tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post2966802041367545344..comments2024-01-02T23:04:02.489-08:00Comments on The Narcissist's Child: Deconstructing rageSweet Violethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321094659806702782noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-77004851873202098672014-08-24T22:34:13.008-07:002014-08-24T22:34:13.008-07:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-16929643298848751532013-10-10T23:26:51.206-07:002013-10-10T23:26:51.206-07:00Have you read my entry "Scapegoats: not alway...Have you read my entry "Scapegoats: not always what you expect"? Has it occurred to you that your parents may also have felt "it's her or me"?<br /><br />That doesn't make what they did right, but if you can fathom their motives, it can help you come to terms with it. Some years ago there was a terrible drought in the American Southwest and the wild horses were unable to find sufficient forage or water. Range managers were finding dead or starving foals...abandoned by their mothers to die, something very contrary to their normal behaviour. It was ultimately determined that the mares were abandoning the foals because if they cared for them, they would both die due to the lack of resources: by allowing the foal to die, the mare stood the change of surviving to better times, whereupon she could produce more foals. Now, horses are not smartest beasts in the world (I have owned a few, I know this from experience!) so this was not something the mares cognitively figured out...they were acting according to some instinct that was triggered by the scarcity of resources. I tell you this story because your parents made me think of it: as abused kids themselves, they had precious little emotional resources of their own and when they had children, those children were drains upon those scarce resources. <br /><br />Now, they aren't horses, your parents, they are human beings with an infinitely greater intellectual capacity than a starving feral horse, so their bad childhoods do not excuse them, for all that it may explain them. Remember, they are not you and you cannot judge them based on what you would do...you can, however, judge them based upon the expectations of the culture in which you and they lived.<br /><br />I hated my mother until she died. Like you, I moved away from the toxic, angry kind of hate into a more detached hate that protected me from hoping for her to wake up and grow some compassion and love for me. It wasn't until she died that I realized it hadn't worked: the hope is still there, however feeble, and when I learned she was dead, I cried. But I didn't cry for her, I cried for the death of that hope. I would have been better off if I had given up all of the hate because the opposite of love is not hatred, it is indifference. The fact that you cling to any kind of hate is simply saying that you continue to keep an emotional bond between you alive.<br /><br />From what you say, it sounds like your NM could be declared incompetent and given a guardian. You might want to explore that...but be careful because your siblings might object and you might be appointed that guardian. Above all else, do things that work to keep your conscience clear...the last thing you want is to look back after her death and feel remorse for not doing what you believe was the right thing to do.<br /><br />Best of luck to you,<br /><br />VioletSweet Violethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08321094659806702782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-62753881260365387232013-10-10T18:58:46.470-07:002013-10-10T18:58:46.470-07:00Dice my NM, conclusion:
When I told her that my p...Dice my NM, conclusion:<br /><br />When I told her that my partner of 8 years and father of our son were probably going to get married soon because our child was asking us about it, and seemed to fret that we were not married and we want to make sure our child feels secure, she turned on me and hissed "If you do that, you'll be sorry! Why does [our child] even know about such things! That's an adult matter!" I explained with detachment that in my relationship, a 6-year old child knows the truth about mom and dad's relationship and we like it that way, and that the days of her presuming to dictate whom I love have been over for decades.<br /><br />She always worked her will with verbal and physical abuse, with my gutless father looking on. Now he's dead. She's a toothless, pathetic old snake, and flipping out. The control is gone. She never bothered to learn to use the imac I had set up for her. She cancelled the cable because my father watched too much TV while terminally ill, when he could have been paying attention to her. Now she's totally isolated herself. I guess her plan, whatever it was, went wobbly on her. I can't say I'm not pleased on some childish level that she now feels lost, unmoored, afraid and alone, just as I did for so very long. I guess payback is a bitch.<br /><br />I'm trying to heal for my own sake and for my family, but it is not anything I can share with my NM. Nor do I want to. Stress from my parents almost cost me my life. I cannot afford to give NM another atom of my soul. I wish her a swift death-she is a miserable, horrid, soul-killing bitch. I hate her for what she did to me and her other children, but in a detached less-toxic hate than angry hate. I have to keep that hate there as a placeholder to prevent hope from creeping back. It is the hope that crushes you. My father died without telling me--his GC--he loved me or even saying goodbye, wishing me or his only grandchild well, and he had many opportunities. <br /><br />These twisted people choose to inflict pain, guilt, shame. Both my parents had horrible childhoods, but so did I. When I had my child, what I had been through made me want to be a far better parent than mine were to me. I try to extend the compassion that I yearned for, and put myself in my child's place to give what's needed. I do not, and never will, understand why my parents did not feel the same way, and chose instead to invalidate my identity, my emotions, my self, and see me as a permanently unequal being, simply an extension of themselves. NM still sees me this way. She is the center of the universe. I hope I outlive NM and see her universe implode and at last, be truly free.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-81785749332796806382013-10-10T18:56:57.969-07:002013-10-10T18:56:57.969-07:00Dice up my NM, continued:
