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.
This sums up my mother - the Enabler - always the silent witness to my father's verbal abuse of me, my husband or anyone else. All of this has become clearer over the past year or two. My mother is also a victim of narcissistic parenting by my late grandmother who was a narcissist and my grandfather was her enabler. Does it pass down the family tree? Do people repeat patterns that they learned in childhood? I know little of my father's parents or childhood. He spoke little of it. My father's parents died before I reached my teens. My grandfather looking back was aloof and 'hands off'. After my grandmother died he used to spend Christmas alone. I now wonder why he never came to our house ....
