A male reader shares his experience of his narcissistic adoptive mother in:
THE PROMISED FAMILY THAT NEVER WAS
Names in this story have been occluded in order to avoid legal hassles down the road for everyone involved.
A little about me. First of all, I’m male. There is a lot of information and documentation about daughters of narcissistic mothers, but there are male victims of this form of maternal narcissism too. While I understand that daughters are more likely to get harsh treatment (and several aspects of my own story will bear this out) there are also vicious things which happen to the males in the family too. I am happy to have a chance to tell my story.
A little more about me that puts me in a unique position is that I was adopted. At 12. By my grade 7 teacher. My biological mother was a completely nonfunctioning alcoholic and still is to this day. I got bounced around from family member to family member throughout my entire childhood; living with aunts, uncles, grandparents, you name it. So I am in a particularly unique situation different than most other kids; I have seen many different parenting styles and the effect upon which these styles had on me. When I lived with my biological mother, I was a bad kid, always getting into trouble. When I lived with my great aunt who was a very caring and loving and gentle person, I was a good kid. Depending on who else I lived with in my childhood, I was something in between. This does and throughout my teen years gave me a very good perspective on the effects that parenting has on kids unlike most other people.
In grade 7, my great aunt wanted to find me a more permanent home. She was a very good lady who loved me very much. She explored foster homes, other extended and removed family, and I guess upon telling my extended story to my grade 7 teacher he fell in love. He had a money system in his class, and I dominated it; I started a raft of businesses, I managed to break the system, where other kids were trying to play catch up on their school work in order to negate detention due to “missing work fines” I had a bank, and insurance company, and a newspaper. It was a really fun class to be in, I managed to create a vertically integrated company like no other he had ever seen. I was really into computers, and so was he.
So, when it was brought up that maybe my grade 7 teacher’s family wanted to adopt me, I was thrilled and filled with hope. There were dinners arranged and sleepovers. Things seemed very normal; kids had to do chores and I had to take part to learn the ropes. There were 6 brothers and sisters of varying ages – I had never experienced having siblings before – and it seemed like it would be a lot of fun.
Eventually, the lawyers were called and I did interviews with government people who did their best to make sure I understood the choice I was making. Legally, my “real” mother would no longer be my mother and I would be taking on these people as my new “Mom and Dad”. I agreed, it was a big decision to make at 12, but I felt that I finally would have hope of being just a kid for a while, for the rest of my years. I had had to look after myself and my own safety ever since I was four years old; it we me myself who called my uncle and told him that living with my mother was no place for a kid to live. My biological mother was having drinking parties that lasted literally for days 24 hours a day. I was whipped with a Mexican whip by my mother, I had been grabbed by my hair after being awoken in the middle of the night and thrown across the room because I couldn’t find a hot wheels toy that she had recently bought me; she wanted to show this car to her friends she was drinking with in the middle of the night.
So, the thought of moving in with a “normal” family was a dream come true. I set in in earnest to try to fit in and do my part in this new “family” and in learning the ropes of things like chores, siblings, and having normal parents.
At first, it seemed like everything was going to be just fantastic. I wasn’t getting any sort of red carpet treatment, I was taught I had to do my part in the family to keep the house running and I did my best to do whatever I could. Those first few months, the last months of grade 7, seemed like this was going to be a great way for me to seize upon the childhood that I never had really had. I was filled with hope.
That summer, things went entirely weird. My new “mother”’s brother had been staying with them, in a trailer parked on the large lot. He seemed a cool enough guy, he had me and my friend (the neighbor’s kid roughly my age) come and drink pop with him and stay in the trailer. Later that week, this guy crawled into my bed, and put his arm around me. I was no pushover, given my upbringing, I told him to get the hell out of my bed, and when he didn’t oblige, I proceeded to bang his hand against the metal springs of the bed so hard he nearly needed stitches. I came from a tough background, I had learned to deal with drunken people being idiots. Finally, I went downstairs and told my new “parents” that this drunken idiot was in my bed and wouldn’t leave. My new dad came up and got him the hell out of the house.
