own character, emotional or moral weaknesses doesn't mean the narcissist will do the same. Oh, no. They sniff 'em out like a vulture sniffs out carrion.

Assess your vulnerabilities. One way to do that is to ask yourself how a person can best flatter you. For example, are you easily flattered when someone compliments your looks? This could be a handle the narcissist can grab to make you jump when they say jump or to crush your soul. If you are overly concerned about your appearance then someone flattering you on it may be a quick way to soften you up. It can also be the fast track to beating you up emotionally by tearing you down on this point. The more you are susceptible to being flattered, the less defense you have in that area. It is a soft spot. Do not swallow flattery whole. You may take a little sip, but do not over imbibe otherwise you are likely to help someone get you drunk so they can emotionally rape you later.

Your moral failings can also be a big handle. Bullies are good at emotional blackmail. Your moral failings weaken you. We see this in politics all the time. The whole objective of "opposition research" is to hunt down every scent trail in the hope of finding some moral failing of a candidate to use to weaken them. Some uncovered indiscretion is all it takes to disarm you against the assault of an emotional bully. Your sins weaken you because your conscience becomes a bludgeon in the hand of the bully. Nothing like an accusation that has some foundation in truth to weaken your knees and make you submit to the abuse and perhaps become an accomplice with the bully. I'm not saying the bully has the right to beat you up for your moral failings. They don't. It is hypocritical for them to do so. I only hope by pointing out this possible tool of the bully that you will be prepared to stiffen your spine and not let them use your conscience against you. Forewarned is forearmed. You will feel overwhelmed at the moment they use this tactic. Even if it is something you long ago stopped doing and repented of. They love to throw it in your face anyway. Many decent people can be blindsided by this cruel tactic. Don't crumble. Don't cave. Stand up straight and blow it back at them. I hope I've given you some idea of how to take a good hard look at your self so the bully can't use YOU against YOUR SELF.

I recommend you sensitize your bully-o-meter to go off at the first small sign. Aim for a zero tolerance policy on bullying. The reason I recommend this is because with narcissists the bullying always starts small. Little things. Push, push, test the limits of your tolerance. If you have zero tolerance you can see why the narcissist won't get far with bullying tactics on you.

The only effective way to deal with a bully is to show that you are not intimidated. What form this takes depends on the circumstance. The principle is push back. Do not act like you didn't notice. Don't tell yourself "he didn't mean it the way it sounded". Don't try to understand the "pain" of the bully in order to excuse his behavior. Bullies are small-minded, small-hearted creatures who feed off the pain and intimidation of others. Stand up to it. If you aren't up to that, then leave. Get away and stay away. Keep in mind, though, that the only way to get a bully to back down is to get in their face, show courage, call them on their crap. After you've done that, then walk away. There is no point to keeping a bully in your life. They are mean, evil little freaks. Kick 'em hard and wave good-bye.

For all you "nice" people out there who wouldn't dream of hurting a fly, I'm sorry if my promotion of emotional or physical violence in self-defense offends you. Well, I'm not sorry. Never mind. There are some realities that have to be met with force. Because bullies only understand the language of power, sometimes self-defense requires the use of it. I will tell you that when I come up against a pacifist I tend to suspect they are closet bullies themselves. It seems those who expend the most energy trying to disarm us against bullies are really reserving to themselves the right to use terrorist tactics when it suits them. So, as far as I'm concerned, pacifists are cloaked despots.

Disclaimer: this is not an exhaustive treatment of the subject of bullying. You can go other places for that. These are just a few of my personal thoughts about this lower life form. Take it, or leave it.

[Icon by gryphonsmith]

Little Sister Arrives...It is Still All About My Mother

I was three years old and looking forward to having a new sister soon. Some months earlier, while still in my two's, Mom evicted me from my crib into a regular bed. Word has it that I loved my crib so Mom was worried I would resent a new kid coming along and taking it from me. The transition was painless. I didn't care that I was now sleeping in a big bed, in fact, I remember liking the feeling of "growing up". So I think I was more attached to what I did in the crib, sleep, than the crib itself. My mother has consistently through out my life misapprehended my feelings and motives. I guess that habit of hers started really early for me.

