My Brother, Grievous Godmother, Aunt Denial and Uncle Narcissist

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The family would faint if they ever saw this blog, and I am making arrangements that it will be seen upon my demise. I want to live a long time but want it shared then. Let them read, I doubt it will make any impact but perhaps some of the non-narc side parties will wake up to what I have dealt with. Maybe this blog will serve as a warning to the members of the younger generations that avoid becoming narcissists themselves.  Truth-telling is not allowed in narcissist families and well I've laid it all out here.

 Remember when I said I wrote the final letters to the top two narcissists, a few of the ones on the sidelines , got some Goodbyes as well. As a Christian, one thing, I believe is in forgiving people lest people think I am too hard of a person and would just slam the door in people's faces. With narcissists there is NEVER any repentance, or statements of "I was wrong."  In fact one thing they all hold in common is this air of superiority over other human beings and the refusal to ever admit they are anything but perfect. Speaking to them is always like speaking to a wall. I have friends who have shown me far more loyalty then most members of my family ever did.

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Just so folks realize, it is not unknown for a scapegoat victimized by narcissists to have to walk away from an entire family, I only have my brother left now who has shown me love and care, his kids, girlfriend and three cousins who noticed I was alive and their families and they all live very far away. Maybe my sister's kids will grow up and talk to me. I sure hope so. Even there I must proceed with caution as they have contact with the narcissists. My only hope is to tell my side of the story and hoped I am believed. My brother of course witnessed some of my abuse growing up.

These relationships were probably rescued due to early contact I had with all parties, the smear campaigns didn't work like they did all on the others. With my brother, I have been telling him about some of the abuse and some of the background lies. A few things have shocked him such as the  "big Momma" joke panties that were sent me by my mother. One thing, the narcissists always made me feel like I talked too much, but now there is the realization that too much was held back.

One thing I stressed was that many things happened to me, he didn't even know about and they were done behind closed doors and not in front of others.  I flat out told him I believed the two top narcissists lacked consciences. He has admitted to me that something is seriously wrong with them in the "affective sense", and they do not seem to have the same type of emotions or attachments as other human beings. He refers to my sister as my narcissist mother's "Mini-Me" and has told me he is weirded out by her dressing exactly like my mother and modeling her life on wanting to "be her". I care about my brother very much, but have been praying knowing the narcissists will do everything in their power to sever the relationship. She managed to take everyone else away and will try there too.

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Two of the people I sent letters too, included Aunt Denial, the wife of my mother's narcissistic youngest brother Uncle Narcissist [she is near my age and has three young adult children] and Grievous Godmother. They never wrote back to the final letters nor do I expect them too. Their insistence on keeping a perfect picture will always come first.

Part of my recovery has been to not chase after people who want nothing to do with me. Here some of my own Asperger obtuseness and denial was in force because Aunt Denial was always so friendly to me at least on the surface with a smile. I glommed on to this like a starving and thirsty man in the desert getting a few drops of water. This was someone I could talk to at family gatherings who would noticed I was alive so in some ways she fooled me. When the pedal hit the metal, I realized she had the same world view as the narcissists seeing me and Aunt Scapegoat as "lesser". Aunt Scapegoat due to her accepting her position was included far more in family functions, while I "the rebel" was merely tolerated and barely even that. I still remember defending Aunt Scapegoat when Aunt Denial told me about some 25 year old wrongdoing of hers, saying, "That was so long ago!, she was young we all make mistakes when young!"

The only time I saw this Aunt at my place was once in 20 years when her son happened to have a ballgame in the vicinity. From my old town, we visited her home a couple times a year, trying to reach out. She and her family would also appear at other family functions. I liked many things about her, but a firm wall was up, and one thing I noticed is I was getting far closer to people I met in my community then even a fellow family member. I realized that they were far closer to my mother and agreed with everything she said about me.

I confronted all the parties on their treatment of Aunt Scapegoat and said it was wrong and said a few other things I had kept silent for years. I told Aunt Denial, that it was wrong how she refused to listen to me when I asked for the annual family gathering to be changed to a time of year I could breathe and travel and all I heard was about her needs and how hard things were for her and how busy she is and she is perfectly healthy.

I also said, "I now realize this relationship if there ever was one was all one way and that was reason enough for me to walk away". One thing Aunt Denial would do while she was friendly on the surface, she would always treat me with disdain, or with the excuses, "I am too busy.". This was not someone I contacted every month or every week even but only a few times a year, and it was like calling on the president of the United States. I'm responsible for this one but should have gotten a clue earlier on and not tried so hard. At least now, when people do the "I'm so busy" thing, I know they are saying, "you are bothering me and a low priority". Yes a real and good friend can tell me they are legitimately busy, but if you hear this over and over for years, it means something.