Around the same time, unrelated, I was starting to receive a lot of flack from my new mother, that I wouldn’t call them Mom and Dad. It was difficult for me, I was 12 years old. I knew my real mom, and I had never ever known my dad. It was just too weird calling them mom and dad, so I called them by their first names. In third person, I did call them my mom and dad, but it was just to weird for me at that age to start calling some new person mom or dad. I thought that they understood. But with my new “Mom” tensions built up, because she seemed to not be able to understand.
I was then approached by my parents about pedophilia. Apparently, this same guy who crawled into my bed had drugged my new adopted cousin away in some cabin way up in the middle of nowhere, and woke up with the guy molesting him. I didn’t remember anything happening to me, and shrugged it off. I just said that the guy was drunk and being a fool crawling into my bed. I didn’t really connect that night in the trailer when me and my friend mysteriously decided to go to sleep in that trailer instead of in my room.
Until, of course, my best friend told me he couldn’t hang out with me anymore. I was devastated. I thought I had done something wrong. We lived way out in the country, and he was the only boy roughly of my own age who lived anywhere nearby. We did everything together. I pressed and pressed, and he told me that the reason wasn’t me, it was because in that trailer he had woken up and discovered this guy (my new “mom”’s brother) molesting him. I urged him to tell someone; citing that this same thing had only recently been discovered to have happened to my cousin. He refused.
I went and told my new “mom” what had happened. I was 12, and I figured that was that and that this guy would be brought to justice or whatever needed to happen would happen.
As time went on, my “mother” became more and more and more enraged with me. Strange things became apparent. My sister, my new “mom”’s younger daughter, seemed to live by an entirely different set of rules. I liked my mullet; and my mother tried to have her friend who was a hairdresser, just cut off the long hair in the back without any form of discussion at all. When she couldn’t bring herself to do it, my new mother exploded in rage.
If I got a better grade in band class than my sister, (I was a C- student so a B for me was a big deal), I would be the subject of rage at how my sister tried harder than me and deserved that B and I didn’t. We were all punished if we didn’t do our chores, clean our room properly, but my sister was always given a free pass, my mother citing that “she tries hard in school”. One day I made myself a gourmet sandwich (we all had to take turns making each others lunches), when I grabbed my lunch bag in the morning and noticed nothing but the regular peanut butter sandwich, my sister wryly showed me that she was given my nice sandwich, and it took much negotiation to get it given back to me; she didn’t even like mayonnaise or Dijon mustard.
Things were shaping up quite oddly. By grade 9, I was getting punished for not re-doing homework that I had actually passed. Turns out my math teacher was phoned by my mother and told that if I didn’t get at least a B, I should be sent home to re-do it. My work compounded upon itself over and over, I not only had to do the work I was assigned, but to re-do every test, work sheet and assignment. I was buckling under the pressure, I eventually got to 6 hours of math homework a day and gave up. When I gave up, and was over at a friend’s house, my mother came zipping over to pick me up at 10 oclock to force me to redo my homework because she was regularly calling my teacher. On a Friday night even.
I neglected to clean my room once, in the middle of summer, and she came at 6 o’clock in the morning to pick me up from a sleepover at my friend’s house. My friend’s parents thought she was nuts. She got my oldest sister to do the driving, and wouldn’t say a word the whole way home in the car, letting my oldest sister do all the talking, which was a weird experience unto itself. Why making my bed couldn’t wait until I got home later that day I will never know nor understand.
As I got older, things got even worse. She refused to buy me clothes. My 16th birthday, a very important birthday for any kid, she “skipped” to hang out with my sister who was supposed to have a baby a month later. I didn’t even get a present for my birthday that year, I had to remind my new “dad” that it was in fact my birthday. When my “mom” got home, and I inquired about getting my drivers’ license, I was flatly refused, citing that I was too much of a danger to learn to drive, I played racing games on the computer and I apparently due to that shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of a car.
