My N-mother has been telling me that I am cold hearted and selfish for not seeing my brother's two children (my nephews). My mother tells me I'm a pathetic person. I didn't go to my brother's wedding. My name came up during his nasty divorce proceedings despite the fact that I had never met his family or his ex-wife.
My brother is visiting from out of state and he is staying at my Narcissistic mother's house.
I saw him and the children a couple of days ago for the first time, one is 5, one is 8 years old. I hadn't planned on being at my N-mother's house or visiting them. It just randomly happened that I was in the emergency room, and I asked my n-mother to pick me up because I don't have anyone else around who would do that for me. Turned out that the doctor just thinks it was kidney stones.
I wish I had a better personal support system, I wouldn't ask my mother for help if I had someone else to ask.
I ended up at my mother's house. So, I made easter eggs with the kids because according to my Mother the kids didn't get to do this at easter time and they really wanted to. It was pretty simple to do, boil some eggs, dissolve some dye and encourage the kids while they are making them, it's not like it's difficult to do. I hid the eggs around the yard for the kids and watched them find the eggs. My alcoholic brother was just sitting inside on a computer during this, no interest in it at all. I also went to the fair with the kids and my N-Mother, I got on the rides with the kids, my alcoholic brother just sat at home on the computer and didn't come to the fair. I took the kids for a walk down to the beach so they could collect shells. I played baseball with them. I had fun hanging out with the kids. One of my nephews sits for hours upon hours on a little video-game-player every single day and no one limits the time he spends doing this.
My mother and her husband bring home big boxes of beer and my brother is drinking himself into a stupor every single night. He drinks 4-5 beers and then he starts drinking tequila, he is also sneaking outside through the downstairs basement to smoke. The kids don't brush their teeth at night because he is already in a mumbling stupor by their bedtime, I have them come and brush their teeth at the same time I'm brushing mine. After one night that I point out to my n-mother "grandma" that the kids are not brushing their teeth, n-mother tells me to "lay off" and then she gets out a toothbrush and starts brushing her pet poodles teeth???? The kids are eatting junk that my n-mother is feeding them, she says how she wants the vacation to be "idyllic", the kids are eatting icecream, popcycles, hard candies, juice, soda, french fries, pie, cake and it goes on and on from morning to night its a sugarfest. I tell her that the kids are eatting too much junk and then she says in front of one of the boys that "he is chubby", the poor kid then shows me his stomach later after we have gone for a walk and asks me if he is less chubby after the walk, I just pat his back and say "honey it's ok" because I don't know what else to say.
It comes up somehow that the kids are not brushing their teeth and my brother's response to it is "I don't brush my own teeth". It's a response that sends the message he neglects himself so it's ok to neglect the kid's health..........and it's familiar I went through this when I was a child.
The thing is, the toothbrushes are sitting there and the toothpaste is there. The kids are not getting the right kind of routines and supervision.
They are not my kids and I have my own problems to face. I can't fix the situation and that is why I never wanted to meet his family. During the time I was there though, I made them brush their teeth, I clipped their long fingernails because my brother is too lazy to do it when I set the clippers right in front of him on the table. I can't stand my brother he is a foul jerk. Somehow this sort of stuff is overlooked and my relatives seem to be entertained by his weird buffoonish stories when he is drunk.
So fast forward the next day, I'm in the car with my alcoholic brother and my narcissistic mother, and the two kids. Something sets my brother off and he starts yelling at the top of his lungs in the middle of the parking lot. He gets out of the car and he is yelling at me through the window where I am still sitting and he is screaming "get out" "get out", his face is red and he is shaking and I wonder if he is going to hit me. He is screaming all sorts of nonsense that I don't even remember what he is saying I get out of the car. But before I do my N-mother says to ME "your a miserable person, you need to see a counselor". My n-mother looks over towards a building and she says "we better leave, or else they are going to report us".
I walk from the middle of the parking lot over to the entrance of a building and ask if I can use a restroom. When I get out of the restroom, a woman asks me if I'm ok multiple times and she says that she saw the kids crying and saw them going to my N-mother to be comforted. I tell them that he's my brother and he is an alcoholic and those are his kids. The woman says she is required to report anything like that. I look at her and shrug my shoulders because there is no law agaisnt n-grandmothers making alcoholic children that are horrible parents. My brother doesn't care if he is reported, somehow he is like this big monster that threatens everyone around him. My brother only has the children on weekends, the rest of the time they live with their mother whom I've never met. I think my brother's big-crazy-alcoholism is due to my mother's narcissism. Somehow my the addiction has helped my brother to be big enough that he isn't completely overshadowed by her narcissism.
Mother drives away with my alcoholic brother. I'm in an unfamiliar city, and an unfamiliar neighborhood that I have never been in before. I walk miles to the nearest bus station wait for about an hour and then spend the rest of the day catching a series of buses back to my apartment. When I get home that night I call my mother and I tell her how disgusting the scene was, that the people witnessing it inside the building said they are required to report events like that. My mother then starts telling me how I was the cause of the problem, I tell her that other people don't act the way my brother does and theres no excuse for it. I tell her it's inappropriate. My mother doesn't hear any of this and she blames me for his outburst. At this point I'm so pissed off that I start yelling profanity at her on the phone!
