I have a greater event to confess... And this one I feel very ashamed about. I hope that what I did, especially, did not affect my father.
My sister got married 5 years ago. I went to her wedding. It was a full-on nightmare and I was the anooying person who was basically excluded from everything although I HAD to be there to keep up appearances. I am not proud of my whole behavior during the period. My sister and her husband had been dating for years. He made no move to propose. She found out he had cheated. Then he proposed, but mostly because my NM started pushing the issue. I know it wasn't my spouse, but I really hoped my sister would not marry him. Parents and sister planned a huge wedding and bought me a dress I did not want to wear. NM enjoyed fighting with as many people as possible over any detail. I started drinking again and gained weight so that I could not even wear the dress. My sister hardly talked to me at the time, but asked me to be the matron-of-honor. Finally, I backed out of that and said I would go to the wedding, but not play a role. My sister asked me to read a passage, which, of course, was picked out by them.
So I went. I helped my sister with her preparations and gave her gifts I had bought for the bridesmaids in Italy. And I drank the whole two days of the pre-wedding and wedding. My aunt was there and we were close up through my teen years. We drank together and I told her how ignored I was and how nasty my NM was. I also told her that NM biched about everyone, including her. She was surprised, buit believed me and sees it now. I feel bad, because I should not have tried to make someone else see what they did not need to see. I am also afraid that she thinks less of my dad (her brother) because of my disclosures. We talked all night and she told me thongs about her life and I gave her an earful of all the things I went through. This was before I knew about Narcissism, so it was from a confused, unclear, angry place.
But this weekend when I saw them, I could tell there were leftovers from that talk. My aunt called us to meet up as soon as she got there, but did not call mom and dad. Granted, she did say they hardly ever talk to her. My dad is always happy to see people, but he does have some role in where they stand, because he buys into NM's nasty portrayals of people. I feel bad for him on one hand because he wants to love his family, but his low self-esteem and association with the nasty, ugly putting down of them makes him at odds with them.
I don't know, I just feel now that this is my deal and that I should not try to make others see it. I tried once with my sister, but I do believe that one shouldn't try to triangulate people, no matter what the hurt. It is as wrong as what they did to me.
Thanks if you made it through this long post.
Love, Beth