During these years, the blatant double standard of my sister got worse and worse. We were constantly compared against our sister. My parents left us in the house over the weekend, my sister had a party, complete with girlfriends and boyfriends lingering around on beds. I had some friends over from a rock band I played in, we were going to do a jam session. I got in a world of trouble, complete with my stuff thrown in garbage bags and my bed removed from my room, my sister got a pass despite my mom knowing full well she was having somewhat of a party.
The rages continued, not only to my face but behind my back. I could hear her through the vents of the house bad mouthing me and saying all sorts of crap to my dad about me and how bad of a kid I was. In reality, I maybe smoked a bit of pot and got caught drinking a few times. Quite normal for living in the backwoods of British Columbia. No trouble with the police, no fighting, no stealing, no crimes. I liked camping and the woods near our house.
I was always a very self confident kid, despite my upbringing. However at this time I was starting to lose my whole sense of self-esteem. Every facet of my success was belittled, either contrasted to my sister’s success, or downplayed as a mere fluke or something. I became introverted and very sad.
The fact I realize today, is that I became the scapegoat at this point, if not long before.
You see, her oldest daughter, was always on the ins or the outs with the family. She had apparently become a drug addict and even dabbled in prostitution before I ever came alone. She came along when she had a child and wanted support from her family, and tried committing suicide a few times. Eventually, my “mother” (her biological mother in a blended family) had her kids taken away, one by one, years apart.
My next oldest sister to me, was a social misfit who had had explosive bouts with my new mother. She wasn’t getting the rages anymore, she was the biological child of my new father. I guess he had put his foot down one too many times. She became ignored and the spotlight was entirely on me. She these days is horribly depressed, missing the relationship with her father that was robbed of her when this “step mother” came along. She is on high doses of antidepressants and has gone no contact with the entire family. She was, in fact, the second scapegoat. I became the scapegoat only to relieve pressure on her. She then became ignored.
Eventually, my mother’s oldest daughter went no contact as well. Today, she is dead. Was found hanging from the light fixture of her apartment. The stress of having her own mother have two of her children removed from her was too much. She left behind 11 diaries to try to tell her tale. My mother kept the contents of the diaries secret and only revealed them to my sister (the golden child) who then went promptly into counseling, virtually perpetually, for the past 7 years.
At 16, I got kicked out of the house. Why, I still, don’t remember. But I did. I ended up living with a friend and his parents for a few months before I was allowed to come back, just before Christmas. Apparently, I was always going around slamming doors and cupboards, something that absolutely was not the case, but my friend’s mom was a social worker, and I managed to get back in – for a while.
Things were very tenuous for those next few months. I was scapegoated to the maximum level. Regular narcissistic rages, constant backtalk whenever I mentioned anything at all. It was like any time I cried out that I existed and I was a good person, I would be on the receiving end of some rage, for some mistake I had made maybe even years prior. I was becoming very depressed. I didn’t know what to do. I obviously could do no right, and I could obviously only do wrong. I could get decent grades, do all of my chores (chores that my golden child sister by this point NEVER had to do, because she was working and going to school), keep quiet and hide out in my room, and I still was the victim of rages. My sister, the one who had previously been a scapegoat, tried to protect me – she understood the damaging effects of this as she had suffered it before. Then she got kicked out; she went to live with her biological mother to escape.
We got a meager $5 per week allowance. A system was devised whereby for every plate, dish, or piece of cutlery we didn’t put away, we would lose 25 cents of it. Both her and my dad went into overdrive, I would get up to go to the bathroom and I was dinged a dollar for not putting my plate, that I wasn’t finished with, away in the dishwasher. I would wake up for school and go to the bathroom and take a shower, by the time I got back up to my room to get dressed, my bed was made for me and I was dinged $1.50. Every week my allowance was in the negative. Other kids got it too, but it seemed they were so right on top of me specifically, that I couldn’t win. What’s worse, they carried the debits over into the following week. Pretty hard to catch up on your $5.00 allowance when you are starting a new week with a $15.00 debit, and every week the debit only went higher.