One thing about this aunt is she always praised the family acting like it was the greatest family in the world, when even as far as dysfunction goes, it's pretty high up there. Maybe there are people like this where life is happier living in a bubble of denial, where they are less bothered. She would wrote me a letter back telling me, "everyone seems to get busier and busier". Wow I heard that from my mother too whose been retired for years every time she drove my apt within a mile and didn't stop by.  She praised my narcissistic grandmother [now deceased] as the epitome of greatness and told me, that "I'm sure she'd be sad to know how sad you feel about your family." She then told me, "Please don't forget your roots. No matter what, you are and will always be part of our family. Although we can't always see you. you are in our thoughts and prayers. 

The line, "she'd be sad to know how sad you feel about your family" stands out to me because why not take my feelings seriously? Don't I have reason to be sad?  Here I see the insidious message, that my feelings are my fault supposedly, and they arose out of a vacuum. The "we can't always see you" is just more of the excuse making. Part of my mind applies that one metaphorically where they never did SEE me. Actually this is the grandmother that had a family wall of pictures in her living room where she left me and Aunt Scapegoat off that wall and where she told me, that my cousin was her favorite grandchild. Why would you say that to another grandchild?

 Part of my recovery has been to not chase after people who want nothing to do with me. Here some Asperger obtuseness and denial was in force because Aunt Denial was always so friendly to me at least on the surface. This was someone I could talk to at family gatherings who would noticed I was alive so in some ways she fooled me but when the pedal hit the metal, I realized she had the same world view as the narcissists seeing me and Aunt Scapegoat as lesser. Aunt Scapegoat due to her accepting her position was included far more in family functions, while I the rebel was merely tolerated and later cut out more and more. Various scapegoats were called out as "losers". I still remember defending Aunt Scapegoat when Aunt Denial twittered on about some 25 year old wrongdoing of hers, saying, "That was so long ago!, she was young we all make mistakes when young!" She backed up the same order as the narcissists.

The only time I saw this Aunt was once in 20 years at my apt when her son happened to have a ballgame in the vicinity of the town I live in now.  She stopped by for 20 minutes.  From my old town, we visited her home a few times, trying to reach out. I liked many things about her, but a wall was up, and one thing I noticed is I was getting far closer to people I met in my community then even a fellow family member. I realized that they were far closer to my mother and agreed with everything she said about me.

She lived a middle class lifestyle with her husband indulging in an over the top sports obsession, they'd even wear the same team colors while visiting games hundreds of miles away and go every spring break to their condo down on Gulf, where my mother from her second house in Florida would meet up with them. Her husband, my mother's favorite brother Uncle Narcissist, was a secondary golden child, who never could do anything wrong. My grandmother literally fawned over him as he was her youngest child, laying his clothes out, attending to his meals where he ate at different times coming and going from endless baseball games or part time work as she yelled at Aunt Scapegoat to get out of the way.

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 As a kid, whenever I visited my grandmothers house, which was long distance, as a teen he would tackle me on the ground, a few times knocking the air out of me with Indian burns included and trying to play tricks and pranks on me where the whole family including my parents would laugh at me, such as the time he made noises through the bathroom vent when I was in there and scared me.  Employed by 18 even without a college degree at the time, by his best friend's father, he never lacked for a good job and rose up the ranks. He never had to go hunting for a job in his entire adult life, so ended up with a bad attitude towards anyone who ever faced poverty or unemployment. On a social website, he would write about the "lazy" poor, welfare/disabled "deadbeats" and how they were after all his taxes and how anyone without money was a bum. In this he combined neo-con banker-loving Republican politics with odd liberal ones that made him an adamant fan of Marilyn Manson and Black Sabbath at the age of 50! 

I argued with him a few times, but he always backed off with an off-handed comment like "Take a chill pill!" Viewing him objectively I realized he was "mean" too. I applied the things I learned about narcissism to him too.  There was one time at a family event, Aunt Denial said she was going to plan a bonfire there, and two family members are severe asthmatics including me, and she refused to back down on her plan. Both are very friendly with my mother, visiting her house, seeking to impress her with shared vacations, and prime rib dinners. They were some of her favorite relatives too and no criticism between either parties ever happened. That was one thing about Aunt Denial, fooled by the surface kindness, I could tell her a story of some of the most hideous abuse when younger and trust me these times were extraordinarily rare, "my mother stole my identity, my father hit me", and she would always tell me things like "Your mother loves you, or your parents mean well". Of course I heard this nonsense from my father's sister as well too.

