Mother's Legacy

It seems that I'm always talking about fear.  Fear is so real to me that it just takes hold so I can't even think.  Fear makes me react and do things, that I wouldn't do otherwise.

I am worried about my children.  No one has called me yet.  My youngest daughter has seemed to win everyone over.  I wrote this letter to my oldest daughter:

I realize this has been laid on your shoulders.  Now I am looking for coping mechanisms in dealing with this.  Its not me laying this on your shoulders, this has been laid on our shoulders.  

I know there is a great deal of difficulty not going into denial. But trust me, I have an Aunt Denial, you could easily be one too.  And if we/you are, then Thomas(my youngest daughter's new baby will spend the rest of his life trying to fix his life and unable to do so and maybe walking up to the truth when he is near 50 years old.

That is, if he is lucky.  Most are not that lucky but have been destroyed or dead.  We must stay in the truth, no matter what. It is not the easy thing to do.

I would do anything to be wrong.  It is near Christmas, I have not gotten to see the baby, nor is anyone calling me.  My youngest daughter is a pathological liar and she gossips.  I don't get anything else from her at this point.  But seriously, triangulation?  I am all too familiar with it.

I was thinking what if you put a narcissist on the rack ie. medieval style?  Then threatened to tear them apart unless they reveal their true self.  Sounds kind of crude I know, but what if we were to try it and then if we were some kind of superhuman that can tell when they told the truth or not, and stopped the racking in that case.  Suppose we have that setup on them.  Do you think the true self would appear?  I don't know.

The true self of a narc seems to be hidden even to themselves.  It might even be dead, who knows. The false self is on automatic, it can't shut itself off.  It is all the narc knows.  To them this is the real person that they are this image loving destructive person.  To this day I'm sure my mother doesn't know what she did was so terrible, I'm sure of it.  Well, she knew when she was doing it that it was terrible then. But after some time has past they don't know that they are evil.  They are above reproach at that point.  So they know what they did what they did was wrong, but after some time has past they are back in the false image.  Its a false image, nothing else.  That's how come they don't feel guilt, its that false image.

To put it much simpler, mother knew what she did was wrong, but she used a mask to protect herself from that truth.  I remember once, a time when she was being abusive to me, and then she would stop herself, only because she didn't like the image of herself.  I would be all silent during those times and it was like this wave of conscience came over her, then it became more of the pushing away of that feeling.  Or maybe it is because she had already had her fill of supply, better keep the food for later and not destroy it.

Or, is it that they are afraid of getting caught.  Suppose the victim were to clue in to them, the narcissist has to strike quick, like a venomous snake.  I don't know.  Or there are the times it went on for hours, like in school.  I remember this, and I think it was because when in a gang or with flying monkeys they don't have to work so quick.  Or when someone appears out of the blue, the narcissist turns into a sweet loving person.  I tend to believe that they can change into a real normal person, they don't really want to.  And that it is this need for supply that fuels the narc, not doing the evil in itself.

Its not like a normal person who might do harm but feel badly about it and feel that intensity of guilt and remorse.  And who lives in reality.

Yeah, they might go into counselling, right after they are in a crisis.  But that is only to get back what they lost, they will enforce their will on the counselor and make them do as told, even after they have destroyed everything.

That is enough pity for the narcs.  My point is to try to figure out this thing in my emotions that tell me when a narc is around.  Emotions have no words.  I think its because emotions were designed way before human language came about.  We would speak in a very primitive way only to express those emotions.  And those emotions would only keep us safe, fed, warm etc. stuff like that.

Around a narc I'm not safe.  I immediately go into hiding.  I fake I like them, I fake I'm ok with them. That's my most immediate response I get from myself.  But they must see something else about me, something that they can feed upon, and that is what I'm trying to figure out here.  I get that need to please them same as I did with mother.  Except I don't do it with my youngest daughter.

I don't get that way with my daughter who is narcissistic as well.  She gossips to me and I tell her to stop it, then she stops.  She has no where to go with that behaviour with me.  I have to try to not keep things hidden with her though.

This is not like an animal behaviour such as my kitten biting my feet right now and I'm telling him to stop it and he won't.  This is an able minded individual who knows right from wrong.  Its just that my daughter's brain is on automatic and won't stop this until I tell her too.  Her first response is to always do wrong until I tell her.  Now its that first response to do wrong is what makes a narcissist, just like a child.  But an adult should know better.

Its like an ingrained behaviour.  Can they stop?  Can they one day decide to change and make themselves like normal people?  Well, they don't have a clue as to what that is.  And you can't even convince them.  They see themselves as normal and we are just their slaves.  That decision to change will never come.  And yet, it could come and they can be like normal.  That could happen if they ever made that choice, they know right from wrong.  I just choose to believe that.  Or that they can't and they don't have a conscience.  So I can't really logic this out, all I can do is talk of my experiences.  I suck trying to use logic here.

I have known many narcs in my time.  I remember my first ex-husband.  I refer to him as an asshole. Yes he was abusive and horrible and mean.  But he wasn't narcissistic in the least.  As a matter of fact, it probably would have been better for himself if he was narcissistic.  I know he felt guilt and empathy and he just hated it.  He was all too familiar with guilt and it would be written all over his face.