Of course, I wasn’t allowed to get a job. When I suggested it, I was told I’d have to find my own way, despite that my sister got not only her drivers’ license, but to borrow the car, and when that wasn’t logistically possible, a ride to and from work until she bought her own car. We lived a 30 minute drive from town; so walking wasn’t much of an option. Hitchhiking was, but as a younger kid I wasn’t brave enough to chance it… Plus, that’s a terrible way to get to and from work at night.
I did manage to get around it though. I ended up mowing lawns; and in my area lawns were really big. I managed to start a small landscaping business, and I was netting over $150 a week. “Screw them and their allowance”, I thought. They kept on the nickel and dime-ing, and when they confronted me, I merely said that $5 a week was the cheapest maid service I had ever heard of. I was making $150 a week, hell I’d pay them an extra twenty bucks a week to keep it up if they wanted. They were unimpressed, and of course the system ended. It was never devised for the other kids, it was devised for me. My brother actually got at least 20 minutes to pick up his dishes. I got less than a minute; when I left the room they swooped into action.
Later on, during that summer before grade 12, I got kicked out again. Of course, in the true narcissistic fashion, it happened when nobody else was home, and I was alone with my mother as everyone else was out of town. I cant even remember why to this day, apparently my mom’s story was that she had asked me to mow the lawn and I had already made plans to go camping. I got home and she was furiously mowing, and I asked if she’d like some help, and she flipped out. I don’t buy it. I remember having a long and heartfelt conversation with her where she just told me, “Maybe it’s better if you don’t live here. Get out, go live someplace else”. I don’t remember what it was about. This was the second time I’d been kicked out. Given my past, I realized that the only person who was going to really look after me was me. I may have been 17, but this constant dangling of the roof over my head that had gone on since the first time I was kicked out was literally killing me. I needed stability. This wasn’t it.
I got solace in that a friend’s dad allowed me to stay at his place while I figured it out. He suggested I go to welfare and ask for some youth supports, they had those sorts of programs, and he had been a foster parent. I went in earnest, and explained my story to the social worker, and said I just wanted to finish high school. I had enrolled myself in Grade 12, and was doing my best to go, despite being technically homeless at this time. They told me they’d have to call my “mother” and ask if I was allowed to come home. I told them to go for it, it seemed like my mother had no interest in me living there ever again.
Then, shock and horror. My “mother” had told them that I was allowed to come home any time, as long as I was willing to follow the rules under her roof. I contacted them and suggested that maybe I could come over for dinner. It was a terrifying experience, because I didn’t even know what rules I was breaking, or what the rules were. All I knew was that I couldn’t succeed at following any of the rules because the rules were always unspoken and they always changed. It was a moving target. Normally one would expect that staying in school and trying my best and not getting into trouble would be enough; but I would get lambasted for getting too good of a grade because I beat my golden child sister; or I would get an A and it wouldn’t be good enough because the teacher graded too easily.
I arrived. The first words out of her mouth with a big hug were, “It’s so much better that you don’t live here anymore. It’s good to see you.” An awkward dinner at best.
Back to welfare. This process was repeated five times, until I gave up. I later heard from her friend who was quite disgusted with the whole affair that this was all done merely to “teach me a lesson”. I guess the lesson was, you’ll finish high school, or you’ll eat, but not both. I never did finish high school, I had to get a job. I was on my own.
A year or so later, after working 21 days on with 1 day off, and making good money, I got wrongfully dismissed, and the unemployment insurance claim was a nightmare, putting me on temporary welfare while I appealed their claim and filed suit against the employer. I was living in what was effectively a frat-house, and these guys were totally destroying the house. I didn’t want to get sued for their drunken pranks where they treated the house like a place to destroy. I had to have hat in hand and ask my parents, if I could come back home.
