Narcissists aspire to perfection. In their sphere of influence they pursue perfection at every moment in every circumstance. Because of this transcendent need to keep up the illusion of perfection, the children of narcissists are taught early on to hide the family's skeletons. The sermon is oft preached that there will be no exposure of the internal workings of the family to those outside the walls of the house. This imperative is enforced ruthlessly using behavior modification techniques which can include derision and mockery right up to physical abuse. There are grave penalties for talking to "outsiders" for the narcissist-ruled family.
This is one way that a narcissist's family resembles a cult. Family members are cut off from the outside. Outsiders can, and usually do, include extended family. Children are taught that it is a mortal sin to violate the "no talk" rule. These rules are even more stringent when there is physical and sexual abuse in the home. In this way, the family becomes an appendage to the narcissist's illusion of perfection. They are forced to share and support his delusions. A House of Insanity which presents as the House of Perfection to those on the outside looking in.
The narcissist runs his home like a small dictatorship. Like any dictator he issues rules of speech. "Political" correctness rules the day and the home. If there is a truth that reflects poorly on the narcissist then speaking of that truth becomes a punishable offense. The more safe a narcissist is from exposure, the more egregious his crimes become. Like any despot he rules with an iron fist. You may even have to deal with that fist being planted in your face.
The more oppressive the nature of the regime of the narcissist is the more likely his little fiefdom will collapse from within. Humans are equipped with a built-in desire for freedom. Rebellion will often rise up in the heart of at least one of his subjects. The moment one of the members of his family lets go of the shared delusion -- mutiny is born.
Secretiveness and false reality built his kingdom. The converse will destroy it. Talking to each other, or a sympathetic outsider, and a rejection of the lies and falsity of the narcissist spell doom for his fascist rule. He will have a very hard time reconstructing his false reality if a defector lives outside his control. The mirror will be broken or, at least, very cracked. The psychosis is no longer shared therefore the narcissist has a much harder time maintaining his false reality in his own head.
You want to shake up the world of the narcissist? Live outside his control; live outside his false reality. It is like the burr under the saddle. It will chafe and rub him all the days of his miserable life while you go on to barely even think of him. To quote from yesterday's mentioned movie, Ever After,
"I want you to know that I will forget you after this moment, and never think of you again. But you, I am quite certain, will think about me every single day for the rest of your life."
That is the sweet revenge which will forever disturb the peace of the narcissist while concurrently insuring you have peace in your own life. It is a healthy revenge which will not rot your own soul.
The absolutely most devastating behavior (to the narcissist) to develop in his subjects is if they start comparing notes. Narcissists instinctively use "divide and conquer" to gain the upper hand in their fiefdom whether that is the home or the work place or the non-profit organization. He uses lies and gossip to develop animosity and jealousy between people. Individuals will often end up cutting themselves off from those around them thinking they did it themselves not realizing how the narcissist set them up to do this from the beginning. The social configuration narcissists are always striving for resembles a bicycle wheel. The narcissist at the center from which all the spokes are attached. None of the spokes are directly attached to another spoke. This is the social configuration that guarantees the security of the narcissist.
Disorganizing the bicycle wheel is the only way to break the power of a narcissist in whatever sphere they have set up their dictatorship. For children of narcissists this can be rendered very difficult to do. They have been taught from their earliest moments that it is actually sinful to talk with someone else about the narcissist or what happens in the home. It feels wrong to do it. Adult children of narcissists often struggle with how wrong it feels to confront the evil in their family. How wrong it feels to talk to an "outsider" about the dysfunction and abuse they've experienced. This feeling was reinforced by the time or two it was tried and a outsider dismissed what they were hearing as being gross exaggerations and question the sanity of the person revealing these insanities rather than believe that a parent can be so evil.
If you, as an adult child of a narcissist, are going to break free from the tyrannical rule of your parent(s) you are first going to have to talk. You are going to have to go against how it feels in order to actually do the right thing. Your feelings say "wrong", but the reality is that wrong is right. Your world was inverted by the narcissist. You've likely been taught many things that are wrong. You grew up believing wrong was right in many areas; your own moral compass has been warped by association with the narcissist. You need some re-work of your own soul. You are going to have to start thinking your way through life rather than emoting. You're going to have to re-analyze what you have assumed to be true and examining each tenet of your core of beliefs to see if they hold up to scrutiny in the light of day. You're going to have to face some uncomfortable truths about yourself. It is not easy to escape the Dictator. You may even escape physically and still be ruled by the Dictator from afar through your own misdirected conscience.
I have come on this theme before. That of knowing yourself. It really is an imperative if you are to find freedom from the narcissist. There are tentacles wrapped around your brain which must be extricated one by one if you are to ultimately own your mind and your life. This is a project for the brave of heart. If you aren't willing to face some of the uglies of the past, including your own mistakes and misdeeds, then you will never be free. If you are morally and intellectually weak you will remain a slave to your master or mistress. If you are afraid of the truth of who the narcissist is, and of who you are, then you are going to remain a servant to evil. A servant of evil is himself the same as what he serves. Know that.
George Bernard Shaw must have understood the narcissist ruled family when he penned these words of insight:
"A family is a tyranny ruled over by its weakest member."
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Cinderella...and Me
One of our favorite movies here at my house is "Ever After". We probably watch it about every six months. We've been having a Drew Barrymore marathon of movies here since Mother's Day which led us back to "Ever After". I am pretty sure my husband and daughter like it even better than I do. The ending is so satisfyingly just.
The movie highlights a particular dynamic I've been trying to get across in the narrative on my life with my sister. Even though this movie is a re-telling of the Cinderella story it has parallels to real life...otherwise it would have no appeal. What I'd like to point out, because it is such a great illustration of the power structure of my family, is the step-mother and eldest step-sister. The step-sister is haughty, snotty, sneaky and at times cruel to the Drew Barrymore character, Danielle. What is perfectly illustrated in this movie is how the step-sister derives her power to make her Danielle's life miserable from the mother.
That is exactly what I've tried to illustrate in my blog posts on my sister. My sister's advantages over me were derived directly from my mother. My sister would not have had much power to screw with me during our growing up years together except for the power handed to her by my mother's system of "rules". My mother actually went further than handing power to my sister. My mother took power away from me simultaneously. I was rendered damn near defenseless where my sister was concerned. I lay the blame for that at my mother's feet.
So, yeah, I was older, but birth order did little to save me from the predations of my sister. She was granted power over me through a complex interplay of my mother's prejudices, false reality and favoritism. It is significant to note how many times over the years my mother would tell me how she didn't love one child over the other. She would say she loved us equally. I believed her because, back then, I always believed her. Now, I look back and think the lady doth protest too much. No one had ever challenged her on this point. Certainly, not me. So why the need to repeat this so many times?? I'm tending toward the belief she was covering up the truth. The truth is she knew she had greatly favored one child over the other. I was favored as a work horse, but not as a person. I do not say this in a self-pitying way. It all worked out. I am a better person for having risen above the difficulties of my youth.