My second ex-husband we were married for 20 years.  Now, that was a narcissist.  The first one, I couldn't stay married to for even 5 years.  The second one was much more friendly, easy going, fun to be with and talk to.  He played it so well.  It was a long time before I realized how messed up he made me.

With my first ex-husband, sure he lied but he felt so guilty, it would be so apparent, even when I was young, he was easily caught.  He couldn't gaslight to save his life.  As a matter of fact, he couldn't do anything to me, and at that time I was a constant victim, but not to him.  If he was a narc, then he sucked at it.

Just like my sister.  Now, she knows exactly what mother is like and tries to defend her.  But sister is not a narc, just really in need in mother's money, thus she has a reason for being the way she is, unlike a narc.  But I do tend to forget that narcissism is on a spectrum.  From the nearly nothing to the psychopath.

So I guess what I'm saying is that narcs are hard-wired into that.  That's why I always talk about vulnerability as the way of weeding them out, especially in relationships.  In fact, just let all your walls down and see them come in for the attack, then you will know what they are immediately.

I was reading on the relationship site, a woman asked a question.  Her boyfriend was asking her for a threesome.  She kept telling him no, I don't do that, don't want to do that.  He kept asking her though.You know what the answer was?  The answer is show him how this makes you feel, show your vulnerability, then tell him that it hurts your feelings him bringing it up.  There, that gives him the opportunity for attack or need to take care of her feelings.

He might say, oh your a big baby or frigid.  H E L L O, attack.

He might say, oh I didn't know it made you feel that way, I'm so sorry, I'll never bring it up again.  I just wanted to try something different.

You see just by her telling him she didn't want to wasn't enough for him to realize that this wasn't about her not wanting to try something new this was about hurting her feelings.  Yes, good men can be that dense.  Sorry, I don't want to offend.

Lol, yes I would too be mad at him for even mentioning anything like that.  However, the way the world is these days, who knows what he is thinking.

If we cover up vulnerability it might take many months to discover you are with a narc instead of a good man.  But never show vulnerability to a narc if you know they are a narc.  With me this happens very quickly.  All these body sensations I have and I start acting weird, and I just know.

How to describe a narc.  Well, it rather difficult really.  Do normal people attack, or gaslight or triangulate?  Perhaps they do get mean and gaslight.  I don't think I've seen a normal person triangulate.  To me it seems really hard to do.  Maybe if they are after your job or something like that. In order to meet their physical needs as in food, clothing shelter.  Maybe.  I once even seen a normal person have a love affair.  All these horrible things normal people are capable of.  But they don't need to terrorize for no reason other than to get a fix of narcissistic supply.

I am still upset over what has become of my youngest daughter.  The worst part is, that I know she will never experience real peace.  Not in the truest sense of the word.  And now I have to find some way to deal with her.  She is not my mother.  She is my daughter.  Can I get past my anger?  Can I somehow cultivate the emotional resources to handle her?  I hope so.  But you see in dealing with someone like this, there will always be lies, manipulation and so forth.  It even hurts too much to talk about how she was as a child.  I think what I will do is, know she is like this.  Know what she is like. Not expect too much from her.  Truth is, I do expect a lot from her, I am expecting her to change.

I know this one girl who is a friend with my older daughter.  That girl has two boys with severe autism.  My daughter has one autistic child, so I get autism, but two kids like that?  Oh boy.  Her life must not be easy.  Still she has time to paint her nails and comb her long flowing hair.  And the needs of her boys are always taken care of.  She also appears quite normal despite having this huge responsibility that seems to me to be so crushing.  All the parents of autistic children have to deal with it.  What if I looked at the situation with my daughter like that?

But my youngest daughter can function normally and I don't have to worry about that.  Just that she is evil?  Soooo hard to accept.  But I just can't bury my head in the sand about it.  Can you imagine if that girl with the autistic boys did that?  What if she treated her kids as normal?  She can't that wouldn't work.

I know I'm being horrible here, it sounds like I'm comparing autism to narcissism, but I'm not.  I'm trying to see the parallel of how coping mechanisms will work.  I mean, afterall my daughter is not speaking to me now, because obviously I haven't been coping too well.  Well, its not working right now.  She seems to want to avoid me because she can't be a narcissist around me.  I keep calling her on it.  It is time for me to accept it.

And its a bad example comparing the two situations.  Besides which, this girl can look at her two boys and they will light up her life.  She can smile, she can access all sorts of information about autism on a whim.

We want our families all intact.  So does that girl, so does my oldest daughter, and the best way to do that is accepting the truth.  And finding emotional resources and coping mechanisms.  There are no pills to erase the autism in her boys, just as there are no pills for narcissism.

Or maybe that is just stupid positive thinking.  I'm grieving right now, and maybe that is the best thing.  I asked my stepdaughter to facebook her last night, I'm trying to reach out and talk to her.  I grieve for my daughter, and its so hard.  When bad things happen and you're an ACON everything feels so much worse.  The problem is, I can't self soothe.  I know logically that she will contact me but I somehow can't be at peace with that.  It feels like I'm falling apart.

What I did was wrong.  Blaming her, trying to make her feel guilty for lying.  Well, she should feel guilty, no doubt about that, but that is not helping.  I have to find what works.