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This may sound bad, but I asked myself for years how could I be related to people who were so provincial and who didn't care about anything I cared about and who seemed to lack any emotions? I can understand Aunt Denial not being the same as me, her life followed a direct trajectory where tragedy and suffering came in limited supply, a good teaching career, three healthy children, extraordinarily stable upper middle-class living and that's fine with me as I have friends who have had different lives, but also now understand that at some core place, I was totally rejected and contrary to all her claims that I was part of the family, I really was not. 

This brings me then to Grievous Godmother, who is Uncle Narcissist's and my mother's first cousin from my maternal grandfather's side. Around 5 years ago, she got a spasm of religious guilt or something, and she wrote me after 26 years of no contact which had ended with a present sent from far away at the age of 14 or so. Her letters seemed nice on the surface and I started to respond and updated her. She was what the Catholic church calls a "godmother by proxy", ie: not in the room, and well she really wasn't in my life either. As a child, I saw her once around the age of 5 and never again.

I am in a church as an adult since I left the Catholic church, that does not believe in infant baptism nor in "godmothers" but decided to be kind and start talking to her in letters and emails. At the time, maybe I thought this was a relative, I could get to know, but my disappointment remained. Her letters were odd, stilted renditions of expensive vacations which I still have no idea how a retired home-ec teacher could afford them and the endless achievements of her upper middle class adult children who held professions ranging from Catholic high school principal to her daughter who was the head of a art education department at a university.

 Think of one of those notorious Christmas letters where someone uses it as a brag-fest, that was her letters but in an extreme form.  She took little interest in my viewpoints or interests or even me as a person. Her letters included unending praises for my mother too, sigh just like the rest of the family. One time she accidentally informed me she had visited a town right north of me where she would have had to pass within a mile of my apt, but still never visited. I didn't really understand her motive in contacting me except to have someone to brag too. I almost wanted to ask her, "Where were you when I was being abused?"

I informed her I was poor, had serious health problems and even once confronted her saying "please stop bragging about your daughter, it hurts me as that is the career I could have imagined for myself if my health had stayed intact". But while she said a half-hearted sorry, saying "Oh we are too proud", she continued with the same behavior. My attempts to get to know her as a person failed and then I realized she had the same personality as so many of my relatives. There was no intimacy to be had there either, just someone else who wanted to use me as a mirror to reflect off of.

I went no contact with Grievous Godmother, which really made little difference as she is and was basically a stranger to me. With Aunt Denial and Uncle Narcissist, I have walked on too, but that door was shut by them as well a long time ago.

Since when did family become about having an audience to brag to and no real relationships? Outside of my brother, the good cousins, and ones too young to be fully in the system, I am facing the fact, I really was a stranger with them all, and asking myself how on earth did this happen? My attempts to connect and even get to know them as people failed. Narcissists do not want to be "known", it is all about the image.

For years I thought I was the problem, I thought because I was fat and "failed", that they were "ashamed" of me and had reason to be so.  Later I blamed my Aspergers but while I have social difficulties out in the world, there were people who cared about and liked me. I dreamed of the day I would be thinner or even have some success or money and where I would become loved and accepted but as I got older and knew that day was more remote in coming, I started asking myself, why was I seeking love from people that from my side I didn't even like or didn't like me? Meeting normal people in churches and in other venues, I knew while families had problems at least they were not strangers to each other. The people could "see" one another. Something was very wrong.

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I think of various lists regarding narcisissts and these things applied to these relationships, they turned every conversation to themselves, they ignored the impact of negative comments on me, they bragged about their lives, ignoring mine. Looking at them, I saw how they treated the entire world with the same shallow base, with contempt for those they saw as not measuring up. It stood out to me that even a diagnosis I fought for years for, meant nothing to them all except my brother and the few good cousins.  So much was about "impressing" others and seeking their admiration. For me I faced it was a losing battle, and these relationships were a lose-lose for me. Sometimes for my relatives who do have emotions, sadness in the eyes of some of them and some kindness, I feel for them and the affect these others will have on them.

I never felt I fit in, maybe I will find out I wasn't even related to some of these people [my brother will always be my brother] but I never did belong either way.


Post script regarding Aunt Denial: She sent me a response, she complained about how busy her job made her and ended with this. She will not come back to respond when there is time. I know that already.


"I do not have time to comment on many of the points you have made properly this time.  I can say that I'm sorry and sad you feel the way you do.

Love Aunt Denial

One thing stands out to me here, she is sad about how I feel as if those feelings were wrong. Also the "do not have time thing" is pretty sad too, since I had written an original email 4 months prior with no response. I have realized I really do not have a relationship with these parties, and with some of them, my going NC really made no real changes to my life except freeing me of empty social interactions.