Not "fine"

Ah....  I can officially walk without thinking about my foot, the sinus infection that I'd thought at various times was an ear infection or a cracked tooth turned out to be just a severe sinus infection which is now on the wane due to lots of crazy medicine, and I have so much more energy due to both of these issues getting resolved.   Having been raised by N's and then being married to a p/a who has chronic and severe health issues has made me waaaaaaaaay too likely to ignore my own physical and emotional needs. I'm better, it turns out, at dealing with emotional issues now and have to work at the physical side of this.  Honestly.  I have to get over being "fine" if I'm really not. 

Therein lies the rub

So God and I need to have a long talk.   The NFOO into which I was born is riddled with personality disorders and mental illness.  I married a man with p/a personality disorder – compared to my NFOO, he looked normal…  Well, he didn’t rage, anyway…  Little did I know...  Having come to terms with all of this nonsense, I find myself facing the abyss.  Who am I, really?  What are my dreams, my wishes, my desires?  I’m dealing with adolescent questions about my identity in the Third Age.  How do I do this?  I’m trying to slow down, to deal with the anxiety instead of blocking it, to take deep breaths and listen to the world around me.  The anxiety is mostly gone – but I’ve had 2 panic attacks in the last few days and I think now it’s more about the future than the past –progress, but still scary.  I want my life to be meaningful – but I now have to define that differently than I did before.  I want to experience joy, love, excitement, pleasure – but I also want to care and be cared for, to love and be loved back, to give and be given to – the second part of those phrases has been missing to a large degree and

I feel like I’m missing some piece that makes these things possible.  An essential piece, a piece that makes real relationships possible…  I refuse to believe that I was born without that piece, but I do believe that it was taken from me early on in my life and I know that I have to somehow find it if I’m to find peace.   How do I do this?  How do I stop presenting a self to the world that is giving, caring, and loving without expecting anything in return?  I’ve stopped automatically jumping into caregiver status.  I now think through whether or not I have the time and energy to do something for others, and if I don’t, I hold back.  And surprisingly, I don’t feel selfish when I decide that I can’t give something.  (This, I think, is marvelous progress!!!) 

But I still feel unworthy, somehow, of having people help me.   It’s not like I haven’t needed help, but I’m terrified of asking for it – and I find that most people don’t have the crazy radar that I have that alerts them to people’s needs.  And a lot of the time, I guess because of the unworthiness factor, I don’t even KNOW I need help until after the time has passed and I’ve struggled through on my own.  Goodness, I was well trained to live in the NFOO – but not to live in the real world with real people.   

I’m open to any and all ideas, y’all!

Narcissism +

Sometimes it's not "just" a personality disorder - sometimes it's a personality disorder AND something else that makes life just that much crazier.  My spouse is passive-aggressive and I've struggled with that for a long time - add dementia and Pow! life is now much, much harder.  The narcissism in my NFOO is ridiculously complex because of the number of sibs I have - but I suspect that there is an underlying mental illness that exacerbates it and takes it to a level of craziness that makes one's head spin around.

The NFOO has taken it upon itself to deny even the mention of mental illness - even though my grandmother had electric shock treatments back when it wasn't the new, improved electric shock and my great-grandfather committed suicide.  There is OCD everywhere in the family, and I suspect that at least two sibs are dealing with undiagnosed bipolar disorder - it's sooooooo important to the NFOO to keep this undercover - there's a lot of nonsense in the NFOO about "good genes" - we don't have those kinds of illness - or any kind, for that matter!  Even though a number of sibs have autoimmune diseases, one sib has had cancer, a couple of us have PCOS, a family member has Type 1 Diabetes, another has a debilitating anxiety disorder, etc.  Nope, still good genes - and absolutely NO mental illness!!! Like we still live in an era where mental illness is viewed as possession or at least punishment for sin.  Really.

This explains so much that "just" narcissism doesn't -  the "poor WW" that's always baffled me, the unwillingness of NFOO members to look at the complete fabrications that issue from the mouth of the WWW, the hysteria that drives the NFOO.  Narcissism explains the roles in the NFOO - the Protector has her work cut out for her, dealing as she does with all the manic and depressive episodes of at least 2 of the sibs. The scapegoats were beaten into the ground and their characters completely annihilated during bipolar mania.  And the peacemaker - he has his work cut out for him!    And then there are the just plain N's - who are pieces of work unto themselves.

The confluence of narcissism and bipolar disorder creates a perfect storm - roles are locked in because of the narcissism, there are golden children who must be protected at all costs, even from themselves and knowledge of their mental illness, the no-talk rule is strictly enforced, the level of anxiety goes through the roof, and the scapegoats are shamed and degraded for wanting out of their roles.  But I am out - and there is unimaginable peace and calm because I'm finally free of the "family."  I sincerely hope that this is the last piece!

