If your mother was a narcissist then you'll understand this...

An interesting article appeared on the UK Daily Mail a few days ago. Erin Pizzey is stating a solemn truth that must be seriously considered by the world: that women are every bit as capable of cruelty and abuse as men are and that it is time to stop pretending that men have the corner on being abusers. She describes her childhood growing up with two abusive parents and describes her mother's abuse as being much worse:

...it was my mother's more emotional, verbal form of abuse that scarred me most deeply. She indulged in a particular kind of soul murder...

Those of us raised by a malignant narcissist mother certainly can understand what Erin is describing.

I won't be entertaining heated defenses of feminism in the comments section. Keep the comments confined to the point of this article...that women are just as capable of being abusers as men are. And women may very well be more damaging in their form of abuse because they understand the nuances of emotional and verbal slaughter and have more access to their children to carry out their abuses.

Read it and weep:

Why I loathe feminism... and believe it will ultimately destroy the family

Truth + Obituary = Making People Squirm

It's superstitiously considered bad form to speak ill of the dead. I say 'superstitiously' because people act like the dead will have their revenge. Maybe it is just that people think it makes the person who does speak ill of the dead look bad themselves. That is true only if by speaking ill they are lying. But when someone dares to speak the truth of the dead, and that truth reflects poorly on the dead, then it is the dead person's fault not the speaker's fault.

In case you've missed it there has been a bit of a bruhaha over the obituary for Dolores Aguilar. It first appeared in the Vallejo Times-Herald. It was yanked rather quickly by that paper but not before Aguilar's obit was picked up by the SFist.com, an online newspaper from Aguilar's home town, San Francisco. Then the rumors started to fly about how the obit was a hoax. Both SFist and a journalist from DailyBreeze.com did their research and were able to confirm the obit's authenticity.

The woman who wrote the obit was a daughter of Dolores Aguilar, one of eight children, Virginia Brown. She describes how growing up with her mother meant being "unfed, poorly clothed and completely terrorized". She hints at the divisions formed in the family. She admits her mother presented a respectable face to the world, but how: "She was a chameleon. She could make outsiders see her in any way that she wanted while behind closed doors she would beat at least one of us every day..." This is not the behavior of a mentally ill person. This is the behavior of an evil person. It takes awareness and calculation to only pick on your victims out of sight of the observance of those who would hold you accountable. This blog has dealt with this aspect of the malignant narcissist and how they know what they are doing is wrong and therefore are careful to hide what they do.

The daughter of Dolores Aguilar unwittingly describes a malignantly narcissistic mother. So I want to bring to your attention the obit that such an evil mother deserves. Virginia Brown, the brave daughter who flaunted convention, dared to speak the truth. I applaud her for it. I don't believe it makes her look small. She is bravely saying the truth and validating the experiences of all her family members. I think it is hugely significant that:

Brown wrote the piece alone but has yet to hear any disagreement from the family members who have seen it in the three days since it ran in her mother's hometown. Nor has the paper received any. (source)

I really think this is further proof of the rightness of Brown's honesty. She wasn't speaking ill of the dead. She was speaking the truth. That the truth is ugly is no ones fault but the dead Dolores Aguilar.

When I contemplate the further damage to the family of Dolores Aguilar a standard obit would inflict, I am able to recognize what a good and decent person Virginia Brown is. She did what was right by her living family by not buckling to what society believes is right by the dead.

Click here for the link to the obit when it was first picked up by SFist.

SFist ran their update here.

For the DailyBreeze.com article by John Bogert, click here.

Now, in order to help preserve this obituary for future readers of this blog I'm going to copy it below. I don't know how long before the links above go dead so I am trying to insure that the heart of this post is recorded for posterity. This is likely an obit that many of us could write for our own mothers.

An homage to the evil mother:

"Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on Aug. 7, 2008. Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.

"Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times, too. But I truly believe at the end of the day all of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again.

"There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, goodbye Mom."

Considering the scope of abuse and damage that Dolores inflicted I find this obit remarkably restrained. Another testament to its honesty. It is a study in understatement while refusing to praise an evil woman. I hope that Virginia Brown and her siblings and extended family find the peace they have craved now that the family tyrant is gone. I admire Virginia's courage to speak the truth more than I can ably express. She has validated not just her own family's experience, but mine. God bless you, Virginia Brown and family. Who cares whether or not Dolores is resting in peace. It is her family that deserves rest and peace.

[Icon credit]

On a Tear: More Comments on Evil Mothers

From "Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers":

She terrorized. All abusers use fear to control their victims, and your narcissistic mother used it ruthlessly to train you. Narcissists teach you to beware their wrath even when they aren’t present. The only alternative is constant placation. If you give her everything she wants all the time, you might be spared. If you don’t, the punishments will come. Even adult children of narcissists still feel that carefully inculcated fear. Your narcissistic mother can turn it on with a silence or a look that tells the child in you she’s thinking about how she’s going to get even.

This describes my mother; how 'bout yours? The author uses the word "terrorized". This word is not hyperbolic. It is the exact right word to describe what the child of a narcissist mother endures, possibly for a lifetime.

At Answers.com we find the military definition of a terrorist:

An individual who uses violence, terror, and intimidation to achieve a result.

The word most often is applied in a political sense, but how is what the narcissist mother does to her children not the acts of a terrorist? "Violence, terror and intimidation". Heaping servings are dished out to the offspring of a narcissist mother. Daily fare. Routine.

To mention the routine-ness of the terrorizing is not in any way to diminish its horrid effects. It simply serves to underline what the grown children of a narcissist parent has survived. It is no small thing to survive the parenting, aka terrorizing, of the malignant narcissist. It is an achievement. A triumph of the human spirit.

Narcissists teach you to beware their wrath even when they aren’t present. The only alternative is constant placation. If you give her everything she wants all the time, you might be spared.

Here is described the demand of the narcissist mother that you assume a total submissive posture toward her at all times. "You might be spared." There is no way to be completely safe from the rage of the narcissist.

Sam Vaknin describes the two postures you can take in dealing with a narcissist. The submissive posture and conflictive one. When he concludes his comments on what the submissive posture will require from you, he says this:

It is an onerous existence, consistently tiptoeing on eggshells. Neither is it invariably successful. The submissive posture delays the more egregious manifestations of abuse but cannot prevent them altogether. Choosing to live with an abuser is like opting to share a cage with a predator. No matter how domesticated, Nature is bound to prevail. You are more likely than not to end up as the abuser's next meal.

Again, I only quote Vaknin when I know from my personal experience and observation that he is correctly describing something. This is one of those times. If you proceed to read his comments on the "conflictive posture" of dealing with a narcissist you come out at the end realizing that he is telling you something very important. Whether you submit or resist, living with a narcissist is not worth the effort you have to put into it. They are irredeemable, intractable, predatory. No matter your approach, the narcissist will manage to get some blows in.

What I find very interesting whenever I have read Vaknin prescribing going no contact he issues the strictest of orders. He is being helpful on this account as well. There is no way to allow even the slightest bit of contact with a malignant narcissist and have "no contact" remain in place. The lack of contact must be absolute and unappealable.

Back to the reality that narcissist mothers terrorize their own children. On what planet should such a mother be applauded, 'honored', bequeathed with gifts? Can we see that to do so is to dishonor good mothers? What is the point of honoring a good mother when evil mothers are accorded the same accolades? Can anyone else see how this makes Mother's Day into a mockery?? Is there ever any safe contact with a terrorist, even on this High Holy Day of Mothers? Highly doubtful.

I realize that some of my readers had a narcissist father instead of a mother. I think you can see how much of what applies to the N mom also applies to the N dad. I didn't have a N dad therefore I speak about N moms. On occasion, as I read from message boards online I see there is a general ignorance of even the existence of narcissist mothers. So I make no apology of putting extra emphasis on this type of parent. There is still too little recognition of the reality that there are malignant narcissist mothers out there. N mothers have some very different tactics that they employ against their children. Her game is often much more subtle than the N father. Hence, she often escapes the scrutiny of the general public. Come Mother's Day we who have N mothers are assailed with the multiplicity of expectations that demand we pretend the terrorist mother we have had all our lives is, ultimately, our 'holy' mother deserving of at least some credit.

I am rebelling. Publicly rebelling.