I remember the night my mother came home with my new sister. I was in awe. I also remember asking if she was born with that cute little yellow outfit she was in, and all the adults laughing at the question. "No, S, I brought the outfit with me to the hospital." explained my mother. "Babies aren't born with any clothes on." Now there was a shocker for me. Obviously, at three years and three months of age I didn't have a handle on certain subjects yet.

I have come to strongly suspect that my mother as a child had a severe case of sibling rivalry when her first sister came along. My mother was the eldest of three girls, and she was somewhere between two and three years older than her next sister. From well before my sister was born my mother operated on the assumption that I would be upset and angry at having a little sibling. I now think my mother was projecting onto me. I think she was the one who was inordinately attached to her crib. I think she was the one who resented losing her crib to a younger sibling. I think she is the one who hated the little usurper of attention and affection. It wasn't me. It was her.

My mother claims I often asked for a little sister to play with. I have come to suspect that my requests for a sibling were probably prompted by my mother. I can imagine how it likely went down, "S, wouldn't you like to have a little sister to play with?" "S, wouldn't it be fun to play with your dollies with a little sister?" Leading questions. Suggestions. Get the little kid to cooperate in your quest for a new baby to hopefully convince the recalcitrant husband of the need to concede. I have no memory of ever picturing myself with a little brother which is evidence in support of my "desires" having been shaped by my mother. I know my mother didn't picture having a little boy. She wanted another girl. Period. I think she projected her desire for another girl onto me and caused me to wish for the same little girl. My mother's reaction when my first baby was born was disappointment because he was a boy. She acted like it was some kind of tragedy. My mother hates males. Little males or big ones. So, I know she didn't spend any time hoping for a male child for herself. I have the added evidence of her dislike of small boys from the children she baby sat. I saw how she treated them. I saw her unconcealed dislike of their maleness. I have often shuddered at the thought of how my mother would have screwed up the raising of a boy long before I knew anything about narcissism. I remember musing as a young adult that my mother would have likely raised a serial killer if she had had a boy. Serial killer or not, she would have royally f***ed up a boy. As girls, my sister and I at least had a chance at normalcy.

I have some clear memories from before my sister was born, so that means I can remember certain events from the age of two and a half and later. I remember how I felt about having a little sister. I was thrilled. I did not resent her. I wasn't jealous or angry. It never occurred to me to feel those things. Nevertheless, my relationship with my sister was largely shaped by the interference of my mother. At some point my mother managed to create some of what she was assuming was true. I eventually did come to resent my little sister...and now I realize I was justified in those feelings.

Several factors were largely determinate as to how my sibling relationship developed. I've already mentioned one: my mother's projection of sibling rivalry onto my motives. Another factor was that my sister was a wanted child. I was conceived out of wedlock which is why my mother married my father. I was most decidedly not wanted. She told me often through the years that it was a good thing I was such a quiet baby because she doesn't know how she would have handled it if I was difficult. (I do. She probably would have killed me. She intimated as much in later years.) I didn't know until many years later that I was conceived out of wedlock. A lot of things made more sense once I got that piece of information. First child: not wanted. Second child: coveted to the point of screwing over my father. My mother was determined to have another child even though my father only wanted one. Here is how she tells the story:

"When you were born I was so overwhelmed at the responsibility that I gave you to God. I just wasn't ready for the responsibility so I knew I couldn't handle it on my own. But as you became older I realized you needed a sibling. Even though your father didn't want to have another child I knew it was the right thing to do. You needed a sibling. But this time I wanted to keep this child to myself. I told God, 'I already gave you one, this one is for me.' "

She has admitted to me that she "accidentally on purpose" became pregnant with my sister. Notice how she makes her deception of my father, and her not respecting his desire to not have any more children, into a virtue. She did it for me. She was only considering what was best for me. F***ing Mother Theresa she was. When she tells this part of the story she likes to emphasize how often I asked for a little sister. I now doubt I asked unprompted as I explained above. I was always a very happily self-contained little person. I didn't need to be entertained. I would have been a very content single child. I think she has exaggerated my requests to add justification for her dirty little deed. She was the one who wanted a new baby. Not me. Not my dad. It was her idea. Besides that, who depends on the advice of a two year old to decide whether or not another baby should be brought into the family?? How ridiculous she looks when I realize she was using a two year old's "desire" to justify what she did. She doesn't see this ridiculous aspect of her story; she only sees justification for what she unilaterally decided was going to happen.

