Far from FOO - but not far enough

I don’t live near my FOO – well, my FOO is scattered all over the country and the world, but I left my home state years ago to get away from the nonsense perpetrated by my Nparents and the WWW (I didn’t know about the FM’s at that point, although I suspected that there was involvement of other sibs).  I left with my chosen family to create a new life far from the craziness that was becoming increasing obvious in my generation.  But you just can’t get far enough away from this idiocy.  Holidays and family events just sucked the life out of me.  A strange thing used to happen to me at these gatherings.  I’d start out strong and as the day wore on, I’d find myself getting weaker and weaker, not just emotionally but physically – I knew I had to leave, that I was fading, but I couldn’t make myself get up and go!   I started setting time limits on FOO visits – early on, before children, I had decided that I couldn’t spend the night in my Nparent’s home – it just brought back too much awfulness and the awfulness of the present was quite enough…  Then I set a 5 hour limit, but that became too much, so eventually it had to be set at 3 hours – that was the absolute limit to the amount of time I could spend with my FOO.  My husband’s job (God love him!) was to alert me when the time was getting close because I’d have to really gear up to get out.  My husband’s family lived only a few miles from my Nparents and although the Nparents aren’t big fans of me and my chosen family, they hated to think that we were going to my husband’s family, that his family was being chosen over them, so leaving was a huge effort with a lot of negotiating and pathetic looks from my NM. 

Part of the reason that the visits were so stressful (not that having 3-5 narcissists in the room wasn’t stressful enough) was that my parents didn’t like my children.  In actuality, I don’t think my parents liked ANY children, but my job was to protect mine.  I once walked into the living room to hear my father saying to my 3-year-old son, “You think you’re so smart.  Well you’re not – you’re not so smart.”  I picked up my son and glared at my father, who started telling me that my son thought he was so smart.  I said, “Dad, he’s THREE.  What are you doing?”  It turned out that a family friend’s teenager had taught my son to spell his name backwards and my son was showing his grandfather what he could do, which I thought was hilarious, but apparently MNF felt threatened by a 3-year-old being able to do this.  That was the last time my MNF was ever alone in a room with either of my children.  I can remember my MNF saying the same sorts of thing to me and to my siblings when we were young – what a guy, huh??

Before I knew about narcissism and before I had set HUGE boundaries around my children with my Nparents, my husband and I went on a short cruise.  For 2 days of that time, our children stayed with my Nparents – I know, what was I thinking? So, my son was about 2 and when we got back, I discovered that my NM had taken away his pacifier, deciding that he was too old to have it – so here is a child whose parents are gone, he’s staying with his grandparents, and they take away the thing he uses to comfort himself!  My NM was so proud of herself!  She told me in that stiff-backed, tight-lipped way that she had that she had weaned my son from that disgusting habit.  AACK!!!  Needless to say, our son got his Nooky back and he was sooooo happy! 

After we moved to another state, my husband’s mother came to visit and had a massive stroke.  She lived with us for a while, got much better, and then had a series of strokes that eventually killed her.  When she died, my daughter looked at me sadly and said, “Now we don’t have any grandparents left.”  It broke my heart because my Nparents were still alive.  I tried to console her, saying that she did still have grandparents,  that my parents were still alive, and she gave me the look she always gives me when she thinks I’m talking nonsense.  She was right, of course.