Anyone who grew up under the cruel regime of a narcissistic abuser will instantly recognize the substance of this topic. It has to do with the way in which narcissistic abusers tend to make everything about themselves, even and perhaps especially events that are objectively and incontrovertibly not about themselves. For instance, on my 18th birthday, my mother wrote me a letter telling me that, because I was such a selfish person, she wasn't going to give me a gift. A few days after my 18th birthday, when my father announced that he was no longer paying child support, my mother screamed at me that we were going to lose our house, and that it was all my fault. (This was the first time I ever seriously considered suicide). She almost didn't come to my wedding, and she spent most of our engagement torturing me with cruel head games, saying at multiple points that she never wanted to speak to me again, and once threatening to call the police if I ever again stepped foot on her property. She did not attend my PhD graduation ceremony. Etc. As a result, these events are forever marked by the cruel scars of parental spite, which, I suspect, was exactly what she wanted. Ruining an event is one way of imposing oneself indelibly into the memory associated with the event.
Last week I was reminded of this, as my beautiful little niece celebrated her 7th birthday. My niece is, for better and for worse (as I like to remind my sister constantly), the spittin' image of my baby sister when she was a little girl. Smart as hell, clever, beautiful long, sandy blond hair, sparkling eyes, a smile that lets you know she knows more than you do, she loves to dance, and knows how to get her way.
She was born in April of 2015. Her birth marked the beginning of my mother's downward spiral and eventual death. My sister and I were somewhat estranged at the time of my niece's birth, thanks to years of manipulation on the part of my mother. My mother would regularly call me and tell me what a disappointment I was as a son, telling me at the same time what a wonderful daughter my sister was... how loyal she was, how much she loved her mother, etc. What I didn't realize was that my mother was also doing the same thing, in reverse, to my sister. I had grown pretty numb to my mother's abuse by that time, but my sister hated me as a result of all the wedges my mother drove between us. What this meant was that, at the time of my niece's birth, I wasn't privy to the details of what was happening from my sister's perspective, and while I knew that my mother's account was unreliable, I had nothing else with which to fill in the blanks.
My sister had made a plan with my mother for when she went into labor. They would stop by my mother's house, drop off my nephew (who was just barely 2 at the time), and head to the hospital. So, when my sister went into labor, that's exactly what they did. They drove my nephew to my mother's house, left him with my mother and stepfather, and went to the hospital. At that time, my sister told my mom she would text her when it was close to time to deliver. In yet another example of the pernicious effects of narcissism, my sister, recognizing that my mother would inevitably make a scene at the hospital if she had to wait in the waiting room for long, concluded that it would be better for all involved if my mom arrived closer to the actual delivery time. So instead of thinking only about her own wellbeing (as a delivering mother should be), she was also stressing about how to negotiate the childish antics of my mother. But then, my brother-in-law's family showed up at the hospital immediately, and began (innocently) chronicling the experience on Facebook. My mother, seeing this, interpreted it as my sister's doing (it wasn't), the idea being that my sister didn't want my mother there, but she did want her mother-in-law there. And my mother decided to dive into a bottle of vodka to indulge her loathsome self-pity. Shortly after this, my sister texted my mother and asked her to come to the hospital. But my mom, now completely blitzed, (with my nephew in her care, no less), was too mired in drunken self-pity to go to the hospital. And she didn't respond to my sister's text. My sister delivered her baby girl without her mother present to celebrate the occasion with her. Furthermore, our mother didn't go to the hospital the next day to see my sister or my niece, nor did she call or text. My sister was released from the hospital that afternoon, and went to my mother's house to collect my nephew, discovering my mother completely blitzed and incoherent. This was, understandably, the last straw for my sister. She told my mother that unless and until she began to respect some basic boundaries about her drinking, the two of them could not have a relationship.
