Sister Light, Sister Dark

                                                       [picture source]

This is an article to accompany Sister Fat, Sister Thin

One sees loving sisters on TV all the time. Sadly it is not always like that in the real world.

When I was a child, I loved my sister dearly, we played many games together, shared a bedroom for years full of conversation, and even once I saved her life from a severe asthma attack my parents ignored but my mother would do everything in her power to destroy the relationship.  Well she succeeded. 1986, my sister still loved me, by 1987, it was if a changeling had taken over her. Love turned to hate at the behest of a narcissist!  My sin? Going away to college though now I realized trouble brewed far before that. What happened to the girl I once loved and who was there? It was like an eraser was taken to her very soul. I grieved the same as a woman who has lost a sister to death. That person I once knew is gone.

 A switch was happening in late high school that centered around my Aspergers and growing weight. My sister was embarrassed of me and would pretend not to know me in our high school halls, she knew I was seen as "the nerd". My parents backed her up in this rejection, telling her, that too much closeness with me would socially drag her down. Even though I was a far better student and my parents had me doing her school projects or reusing papers I wrote a few years before, I came way in last. They treated me like a "Nobody".

I remember the extreme differences in our treatment that for some reason worsened immensely by the time I was in high school. My mother would walk into my sister's room every morning to help her get ready, combing her hair,  tidying up her bed, fluffing her pillow for the next night and laying out her clothes and helping her choose what to wear. I remember being around 14 and 15 years old wondering why my sister who was only a year younger got all this attention and I did not. My mother would also make her school lunch, cutting the crusts off the white Italian bread making her favorite garlic bologna sandwiches with lettuce and putting always the same amount of goldfish crackers in a baggy for her.   No one ever made my lunch, I made that on my own. My mother also would pour her bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios--she ate nothing but for breakfast for decades even into adulthood and could even still eat them now for all I know.

Before I went no contact I had to face what my sister really was about, the picture was bad. After I have gone no contact, clarity has made the picture even more frightening.

There were many years I did not want to face who she had become.  The day after Thanksgiving 2012, she sat in my mother's house giving me the same look of disgust and disdain, I had gotten so long from my mother. Going back to that day, looking at her winced up face, staring at me, I thought to myself, "Here is someone who has it all [well on paper], and appreciates none of it. There is no happiness, no light in there."  She had lied to me about her family visiting my mother on Thanksgiving, else I would have gone the day before for Thanksgiving. Her lies and my mothers ensured that I was not there.

I was being punished for the year before's Thanksgiving  [2011] for telling them, they should not have a relative with open and active MRSA [the flesh-eating virus] come to our family Thanksgiving gathering. Just two weeks before he had a surgery to remove a portion of his thigh where the MRSA had ate away at it. I feared losing my leg. This was before I had lymph therapy and my lipedema diagnosis and constant infections came from that.  I warned them because I feared CHILDREN getting it, but I pissed both of them off beyond no belief. Does that make any sense? No, it does not.
This whole episode told me how sick and dysfunctional both of them really were.

I remember my mother even though this other relative had given it to three others, saying, "We can wipe the toilet seat off, with alcohol and make sure to use different silverwear!". She had other ideas like requiring the relative use the second bathroom upstairs instead of the one downstairs. Instead of having the guts to tell this other relative, that not everyone felt safe, and wanted to wait, my mother cancelled the entire event and lied to the other relative, saying she had hurt her knee and was not up to fixing Thanksgiving dinner. My sister was no help, and backed up my mother's lie and asked me, "Why did you open your big fat mouth?"  Both treated me like I was over-reacting and abused me for telling them the truth about what was going on with the relative. They didn't seem to even care about their own young children or grandchildren getting life-threatening MRSA. With the relative in question, I had barely gotten the truth out of him on the phone and he admitted to me at the time he was a carrier. His selfishness was immense, as he called me bawling me out for "messing up Thanksgiving". This was part of my horrific path to no contact.

Can you all believe it? That is how my family operates. I knew I wasn't going to go. Loosing my leg or my life to MRSA was not on my game-plan. Concern for my nieces and nephews, fear of death or being an amputee overcame my fear of my mother. I took a major hit for keeping my sister's children away from it. How stupid can people get?

Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2012, Back then still with the fog in my eyes, trying to desperately get my family to love me, I had gone out the day after, wanting to see my nieces and nephews.  She had flubbed up Thanksgiving lying to me, telling me no one was getting together. This year of course, I will be making my own turkey and will be free of their dramas. Thank God.

Being no contact this long,  I started getting more objective about my sister.

1. I realized she had become my mother. She was a narcissist. She was cold, she was a frozen wasteland of a person. She may even be a sociopath. She seemed to have no feelings or emotions.

2. She had the same coldness my mother displayed and the same extreme lack of empathy. My sister never cried at funerals. Never. Other family members would remark on this and wonder why she never cried. She didn't cry otherwise either. She didn't bother with faking a few emotions like my mother did on extremely rare occasion. One day a few years ago, one of her sons got a rare heart disease that almost killed him. He would survive but I remember how utterly blank she was about it. She didn't seem to care in the same way a mother should care about a child facing life or death.

She showed no fear during extreme asthma attacks, that to my horror, I realized she lacked the ability to feel fear like my mother.

3. My whole sister's life revolved around pleasing my mother. She did not care about pleasing me ever or having me or anyone be happy. I've mentioned this before but the creepiest thing is she DRESSES just like mother. The same clothes. The same lack of make-up. The same unflattering helmet hairdo! However it's worse then that, just like that movie where the evil roommate tries to take over the other's life--in "Single White Female", my sister sought to replicate my mother as closely as she could. Have any other ACONs encountered this with a golden child or is this just an extreme case?

I noticed how her first house, was the same exact design and color of the first house my mother married and moved into. She even tried to have three children [supposedly just like my mother] but ended up with four because the third pregnancy was fraternal twins. She watched the same exact TV shows as my mother including General Hospital for thirty years. She cooked the same food. She bought the same furniture.  She modeled everything exactly except my mother's government job.

4. While my mother kept me from her friends and I barely knew who they were, my sister was brought into my mother's social circles as an adult and vice versa.  Seriously my mother and sister were like a clique unto themselves as I remained an outsider. Trust me, it's weird to see your mother's Facebook, with all her friends, know barely any of them but realize your sister who lives even further away then you do, is friends with many of them.

5. My sister saw her children as trophies. In one letter when we were still in contact, I told her don't honor children only according to their achievements. Everything she wrote on Facebook was "****** became an Eagle Scout, ****** won a school award". She didn't seem to know her children as people seeing them as objects in filling out the "perfect family life". Family photos were odd with everyone lined up like tin soldiers, my sister always to the side with the children grouped together.  Image like to my mother was everything. I worried about the values her children were being taught, hopefully some loving teachers and others filled in a few blanks.

6. My sister has no friends. She had a few activity partners, and was friends with a couple that her husband had a close friendship in from college, but when I used to talk to her, everyone was inferior, everyone had done her wrong, everyone didn't know what they were doing. She seemed to always meet the world's most incompetent people if I was to believe what she told me about them.  I asked her once on the phone, "Sure there are people annoy me, but you don't ever meet someone you like in any group you join or volunteer with?" She ignored old high school and other friends I ended up having more contact with. She just didn't seem to be that attached to anyone. There was no girlfriends coming over or Mother's groups even. She was superior to all!

7.  She was so fixated on pleasing and being what my mother wanted her to be, she became an empty shell. This is the negative side of being a Golden Child. They become the narcissist's total mind slave.. That is exactly what the worse of the bunch become. All the false praise, presents and elevation makes the narcissist a false "god" to them. This "god" is who they desire to please. My sister was never open to any thinking that my mother was adverse to. She followed my mother's church obediently. She shared all her politics to the tee. She shared her same exact views of life and what was important and what was not. She disliked everyone my mother disliked and scapegoated including me and my brother's ex wife. She had no mind of her own. She has no identity of her own. It is frightening and it is scary. She always obeyed my mother no matter what and never ever disagreed with her once that I can remember in 25 plus years. Can you imagine someone like that never disagreeing with another, even MILDLY where even banter is off the table?

8. Spiritually my sister gave me the willies. This worsened with time. As I talked about in the People of the Lie article, being in thrall to a narcissist will make evil grow.  In one last conversation, I got a stomach ache and she kind of "frightened" me and wanted to get away.  She wrote weird stuff like "I do not travel' and then wrote she was going to Florida almost in the same paragraph. During the last two-three times I saw her, She never smiled in my presence. She never laughed.  She spent most time robotically looking at an empty Kindle as her school-aged children escaped to their various gadgets and/or wiping down my mother's tables to perfection, pinky in the air.

Hey I am a disabled person prone to some depression, so understand depressed people but this was worse, it was a like black cloud hovered both in her eyes and in the room.  This occurred during the Thanksgiving 2012, and during one of my last conversations with her. Her letters freaked me out. Here are some of these last letters before I went full no contact. When I look at these letters, it reminds me what I left behind. It keeps my no contact firm.

