Schadenfreude Harm-Joy

Just when I think I've read everything I can read about Narcissism and that I've finally grasped it, I come upon another blog or book or article  that makes me aware of yet another aspect of it - or at least, that makes me aware of how that piece fits into my life with N's.  From the time I went away to college, Nmother would send me clippings from the local newspaper giving me information about tragedies - deaths, fires, traffic accidents, etc.  It was somewhat discombobulating to open a letter (which had been copied and sent to all sibs living away from home) and see news of the latest catastrophe, which had often happened to people I didn't even know.  I'd explain in a return letter that I didn't know that person and in the next letter, she'd add a handwritten footnote about who they were. This  always confused me.  At first, I thought it was an attempt to keep me in touch with my hometown - but who'd want to go back to so much disaster??  And Nmother had no friends that I know of - she would write to people from her past sometimes, but I never met those people.  So why were these stories so important to her?  I think it was Schadenfreude- somehow, her life looked better if there was a lot of suffering around her. 
She was an inveterate gossip, but she only had her children to gossip with - we heard every bad thing about anyone who'd ever been in her life - or ours. The only person about whom she didn't have anything bad to say was her father - she thought he'd hung the moon, as Southerners say.  I remember telling her once about a college friend who'd joined the convent in high school to get away from sexual abuse - and she looked at me and asked,  with her lips pursed, "And do you believe her?"  It kind of freaked me out.  She was such a strange woman...

Patterns post from Gale Warnings

OK, so broke a bone in my foot 2 1/2 weeks ago and it's given me a chance to do some reading online.  I've been re-reading a good bit of Kathy Krajco's blog "What Makes Narcissists Tick" - the woman was brilliant!  So I came across a link that she gave in one of her posts from a blog entitled "Gale Warning" - it's about behavior patterns and what we need to be looking for - and why we often didn't see it for a long time - great article and now I'm looking forward to reading more of that blog...  It's listed on the sidebar - the article on patterns is from February 17, 2007.  The last post on the blog was June 15, 2011- I hope that means that she's moved on and is living an N-free and wonderful life!!! 

Temptation

There is a terrible longing to have this over with, to "get on with it", to push it down again, to bury the pain once more, to go into my head and not feel the ache anymore.  It's like most grief - it sneaks up on me when I least suspect it and washes over me like a wave, leaving a vague sadness in its wake.  The wave doesn't knock me over anymore and the sadness feels more like an ache than a stabbing pain, so I know that I'm moving in the right direction, but when will it end?  Fifteen years ago, a dear friend died and I remember the horrible grief that I thought would never end - it did, of course, and when I think of my friend now, it's with smiles tinged with sadness.  I still miss her, the kind of back door friend who chats while making yeast rolls for dinner.  I know that grief wanes and I know that I can't speed up the process - and I also know that if I walk through this with courage, I'll come out on the other side stronger and with a chance at joy. 

The Thing with Feathers

Hope is almost a disease with some ACON's.  For years, I hoped that the NFOO would survive intact, that my sibs might be able to understand me and maybe even love me, that my Nparents would sit up and take notice that they had lots of children and grandchildren who needed parents and grandparents who weren't so obsessed with each other that they couldn't actually see anyone else. I hoped that we could all support each other and care for each other without all the sniping and backbiting and fear that's inherent in most NFOO's.  Years and years of hope - and finally, no more.  The thing with feathers died.

I don't mean to imply that all hope is bad - I hope for full, healthy lives for the people I love and care for (and even for my Nsibs), for a world that cares for those who need help, for so much - but no longer for anything from my NFOO.  Somehow the NFOO myths became my responsibility - I was supposed to resurrect dead relationships, I was supposed to reach out, I was supposed to go to family events where I could be abused, I was supposed to act lovingly when I was rejected, etc.  And Nmyths are powerful - they've sucked the life out of me long enough and I'm done with them.  There IS no hope for the NFOO - at least, none that I have to take responsibility for - I no longer have expectations that I can have healthy relationships with most of my sibs.  Not only is that expectation gone, but the desire is finally gone as well.  Why on earth did I think that anything good could come from attempting relationship with people who so obviously don't want a relationship that's based on anything other than the assigned family roles?  Their roles may be working at some level for them, but mine no longer works for me, so Adios!  I'm out of hope and out of this crazy NFOO.

So who's left?  There's LS1, with whom I have a real relationship- I'm calling her Danielle from now on.  (Not her real name, of course.)  There's MW, with whom I'm trying to have an even-even relationship - we'll see how that goes -I'm calling her Greta from now on.  And there's W2, whom I love dearly, but who's in a relationship with someone I don't think I can trust - boundaries being phenomenally porous in the NFOO, I don't think I can share much of my life with him without it being passed on to the Nsibs through his overly sharing fiance.  Alas. (He's going by Richard from now on.) If you've been reading all along, you'll have noticed that I'm 2 more down - and both of these sibs I'd considered LS's!  Wow. (They're now N1 and N2.)  And there was that silly hope again - they seemed open to a relationship, they'd both been burned by the WWW and her monkeys, but a trauma bond wasn't enough...   This learning curve is just way too long...  Dear Lord, I hope I'm near the end of it!!!!

Shame on you!