Mother trys to tell me that I have various mental problems. I tell her: "I've been to many therapists and I have never been diagnosed with anything like what you are trying to tell me I have, you are not qualified to make a diagnosis." She pauses for a second after I say that and then she just continues to tell me that everything is somehow my fault. The arguing just goes around and around where she tells me that I make everyone uncomfortable and miserable.
This all happened a couple of days ago. I was almost wondering if she was starting to change because for a brief period of time she started acting nice. I guess because I haven't seen my mother around my brother for a while I forgot how she is part of the alcoholism disease. After 8+ years of not seeing my brother I guess my memory must have faded about how bad it is. The scene in the parking lot was exactly like a domestic violence advertisement on television. But it wasn't on television I was sitting there witnessing it on the receiving end of it. There is not a single one of my relatives that steps in either and says "this is out of control and unnecessary." My mother actually looks to my alcoholic brother for advice, as if he is the masculine "voice of reasoning". Both of my grandparents (my mother's) parents were alcoholics so my mother has some weird "codependent" personality. She doesn't drink that much herself but she seems exactly like an alcoholic to me.
I think I actually called my mother a "f-ing B*tch" after the scene in the parking lot because I was angry that I was being blamed for my brother's violent outburst. Then, I myself lose my own dignity and flip out and say all this nasty stuff to my mother.
During the time that I'm there at the house my brother also tell's me in this mean/alcoholic cynical voice that he uses, that he thinks my father is dying. This was before the parking lot scene. My brother seems to be trying to escalate an emotional breakdown in me.
A person just doesn't tell another person that someone is dying in that sort of way.
Someday those two kids are going to be mature enough to understand what alcholism and drug addiction and abuse is or they will become abusive alcoholics themselves. I don't think those two kids will know about their grandmother's narcissism though.
Their grandmother flits around occupying herself with unimportant things but she is always too busy to focus on any real concerns.
I don't understand her interest in those two kids at all. If she cared she would notice that their alcoholic father passes out on the floor at bedtime- this was before the blow-out in the parking lot. The night that he was passed out on the floor I locked the door to the room I was sleeping in because I don't feel safe around him.
I just had to come here and write this out. Thank god I have read about narcissism and alcoholism and codependency and have self-analyzed myself to pulp otherwise I think I would have a total emotional breakdown. I lost my cool and calm and dignity and I said some profane words to my n-mother -but I'm not a total panic-attacking basket case at least not today. I guess my only triumph after all my reading and processing is that I can say "This is crazy-making, this is out of control, I can't think clearly because of what is going on, I have to get away from this."
The part that I have difficulty with is that my mother tells me that I'm a " cold hearted-pathetic-miserable person". When I tell her that my brother is an out of control alcoholic drinking out of her refrigerator, she then just continues to tell me that it's my fault for setting him off.
He yells at his kids also when he doesn't need too. I just don't understand how my mother can be proud of the family that she has created.
One day my youngest nephew was crying, by brother and mother go into the room where the kid is. My brother is yelling in a mean tone to the kid "stop crying", "Stop crying", "stop crying"... and he just wails louder. So my brother and mother come out and tell me accusingly that the kid is going crazy because I took one kid for a walk and not the other one. The older boy said he wanted to go for a walk and the younger one did not. (I had already taken the younger one for a walk the prior day). So I go into the room where the kid is crying and my brother calls in after me in this snotty-teenage-alcoholic type voice "don't go in there". I go in anyways, I bend down, I rub the his back and I ask him if he is feeling upset because he feels left out because he didn't come with us on a walk, he says "no that's no even it"- he explains to me how he saw the seashells that his older brother had and he wants some too. I tell him how there are still a lot more seashells on the beach, in fact even bigger ones then we brought back. He stops crying and he asks me where is the exact location of the biggest seashell. I tell him the location of the big seashells. I tell him that he will get the chance to go down and find some shells also. After this conversation he has stopped crying and he pops up immediately off the floor and runs out of the room.
My brother trys to tell me how parenting is harder then it looks. All I can think is that it's a lame-ass loser excuse. My brother is on disability, he doesn't do anything all day except for sit around and drink and chew his nicotine gum that smears his face yellow, he complains how he can't get a girlfriend because every single woman in his town is ugly, every last one of them. My brother tells me that he is receiving money to take 2 classes at a community college, he tells me that last quarter he got a D and an F and he blew up and yelled at one of his instructors. (he is a full grown adult). He tells me how he got all of his school books for $10.00, reading between the lines, what he is saying is that he had school money left over for his addictions.
My n-mother says "he's doing really good, he is getting his life on track, he is taking college classes, he gets to see his children on the weekends".
I personally find my mother's denial to be crazy making. That she conjures up a fantasy version of reality.
My brother is a horrible role model for those children.