I realized my sister always, always, always invalidated me just like my mother if not worse. She copied my mother's techniques in dismissing my emotions, for calling me a liar, and ignoring all my feelings and me as a person. She saw me as inferior to her. My mother emphasized our economic differences telling my sister I was a loser for having so little money and not marrying wealthy even though I am far more educated then my sister. The below is a response to my last no contact letter where I confronted both of them with having lipedema and their treatment. Her summation of a three page letter was this little paragraph. Double Click on all the below pictures of text to enlarge.

Her refusal to face the truth, about the lies, the refused visits, the cutting me off from my nieces and nephews and things that are proven is summed up in her "talk to the hand" dismissal..."Many false accusations have been said".

While a few attempted nice but empty things are written with strange syntax just like my mother, she is incapable of EMPATHY, incapable of EMOTION and just as COLD. In this second letter, you dismisses more of the NC letter with, "I am not going to do this-you hate me crap". That is one thing I noticed about her just like my mother she would dismiss everything and anything. This was not someone capable of listening.

About a year before my no contact wanting to "wake her up" I sent her links on narcissistic mothers, I told her our relationship had been severely damaged by our mother. Know from my experience with this, this does not work on golden children or flying monkeys, they are under the spell of the narcissist. This was a waste of time. Don't make my mistake. They simply do not care. Intellectually and emotionally they do not want to know.

One thing about my sister is she served as an enforcer for my mother. Everything to my sister, was about someone getting IN LINE with my mother. This applied to all other people. Anyone in a disagreement with my mother was my sister's automatic enemy. She never looked at their side.  My sister was upset at anyone daring to disagree with my mother. Notice the phrase above, "as a decisions to move forward with US." It is weird she writes many prayers come to me. I suppose she is not really praying to God whatsoever.

No matter how cruel my mother was to another person, my sister would always defend her. My mother remained superior while everyone else was inferior. She writes above, "Why now, mom has nothing to do with this". My mother is perfection squared in my sister's eyes. According to my sister, my mother did not abuse me. She has never done anything wrong. My mother is her true "god" as other human beings including her own sister mean nothing. Remember at this point in time, I am totally walking away.

She has no inkling of loss or even trying to save the relationship with me. She simply does not care like my mother and brings up her OWN problems in response. Her coldness and lack of empathy is shown towards her own daughter with the line "Today ****** is throwing up and not feeling well though she will recover". One can tell she is more annoyed by her daughter then actually feeling concern over her health. One thing you will notice about the letters of narcissists is they are kind of like Hitler's artwork. Ever seen Hitler's finely attuned watercolors which while technically good led to him flunking out of art school? Notice something? They lack SOUL.

I saw that in here several times I was around her. I sometimes fear what will become of her children facing a mother like this. She keeps secrets like my mother, that are brought up as needed. What health problems? I had no idea. She could have everything from cancer to a stubbed toe for all I know. Narcissists and their ilk remain strangers.

And here is a letter that had come earlier which I ignored. Both her and mother hated people simply for being my friends. That alone was a giant red flag to flee for the hills. Why wouldn't I distance myself from a family that slammed doors in my face? Here you see the refusing to take responsibility and more. The bullying comments are more projection. Her line about "I made a decision that was best for *********" was her excuse for cutting me off from my nieces and nephews.

One line I got on a PM after my no contact letter sums this all up.

"You Just Have to Ignore the Little Things"

What does that tell a person?

The worse thing about narcissists is they darken other souls. One can feel very helpless as this occurs, I threw her lifelines that were ignored from an early age.  They infect them. My sister got infected. There was nothing more I could do. A stranger sits there, not a sister.

Generational Narcissism: My Grandmother

                                       

 

There were major generational aspects to the narcissism I dealt with. Aunt Scapegoat, my mother's sister was the scapegoat of the previous generation, but what about her mother, my grandmother?

My memories of my grandmother are convoluted. I found her somewhat easier to talk to if we were both alone or on the regular phone calls I made to her. When I was in my early 20s, and I'd go on visits by myself to the relatives, she actually would tell me, "Your mother has major problems", and told me once, "Maybe you should write a book about how your mother treated you!". With my grandmother, all the family ideals came together, she was worshipped by everyone and some of the same dynamics applied, everyone wanted to please her, EVERY ONE. My mother's dynamics with the family are the exact same as my grandmother's where the family forms a nexus that rotates around her.

Her book idea for me is irony of ironies.  Before the smear campaigns by my mother were strengthened a few in the family behind closed doors would admit I was treated rotten. Only problem was it was never done in open. Looking back at that, the me of today, asks "Why did you stand silently by as the abuse went on?". She never contradicted my mother either. She never criticized her. She never stood up for me. She believed everything she told her too and did so even more.  Today I know the realities of generational narcissism, it ran like an evil thread through my mother's family. My grandmother was no innocent herself.

In my mind I question some of the better memories I have with my grandmother, buying eggs on a farm, times I spent at her house but I can't ignore how many of her qualities intersected with my mother's or some of the ill treatment and oddness of the latter years. Every kid wants to love their grandmother too, and since she was so idealized within the family, I never thought to analyze her or her actions until very later. I hope this makes sense.

One thing never let narcissists fool you this way. Some really do play Spy Vs. Spy. Good cop and bad cop. Good cop is still a narcissist who may mistaken for being on your side just because they are a little bit nicer.

My grandmother was no ally in a crowd either. She laughed too when the cricket came out and Uncle Narcissist played his games. One time I came down to visit when I was around 19 years old, and I was going to stay at her house but planned to also visit Aunt Scapegoat, and the Aunt that Loved Me.

 She decided to starve me while I was staying at her house to lose weight. What would one week do but she was insistent! She said to me, "You are too fat and only need one meal a day". When I was 19, I was still in the 200s, and actually had lost weight to the lower 200s at that time because I had worked at a camp as an arts and crafts director and counselor all summer. Unlike kind grandmas that would pile on cookies and goodies on their grandchildren, mine was the complete opposite. She wanted me hypoglycemic and on the floor. She wanted to give me only toast and coffee for the entire day and claimed that is all she ate. She weighed at least 200lbs so I didn't believe it. At the time, I argued and then just decided to eat out or at another relatives house when I got hungry. After all I was down there with my own car. She couldn't control what I ate.

More weirdness started on that particular starvation visit, as I was told not to call Aunt Scapegoat next door and told she was "too busy" to see me even though I drove 120 miles to get there. Aunt Scapegoat did not work. Were they already trying to hide the broken down trailer with no running water? I do not know. As a teen I was friends with Aunt Scapegoat where we even traded letters but that soon ended under these pressures. My grandmother copied my mother's isolating me from others. Perhaps my mother even instigated all this?

There are times of other meanness too, I remember. Now keep in mind my contact with my grandmother was far less then my mother. My grandmother lived in an old farm house, where to come down from upstairs, you had to go down this long tight flight of stairs, with no windows. They were pitch dark at night, since she lived in the country and there was a door at the end of them downstairs.  Her farm house was modernized and had normal electricity. She would not allow any night light. I was scared of the dark as a child and I was petrified especially when I had to go to the bathroom.  My family lived in large cities so even with all the lights out it was never pitch black. She actually expected us little kids, to "feel" our way down the stairs in the dark. As a teen I got smart and got flashlights that I hid from her upstairs to make my way down, but as child, I would almost tumble down those worn stairs and slid down them at least once or twice.

My treatment was grew worse by as I got older it never would be repaired. My grandmother would send me cards but major rejection set in for my weight and would only worsen after my severe weight gain. My mother and grandmother when they got together would become more cruel about my weight. One day the entire family ate sausage take-out pizzas and me a turkey sandwich because I am lactose intolerant. They started yelling at me for being fat and I lost it! I turned to them and said, "Look how you all pigged out on pizza! How dare you! My body works different!" Yes I cussed too. I was tired of being stomped on. Both would work in tandem against me.

 My family lived further away, 500 miles for a time, and 120 miles during my teens and later. However my grandmother had three adult grown children all living on the same farm road in a row.  Maybe it was the cheap farm land or maybe it was narcissistic dynamics and control. Have you ever seen a family where there were 4 houses in a row of the same relatives?

 My Uncle with his family lived a field and another house down to the left, the Aunt That Loved Me until 1987 when she died lived next door to her on the left where her and her husband before they divorced built a late 1970s modern home with bright orange counters in the kitchen. Aunt Scapegoat lived in her broken down trailer next door on the right.  A great-Aunt lived further down the road. Corn fields were intermingled with these houses. I was jealous of all the cousins who got so much family closeness as only had our rare yearly visits but maybe we were better off. I tried to get close to but what did I have in common with a woman that grew up on a dirt farm with 12 brothers and sisters, and who had 7 children, three of whom died before the age of 36? She considered me an over-educated book worm and dilettante.

