Finding voicefulness......losing......finding.....practicing..

[Meh]

I like makeover shows on television they rivet me because I want to see just how different a person can be after a few days of fashion counseling, haircuts and makeup. Makeover specialists somehow explain that it is going to change a persons life, they will start dating or get married or get a better job or something along those lines. I can think of a time in my life when I was in my twenties and I thought that I could make myself over and that maybe the process would also replace the Narcissistic/Alcoholic relatives. Some part of me thought that the power of my new persona would somehow dissolve the reality that my mother could be the subject of a Stephen King movie.

[Lollie]

Hi, MuffinBuster.

I don't post much, but I come here frequently to read. I just wanted to say that I'm glad to see you back. I was a bit worried about you and was wondering how you were doing.

Lollie.

[SilverLining]

Hi Muffin.  

It would be interesting to find out if the makeovers  have any long term effect.  One thing I have noticed with my N-ish relatives:  they are  constantly doing physical makeovers.   My sister spends a fortune on plastic surgery, but doesn't have enough money to buy school clothing for her child.   My mother remodels, and then remodels again, in a never ending process.  Our society likes to push this kind of solution.  It keeps the corporate system rolling along..  

[Hopalong]

Hi MB,

I wouldn't want the surgery but sure could use the $5000 preloaded Visa card for a wardrobe!

And I understand the fascination.

Really glad to hear your voice again.

Hops

[Meh]

Thank you for the warm thoughts. Hi Lollie-and Silver Lining- and Hopalong.

I'm not certain that I have much I feel like sharing right now. I've had a lot of draining fights with my M-mother lately. I think I have pretty much analyzed the heck out of my relationship with my N-mother and I would have to say after recent experiences with her I'm glad that I analyzed because now I just say to her "believe me I get get it....I GET IT" and she looks at me in a pissed off look. She actually said I'm really burnt out on the Narcissist stuff in my life and I desperately want to focus more on me being more secure rather then insecure and having more confidence or something.

Last week my mother starting harping on me and I stood up for myself I know I did because afterwards I got that feeling of my body being more solid- she gave me this look as if to say "how dare you stand up to me". But then the next day she started a fight with me where she starts raising her voice at me and during this she accused me of speaking to her disrespectfully as if I was a teenager. She will repeat the same thing to me 10 times and it drives me nuts. I eventually just walk away from it but I argue with her for a while and I know it is pointless.

She doesn't really surprise me anymore. I still haven't acheived no-more-contact! with my mother but I hope that someday I will and that seems like a weird goal to have. She is really mentally ill I understand that.

[Meh]

One day a few weeks ago I saw my mother with a baby belonging to "friends of the family". The baby tumbled over and my N-mother was the closest to the baby while the two parents were a little ways away. It was interesting to watch because my mother failed to pick up and comfort the baby she dismissed it and said "she's ok". I could sense the parents concern to protect the baby and my mother did not have that instinct at all. It was a small moment of awkwardness because my N-mother is viewed as a grandmother like figure to this child. It's really the only time I have ever seen my mother interact with a baby.

[Meh]

At some point in my life I will be free of my mother's Narcissism because I will be successful with the no-contact tactics.

I do question why my mother becomes angry when I don't contact her, I know it is a power thing. Since she has never attempted to cultivate a real relationship with me that is based on trust and respect it makes me wonder what is the bond that we have and why is that bond hard to break? Maybe it could be classified as a codependent thing I don't know.

I wonder why she insists on maintaining a "relationship with me" because she clearly does not like me at all.

In a childish way I fantasize about when my Nar-mother is older and she can't wheel herself around in a wheelchair and I think about how I'm going to refuse to help her. I know it is immature and I know it is pointless and it does mean I want to retaliate against her and be like "look I can do it too".

So I guess I'm still mad at her a little but at the same time I think I'm getting over the mad slowly to a "I just don't give a crap"

[Meh]

I really don't have the time or energy to write anything meaningful here. I just feel like I need to keep some sort of connection to this place.

My mother is still in my life and beyond that I am alienated from the rest of my relatives in a mutual way. I think I have avoided them because of their negative impact on my life and they have avoided me out of a disinterest in my life.

So without having family or friends or significant other, I'm left to be with myself. That state is not all bad but it is tiresome.

My mother has put me through so much crap, it use to hurt my feelings but at this point I roll my eyes and ignore her. I just wish my relatives and other people would experience her the way I do and since nobody can confirm to me my experience I still come here and write.