Another thing her script above reveals is an attitude. I do know she believed she "gave" me to God. I have certain evidences that her belief was a restraint (somewhat) on her behavior. I am very thankful she believed this. So, if her believing she gave me to God shaped her approach to me, then her belief that this second child was hers also shaped her interactions with this child. Regardless of how you or I believe, my mother did believe this way and it shaped my and my sister's life.

Another interesting part of my mother's rendition of this story is how she admitted to this after she had overt evidence that she'd raised my sister into a selfish bitch. She used this story to explain how her selfish desire to keep a child for herself was the beginning of her mistakes in raising my sister. Obviously, there was no denying what a self-centered brat she'd raised so this quasi-confession served as an explanation for her failure at raising my sister. In my sister's defense, part of what my mother considered a "failure" was that my sister wasn't the compliant and obedient kid I was. This was true into adulthood. As a teen my sister was mouthy and cruel to our mother which was Mom getting her own shit dished back to her. My sister got away with things I wouldn't have dreamt of doing or saying. My sister was able to bully my mother because she caught on a lot sooner than I did that my mother was a bully herself. Get in a bully's face and they are likely to back down and run. Unfortunately, my sister chose to become like our mother in order to fight her. Those two were peas in a pod. My mother often confessed that my sister was too much like her which is why they clashed so often. From what I have seen, I'd say she was right about that.

I want to say that when I describe myself as an obedient and compliant child I am not singing my virtue. As I outlined in another post:

• A forced obedience is no obedience at all, but rather it is slavery.
• A manipulated obedience is no obedience at all, but deception.
• A purchased obedience is no obedience at all, but bribery.
• An obedience rendered in fear of adverse consequences is no obedience at all, but self-preservation.

I was a child with a sensitive nature which could be easily shaped by fear, manipulation and deception. I was a child who deeply desired to please which made me rich fodder for a narcissist mother. Mid way through my teens I started to rebel, but I did it mostly under the radar, sneakily, and in a self-destructive way. Understandable, but not virtuous. I didn't lash out on others. I saved the lashes for myself. I actually admire my sister's early recognition of some of my mother's attempts at mind control. She caught on much sooner than I did that our mother falsely ascribed motives onto us and judged us thereby. I was more prone to brainwashing because I just didn't get it. I trusted my mother to know me better than I knew myself because she impressed this on me very early on. On the other hand, my sister's ways of coping were to take my mother's tools and use them against her and others. She made a decision at an early stage that the ends justifies the means. My admiration doesn't include how my sister chose to cope. She was much more sheltered from my mother's cruel ways at an early age. She was sheltered because my mother indulged her and because I was a shield to certain realities being impressed onto my sister when she was the most impressionable. Not that I was a willing shield. It was because I was the oldest that my mother held me accountable, not just for my behavior, but for my sister's behavior. I think my sister's early years of not being oppressed by my mother is what enabled her to get a "leg up" on the mind control techniques when my mother finally got around to trying to use them on her. I am sure that when Mom decided it was time to start reining in my sister with some good old fashioned mind control that it was a real jolt to my sister. It would have felt foreign. Whereas, for me, those methods had been employed from before I could have any memories of when they began. We tend to accept as normal what has "always been".

This is more than enough for one post. I see now that describing my relationship with my sister is simply another description my mother's narcissism. Narcissism affects every aspect of life. Nothing comes out unscathed by association with it. Remember that when trying to decide whether or not it is healthy for you, or your children, to remain in proximity to it. Narcissism eats away at everything. It undermines every relationship it touches.