Sad to say it, I now see my grandmother as a narcissist too. I haven't made up my mind about her being as toxic as my mother or not such as in her being an out and out sociopath. But I saw serious problems while growing up. I remember the favoritism she showed my mother. She would snipe about my mother behind her back but she had total respect for her and always gave in to her and let my mother run every show on every visit. My mother was the obvious golden child. If you are an ACON, in most cases you will see these obvious narcissistic generational patterns. Perhaps your family like mine has the scapegoats of the previous generations as well.

She praised my Uncle Narcissist who was her youngest son and piled food on him, including as many fried bologna sandwiches he wanted after his endless baseball games. She praised him constantly, his grades, his jobs, his work, his hunting and other skills were the best. He was not controlled and could do whatever he wanted coming and going as he pleased.  My "lost boy" uncle, she was generous with the food but basically ignored him while he said nothing. He still is one of the most silent people in the world. I don't even know him enough anymore to write anything good or bad. He seems a pleasant fellow who obviously isn't throwing his adult children out of his house. With my Aunt Scapegoat, the criticisms never ended. She'd shout at her for being fat, for eating a second plastic bowl of potato chips, for not getting a good job. Aunt Scapegoat was the designated "loser" while my mother and Uncle Narcissist were deemed the "winners. I would hear about stuff she did 20 years ago, every joint smoked and every visit to the bar. In my family total abstinence wins no favors either. Even those who never drink or drug can end up scapegoats.

My grandmother played favorites among the grandchildren too. I was not the most hated grandchild but second in line. That role was reserved for my brother. She would actually when I was alone with her, would tell me how much she hated my brother. Today I know this is sick, to tell a little girl how much you hate her brother. One time my brother had a fit when he was twelve years old while my grandmother was babysitting us kids, and she never forgave him for talking back and stomping down the road out of the house. When my brother was young, he had bedwetting problems which can be related to physical problems, and my grandmother would talk about the sodden sheets for hours and how disgusting it all was. Of course in this way she was not much different then my parents. Thank God I never wet the bed, they piled the abuse on and then some for that one. You would have thought the world came to an end the day he peed his sheets while sleeping on her floor.

Around a year before my grandmother died, I went to a family party that was held for by my mother's husband of a few years. It was a graduation party for his granddaughter but several relatives were all there. I sat by my grandmother trying to talk to her but she kept getting up to talk to my mother and other relatives and ignored me.

In 2005, there had been a family battle because the year before, I told my family I was against the use of embryos in stem cell research. Never disagree with narcissists. The small disagreement or wavering from their stances will earn their hatred. They nearly ripped my head off. Aunt Scapegoat called me a "Christer"! My grandmother sneered at me for voting for Bush. [actually I had already rejected both the major parties by that time] A shouting match ensued. They all turned on me. I didn't want to fight about it but move on to the next topic. It was a disaster. That day it seemed the hatred they had for me moved up another notch, but I had suspected since I had become a born again Christian, there was no love lost from around 2002 onward.

Anyhow back at the 2006 graduation picnic, I am sitting next to my 20 year old cousin, asking him how does he like college? I suspect this guy of being a schizoid, his Dad is the Uncle "Lost Boy", the silent stoic, and he literally just grunts at me, and refuses to talk to me. I have never seen him emote anything but anger and bored indifference.  Sometimes I wonder if I will see him in the newspaper one day.  He gives me the willies. He still lives at home with his parents nine years hence.

For years I had seen him on visit's to my mother's house and he would never talk. Him and his other very tall brother would sit there and eat and say absolutely nothing.  At 6 foot, 6 inches, he stared down at me. I trying to be way too people pleasing, say "Hey I liked college, so how is State U?" and I get another grunt. I wonder how this guy made it past the admissions office. He gets up to get another drink, and my grandmother comes back.  She looks at me, down her nose and says to me, "You know A**** s is my favorite grandchild, you are not!" "He knows when to keep his mouth shut.". "When he drives me to the grocery store, I don't have to listen to his prattling on". I remember saying something to her like "Well he doesn't talk at all, and he better learn to if he ever hopes to have a job of any kind when college is over." Inside I am hurt, how could she say that to me?  I and my husband leave the picnic early, I am fed up.

 One thing about my grandmother that used to astound me is she had no emotions, she never cried or showed fear either. It used to bother me as a child. She was just like my mother in these attributes. I saw her as less cold and mean then my mother but such things are relative. After all I was only around her in measured dosages. There were no hugs or kisses from her either.  I remember talking to Aunt Denial about this, and she would tell me, "Oh that's just the way they are" but this aunt who married into the family worshipped her mother-in-law. The same worshipful attitude people have towards my mother was the same for my grandmother. No one ever disagreed with her. No one ever bantered with her either. Where they afraid of her too like my mother?

 This was beyond old school reticence though, and when she got pancreatic cancer and was told she was terminally ill, in 2007 watching her wait for death like she was waiting for the bus, creeped me out. It was something that truly bothered me and still does. Some may tell me, well that is the older generation they were taught not to complain especially before the era of therapists and tell-alls but this was something beyond that. She just didn't seem to care that much. I've seen more stoic people die before, they keep quiet, don't tell you of all the pain they are in. I'm not stoic but know even when I am very sick, the natural inclination is to withdraw.

I'd call her on the phone on a regular basis, and she'd act like nothing was happening and talk about mundane matters. I couldn't go any deeper. There was one moment, near the end on the phone when I awkwardly tried to show her affection,  and told her, "I love you." and she said NOTHING in response, not even the polite "Thank you." or "Me too". This bothered me quite a bit.  Embarrassed, I scrambled to get off the phone. She was still wholly lucid at this time. I had to accept she did not love me either.

It would haunt me for some time, the way she dealt with death. It still does. I have faced almost dying before as people know on here, but a few years later around 2010, I would lose two close friends to death, and it was nothing like this. There were tears and goodbyes, and desperate pleas. I hope I did not fail them in offering them comfort though both these friends were far away. I still miss them but there was more of a sense of closure. With both friends, we talked about dying openly, I told them how I would miss them, I told them I loved them and received a response as long as they could still talk. One would have her sister send me photographs and pictures and the cards I sent her for the 17 years of our friendship. Another friend I talked about God to her.

With my grandmother, there was no emotion shown. At the age of 81, she had chosen not to go to extreme measures for the cancer. There was no regrets, or tears or even discussion of pain I saw. My families refusal to discuss health problems or share pain, only made my own pain and health problems far worse. This was 2007 and I had already dealt with my own health crises for many years.

I went to go visit her about 6 months before she died. She looked wizened and had lost a lot of weight but still was there mentally but without emotions as I describe. My mother had taken her into her home and hired hospice to come in to take care of her before putting her in the hospice center when she no longer could get out of bed. Now this was a very hard time for me, my husband had just lost his job, we were fearing homelessness and had just moved to where we live now after a year and half of employment.

Let's just say I was stressed out, and was having feelings about my grandmother dying. I don't like to see anyone suffer. Anyhow, my grandmother and other relatives are inside, and my mother and Aunt Denial are sitting outside on my mother's new deck that she forced her 70 plus year old husband to build for her. I sit out there, and they are discussing theatre shows and telling me to stop looking so glum. I said, "Well I am worried about my husband losing his job", but I shut up after that one sentence, because I figure my grandmother is dying and my problems are lesser. As they go on about their theatre shows--I forget the exact ones but its high priced ticket ones I never could afford my mother turns to discussion about the care of my grandmother.

Now this is a time where the veil got ripped off, I have discussed before.

My mother complains about my grandmother being sick, she is not cleaning her up or any of the hardcore stuff, but complains about the medications and insulin and having to maintain her sugars. She looks over at Aunt Denial and me, and says "She's taking too long to die!"

Some of my hugest regrets in life is not answering back and saying "What in the hell is wrong with you?" but I suppose my being no contact is a message of a sort isn't it?  I actually felt the earth tilt on it's axis. Perhaps this is the very day, I knew exactly what my mother was.  I always thought if anything since my mother was my grandmother's favorite, that she loved her in return even with some of the backbiting. In reality my mother who had spent a lifetime telling us how much she loved her mother, couldn't wait for her to shuffle off this mortal coil.

I would go into the other room. One thing about me, and my health, infection can settle in fast. And when I mean fast, it can come on within minutes. The doctors allow me to have emergency antibiotics, because I proved to them emergency antibiotics can mean the difference between a three week death's door, blood infection hospital stay vs. rest and being able to handle an infection at home. Stress and extreme emotional trauma can trigger infections in me.

I did not wrap back then and was not getting lymphedema treatment yet, that came years later. I go and cry in the bathroom tired of evil shallow women, suck it up and walk out to the living room where my grandmother is sitting and I feel these immense feelings of incredible sadness that are hard to explain. I put my legs up and notice with my horror, the "red spots" are there but say nothing to nobody.  Red spots on my bad leg mean an infection is coming. My grandmother sitting in her cancer wizened thinness looks over at me, and says nonchalantly "What's wrong with your leg, it's turning all red, you should do something about that!" as if it is all in my control.