I offered to pay room and board. Declined. I only wanted two months. “Ok” they said. I knew it was tenuous; heck I had been kicked out twice for no real reason and given the runaround from welfare. I strived to be there as little as possible. I kept most of my things with my friends, especially things like my stereo system so I wouldn’t accidentally annoy them. I was pounding the pavement looking for work every day, all day, and persuing my claim against my former employer. Eventually, I got paid out $1600 for the wrongful dismissal and I bought a houseful of furniture and put down a damage deposit and first months’ rent on an apartment. Boy was that ever a smart thing to do; I had only been staying with my “parents” for three weeks at this time. I didn’t trust that I wouldn’t get kicked out for no reason again, so I had made moves to get the hell out of there as swiftly as possible. Their refusal to take my room and board payments troubled me. My mom had always said, “if you pay your own way you can follow your own rules” – and I took that very literally. I was 19 by this point, and I wanted to pay my way to be treated like an adult, rather than the crap I got before.
I was sitting at the kitchen table on the phone, trying to locate a truck, to move the stuff I had bought to my new apartment. My dad poked his head in the front door and said they needed to talk to me. When I got outside, my mom looked all angry, and my dad told me that they couldn’t have me living there anymore, that it was too hard and stressful on my mom. I was shocked. I asked for two months but here I was three weeks in and they were wanting me out, like, tomorrow! They couldn’t come up with anything concrete, it was just the way it was going to be. I very proudly told them that they had interrupted me in looking for a truck because I had a place to move out to at the end of the month; and said I would talk to my landlord and see if I could move in a few days early, and my new landlord obliged, as the suite was empty already.
After moving out, I found out some soul destroying things. Apparently I had received a number of phone calls for jobs – people who I knew from long prior who really liked me and wanted to hire me. My mother took the messages; but never gave them to me. So I was continuing to look for work in a small town where jobs are scarce and she had basically given them the impression that I didn’t even bother to call them back.
I now understand; I was in the role of the scapegoat. I was not supposed to succeed. I was supposed to live a destitute life, I was supposed to be homeless, to be the bottom of the barrel. It would allow her to play the martyr in that I was such a bad child (which I wasn’t) and how she had tried so hard to do good by me (which she didn’t). The goal of booting me out three weeks into staying with them at the last minute was to keep me off guard and leave me grasping at straws.
I didn’t have much contact with them for years after that; and I didn’t get them contacting me much during those years either. I ended up working at McDonalds, and what little contact I did get from my “mother” was that I should “stick with McDonalds, it’s your ace in the hole”, when I was looking for better work options. I guess me working at McDonalds was a good place as far as she was concerned for me to be. To me, however, it was a great place to work and get laid, not exactly a career.
I got a bit of justice later, when I got hired into investment banking. My mom was a bank manager, you see, and she had a planner working for her at the credit union in town. Knowing I was in the same industry as my evil mother, I really took it on with vigor. I stole a quarter million dollars in accounts from her planner every single month. My mom, finally seeing her wayward ways, tried to hire me. “Whatever they are paying you, we will pay double.” I didn’t take the bait, thank god. Investment banking jobs in a small town like that are hard to come by, and loyalty is valued over performance. If I took her job, there’s no way I could come back.
That job led to another job, and another. I eventually started doing a great job as the trainer for all of my province. It was what seemed like the time for me to be redeemed, I wasn’t the failure that she flagged me as, maybe she would learn?
Nope.
Every accomplishment I made was belittled. I had plaques of my name from five star hotels where I was the keynote speaker in front of hundreds of investment bankers and while she would tell me in private what a great thing that was, she would only tell other people including members of my own family that I only called to brag and that I was just a two-bit chump in the industry. My family members still thought I was into drugs, which I never really was save for smoking the occasional joint; odd to have a drug addicted investment banker trainer.
I flew to Toronto and all around western Canada, and tried and tried to tell of my tales of success. They were belittled to my face in front of all of my siblings, and I was still chalked up as a failure.