Failure to Properly Greet

"Failure to properly greet" the WWW and her Flying Monkeys was the crux of the issue when Danielle, my LD and I went to be with my mother while she was dying.  After driving 7 hours, staying overnight on a friend's apartment floor, flying halfway across the country, and then driving an additional 5 hours, we apparently did not greet family members with sufficient enthusiasm and thus the attacks began. This is so unbelievably common in my NFOO - stressful situation, let scapegoats make one "mistake" and then take them down.  Never, ever, ever, ever going to any sort of "family event" ever again - ever, ever, ever. Danielle and I are not going to Richard's wedding - we're meeting him and his new wife in a country close to where I live.  It'll be a one-day let's get together and celebrate your wedding kind of thing -  and so it goes in the NFOO!

Fantasy

I raised myself in the company of two of the nuttiest people ever to live.  Needless so say, my maturation was delayed (although I appeared older than my years from a young age) by lack of parental guidance - and worse, by strange and often perverse pseudo-parental messages.  Consumed by their obsession with each other,  finding fault with every other person on the planet, and believing that their progeny were there only to bring them glory, they were hardly the stuff of any child's fantasy- but they inspired me to fantasize about other parents, my "real" parents, who might just come and find me one day.  (I've mentioned in a previous post that the WWW often told me that I had been adopted - difficult to believe since I looked so much like Nfather, but a child can hope...)

So I fantasized the perfect parents - and it turns out that they were a hard act to follow.   It's pretty clear that I was a significantly better parent than my parents - but the bar was remarkably low.  A chimpanzee is likely to be better at parenting than the Nparents were.  But the fantasy parents - they were good!  They held me on their laps, they tucked me in at night with stories and songs, they comforted me when I was sick instead of locking me in a room, they listened to how my day was, they made my favorite foods, they asked about who I was dating, they didn't call the police when I was out late, they told me I was pretty, they got to know my spouse, they liked my kids - you get the idea.  They were more real than my real parents were!  And I imagine that if they messed up, they apologized.  Goodness - they were never mean-spirited, they never had a bad day, they never raised their voice or became impatient.  See???   A hard act to follow.

But it gets worse - I saw a train wreck of a marriage, so I fantasized the perfect marriage.  I never saw decent grandparenting, so I fantasized that, too - the whole array of human relationships was created in my head and I had to live up to some really remarkable expectations! I wonder if all N's did this to survive living in so much dysfunction.  I remember driving in the car as a child and looking into windows and wondering if those people were happy and how "happy" looked.  I didn't go to other children's homes very often - we weren't allowed to bring people home, so I could never ask anyone back.  (And really, it was too scary, too - the Nparents were a bit volatile and Nmother couldn't tolerate having her house messed up by children - or anyone else, for that matter.)  The more I write about this, the more I wonder how I survived these people at all!

Fantasy helped me survive - but it also kept me in the mess longer than was good for me - I fantasized that it was possible to have real relationships with my Nparents, with my Nsibs, even with some of my sibs who aren't N's, but struggle also, I think, with fantasy.  Let's  all pretend that.....  we're close.....  we're a normal family.....  any of us got out unscathed....
it wasn't so bad...   only some of us were "hurt" by the family...   being horrible to each other is normal...  bullying doesn't exist in our family...  Nfather was the only problem....  Nmother was a saint.... Nmother was a victim of the abusive Nfather...  This could go on forever - family mythology is strong and when you give it up, you're an outcast.   This is one thing I think I'm at the end of, finally -  there is nothing to go back to.  I have one sister,  a couple of friends with whom I need pretty strong boundaries, and a lot of scarey aquaintences.

Invisibility

Invisibility is one of my superpowers.  My friends called me out on it in college - I could be at a party and no one would remember seeing me there.  Good thing I never needed an alibi...  They asked me how I did that - and I wasn't sure then, but I know now.  Part of the answer is that I'm an introvert - a loud introvert, but still an introvert.  Parties with lots of people I don't know are anathema to me, and I tend to get lost in my head a good bit.  But a bigger part is that I'd learned early that standing out, being visible to Nparents was NOT in my best interests.  If I wanted any sort of life at all, any space to think and dream, I had to stay under their radar.  I watched and waited for the chance to escape their constant needs - I hid in the attic, in an old barn near our house, in trees, in fields, in neighbor's houses, by the river, wherever I could.  I hid in books, in schoolwork, in school activities.  And finally, I could escape in plain site.  They just did not see me.  It's a truly amazing superpower, but one I need to get rid of...  The invisibility cloak is no longer working in my favor.