That's one thing I remember from the both of them, the rude comments about my swelling lipedema legs, as if I woke up one day and decided to get huge giant legs. But what gets me is how she is commenting on my health conditions while she is dying of cancer like I am the one with the problem and not her. Anyhow thankfully I am able to bow out, tell my husband it's time to leave and act polite and tell my grandmother, "I am fine." I am lying of course. This is the last time in 2007, that I saw many of the other relatives too.

Three months later, I don't go to her funeral. For me it is an act of self preservation. I hope you can understand why.

 I don't have money to go anyhow. No one offers any. I feel like I will "die" if I go, and can't even explain that to anyone. Inside I feel this cold dark feeling regarding the family that has never ceased. I know my status in the family is lowered a few notches in refusing to come to the matriarch's funeral though I do order and send flowers that I can't really afford.

My Mother's Second Daughter

I had an old school chum on Facebook I thought had no more contact with my sister and mother. I thought wrong.

Yesterday I kicked her to the curb on Facebook, unfriended and blocked her immediately. She probably was serving as a spy too. She was an old friend of my sister and I hung out with her too on occasion in high school.  I believed wrongly her contact with my sister and mother had become very minimal since this was someone I knew in the 1980s and early 1990s. I should have remembered Queen Spiders never leave loose ends.

My sister never posted on her Facebook wall even when I was in contact with her. However my sister's daughter the one who refused to befriend me on Facebook befriended her which gave me a clue something was off. For the old school chum, let's call her Betsy for now, that's not her real name of course.

One of my friend's on Facebook showed me a public post where my mother wrote Betsy, on her facebook wall. Since I had my mother blocked long ago, I did not see this before. This friend wanted me to know that the Betsy was not a safe person for me to be friends with on Facebook. I am glad I saw this though it was painful.

My mother wrote in 2015: "You Haven't Changed a Bit, Oh, you are now my second daughter."

Betsy: "AWESOME, [name of my mother] I've moved up!"

I had some memories return and one of those was that my parents both loved Betsy. Betsy was one of those sunny type personalities. My parents loved her so much that in high school, they would refer to her as their "second daughter". Now consider that, since there was two girls in my family.

Betsy would come bouncing into the room and joke and call my mother and father, her parents.  She would joke about being their daughter. They would hug her, laugh at her jokes and tell her what a great person she was. My mother used to put me down and say "Why can't you be more like Betsy? She is friendly and happy unlike you!" My father would even fawn over her, saying "Betsy is a great person, I love to have her around!" They always had presents and gag gifts for each other. Betsy never saw my parents yell or cuss each other out, they put on the best face for her. My mother would sneer, mumble and complain even in front of a very rich college friend, but when it came to my sister's friends, they were her instant best buddies.

Betsy is a person of low moral character. I always found her dating life weird, she married a man who was 65 years old when she was in her late twenties. Even my mother and sister behind her back later made snide comments about her choosing such old men at a young age. She was infertile but seemed to be wanting to look for a Daddy figure. Maybe a sugar daddy? Anyhow her first husband got older and poorer and she cheated to get a second one, in that she had her replacement so quickly she never had to live on her own as she got divorced and moved in with her ex-husband's replacement who was closer in age to her, but still 13-14 years older. This stuff was weird, but who spends time analyzing friendly school acquaintances online. I didn't have the time.

I believe Betsy is a narcissist too. I have no doubt of this now. You think about someone who writes and supports a sociopath doing a "daughter discard". That is not normal either. These are some sickos. Betsy ironically was close to her own mother who died around 6 years ago. Her wall was full of memorials to loving mothers. Her father died young, but perhaps when it came to my parents, she found like dark soulmates to be at one with. Betsy has never wanted for a job or a dollar just like my mother. She loves to bowl, and is very popular and has the nickname of "Cooter" among other friends.

This exchanged bothered me greatly. I was shaking with anger, and had to talk myself out of more kiss-off letters to various people though I told this one a few things as I walked out the door. No one who has ever known my mother in the last 50 years or met her in a room even once is a safe person and that makes me sad. The plate is being wiped completely clean. When I pondered this situation more, I used to get very depressed when Betsy visited. Today I understand why. I used to think she is so nice, why do you feel so bad around her? Well there's a reason I felt so bad. She had no problem sabotaging me behind the scenes at my mother's direction even many years later. She was a two faced traitor.

I have realized some of the depths of my abuse, and it's hard working my way out out of some of these things. Undoing these decades of damage is tough.  I had no chance being smashed down behind the scenes. Remember this was done in public so imagine what would be done behind the scenes. Socially I feel more uneasy then I did even as a teenager. No contact has changed my personality and it has continued even three years later. The other day, I had the fleeting thought that someone new did not like me, because they were not talking to me in front of a group of people, and geared myself saying, "You must not care anymore if people don't like you!" "It is a trap you must escape!". 

 My mother has been doing anything and anything to crush me behind the scenes, and did it with everyone she came in contact with.  I used to think "Oh I am being paranoid!" to think anyone she had talked to had been poisoned against me but it's true, absolutely true. She talked everyone else into sharing her opinion of me that I meant nothing and was nothing. Her ways of turning me into "nothing" to others were never-ending.

The years of being devalued and invalidated have taken a massive toll, and I know my mother got so many to join in with her, it is disgusting.  Remember Smakintosh's video Familial Sabotage of the Narcissistic Parent? In my case, not one family member, not one family friend, not one school chum or anyone who has ever met my parents or mother was left untouched. I have had over 40 relationships affected, where my mother's side was overtly chosen. Some condemned me for no contact and some relationships were poisoned far earlier. Yes I know that is a lot of people. If I didn't know how narcissists and sociopaths operated, there is no way I could have coped with so many betrayals.

This "second daughter" comment, is more evidence that I did not come out of Queen Spider's womb.

I really was surrounded by evil people.

My Father

My father was a narcissist too.

I once had a conversation with my father.

I told him in my teens that my mother hated me and I knew she had never loved me. He shaked his head, "No, No, Your mother loves you!" as if he had to convince himself. I told him, "She has never hugged me and never has one kind word to say!" I responded, "She does nothing but criticize me." He would assure me she loved me but sadly serving as her enabler, would then start saying "Maybe you should lose weight or clean more then your mother would treat you better." With this, he would team up with her to rip me down. He never defended me. Never ever. I burst into tears knowing I would never be listened to.

The abuse he gave me was bad enough on it's own but his betrayal for her, I will never forget. After all this is the man, that knew I was dying in Chicago, covered in sores, weighing near 700lbs, and left my mother every dime ensuring a forever comfortable existence for her, as I took the bus to food pantries and gasped for air in the ER. Those days of poverty I have never forgotten. There is real terror and fear when you realize there may be nothing to eat, or you need a medicine and can't even dream of the money for it. I am sure those who read this blog today see that edge to me where I fear the streets and life destroying poverty. My father failed in one of the first jobs of a father, which is to protect a daughter. Even if someone is over 18, someone may still need help. He scapegoated me too along with her.

He joined her in my abandonment in Chicago. He was angry at me for failing.  He was angry over the money borrowed for my college. When you hear me say I would not go to college again, I wouldn't. They paid for half, and I paid the other bills and worked in the dorm cafeterias for spending money. The constant crushing to meet the financial juggernaut, destroyed so much of life for me.

He did not want me to become a teacher but wanted me to be a business person or a more elevated position, but I barely got through college financially as it was. When both parents realized I was not going to get a normal teaching job, for some reason they didn't understand my medical problems and refusals when I explained it to them, it's like they wrote me off for good. My growing weight angered them. He was there too, that day they both visited from their trip to the Mall of America, stopping at my two-room ghetto apartment--I had new traps just put in for the mice and thankfully one didn't appear during the visit,

I remember he sat in the van, and he didn't want to come in. Just like they both would almost refuse to come to my wedding a year later,  he acted put-upon. One relative told me they had complained about me marrying and did not want to come and almost refused. He wasn't too disabled to walk in my apartment. He still did flights at stairs at home and there was only 4 steps into my apartment. He sat like a petulant child in the car and then reluctantly came in and sat in our old easy chair by the door. My mother gave me that horrible sneer, forever caught on film, the picture as she met me at the door. In her eyes, is the lifelong enjoyment she had for my misery. The picture is so shocking I wish I could post it here. Sometimes I consider it but I keep this blog anonymous for obvious reasons.

They came in and she brought roast beef sandwiches with cole slaw in white paper bags picked up from some deli on the way. They spent about an hour, on the way home from their shopping trip blast. My mother didn't even sit down the whole time. I remember as they were leaving, she looked me up and down said, "Do you know how big you are getting?" It's disgusting". My father nodded in affirmation. Then she pointed at my worse leg, and said, "You need to do something about that too!". What could I do? I had no medical insurance and was barely getting treatment for asthma and breathing problems via the ER. I was seeing a charity doctor who would prescribe me needed antibiotics, but couldn't afford better care. I had already had multiple hospital visits with one week to three week long stays, for severe leg infections and blood poisoning. The me of today remains in horror, that two parents could see their daughter literally dying, covered in sores through out her whole body having gained hundreds of pounds in a very short period of time and do nothing about it. 