Meanwhile, when I spoke of things I did, topics were instantly diverted to my sister. I recall having my parents over to my house to see my 14 foot projection home theatre system. Upon showing my mother, she instantly drifted… “Your sister H… she has very nice things”. I mean, come on, I’m playing Star Wars on a 14 foot projection system on a one thousand watt home theatre system here… and you’re talking about how my sister has a stainless steel fridge??
This process continued, and got much worse and way more personal as I got older.
I got engaged; shortly after the engagement party my fiancee’s mother received a call – saying that I was always an “angry child” who was “prone to violence” and that her daughter should “seriously reconsider” a life with me. That relationship didn’t last.
Smelling blood, my mother went after my next girlfriend, saying that she should just leave me and come after me for child support, that I was no father material for her or her kids. Next girlfriend, a gorgeous Iranian girl, was told that she was so pretty she could do much better than me, and that I was actually a closet alcoholic and she should keep an eye on it. My life became somewhat miserable with that lady after that. My next girlfriend, upon introduction, quickly was whisked away, and learned that she “should seriously reconsider moving in” with me, because she should “consider the safety of her daughter”.
These sorts of stories weren’t limited to my girlfriends. Her own friends, who had never met me, as she cycled through friends on an almost quarterly basis, were lambasting me to my own girlfriend. My mom had wanted my girlfriend to come up on her own, without me, to get to know her; she reported that any time my name came up, it was in the negative, whether it was just her and my mother or even my mother’s friends alone.
Well, recently, at the urging of my mother, I decided to go to the police to report the abuse her brother inflicted on my friend. I was going to beat the man senseless; and at 36 I realized that after practicing martial arts on and off for 15 years, this now 50 year old man wouldn’t stand a chance, I’d end up in jail. I told her what I had done.
She rapidly told the man of the allegations and he was currently in my city. I got a call from my “dad” who told me to stay put, the police were coming to protect me, and they never came. I called a bodyguard, and had a man in a bulletproof vest with an assault rifle patrolling my property. The police, when I called, said they knew of no reason why they were supposed to come. Later that night, my dad even admitted it was my mother who wanted him to tell me that, and she venomously denied it.
My next few phone calls with my mother were filled with accusations; that I was lying, that my girlfriend was a liar, that I only reported this to raise my public profile. That I was such a braggart, and any assertions that I was a “good friend and loyal person” was mere bravado. She railed on me with a rage not unlike I had experienced 25 years prior.
I did some research. I realized – that my “mother” was a narcissist. My sister H was the golden child, that is why she could do no wrong. I was a scapegoat; and my mother wanted me to stay that way. My other now ostracized sister, was a former scapegoat who had unplugged. My mothers’ oldest daughter, now dead, was the first scapegoat. Maternal narcissism explained my entire childhood. It finally started to make some sense, what had happened to all of us kids in that sickeningly dysfunctional family. It was like reading a playbook of our lives.
It all made sense now. I had gotten a job promotion and a signing bonus and bought a sailboat, everyone thought that I had made a hopelessly irresponsible decision, and didn’t know that I was now in the big leagues. I was hanging out in the most exclusive social clubs in the city, I was mingling with the city’s elite. I was making more money than I had ever made before, and yet I could still get not even an iota of respect from my own mother. It didn’t make any sense – until I learned about narcissism.
I decided to go no contact with my mother. This was only after explaining to my “father” how I had had enough of her and explaining some of the things that had happened over the years. I got a pretty boilerplate response from my “dad” in his response: “I agree with everything that she has said. If a relationship resumes I hope that it is cordial.”. I could only sum up my reaction in one word: “Wow”.
In retrospect, the only thing that a son normally must do in order to get a basic level of respect from one’s mother is to not turn out to be a complete and total failure. While I’ve made my share of mistakes and mishaps, I’m doing just fine, I’m a lowly investment banker with a sailboat, a family, a house, a truck, and a beautiful daughter whom I have done tremendous work to catch up in her schooling from being pre-K level at entrance of grade 2 to exceeding expectations entering grade 3. I work extensively with the local police on community crime prevention, I am a member of a wide variety of community boards. I have been written up in the local and provincial papers; I even got a phone call from a notable provincial columnist while I was on vacation on my boat to hear of my thoughts on our educational system.