This kind of cruel and evil mother deserves no credit. She donated an egg. Big deal. After that, she assumed my life was hers to consume at will. I was not even granted the right to be a separate human being. I was simply granted status to be an alternate life source to her majesty. My mother has more in common with Elizabeth of Bathory than anyone would care to admit. She simply lacked the power and opportunity to fully express the evil she was capable of. Do I give her credit for that? Does she earn some kind of "good mother" credits because she didn't abuse me more simply because she lacked a way to get away with it? No, not anymore.

I know there are well-intentioned folks out there who think I am wandering from being a "good" Christian by defying Mother's Day. So be it. I do not believe that Hallmark or the government has been given the authority of Heaven to saint a day for mothers. Duh.

I know with all certainty that honoring evil has never been commanded of the Christian. Call me unbiblical if you will...I know the truth of it. I know that my mother is not my Creator. All due honor goes to Him. She, because of her evil actions, gets her duly earned dishonor. I am not dishonoring her. She has dishonored herself. I am simply recognizing that fact. The only honor I am left to give her is her anonymity. I have sheltered her from public exposure. You do not know who she is. You may meet her tomorrow, but you'll never know that you have. Therefore, she is not truly exposed here on my blog. I am describing EveryEvilMother. Not an individual. So, in a very real sense, I have protected her. That is the only 'honor' I am left to bequeath to her.

Narcissist Mothers Suck

I need to put in a clear disclaimer at the outset of this post. I love motherhood. In fact, I am someone who thinks there is no more important job in the world than being a mother. It is my deep, sincere respect for the high office of motherhood that motivates me to highlight the fact that there are mothers out there who have more in common with a serial killer than with true motherhood. These monsters who clothe themselves with the sacerdotal cloth of motherhood while terrorizing the fruit of her womb are worthy of no honor on this day set aside to thank good and decent mothers. Yes, I know very well that all mothers make mistakes. We could never honor any mother if the qualifications for honor were that she never have made any mistakes in raising her young. I don't believe in perfect motherhood. I do believe that good and decent mothers make mistakes, but she more than makes up for them by the fact that she unfailingly loves her children and puts their best interests ahead of her own.

That being said...

I keep thinking these last several days that I should continue on the theme of horrendously rotten and evil narcissist mothers in this run up to the Day of Days. There just isn't enough rotten mother bashing out there this time of year.

I want to be that place.

The place where people can come to ritually poop on the hallowed altar of Worshipful Motherhood. A place to cleanse yourself of the saccharine sweetness of pretense which assumes every mother is worthy of accolades and wreaths and undying adoration. Should you refuse to bequeath honors upon your narcissist mother on this High Holy Day you make yourself into a personification of ingratitude in the eyes of the ignorant.

I don't blame the ignorant for their ignorance on this matter. In fact, there is something kind of innocent and sweet about them. They had a mother who truly loved them. How can they conceptualize a mother who is the complete inverse of good motherhood? What precedent could they use to pattern your mother after? Only fictional ones. Which is why they think these mothers only live in fiction. Therefore, you are making it up. Only the children who have witnessed the evil mother behind closed doors...the only place where her true evil was on full display...can attest to the existence of the soul-sucking mother who actually hates her children. Don't despise the innocent folk who were blessed with loving mothers. In fact, try to shelter these innocents from the truth of your mother. They are not equipped to handle what you know. Spare them when possible. Your mother is the stuff of nightmares. Don't foist those nightmares on the innocent if you can avoid doing so.

Only narcissist mothers demand that Mother's Day be a day to worship them. Which is why I call it Worshipful Mother's Day. The narcissist mother doesn't want sincere affection, sincere gifts, sincere thank yous. No, they want worship. As I've said before, truly good mothers don't demand attention on this day. But the malignant narcissist mother knows somewhere in her evil heart that she must demand the appearance of such things because she hasn't earned them. The truth is, appearances are all she wants. Genuineness is completely lost on her. The narcissist is consumed by appearances therefore they are incapable of appreciating the genuine.

The evil mother feels that society itself has lent its considerable influence and imprimatur to compel her children to honor her dishonorableness. She is more than happy to exploit the shame which will come upon disobedient children who refuse to bring their annual sacrifice to her altar on her day. You see, to the narcissist mother Mother's Day has the force of the government behind it. She believes that Mother's Day is like a blue law. She believes worship of her on this day is compelled by the highest powers-that-be. On this day, she is not the lawbreaker. You are. She deserves honor on this day because Gub'ment sez so. Never mind all the laws of goodness, morality and true motherhood she has broken over the years. On this special day to her Worshipful Honor her lawbreaking is set aside. You become the lawbreaker on this day should you withhold from her whatever she demands. At least, that is how she reckons it.

This is childish and legalistic thinking. In other words, this is just more of the same narcissist crap thinking piled higher and deeper.

We need to, at this point, differentiate between truly honoring ones parent(s) as commanded by the Bible and this idea that on one day a year you can fulfill your obligation in that regard. Truly honoring your parent doesn't include honoring them in their evil. I've discussed this in my two posts on the fifth commandment. Conversely, you can't fulfill that commandment by dishonoring your parent 364 days a year and then make up for it all on Mother's Day. Can we just remember that for most of human history there has been no such day as Mother's Day? If Mother's Day was intrinsic to "honor thy mother..." don't you think that God Himself would have handed down the command to set up such a day from Sinai? He didn't. So can we separate out Mother's Day and Father's Day from the command to "honor thy father and mother..."?? The Hallmark holidays have nothing whatsoever to do with truly honoring ones parents. In fact, I think a case could be made that setting up these two holidays have done more to trivialize how we honor good mother and fatherhood than to elevate our conceptions of these important roles.

What I'm trying to drive home in this post is that the narcissist mother demands a caricature of honor on Mother's Day. Caving into every whim and demand of a narcissist on Mother's Day is by no means a true demonstration of honor. There is no honor in giving honor to dishonor. Ever. I want it crystal clear that the narcissist mother goes way beyond demanding "honor". She demands worship. And that conflicts with the first commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."

The only law you break when you abdicate from Worshipful Mother's Day is the law of the lawbreaker herself. I can live with that.

Icon credit.

The Approach of Worshipful Mother's Day

The pitty-pat of the approach of Mother's Day in the U.S. is even now discernible. A month away, I'm sure some of you are starting to feel the creeping dread rise up in your throat. Your stomach sinks; your heart squeezes in the vise-grip of expectations of family and society-at-large to bequeath honor on the dishonorable. At the other end of whatever I end up writing here today, I'll direct you to my ode to evil mothers written last year since I'm not sure I have anything better to say on it. Let me stop for a moment here and tap into my internal rage and see if anything else comes up.

Ummmm, ummmmmnnn. This coffee is too good--it's put me in my happy place.

Perhaps I'll recount for you part of a conversation with my husband yesterday. We were discussing the comment that I dealt with this last week here and here. Hubby brought up the presumption of the commenter that I was selfishly motivated as well as the implication that I had casually tossed away my relationship with my N mother.

My husband said, "I don't think people with poor imaginations (like that commenter) can even begin to conceptualize how difficult it was for you. You agonized over how to deal with your mother. I watched you struggle. I saw your intense distress over what to do about your relationship with your mother. I saw you do everything you could to try to repair the relationship without surrendering your integrity. I saw her reject your efforts. Ultimately, your mother forced you to make the decision to cut her off from you and your family, but it was not something you did quickly or easily. There was no glee in you in cutting her off. It became an obvious necessity after several years of agonizing and effort to salvage some kind of relationship with her. For much of that time you knew nothing about malignant narcissism. You simply knew something was terribly wrong."

There you have a snippet of outside observation of my attitude and behavior in dealing with my malignantly narcissistic mother. I hope you haven't mistaken my firm resolve and clarity of thought and opinion as being the place I started from. I struggled, I cried, I shook in fear, I lost many nights of sleep, I suffered physically, I spent long hours in thought, I studied, I truly did agonize.

This blog represents the outcome of all that pain and difficulty. What I have hoped to accomplish here is shortening someone else's trip through this land mine ridden emotional territory. I have hoped to help you see things from the vantage point of victory over the tyranny of narcissists to give you hope and resolve to make the hard decisions; to give you something solid to hang your faith on that it'll be better on the other side. I have come out the other side with no regrets and with my integrity firmly in place. Good people want to do the right thing so they can live with a clear conscience. I think I have had something to share on that account.

I stopped surrendering my morals and my intelligence to the narcissist. My conscience is clear. My life is my own. Here, on this blog, I have shared with you my hard earned strength, acquired wisdom, and experience with the desire that, if necessary, you can borrow from me in order to proceed toward freedom in your own life. My hope has been to share with you the principles that guided my thinking so that you can shape your own thinking and make these good outcomes your own. So you too can have a guilt-free as well as a narcissist-free life...and still be able to look at yourself in the mirror.