I am hoping to emphasize here that a parent is able to hand power to one of their children which that sibling will wield on another sibling without much mercy. This is the dynamic I have been attempting to draw a picture of. Being older didn't save me from my sister's meanness. Being pretty, being nice, being fair, being giving...none of it saved me. If my sister wanted a piece of me she was granted it because she had been given power over me. So, I guess I was wrong when I first described my sister as not being in a "power over" position in my life. I didn't see it clearly until having spent much time reliving our life together in recent days. Her "power over" position was furthered along, too, by the great differences in our personalities. I was always prone to question myself, to bow to those who assumed dominance. My sister was dominant by nature. Very forceful and confident and prone to question others, not herself. My less forceful nature made me all the more like prey to both my sister and my mother.
I'll end this post with the memory of my mother often calling me Cinderella. I don't remember when she began doing it. She would use the name after she had been working my ass off. She would, with a little smile, say something like, "Hey, Cinderella, I need you to do such and so." I've already recounted how I was used as a house slave for years while my sister was somewhere filing her nails. My mother, great lover of fairy tales that she was, apparently couldn't help but see how she was working one kid like a Chinese laborer while the other one was hiding somewhere until the work was done. I wasn't allowed to indulge in self-pity, so calling me Cinderella was not her way of granting me room to complain. It was just a once-in-a-while acknowledgment there was a big imbalance in the gulag. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Yes, indeed. I was raised in a frakking communist system.
The movie highlights a particular dynamic I've been trying to get across in the narrative on my life with my sister. Even though this movie is a re-telling of the Cinderella story it has parallels to real life...otherwise it would have no appeal. What I'd like to point out, because it is such a great illustration of the power structure of my family, is the step-mother and eldest step-sister. The step-sister is haughty, snotty, sneaky and at times cruel to the Drew Barrymore character, Danielle. What is perfectly illustrated in this movie is how the step-sister derives her power to make her Danielle's life miserable from the mother.
That is exactly what I've tried to illustrate in my blog posts on my sister. My sister's advantages over me were derived directly from my mother. My sister would not have had much power to screw with me during our growing up years together except for the power handed to her by my mother's system of "rules". My mother actually went further than handing power to my sister. My mother took power away from me simultaneously. I was rendered damn near defenseless where my sister was concerned. I lay the blame for that at my mother's feet.
So, yeah, I was older, but birth order did little to save me from the predations of my sister. She was granted power over me through a complex interplay of my mother's prejudices, false reality and favoritism. It is significant to note how many times over the years my mother would tell me how she didn't love one child over the other. She would say she loved us equally. I believed her because, back then, I always believed her. Now, I look back and think the lady doth protest too much. No one had ever challenged her on this point. Certainly, not me. So why the need to repeat this so many times?? I'm tending toward the belief she was covering up the truth. The truth is she knew she had greatly favored one child over the other. I was favored as a work horse, but not as a person. I do not say this in a self-pitying way. It all worked out. I am a better person for having risen above the difficulties of my youth.
I am hoping to emphasize here that a parent is able to hand power to one of their children which that sibling will wield on another sibling without much mercy. This is the dynamic I have been attempting to draw a picture of. Being older didn't save me from my sister's meanness. Being pretty, being nice, being fair, being giving...none of it saved me. If my sister wanted a piece of me she was granted it because she had been given power over me. So, I guess I was wrong when I first described my sister as not being in a "power over" position in my life. I didn't see it clearly until having spent much time reliving our life together in recent days. Her "power over" position was furthered along, too, by the great differences in our personalities. I was always prone to question myself, to bow to those who assumed dominance. My sister was dominant by nature. Very forceful and confident and prone to question others, not herself. My less forceful nature made me all the more like prey to both my sister and my mother.
I'll end this post with the memory of my mother often calling me Cinderella. I don't remember when she began doing it. She would use the name after she had been working my ass off. She would, with a little smile, say something like, "Hey, Cinderella, I need you to do such and so." I've already recounted how I was used as a house slave for years while my sister was somewhere filing her nails. My mother, great lover of fairy tales that she was, apparently couldn't help but see how she was working one kid like a Chinese laborer while the other one was hiding somewhere until the work was done. I wasn't allowed to indulge in self-pity, so calling me Cinderella was not her way of granting me room to complain. It was just a once-in-a-while acknowledgment there was a big imbalance in the gulag. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Yes, indeed. I was raised in a frakking communist system.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
In Sickness and In Health--Narcissists Always Suck
One of the most overt signs that I had been screwed up by growing up with a narcissist parent was the fact I was married and divorced twice by the age of 26.
I've already told you how I was 17, pregnant and too scared to tell my parents so I ran away and eloped. I stayed with husband #1 for three and half years. When I left him my second child, a daughter, was nine months old. Not surprisingly, I had married a young man with some very narcissistic traits and a profoundly screwed up family that he was completely enmeshed with. With all the dysfunction around me eventually my family started to look sane by comparison. My parents offered me a place to land if I decided to leave my husband. As I've explained, they were anxious for this marriage to end. I took their proffered help and ended up living with my family again. This time I lived with my parents and sister for almost exactly a year which was how long it took for me to scrape the money together so I could move out. I slept for that year on the living room floor in a sleeping bag. I was grateful for it.
It was a challenging year. I was 21 years old, but moving under my parent's roof meant they could make rules for my life. Rule one: you can't date anyone until your divorce is final.
It was hard to not rankle at being treated like a child in various ways when I had a child of my own and had been out on my own for almost four years. I chafed as quietly as I could. I was just biding my time 'til I could get out on my own again. I was again being ordered around and wasn't in any position to protest considering my dependence on their good will. My sister was still at home. She was around 18 and damn near insufferable at this point. But that's another story. I was working for 10 hours a day...that helped. I didn't have to spend as much time at home although that meant less time with my baby.
The divorce was finalized some eight months after I moved in with my parents. Now that it was "allowed" I began dating someone. Prior to dating being allowed, I managed to carry on a love life out of sight. I had a job and a car. They couldn't control everything I did. Anyway, my sister brought home a Christian contemporary band of four guys one day. They were all hotties, including the bass player who almost immediately started pursuing me. The attraction between the two of us was intense. My mother really liked him and the other three band members until she figured out Ed was seriously interested in me. She wore her disapproval prominently. I wasn't allowed a one-on-one date with him until after I moved out on my own.
Guess Mom knew what my boyfriend and I were headed for. He and I commenced our sexual relationship within a week of my moving out. My boyfriend was very anxious to marry me. More so now that we'd had sex. He suggested marriage right after we began a sexual relationship. I was amenable to the idea because I felt guilty about our unmarried sex. Ya know, the vestiges of my Christian upbringing in addition to what I knew my family's expectations were. While I had grown up fast in some ways, I was still quite immature in my ideas about marriage. Still having no idea what things were most important to base a marriage on, it seemed like hot sex was as good a reason to marry as anything else. Besides, I really liked how things were set up. He would be gone all during the week and come home for the weekends. This made for perfect marital harmony for me. This allowed it to only be about the sex. Nothing like a week long separation to make the reunions intense so you can tell your self you're in a great relationship.
I was pretty much in the mind set at this point of my life to grab what forbidden pleasures I could. I completely shucked going to church at this time since I'd become a bit cynical about church folk...which would include my mother. I had no examples of happy marriages around me either in the church or out of it. This would be one reason I would consent to marrying on such a shallow pretext. "It's all one big crap shoot anyhoo." to quote Groundhog Day.
