I just read a post about an article that spoke about abandonment and depression. It took me awile before I could recover from it since it represented such a close connection to my life and my life-long depression. When you're raised in an N family, you are almost always abandoned emotionally. With the exception of the GC, the other members of the family experience these damaging effects.
The kind of depression described in this article mimicked my life exactly. I have suffered from serious and clinical depression all my life. Having a somewhat logical mind, I could never understand or accept why, when I suffered so from this depression, that neither of my parents or other family members would ever offer any empathy, support or help. But as this article says, the N finds anyone who is sick as someone worthy of complete disdain and disgust. In my mind, you go out of your way for the people who need help the most. Instead, their inclination is to completely turn their back on you. That kind of mindset and good mother or father behavior are on complete contrast. I think that's why I still can't entirely accept what's happened to me. It just makes no sense. But of course it wouldn't. We're talking about narcissists.
If I had to name the one "theme" of my life, I'd say it would be rejection. Rejection by everyone in my life---starting with my family. I am only recently understanding the extent to which my family has abandoned and rejected me. It is complete. My brother, who I always deemed the "healthy" one since he was able to be relatively unscathed by the narcissism, has now abandoned me as well. He does whatever he wants without any concern for me. Again, it is just so completely opposite the way I think and behave. It is frankly a frightening place to live when you realize there's not a single soul in this world who cares about you and upon whom you can depend.
I also can't keep from wondering why, starting as a young child, I responded to my Nmom's and Nsis's narcissism with deep depression and he did not. But I do realize that like my Nmom, he has no use for someone struggling with depression as I have. He just wants it "fixed" but he can't cope with the idea that it can't be readily fixed or that part of the "fix" is for someone to pay attention in and take interest in me. He has made it clear that he has no time for me and is not interested in making time for me. How can you react to that with anything but hurt and pain?
So the rejection and abandonment is just so complete. And how do you move on or even keep going when literally everyone has abandoned you? On the one hand, it makes me angry because I've always been so attentive to and concerned about others...but the feelings have never been returned. It hurts that my own family never cared anything about me and that that will never change. It hurts to know I am alone in this world....
It was a powerful article...and helped explain my depression a lot.....It's cause is far more rooted in environmental reasons than biological ones. But it is just so painful to know that I am on no one's radar....that I never mattered.