I think most of you have active enough imaginations to grasp the concept that I have wrestled, battled, and fought with myself and my upbringing in order to get to the place of peace I now live in. It was my desperate clinging to truth, i.e. reality, that brought me out into the light. Being a Christian, I had to examine each issue carefully within the framework of morality. I have shared my discoveries there as well. I can tell you will absolute certitude that without my understanding of the gospel I think I would have wandered interminably in the wilderness of slavery to the narcissists in my life. I don't think it is obvious to many why that would be...but, it is true nonetheless.

When I started on the road that eventually led to my no longer having someone I call 'mother', I didn't even begin to envision that outcome. I certainly never imagined no longer having my father in my life. In fact, I desperately didn't want to lose my father in the process of trying to hold my mother to account for her bad treatment of my own daughter. Even though I didn't want to lose my father, I didn't make that desire my guiding principle. I had to be willing to risk losing him to do right by my mother, and to do right by my own family and myself...ultimately to God. I knew what I was risking when I decided to take a stand against my mother's predations of the weaker members of our family. As much as I didn't want to lose the favor and love of my father, I didn't let that desire over rule the course integrity should take.

Alas, my narcissist-appeasing father made his own choice. He made it clear he didn't want me if I wasn't willing to continue to quietly stand by whenever my mother decided to eat a family member. Was there no struggle with the possibility of losing my father forever because I had decided to no longer wink and nod when my mother cannibalized her family? Of course there was. It was another dark struggle I contended with.

There are terribly hard choices one has to make when deciding to hold a narcissist to account for their evil behavior. To hold that narcissist to account is most likely going to lead you to the realization you can't safely keep them in your life anymore. This can lead to what seems like dire outcomes when you're talking about a narcissist family member. You will very likely lose other family members. In the beginning that can seem like too high a price to pay. For some, it likely is too high of a price. For many of us, freedom of mind, body and soul is well worth the cost in the long run. Yeah, the long run is where the benefits are reaped. The short term is painful and costly. Ultimately, each person has to decide what they value most. For me...that is freedom. Moral, intellectual, spiritual, emotional freedom. Priceless.

To read my ode to bad mothers on Mother's Day, click here.

The Wizard of Oz: How One Narcissist Interprets it

Speaking of the 'man behind the curtain' in my last post, I thought I would elaborate a bit on my mother's inordinate interest in the movie "The Wizard of Oz". She refers to the story often and studies it like it is filled with subtle signs and cues of some grand conspiracy. For example, she finds great significance in the color green in the movie. (Emerald City and all.) I don't actually know what the significance is because she won't explicate it. She just looks like she knows the mystery of the color green and expects you to puzzle it out for yourself if you want to prove you're as smart as she is, as well-versed in hidden (occult) knowledge. My mother claims to be a Christian but she is an occultist at heart. Always has been.

This obsession of hers about the Wizard of Oz was a later development in her life although I remember from my youngest years that we always watched the movie when it was replayed on TV in the days before videos. Maybe it is a sign she's gone around the bend with this new obsession. But there are too many other signs that she is still sane for me to slap that pat of an explanation on it. This is more a manifestation of her increasing paranoia as I'll explain a little more in moment.

I think she can sense there is a lesson in the story that is just beyond her grasp. She studies it and studies it but can't quite see it. I really do think she senses there is some big revelation in that movie that she is yet to nail down. She ascribes an air of mystery and dark quiet conspiracy to this movie. It's like some grand poobah in the Globalist cabal is sending her a message. Perhaps her obsession is nothing more than a narcissist majoring in minors as they are wont to do, but I think there is a little more to it than that.

Her self-delusions make the rather obvious moral of the story hazy to her understanding. She is most fascinated with the "man behind the curtain" yet doesn't seem to 'get' that she is that man. Or maybe some part of her does. Yet, she doesn't focus on the grand act of this weak little man being unmasked. That is a rather climactic moment in the movie, I daresay. What does she focus on? "Notice how he puts his finger on the side of his nose. That's a sign. Santa Claus puts his finger on the side of his nose. So do the popes..." All said with her imperious self-importance because she is plugged into the secret signals of the ... what...the masons? The Illuminati? Yes and yes. I don't want to try too hard to understand the twisted convolutions and obsessive paranoia of her brain as it only tends toward making me dizzy. Yet I continue...

My mother had brought up the topic of this movie one day and found out that my cousin "Lee" had seen the movie once as a child and didn't like it, therefore Lee's boys had never seen the movie. As my mother had done on other issues, if Lee had some qualm about exposing her sons to something it became my mother's mission to force things. It became an imperative for my mother to expose Lee's boys to whatever it was that Lee had chosen to keep from them. This was because my mother actively worked to undermine my cousin's parental authority in order for my mother to usurp that position with Lee's boys. My mother forced my cousin and her sons to watch this movie followed up with a classroom type study of its implications. She instructed everyone to pay attention to the color green. To take note of "north". As in, the witch of the north. What is significant about "north"?, they asked. "Bad things come from the north." She responds with weighty meaningfulness. (Never mind that the witch from the north is a 'good' witch in the movie.) She again referenced Santa Claus, and implied there were other proofs of this connection of "north" to "bad things". **sigh** It is kind of tedious to try to write this crap down. She is such a paranoid whack job.

My mother refused, after they had watched the movie, to actually explain these mysteries. She gave them assignments, "Go to the computer and look up 'green' " ... I kid you not. (Type 'green' into Google and you'll get over a billion hits back!) My mother who refuses to touch a computer because she is intimidated by them pretends to know something about how to search for something on the Internet. Yes, you can type in the word 'green' and then study all that information that will magically appear. She told them to do this kind of 'research' on multiple other words at various times usually during her "Bible studies" with them. "Lines" "Walls" "Angels" Each time making silly pretense at her having searched this all out herself and pretending to instruct her students to be studious. There was, thankfully, never any follow up to these Internet search assignments. It was just bluster and bluff to avoid actually having to have anything resembling an answer to the stupid shit she was presenting as being hidden knowledge. It is this hocus pocus silliness which characterized her 'study' on the movie "Wizard of Oz". Who is the 'man behind the curtain' now? It is rather amazing to me how she can practically worship this movie and yet not see its obvious messages because she is so busy looking at the details rather than the whole. "The devil's in the details" ... and she is busily hunting him out there instead of seeing the bigger picture. I marvel at my mother's ridiculous pretenses at being some kind of seer and intellectual. I marvel she can mesmerize people into falling for such a shabby presentation. But she can pull this crap off with the sheer force of her personality.

It's like someone who wants to study an animal. The best way to learn about an animal is to watch it unmolested. We can observe it doing what it does only by letting it be. How it eats, what it eats, when and where and how it sleeps, mating behavior, nesting behavior, how it raises its young, etc. But if you are like my mother you wouldn't try to learn about the animal this way. No, you would take it to your garage and pin it down. Then you would kill it and start looking carefully at all the pieces as you tear it apart bit by bit. You look at its limbs, organs, fur, features all in isolation and try to intuit how the animal must behave, eat, mate, sleep, and even how it looks after you've torn the thing to bits to look at each piece of it. This is how my mother studies this movie. It also is her method of Bible study. It is a pseudo-intellectualism that does not, in the end, impart true knowledge. She may be able to describe in great detail the various parts of the whole but she will never see the whole because she has torn it into pieces.

In case you are tempted to think that you would never fall for my mother's gambit because it seems that she would look so crazy that you'd be long gone in no time, please balance out the above with the careful stalking and then grooming of her prey. My mother presents as being quite sane. She is, even though she is an older woman now, very pretty. She dresses really well. Always a fashion plate. She chooses well-tailored clothing with classic lines. Nothing trendy, but certainly not fuddy-duddy either. Her slim figure carries off her clothing choices to their maximum benefit. Her skin is smooth, her make-up applied with perfection. Her hair is perfectly coiffed in a very complimentary style. Her body movements are graceful and lithe. She doesn't move around like an old person. All of this attention to her appearance takes her a very long way in her relationships. It's the hook. She accompanies the above with an air of erudition and huge self-confidence. Many are attracted to self-confident people. The period of grooming her supply sources includes a long honeymoon where she flatters their intellect every time they agree with her. It is only in time, after she determines that you are convinced she is more knowledgeable than you are, that she'll start to tell you something of the dark mysteries and conspiracies she has uncovered. This process really is like the poor frog dumped into the pot of cold water with the temperature only gradually rising. Froggie doesn't know he's cooked. There is a certain type of person who is especially vulnerable to my mother. It is the person who lacks self-confidence and who is looking for guidance. She seeks these people out actively and seems to always have one on her hook.