When you have married once without your parents approval, it becomes much easier to do it again the next time! Yeah, I decided on having another secret wedding. Only this time I wasn't pregnant. Knowing my parents didn't approve of my boyfriend, I decided they weren't going to know about the wedding until it was over. At 23 years old I wasn't about to give them veto power. Several girlfriends got a nice little garden with gazebo reserved, a cake, decorations, a justice of the peace, and a few other friends, and my boyfriend and I got hitched on a nice spring morning. I actually dressed up for this wedding as opposed to the Tijuana adventure with husband #1.
So, now I was married and could have guilt-free sex, but how to break it to my parents? I wasn't sure. So we kept our secret under wraps for a while. Since my life was completely independent of them it was easier to keep secrets. I was in no way dependent on them. No outstanding loans because I never asked them for one red cent. I would have lived in my car before I asked them for anything. Actually, I wouldn't even ask then. I was barely squeaking by, but at least I owned my life.
A month or so after we married I ended up getting very sick. I had ignored an off and on again bladder infection for months. Finally the pain moved into one of my kidneys and then I was really sick. Too poor to consider time off, I kept working and didn't want to go to a doctor because I had no insurance and no extra money. I endured complete fatigue and spiking fevers (up to 104 degrees) for two full weeks. I finally realized I was getting worse and needed some help. I had lost so much weight I was looking skeletal. I walked into an Immediate Care Clinic after work on a Friday afternoon and got the diagnosis of a severe kidney infection. When the doctor told me he should admit me to a hospital because, "you are a very sick young woman", I cried and begged him not to. I was scared of the bill. So he sighed, said he would give me a very large couple doses of Sulfa drug and if I wasn't significantly improved over the weekend, he was sending me to the hospital.
I'm only telling you how sick I was because of what happened next. I picked up my daughter from daycare and went to my apartment to collapse in bed with a 104 F fever. I was so incredibly weak and sick I felt like I was dying. Thankfully, my husband was waiting for us at the apartment and could take care of my daughter as I waited for the drugs to work. Unfortunately for me, this was the day my mother decided it was time to confront me for "living in sin". Mom had caught wind (my sister dearest tattled on me) that Ed was staying with me on the weekends. She, of course, didn't yet know I had married him (sister didn't know this either). She bangs on my door and husband opens it wearing only jeans and was shirtless. This only infuriated her more. A half naked man in my apartment confirmed to her I was a shameless whore.
She demands to see me. He tells her I am very sick and in bed. This matters not a wit. She pushes past him, storms into my bedroom and immediately launches into a haranguing fit. She is shaking and enraged. She is talking through her teeth at me. She is denouncing my immoral ways with me too weak to defend myself. I can't even lift my head off the pillow. At some point she took a breath and I begged her for a shred of mercy. I asked her if she could see that I was very sick right now, could we have this conversation later? She, in her usual fashion, was disgusted with me for being sick!! Not only was I an immoral hussy, I was SICK. My mother has always acted like being sick was some sort of crime. So, now I was doubly condemned. (When YOU are sick then it isn't about the narcissist. So they usually choose to treat you like a pile of dog doo when you find yourself under the weather. The sicker you are, the worse the treatment gets.)
I have no recall of exact quotes because my brain was fuzzed by fever, but I can see a clear picture of her standing over me and look on her face. Her total rage. At some point my husband told her to leave. She left in a huff. No apology for verbally beating me up while I was practically dying. Shit, no. She was FULLY justified.
I did improve dramatically over the weekend, much to my great relief. The fevers were gone before the weekend was out. I continued to improve until I was fully recovered without further incident. Did my mother ever call to inquire as to my health?? Uh, no. Did she wonder at all if her grandchild needed looking after while her mother was sick? That, again, would be no. The only reality that counted for her was that I was again making her look bad. My "immoral" life could possibly make the evening news and then all her church acquaintances would have another reason to look down on her. Of course, it wasn't really like that, but that was her perception.
I stayed away from my mother for weeks. I was seething with anger. I realize in retrospect that this was a good and healthy thing. I can see now this became an important mile post in my relationship with mother dearest. I mentally drew a line she would not be allowed to cross over ever again. This gave me space to live my life on my terms. I eventually was able to make good decisions and get my life on track. That was no thanks to my mother. Every good choice I made she raised her eyebrow at like it was somehow wrong. Thankfully, time proved my good choices to truly be good choices despite her lack of support for any of them. Narcissists aren't as smart as they think they are.
Many weeks after the "sick bed attack" I finally decided it was time to tell my mother I was a married woman. I drove to her place after work one summer afternoon. This is another time where extreme emotions have blotted out the specifics, but I retain some memories of the encounter. My sister was there as well as Mom. Dad wasn't home from work yet, which is how I wanted it. I went up to her bedroom and announced my presence. I told her I had some news for her. I had married Ed a couple months earlier. Deal with it. She was angry, of course, but I interrupted her and asked her if she remembered how she had abused me on my sick bed...well, guess what, I was married then too. While you were ranting and raving and not letting me get in a word edgewise, I was a married woman. You were accusing me of something I wasn't guilty of. Thanks a lot, Mom.
All I really remember from there is my escalating anger. I nailed her and I nailed her hard. I didn't let her pin shame on me. I hammered shame down on her head. I let it be known I didn't give a shit what she thought of me and how I was completely disgusted with her lack of simple human consideration for me as demonstrated by her behavior that ugly day and her lack of the slightest bit of concern about my health. I told her just how sick I had been and how that obviously didn't matter one little bit to her. I, for the first time in my life, shouted her down. For the first time in my life I left her presence while her lips were still moving. For the first time in my life I slammed a door so hard the house shook. For the first time, I peeled out of her gravel driveway leaving two trenches. That was something for my dad. He used to complain about people who would accelerate too quickly on his gravel driveway and leave tracks. So I left him a present. Here are two 35-foot long grand canyons for you to bitch about, Daddy-O.
As opposed to how I acted after my elopement at 17, this time I took control of the fall-out. I didn't let my Mom get the upper hand on me just because I didn't do things the way she would want me to. This was the beginning of a very cool period in my relationship with my family. I moved almost 800 miles away a couple months later and didn't speak to any of them (Mom, Dad, Sister) for the whole year I was gone. This event was a seismic shift in our relationship. My mother didn't know much of anything about my life for the next five or more years even when I moved back to her city. And even when she was back in my life again I kept my private life completely private and she knew that probing would get her nothing more than what I wanted her to know. She would occasionally pretend like she knew what I was up to even though I was wasn't telling her anything. "Trust me, S, I know a lot more about what you're doing than you realize." she would say with an annoying "knowing" look. I knew this was total B.S. and I didn't bite. I knew she didn't have a clue.
As a side note, I eventually quit living like a rebel and became a sincere Christian again. My life straightened up and I was truly happy for the first time in my life. It was the first time I had peace. It was a new and amazing place to be. My dear daughter was happy that she had a loving, engaged mother again. She was six years old by this time. I was staying away from dating, working at a very good job, had said good-bye to friends who had been influencing me poorly...I had grown up a bit. The school of hard knocks had made an impression. Well, one day after I had been consistently living an upright life for a significant period of time, I told my mother she didn't know shit about what I had been doing during my wild and crazy years. I proceeded to tell her, in broad generalities and a few specifics, about some of the things I'd done. She was startled and taken completely aback. She couldn't disguise her discomfiture. I forced her to admit she had known next to nothing about my life. That was an obviously embarrassing moment for her. It was a satisfying moment for me because she'd been playing this "I know what you're doing, I have eyes on the back of my head" for all my life. I wanted to rub her face in it a little now that I didn't have anything to hide. As it was, I didn't tell her everything I'd been up to. Didn't want to give her too much ammo to use against me. I told her just enough to let her know that she didn't know jack shit and to prove to her that I if I want to hide something from her I can. Guess she hadn't learned anything from my teenage years, eh?
