Family History

Got in touch with a cousin yesterday - a cousin who lived in the same small town I did, but she may as well have been living on the moon. My Nmother's family was so very weird that, although I lived in a town of about 300 people, I had no idea until I was in high school that I was related to half the town! I went to a dentist that my mother called "Uncle Doc" , but I thought it must be some type of term of endearment because I honestly didn't know that he was my mother's uncle, my grandmother's brother-in-law, and that his wife was my grandmother's sister. I don't even know if they had kids... I have no idea what my grandmother's brother looked like, although he, too, lived in our town. When a guy in high school asked me out, I was surprised to learn that he was my second cousin. I think this is beyond strange - and thinking, as I've been conditioned to think my whole life, that maybe I was just a frightfully unaware child, I was pleased to know that at least two of my siblings had the same experience.

Was grandma the scapegoat of her family or the golden child? She was institutionalized a couple of times and of course no one knows exactly why - depression? Anxiety? Was she bi-polar? Her parents came from Germany on their honeymoon and settled here in the late 1800's and then most of her family was caught behind the Iron Curtain. I remember grandma sending care packages to East Germany to help family members. WWW, her flying monkeys, and both winkies deify my Nmother's parents - I'm not sure why, except these grandparents seem to have validated the choice of the golden child and her protectors and minions early on. These grandparents were also wealthy, a situation that is held in high esteem in my Nfamily. This is certainly a generational curse.

No Forgiveness without Repentence! No Healing without Feeling!

I've been feeling a bit stuck lately - I've made a lot of intellectual progress in understanding malignant narcissism (Nfather) and plain vanilla narcissism (Nmother), but I don't feel like I'm making a lot of progress emotionally. I feel like I'm still emotionally flat. Soooooo I went to a seminar entitled "Emotional Enlightment". Now, most of you know me well and know that I normally avoid this type of event like the plague. And I probably should have this time as well but I thought it might help to unstick me emotionally. I did learn some things, but on the whole it was not helpful. The day started with a narcissist sitting beside me and telling me that she reads quantum physics and that she would like to be become enlightened enough to re-arrange the atoms in her body so that she can walk though walls - and she had thought this was possible when she first learned about atoms in the 8th grade! Also, she wasn't at the seminar for help - she just wanted to expand her community since there are so few people who want to discuss quantum physics and spiritual issues. I moved. Another narcissist attempted to dominate the conversation with all of her various concerns and all of her former attempts at self-help. I avoided eye contact. The basic premise of the day appeared to be to convince us that we had to re-think our memories and realize that the people who had harmed us were themselves harmed as children and that their abuse had nothing to do with us. We were then encouraged to think about past generations of our abusers and to visualize them as healed while tapping parts of our bodies and visualizing the past generations as tapping their bodies - it felt a bit like the Mormon baptism of the dead.. We were told that we had just healed these past generations and that we could also visualize present and future generations and heal them as well. I took issue with the concept of memories being merely opinions or perceptions and also the idea that false memories can also be healed since they are also opinions or perceptions. This equation of reality with perception seems to be prevalent in our culture and I was in a group that appeared to accept this concept readily. I understand that our perceptions of the same event may be significantly different, but to say that no reality exists and that whatever makes its way into our head is the equivalent of reality just doesn't square with my beliefs. It feels a bit narcissistic, doesn't it? I also didn't agree with the premise that Nmother's and Nfather's abuse was the fault of their parents. Yes, I realize that there were HUGE issues in both families and that neither of them received the nurturing they needed, but I don't see that as giving them a pass to abuse their own kids. Lots of people raised by narcissists and other abusers made choices about raising their own kids that didn't include emotional and physical abuse, so they, too, could have made those choices. It's sort of like the idea of forgiving narcissists who have made our lives hell when they haven't even remotely asked for forgiveness nor acknowledged any blame for what they did! Silliness... And lastly, I don't agree that I have to forgive my abusers in order to get better myself. I felt like this was a shortcut offered to avoid the messiness of remembering what I went through and working through the pain in order to get to the point where I am finished with narcissism forever. I need to feel the anger that I should have been allowed to feel as a child - I don't need one more system telling me that what I'm feeling is wrong or that my anger is standing in the way of my getting emotionally better. My intuition, to which I am now listening, is telling me that I have to cry, yell, scream, laugh, sing and dance my way into healing - so that's what I'm going to do!