This was not the story that I got from my mother. On my mother's account, my sister had uninvited her to the hospital, invited her in-laws, and then the next day, inexplicably shown up angry, grabbed her son, and sped away, never to be heard from again. This was the moment that my mother began her long game of self-destruction. For years... well, really, for most of our lives, our mother had this guilt formula wherein she would treat us like pieces of garbage, then when we would be upset with her, she would cryptically allude to vague "health issues", saying that someday soon, she would be dead, and then we'd really be sorry. By the time our mother died, she'd been dying for thirty years. But when my sister finally put up that wall, my mother decided to implement her self-destruction as a concrete strategy. She began drinking, constantly. By late spring, she was telling me, in incoherent telephone conversations, that she was having difficulty walking. When I would encourage her to see a doctor, she would tell me that she wasn't "rich," like I, apparently, was. I chalked it up to her dramatic posturing, (which had been a staple of her abuse for decades). By the summertime, she was in a wheelchair. Again, I chalked this up to her dramatic posturing, as there were indications that she was, in fact, walking, when people weren't around. Through this whole affair, she would tell me that my sister wouldn't have anything to do with her, and, according to my mother, "she just keeps saying, 'you don't get it.'" I'd ask, "don't get what, Mom?" and she would claim not to know, repeating herself through the slurs of alcoholic anaesthetization. Again, being estranged from my sister at this point, I was only getting one side of the story. I encouraged my mother to ask my sister to go to family counseling together. She initially said she couldn't afford it. So I offered to pay for it (you know, because I'm so insanely rich). Then she declined on the grounds that she knew my sister would refuse to go.
Then came my sister's wedding, in the late summer. My sister looked past her differences with me and invited me to the wedding. She also invited my mother, but as a condition, insisted that she be sober. That was apparently too much to ask, as my mother didn't attend, yet again breaking my sister's heart. I sat with her in the church, as she anxiously looked back at the doors again and again, hoping against the odds that our mother would come. She didn't. I proudly walked my sister down the aisle and gave her away. Thus began our reconciliation.
Then came early November. My mother collapsed, and was taken to the hospital. It was only then that I realized the depths of her self-destruction, and that her posturing was only partly feigned. Through conversations with the attending physician, I realized that what my mother had begun doing when my sister put her foot down about her drinking was, she began drinking heavily, constantly, non-stop. Her body reacted by not allowing her to keep any food down. She responded by intensifying her drinking and cutting her eating to the bare minimum, a tomato here, a slice of bread there. And most of it, her body would immediately expel. As a result, her potassium levels plummeted. It was their precipitous decline that had weakened her limbs and deadened her extremities to the point that she required additional assistance with ambulation. But rather than recognizing this as her body's cry for help, my mother had merely interpreted it as a sign that her strategy was working. Her health really was declining, and sooner or later, we'd have to come to her rescue and be at her mercy. We'd have to see what awful and ungrateful children we'd been. So she'd doubled down.
In the hospital, my mother was, naturally, insufferable. She screamed constantly at the doctors and the nurses, she tried to claw them, to the point that she had to be physically restrained to the bed. So she writhed like a wild animal, and ripped her IVs out with her teeth. After 48 hours, the doctors, unable to subdue her any further, and having staved off the absolute worst for the time being, released her into the care of my stepfather.
Over the course of that weekend, my sister and I reconnected. We talked openly and honestly like we hadn't done in over a decade. I learned about the extent of my mother's drinking, how it had been going on for years, how she had hidden it from us (or tried to anyway). I learned the story about my niece's birth, my mother's tantrum, her drunken dereliction of grandparental duty regarding my nephew, and I learned exactly what it was that my sister had demanded of her, that had kicked off this whole degradation. My sister, blaming herself, said that it was all her fault that our mother was in this condition. That she shouldn't have "cut our mother off" that way. And that she was planning to basically drop the walls and unconditionally let our mother back in. I made a decision and recommendation that, in hindsight, set off a chain of events that led to our mother's death. I told my sister that she was absolutely in the right with her ultimatums. That love, even the love of a parent, is never obligatory. That she is a mom, and that, first and foremost, her obligations are to the protection of the wellbeing of her children. That there is absolutely nothing wrong, and on the contrary, that it is in everyone's best interest that there be clear and established boundaries for our mother's behavior. I encouraged her to approach a reconciliation with our mother, if at all, with the utmost caution. That she approach her first by herself, and, if anything, say that she wanted to reestablish a relationship, but that the only way that they could do that would be if my mother would agree to some ground rules, all involving abstention from drinking when she and the kids were around, and of course, the uncompromising cessation of all abusive belittlement of her. That crossing either of those lines would result in another break in communications between them. My sister followed this advice to the letter.
