I read all of your replies and every single one of them had a common thread as to how my family operated.
My mother was born in 1922 to immigrant parents who came from Ruthenia (now the present day Ukraine)... it's sort of between the Transylvanian and Carpathian mountains. I fact I found really neat but was abhorrent to my mother, who Anglicized her last name when she went to business school in Boston. She had an older sister who was born in 1919. Nana and Gram-pa settled in a very WASP community in Massachusetts, not a good choice. My mother ALWAYS wanted to be white-bread... and wanted nothing to do with her ethnic background. She was ashamed of who she was and wanted no association with it all.
My aunt was the darling of the family, outgoing, talented (concert pianist), tons of boyfriends, and very smart. From what my mother told me, she was an afterthought and not wanted. My grandmother told her that when she was pregnant with her she tried to abort her with hot mustard baths. My grandmother would beat my mother when she was a child for no reason or the tiniest infraction. I have a feeling something very bad happened between my grandmother and my grandfather. Never found out what though. In 1940, when my mother was a senior in HS my aunt contracted tuberculosis. She died later on that year a the age of 21. Pretty tragic.
I can imagine that there were many words as to, "how come it wasn't you" to my mother. Plus the grieving process afterwards took on an Eastern European flavor, like going to the cemetery and wailing over the gravesite. I can't imagine how the locals perceived that behavior.
Now, all of the information that I know was told to me by my mother. In some cases I can see definite spin doctoring, now knowing how she would lie to gardner sympathy from anyone who would listen. Some information has some truth to it.
My grandmother was pretty good me growing up but she always had a "edge". In the end she had to be institutionalized in a straight jacket. Totally went off her rocker. She was in a nursing home for 12 years, dying at the age of 96. I think in that 12 years, my mother only visited her 12 times. My Dad would go and so would I. When she died she never put anything in the paper, and my husband and I had to make all the arrangements. It was if my grandmother never existed.
Even weirder was that when my mother had my sister in 1946... (yes, after my dad came back from Europe and WWII) she named her after her dead sister. (pressure I think from my grandparents) I was born 8 years later. Everyone always looked at my sister as some kind of reincarnation of my dead aunt. Me, I was paralleled with my mother plus coupled with the fact that we looked identical. People on the street would know who I was, even if they didn't know me, but knew my mother. Creepy! A connection that I would rather not had, especially when I look in the mirror.
My sister is a N.... always was. She was not allowed to be in the same room with me alone when I was in a crib. Not hard to figure out that she was green with envy and jealous of me showing up after she had the limelight for seven-eight years. She was just like that little girl in the movie "The Bad Seed".
She would torture me, lock me in cupboards, burn me, blackmail me, etc. Except one day when she was supposed to be watching me (I was 4 or 5) ... she dragged me downstairs and tied me to lolly column in the basement. She knotted a rope and started hitting me in the head with it. My Dad came home unexpectedly and caught her. I think he would have killed my sister if my mother hadn't walked in the door. To this day I don't know what happened with my parents and that situation.
What I do know is that my father hated her from that point on.
I slept with one eye open after that until my sister left in 1971... and I haven't seen her since.
Looking back, I can remember my mother developing into an N - probably from around the time I was in grade school. There are specific memories of her being controlling, manipulative, along with using her famous "rejection" tool. She really liked that one, and used it on me frequently.
So, you can see there is what I would consider insanity in my family. Crazy grandmother, Nmother, Nsister, etc. I might look like my mother but don't have the same gene pool personality wise. Fortunately I take after my father and his family.
You can see why I asked the question about how an N develops into what they are. Comparing my story to others out there really helps me understand how things got so out of hand.
As far as living in an old house...well, let's just say it's a brandnew experience everytime you do something to it. You'll never know what you'll find underneath when you scratch the surface!