I had made a mistake in marrying Ed. I'm sure that doesn't surprise you. Things started falling apart when he quit his band. He said he couldn't stand to be separated from me all week, only seeing me on weekends. *sigh* It had been working for me, but I didn't have the courage to tell him that fact. He was so sentimental I hated to rain on his parade. The guy couldn't do anything else but wash dishes in a restaurant...and soon that wasn't good enough work for him. So he quit that and spent a year looking for work while I supported him. I lost respect for him. When I found out he was flirting seriously with an ex-girlfriend, I left him. After I left, we spent a year trying to see if we could work things out while we were separated. We parted amicably when we could admit to ourselves and each other that it just wasn't going to work out. At least this second time around I hadn't married a narcissist. We were both immature and unequipped for the requirements of marriage. I'm not sure he if grew up. Within a few months he'd found an older woman with kids, a good alimony and a house and let her support him in better style than I had done. Last I knew they were still together and having a rocky time of it. To each their own.
But the whole second marriage "incident" was a continental shift in the old mother/daughter relationship. It marked a large distancing of my emotions from her control. Forever. It demarcated clearly where some of my boundaries were...and she was intimidated enough by my obvious willingness to live without her to cooperate with some clear boundaries. I was showing signs of a very stiff backbone. Nothing like showing some spine to scare a narcissist. I purchased a very large piece of my life to live without her having a right to dictate or comment. I hadn't yet gained the strength I needed to stand up to all of her manipulations, but I was learning. We at least had an unspoken understanding that I had limits.
I've already told you how I was 17, pregnant and too scared to tell my parents so I ran away and eloped. I stayed with husband #1 for three and half years. When I left him my second child, a daughter, was nine months old. Not surprisingly, I had married a young man with some very narcissistic traits and a profoundly screwed up family that he was completely enmeshed with. With all the dysfunction around me eventually my family started to look sane by comparison. My parents offered me a place to land if I decided to leave my husband. As I've explained, they were anxious for this marriage to end. I took their proffered help and ended up living with my family again. This time I lived with my parents and sister for almost exactly a year which was how long it took for me to scrape the money together so I could move out. I slept for that year on the living room floor in a sleeping bag. I was grateful for it.
It was a challenging year. I was 21 years old, but moving under my parent's roof meant they could make rules for my life. Rule one: you can't date anyone until your divorce is final.
It was hard to not rankle at being treated like a child in various ways when I had a child of my own and had been out on my own for almost four years. I chafed as quietly as I could. I was just biding my time 'til I could get out on my own again. I was again being ordered around and wasn't in any position to protest considering my dependence on their good will. My sister was still at home. She was around 18 and damn near insufferable at this point. But that's another story. I was working for 10 hours a day...that helped. I didn't have to spend as much time at home although that meant less time with my baby.
The divorce was finalized some eight months after I moved in with my parents. Now that it was "allowed" I began dating someone. Prior to dating being allowed, I managed to carry on a love life out of sight. I had a job and a car. They couldn't control everything I did. Anyway, my sister brought home a Christian contemporary band of four guys one day. They were all hotties, including the bass player who almost immediately started pursuing me. The attraction between the two of us was intense. My mother really liked him and the other three band members until she figured out Ed was seriously interested in me. She wore her disapproval prominently. I wasn't allowed a one-on-one date with him until after I moved out on my own.
Guess Mom knew what my boyfriend and I were headed for. He and I commenced our sexual relationship within a week of my moving out. My boyfriend was very anxious to marry me. More so now that we'd had sex. He suggested marriage right after we began a sexual relationship. I was amenable to the idea because I felt guilty about our unmarried sex. Ya know, the vestiges of my Christian upbringing in addition to what I knew my family's expectations were. While I had grown up fast in some ways, I was still quite immature in my ideas about marriage. Still having no idea what things were most important to base a marriage on, it seemed like hot sex was as good a reason to marry as anything else. Besides, I really liked how things were set up. He would be gone all during the week and come home for the weekends. This made for perfect marital harmony for me. This allowed it to only be about the sex. Nothing like a week long separation to make the reunions intense so you can tell your self you're in a great relationship.
I was pretty much in the mind set at this point of my life to grab what forbidden pleasures I could. I completely shucked going to church at this time since I'd become a bit cynical about church folk...which would include my mother. I had no examples of happy marriages around me either in the church or out of it. This would be one reason I would consent to marrying on such a shallow pretext. "It's all one big crap shoot anyhoo." to quote Groundhog Day.
When you have married once without your parents approval, it becomes much easier to do it again the next time! Yeah, I decided on having another secret wedding. Only this time I wasn't pregnant. Knowing my parents didn't approve of my boyfriend, I decided they weren't going to know about the wedding until it was over. At 23 years old I wasn't about to give them veto power. Several girlfriends got a nice little garden with gazebo reserved, a cake, decorations, a justice of the peace, and a few other friends, and my boyfriend and I got hitched on a nice spring morning. I actually dressed up for this wedding as opposed to the Tijuana adventure with husband #1.
So, now I was married and could have guilt-free sex, but how to break it to my parents? I wasn't sure. So we kept our secret under wraps for a while. Since my life was completely independent of them it was easier to keep secrets. I was in no way dependent on them. No outstanding loans because I never asked them for one red cent. I would have lived in my car before I asked them for anything. Actually, I wouldn't even ask then. I was barely squeaking by, but at least I owned my life.
A month or so after we married I ended up getting very sick. I had ignored an off and on again bladder infection for months. Finally the pain moved into one of my kidneys and then I was really sick. Too poor to consider time off, I kept working and didn't want to go to a doctor because I had no insurance and no extra money. I endured complete fatigue and spiking fevers (up to 104 degrees) for two full weeks. I finally realized I was getting worse and needed some help. I had lost so much weight I was looking skeletal. I walked into an Immediate Care Clinic after work on a Friday afternoon and got the diagnosis of a severe kidney infection. When the doctor told me he should admit me to a hospital because, "you are a very sick young woman", I cried and begged him not to. I was scared of the bill. So he sighed, said he would give me a very large couple doses of Sulfa drug and if I wasn't significantly improved over the weekend, he was sending me to the hospital.
I'm only telling you how sick I was because of what happened next. I picked up my daughter from daycare and went to my apartment to collapse in bed with a 104 F fever. I was so incredibly weak and sick I felt like I was dying. Thankfully, my husband was waiting for us at the apartment and could take care of my daughter as I waited for the drugs to work. Unfortunately for me, this was the day my mother decided it was time to confront me for "living in sin". Mom had caught wind (my sister dearest tattled on me) that Ed was staying with me on the weekends. She, of course, didn't yet know I had married him (sister didn't know this either). She bangs on my door and husband opens it wearing only jeans and was shirtless. This only infuriated her more. A half naked man in my apartment confirmed to her I was a shameless whore.