I tell you about her presentation to help balance out the picture. What she actually says, the ludicrous assertions and false knowledge, when standing alone are truly ridiculous and lacking in appeal. It is only the rest of her presentation that gives her paranoid and silly pretense any ability at all to deceive. Thankfully my cousin and her sons were not so much under my mother's power that they didn't start to see the farce. My mother miscalculated the level of her control over them. To her everlasting chagrin in the end.

Thank God.

And I say that reverently.

Your Sickness is a Sin to the Narcissist

Judging by the comments on the last post there was a lot of resonance on the subject of medical neglect by narcissist parents. The other extreme was brought up there too; that of the narcissist parent seeming to relish a child's illnesses and needs for medical attention because the parent has found a way to capitalize on the attention they can derive from these situations. In both cases, as opposite as they appear on the surface, they are just flip sides to the same coin. It is all about whether or not the narcissist is getting the attention they feel they must have to live.

I have taken note that my mother was not unique in her views and behaviors toward sickness. I have heard others describe how sickness was treated like a moral failing by their narcissist parent. My mother fully transitioned into this view about the time I was becoming a teen. Because she would feel inconvenienced if anyone became sick in the household she started to issue threats. They went like this:

It would be a sunny but cool day and I would be heading outside or to school. "Where's your coat?" "I don't need a coat; it's nice outside." I would say. "Alright, fine. You can choose." She would assume her haughty/stern look which included her set jaw and raised eyebrows. "But if you get sick, I promise you...you will get a spanking." Because she was excellent at follow-through on threats of spankings this was an effective threat. She pretends that I get to choose whether or not to wear a coat even while setting up a false choice between two options for me. Wear a coat and stay well and avoid a spanking. Eschew a coat, risk getting sick and punished.

As I became a little older I recognized the choices were false. There was another option my mother didn't care to include...that I could choose to not wear a coat, and I most likely I would not get sick.

When I became a teen spankings were no longer threatened. Vague promises of being in trouble were then issued. I was a teenager and still there were times when mommy dearest thought I should wear a coat. "You need to get a coat." "No, really, I'm fine. It's nice out." Same stern look..."Okay, your choice. But if you get sick you will be in trouble." I remember I got to the point of shrugging off her threats to her face. "Fine. I'm willing to take that risk." Now that I think about it, it could be why she stopped this stupid threat before I was old enough to leave home. She saw that it had lost its effectiveness with me.

Even though the overt threats were no longer made, there was trouble if I got sick. I have two very clear memories of getting sick after I had become an adult. Once was when I was living in my parent's home after my first divorce. The second time was after I was back out on my own. I told the story of my getting attacked verbally by my mother while battling a 104 F degree fever and a kidney infection in this post.

I was around 22 years old. My daughter was a baby of almost two years. I was working full time and trying to save the money to move out into my own apartment. I lived at my parent's home for a year after my first divorce. This happened when I was close to the end of that year.

At the time I was working for a doctor whom I know now was a malignant narcissist. Quite possibly a sociopath. He is a WHOLE other story. I was gratified to find out about five years after I left his employ that the feds caught up with him and he'd been convicted of various crimes which includes fraud and racketeering and lost his license to practice. Oh, yeah, he was a humdinger.

Work required me to take a course in word processing which was just starting to come into business offices at that time. I had to drive to a large metro area over an hour away to take this day-long course. No biggie. Except that this particular day I was coming down with something. I was already in the class when I noticed that I wasn't feeling well. I was flushed at first. Then started getting chills. I had a fever. I brain was turning to mush. My eyes burned and I could barely hold my head up. My head throbbed, my lungs hurt. I somehow muddled through to the end, got in my car and drove the hour and half back to my parent's home. By the time I got home I was really messed up. Turned out I had a splendid case of flu and bronchitis.

The year that I lived at my parent's home I slept on the floor in the living room. When I got home this particular day I grabbed some blankets and made a pallet on the floor in the "den" (which was my former bedroom) so I could have a little quiet and privacy as I tried to cope with this flu bug. Yes, there was a bed in that room still, but I didn't want to mess it up because I couldn't make it look like my mother wanted it to look when it came time to straighten it. She would get very pissy if things weren't just so. Beds in her home are made for looking at during the day. Once a bed was made there was no sitting on it even. It was easier just to sleep on the floor. It was late afternoon and there was still a lot of noise and activity in the house which is why I didn't try to sleep in the living room. For this period of time, my mother was babysitting my daughter during the day. No, she didn't do it for free. I paid her the going rate. She was still running daycare out of her home, so it wasn't some huge favor she was doing for me by watching my daughter during the day. It was a business arrangement. I bring this up to stress the reality that I was not using my mother to take care of my child while I worked. She ran a daycare. I was one of her customers.

When my daughter's dinner time rolled around it was time for mother to dish out her extreme displeasure. I was not in the habit of dumping the care of my child onto my mother. When I came home from work I took over all the care and feeding of my child. I wasn't a mooch. I didn't neglect my child because I had a mother around. She was in it for the money. Once I got home from work she was no longer interested in dealing with my child. Which was fine. I was the mother and I expected to care for my child when I was home. If you've read any of my posts on my life you know I was not a slacker and I certainly didn't mooch off my parents. I was living in their home for this year at their invitation. Obviously, my pallet on the floor was evidence of the fact that they wanted the invitation to expire sooner rather than later. I was working as hard as I could to make that happen as quickly as I could.

But on this day, I didn't take over the care and feeding of my child. I was collapsed on the floor in a fever. It was a total anomaly for me to expect my mother to help me with my daughter after work. A normal parent would know that something was seriously amiss for my behavior to diverge so sharply from its usual course. My heartless mother was not normal.

She burst into the room I was in, stepped over my feet so she could look at my face, and then demanded to know when I was going to take care of my daughter. I looked up at her hard, unyielding face and felt a special kind of desperation. I remember feeling so helpless. Once a fever reaches 103F I'm really f---ed up. I don't know about anyone else, but I can't function when I'm in the throes of the flu. And, as was usual, it was heading straight for my lungs. I couldn't take a deep breath for the pain and burning. The last thing my baby needed was for her mother to breathe her nasty germs at her.

"Mommy, I'm so sick. Could you please, this one time, feed N? I promise I won't ask you to again. I just don't think I can get up right now." The look of disgust and anger on her face was total. I felt like a complete loser. I felt inadequate. I felt like I was so very alone. Just remembering it now makes me tear up. It was a moment of quiet desperation and abandonment. Damn me all to hell for inconveniencing her. I was a total failure at that moment. I was a sinner. She huffed angrily out of the room and made sure I knew she was only helping me this one time and that she was doing me a HUGE favor. After that, "she is your daughter; you take care of her." Uh, yeah. I knew whose daughter she was. I was a responsible mother who did not slack off in her care. But ONE TIME...just ONE TIME...I needed some extra help and I'm condemned for it. Maybe I should have offered to pay the bitch since that is the only way she would be motivated to "help" me with my daughter. A loving grandmother? Never. Not once. I hate her more for how she viewed and treated my child than for how she treated me. Grasping, selfish, horrid, hateful bitch.

As my mother's narcissism has fully blossomed over the years, she became more and more hardened in her view of family members' sickness being a moral failing. It is always our fault. She will find some reason to pinpoint as to why we are deservedly sick. Why we brought it on ourselves. Why she is justified in neglecting us, judging us, abusing us for getting sick. Why we deserve not a shred of sympathy or kindness from her. Why her total abandonment of us in our illness is justified and righteous. Some of the reasons she has given as to why other family members have fallen ill are:

He eats his food too fast so he isn't getting proper nutrition from his food.

She doesn't get enough sleep.

He smokes.

She doesn't take vitamins.

He doesn't eat right...so when he has a heart attack and dies I am going to be very angry with him.

Then there is injury. There is rarely a time my mother can't find the reason why you deserved to be injured. There are no mishaps or mistakes where you are concerned. No, only your own stupid choices which brought you to this place.

