Reclaiming my identity after narcissistic abuse — part 2.
The smaller things are nonetheless important.
Although I won’t mention anything “serious” in this article (check out part 1 for that kind of stuff), somehow, these smaller and seemingly innocent aspects of my persona were a lot more painful to realise.
Aye, that’s right. I said “persona”.
It’s common for children of narcissistic parents to adopt a persona, just like a character, in order to survive the inhospitable environment at home. There can be a number of reasons for that, and I am by no means pretending to offer you a one-size-fits-all explanation that will make sense for everyone’s unique story. Instead, what I offer you today is a slice of my own life experience, so take it as a personal story. If it resonates, good. If it doesn’t, I hope to still make you think. So, keeping that in mind, for me it was “hope”.
My relentless, stubborn hope that there would be some good amid all the chaos is what kept me from growing up acknowledging my true self. Sometimes it veered towards denial; other times, it was just a coping mechanism. I just wanted, very badly, to find a wee hint of relatability in my mother. I wanted to see something in her that would reassure me she wasn’t all bad. In wanting that with so much eagerness, and in making so much effort to be at least a tiny bit “similar to her”, I lost myself.
I lost myself without realising. For a long time, I thought I was actually making progress with this harmony thing, keeping family together and all. In reality, though, I was normalising bad stuff in order to make the horrible stuff more bearable in comparison.
My thoughts went as follows:
“Ah, sure, look… She’s always talking shite about folk music. I don’t like that, but I think I can do it too. It’s the less of two evils. Surely it isn’t AS BAD as her overt and completely shameless racist comments against the poor people around us. It’s innocent in comparison. I’ll bite the bullet and agree with her takes on music”.
“Well… She’s not a fan of unruly gardens. I don’t like that, but I think I can do it too. It’s the less of two evils. Surely it isn’t AS BAD as her blatant discrimination against the Native American who live nearby, their way of life, their connection with the wild etc. Ya know what? This gardening thing is innocent in comparison. I’ll bite the bullet”.
“She absolutely hates creative fashion or anything too ‘out there’. My heart disagrees, I have no reason to obsess over ‘normality’ like her… But fuck it, I’ll bite the bullet and force my mind to agree with her. Things will feel more relatable at home. Besides, this is better than agreeing with her blatant sexism and homophobia. I’ll tone myself down and beat all the creativity out of me”.
“Oh look, I grew up some more. No longer a teen now. I can see that she has very serious attachment problems. She becomes clingy and pushy if I even imply I won’t make it home for Xmas, even for legitimate reasons at work or something. But you know what? Maybe I’m too unfair on her. Maybe I dislike too many things about her. Sure I can bite the bullet on this one and force myself to become the overly zealous daughter she wants me to be, never missing a trip home for Xmas even if I have to go job hunting when I’m back. It’s ok. I can make ends meet somehow”.
“I see she has very negative opinions of her own siblings and close relatives she no longer talks to. I met some of them a long time ago and didn’t see red flags… But maybe I should bite the bullet and never tell her what I really think about it. It’s fine”.
“This is fine. I am fine”.
Narrator: this was not fine.
Eventually I realised I needed to, ya know, stop saying to myself “I don’t talk about this, I don’t talk about that”. The house will “break” and family unity will be ruined if I do, won’t it? But ya know what… Let it happen.
Let it all fall apart, brick by brick. Let the chaos ensue, because I’m simply tired of being the only one keeping it together. Let us start anew if there ever was a good foundation to this metaphorical “house” to begin with. Spoiler: we didn’t. When I finally gave up on helping her and all the others maintain facade, I wasn’t initially planning on going no contact; I did, however, end up cutting contact. That’s because her entitlement persisted. Never once did she even consider the possibility of owning up to the shit she coerced me and others into keeping quiet for so many years. No, she just treated this as some silly act of “rebellion”, oh sure I’d come back eventually, and then she’d punish me.
Sure. As an adult. Far from home. (But perhaps in her head, I never grew up. I’m eternally a baby. I have no right to grow up at all, do I? The high-pitch baby talk in a patronising tone whenever she talked to me said it all). Surely I’d come back, why not? It’s what I always did, of course I was afraid of simply walking away? She was* so self-centered, so smug, so arrogant that she straight-up assumed my reason for having tried all these years was “fear”. Oh, of course! Nothing else could possibly be behind that, could it? Love, for instance? Hope that one day she’d finally trust me? Nope. None of that. Just “fear”. Yeah, sure…
*maybe she still is all these things. I can’t know. And even if she changed, I’m over it. I’m no contact for good. Didn’t value me? Oh well. Live with the consequences now.