Together my parents were a nightmare. It's like they fed off each other. The evil would be increased a notch when they were together. Us kids would be relived whenever one went away usually my father on a business trip, because the tag teaming of child abuse and ranting and raving about what me and my brother did that day would go down.  Alone my father seemed more placid, and easier to deal with and alone my mother simply ignored us more.

As I have written before, she would manipulate him, throwing him into a froth, complaining about me and my brother. She usually would instigate this complaining about the housework and things not being clean enough. A spot on the bathroom floor, a droplet on the kitchen floor and all hell would break loose. The smallest sins would be magnified a dozen fold. He would smack us saying "Don't talk back to your mother!" My brother got it worse as I shrunk into the wall, getting all the attention for being a boy but that included beatings for not getting good enough grades and for losing a tool or for making an error as my father did his endless yard, house maintenance/decoration, and computer projects.

It's strange. He was so controlled by my mother. Sadly my mother defined me in his eyes as she did with everyone else. I believe she turned him against me totally. It was like he saw me as "nothing". The list of my failings never ended. He called me a loser for being poor and not getting jobs. He mocked both I and my husband at the dinner table, saying we could never afford a trip to Disney World where he bragged spending 7,000 dollars on the trip.

Around the same time my sister decided she hated me after I was into college, things worsened with my father. I had moved back home to do my student teaching which pissed them both off. My health had worsened. Everyday I was treated like I was in the way.  Downstairs in the basement while standing next to the pool table being told to do some cleaning project, he said to me, "Your personality sucks!" "No one likes you! and you have a shitty personality!" This attack remains in my mind because he was attacking the core of my being, basically saying he did not like who I was. These weren't thoughts he came up with his own but definitely instigated by my mother.

The me of today wonders, "Why didn't I fight back?" Is there any wonder on my high school student teaching report that while I got high scores on everything, the lead teacher pointed out a lack of confidence. Why did he hate me so much? That bothers me. I was scared of him and nervous which isn't exactly bringing out one's best side. If someone tells you that, where they even hate your personality, there's no hope for the relationship.

However things are more complicated. My father was different. My brother told me that once he apologized to him for being so abusive. I thought to myself, "Where is my apology?" Here while I have attested to his own narcissism and problems with rage, and abuse, I have seen differences between my mother and father that stood out.

 He at times seemed to have this little good side in him, where he knew something was wrong about his life and it was not going well.  He was a narcissist but seemed to have very brief but fading flashes of insight among the general mode of having none. He would hug us children on occasion. He would try to talk to us, though this was adversely affected by him screaming or hitting at us this the day before. He took us to movies and talked about science fiction and computers with us. Sometimes he would come home from work seminars that talked about life improvement and vowed to change.  He wasn't going to scream at us anymore. He was going to try to be more understanding. It never lasted more then a week, but one could see this spark of thinking life could be different. Was this the spark of conscience my mother worked actively to stamp out? I think so.

My mother always had this way of commandeering people and he was totally. Even recently while being NC, during the pop-up visit, I watched my brother online and then my mother's present husband complain about the failings of his live-in girlfriend. I know where that originated. If my mother doesn't like someone or tells people what to think, she can get everyone on board with her hate campaigns. No one ever defends the person she decides to speak against. Even now it troubles me how these dynamics remain so entrenched.

With my father, I  have been confused my whole life about the small snippets of good and the very very bad. This was the same man who hit me and threw me in the pool to sink and almost drown, while I screamed. He pinched at me and smacked me all the time. He kicked me in the butt. He respected no boundaries and treated me like trash. He would punch me in the arm if I didn't rake the leaves correctly. The neighbors would call the police seeing him cussing in the yard and smacking us kids around and even sometimes just from all the noise.

That's one of the complicated things about being abused. With the sociopath in the house, she hated me and outside of buying me things never deviated from absolute disgust with me. My father at times seemed to take an interest in me.  He would tell me I was smart and talk about his memories. Talk about confusion. However every abuse website talks about this. Even domestic batterers buy flowers for their abused wives and talk nicely to them on occasion, it doesn't excuse the abuse. It doesn't excuse the fact he never stood up to my mother either or did something about the severe emotional and other abuse.

Why did he marry my mother? He seemed to see her as this angel that could do no wrong. She was the leading light in his life and on an absolute pedestal she never deserved. She never hugged any of us or talked to us in any serious conversational way outside of telling us what to clean. I once asked my mother why she never talked to me and never got an answer. I suppose empty shells just have nothing to talk about. She seemed to hate having children outside of her relationship with Mini-Me. One odd dynamic was that Mini-Me and my father had absolutely no relationship, she hated my father. Once she was married and out of the house, she had absolutely nothing to do with him. Even today my sister has nothing to do with my brother. or his children. Relationships weren't just destroyed for me, when life revolves round one person, there's many that go down the tubes.

This doesn't mean he stopped all abuses, but there were times he attempted conversation. He would share some happenings about his childhood such as when his childhood home burned down during the Christmas season when he was just 9 years old or talk about his summer working in Yellowstone Park during college. He absolutely loved Yellowstone Park and this was something I remember sharing joy with him in. So there were those times. My mother never shared anything like this keeping clammed up about her past completely. She never talked to me about anything.

My father had a very high IQ. For some reason I remember being told his IQ was around 140. Sadly even his intellectual interests and abilities were completely different from my own.  There were times I wanted to understand things he understood but was unable to. He didn't understand how my Aspie mind worked. There are things I figured out he never could have done so and the mysteries of math and computers remained a giant fog to me.

He was a computer and math genius who even got a full-ride scholarship at an esteemed Ivy League university. Imagine that, he was angry that his own children were not showing such academic prowess, but in his poor choice of a wife, it's not like we were getting academic stimulation and time to study.  He won awards all through school and was even written up in newspapers for winning academic contests as a child. I believe his narcissism could be rooted in the fact that he never could do no wrong as a child. He was a shining star. I saw in one old newspaper online where his parents had a birthday party so big for him, they wrote about it in the newspaper with Aunt Confused playing the accordion. He was only 7 years old.

He never went without a job, so my later economic troubles were not understood. I flunked math all through school, and barely passed it even having to take the general mathematics exam that required 71 percent to pass ten times so I could get my college degree. One friend has theorized to me that my father was an Aspie, but  I disagreed with her. His skills to make in the world were too high, he never faltered like me socially. He was not like the Aspies of Silicon Valley with great computer skills and social failure. He succeeded socially. He was a well-liked boss at work with a smile on his face and when he died many old employees showed up to his funeral even though he had been disabled some years before.  My mother never would have put up with a socially awkward Aspie who could not make money.  So no, there was none of the same social problems or any of the rest.

One thing I noticed when my mother was not around, there were rare times my father treated me far better even into adulthood. He talked to me different. Today when I analyze this, it happened after he got sick. I am not sure if was because he wanted someone just to talk to him or if it illustrated any real feelings for me. I remember saying to people, "Why does my father get nicer when he is sick?" 

After my first no contact was ended, around 1993-4 right before I moved away to Chicago, I commuted to a job where I had to bypass my parents house and a few times I stopped to visit, when my mother wasn't there, he talked to me almost like a human being. That probably was the closest we ever got. My mother was not there and was at work But then that was the time where it looked like I may still have a career and find a normal life.  He was cooking and teaching himself to draw and exploring alternative medicine to help with his health problems. I discussed all those topics with him. Even then when I think back his accolades and excuses for my mother stayed the same. Did he like me more because I seemed like I was going to do well back then? This was the time I had my art teacher job at a juvenile home and it seemed career and otherwise, I might be okay.

As I got sicker and poorer all that goodwill disappeared. All it took was one job lay-off and even he threw me away and I was written off as a "loser".  I moved to Chicago to get my residential counselor job and to stay off the streets which angered him. But what else could I do? He refused to help, I was facing homelessness and he was from the sink or swim school. My mother filled his mind with bad thoughts about other people including me.

What kind of man allowed a fat Aspie daughter to go work and live in the hard streets of Chicago? He had absolutely no fatherly concerns for my safety. There was no empathy for my troubles even from him. He was part of the picture of my severe medical neglect. There was total selfishness in that he only cared about his own health problems. He wasn't visiting me in the hospital either when I almost died of those deadly leg infections. He was healthy enough after being disabled to travel to Florida and Disneyworld and that notorious Mall of America so while he died at the age of 57 during that time he was healthy enough to have done more.