Our mother refused. At this moment, she realized that her plan had failed. She had gotten exactly what she wanted in terms of the decaying of her physical wellbeing to the point that she had to be hospitalized. However, it didn't have the desired effect on my sister or me. We didn't collapse into a state of abject groveling, there was no "come to Jesus" moment where we were suddenly overwhelmed with shame at our ingratitude as her offspring. Her wager unsuccessful, she immediately resumed the practices that had put her in the hospital. One month later, she was dead.
At her funeral, my sister and I stood together at the coffin, looking upon her body. All the mortician's expertise and efforts were unable to restore to my mother the customary look of peace on the face of the dead. Her eyelids, her mouth, her cheeks, even her gnarled fingers, all bore witness to the years of resentment, spite, self-loathing, self-pity, and substance abuse that had slowly gotten the best of our mother. My sister cried, and through her sobs, she kissed our mother's forehead and said, "I'm so sorry, Mommy." Even now, I can still see her tears saturating our mother's forehead, tears mixed with saliva, both uncontrollably flowing forth from a soul in agony, racked with guilt. But I held my sister, and I assured her with absolute certainty that it was my fault, not hers, that I was the one who had advised her on how to handle the situation, and that she had merely followed my advice. I can't remember, however, whether or not I told her the truth, that even though I bore the responsibility, I wasn't sorry. That if my sister had gone to our mother and granted her wish of unconditional surrender, it would have only been a matter of time before my mother had completely destroyed my sister, and that my niece and nephew would have inevitably been recipients of the shrapnel, casualties of a unilateral emotional war. I bear that responsibility, but I would, without hesitation, do it again.
I offer all of this as a reflection on the ways in which our abusers impose themselves into our every memory, even and especially the joyful ones. Anything that is not inherently about them, they will make about them by inscribing on our hearts a scar that will forever be associated with that joy. Last week, as we celebrated the birthday of my beautiful niece, (whom my mother never met), my heart was also revisited by the scars of the events that followed upon her birth, and the scars of my culpability in them. I offer this reflection as perhaps a small consolation to those victims of abusers who also wrestle with such gut-wrenching ambivalence over life's joyful moments: you are not alone.
Last week I was reminded of this, as my beautiful little niece celebrated her 7th birthday. My niece is, for better and for worse (as I like to remind my sister constantly), the spittin' image of my baby sister when she was a little girl. Smart as hell, clever, beautiful long, sandy blond hair, sparkling eyes, a smile that lets you know she knows more than you do, she loves to dance, and knows how to get her way.
She was born in April of 2015. Her birth marked the beginning of my mother's downward spiral and eventual death. My sister and I were somewhat estranged at the time of my niece's birth, thanks to years of manipulation on the part of my mother. My mother would regularly call me and tell me what a disappointment I was as a son, telling me at the same time what a wonderful daughter my sister was... how loyal she was, how much she loved her mother, etc. What I didn't realize was that my mother was also doing the same thing, in reverse, to my sister. I had grown pretty numb to my mother's abuse by that time, but my sister hated me as a result of all the wedges my mother drove between us. What this meant was that, at the time of my niece's birth, I wasn't privy to the details of what was happening from my sister's perspective, and while I knew that my mother's account was unreliable, I had nothing else with which to fill in the blanks.