I don't really wish to write so much about my personal life because it looks like a failure. I'm staying at a shelter and still looking for a job. I'm thinking about moving to a different area where I might be more likely to find work.

[Hopalong]

This is beautiful, MB -- really spoke something true to me.

I stood up for myself I know I did because afterwards I got that feeling of my body being more solid

hug,

Hops

[Meh]

Thanks, Hops.

[Meh]

I'm sitting here in a beige painted basement of a homeless shelter. Computer and internet access in a shelter is pretty good, some places are not so well equipped. Above, the next floor up there was a community dancing class in a large room that is part of the building and I could hear 70's music and glimpsed middle aged people dancing.

Today, I spent a few hours at an employment office and managed to fax off application materials for three jobs that I would find pretty boring to do but would be lucky to get.

Walking down here to the computer terminal, I had the thought to myself "If I didn't have my mother in my life I would have nobody". My mother says things to me though that make my heart feel like a twisted dish towel.

Since the economy isn't too great in the place where I am, as a solution I think about trying to save money to take a train somewhere else. It's rather odd that I have gotten to this point in my life because prior to this I had modestly saved a good amount of money and at one point I could have made mortgage payments. I have to state that to justify myself. Oh well.

One of the women here in the shelter made some pasta for everyone. I'm usually cautious about food from mysterious origins and I like to over see preparation methods so I can decide if I should eat it or not...but tonight I just ate it.

Tomorrow I have to go to my mother's house where she has some of my belongings. It's an opportunity for her to squeeze the life out of me a little more, to accuse me of being a bad person. More of the same ol' same ol', so I will just stay focused and look forward to Saturday night when it's over with and I will figure out something to do.

I think I'm heading to read and sleep. Goodnight.

My mother actually confuses homeless shelter and hotel or college dorm in her vocabulary. It's all the same to her in her weird mind. Not only that but she is obsessed with her dog's pooping. I've written about that here before, there is just no cleansing my ears after time spent listening to her talk about her dogs poop and her own bowel movements. Oh well. I don't have any new complaints of her because the pattern has become so routine. The last argument that I was drawn into with her I realized how she had initiated the conversation and then accused me of being quarrelsome. Oh well again. I think I'm too tired. At some point it has all been written about.

g' Night it's getting late I need to scurry. 

[Gaining Strength]

MB - I am so thinking your Jan 24th post is excellent.  I really love it.
And about your post right after that - I wish we could form a family of like-minded children of Ns.  That could be a good choice.  Not all children of Ns mind you but like-minded ones.  I am so needing a family.  I have a number of friends whose family is not very good but they still function like a family.  My father's illness has revealed to me that there is no there there in terms of family connections for me.  Good to know.  But the need for caring structure still exists within.

[Gaining Strength]

I am not in your shoes but I am responding to your last post.  Take it with a grain of salt.

But your idea of getting on a train and going where things might be better economically (or even weatherwise) sounds like a good idea to me.  Why not?  Fresh start - cutting those ties - really cutting them.  Do not lose hope.  I think these Ns beat us down so badly as children that functioning well in this world is absurdly difficult but I believe in you and by doing so I am able to believe in me as well. 

I hear hope in your posts.  I want to flame your fires of hope and determination.  I want to encourage you.  I hope for you a system of support and encouragement.

[Meh]

Thank you, Gaining Strength.

(I have to post sentence by sentence because the computer keeps blinking out)

I think I do have some type of hope. The more extreme my life gets the less depressed I am because there is no room to be that way.

Maybe I will write more later, I'm getting tired. 

[Meh]

Right now, nobody knows where I am, only me. I'm sitting on a bed in a shelter typing this on my old laptop that I just got out of storage.

I found a book here at the shelter titled "Are You Somebody?" by Nuala O' Faolain. The Author grew up in an Irish Catholic family and went to a boarding school taught by nuns. My grandmother also went to an Irish Catholic boarding school taught by nuns and it makes me wonder if there is something in the culture of my family passed down through the generations that views children as not valuable.

Maybe I'm not so many generations away from the women who didn't use birth control (great grandmother?) Who saw children as a threat to their ability to be their own person? I don't know maybe not.

In the book "Are You Somebody" Nuala describes a woman who gives birth, the grandmother ends up with the baby and the baby becomes emaciated and shrivels up from neglect. The grandmother states "who would want it?". So I guess the baby is let to die.