 Sometimes I ask myself "How could someone influence someone to treat their own daughter so badly?" But he definitely had no qualms in doing so. One thing that bothers me to this day, is asking "Why did he treat his sister so badly? Why did I grow up hearing absolutely no empathy for a woman who was domestically abused?" This gave me a weird view of relationships. It's like I was taught that men were not supposed to protect women at all. My father seemed to have a weird view of women, and would scoff at any female tears saying women only cried to manipulate. There seemed to be a hatefulness for femininity or any "softness". This makes sense he married the hardest coldest woman who never cried. There was no Daddy's Little Girl stuff to my life.  When I see that stuff it's like a punch in the gut, just like the "Mother always loves you" memes on Facebook. It's like I was another male child but one that wasn't quite good enough for basically not being male.

Another conversation stands out to me. I left the Catholic church when I was 18 and joined the Unitarian church. Today of course I am a Christian but back then that is where I was.  I kept my mouth shut about this but my mother found out. When I told my father, he said, "That sounds like something you would do!" When I lived at home, they basically told me stuff like "My house, our rules" and forced me to go Catholic Mass even when I had passed the age of 18.

The conversation that stands out to me, sums up a lot to me. I was sitting in the car with my father with just the two of us and I told him, why and how I had left and told him, "I just do not believe in Catholicism.". He basically went into this spiel telling me how people join religions for cultural and social reasons. "No one really believes it! If you lived in China, you'd be Buddhist, it's for social cohesion. I really do not believe in Catholicism but I go along with it to keep your mother happy." I was very very bothered by this. I said to him, "How can you be a religion and go to Mass every week for a religion you don't even believe in.? 

My father's religion was more science fiction. He even used aloud to me once that God could be an alien being with superior intelligence but he bordered on agnostic beliefs. His personal notebook full of phone numbers had this quote typed out on it on the front page: "Nothing Exists But Atoms and Space, All Else is Opinion Democritis 460-370 BC." I am not sure what he would think of the me of today. He probably would joining in the disgust of someone in the family being a Christian.

To me this is an example of the thought control that a narcissist can hold over another. Everything was about pleasing my mother to that man even to the point of the suppression of his own religious beliefs and thoughts. How could one keep silent about so much? My mother's second husband even ditched his life long Methodism to join the Catholic church at her bidding. In other words, my mother's control of people even supercedes God's in their minds. What of God? I couldn't bring up religious issues with either of them. My father busily told me to keep my mouth shut about any religious questions.

One thing about my personality compared to my father's is he would chide me constantly for being too idealistic. In some ways this was true, I didn't know how the world really worked but his put-downs for being a "flowery hippie". "hippie-dippie" and "flower-child" did not include any real lessons about the world. I was seeing far more of the world working with incarcerated youth, gang members and living in the neighbors I did then any of my parents ever did. There seemed to be part of him very angry that I held to the things of conscience and simply did not conform. He was always angry at me for not submitting to him and to my mother. He told me constantly I was "too weak" and "too sensitive". 

When I read People of the Lie, and read about the couple where one was in thrall to the other. It described my father to me. I wrote about this on the People of the Lie article.

"One thing about my father is while he was a narcissist too, he was in thrall to my mother, same as Hartley the milquetoast weak husband to Sarah in "People of the Lie." Notice how Hartley did Sarah's bidding at every step even as she insulted him emasculated him and called him nothing. He reacted with depression but still never challenged her. My mother and father screamed and yelled at each other without fail, with my mother making constant demands of my father, leaving him no energy for anyone else but in the end whatever she said went. I can't even recall one time where he made a stand against her or didn't submit to her wishes. This is true for my entire family come to think of it. I am the only one who has ever "rebelled".

His "thralldom" to my mother allowed him to be led by the nose into even worse behavior. Peck goes into thralldom of evil in this book and says that Hartley was in thrall to Sarah. Charlene while more of a borderline type sociopath also too expected complete control in any relationship.

 My father would have his rare moments were it seemed he wanted to change to be a better person but it vaporized under her spell. There were times he tried to get close to me, but she would shut it down in an instant. She had a way of goading him on and having him erase all his vestiges of kindness encouraging meaner and colder behavior. To please her, he chose wickedness. He put her on a pedestal treating his own children like objects but he made this choice to submit to evil.

I believe this is true. Even the religious aspects of following his wife's religion he really did not believe in was part of this being in "thrall" and seeking to please.

One close friend met my father acouple years before he died, and has told me, "That is the saddest man, I ever met!". I would agree that something in him did seem very sad and lost.  When he got sick, he seemed to have some regrets. But even far before that he was not a happy person.

When I look back, and my health conditions are far worse then his and came at a young age, even his health problems don't explain his object misery and constant anger. I used to wonder "What brought out all the rage?" Was he repeating child abuse he had suffered? Anyhow he was such an angry person. He would brag about being a perfectionist, well that I believe was part of the problem. Everything had to be perfect and when it was not, he would get very angry at the world, others and himself. Of course my mother worsened this side of his personality, basically three children suffered under the perfectionism yoke.

I cried and cried when he died, but I had grief over the relationship that should have been too. I feel like he was someone else taken away from me by my mother. Sometimes I have considered who people could have been without the wicked influence. I saw the brief moments even admist all the abuse where he wanted more and where he seemed to want love, and to be close to us. However his desire to please my mother, superceded all this. I remember seeing an early letter he wrote her when they were first together and he is so eager to please in wanting to do right by her and fixing up their apartment. Even as a teen reading this letter, I was troubled and just shook my head. I wish he had been able to see me outside of my mother's eyes.

"You're Not Really Sick!" Dealing with Narcissists and Illness

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This may be an intense one, and triggering.  I'm peeling the layers of the onion off strip by strip. This is a very thick layer. The facing that my very life was not valued by these people. A warning for all here, is when it comes to illness. Avoid people who display the RED FLAG of having NO EMPATHY for your health challenges or those of others. The worse thing about narcissists is their lack of empathy, the inability to put themselves in another's shoes. They will see illness as something to prey on, not something to have sympathy for.  It doesn't matter if it's your Mom. There's nothing inside her to get her to even have one emotion about what you are going through.

 One huge reason for my no contact, is physically I couldn't take dealing with them anymore. My body is too tired. I got too tired to do the visits anymore and put on my acting job of getting along with people I knew hated me.

My medical neglect growing up with the narcissists was severe. I am lucky to be alive.

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"Turning Blue? Shut Yer Trap!"

The day is seared into my memory. Sitting on the bottom stoop of the stairs, while living at home during college, I tell my father I can't breathe. Every breath is a force of will. Another severe asthma attack has hit. Wheezing and about to throw up, I showed my fear and distress. His response? "Shut the hell up!" "You're not really sick!"

Another day, I am living away from home in one of my rented rooms, and get a violent asthma attack while driving home from work. Thankfully I know right where the hospital is, I should after many panicked visits to the ER. I drive up on the curb, as the orderlies half carry me in. My inhaler won't work. My lungs are slamming shut. I am taken into intensive care. They know it is not a panic attack.

My heart has gone into afib from the severity of the asthma attack. I barely avoid intubation as they give me Benadryl and other medicines and hook me up to the heart monitor. An atheist at that time in life, I pray to God to keep me alive. Later they stabilize me and then give me a breathing treatment. The asthma attack will be such a bad one, that it will hurt to breathe for weeks. Imagine the worse case of bronchitis. I have that too having already entered chronic bronchitis land. Even today, I have to be on steroid inhalers to be able to breathe. The endless asthma during my youth damaged my lungs. I have COPD.

The nurses call my next of kin and call my parents and tell them, "Your daughter is very sick!" "They scoff, and tell the one on the phone, "Oh, she just can't cope!". The nurse waits until I can breathe to tell me, my parents reaction on the phone. I am only 25 miles away from where they live. She says to me, "Something is very severely wrong with you parents, they told me they are not coming out." and relays to me what they said. The look on her face is one of pity. Since I did not have medical insurance, I was released from the hospital. Already I had run up thousands in medical bills but none of my jobs provided health insurance. I would crawl home and could barely make it up the stairs to my rented room. A roommate took care of me as I was in bed for over a week. It should have been my family.

This is how things went for me when trying to get help for medical problems. One other time while still living with my parents. I would get sick again, crawl up those too steep stairs to grab my inhaler and drive myself to a clinic to get a breathing treatment. Sometimes I think, "Why didn't you just call an ambulance?" but I was afraid. I wasn't supposed to have any needs met.

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"Xs over Your Eyes? We Need Our Beauty Sleep"

My parents almost even let my GC sister die when she was 13 and I was 14 letting her gasp in her bed, from the smoke in the neighborhood from burning leaves. They went to bed, telling her, "You'll be alright!", and I was the one having to scream, yell and pound at their door to get them to take her to the hospital as her gasping turned worse and worse. Her chest heaved and she grabbed at her throat. What is scary, is by then my sister was showing her  growing coldness as she did not cry and depended on me to go display the emotions to get things done.  She coded on the hospital floor, but this didn't change them. Not one bit. She would grow up to hate the sister who saved her life.

I often think to myself, that my sister's burgeoning coldness blossomed under my mother's total lack of empathy. Perhaps that is one day some of the craziness set in. In other words, she almost paid the final price too for having a malignant narcissist for a mother. My nieces and nephews couldn't even imagine that the reason they are here today is because of me.