She demands to see me. He tells her I am very sick and in bed. This matters not a wit. She pushes past him, storms into my bedroom and immediately launches into a haranguing fit. She is shaking and enraged. She is talking through her teeth at me. She is denouncing my immoral ways with me too weak to defend myself. I can't even lift my head off the pillow. At some point she took a breath and I begged her for a shred of mercy. I asked her if she could see that I was very sick right now, could we have this conversation later? She, in her usual fashion, was disgusted with me for being sick!! Not only was I an immoral hussy, I was SICK. My mother has always acted like being sick was some sort of crime. So, now I was doubly condemned. (When YOU are sick then it isn't about the narcissist. So they usually choose to treat you like a pile of dog doo when you find yourself under the weather. The sicker you are, the worse the treatment gets.)
I have no recall of exact quotes because my brain was fuzzed by fever, but I can see a clear picture of her standing over me and look on her face. Her total rage. At some point my husband told her to leave. She left in a huff. No apology for verbally beating me up while I was practically dying. Shit, no. She was FULLY justified.
I did improve dramatically over the weekend, much to my great relief. The fevers were gone before the weekend was out. I continued to improve until I was fully recovered without further incident. Did my mother ever call to inquire as to my health?? Uh, no. Did she wonder at all if her grandchild needed looking after while her mother was sick? That, again, would be no. The only reality that counted for her was that I was again making her look bad. My "immoral" life could possibly make the evening news and then all her church acquaintances would have another reason to look down on her. Of course, it wasn't really like that, but that was her perception.
I stayed away from my mother for weeks. I was seething with anger. I realize in retrospect that this was a good and healthy thing. I can see now this became an important mile post in my relationship with mother dearest. I mentally drew a line she would not be allowed to cross over ever again. This gave me space to live my life on my terms. I eventually was able to make good decisions and get my life on track. That was no thanks to my mother. Every good choice I made she raised her eyebrow at like it was somehow wrong. Thankfully, time proved my good choices to truly be good choices despite her lack of support for any of them. Narcissists aren't as smart as they think they are.
Many weeks after the "sick bed attack" I finally decided it was time to tell my mother I was a married woman. I drove to her place after work one summer afternoon. This is another time where extreme emotions have blotted out the specifics, but I retain some memories of the encounter. My sister was there as well as Mom. Dad wasn't home from work yet, which is how I wanted it. I went up to her bedroom and announced my presence. I told her I had some news for her. I had married Ed a couple months earlier. Deal with it. She was angry, of course, but I interrupted her and asked her if she remembered how she had abused me on my sick bed...well, guess what, I was married then too. While you were ranting and raving and not letting me get in a word edgewise, I was a married woman. You were accusing me of something I wasn't guilty of. Thanks a lot, Mom.
All I really remember from there is my escalating anger. I nailed her and I nailed her hard. I didn't let her pin shame on me. I hammered shame down on her head. I let it be known I didn't give a shit what she thought of me and how I was completely disgusted with her lack of simple human consideration for me as demonstrated by her behavior that ugly day and her lack of the slightest bit of concern about my health. I told her just how sick I had been and how that obviously didn't matter one little bit to her. I, for the first time in my life, shouted her down. For the first time in my life I left her presence while her lips were still moving. For the first time in my life I slammed a door so hard the house shook. For the first time, I peeled out of her gravel driveway leaving two trenches. That was something for my dad. He used to complain about people who would accelerate too quickly on his gravel driveway and leave tracks. So I left him a present. Here are two 35-foot long grand canyons for you to bitch about, Daddy-O.
As opposed to how I acted after my elopement at 17, this time I took control of the fall-out. I didn't let my Mom get the upper hand on me just because I didn't do things the way she would want me to. This was the beginning of a very cool period in my relationship with my family. I moved almost 800 miles away a couple months later and didn't speak to any of them (Mom, Dad, Sister) for the whole year I was gone. This event was a seismic shift in our relationship. My mother didn't know much of anything about my life for the next five or more years even when I moved back to her city. And even when she was back in my life again I kept my private life completely private and she knew that probing would get her nothing more than what I wanted her to know. She would occasionally pretend like she knew what I was up to even though I was wasn't telling her anything. "Trust me, S, I know a lot more about what you're doing than you realize." she would say with an annoying "knowing" look. I knew this was total B.S. and I didn't bite. I knew she didn't have a clue.
As a side note, I eventually quit living like a rebel and became a sincere Christian again. My life straightened up and I was truly happy for the first time in my life. It was the first time I had peace. It was a new and amazing place to be. My dear daughter was happy that she had a loving, engaged mother again. She was six years old by this time. I was staying away from dating, working at a very good job, had said good-bye to friends who had been influencing me poorly...I had grown up a bit. The school of hard knocks had made an impression. Well, one day after I had been consistently living an upright life for a significant period of time, I told my mother she didn't know shit about what I had been doing during my wild and crazy years. I proceeded to tell her, in broad generalities and a few specifics, about some of the things I'd done. She was startled and taken completely aback. She couldn't disguise her discomfiture. I forced her to admit she had known next to nothing about my life. That was an obviously embarrassing moment for her. It was a satisfying moment for me because she'd been playing this "I know what you're doing, I have eyes on the back of my head" for all my life. I wanted to rub her face in it a little now that I didn't have anything to hide. As it was, I didn't tell her everything I'd been up to. Didn't want to give her too much ammo to use against me. I told her just enough to let her know that she didn't know jack shit and to prove to her that I if I want to hide something from her I can. Guess she hadn't learned anything from my teenage years, eh?
I had made a mistake in marrying Ed. I'm sure that doesn't surprise you. Things started falling apart when he quit his band. He said he couldn't stand to be separated from me all week, only seeing me on weekends. *sigh* It had been working for me, but I didn't have the courage to tell him that fact. He was so sentimental I hated to rain on his parade. The guy couldn't do anything else but wash dishes in a restaurant...and soon that wasn't good enough work for him. So he quit that and spent a year looking for work while I supported him. I lost respect for him. When I found out he was flirting seriously with an ex-girlfriend, I left him. After I left, we spent a year trying to see if we could work things out while we were separated. We parted amicably when we could admit to ourselves and each other that it just wasn't going to work out. At least this second time around I hadn't married a narcissist. We were both immature and unequipped for the requirements of marriage. I'm not sure he if grew up. Within a few months he'd found an older woman with kids, a good alimony and a house and let her support him in better style than I had done. Last I knew they were still together and having a rocky time of it. To each their own.
But the whole second marriage "incident" was a continental shift in the old mother/daughter relationship. It marked a large distancing of my emotions from her control. Forever. It demarcated clearly where some of my boundaries were...and she was intimidated enough by my obvious willingness to live without her to cooperate with some clear boundaries. I was showing signs of a very stiff backbone. Nothing like showing some spine to scare a narcissist. I purchased a very large piece of my life to live without her having a right to dictate or comment. I hadn't yet gained the strength I needed to stand up to all of her manipulations, but I was learning. We at least had an unspoken understanding that I had limits.
Monday, May 14, 2007
***SCREECH*** The Sound of A Blogger Hitting the Brakes
As I explained at the outset, I have been reluctant to write about my sister on this blog. I knew it would be hard to capture it. It is easy with my N mother because she was in a position of authority and therefore I was the recipient of the full malignancy of her narcissism. With my sister it is subtler. Because she wasn't in a position of authority over me her methods and modes of operation were sneakier. I was rendered emotionally vulnerable because of the dynamics my mother set in motion. I've tried to capture this. Perhaps I've bungled it.