In addition to the sin of being ill, it was a sin to pamper the body in other ways. It was a sin to sleep in. It was a sin to rest quietly while trying to deal with a migraine. It was a sin to rest simply when tired if the work wasn't done. It was a sin to take in recreation if you hadn't worked yourself to a nub first or gotten her permission to do so. It is a sin to not be constantly working. So many sins. So little mercy. I spent the last four weeks of my pregnancy with my daughter in my mother's home. My doctor was in the same town as my mother lived in. I had lived in this town for many years, but my husband's job required us to move a state away about half way through my pregnancy. My mother invited me to stay with her for the last part of my pregnancy so I wouldn't have to change docs. Being very, very pregnant did not cut down on the work load. You stay in my mother's home and you are put to work. I expected nothing else. The day I went into labor I could be found a few hours earlier on my hands and knees scrubbing all my mother's floors and doing other housework. Being extremely pregnant is no excuse for slacking!

Mother dearest can always find a reason as to why you deserve what you got. Whether you are sick or injured. And since you brought this calamity upon your own head you are not worthy of her attention.

Which is the real issue, once again. Attention. When Mr. Farmer is raising a cow for the dinner table he doesn't make a pet out of it. Obviously, to minimize the level of sympathy he must not befriend the beast he plans to make a meal of. I'm not condemning the farmer for this. I'm simply using him to illustrate an obvious point. That when we want to make a meal of someone we can not allow their feelings or ours to get in the way. The narcissist must not allow themselves to feel anything for you because it would get in the way of them making a meal out of you.

For the medically neglectful narcissist parent the attention that a sick person should get is a mighty inconvenience to them. They covet every shred of kind human regard and attention at all times. Your sickness, in a kind world, means that the others in the household divert more of their energies and concern toward you because they want to help you get well as quickly as possible because they have empathy. They know how it is to be sick. They know how helpless the sick are to care for themselves, let another others. But the narcissist will not spare even a little attention for you even when you're sick. So they must find the reason why you deserve your sickness...so they can be exempted from feeling like they should give you some of their precious commodity...attention and kind regard. They are so covetous for attention that they can't even spare any for you when you are injured or ill.

It is evil to be this selfish. It is evil to be this determinedly shut off from basic humanity. What could possibly be the point of keeping these blood-suckers in our lives? They take until there is nothing left to take and then revile you for falling short of their demands. They will kick your corpse for daring to die on them.

We have limitations because we are finite beings. Life is too short and too precious to keep these predatory animals in our families. They don't deserve to be called family. They eat family for dinner without compunction. The sooner you face this reality the sooner you can free yourself of this murderously selfish and predatory beast. Your life blood is yours, not theirs for the taking. Refusing to continue to feed these Xenomorphs** is not only smart but righteous.

**Xenomorph is a reference to the "Aliens" franchise of movies. Which seems like an appropriate metaphor for destructively parasitic life forms that malignant narcissists are. Go, Ellen Ripley.


UPDATE: I was remembering one of my favorite lines of Ripley in "Aliens". Ripley is protecting the small girl, "Newt", from the huge egg-laying queen alien xenomorph. She's outfitted herself with a weapon (forklift power loader) and sez:

"Get away from her, you bitch."

Oh, yeah. I love the way she spits that line out with such determination and righteous rage. That line sums up my attitude toward my mother. I stand between her and my precious family members. My weapon: truth. Have I mentioned that I love these movies? Uh, huh. Ripley is my gal.

Medical Neglect -- A Frequent Reality for Children of Narcissists

This is another story my mother has told me often enough that it is ingrained in my memory. The event described happened when I was too young to be able to recall it myself. I have to marvel at which events my mother chose to memorialize by telling and re-telling them. I marvel because there is incriminating evidence in her stories if one looks at them from an objective view. This particular story is one she told me numerous times, but I really have no idea if she told it to others. I'll have to ask my cousin if she has heard this one.

I was between ages one and two. We were living in the upstairs apartment I described in another post from my early childhood. North Hollywood, CA. I toddled out the door onto the landing and then took a plunge down the fifteen or so concrete steps to ground level. My cry brought my plight to my mother's attention. She scooped me up and ran inside. She picked up the phone.

Whom did she call?

It might seem like a good time to call a doctor.

This is where the story sharply diverges from what a truly concerned mother would do. No, she didn't call a doctor; she called her sister. She quickly points out the logic of calling her sister...her sister is a nurse. (This particular sister has very strong N traits and may very well be N too.)

My mother is careful to emphasize at this point in the story her extreme concern for me. She is worried I might have a concussion. Her sister also raises the possibility that I have a concussion and so gives my mother advice based on that possibility. "D, it is very important that you keep her awake. If she does fall asleep then you must watch her carefully to make sure she doesn't stop breathing." At this point in the story my mother emphasizes again her concern which was now raised to the level of near panic.

Then she paints the picture of the loving, concerned mother who sat by my crib all night long to make sure I didn't stop breathing. Morning arrived and I was still alive. What relief!! Then more emphasis on what a frightening experience it was for her. Her baby almost died. Obviously, I didn't almost die, but had I been seriously injured in the fall I could easily have died given the fact that my mother didn't seek real medical attention for me.

Now I have questions when I think this story over. First of all, how is it that my mother lost track of her small child long enough for the child to escape out the door and take a dive down the stairs? I realize that small children can move very quickly and even the best parents can lose track of them momentarily. Nevertheless, it is still her fault that this happened. We lived in a small apartment at the time. My mother had no other children to keep track of. What the hell was she doing?? I suspect she had a consciousness of guilt because of how she purposely avoided getting a doctor involved even though there was reason enough for concern about a possible life-threatening injury. The other factor that can't be ruled out is that she didn't want the expenditure. The pattern that developed during the rest of my childhood is that my parents never took me to a doctor no matter the seriousness of the injury of sickness.

One exception, if I can call it that. I was five years old and came down with a very bad case of bronchitis. My mother relented after several days of a high fever and delirium and took me to a Chinese chiropractor that she had gone to as a child. Dr. So. I have no idea how his last name was spelled, but it was pronounced So. He gave her a nasty and horribly bitter concoction for me to take every day for weeks. Every time I took it I wanted to vomit. I was out of school for six whole weeks and returned to school very weak and tired. The teacher begged my mother to take me out of school and restart me in first grade the next year. I was so young anyway, the teacher pointed out. I had missed six weeks of school at the very outset of the school year and I'm almost a year younger than the rest of my classmates. My mother was insulted at the suggestion that I be kept home for the year. She tells this story because she then says, "this is when I knew for sure what a bright child you were." She is proud of her decision. She is proud because I was able to easily catch up and do just fine that school year. She knew better than the teacher what a shining bright star student her daughter was. I was able to reflect well onto my mother by my academic achievement. She was right, that teacher was wrong.

The only other doctor visit I can remember was a tooth-cleaning at age three. And a dentist visit at age 13 for a cavity. That's it.

Back to the original event. While she uses this story to emphasize her great motherly concern for her precious baby, the story she tells actually portrays a mother who didn't care enough. She is worried enough to stay the night by my crib, but not willing to take me to a hospital for monitoring. I think that the only thing she was worried about was how horrible of a mother she was going to look like if 1) she took me to a doctor and had to admit to her inattentiveness that allowed the accident in the first place, and 2) What were people going to think of her as a mother if she ended up with a dead baby in the morning? Would she be accused of abusing her baby? Was there already evidence against her on that account? Her worries were all self-concentric. Her baby only represented possible evidence of her lack of mothering skills if by my death or serious injury she was revealed to be negligent. She is the center of this story. I am peripheral.

This story of my mother's great motherly concern for her baby is just more evidence of her neglect of me. In typical narcissist fashion, this story is really all about her. Her feelings. Her worry. Her heroism (all night vigil). Her relief. Oh, and by the way, my father would have come home from work that evening. It is very likely my mother told him of the fall. He could not have failed to notice my mother watching me sleep. I notice he didn't insist that I be taken to a doctor. He was every bit as guilty as she for the neglect of my physical well-being. He is without excuse.

I am convinced that if I had been born with a birth defect or been seriously and/or mortally injured that I may not have survived childhood. The medical neglect of my youth was complete and total. Thankfully, I had a strong constitution and tended to not court danger with stupid childhood stunts. I have a high tolerance for pain and learned not to complain about pain, sickness or injury. Thanks, ma.

If I revisit this topic again I'll talk about how it was often treated like a sin to get sick. This was more and more the case the older I became.