My periods totally had stopped midway through college. I told my mother, who said, "Oh that doesn't mean anything", and went to a doctor at my college clinic who said, "You are stressed". Actually it was the development of severe PCOS.

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"You Don't Need to Hear!"

When I was 13, I went totally deaf in my right ear. I cried to my mother for a week and half and still she would not take me to a doctor.  Standing in the hallway on the slate tiles of our 6 bedroom house, I remember as she smacked me and told me to "Quit whining about your stupid ear!". While back then, the hearing came back, today I have no hearing in that ear. It is stone cold deaf.  That was my life with my parents. Their problems always came first. Mine meant nothing. Being hearing impaired around narcissists sucks by the way, they aren't going to make sure you heard what was said.

We went to Colorado as part of a family vacation and were at a high altitude. I couldn't breathe. I remember crying and being scared. Nothing was done for me. I was told to shut up and suck it up. Fortunately I made it but I spent a week seriously short of breathe that would equal later bouts of severe bronchitis. Thankfully I was young enough then to survive.

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"My Baby Loves to Play With Light Motes"

My autistic problems showed themselves early. I stimmed. I cried and was easily frightened. I had serious OCD, that went neglected even though it worsened and became very severe in high school. I would not conquer OCD until my 30s and even now it can arise if I am under stress. Hours were spent lining up my shoes. My mother took advantage of some of the autism as she without guile bragged to her friends when I was a child, that she could put me as a baby in a crib for hours alone and I would not cry. They had plenty of money for a professional. This was not a poor family with their hands tied. Obviously as I became more verbal, they probably knew I would talk and did not want to risk that. I told a teacher who did not believe me, "My parents don't love me," but a therapist may have taken a second look.

"Even Mr. Buller The Ex-Marine Gym Teacher Doesn't Want a Dead Kid on the Playground"

I would get sick, throw up and worse. Gym teachers as early as elementary school sent letters home to my mother stating "Five Hundred Pound Peep is having breathing problems, her balance is way off, she has major motor skill problems, please take her to a doctor!". I would never be taken to a doctor. Thankfully gym teachers had mercy on me. They probably didn't want to have to perform CPR during gym class or have one of their students die. I didn't have to run on the bleachers with the rest of the class. I could walk instead of run, this during times where I was no where near a weight that prevented exertion. The gym teachers knew something was wrong with me, but my parents simply didn't care.

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"The Opposite of Stephen King's book THINNER"

I gained 100lbs within 6-9 months, when I was around 13 years of age. I believe this is when the lipedema first set in. Puberty is a major on set time for lipedema.  This was just a taste of what would come later with the 400lb gain. I went from being a size 13 to a size 22. Imagine being a size 22 in high school. I was. I did not eat for this weight. My parents knew exactly what I was eating as my mother lorded over the refrigerator. I was smacked for gaining weight, one day when my mother realized I didn't fit in any of my clothes, screaming at how expensive I was. No one thought to take me to a doctor. Aunt Confused lived around us at that point and recently told me, "I told your mother to take you to a doctor, but she just wouldn't."

I saw a doctor on rare occasion, the schools wanted their vaccinations, but these occasions were extremely rare. My mother would pooh-pooh all medical complaints that I told the doctor. "There's nothing wrong with her, she is just a whiner". We got our teeth cleaned in elementary school, I suppose even narcissists didn't want gap toothed children spoiling the family photos.

Since I have gone NC and been diagnosed with a rare disorder [stage IV lipedema, lipo-lymphedema] the second one beyond PCOS] this last year, one fact stood out to me about my family. My sister got a rare disorder as an infant [totally unrelated to mine] and my parents moved heaven and earth to keep her alive.

"Doing What Was Right for the Golden Child"

 One odd thing about my Aspergers is I have a good visual memory from it, and can remember many things I have read even as a child. It is not a photographic memory but perhaps a subset of one. I remembered seeing a medical article on my sister as a child, and I decided to go looking for it, using the name of the rare disorder which was heart and vein related. With the help of a friend, we were able to recently find it. In other words, while I was medically neglected, with my Aspergers undealt with and other serious health problems especially from my teens on ignored, my sister warranted the most advanced medical care in the country where my mother went to go find her experimental doctors and researchers.

 She would actually be the first one to ever LIVE from her disorder and this was written up in a medical journal. Finding this article too, I realized some discrepancies the family had told me, they told me she got sick at the age of 2 and half,  but the medical article made it clear she had been sick from the age of 4 months old. Of course my mother being withholding as crazy, I was having to go by whatever clues I could muster and what was personally witnessed. The stroke I witnessed myself at the age of 3 and half when my sister told me, "I can't move my legs". This was one of my earliest memories.

My mother got huge narcissistic supply via my sister. She was the martyred mother of the very sick little baby and then little girl. The entire neighborhood rallied around her and so did the family. I was sent away from home for months twice, as my sister recovered and my mother was too overwhelmed to deal with me and my brother. One time would be living with Aunt Confused in her crazy domestic abuse house of horrors and the second time would be when I lived with "The Aunt That Loved Me".

 I found this interesting as we were only a year apart in age supposedly but who knows what to believe given the possibility I am adopted. If she was sick by 4 months. This means I was a non-entity by the age of 15 months.  Irony of ironies, she would go on to be very healthy and thin, and overcome this disorder with no heart issues, while I got sicker and sicker. Of course some will say a possibly terminally ill sibling, needs all the attention! However years after she recovered, and I was getting sick I was told, "Take care of your sister!".

No one ever took care of me.

 She ended up with 4 children and as an upper middle class suburban housewife who disdains me. For years I was told she would die young, even into late high school but she got stronger, healthier and meaner, as I got fatter and sicker.  To be frank, she was healed by age 4 but the affects of her illness lived on as it guaranteed her golden child status. She was the child that lived! She was the child my parents worked so hard to save! I was chopped liver.

Like a little vampire she sucked up all the energy. She got the space in the garage for her car, while I had to clean the snow off mine. My mother combed her hair and cut her dinner meat into high school. She was spared any heavy house work, raking, shoveling, taking out the trash and my mother protected her from the rage of my father. He never dared to hit her or touch her unlike me.  She was the "perfect" child, tattle-tale, a Nelly Olsen who could do no wrong in Mommy's eyes.

My mother laid out her clothes every morning through high school and made her lunch while I was on my own for both and often required to make her lunch too. I was forced to do her school work into college, sharing what reports, and projects with her I could. My mother even had her use my early art class projects from college left in the closet for her community college degree. She was the princess while I was nothing to them.

There was no experimental doctors for me. No true help. I was thrown to the wolves. This is something I never thought about in years, but I'm facing it now. How did she warrant such extreme help and I didn't? I know a baby is different from a teen and an adult, but most parents will say they forever care for their children. Even my autism was so severe, that teachers and others told my parents something was wrong and they simply ignored it. Being in Catholic schools instead of public schools made my sliding through the cracks even more likely. The nuns weren't going to do IEP meetings, we didn't have special Ed. teachers.

"There's Nothing Wrong With You!"

 Dealing with severe PCOS as a teen, and not knowing it, as I threw up and was in severe pain during periods, my mother took me to a quack who gave me a big bottle of black vitamins. She yelled at me for the brown spots on my neck and legs that were signs of the disorder. No specialists were called for me. I saw this other doctor once or twice during high school for vaccinations, who did nothing but remember my mother was ever-present telling him, "She's exaggerating!".

I was never ever listened to. Years later I would end up abandoned in the ghetto after my 400lb weight gain and was dying. At near 700lbs in 1998, I was given less then 18 months-2 years to live. I married my now husband expecting to soon die. He supported me on 8 bucks an hour which was chump change in that expensive city as I had applied for disability.

Both parents only visited twice, once for my wedding and other relatives had to talk them into coming, and another time on the way home from Mall of America. This is the day my mother screamed at me, "Do you know how big you are getting?" and pointed to my most swollen lipedema/lymphedema leg and said, "Do something about that!" I was abandoned at a time in my life when I needed help. I knew she hated me, but learned that my father hated me that day as well.

The poverty almost killed me. Imagine being near 700lbs and having to stumble to bus stops, out in the rain, cold and sleet with severe breathing problems. Imagine being that sick living in a very dangerous neighborhood with no car, no phone or refrigerator or working stove. Imagine that fact I didn't have regular groceries. Some of my recent problems now is I feel so triggered to those days of poverty being crushed by all these bills, knowing the bottom could fall out at anytime. My friends have helped to keep me going now. Then I didn't have any friends and I didn't really have any family either. The ER staff knew me by first name in that town. The prognosis was not good. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I had gained 400lbs in 28 months. There was no mercy. 

