I'm new / old here. Dr. Grossman was kind enough to add me after the "other" message board shut down and I've been reading everyone's posts and remained voiceless all these months. I think it is going to take me some time to get any of it out but I decided to make a start and stop lurking in the shadows. In that time, I've come to love and admire so many of the woman of this board. I was so glad you were here, those of you who came over from Dr. McBride and "met" so many new and insightful voices as well. This has been my refuge and I have gotten a whole bunch of really good things here.
So I start to today to tell my story... sigh
I don't want to give up this start but find myself enervated - AGAIN - by the family of origin and the never ending emotional lightning that flares up when you least expect it and are most vulnerable. I wonder if there is ever going to be any escape? And I also know that I am damaged, so damaged by it all.
I think my father was the primary narcissist of the family, but it worked out so well for him that my mom adopted it for her own mode of living and her natural propensity for it far eclipsed his mundane everyday male narcissism.
They are both living. I have been no contact with them since July 6, 2010 and have only gotten gotten second hand pain from them, via the efforts of well meaning family members. (Hereafter described as "TOOL!")
My mom and Dad had a stormy relationship during my formative years, with weekends being a war zone of fights and screaming about his activities. I didn't know what the problems were just that were never anything resembling a normal life when they were together. The separated briefly when I was seven with the usual wrangling about who wanted to go with whom, etc. But of course we weren't really allowed to choose -- it was just part of the game. We ended up with mommy dearest for a long summer in a trailer outside of our town. Mommy didn't want to shell out for childcare so she wrangled a way to get me into summer school (remedial classes for underprivileged kids) all day while she worked. I don't know what she did with my Golden Child Brother -- he would have been almost 10 and I'm sure that would not have been good enough for him. Perhaps he was allowed to stay home alone --
Even as young as that, I was able to discern some of the inconsistencies and incongruities of their lives, but learned young that it was pointless to try and interject any logical reality into a situation. So it was "crazymaking" all the way for decades. One of the biggest problems was that Dad liked to run around. By the time I was 13 we had moved 10 times, as they were always looking for something better but did not want to build it on any "real" foundation. Mom thought that a way to counteract his roving was to make sure he never left the house without one of us. This resulted in us constantly being left with relatives or strangers or simply alone somewhere so that he could indulge in whatever. He always had very "plausible" explanations for this and even though we told her of some of the predicaments he left us in, she allowed it because at least she was not burdened with us. She stuck us anywhere! She was just a little less Overt about it than he was. She is a schemer. He tends to act more in the moment. Luckily for me, she discovered that her church had youth activities almost nightly. We spent all weekend at church and at least two nights per week. Might have to walk back and forth but it resulted in me being exposed to some nice normal people and that is the only gratitude I will give her. She had me in a children's choir (lots of rehearsals and performances) before I could read the words. The choir director ( I wish she was my mommy) helped me memorize the words and praised my participation. There was sunday school activities and youth group and I was pushed into everything whether it was appropriate for me to be there or not -- what could they say? God Bless them where ever they are!
So when I was 13, and I had just completed 8th grade in my second middle school of that year, she decided to leave him "once and for all." Her brother arranged for her to get a house near him and family members helped us with an interstate move to be back close to them. It seemed to me that perhaps we could begin to live normally. It was also at this time that she chose to disclose to us that he was a homosexual. She claimed to have known about it for years, yet did not bother to explain why we had all been placed in social situations with Daddy's "weird" consorts. We actually went on outings with several of these people and I did not even know what their issues were, just that had some very smarmy ways. I did not feel like I had the RIGHT to complain about being fondled by one of them and never mentioned it -- in some ways that was not as disgusting as some of the other stuff I was subjected to and had never heard of homosexuality until she screamed it to us. I figured that sort of blatant infidelity would surely result in divorce and we would be done with that chapter of our lives once and for all. She used my brother and I, mostly me as a her confidante in these matters and it was settled that it was "over." By my reckoning, that reduced our problems by at least 50 percent and I was all for it. Bear in mind, I did not have any particular animosity towards my dad as I thought they were both crazy -- but gender neutrality was unheard of then and this seemed to be a big enough issue to result in a clean break.
The summer was a storm of high drama with their fighting and scenes raising to a new level. At one point before our big escape, we got in her car to go somewhere and the wheels began to wobble and mom discovered that her lug nuts had been removed on her car. She claimed that one of his paramours had done it out of jealousy. In hindsight, I believe that she would risk our lives to be the object of even more pathos and I will always believe it was her. That was my gut at the time -- "I'll make him sorry" was always her intent but I don't think he ever was or if he even knew about the incident. Suffice it to say she did not report it to any authority or bother to have him restrained in any way. But soon enough we were installed in our new home and making arrangements to change everything to accommodate her and her new life.
This didn't last three weeks. One morning, a few weeks later, we got up to find Daddy dear in her bed! Oh Yummy. Gladsome tidings indeed to children who have been indoctrinated for months that he is the devil. My brother was almost 15 at the time and he took it especially poorly. He ranted at mom about why Dad was back sleeping with her! My mother's exact words were, "You won't tell me who I can sleep with!" Even then, I was pretty smart and made no comment. Then she began raving about her religion did not allow for Divorce! So the pattern of crazymaking crap was set in stone and they resumed their old pattern of her being an eternal victim of his abusive behavior. They mitigated it somewhat by installing him in a job 150 miles away from which he spent the next fifteen years being Dad on weekends. And that was plenty! I don't think I would be tapping away now if I had been subjected to both of them in the 5 years between his return and her kicking me out at 18.
I have neglected to mention my Baby sister who was two during the summer from hell and doesn't have much recollection of that year but more about her later. I'm going to have to do this in installments to get to the present insanity. Thank you for your patience.
Bad daughter