Chief Slave and Bottle-Washer

My cousin, "Lee", relates her memories and impressions from the first visit to my parent's home as a child in this post. Before we get to that, I have remarked in other posts about my cousin about her exceptional memory. Her great recall has earned the opprobrium of my mother. Back when Lee was under my mother's thumb (1997-2002) my mother began to be annoyed at Lee's excellent recall of conversations, events, time and place. One day my mother told Lee, "you really need to work on this [her memory]. It isn't good to remember every thing that happens. I have learned to not remember certain things because some things are not good or right to remember. You need to learn to do that too." At the time, my cousin's memory was getting in the way of my mother's truth revision and therefore earned her a lecture. The silliness of this demand makes me want to burst out laughing every time I think of it. But, there it is. The confession from a narcissist of how she can do mind-wipes on herself at will. Um, yeah, I had noticed that.

My cousin went down memory lane while visiting with me on Saturday night. Here is our conversation:

"I remember I was six years old the first time we went to visit your family in Oregon. I was fascinated watching your family. What really fascinated me was how much work you had to do, Anna. That was a completely foreign concept to me. My mom, as you know, was a fiendishly obsessive house cleaner. She didn't want me or my brother in her way or doing anything because we would not do it "right" in her estimation. I had a few chores I had to do at age six. Clean my room. Take a shovel and clean dog poop out of the yard. Feed the bunny. That dog poop thing, now that I think about, that was kinda yucky. But feed the bunny? How fun is that to give the bunny lettuce and watch him eat it? That was a treat, not a chore."

"Then I go to your house. You had to work. Real work. It was a whole new thing for me to see; I was amazed and fascinated, which is why it made such a deep impression on me."

"It seemed like every few minutes your mother would be calling you. 'AAAAAAANNNAAAAAAA' she would yodel. And then standing there with this satisfied and smug expression she waited for you to come running, literally running, from whatever other chore you were working on to see what demand was being issued at that moment.

"Your mother then fixed us dinner. She had you and your sister doing this and that helping her with all the simmering pots on the stove and things bubbling in the oven. Again, I could see how proud your mother was to "show off" her finely honed and trained slave -- you-- in addition to her culinary skills. It was obvious to me that your sister was really good at looking like she was busy, but she really hardly did anything. She would keep drifting away from the work in the kitchen and would be chatting us up. I noticed your mother didn't give your sister much to do in comparison to you. I also noticed how your sister would strategically disappear especially when clean up time began. After dinner every one went off to the living room. There you were -- alone in the kitchen cleaning up the big mess. Your sister, no where to be seen; you uncomplainingly made the mess go away."

"Oh, yeah, then your mother, after dinner, tapped the floor with her foot and said, 'Girls, the floor is sticky. After dinner I want you to mop it.' She said that while staring straight at you, Anna. It was obvious who was expected to get it done. Sure enough, you were the one who did it."

Lee paused, then asked, "How old were you at the time?"

"I'm eight years older than you." sez I.

"Okay, um, that would make you...um, well, not good at math here..."

"I was fourteen."

Lee goes on, "Okay, you were fourteen. My mom and I couldn't help but marvel at how you seemed like the house slave."

I was getting into the spirit of the memory so I helpfully volunteered, "Yeah, and you only saw all the indoor chores. There were all the outdoor chores I had to do every day."

"Oh, yeah!" Lee responds. "That's right. I left your house after that visit thinking you were Cinderella. Poor thing. Both me and my mom felt really sorry for you. We talked about it often."

Since I'm on the subject, I'll elaborate. Here is what I can remember of my outdoor chores. Throwing hay for cows, horses and goats and watering them (this was in winter). Tending the chickens, milking the goats, working in the garden, etc. In the summer, the daily chores included moving irrigation pipes and hacking weeds out of the pasture. The first summer I had to move pipes (age 15) I was able to use the child labor of one or two of the older kids my mom babysat. Sometimes my sister would be forced to help. As with most cheap labor, you get what you pay for. I got to where I would usually just do it by myself as I became stronger and more skilled. Then there were the weekly chores of mowing the huge lawns (no, it wasn't a riding mower), washing my dad's delivery truck, mucking out the chicken coop. Only the lawn mowing ended with winter. Washing that truck in the cold, after dark and, often, in driving rain or icy cold weather. Good times.

All during the summer and fall there was the harvesting of the garden and the huge amounts of canning and freezing to preserve the fruits of the earth. My parents were always heavily involved in these projects because they were HUGE productions. Damn, that was fun. Kinda like jabbing yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. Working with my parents was always a special kind of hell. They were short-tempered and mean. I would get verbally beaten up with regularity during these work sessions as they took out any of their frustrations on the nearest target.

My sister? Other than helping a little with the harvesting and canning...she was no where around. All those chores outdoors were mine and mine alone. For years, the only farmyard related work she had to do was wash the eggs. Something she did indoors after I had gathered them. And she always had to be nagged and threatened before she would get around to it. After many years my parents finally gave up on getting her to do this particular chore. Probably because I started doing it just to keep the eggs from rotting in the laundry room utility sink.

Which is exactly why I was entrusted with the care of the animals. When dealing with animals you need someone dependable. Someone who won't "forget" to feed and water them every day. Someone who would remember the recipe for the calf formula and remember to feed them twice a day. Or bottle feed the occasional abandoned baby goat. (Which I loved doing. I loved feeding any of the barn babies.)

When the really nasty and difficult projects came along, I was on the front line. My mother would "throw" me at my father when he'd come around looking for help to de-horn the baby goats, or castrate the goats, or help deliver baby goats. Castrating the calves would require both my sister and me, so I won't count that. Other non-animal projects like helping dad with any scary big thing he needed to do that he really should have had a son to help him. I was the boy they never had. Unfortunately, I was a petite young girl without the brute strength or aptitude needed for some of these projects. What made many of these projects scary was my father's mercurial temper in addition to the sense of life or death. Like getting crushed by a camper Dad was trying to back the truck under, or getting knocked in the head by a spooked horse. My mother and sister didn't like getting cursed and yelled at during these events. Neither did I. But, unfortunately for me, he had come to recognize I was the most competent of the bunch, so I would get drafted...and yelled at when things went wrong. I quaked under the sense of responsibility if I screwed up and something very major was damaged or worse.

Laundry became my job at around age 15. I endured much hassling and annoyance from my mother until I learned to do things exactly as she did them. Different towels must be folded in certain ways. I had to learn to take things out of the dryer just perfectly so as not to wrinkle anything. It never failed that every time she saw me carrying an armload of laundry she'd snarl at me through her teeth, "you're wrinkling them...don't do that."

Fridays were a perfect storm of housework and my mother would unfailingly be in total bitch mode. Vacuuming, mopping, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing. I would collapse in an exhausted heap at the end of a week.

Keep in mind that all the winter projects were concurrent with the school year. I had school and homework to do too. There were also piano lessons and practice. Washing dishes after dinner. I'm sure the list could go on if I spent more time trying to remember.

Memories. Precious memories.

In my dad's last letter to me in Sept. 2005 he said this:

"If you can dredge up things that happened so far into the past and ignore the good things and good times in between I see little hope for any of us." [emphasis mine]

Yeah, good times. Rockin' good times were had by all. Maybe if the bad times didn't outweigh the good times 100 to one I could stand corrected by his point.

I remember that sometime when I was a kid my sister and I made a comment that infuriated my dad and got us an angry lecture. My sister and I were working out in the garden. At some point we chirped that we had figured something out. Dad was the king. Mom was the queen. We were the servants. I crack up now when I recall this innocent comment. My dad immediately turned on us and yelled that if anyone was the servant it was him and our mother! We were then treated to a diatribe on all that they did for us every single day. What little we did was the very least we could. That was the attitude of my parents all my growing up. Whatever was expected of me was the least I could do. Appreciation? In my dreams. Commendation for being consistent and doing well? Shit, no. You be the judge. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, they might have possibly over-worked me and taken full advantage of my free labor?

I'm not looking for sympathy about all the hard work I did. I benefited from it in more than one way. First of all, I learned how to work hard. Secondly, after I left my parents' home -- whatever work I had to do was Easy Street by comparison. Thirdly, I had a knock-out body from all the exercise and was as strong as a horse. Okay, that last one isn't a big deal, but both my sister and mother were a bit jealous of that one. Served them right. I should do all the work and they should have the great figures?? I don't think so. Since I left home at the tender age of 17, all this work had me fully equipped to make it out there on my own. I knew how to cook and to run a home. I wasn't afraid to work. When I got my first paid job at age 18 I busted my ass and made a place for myself.