                                           [from reddit]

"A SNEER For You As I Taste Your Tears with Glee"

I have mentioned this before, but I gathered my strength to go no contact looking at a picture from that time. I wish I could show it here, but have to keep my anonymity intact. In it, I am standing at 600lbs and something with bald spots on my head, covered body-wide in skin sores on the front stoop of our mouse infested two room Chicago brick building two storied apartment and my mother is at the door wearing crisp bright white linen shorts and a green blouse, her hair is brown, her eyes deep set, and on her face is a Joker's smirk. Looking at that picture years later in horror,  I realized something. She enjoyed my pain and misery. This was the time I was groomed to be under her thumb. With her basically teaching me not to depend on anyone, and that I was a worm that deserved nothing but misery. While other families would rally to help an ill member, with narcissists some of us are literally left to die.

As I got older, I realized no sane upper middle class family with financial resources would leave a daughter in such dire straits. I had never done drugs or drank or ran wild. But I was so so so hated. During my time of low contact I hid my health problems as best I could. During one family meal I went to after being in the hospital, almost passing out at the table, I ran to the bathroom to hide how sick I was. This was the time, I and my husband developed the rule, I must always leave my mother's house and other family homes if I took ill. I didn't trust them enough to be around them when sick. Looking back, I think why even bother with people like that? No one ever let me lay down either on long visits, more often then not, the hour and half car ride going and coming and sitting up all day would leave me with a leg infection.

Many of my health problems were worsened via my abuse; in fact the constant trauma led to the failure of my body. With the lipedema, if I had been diagnosed in high school, I could have been kept in stage one or two which means mobility. and being far smaller.  I wouldn't have almost lost my life to leg infections. My heart would not have been damaged by hypothyroidism which my doctors believe started in my teens. Severe untreated PCOS and insulin resistance took a major toll on my health as well, destroying my fertility and bringing me to diabetes. My lungs were damaged from all the untreated asthma as a teen. While at the age of 18, I got myself to the doctor and  got it diagnosed, the lack of medical insurance and help took a toll. Having to depend on the ER damaged my lungs where I had chronic bronchitis by the age of 19 and was fully entrenched on the way to COPD. Remember the breathing failed before the severe obesity came. There were years I was told, "You're Not Really Sick!" as I cried about my breathing, weakness and fatigue and what teachers were saying to me.

                                         [picture source]

"You're Sick Because You are Negative"

Toxic personalities have no empathy for illness. I even realized on a social website support board I was on, my admitted disabilities were cannon fodder for personality disorders in the mix. That is one sad factor of a growing narcissistic  society, be "less then" healthy and raring to go, or have diseases  without a cure, these types will try to make you a nobody. How dare you don't heal!  How dare you are not positive! They almost see it as a personal affront. I know now to run when I see personalities like that. Your problems get in the way of their narcissistic supply.

Toxics have no empathy for the ill. They lack the introspection to even think one day they could be ill, or bedridden or in pain. They do not think of the day when they may be old or sick. Time barely passes for a narcissist. Sociopaths don't sit around and get nostalgic. They don't give a damn. My narcissistic relatives lacked empathy for other ill people. I wasn't the only one. Things I observed with my mother and sister were quite scary and showed their lack of empathy. A few of things I have mentioned in other articles.

Here are some things I observed:

"No Mercy for A Broken Back"

1. My mother and her husband scoffed at a man they went to go visit in the hospital. He had fallen from a tree and broken his back. My mother said to me at the dinner table, "He was such a big baby, he asked me for a straw! How lazy can you get?"

"You're Taking Too Long to Die!"

2. My grandmother [a narcissist as well] got pancreatic cancer, and was living with my mother. She was still mobile and in the other room inside.  Sitting at a table on my mother's new deck, with my mother, Aunt Denial, and one other relative, my mother complains about taking care of her, a job she freely took on. Remember this is someone who will have no problem in acquiring hospice or getting in-home nurses as things progress. She leans across the table and with a sneer on her face says, "She is taking too long to die".

Aunt Scapegoat Colostomy Bag Smells!

3. Aunt Scapegoat is living with my mother for a short time after heart valve surgery. They live 120 miles from each other so my mother has not served as a caretaker for her except for this short period of weeks. She has been disabled since her 30s and is on tri-weekly dialysis. She is despondent and looking at the floor but otherwise healing physically. She goes into the other room. My mother starts a litany of complaints, "She is so disgusting, and lazy!" , "I have to do all the work around here, she won't lift a finger to help herself!", "Her colostomy bag stinks, I can't take the smell!", "She won't help herself!", "She won't join support groups!". I defend Aunt Scapegoat but to no avail. My mother considers her a lazy good-for nothing that deserved all her health problems.

It gets worse, my mother turns to me and says, "I wish she did not get the heart valve surgery, why does she fight to live, her life is worthless!" Why does she keep fighting for her life? It's a waste of time. I wish she would just die!" I realized at that moment how much she hated her sister. This was  time my mother's mask she wore in front of other people fell with a thud. Everything was about her feeling "put upon", she wasn't stuck in dialysis or having scary heart surgeries. Why take her in only to resent it? I was speechless and regret not saying more but that it was natural for people to fight for their lives and her life was in God's hands, but talking about God to Satan's daughter was an absolute waste of time.

"It's Your Fault You Broke Your Foot!"

4. An uncle broke his foot coming out of his trailer falling down some stairs, he is older, mildly overweight and works in a factory where he has to be physically fit and on his feet. My mother writes a joke, "At least I didn't push you".

"Be a Good Stoic Even When You Can't Breathe"

5. Around 7 years ago, my sister is visiting my mother but in a full blown asthma attack. Her chest is heaving. She sits there and take it. Pleasing Mommy means being the best stoic and staying over night with cats in the house she is allergic to.  Her face is a grey mask as she shows no distress or any emotions. Even the inability to feel fear, starts creeping me out more and more as I watch her. One day about a year later, I am having breathing problems that are severe. They are cold induced COPD stuff and asthma together. I have tears in my eyes but am not fully weeping. I have made the mistake of having the family get me out to travel in weather that is too cold. She says to me, "What's wrong with you?" "You need suck it up a bit."

Later when her daughter has some asthma problems, she looks annoyed as she whips out the breathing machine and methodically gets her ready for a breathing treatment.

"Heart Attacks? No Big Deal!"

6. My brother has his second heart attack, my mother does not go visit him not even during the first either.

7. My mother's own attitudes of health are like my sister. She has heart attacks and finishes the day at work without anyone knowing. She hides her medical conditions to the point I am still unsure what is real and not real.  Twenty five years ago, I found out about a heart attack she had a year later from my father.  Was it a lie? I don't know. I have never seen her show distress, fear or tears. Migraine headaches bought anger but that is all I have ever seen.

"Daddy's Not Having a Petit Mal Seizure, He's Resting!"

8. I wrote already about how my parents hid my father's seizures. He is another one that had a cold view and showed no emotions when under medical pressures. He was another stoic like my mother and sister. He displays anger at some health problems but never shows fear or normal emotional distress even to the day he died.

"COPD? No, You're Just Weak!"

9. One day I am visiting my mother's house. Her husband is in the room with me. I am telling him "I won't be able to make it to a family gathering in December due to the cold and my breathing problems". He tells me, that I am lazy and just making excuses. "You just tell yourself that and are making excuses". I try to tell him COPD is something real and say "How did I get here today if I am afraid to do anything?". He says, "We get tired of all your malingering." I never could win, she gave the whole family this narrative that all my health problems were my fault and that many of them didn't even exist. I can already hear her in my head telling the lot of them lipedema is a fantasy too.

"Dying in the Hospital? We Got Shopping to Do!"

10. There are 4-5 instances where I was in the hospital and never visited, some when I was seriously ill. My mother would check on Aunt Scapegoat who lived further away, at least once every 6-8 weeks.

These were scary people to be sick around. They all weird me out because I think how none of them seem to fear death or sickness. Stoicism is the demand. When I was young, there was never any nurturance, a hand on the forehead, a cool washcloth during a fever. Never any kind words or mercy. One smear campaign I know that has been done against me, is putting me down for being disabled. It showed in the words of that one cousin and the family narrative, was that I was "fat and lazy". Nothing I could do was right. This was the worse family any person struggling with illness could have had. I have no time for people who act like them either.

My mother attempted to rewrite history and covering her tracks and wrote to me, "What exactly am I supposed to do for you. Years ago I offered to help you out with medical bills so you could go to the Mayo Clinic and get a handle of all your medical issues. ****** reminded me of that and the fact you did nothing."

This was a flat out lie but this is what she has told others for years, turning them against me.

My response in one of my last letters was:

"You did not really try to take me to Mayo. You drove to Minneapolis to go shopping at the Great Mall of America in 1997. I have the pictures, including the shot of you smirking at me while I'm opening the door-this was during my hyper-rapid weight gain, when I was covered from head to toe in sores. I found this picture very disturbing. If you had been concerned about my health you would have driven me to Rochester rather then shopping til you dropped."

I am facing the fact, and healing comes with truth, the truth is, they didn't care about me. I cared about myself to get away from them. Going no-contact for me literally was about saving my life.