Perhaps that’s a projection. She’s incapable of love or hope, all she feels is fear; so she assumes other people (including I) are the same. But I digress. Back on topic:
This is not your usual “teenage rebellion”.
In fact, as far as I’ve seen, children of narcissistic parents are usually considered “exceptionally obedient”. This is the impression outsiders get, because we usually aren’t the ones who rebel the way you typically do in teenage years. I won’t pretend to know the reason why, as I’m no psychologist, but here is my best guess: maybe, just maybe, children of NORMAL parents go through a phase of rebelling because deep down they know they’re loved. They know they’ve got a house to come back to no matter what. And in rebelling for a while, they learn about their likes and dislikes, their “dos and don’ts”, how to fend for themselves and essentially EXIST outside their families. This is a very important stepping stone towards maturity later on in life.
The problem is, when your parent is more immature than you (for example, narcissistic), there is no sense of belonging or security at home. Unlike children of normal parents, your worst fear when coming back home from a party or whatever isn’t “oh no, mam/dad will catch me sneaking in too late and ground me”. We WISH it was that! We wish our parents would just get angry for a while, but stay committed to raising us. With a narcissistic parent, it’s instead “oh no, mam/dad won’t even be there for me and might as well abandon me to someone else’s care as punishment”.
Why the certainty? Because the signs are everywhere. The red flags are everywhere, growing up under the same roof as that kind of parent. It’s crystal clear that you’re not just “a dumb kid making dumb decisions” like maybe a normal parent would say when angry. It’s a lot more sinister: you become the “inconvenient burden they didn’t want in the first place”. A normal parent truly worries; a narcissistic parent pretends to worry, when in fact they’ll turn a blind eye to anything that the outside world won’t see. Maintaining an image is prioritised, and learning ACTUAL life lessons becomes an afterthought.
So instead of focusing on the external world, you just keep fighting for acceptance at home the whole time. There are bullies at school? Whatever… Home is worse. You can’t catch up with friends’ hobbies and conversations? Whatever… Home is worse. Anything could happen in the external world, and you’re like “well, I could as well endure that, it won’t be as bad as home — but still, weirdly, I really want SOME KIND of home”.
In fact, acceptance (the real deal, not fake acceptance) goes beyond just relatability.
I know I said in the beginning of this article that I tried super hard to relate to my mother, in search for acceptance. I used to believe these things were indeed correlated; But the more time goes by, the more I realise they aren’t.
In all honesty, if I had a mentally healthier mother, I wouldn’t mind it if she was 100% my polar opposite in terms of tastes and personality. I’d still love her nonetheless. I mean… I have a few friends I only ever meet for coffee because that’s as far as our commonalities go. Sure they aren’t total bigots or incapable of empathy (and therefore don’t hold extremist views about the world, if you get me. No sane person would, in my opinion), but our “surface-level” selves are like wine and water. Totally different. And still, I appreciate them.
With my own mother, it was more a case of holding on to the very last shred of hope. I didn’t learn much with her (because she was more immature than I, even in my pre-teens), didn’t even understand or know the full story of her life decisions (probably because they were caused by her extreme self-centeredness and were unjustifiable after all; which is why she kept it all a mystery and ridiculed me for even trying to dig deeper); showed very little regard for other people’s feelings in and out of the family… So the only thing I could STOMACH was her seemingly innocent superficial mask — which I did mimic for a good while.
You see, I’m not saying her tastes and opinions about innocent topics like music and fashion were “wrong”. Not at all. They’re not for me, but I’m all for them. No hate to you if you’re like my mother in that aspect. You do you, babe. After all, you could as well like the same things as her, FOR DIFFERENT (NOT BIGOTED) REASONS. And that is the important bit.
Going no contact was pretty painful at first, but gradually proved to be a blessing in disguise. Now I’m finally finding out there is no shame in things like enjoying some folk (or even country) music; hanging out with people who aren’t “classy” in her eyes; finding the wilderness prettier than a garden; wearing as many flashy clothes as I damn well please.
In the end, these taboos weren’t mine. They were hers. And it’s about time I stop carrying them as my own.
