Now for some good news!

Narcissism is kind of like a scab that you keep picking at until it bleeds – it’s time to take a break to focus on the good in life!!!  As you may have guessed if you’ve read the blog from its beginning a few days ago, my FOO is huge!  So I have 3 narcissists, 2 Winkies, and 3 Loving Siblings – with that math, I still have more loving siblings than most people I know!!!  

LS1 (by birth order) has been wonderfully supportive of my efforts to free myself from the dastardly narcissists in my FOO – she’s in the process of doing the same.  We talk, we cry, we regroup, we think it through again, we tell stories, we cry – and around it goes!  We went to our NM’s deathbed and it became very evident that we were indeed dealing with what we thought we had been dealing with – there were narcissists everywhere! When we went back to her home, we walked on the beach, we talked, we cried, we mulled, we laughed, we shopped, we read – and mostly we supported each other in the pain of realizing that this couldn’t go on, that we had to end it.  LS1 is a nurturing, caring, generous, creative, and honest person who had the bad luck of being singled out as the main scapegoat in a large and ridiculously dysfunctional FOO.  The family myth is that she is a drug addict (Who’s projecting here?) who chose to not be a part of the “family” (hereafter known as the Division).  What nonsense!!!  She’s no more a drug addict than I am – but it makes a good story if your adult child chooses to move to CA, a state that my family associates with a great-grandmother who left her husband and ran off with a jewelry salesman – that entire state is now tainted and one who goes there must necessarily be of bad moral character!!  My NM apparently kept this story going until she died – and that information came from my NM’s sister.  LS1 was the first one ousted from the Division – she was an easy target, being in CA and all.  I won’t go into the whole story here, but it involved people yelling and running down the street, a decrepit guitar, a letter on legal letterhead (WWW is married to a lawyer) threatening a law suit, and the stipulation that LS1 was not welcome at any family gatherings until the guitar was returned – which it was.  The story that I was told about the “incident” had none of those components – I got it direct from the mouth of WWW, so this is not a great surprise.  Unfortunately, I was then under the spell of the WWW and I believed her – oh, how sad that makes me!!!  But LS1 forgave me that and we became friends again.  She has kept her chosen family far away from the Division and has a wonderful, creative, intelligent and generally remarkable child, now a teenager with all sorts of gifts who is on his way to healthy independence.

LS2 (by birth order) went No Contact before it was cool!!!  Early on, he realized that Nparents were toxic to his chosen family, especially his children.  He limited time with Nparents more and more as the years went by and his children have grown up to be independent, strong, fun, creative adults who have started healthy, loving families of their own.  I have to admit that I tried to get LS2 to have more contact with MNF and NM and he was gracious and went with me to visit MNF before he died and he also honored W2’s request that he visit NM before she died.  He is an honorable man who is married to a completely remarkable woman. I wish I had followed his lead earlier and shut out the craziness.  LS2 was ousted from the Division by WWW and her FM’s with the help of MW at the time of MNF’s death.  (That is a mouthful of acronyms – sorry!!)  Apparently, when they were cleaning out MNF’s house after his death, LS2 got tired of being ordered around by WWW and her FM’s and said so.  Well this, as you know, is anathema to narcissists and WWW got on the phone to round up a bigger posse than she already had – she actually called LS1 and me, people she had already ousted, and tried to convince us that LS2 had been violently angry and she was terrified of him!!!  Imagine a witch being afraid of a mere mortal!!  Well, that didn’t work, but apparently she got the FM’s and MW onboard and that was all she really needed.  At NM’s deathbed, LS2 acted with dignity and restraint and made sure that his family was safe in the midst of chaos.  NM spoke to him long after she was supposed to have been beyond speaking, so WWW and her FM’s will try to make him pay for that – it’s only a matter of time, but LS2 has proved that he is able to deflect the incantations effectively!  (Update 6/16/2014- LS2's lovely wife died this year, and all kinds of Ntraits showed up in this sibling- his wife had told me that LS2 is a narcissist, but I was loathe to believe it. )
 

LS3 (by birth order) has somehow always been a target for WWW and her FM’s – she is the youngest and the family dysfunction hadn’t improved, certainly, over the years, but it’s hard to believe that children can be as horrifically brutal as these children were to their youngest sibling.  And nothing has changed – as middle-aged women, they are still brutal, nasty, vicious, cruel, and generally jealous of this wonderful sibling.  Who knows why?  Having been raised by Nparents (I almost said “wolves”), they were certainly not trained to be loving, giving, kind, and generous, but it does seem like their behavior is beyond the pale.  LS3 is a beautiful, gifted, creative woman who is currently an entrepreneur, successfully building a business and a life of her own.  She was in the midst of moving to our home state to help our NM transition into assisted living when the last stroke hit.  Now, you’d think that this would be a welcome relief to WWW who had been the primary caregiver for NM when she was living in a retirement community and who was going back to work temporarily because her successful lawyer spouse was apparently not bringing in enough money to support her in the style to which she has become accustomed (Ok, I can hear the bitterness in that statement, too…).  But NOOOOOOOOO – WWW and her FM’s actually made even this out to be an awful thing that LS3 was doing – how dare she come in and act like she was in charge?  How dare she write emails and help NM SKYPE to keep in contact with her children and make it look like SHE was the one taking care of NM when everyone knew it was really WWW who had given up her life (back of hand to forehead, please) to help her NM??  How dare she, indeed??? LS3 took a lot of flak and just kept on going – our little Energizer Bunny!!!  She saw what NM needed and was prepared to do what it took even if she was maligned in the process-and maligned she was.  MW chimed in with concern that LS3’s move would affect her job, etc. – a rather obvious move to support WWW without appearing to…  Oh, my – and then the deathbed, where blocking LS3 seemed to be the main game.  At one point, it looked like NM was going to live much longer than anticipated – there had been many predictions of “tonight,” “not much longer,” etc., and LS3 and I realized the NM probably needed a bath.  When I said this to MW, who is a nurse, she offered to go get someone to do this.  I didn’t understand why we needed someone else to bathe our NM when there were so many of us there, so MW asked for some supplies so that we could bathe her ourselves.  Well, you would have thought that we were going to show porno movies in the assisted living room.  WWW and her FM’s, who loved NM so much, ran from the room, acting completely disgusted and horrified – had I known this sooner, we could have bathed her every hour!!  LS3 and I bathed her, rubbed lotion into her poor, dry skin, rinsed her mouth, washed her hair and massaged her head.  She seemed to enjoy it (at this point she had no power of speech) and we enjoyed time with NM without WW and her FM’s hovering over us. (LS3 has gone NC with me - she is apparently upset that I'm in regular contact with LS1, with whom she had a disagreement.  It makes me sad, but I'm no longer letting sadness determine my interactions with the NFOO.)

So there you have it- my loving sibs and their families are a joy to me – and I haven’t yet shared with you the love and joy that I feel for my chosen family!!!  That will have to wait for another day – I’ve used up my writing time today and have to get back to my regular life, which is getting progressively more free and less anxiety-ridden as I live without contact with my woefully narcissist siblings.

Update 6/16/2014 - as you can see from the updates, there isn't quite as much joy as I had then thought - at least, not from this source!  I am no longer in contact with either LS2 or LS3 - I'm not officially NC, but I'm not taking the initiative to contact them.