This woman would never have given me any respect. She is a narcissist. My golden child sister, ironically, works as a city worker designing graphics. I have no qualms with her career; she does just fine and she raises her son well and her husband is a good, likeable guy. But to have her waved in my face when I am meeting one of the richest men in the country, or the next prime minister, or hanging out with cabinet minsters, makes no sense. It is not that I don’t want to hear about my sister, but the typical narcissistic mother ignoring my accomplishments has begun to make no sense. When I talk about sitting at a table with five cabinet ministers, the last thing that is relevant is that my golden child sister has been to the legislature. It’s not even on the same wavelength.
Narcissism is terrible. I have felt so wounded so many times, I have tried so hard to get my mother to respect me, to only even respect me enough not to slander me behind my back would have been considered a victory. I now realize that she is a narcissist. She will never change. I will never change her. So the best thing for me is to never speak to her, never feed her any information, ever, ever, again.
I had to take serious stock of my relationship with this woman. There has not been a single phone call, visit, or conversation between a friend or a girlfriend of mine, that has not left me grasping at the “why on earth”, ever, if not worse. She is toxic. I can call and talk about my accomplishments or something I am proud of, and then hear less than a week later of how she is belittling it to people far and wide, starting with my own so-called “dad”.
I am most disappointed with my “dad”. He was the one who gave me hope. And he is also the one who let this woman run roughshod over all of the kids, his own biological kids included. I speak to siblings; they all complain about the blatant double standard, they complain about the robbed relationship with their father that suddenly never was. When they reached out for their father, they got their stepmother. He never had the balls to wade in and do anything about it, despite being a smart man, an academic, who was fully capable of thinking for himself.
Now, out of the 7 kids, one is dead and three wont speak to them ever again. You’d think – you’d think – that maybe they may take stock that 50% of the kids never speaking to their parents again might show them that maybe they were culpable in some way. Nope. My now dead sister; she was the scourge that sucked my mother’s time away from everyone, especially my golden child sister (sick irony there). My now excommunicated sister who is still alive, oh no, it is her who hurt my mother and my father, despite moving all the way to live less than 10 minutes away and feeling truly burned when she realized the dad who had no time to visit her was traveling to another city every other weekend to see my golden child sister. And me, who knows what they will say of me, but they certainly will be saying negative things about me to cover up for their own disaster.
Luckily for me though, I am involved in a police investigation. It has been said by members of my “mother”’s own birth family that she was the front runner in covering up the abuses of her brother. They were never told about what happened to me or my friend. They are quite angry.
In an ironic twist, the “mother” who tried so hard to isolate me from everyone and everything, may herself become isolated. In a small town, people who protect child molesters aren’t given much rope, people just stop associating and gossip behind backs. Her family is disgusted with her, given not only her hiding of the facts and cover up, but also how she has treated me given all of this – the other victims are eager to come forward after all these years, realizing about the other victims that they never knew. And my mother has had this molester over to her house several times, and trotted him around town as the great guy who does research in our North – with vulnerable kids and seniors.
Small towns don’t reflect kindly on these people. She runs a small notary business. I hope it withers and dies. I am angry – yes, man am I ever angry. Nobody takes kindly to being smeared over a 25 year period. The narcissist thinks very long term – the goal was always to make me destitute and screwed up so that if I ever did come forward nobody would believe me.
But unfortunately for her, that’s not the case at all. I’m doing just fine, thank you.
To all the other adult children of narcissists out there… be strong. Don’t live the life of constantly trying to prove who you really are. It isn’t worth your time. You could be doing dental surgery on top of the Empire State Building with hand carved tools made out of toothpicks on live network television – you’ll still not be good enough. Break free.
Be strong – you are stronger alone than with a narcissistic mother. They only sap your strength and make you question the goodness inside of you.
I hope this helps.