As you may or may not have noticed I had someone comment on the last post. Yeah, I admit I was a little testy. Now I'm rendered somewhat immobile. As hesitant as I was to embark on this story, I'm thinking, "Yeah, what's the frickin' point of building the case against my sister here." I am not on a fishing expedition for sympathy on this. From the lack of comments on this blog overall, if I was depending on feedback of sympathy I would have abandoned the effort long ago. Obviously, that can't be my motivation.
I'll tell you what my motivation is in case you give a flying fig. First off, the whole point of this damn blog is to highlight malignant narcissism. Especially as it has affected adult children of narcissists when they were young and after they are grown. Most of the time, people have more than one kid. That means there are often siblings in homes with malignant narcissists. I thought perhaps I could highlight how my mother's narcissism fundamentally affected my sibling relationship just as another cautionary tale, or to let others know they aren't the only ones to have gone through something similar.
I have no inclination to exaggerate anything. My tendency is to under state. I have tried very hard to not present a completely lopsided view of my sister. I have tried to be fair. This story is told from my perspective, obviously. My sister isn't here to defend herself. I don't effing care. Truth is, she is the one that was always defended. I, for once, would like to present the case against her and at least string her up, here, on my blog, where for once I can talk uninterrupted and without the usual obfuscation and protestation and rage that I've encountered every single time I ever dared to try to get some justice where she was concerned. My second motivation on the "sister saga" was that I wanted to feel a tiny bit of justice, here, in my little space of the Internet.
If I wanted to assassinate my sister's character I could do it. You, dear reader, would have no way to know if I was telling the truth or not. I could make her into a child psychopath if I wanted to. There are kids out there who demonstrate psychopathic tendencies before the age of four or five. It isn't like there isn't precedent for that. But, I haven't done that. The fact that there is some ambiguity as to whether or not my sister was a negative force proves that I have held back. I haven't made her into a she-devil. Of course, the worst of the story is yet to come because she became progressively more difficult to live with the older she got. It was a p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s-i-o-n. That is what I've been trying to lay out for your perusal. Evil bitches aren't usually born. They grow up into one. Duh.
All this to say, I am thoroughly out of the mood to post further on this saga. If you want me to pick up the story again then you're gonna have to pipe up and comment. If silence reigns then I'll assume you're fraking bored with the topic and I'll move on. Maybe my mood will change and I'll say "screw you" and just write it anyway. Dunno. But for now, this is where I'm at. I don't want to hear about how thin-skinned I am that one comment could de-rail me. Like I said, I wasn't real sure I wanted to do this in the first place. And each and every post on this sister topic has been very difficult for me to do. I was on the edge, so a little shove was all it took. That's the way it is. Criticizing me for how I'm feeling won't make me feel differently. Just so you know.
[Icon by mysticxf]
Friday, May 11, 2007
Growing Up With Sister
For part one go here.
Part two here.
Around the time my sister was five years old I begin to have clearer memories of our interactions. This coincides with the major move our family made from southern California to the wilds of Oregon. The move was a positive one for my sister and I. We were delighted with the change. My mother was depressed and my dad was stressed. Six months after moving to the new state my parents bought a home on three and half wooded acres.
My sister was into girly-girl stuff. Playing "house", tea parties, dress up, dolls, Barbies. As I look back I realize that when we played together it was always one of these things we did. Which indicates that we did what my sister wanted to do, not what I wanted to do. My interests were more oriented to the outdoors. I was an avid explorer. I loved our new acreage and was often out climbing fir trees, building forts, hiking and biking. If my sister played outdoors, she was usually playing in the covered patio with her dolls venturing out from the covered area to make a mud pie or two.
I was also an avid reader from a very young age. It was utterly incomprehensible to my sister that reading could be a source of solitary pleasure, so when she saw me curled up with a book she would usually commence her nagging to come play with her. Around the age of ten playing with dolls was losing any appeal for me. My sister was about seven at this time. Rather than continually pushing away her pleas and demands that I come play with her, I decided to try to get her to join me. I liked several genres of books, but I decided I would introduce my sister to a good old-fashioned romantic classic, Jane Eyre. The book was mostly beyond her comprehension, so I would read a section to her and then interpret it into kid-speak. She loved it. Many years later my sister would bring up what a fond memory this was for her and claims that Jane Eyre is still her favorite book. I am convinced that the highlight of this whole experience for her was that she had my undivided attention and energy. It took us quite a while to wade through the whole book which means she had many, many hours of that attention. It is understandable that a younger sibling would like the attention. I'm not faulting her for that. What is the case, though, is that she was an attention hog. Mostly, what she wanted, she got because she had the long arm of the law, Mom, on her side. I'm also pointing out that I did go above and beyond. I didn't have to spend hours of my life reinterpreting Jane Eyre to a little kid. I was trying to give her something; I was attempting to infuse her with a love for books. Books were like a friend to me. I hoped she could come to see them that way too.
In recent years my sister has described what kind of sister I was to her. She remembers my patience and kindness to her. She felt like I protected her and was a mother-type figure to her. This was news to me...the mother figure part. I never felt maternal toward my sister. I simply tried to be decent to her. I remember her as being demanding and very bossy and taking advantage of my kindnesses. I would occasionally feel very vexed by her bossiness and would tell her to knock it off. I remember telling her once that it was a good thing I was born first otherwise she would order me around even more than she already did. She was a tattle-tale, too. Her memories of me as a child are far more favorable than mine of her.
I don't agree with my sister's present-day analysis that I was a mother-type figure to her as a child. I simply don't buy it. I can not look back at her behavior growing up and see her relating to me like she felt I was mothering her. If anything, she was usually trying to assert her will over mine and run my life. She liked to act like she was in charge. I sincerely doubt she behaved this way because she perceived me as a mother-figure. I think I have divined her current-day reasons for trying to put that spin on things, but I'll have to save telling you for another time. I do believe that my presence offered her protection, but that was really only because I was the first-born and I was held responsible for the both of us.
Years after the fact, sister told me how she was jolted to the reality of what a vicious bitch of a mother we had only after I left home. She said only then did she realize how much I had protected her from our mother. On the other side, my mother told me years later how it wasn't until I left home that she was forced to realize what a lazy, mouthy daughter my sister was. They had many, many clashes because now my sister was expected to do some of what I used to do ... and sister dear wasn't trained and wasn't motivated. She'd gotten off easy for the first fourteen years of her life. She wasn't inclined to let that change. It got ugly between those two after I left.
Perhaps you can get a sense from these two women's testimonies that I was caught between the two of them. There was a balancing act going on and when I left home that delicate balance was no more because I was the only one doing the balancing. The two females in our house who were exactly like each other were now forced to deal head on with each other. There was no buffer (me) between them. My mother had focused her anger and many expectations on me, the first born. My sister laid her demands and expectations on me, as well as hiding behind me to avoid accountability. With no one around to be the chief slave and whipping boy they were forced to deal with each other. The battles were ugly and fierce. They both fought dirty.