I guess what I'm saying is that all this work made me competent and independent. Also, my mother unwittingly gave me space by forcing me to work outside for sometimes hours and hours a day. It was time away from her control. It gave me time to think and to decompress emotionally. I loved the animals. Some of the chores related to caring for them were icky and difficult. But I loved the births and would often conduct vigils to make sure we were able to help if a goat started having difficulties with the birth. I would be the first to notice when the barn kitties had kittens and would hunt until I found them to make sure the momma had them in a safe place. Then I would hand raise the kittens so they wouldn't be wild and we could give them away. After I left home, all the new barn cats went feral.

No, I tell you all this because it is all part of the picture of my upbringing by a narcissist mom, a surly and unhappy dad, and a sister who was spoiled beyond measure and only added to life's difficulties for me. This post is added context for the previous post. Those two women, my mom and sister, made my life hell. They used and abused me and then, 30 years after the fact, want to pretend I had a "rage" problem as a teen. No, I had a MOM problem and a SISTER problem. One used me to make herself look like a perfect mother and housekeeper and the other used me to get out of doing anything and everything.

I contend that my problem hasn't been that I was too angry...I wasn't angry enough. I suffered from a plenitude of patience which allowed these women to keep me in their lives much longer than they deserved to have me there. They would, if they could, continue to keep me down by these negative assessments of my character in order to pretend they are somehow better than me. In order to keep me subservient and "less than" those two high-n-mighty and full-of-themselves bitches.

So, how patient have you been with the years and years of use and abuse? Is it time to cut your losses? Is it time to let the narcissists actually have to get through life without depending on your competence, your sweat, your tears? If they are so much better than you, then you can leave them to themselves. Obviously, they don't need you. At least, that is what they are always trying to convince you of. Take their word for it and leave them. They'll muddle through.

The U.S. ended slavery back in 1863.

The Crones Have a Tea Party

Two women are sitting at the table in the breakfast nook sipping their cups of Earl Grey, pinkies in the air, chatting. They've been there since they awakened a couple hours earlier, so they are still in their robes and slippers.

It is a mother and her grown daughter. The two of them imagine that drinking Earl Grey tea is evidence of how civilized and urbane they are. If they only knew of its existence they would apply for membership in the Tiara Tea Society. Basking in their contrived sophistication they pretend their way through the morning.

They've been enjoying talking at length about themselves to each other; a close observer would pick up a bit of a competition between the women. Little games of one-up-man-ship are being played, but nothing too intense. Today, they are relaxed and in a good humor.

Most of their topics, when not totally self-focused, center on gossip about other family members. If you wore special reality-revealing glasses while taking in this scene, instead of two women sitting at a breakfast table, you would see two vultures sitting on a big warm rock enjoying that stuffed feeling after having picked several carcasses clean to the bone.


They preparing to move in on dessert. Dessert d'jour is succulent and sweet. The best for last.

Anna is being served up. The gleam of anticipation in the vultures' eyes is discernible from across the room. As full and fat as they are, their appetites are in no way diminished for the last course. There is always room for a big plate of Anna.

Young vulture has been excitedly sharing her newest fad interest. She's found a brand of Christianized psychology that has given her a new lease on life, she claims. She is secretly cherishing the idea of being able to sell Old Vulture on taking a course in this particular brand of psychobabble for her own ulterior reasons. "Healing the Broken-Hearted" (name changed to protect the guilty) has provided a slick package which allows Young Vulture to blame all her character flaws on Old Vulture. The older woman is being set up by the younger.

The hook needs to be set first. How to do this? The Younger sets up her sister on the autopsy table. She is going to slice and dice her to the wonderment of The Older to show her just how incisive this "Healing the Broken-hearted" program really is.

The classic "Y" incision is made slicing up sister stem to stern. "Did you know that the trauma of a difficult birth can cause that person to have rage issues later in life?" states The Younger authoritatively.

The Older looks interested in the theory so The Younger continues.

"Didn't Anna have a difficult birth?" A light dawns in the The Older's eyes, the answer obviously being "yes". Anna was in a breach position when the birth pangs began. Her mother was in labor for hours and hours. The final delivery was with forceps. The difficulty of the birth left its marks on the baby as well as the mother. The baby's head came to a discernible point, Conehead style, along with the scratches and bruises from the forceps.

The Younger continues by pointing out Anna's "anger issues", particularly as a teen, still sometimes glimpsed into adulthood. The Older swallows the hook whole. Of course. This makes perfect sense. Anna had a difficult birth and now we understand her anger issues. They cluck their tongues and nod their heads knowingly. They have cut to the core of Anna's soul. They have discerned the "pain" that moves her.

They are so full of shit.

This interpretation which is presented by my sister as fact, because she is relying on what she is calling an "authoritative" source, offers up something very important to both of these women: absolution. This lame-assed theory completely absolves them for any responsibility for their behaviors which frustrated the holy, living crap out of me.

My sister, while trying to sell me on her psychobabble blather, told me about this theory one day during a phone conversation. She then told me that she and mom had talked about it together on my sister's last visit to Mom's house, and they both now understood why I was such an angry "child". She sounded so sympathetic; like she was offering up to me complete absolution for my sin of being angry. She was shameless in admitting that she and Mom had sat there discussing what they considered to be my emotional "issues" and had both agreed on the root cause. I was supposed to be impressed...and thankful.

I laid some truth on top of this history revisionism for my sister, and she never brought this up to me again.

"D, that theory is unprovable and runs against the facts." I told my sister. "First of all, both you and mom seem to be forgetting that I was an almost unnaturally calm baby, I rarely cried, could be ignored for hours (and was) as I lay in my crib (by my mother's own admission to me). As a young child, my sweet and submissive nature continued. No tantrums. No displays of fits or rages. Compliant to a fault. If your memory was actually working properly, you would know that I didn't display my anger until I reached my middle teen years. Do you think there might have been a reason for my anger? Do you think that perhaps I might have been reacting to the complete frustration of my life with Mom? Do you think it possible that my anger was understandable and the cause and effect discernible if one considered my life at that time; the time when the anger began to be shown by me? This theory, sister, is complete bull-shit."

She actually yielded my point. The facts were not refutable once I proved that I remembered the facts. She knew them too, but had chosen to forget them because the glitter of her new theory was so much more appealing than the truth.

She didn't want me to go further. Because she knew, deep in her selfish soul, that my mother was not the only source of my youthful anger. She knows that she used me and took advantage of me up until I ran away from home at age 17. She was lazy and selfish and looked out completely for herself. I was her shield from momster. Because the rule was laid down that when Momma made a command-- it was law -- and it better damn well get done now. If it did not get done, I, as the eldest, was held responsible. My sister took full and complete advantage of this arrangement. She exploited it shamelessly. I know she has not forgotten this.

Let's look for a moment at what displays of anger these two bitches were talking about. You may think that I was picking fights in school, or screaming at my family and knocking them around, or joining up with a local gang and beating up homeless guys, if you were to judge by their bringing up my "rage issues" pretending like it negatively impacted their lives. Here's the truth.

First off, I was not allowed to express my frustration or anger verbally. Neither of my parents allowed negative emotions to be spoken because they were not to be inconvenienced by my emotions. There was no mouthing back. I would have been knocked into the next week if I had dared shoot off at the mouth snottily, let alone with overt anger. If I slammed a door, my mother would come running from where ever she was and belt me. I remember the few times when a door would accidentally slam and I would quickly run to re-open it and say, "Oops! Sorry!! That was an accident!" smiling as sweetly as I could as I watched to see the cloud pass off of my mother's face. So door-slamming was usually not an option. What outlet did I have then?

I would occasionally vent on inanimate objects outside the house. I have a clear memory of being so angry once that I went out to the garage and pounded on a wall with my fists for about 10 seconds just to vent onto something. Wow. What a sinner I was.

The anger these two women were gabbing about that day was primarily demonstrated by me with a quiet seething. A lid was kept clamped down on it by me...but the look in my eye would occasionally intimidate them. I remember seeing their intimidation a time or two. They were intimidated because their own consciences condemned them as they saw my quiet condemnation of them. Knowing they had completely and totally crossed a line over into unfairness that could not be justified even by them, they were intimidated by my anger. They knew my anger was justified.

My self-control even while enraged actually scared them a bit. Perhaps they were afraid I would finally unleash and split their skulls open like they deserved. I never, not once, behaved violently toward a person. During these rare occasions when they knew I was angry, perhaps I would slam a door or lash out at an inanimate object. No one would say a peep. My rage was known by them at that moment to be linked to their unreasonable and grossly unfair treatment of me. I think I only slammed a door in anger like that a couple of times. Neither time did my mother come at me with her rage. She was laying low like the simpering coward she really is because she knew she was in the wrong. She would not have let me get away with a slammed door except that her conscience was burning, and she seemed unsure of what I would do with my anger...probably because she was judging me by her own poor self-control when angry.