She's not dead yet....Dice up my NM, continued:<br /><br />She's not dead yet. She's 80. My father recently died, and months later her son (with her 2nd husband) who was her GC and my father's SG died. I wondered what she was going to do without her NS. <br /><br />It isn't pretty. There is no one left who plays along with the fiction of our family. She's becoming extremely paranoid. She's raging about everything, then she breaks down sobbing. Her memory is noticeably impaired. Could be dementia, could be an act. I have no idea who she "really" is--like Violet's NM, mine always amazed me by switching personalities the instant the phone rang.<br /><br />She's behaving in ways that are dangerous to others--she has twice in a few weeks tried to *force* my 80 old aunt, NM's twin who lost her husband a few months before my NM lost hers, to get out of NM's car on a 4-lane highway with no shoulder because my aunt's comments (which my NM can never specify) rub her the wrong way. (Literally, "My way or the highway!") Thankfully my aunt would not be bullied and refused, even threatened to call 911 if NM would not take her back to her car. She loves to act out/threaten abandoning others, and when someone (even her firstborn son) chooses someone else over her (by getting married) she has no problem with dropping them like a hot rock. She hasn't seen her eldest in at least 25 years. As a mother myself, her behavior is unfathomable.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-49908273426537275002013-10-10T18:54:06.033-07:002013-10-10T18:54:06.033-07:00For me, chopping up my mother was not enough--when...For me, chopping up my mother was not enough--when I was a child (8-9?), after having been beaten by my raging mother for something that I did not do (again), I sat on the bathroom floor and traced out an invisible oath on the mirror on the door. <br /><br />In the oath I promised myself to hate my mother forever, to never forget the things she did to me, to fight the gaslighting and know that my memories were real. I promised not to be fooled by her unpredictable streaks of generosity, which only served to run up my "debt" to her. I also promised that when I was older, if she tried to beat me, I would defend myself, fantasizing that I would cut her into tiny cubes--to "dice" her like the little can of pop-top peaches I liked.<br /><br />Now at 48, with a child of my own, a loving relationship, and more than a decade of psychoanalysis, I see that I wanted to annihilate her, because anything less might not be enough to protect me. Even then, I apparently understood that it was a "her or me" situation. I rummaged in the bathroom closet and found something sharp, cut myself, and signed my name in blood on the mirror. Then after steeling myself to do whatever I had to do to get away from my parents--telling myself that there would be a whole life for myself once I got away, I cleaned the mirror.<br /><br />This happened about 40 years ago, and I remember it like it was this morning: the bright orange formica-topped lavatory base, the white drop in sink, the garish bright yellow gloss my mother had painted the cabinet and the back of the door, the cocoa 2" square tiles on the floor with the tiny white flecks.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-50684095536052771542013-09-21T03:46:27.035-07:002013-09-21T03:46:27.035-07:00I used to fantasisize about chopping my mother up ...I used to fantasisize about chopping my mother up with an axe I hated her so much. I wasn't allowed to express anything really ( I was fat, lazy, clumsy, ungrateful, tactless and stupid told to be quiet) so the anger went inside. By 17 I was quite depressed and having suicidal thoughts, and got into huge trouble for not performing well at school and winning the prizes I guess my parents felt they were owed. No wonder university was a struggle. For many years I felt nothing, then I got angry, then I had adrenal exhaustion (too much cortisol is definitely not good). Now I am trying not to get angry, but it's difficult when you feel powerless. I read once that depression is the flipside of anger you don't feel you have the right to have. I have done a lot of work but deep down I am still angry with my mother. She is a monster who poisoned people's lives and she has never been called to account. Naturally her persecution is something I have invented. Though my sister backed me once and that shut her up. We haven't spoken for 15 years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-34455870000989790622013-09-20T10:12:15.388-07:002013-09-20T10:12:15.388-07:00Wow, thank you - I recently had a discussion with ...Wow, thank you - I recently had a discussion with a group about why I felt that anger should be considered a symptom of something else. You say it so much more clearly that I can. I hear so often about "controlling anger" when the reality is that controlling anger is not an issue when we are introspective enough to search out the deeper emotional cause of that anger and address that in a healing way. <br /><br />Oh, and you are not the only one who climaxes an angry bought with tears. <br /><br />ESAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-86114303925405742472013-09-18T02:57:07.357-07:002013-09-18T02:57:07.357-07:00Starting to see that, Violet. Glad you are there a...Starting to see that, Violet. Glad you are there and writing and keeping this blog going. It's a beacon.Calibans Sisterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04817489284771105048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-51142902929656574682013-09-18T02:28:43.678-07:002013-09-18T02:28:43.678-07:00The light is bright out here!!The light is bright out here!!Sweet Violethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08321094659806702782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4333405565931840271.post-10193174055300702022013-09-16T04:00:01.865-07:002013-09-16T04:00:01.865-07:00Magnificent post. And a lesson I am learning even ...Magnificent post. And a lesson I am learning even as I type. I have gone through the tunnel and am coming out the other side. xoCSCalibans Sisterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04817489284771105048noreply@blogger.com