The picture I'm trying to make with as few words as possible is that our sister relationship during our younger years was largely uneventful. There were arguments and annoyances, but I was generally a patient older sister who put up with a lot of her childish crap because I really didn't have any other choice. If we argued too much my mother would threaten us with bodily harm. If my sister's importunities for me to play with her went on for too long, I would be ordered by mommy dearest to comply. My life was circumscribed by the wills of these two very willful females.
Then puberty struck. My reaching puberty first didn't bring about any significant changes in our relationship. I didn't treat her any differently. Her puberty changed everything. The sibling rivalry my mother was so quick to assume I was feeling as a very young child was now in full swing. It wasn't from me toward sister, but sister toward me. And not an eyebrow was lifted. No intervention from the Queen Bitch on this true incarnation of sibling rivalry. Suddenly, I was sensed there was a game on and nobody had told me what the rules were.
I was sixteen when our family went to Southern California to visit family and some friends for Christmas. We spent a whole day at Knotts Berry Farm. My sister had gotten a waist-high yellow jacket for Christmas that she thought made her look da bomb. She put on airs. Insufferable airs. She was suddenly too cool to be seen with me and our fat friend Rick. (Rick is a whole story in himself...kind of a quasi-sibling to me. We were exactly six months apart and had been thrown together since his birth. My mother expected me to treat him like I did my sister. I was, at times, persecuted for having to hang out with a fat kid with a temper. But I treated him well and never tried to disown him in public as my sister was trying to on the day I'm describing.)
Rick and I were scurrying around taking in the rides. My sister was hanging back trying to attract male attention and attempting to look too sexy for her coat. She had spent the day being snotty and mean to me. By the end of the day I was feeling quite deflated as she had hit her mark more than once with her nasty comments and haughty mien. A picture was taken that day that captured everything. There was a bench in front of a little western saloon. On the bench were a couple of shiny life-size mannikins who looked like chorus girls. There was space on either side of the mannikins for people to sit and pose with them. My sister is sitting there with her hands in her pockets striking a pose with all the attitude she had been displaying that day. You can tell from her expression she thinks she is hot stuff. Objectively, she was having a bad hair day and looking a bit chunky. She thought her hair was lookin' good, though. Between her layered cut and that stupid coat she was sure she looked like a babe. Then there is me. I'm not having a bad hair day. I'm looking pretty and trim and a little self-conscious, although I'm obviously giggling and having a good time with the silly photo shoot. No attitude. No airs. I had no idea how pretty I looked that day. (The picture testifies to that fact.) This was true for most of my teens and young adulthood. I never felt pretty. On the other hand, my sister was always very confident that she was gorgeous. It made her very haughty and full of herself. That picture captures our teen age years.
Her confidence seemed to emphasize to me my own lack of confidence. The more she asserted herself as being God's gift to mankind, the more I felt like chopped liver because she was good at acting like I was chopped liver. I was vulnerable to my family's interpretations of me so I could be easily convinced I was nothing much if they turned their efforts in that direction. It seems it was important to use me to boost themselves up by putting me down. I could never summon up the confidence she had. (Thankfully so in retrospect.) I am sure part of my problem was that my mother was engaged in full-out competition with my emerging figure and looks. She would not so subtly put down various aspects of my physicality making me more and more self-conscious. She would actually compare my body to hers when she was young. She had nothing to brag about in the present tense, so I was compared to her image of herself as a teen. What kind of mother does that? A sick bitch of one. Mom forbade me to wear any make-up. I didn't start wearing it until I left home at 17. She would keep me in clothes that made me look younger than my peers. I was still in knee socks long after the other girls were wearing pantyhose. So I felt like an oddball at all times. None of these things did my sister have to endure. It all came early and easy for her. I was the trailblazer. This was another way that having me around made my sister's life easier.
My mother let it slip once that when a woman has teenage girls that they can make the mother look older simply through contrast. Looking back at that statement it is easy enough to understand my mother's efforts to keep me looking like a child as long as she could get away with it. By virtue of me just growing up, she felt she was made to look older. She didn't want to face her age, so she denies mine. She made my teenage years much, much harder because of her selfish concern for how she looked. None of this was put on my sister, at least not until I left home. If it happened after that, I don't know.
As you have probably deduced, my sister and I were completely different people. Our interests and personalities were polar opposites. We were expected to get along...and the onus was on me to make that happen. My sister took advantage of the fact that I was a decent person. She could get away with being snotty and mean and I was expected to just "deal with it". Because I was responsible and reliable much was expected of me. I did the lion's share of work...my sister got to coast because if you want something to get done, you put it on the kid who will actually do it. That was me. I remember she would vex my parents at times because she wouldn't even do the little that was expected of her in a consistent and reliable way. The consequences for her were minimal so she was able to cultivate her laziness because my industry covered up for her by making her lack of effort less noticeable. Only after I left home did my parents realize what a lazy-assed kid my sister was. I could have told them that, but they didn't want to hear it when I was still at home.
The reason I made the effort to tell you that I was decent, considerate and nice to my sister is because of what I'm going to tell you about in a future installment. When my sister was put in the position of being a "big sister" to our younger female cousin, she did not treat our cousin like I had treated my sister. My sister is largely responsible for breaking up my cousin's family and set my cousin's feet on a course of ruin. These crimes remain unconfessed to this day.
Part two here.
Around the time my sister was five years old I begin to have clearer memories of our interactions. This coincides with the major move our family made from southern California to the wilds of Oregon. The move was a positive one for my sister and I. We were delighted with the change. My mother was depressed and my dad was stressed. Six months after moving to the new state my parents bought a home on three and half wooded acres.
My sister was into girly-girl stuff. Playing "house", tea parties, dress up, dolls, Barbies. As I look back I realize that when we played together it was always one of these things we did. Which indicates that we did what my sister wanted to do, not what I wanted to do. My interests were more oriented to the outdoors. I was an avid explorer. I loved our new acreage and was often out climbing fir trees, building forts, hiking and biking. If my sister played outdoors, she was usually playing in the covered patio with her dolls venturing out from the covered area to make a mud pie or two.
I was also an avid reader from a very young age. It was utterly incomprehensible to my sister that reading could be a source of solitary pleasure, so when she saw me curled up with a book she would usually commence her nagging to come play with her. Around the age of ten playing with dolls was losing any appeal for me. My sister was about seven at this time. Rather than continually pushing away her pleas and demands that I come play with her, I decided to try to get her to join me. I liked several genres of books, but I decided I would introduce my sister to a good old-fashioned romantic classic, Jane Eyre. The book was mostly beyond her comprehension, so I would read a section to her and then interpret it into kid-speak. She loved it. Many years later my sister would bring up what a fond memory this was for her and claims that Jane Eyre is still her favorite book. I am convinced that the highlight of this whole experience for her was that she had my undivided attention and energy. It took us quite a while to wade through the whole book which means she had many, many hours of that attention. It is understandable that a younger sibling would like the attention. I'm not faulting her for that. What is the case, though, is that she was an attention hog. Mostly, what she wanted, she got because she had the long arm of the law, Mom, on her side. I'm also pointing out that I did go above and beyond. I didn't have to spend hours of my life reinterpreting Jane Eyre to a little kid. I was trying to give her something; I was attempting to infuse her with a love for books. Books were like a friend to me. I hoped she could come to see them that way too.