Get what I'm saying here? If there was not an obvious reason, i.e. cause and effect, for my anger, even these extremely rare displays would not have been allowed. My anger would have been met with an escalation of rage coming from my mother to me. So my sister's pretending that my "anger issues" as a teen were heretofore of mysterious etiology was just another bit of history revisionism by these two narcissists. They were absolving themselves of all responsibility for their actions toward me...while pretending to me that she was offering me some jewel of insight about my unexplored psyche.

I think in my next post I'll allow my cousin to describe her very first impressions of my family as she gazed in wonderment at this strange and new (to her) family. She was six years old...I was thirteen. It is a very focused snapshot of my life with my family from an outside witness. If one takes that snapshot and replicates it a few thousand times it will give at least some sense of the system of unfairness and servitude that was my life at home. The tea-sipping crones were the two most responsible for foisting this unfairness and slavery onto my life. Now they would chalk up my anger to forces beyond any of our control in order to clear their consciences. They were pathologizing the victim in order to purify themselves.

Now, as then, my anger does not dictate my behavior. I have self-control. I am allowed to have a feeling as long as I don't use a feeling to justify doing something immoral.

Where those two are concerned, I still have "anger issues", but there is no shame in that for me any more. In the spirit of the subject of my anger...

May they eat shit and die.

[Icon by gryphonsmith]

[Cartoon used with permission. Cartoonstock.com]

Treating Childishness as a Crime

All memories are subject to degradation over time. This is an established scientific fact. What science has also discovered is that the memories we have of negative experiences last much longer and degrade much less so than memories not associated with a strong emotional reaction.

My first memory dates back to age two. I know that this event happened before the birth of my sister who was born shortly after I turned three which is why I know I was two years old. I have extremely clear memories of where we lived at the time. I was able to prove that to my uncle recently. He seemed surprised and impressed at all the details I could remember about the area I lived in from age zero to about age three and a half. I can clearly describe the layout of the apartment complex as well as the surrounding properties. Point is, I have clear memories starting from a very young age.

The reason my first memory became my first memory is because it was accompanied by fear and sense of abandonment. It has to do with how a narcissistic mother sees personal affront, defiance, and bad motives when her children disobey her. Childishness is punished as a crime. A child of a narcissist is not allowed to be a child. The strong message is conveyed a thousand ways: if you don't do things perfectly you are a bad person with bad motives and a desire to hurt your mother. Most of us strove to prove to our mothers differently. We over-performed in a desperate attempt to avoid the "bad person" label so easily earned at the slightest offense, the smallest let-down, without even the tiniest bad intention on our part. Over-achieving did not result in banking good will for the future. Oh no, it only allowed you to tread water. Fail in one particular by her subjective and shifting standards and you found your head below water in a moment.

Before I describe my memory I want to ruminate a bit on my mother's extremely consistent view of all children and what it stems from. What I didn't understand at age two, but have much experience and observation on now in my mid-40s, is that my mother's baseline with all children is that they are, each and every one, little criminals. The narcissist mother can never take into account the immature little brains which take many years and much experience to develop. The higher centers of the brain where reasoning and judgment take place are not fully developed until age 25. (This explains a lot of things including car insurance rates!) Yup, science has confirmed this for us. The narcissist mother has no appreciation for the responsibility before her to deal with young and developing minds with wisdom and sensitivity. No, from their earliest moments the children of narcissists are taught that all wisdom and sensitivity are to flow from them to mother dearest. I believe my mother projects onto all children the kind of child she was. Those who study psychopathy have come to recognize that as early as age three the signs of a budding sociopath can be clearly discerned. There are a small percentage of children who seem to be born criminals. My mother assumes the percentage is large...and I now believe it is because she is projecting her own character as a child onto every other child.

My mother told this little story enough times that it stuck. I think it provides a glimpse into how young she was when she was already thinking like a narcissist. The first time I remember hearing it, she was driving with my younger sister and me in the car. She reaches into her purse for a stick of gum. "Oh, look here. I only have one stick of gum. All mine!" And she popped it into her mouth. Then, looking all significant, she proceeds to tell her story. She explains that she could have split that piece of gum into three pieces, but she learned a lesson when she was young...so she recounts a time when she and her five other siblings were traveling with her mother. Her mother reached into her purse and found one stick of gum. Everyone starts clamoring for it. Her mother proceeds to divide that one stick of gum into six pieces and hands out a tiny piece for each of the children...with nothing for herself. My mother could not tell this story without curling her lip in disgust. My mother tells us how she despised her mother's weakness. An actual quote, "I hated my mother for being so weak." Her mother divvied up a piece of gum into so many pieces that it rendered it essentially useless to anyone, she told us. And she deprived herself. For what? So a bunch of whiny kids could be placated? It seemed that the part that most disgusted my mother was the sacrifice her mother was willing to make. Her mother denied her own desire for a piece a gum in an attempt to please her children...and my mother hated her for it. It was perceived by her as weakness. Most would see it as generous. My mother chose to see it as weakness. My mother was still in single digits in age when this happened. This kind of thinking never left her. If resources are limited...mother gets first and best. Period. The criminal mind perceives kindness and generosity as weakness. My mother betrays an aspect of her young criminal mindset. She sets it up before her own children as a virtue. She will never be that weak with us. If she has one piece of gum ... it is all hers. We never dared to complain.

This may not seem like a big deal revelation to you. But it surely was to her. And she made sure it was to my sister and me. Now that I am much older and wiser I see a lot more in this story than she intended to reveal. My mother forever despised her mother's sacrifices...yet that didn't stop my mother from taking advantage of her mother's generosity. She hated her mother's generosity, but depended on it.

Remember those Fisher-Price xylophones? They probably still make them. Here's a pic of the way they looked when I was a kid.


My mother called me to her holding my xylophone in her hands with a look of scary rage bubbling under the surface. I knew I must have really messed up...but what did I do? "Why did you do this??" She is pointing to the side of the xylophone's side label. I was confused at first. She taps her finger on the side impatiently and I can see where I had applied some watercolor paints on the side. "I told you that you are not to paint or draw on anything other than paper. Why did you do this!" I was speechless. It was obvious to me now that I had committed a great sin. I had no excuse for myself. "I didn't know". "I'm sorry". Nothing I could say would save me now. It was assumed that my bit of artwork on the side of my xylophone was an overt sign of defiance by my mother. It was an egregious disregard of her authority and rules that I had dared to veer my watercolors off of approved surfaces. Perhaps I had felt like it was okay to do it since I had restricted my painting to the paper label on the side of the xylophone. I may have understood that by permitting crayons and painting to paper that I was not doing something wrong by using the label for coloring. I don't remember. But I do remember that I had not done it feeling like I was breaking the rules. It was not an act of defiance. It was a childish moment from a childish understanding being given the significance of a criminal act.

My punishment was then dished out. My mother seethed, "I can't stand the sight of you. Go outside and don't come back until I call you." I was thrown out of the apartment door and she threw the lock. What to do now. I cried and sobbed at the door. She told me to go away. I wandered around the apartment premises for what had to have been a long time. I was too young to have a clear concept of time...but it seemed like an eternity. Finally, I thought I had a reason to request entrance again...I had to pee. I knocked on the door. "What do you want" she inquired coldly behind the still closed door. "I have to go potty" I plaintively stated. "I don't care. Go away." I can not describe the vast poverty I felt at that moment. I felt so abandoned and lost. Unloved. All I knew was that I had done something very horrible. So horrible that my mother was throwing me away. I was not sure if I would ever be allowed back into her home. That thought was abjectly terrifying to me. The sense of abandonment and loss was overwhelming. Despair.

I remember wandering around with a painfully full bladder unsure of what to do and how long I could hold it. I held out as long as I could. Finally, because I was not going to wet my pants, I went to the neighboring empty lot in the tall weeds in an attempt to gain a measure of privacy and did the deed.

I know I was let back into the apartment before my dad came home from work. She let me into the apartment but it was obvious I was still in the doghouse. I had to earn my way back into her good graces. I think this story is an example of a disproportionate response.

Did I ever scribble on my toys or any other unapproved surface ever again? Hell, no. I learned that lesson quite early on. I learned to draw within the lines my mother set up very, very well.