In the beginning ....

It’s tough to know where to start with writing this blog, but here I go.

I am the daughter of a narcissistic father (NF), an enabling mother (EM) with a narcissistic golden child (NCG) elder sister.  My realisation, or when the ‘penny finally dropped’ was when I was 48 years of age (more on that later). 

The realisation that my family was dysfunctional was like finding the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle: it all started to fit into place.  The moment that my father turned against my husband was the moment I thought “this cannot be right”.  My husband could never quite believe that my father could do or say the things that I said he did. My husband, like my father, said I was ‘too sensitive', and then .... my husband’s eyes opened to the narcissistic father that he is. 

My father and mother are now 79/78 years of age respectively.   I have neither seen nor spoken to my elder sister (NCG) in over 25 years.

I thought I had a fairly normal(ish) upbringing.  That said, something about my parents never sort of felt quite right.  What I mean by that is that they didn’t do the same kind of loving things that other kids’ parents did.  For example, praising their kids openly, going to school events for them (although my father did go to parents’ evenings, but looking back that seemed to be for his own ego as he would rant about what stupid teachers they were and how he could show them a thing or two about how to do their jobs).  My father was an academic, the youngest son of three and the first to go to university where he got a distinction in Economics.  He proceeded to national service and completed a teaching course, whereupon he obtained a job in a school, and later tertiary college working his way upwards to Vice Principal. 

My parents never told me as a child that they loved me.  Looking back this is where things really felt ‘off kilter’.  As I watched other parents, my parents seemed almost aloof and very different. They just didn't seem to behave like other kids' parents.  

It really wasn’t until after I got married, at the age of 38 (with no children of my own) and when I was accepted into the loving home of my husband’s parents (who are now in their mid-eighties) that I realised what a loving family looked like.  They listened, they understood, they forgave shortcomings, they were never angry at their children, and they clearly loved their children unconditionally.  Mine looked nothing like this.

Throughout all my adult life, from the moment I left home at 23 to work in London my parents rarely telephoned, and certainly never visited me.  I later went to work abroad and they visited once in 3 years.  I returned to London and they never visited.  If ever I rang from abroad, NF would ask ‘what do you want?   I could not even make a social call to say ‘hi, how are you?’  I felt like my father was glad that I had left.  He seemed to take great delight in telling me they had converted mind and my sisters bedrooms to 'alternative uses' in their house.  My father threw away so many things from my childhood that I would have liked to have kept.  I even caught him in recent years (this is another story I will blog about later), tearing up photos. When I graduated with a first class honours degree as a mature student and also graduated from my teaching qualification, a photograph which I (naively) gave them never saw light of day.  At the age of 35, I was upset at this.  My parents never had photos of either myself or my sister anywhere in the house.  I asked my mother what had happened to the graduation photo and she said 'oh it's in a drawer somewhere'.  Face down or now shredded probably.

Looking back, I was always slightly scared I guess of my father's rages.  As a young girl I remember always needing to avoid upsetting him and always trying to do the 'right thing'.

My father was not involved in our childhood upbringing which might have been normal in the 1960s/1970s.   He went to work, paid the bills and mother took care of bringing us up. 

Now to my mother (EM).  Mother made punctuated comments throughout her marriage, most recently in the last 10 years or so.  Such comments included how if she had her time again she would not get married.  Occasionally she would reminisce about her own childhood upbringing.  A narcissist mother (my maternal grandmother) and enabling father.  Seems my mother chose a man similar to her mother, although she has also nurtured him into the monster that he is now.  She waits on him hand and foot.  Jumps at his every whim. My mother says that my grandmother should never have had children.  She tells stories of neglect and abuse (although not physical).  She tells of her EF who handed over his wages at the end of the week and was given a small sum for his tobacco.  If my mother had experienced a loving childhood of her own she would have been a better mother.  She is one of those deep thinking emotional and sensitive individuals whom you just cannot fathom.  I feel that I really do not know my own mother.  I envy other women who do things with their mothers. Granted, given my mother’s age and (now) frailness, this is limited, but being able to take her out for lunch or other nice things, I am deprived because of my NF who won’t let me get close, who, whenever I visit, goes into a rage, shouts and blames me for everything under the sun.

When the final jigsaw piece was found, it started to dawn on me that perhaps it wasn't me, that I perhaps wasn't the bad daughter, or was insane or simply not a nice person.  Thankfully I have the support of a wonderful husband.  I have no children of my own.  I now believe that my decision not to have children is as a result of my own upbringing in my dysfunctional family unit.