This skill is more easily used with N's - they tend not to see anyone else unless they need Nsupply.  And with so many sibs, Nsupply was always close at hand - one child gone missing wasn't terribly noticeable.  After the Nparents separated in their 80's, Danielle and I were the only two people who talked to Nfather - he'd burned many a bridge...  At one point, I convinced my brothers that they should visit Nfather.  I went with them and the visit ranks as one of the most uncomfortable hours of my life - Nfather spent the entire hour recounting all the wrongs done to him in his life.  Honestly, he barely breathed between accusations.  I'd promised my brothers that we'd leave in an hour, so we got up and said our goodbyes at that point.  The next day, Nfather called me and told me that my brothers had visited him and that they hadn't spoken to him at all in the time they'd been there.  I told him that he hadn't shut up the whole time they'd been there and he asked me how I could possibly know that.  I reminded him that I'd been there as well and he said that that wasn't true, that I hadn't been there and why was I lying about that?  Honestly.  (I'd had him checked for dementia shortly before this, so it can't be blamed on that...) 

There were lots of other incidents in which I attempted to call him to accountability (see previous post) and he'd claim that I couldn't know something because I hadn't been there - and I had been there.   I once had an argument with Nmother in which she said, as a justification for not behaving in an equitable way, "I just didn't even think of you, (Pearl)." 

And such is the life of the Lost Child.  I learned not to ask for anything, not to demand acknowledgement even of my presence.  I've been working on this for a while- staying completely present, engaging in a wholehearted (and whole brained) way.  But old habits are hard to break - and I think this may be one reason that no one (except one dear friend and her granddaughter who do not go to my previous church) came to visit when I was home-bound.  I tend to do things behind the scenes (as introverts do), I've always helped out in small ways - cleaning up after dinners, coffee time, etc., serving on committees and doing work that others don't usually acknowledge - designing signs, business cards, flyers, designing and printing event  tickets, handing out maps, writing up the minutes, selecting tables and chairs, collecting money for events, making huge batches of food for events., etc.  Not exactly things that get one noticed, but things that needed doing.  But I think it's made me invisible there.  The Help.  Aack.

N = Lack of Accountability

CS got me thinking about N's lack of accountability.  I think that when defining the traits of narcissism, the very first trait listed must be lack of accountability, not taking responsibility for behavior.  I attempted for years of my life to call my Nfather to accountability - I begged, pleaded, yelled, cried, cajoled, demanded, all to no avail.  He couldn't admit anything he had ever done - his classic line was, "I never called you a son of a bitch, you son of a bitch."  Really. I remember that, as a young child, I conspired with a sibling to figure out a way to put Nfather's tape-to-tape recorder into the warming oven to capture the things he said during dinner, things that he would later deny having said.  Because we couldn't figure out how to plug it in without the cords being visible, the plan failed miserably - and just because there was evidence, it doesn't mean that he wouldn't have denied it, anyway. 

And this was a man who "hated a liar."  Yet if his lips were moving, he was lying.  The accusation of lying is the NFOO's  greatest character assassination.  Anything that is said contrary to the NFOO belief system is a "lie."  And that's that - hard to refute, because if you've just told a "lie", you are a "liar" and you can't be trusted.  It handily reinforces the "No Talk" rule - you may speak out, but since you're a liar, no one has to listen.  And the wheel turns...

Both of my Nparents are deceased - the death of my mother and the Nnonsense at her deathbed released me from the power of the NFOO.   I have Nsibs, but I've gone NC with 3 sibs and LC with 4 others.  I no longer have any desire to hold anyone accountable for anything except to honor the boundaries that I've at long last erected to protect myself from Nnonsense.  Calling me a liar or explaining to me that my "perception" of events is invalid no longer has the power to hurt or confuse me.  People raised by Nparents hold strongly to role-related interpretations of the NFOO - I get that now and if they want to hold tightly to that, it's their prerogative, just as it's mine to abdicate my role and live a full, rich life, free of my dreadful role.

When I write about progress, it sounds easy - it's not.  Every step has been filled with hurt, anger, sometimes despair, tears, grief, longing, and finally something that looks like peace.  And then it's on to the next piece...  I'm getting better at not giving in to despair, at realizing that there will be an end point, at knowing that I'm getting stronger and more resilient, at accepting who I really am separate from my NFOO-given role.  It's quite a process and I'm glad that I'm finally, finally, getting comfortable in my own skin, feeling like I belong in the world.