Shame is just an amazing phenomenon.  A conversation with LS1 tonight brought up the issue of shame in the NFOO.  When I was in high school, I drove to the town bus stop to pick up LS1, who was coming home from college.  Having stayed up the night before to study for exams, and having foolishly taken NoDoze to stay awake, I drove directly into a telephone pole.  I got home and expected that Nfather would explode with rage, but he didn't - he actually said that mistakes happen.  This was so very out of character for my rage-aholic Nfather that I spent the night waiting for the %#% to hit the fan, but it didn't.  A couple of months later, as I was driving the car out of the garage, the overhead door came down on top of the car.  Both the door and the car suffered minor damage.  Nfather acted as if the world was going to come to an end because of this accident, going into full rage mode.  It made no sense to me and I remember mulling this over for a long time.  If I'd known then what I know now it would have made perfect sense.  The first accident had nothing to do with him - I had been sleep-deprived and drove unsafely.  Thankfully, no one was hurt because of my adolescent stupidity. The second "accident" could, however, have been laid at Nfather's feet.  We'd all told him a number of times that the door hadn't been working correctly and that it needed fixing.  Therefore, he reacted with rage out of shame - shame that he hadn't taken care of something that he should have fixed.  That shame had to be dumped on me, since that's what N's do - deflect, deflect, deflect.  And he deflected stupendously!

For those of us who were trained to be supply, to be servers, this was sooooo confusing.  I was conditioned to believe that I had to fix whatever was wrong in the NFOO, but shame-dumping rages can't be fixed by anyone except the N (and then only with years of intensive counseling by someone who truly understands narcissism).  The rages that appeared to come out of nowhere were no one's fault except the N's - there really is nothing in the world that could possibly justify raging at one's family the way Nfather did - it was absolutely terrifying to young children and adolescents. It's no wonder we all walked on eggshells and were willing to take the blame for so much that had nothing to do with us - it's somehow better to do that than to believe that behavior has no obvious cause, that strong feelings can erupt into erratic behavior at any moment, that the world is a dangerously arbitrary place.

I have no memory of Nmother being involved in either of these situations, although she rarely left the house.  I think I need to write this after every memory that I share because I have to get in my very bones that she never stepped in to help me or most of my other sibs.

Giant Step

Well, I've taken the plunge - this is now a public blog.  Caliban's sister encouraged me, and I think that it's time to be out there.  I read through all the blog posts, adding updates when I thought they were necessary.  This is a huge step for me - growing up in a ridiculously dysfunctional family meant that there was a No Talk rule that was strictly enforced.  (I'm sure most of you can relate.)  There was absolutely no privacy at all in the NFOO - letters were read (out-going and in-coming), diaries were considered public property, rooms were searched.  All communication was monitored  - we were Soviet Russia in microcosm.  What an absurd way to live.  Breaking the No Talk rule was a serious offense and was dealt with harshly - gaslighting, rage, beatings, the whole works.  So this is a giant step forward, getting rid of the fear of speaking out, the fear of punishment at the hands of N's - no longer beatings, but character assassination, gossip, lies, and general craziness.  Whew!  One giant step for Pearl!

Not my Circus, Not my Monkeys

OK, this is too cool - I really need the tee-shirt!!  When my recovery started, I spent a lot of time repeating to myself - "This is none of my damn business."  Over and over and over again. It's good to have a humorous way to say it, instead.

Magical Thinking

The childishness of magical thinking seems to stay with many ACON's well past childhood.  I imagine that it's because we were presented with impossible tasks on a daily basis as children and were told that we could accomplish these things if we just tried hard enough - being perfect, never disturbing adults (no matter the pain we were in), taking care of the adults in our families, meeting all of their needs, fulfilling their dreams, etc.  We believed that if we met all of these impossible demands, we would be lovable and the Nparents would finally love us.  Sigh...  Alas, it was not to be - even if perfection were possible, the Nparents wouldn't have been able to acknowledge the feat - it would have diminished them somehow.  No matter how near to the bar you got, the bar always went higher.  When I was a senior in high school, I took physics from a misogynist who didn't think that females needed to take physics.  The four girls in the class banded together and vowed to get the best grades in the class - I worked my butt off and got an A (as did the other three).  I did not, however, do well in Trig and got a C.  When Nfather saw the report card, he immediately noticed the C - and never did see the A.  That was the point at which he ceased to be my parent and I pretty much ignored anything he said to me.

The magical thinking, however, continued - if I worked harder than anyone else, if I gave more of myself than anyone else, if I were more creative or more intellectual or more organized, then I would be loved.  And the criteria just kept growing until I was always under a lot of stress.  This is the "best damn" thinking that was rampant in my NFOO.   Nfather used to say that anything he owned was the "best damn" whatever it was - he had the best damn grill, the best damn breed of cattle, the best damn house.  He bought the best damn bread, the best damn cheese, the best damn bratwurst.  Anything less would have been unthinkable.  Perfection was the only goal available - and apparently, it was possible in things, but his progeny were always deficient.

And there's a part of magical thinking that allows us to think that if we had only done this or that, life would have been great.  If we could just go back and correct the past - if we had been a better parent, spouse, child, sibling, if we had reached out more or accepted more or confronted N's sooner, our lives would have been somehow different.  And then one day, you finally get that the game was rigged - there was no way you could have won it - there's no way they could have loved you because it was never about you - it was always about them and the fact that they were incapable of love.  And that's made all the difference. 

Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.  - Maya Angelou

A verse for ACONs and others who suffer at the hands of N's.