My sister had made a plan with my mother for when she went into labor. They would stop by my mother's house, drop off my nephew (who was just barely 2 at the time), and head to the hospital. So, when my sister went into labor, that's exactly what they did. They drove my nephew to my mother's house, left him with my mother and stepfather, and went to the hospital. At that time, my sister told my mom she would text her when it was close to time to deliver. In yet another example of the pernicious effects of narcissism, my sister, recognizing that my mother would inevitably make a scene at the hospital if she had to wait in the waiting room for long, concluded that it would be better for all involved if my mom arrived closer to the actual delivery time. So instead of thinking only about her own wellbeing (as a delivering mother should be), she was also stressing about how to negotiate the childish antics of my mother. But then, my brother-in-law's family showed up at the hospital immediately, and began (innocently) chronicling the experience on Facebook. My mother, seeing this, interpreted it as my sister's doing (it wasn't), the idea being that my sister didn't want my mother there, but she did want her mother-in-law there. And my mother decided to dive into a bottle of vodka to indulge her loathsome self-pity. Shortly after this, my sister texted my mother and asked her to come to the hospital. But my mom, now completely blitzed, (with my nephew in her care, no less), was too mired in drunken self-pity to go to the hospital. And she didn't respond to my sister's text. My sister delivered her baby girl without her mother present to celebrate the occasion with her. Furthermore, our mother didn't go to the hospital the next day to see my sister or my niece, nor did she call or text. My sister was released from the hospital that afternoon, and went to my mother's house to collect my nephew, discovering my mother completely blitzed and incoherent. This was, understandably, the last straw for my sister. She told my mother that unless and until she began to respect some basic boundaries about her drinking, the two of them could not have a relationship.
This was not the story that I got from my mother. On my mother's account, my sister had uninvited her to the hospital, invited her in-laws, and then the next day, inexplicably shown up angry, grabbed her son, and sped away, never to be heard from again. This was the moment that my mother began her long game of self-destruction. For years... well, really, for most of our lives, our mother had this guilt formula wherein she would treat us like pieces of garbage, then when we would be upset with her, she would cryptically allude to vague "health issues", saying that someday soon, she would be dead, and then we'd really be sorry. By the time our mother died, she'd been dying for thirty years. But when my sister finally put up that wall, my mother decided to implement her self-destruction as a concrete strategy. She began drinking, constantly. By late spring, she was telling me, in incoherent telephone conversations, that she was having difficulty walking. When I would encourage her to see a doctor, she would tell me that she wasn't "rich," like I, apparently, was. I chalked it up to her dramatic posturing, (which had been a staple of her abuse for decades). By the summertime, she was in a wheelchair. Again, I chalked this up to her dramatic posturing, as there were indications that she was, in fact, walking, when people weren't around. Through this whole affair, she would tell me that my sister wouldn't have anything to do with her, and, according to my mother, "she just keeps saying, 'you don't get it.'" I'd ask, "don't get what, Mom?" and she would claim not to know, repeating herself through the slurs of alcoholic anaesthetization. Again, being estranged from my sister at this point, I was only getting one side of the story. I encouraged my mother to ask my sister to go to family counseling together. She initially said she couldn't afford it. So I offered to pay for it (you know, because I'm so insanely rich). Then she declined on the grounds that she knew my sister would refuse to go.
Then came my sister's wedding, in the late summer. My sister looked past her differences with me and invited me to the wedding. She also invited my mother, but as a condition, insisted that she be sober. That was apparently too much to ask, as my mother didn't attend, yet again breaking my sister's heart. I sat with her in the church, as she anxiously looked back at the doors again and again, hoping against the odds that our mother would come. She didn't. I proudly walked my sister down the aisle and gave her away. Thus began our reconciliation.
Then came early November. My mother collapsed, and was taken to the hospital. It was only then that I realized the depths of her self-destruction, and that her posturing was only partly feigned. Through conversations with the attending physician, I realized that what my mother had begun doing when my sister put her foot down about her drinking was, she began drinking heavily, constantly, non-stop. Her body reacted by not allowing her to keep any food down. She responded by intensifying her drinking and cutting her eating to the bare minimum, a tomato here, a slice of bread there. And most of it, her body would immediately expel. As a result, her potassium levels plummeted. It was their precipitous decline that had weakened her limbs and deadened her extremities to the point that she required additional assistance with ambulation. But rather than recognizing this as her body's cry for help, my mother had merely interpreted it as a sign that her strategy was working. Her health really was declining, and sooner or later, we'd have to come to her rescue and be at her mercy. We'd have to see what awful and ungrateful children we'd been. So she'd doubled down.
