Time off

I'm going to take a week off - I need to just live this new life, not just analyze what happened! I don't want to obsess about this - I want to relish this new freedom, bask in the no-stressness of it all, and enjoy my time being able to look at myself and really see me! I'll see you in a week!

The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment

My LS1 recommended this book to me a while ago and I've finally gotten around to reading it - it's powerful! The authors recommend that you put up a picture of yourself as a young child - between 5 and 8 - in order to realize that you were, indeed, just a child and could not have fixed your FOO. When my Nmother died, there was much power-struggling about family pictures - the WWW "owns" anything "family", so things got ugly pretty quickly. I don't have many pictures of me as a child, and when I had the opportunity to have some, I wasn't interested. Looking at pictures of me as a child makes me so sad. From the age of about two on, I look desperately, miserably sad. Knowing what I know now, I understand why. My Nmother liked babies, but when children developed into beings who recognized themselves as separate people, she lost interest and moved on to the next baby. Once the WWW was born (and she is a year and nine months younger than I), there was no need to be bothered with any of the previous children. When we lived in the States, we had a baby picture of me on the "wall of shame" in our hallway, but the picture was taken when I was a year and a half, so I looked happy. After that, everything changed... I look way too much like my Nfather to have been chosen as the golden child - not that I think that position is great, although it sure looked that way when I was growing up! It was tough being the girl born before the princess, the sister who looked like Nmother, the heir to the Nthrone.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough?

Just finished "Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing The Daughters Of Narcissistic Mothers" by Karyl McBride, Ph.D. The author was raised by a narcissistic mother, so she knows what she's talking about. LS1 and I have spent a lot of time discussing our mother's narcissism - the myth in our Nfamily is that Mom was a victim, an abused woman who needed to be rescued. The truth is that she was a co-abuser with our Nfather, did a lot of gas lighting, and set her children against each other in true narcissistic style. She was unable to love her children and was a vain, selfish woman whose children were supposed to take care of her from a young age. The legacy of these two narcissists is a family that is deeply divided, with no hope for any reconciliation. Some legacy.

The Trick

So the trick to making NC easy is to move out of the country! Yes, after moving 1000 miles away 22 years ago to escape the madness, we have been living abroad for the past year. This move wasn't sparked directly by the craziness, but I'm sure glad we're here while going NC. I know that the three weird sisters can attempt to get to me through other sibs, but I've made it very clear that if I have to extend NC to more sibs, I'll do that to protect myself from attack. If you're reading this, you've been invited to do so. Both of my blogs are now private - I'm leaving no avenues for WWW and her flying monkeys to have access to any information about me. I'm grateful that I have family and friends with whom I can share my life safely- life just keeps getting better and better!

(Update - 6/16/2014 - I plan to open this blog later this month - I'm skimming it to update some "errors" I made in evaluating my NFOO. These will show up as "updates" to the original blog.)

Calm

The anxiety I've lived with for so long is gone - I'm not biting my nails, my heart isn't racing, I'm not waking up in flight or flight, I feel centered and - dare I say it? - happy. When I say "so long", I mean 60 years, not the past few years, which have probably been the most stressful time of my life. I've struggled with anxiety, though, for my whole life - the result of living with 2 narcissistic parents, a golden child (WWW), a couple of flying monkeys, some winkies,and (thankfully) some wonderful, loving, real siblings with whom I can be myself in all my messiness. This non-anxiousness is so calm that it's almost disturbing. Hurrah!

Remarkable peace

I know that this lovely hiatus probably can't last, but I'm loving it! I feel calmer than I've felt in years, I can think more clearly than I have for years, and I can calmly and systematically attack problems. It's like a whole new life just because I've stopped allowing WWW and her FM's to mess with me. I know that eventually they're going to realize that they need to victimize someone and they'll try to reestablish contact, but a few more months of this and it's going to be really hard to even consider going back to how things used to be. These things sound petty, but I have nails, continue to lose weight, don't take my anxiety medicine, and am growing my hair out after having the same hairstyle for the past 8 years. Life is good! Ah, peace...

Dysfunctional Squared

Going NC with WWW and her Flying Monkeys has been one of the most freeing experiences of my life. I've suffered from anxiety most of my life and I'm beginning to see that growing up in such a highly dysfunctional family has affected me much more than I had thought. I wish there were a way to "square" words - my FOO is "dysfunctional squared". "Highly dysfunctional" almost sounds like a positive thing... Anyway, I see the light at the end of a very long tunnel. I think that someday I may be able to live without anxiety, feel better about who I am and maybe even believe that I am a capable, caring and valuable human being - hurrah!

Happy Easter! My Nmother died on Christmas Day and the WWW and her Flying Monkeys made the entire experience about them and their ugliness - now that I'm NC with them, I can take a deep breath and enjoy this wonderful holiday. Hurrah! My misguided notions of how a Christian should behave kept me in that nonsense waaaaaay too long and I'm so thankful to other Christian bloggers for opening my eyes to the truth, which has set me free! The Lord is risen!