In recent years my sister has described what kind of sister I was to her. She remembers my patience and kindness to her. She felt like I protected her and was a mother-type figure to her. This was news to me...the mother figure part. I never felt maternal toward my sister. I simply tried to be decent to her. I remember her as being demanding and very bossy and taking advantage of my kindnesses. I would occasionally feel very vexed by her bossiness and would tell her to knock it off. I remember telling her once that it was a good thing I was born first otherwise she would order me around even more than she already did. She was a tattle-tale, too. Her memories of me as a child are far more favorable than mine of her.
I don't agree with my sister's present-day analysis that I was a mother-type figure to her as a child. I simply don't buy it. I can not look back at her behavior growing up and see her relating to me like she felt I was mothering her. If anything, she was usually trying to assert her will over mine and run my life. She liked to act like she was in charge. I sincerely doubt she behaved this way because she perceived me as a mother-figure. I think I have divined her current-day reasons for trying to put that spin on things, but I'll have to save telling you for another time. I do believe that my presence offered her protection, but that was really only because I was the first-born and I was held responsible for the both of us.
Years after the fact, sister told me how she was jolted to the reality of what a vicious bitch of a mother we had only after I left home. She said only then did she realize how much I had protected her from our mother. On the other side, my mother told me years later how it wasn't until I left home that she was forced to realize what a lazy, mouthy daughter my sister was. They had many, many clashes because now my sister was expected to do some of what I used to do ... and sister dear wasn't trained and wasn't motivated. She'd gotten off easy for the first fourteen years of her life. She wasn't inclined to let that change. It got ugly between those two after I left.
Perhaps you can get a sense from these two women's testimonies that I was caught between the two of them. There was a balancing act going on and when I left home that delicate balance was no more because I was the only one doing the balancing. The two females in our house who were exactly like each other were now forced to deal head on with each other. There was no buffer (me) between them. My mother had focused her anger and many expectations on me, the first born. My sister laid her demands and expectations on me, as well as hiding behind me to avoid accountability. With no one around to be the chief slave and whipping boy they were forced to deal with each other. The battles were ugly and fierce. They both fought dirty.
The picture I'm trying to make with as few words as possible is that our sister relationship during our younger years was largely uneventful. There were arguments and annoyances, but I was generally a patient older sister who put up with a lot of her childish crap because I really didn't have any other choice. If we argued too much my mother would threaten us with bodily harm. If my sister's importunities for me to play with her went on for too long, I would be ordered by mommy dearest to comply. My life was circumscribed by the wills of these two very willful females.
Then puberty struck. My reaching puberty first didn't bring about any significant changes in our relationship. I didn't treat her any differently. Her puberty changed everything. The sibling rivalry my mother was so quick to assume I was feeling as a very young child was now in full swing. It wasn't from me toward sister, but sister toward me. And not an eyebrow was lifted. No intervention from the Queen Bitch on this true incarnation of sibling rivalry. Suddenly, I was sensed there was a game on and nobody had told me what the rules were.
I was sixteen when our family went to Southern California to visit family and some friends for Christmas. We spent a whole day at Knotts Berry Farm. My sister had gotten a waist-high yellow jacket for Christmas that she thought made her look da bomb. She put on airs. Insufferable airs. She was suddenly too cool to be seen with me and our fat friend Rick. (Rick is a whole story in himself...kind of a quasi-sibling to me. We were exactly six months apart and had been thrown together since his birth. My mother expected me to treat him like I did my sister. I was, at times, persecuted for having to hang out with a fat kid with a temper. But I treated him well and never tried to disown him in public as my sister was trying to on the day I'm describing.)
Rick and I were scurrying around taking in the rides. My sister was hanging back trying to attract male attention and attempting to look too sexy for her coat. She had spent the day being snotty and mean to me. By the end of the day I was feeling quite deflated as she had hit her mark more than once with her nasty comments and haughty mien. A picture was taken that day that captured everything. There was a bench in front of a little western saloon. On the bench were a couple of shiny life-size mannikins who looked like chorus girls. There was space on either side of the mannikins for people to sit and pose with them. My sister is sitting there with her hands in her pockets striking a pose with all the attitude she had been displaying that day. You can tell from her expression she thinks she is hot stuff. Objectively, she was having a bad hair day and looking a bit chunky. She thought her hair was lookin' good, though. Between her layered cut and that stupid coat she was sure she looked like a babe. Then there is me. I'm not having a bad hair day. I'm looking pretty and trim and a little self-conscious, although I'm obviously giggling and having a good time with the silly photo shoot. No attitude. No airs. I had no idea how pretty I looked that day. (The picture testifies to that fact.) This was true for most of my teens and young adulthood. I never felt pretty. On the other hand, my sister was always very confident that she was gorgeous. It made her very haughty and full of herself. That picture captures our teen age years.
Her confidence seemed to emphasize to me my own lack of confidence. The more she asserted herself as being God's gift to mankind, the more I felt like chopped liver because she was good at acting like I was chopped liver. I was vulnerable to my family's interpretations of me so I could be easily convinced I was nothing much if they turned their efforts in that direction. It seems it was important to use me to boost themselves up by putting me down. I could never summon up the confidence she had. (Thankfully so in retrospect.) I am sure part of my problem was that my mother was engaged in full-out competition with my emerging figure and looks. She would not so subtly put down various aspects of my physicality making me more and more self-conscious. She would actually compare my body to hers when she was young. She had nothing to brag about in the present tense, so I was compared to her image of herself as a teen. What kind of mother does that? A sick bitch of one. Mom forbade me to wear any make-up. I didn't start wearing it until I left home at 17. She would keep me in clothes that made me look younger than my peers. I was still in knee socks long after the other girls were wearing pantyhose. So I felt like an oddball at all times. None of these things did my sister have to endure. It all came early and easy for her. I was the trailblazer. This was another way that having me around made my sister's life easier.
My mother let it slip once that when a woman has teenage girls that they can make the mother look older simply through contrast. Looking back at that statement it is easy enough to understand my mother's efforts to keep me looking like a child as long as she could get away with it. By virtue of me just growing up, she felt she was made to look older. She didn't want to face her age, so she denies mine. She made my teenage years much, much harder because of her selfish concern for how she looked. None of this was put on my sister, at least not until I left home. If it happened after that, I don't know.
As you have probably deduced, my sister and I were completely different people. Our interests and personalities were polar opposites. We were expected to get along...and the onus was on me to make that happen. My sister took advantage of the fact that I was a decent person. She could get away with being snotty and mean and I was expected to just "deal with it". Because I was responsible and reliable much was expected of me. I did the lion's share of work...my sister got to coast because if you want something to get done, you put it on the kid who will actually do it. That was me. I remember she would vex my parents at times because she wouldn't even do the little that was expected of her in a consistent and reliable way. The consequences for her were minimal so she was able to cultivate her laziness because my industry covered up for her by making her lack of effort less noticeable. Only after I left home did my parents realize what a lazy-assed kid my sister was. I could have told them that, but they didn't want to hear it when I was still at home.
The reason I made the effort to tell you that I was decent, considerate and nice to my sister is because of what I'm going to tell you about in a future installment. When my sister was put in the position of being a "big sister" to our younger female cousin, she did not treat our cousin like I had treated my sister. My sister is largely responsible for breaking up my cousin's family and set my cousin's feet on a course of ruin. These crimes remain unconfessed to this day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)