In the hospital, my mother was, naturally, insufferable. She screamed constantly at the doctors and the nurses, she tried to claw them, to the point that she had to be physically restrained to the bed. So she writhed like a wild animal, and ripped her IVs out with her teeth. After 48 hours, the doctors, unable to subdue her any further, and having staved off the absolute worst for the time being, released her into the care of my stepfather.
Over the course of that weekend, my sister and I reconnected. We talked openly and honestly like we hadn't done in over a decade. I learned about the extent of my mother's drinking, how it had been going on for years, how she had hidden it from us (or tried to anyway). I learned the story about my niece's birth, my mother's tantrum, her drunken dereliction of grandparental duty regarding my nephew, and I learned exactly what it was that my sister had demanded of her, that had kicked off this whole degradation. My sister, blaming herself, said that it was all her fault that our mother was in this condition. That she shouldn't have "cut our mother off" that way. And that she was planning to basically drop the walls and unconditionally let our mother back in. I made a decision and recommendation that, in hindsight, set off a chain of events that led to our mother's death. I told my sister that she was absolutely in the right with her ultimatums. That love, even the love of a parent, is never obligatory. That she is a mom, and that, first and foremost, her obligations are to the protection of the wellbeing of her children. That there is absolutely nothing wrong, and on the contrary, that it is in everyone's best interest that there be clear and established boundaries for our mother's behavior. I encouraged her to approach a reconciliation with our mother, if at all, with the utmost caution. That she approach her first by herself, and, if anything, say that she wanted to reestablish a relationship, but that the only way that they could do that would be if my mother would agree to some ground rules, all involving abstention from drinking when she and the kids were around, and of course, the uncompromising cessation of all abusive belittlement of her. That crossing either of those lines would result in another break in communications between them. My sister followed this advice to the letter.
Our mother refused. At this moment, she realized that her plan had failed. She had gotten exactly what she wanted in terms of the decaying of her physical wellbeing to the point that she had to be hospitalized. However, it didn't have the desired effect on my sister or me. We didn't collapse into a state of abject groveling, there was no "come to Jesus" moment where we were suddenly overwhelmed with shame at our ingratitude as her offspring. Her wager unsuccessful, she immediately resumed the practices that had put her in the hospital. One month later, she was dead.
At her funeral, my sister and I stood together at the coffin, looking upon her body. All the mortician's expertise and efforts were unable to restore to my mother the customary look of peace on the face of the dead. Her eyelids, her mouth, her cheeks, even her gnarled fingers, all bore witness to the years of resentment, spite, self-loathing, self-pity, and substance abuse that had slowly gotten the best of our mother. My sister cried, and through her sobs, she kissed our mother's forehead and said, "I'm so sorry, Mommy." Even now, I can still see her tears saturating our mother's forehead, tears mixed with saliva, both uncontrollably flowing forth from a soul in agony, racked with guilt. But I held my sister, and I assured her with absolute certainty that it was my fault, not hers, that I was the one who had advised her on how to handle the situation, and that she had merely followed my advice. I can't remember, however, whether or not I told her the truth, that even though I bore the responsibility, I wasn't sorry. That if my sister had gone to our mother and granted her wish of unconditional surrender, it would have only been a matter of time before my mother had completely destroyed my sister, and that my niece and nephew would have inevitably been recipients of the shrapnel, casualties of a unilateral emotional war. I bear that responsibility, but I would, without hesitation, do it again.
I offer all of this as a reflection on the ways in which our abusers impose themselves into our every memory, even and especially the joyful ones. Anything that is not inherently about them, they will make about them by inscribing on our hearts a scar that will forever be associated with that joy. Last week, as we celebrated the birthday of my beautiful niece, (whom my mother never met), my heart was also revisited by the scars of the events that followed upon her birth, and the scars of my culpability in them. I offer this reflection as perhaps a small consolation to those victims of abusers who also wrestle with such gut-wrenching ambivalence over life's joyful moments: you are not alone.
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