Memories and New Oddness

I'm in the midst of looking for an EMDR therapist because I don't have a lot of memories of my childhood and the ones I have are awful. I remember winning a science competition in 7th or 8th grade. For some reason, my Nmother was there. Sometime during the day, I had backed into a hot radiator and burned the back of my leg just above my heel -- it hurt like hell, but I didn't tell anyone, especially not my mother - I really was trained not to inconvenience anyone! I do remember feeling sick to my stomach from the pain and trying hard not to let anyone know what had happened. When the awards were given, Nmother put her arm around my shoulders and it felt creepy and wrong - I didn't remember her EVER doing that before and it felt weird, so I moved away from her and got the silent treatment for the rest of the event. I remember my oldest sister, a Winkie, babysitting for the rest of us one night. I can't remember what I did, but I was punished by being yelled at, hit, and sent to bed early. Winkie came in, sat on the bed, and explained that everything she did she did because I was so bad - I accepted this, of course, because it was a recurring message in my childhood - if only I hadn't been so bad, others wouldn't have to scream at me and hit me. In fact, I was an amazingly compliant and obedient child for the most part, with some notable exceptions... I remember climbing the church steeple when the doors were left open during a renovation- it was me and a childhood friend, daring each other to climb higher and higher, up a ladder, over a beam, up another ladder, over another beam until we reached the top - we were so proud of ourselves! Then we saw the nuns heading to the church and we realized that they might be coming to lock the doors- if we didn't want to get locked in, we'd have to get down fast. This is, I think, the very scariest thing I've done in my life - I was terrified! Crawling across those beams quickly was horrific. Kathy kept saying, "You can do it, keep going, you can do it" until we reached the door and crept out into the choir loft just before the nuns arrived at the door downstairs. Although I don't think we convinced them that we were praying, we were lucky to have nuns who understood that parents didn't need to know everything that children did. When I was young, we lived near a river. Although it was a shallow river, we were forbidden to cross over the ice as a shortcut to school in the winter. It was very tempting, though, because our school was just across the river. The long way around took a lot more time - we had to go into town, cross the bridge, and then walk another couple of blocks to reach the school. So one morning when we were running late, we decided to risk it. My older sister went first, then my next oldest sister, then me. I, of course, was the one who fell in. My oldest sister said I should go home and change my clothes, but there was absolutely NO WAY I was going to go back and tell Nmother that I had disobeyed her and crossed the ice. I'd face a lecture from the nuns first. So off I went. Sister Chiara, my wonderful 1st grade teacher, told me that she would call my mother to bring in dry clothes. I remember crying and telling her that my Nmother would spank me - and mostly I remember her eyes getting big while she assured me that she was sure my mother wouldn't be upset. I convinced her, though, and she took me downstairs to the nun who kept house for the convent and she dried my clothes on radiators and gave me hot chocolate and cookies while they dried - and she TALKED to me! It's a bit surprising that I didn't fall in the river every morning... When my Nmother died, my eldest sister wanted each of us to come up with a story about her that we could share - I was amazed and saddened that I couldn't think of a single positive story about Nmother. At the memorial service, I discovered that most of the stories that were shared were about the desserts that Nmother made - apparently, none of us had a lot of positive experiences to share... So sad... Last year, my eldest sister (Winkie 1) asked if she could come to visit, since I currently live Iin a Spanish speaking foreign country and she wanted to take some language classes. After I said yes, she asked if WWW could come with her. Having not yet set firm boundaries, I said yes and then set up a schedule so that WWW and I were never at my home alone. It worked. One morning not long after they arrived, WWW looked and me and asked me if my hair was naturally curly or if I'd had a permanent. I'm 61 years and have struggled with this crazy curly hair since I was born. When I was about 35, I gave up and let it have its own way. I've worn it short and natural for most of the time since (except for the couple of years when I insanely grew it for Locks of Love). WWW is 1 1/2 years younger than I and she didn't know that my hair is naturally curly - go figure!

Leaving the Toxic People Behind isn't Enough - alas...

So I really thought that going No Contact with the WWW and her Flying Monkeys would be the best thing since sliced bread -and it has been wonderful, mind you. I'm remarkably less anxious, my brain seems to have been re-activated, I'm getting more organized physically and psychologically, and I'm happier than I've been in a long time. That said, I'm still wondering if there's enough time left for me to grow up emotionally - I feel like I'm so far behind! I feel like I'm in a sort of limbo, waiting for whatever is going to happen next - do I just bull ahead and, as my probably OCD grandmother said, "get to work and..." decide what I'm going to do next or do I wait and see who I really am before taking the next step? I'm tending toward the latter, but of course the Nmother voice in my head is telling me that I'm lazy and that I should be serving someone- I'd really like that voice out of my head permanently and maybe the best way to do that is to focus on ignoring it whenever I hear it...I've spent so little time on my needs and desires that I think I can justify taking some time for myself and trying to figure out who I really am and what I want to do now that I'm free of the toxicity of my FOO. There you have it!

New Goals

Having been raised to provide narcissistic supply to an Nfather, an nmother, and a golden child and her flying monkeys, I really didn't understand that my life was mine alone and that I should decide how to live it. Isn't that just strange? So I sort of fell into a helping profession and I think I was good at what I did, but I'm beginning to wonder if I missed my calling, if I was supposed to do something that called to me from my real self, from the essence of the person I was created to be. This is a troubling thought, but I'm hoping that I can still discern what that calling was/is and that I can figure out how to express the real me to the world through it. This is my Fifth Task.