My brother gets on these alcoholic rants about women and he says how some woman he dated was THE biggest b*tch he ever met, the biggest b*tch. And he says this in front of his kids, the kids are sensitively picking up everything. He says "the kids aren't even listening".
My brother says how his ex-wife's father has all these investments and how the man is cheap. My alcoholic brother told me when he married his exwife that her father was wealthy and how he would be rich when the man died, and now that he is divorced from her he is angry because he seems to think he is should be entitled to her father's money. Then a few hours later my brother goes on this rant about how he can't get a girlfriend because he doesn't have a money and a car and that it's disgusting how women only want money. My brother lost his license because of DUI's.
It seems to me that so many people have some sort of issues. My whole life I have always wanted to have a functional life, I feel like I have had moments where things are going well for myself but I have never felt like I have left the disfunction behind and made a success out of my own life.
I'm just so thankful that my brother lives in a different state without a car.
My alcoholic brother emailed me a few months prior to the white-trash-domestic-violence commercial scene that happened in the parking lot. In the email he said to me that he was worried about me because I don't have much to say to him and he told me that because I'm not very communicative with him that I should go see a psychiatrist and get put on antidepressants.
That phrase of "you should get psychiatric help" is now a comment that I have heard from my co-dependent-enabling-narcisist mother and my addicted brother.
Throughout my I have seen therapists about 8 of them. I have never been diagnosed with anything serious, they tell me that my brother is an alcoholic, that I personally have issues with depression, that my family of origin is not supportive.
Ok, I think I am done writing this out. Thanks to this board and Dr. Grossman for having this place for me to write this.
Sometimes people ask me why I write, I write it out because during the whole emotional crazy making I start to feel disoriented and out of control. By writing it out I can slowly process what is going on, or attempt to and find some personal equilibrium.
There is a voice inside of me that has to defend over and over "I'm not the cause of the alcoholism and disfunction" "I'm not crazy, and I'm not the miserable, hideous person my mother says I am."
I'm thankful for the fact that my brother's blow out was in a public place and there were people inside the building who heard him screaming and noticed what was going on, I needed that feedback from them that let me know how out of control the behavior was. I needed that witnessing. My n-mother has always given me abusive feedback, in her world that behavior is normal and acceptable.
My mother use to have an old boyfreind who would get drunk and blow up in crazy-making fits and now my brother has taken over that role I guess.
My mother always use to blame me, and I keep coming back to that point over and over in my mind how I'm bad and the cause.
Some part of me has heard this so many times from my mother and feels weak. The other part of me has studied the issues.
There is definitely alcoholism in my family and my relatives accomodate it and condone it. My aunt (n-mother's sister) picked up my brother from the airport and dropped him off. Everyone of my relatives knows that my brother is an alcoholic but they don't seem to care. My aunt and mother grew up with alcoholic parents so I guess they try to please the alcoholic.
I'm so tired, I already had a lot going on without having to go through that situation. I'm worn out of the over-all emotional toll of having such disorganized, denial-using relatives. I have ended up being rather lonely and alienated because I have distanced myself from this as much as possible but the result is I don't have a family.
My mother is angry if I don't contact her. When I am near the relatives I'm on the receiving end of verbal and emotional abuse. I've already been through the emotional ups and downs so much that it doesnt seem as bad in a way, but it still is, deep down inside I think of all the good things I've missed out on in life. I think about how I was robbed of love and a good quality upbringing. My parents would deny that but I see it now with my nephews.
The thing about my mother brushing her pet dog's teeth but the children not having an adult encouraging them to do their toothbrushing at night blows me away. ----------------------------WHAT IS THIS????----------------------------------------------
It's like the pet takes the position of a favored child..........it's just so weird......?
It seems like a little thing, but it's just so weird and it's reminiscent of my childhood. I had severe asthma as a kid that was exacerbated by my mother's smoking, her boyfriends smoking and my brother's smoking indoors as well as the pet cats that were indoors that I was allergic too. I was on steriod inhalers and various pills that made me feel weird, as a kid I was hospitalized for asthma and bed-riden for months with respiretory problems. My mother would not get rid of the pet cat or stop smoking indoors and denied that there was anything she could have done to help. She said she was just powerless to fix anything. My mother and brother and other relatives told me that I was crazy when I was a kid and pretending to be sick. My brother use to say to me "your faking it".
I think about how much effort I have put into working through the clouds of family denial and all the emotional stress that I went through when I was younger due to the sick-distorted-feedback I was given that made me think my perceptions and feelings were wrong and the disfunction was right.
I think about all the acting out and controlling and neglect- I think about how all of this energy could be channeled more positively but it isnt.
I think about how much better life COULD be if only people would start acting differently.
I don't have respect for these people. I think about how my brother rants and raves and it freaks people out. He is controlling and he gets power out of it but I have no respect for him. I can't stand him and even though his kids are fun, I don't ever want to see or hear about his family again.
My mother minimizes, and denys and minimizes and denys so much.. I cant stand her. Then she wants to talk to me about minutia and she gets angry with me and says I'm rude RUDE and disrespectful if I don't PLAY along with her game.
