The Way They Speak To Us

From an old PM interaction with my brother. [language warning] It's from some years ago.

He would have been telling the truth to say, "You don't care about her anyway".

In this one, I probably had complained about them driving by my apartment without seeing the nieces or nephews or something along those lines to him. My words weren't that extreme but the littlest rebellion against the Queen was to be stomped out at any cost.  Of course I didn't get much empathy. There never was any. He always took my mother's side on everything.

A decent relationship with anyone in my family is impossible. There's too much baggage there. Even the ones on the side lines that twitter on about Aunt Scapegoat or hold to the family lines, are impossible to talk to.  There is a feeling of anger and disgust in my stomach. Maybe they pick up on it. I can't erase it unless I get a lobotomy so good relationships are never going to happen. Nice polite words and being kind and sending cards, aren't going to form decent honest relationships. 

 Even with the extended cousins, while some and/or their children are still on my Facebook, I just went silent. I sent out a few birthday cards and did the social niceties but there is no relationships really there. With my brother years ago, I ceased all discussions of my mother and rest of the family and in the last two years all discussions of anything personal after his heart surgery were ended. He didn't even notice as I said nice things about the weather and asked how his boys were doing and this "change" was left unnoticed to him. The only time I talk to him now is when he calls on Thanksgiving or Christmas or one of his kid's birthdays. The relationship has already died out, he will be the same to me as seeing an old classmate I haven't seen in 30 years that is on my Facebook.

He gaslighted me too, telling me she was innocent as the driven snow, but he knew which side of his bread was buttered. His constant bragging wore me out too. There's a reason he told me his exact income for the weekend which probably amounted close to my monthly income at the time.  I think about too how these people spoke to me and gaslighted and invalidated me at every turn and yes I have asked myself "WHY DID YOU PUT UP WITH IT?"

He always told me he defended me, but I have realized that was a complete lie. It is weird how long it took me to realize that. It does horrify me how I allowed so many of them to talk to me like I was "nothing".  Those days are over.  Regular life is getting turned over, because I refuse to accept things from people I used to accept, but more on that in the next article.

Sinead O'Connor Attempts Suicide: Was She a Victim of Narcissists Too?

It is very sad to hear that Sinead O' Connor made a suicide attempt. I saw Sinead O'Connor sing in concert in 1990 at her peak. I never had heard such beautiful singing in my entire life and still remember this concert in detail. I have listened to her music for years.

She posted a new message yesterday:

"Her post on Monday was somewhat disjointed however it was clear she wanted to publicly rip her family members. O’Connor’s message implied she was still hospitalized.  

“Jake, Roisin, Jr., frank, Donal, Eimear, I never wanna see you again. You stole my sons from me. Then you had hypocrisy to come to hospital and then not be here when I wake and not pick up phone? I'm s--t to you. You're dead to me. You killed your mother. You stole my sons. You left me alone for twelve weeks! Why did I have to hear it was your hypocritical asses here while I was unconscious?? And now you're Gone and not picking up phone? You are child stealing murderers, I never want to see or hear from any of you again. Why were you here when you're the ones who put me here???? And where the f--k are you now??? Murderers. Liars. Hypocrites. All of you. You caused this.”"

 If you have been a fan of her music, you know something happened with her children where they were taken away.



One song Fire on Babylon speaks of her son being left with her abusive mother.

"She took my father from my life Took my sister and brothers oh I watched her torturing my child"

 This song is pretty obvious in speaking of early abuse.

 Sinead O'Connor for years talked about her "messed up" family. In this Spin article from 1991, she discusses how her family didn't like that she had become famous. Often that is one attribute for the scapegoat, get rich, get famous and you still aren't good enough. That says something scary about them right there.

In this other article where she responds to her brother in 1993 [stick with the cache on this one because a virus has been put on the normal link] she talks about her abusive mother, "My mother was very terrifying" while saying her father was "lovely" but failed to protect her.

Her brother backed her up in another statement in 1993:

"A few weeks later, O'Connor's brother gave a lengthy response, defending his father but echoing her about their mother, who died in 1985, and subjected her children to "extreme and violent abuse, both emotional and physical," he wrote. The next week, the singer responded: "Our family is very messed up. We can't communicate with each other. We are all in agony. I for one am in agony."

 It's been reported for years that Sinead had an abusive and violent mother, she ran away from home so much, that she was put in a Catholic reform school where the nuns gave her a guitar and got her into music.

  "O'Connor's mother – who would die in a car crash when Sinead was 19 – was a troubled, violent woman, and was also, the singer says now, a kleptomaniac herself who required her children to behave similarly. "

What kind of mother would force her own children to steal?

  She was definitely separated from her children.

Sinead O' Connor has been diagnosed with bipolar in the past though she has questioned this herself. The endless marriages including one that lasted only 18 days does point to some serious mental health problems. We know severe mental problems are rife among the famous for various reasons. This is a world most of us can't even imagine.

There definitely have been problems with depression and anxiety in her life and possibly other problems,  despite her world fame. I find myself wondering if the family is narcissistic, despite her mental troubles, there are people who become ill because of what they have faced. Something is really wrong when a world famous musician can't even get any breaks from a family.  Abuse does break people.  As I have written on here multiple times sometimes the soul murderers succeed.  I have seen supportive families even when someone has faced severe mental illness, her family does not seem among their number. What happened with her own children? Her mental problems could have driven them away but what else happened?

 ACONs who were scapegoats who stay relatively mentally intact, are the fortunate ones in the crucible of severe abuse. Sometimes I have said to close friends, "Aspergers saved me and kept my identity intact. It gave me an intellectual refuge so they could not break me down and disintegrate my personality." Even if Aspergers caused me major problems, that was on big positive. Other ACONs may find other places of refuge, including friends and finding someone who loves them outside of their family.

One thing that happens to singers is when they age, their voices can deteriorate. This happened with Sinead and you can hear the changes even 10 years ago as her voice went deeper. She also recently had a hysterectomy. Mid-life for the abused ACON and someone who has faced emotional problems their entire life can be a crisis point. For those of who have escaped and admitted there is no chance of change among our families. I know my own mid-life crisis point of facing my own possible early death from my disabilities and health problems necessitated my breaking away and going no contact. In my case, it had as much to do with saving my emotional life as well as my physical life.

I find myself thinking..."If only someone could tell Sinead about no contact and not investing time in people who have no love to give you".  Her message to her family is even more sad today:

"A distressing post written today says: 'You came to the hospital to see me on life support. You left before I woke and you haven't been back. Please why are you doing these things to me?? I need you. I need your love.'

It goes on: 'Come and tell me why this is all happening. Come and tell me I'm loved. Come and tell me I'm wanted and cherished.

'Been missing you all for weeks. To hear that you were here and left was agony. Now I am utterly alone. Please. Please love me. Please come to the hospital and spend time with me and help Fix all this. Please. I'm. Begging you. Don't leave me so frightened and alone.' 

The singer was found by police on Sunday afternoon after claiming she had taken an overdose."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3340813/Sinead-O-Connor-stable-hospital-unconscious.html#ixzz3t5EELzyZ
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It's sad to me watching her beg her family for love.  It's enough to bring one to tears. Many of us ACONs have been in that boat. I even asked my narcissists before I walked, "Why don't you love me?" and "Why do you hate me so much?" This is a trap an ACON can fall into, seeking love where there is none. It is a trap that almost destroyed me before I escaped. I don't seek the love of the narcissists anymore and don't want it. I realized they are incapable of any love. My own love and wishes for what could be are done.  Just showing up to the hospital when someone is unconscious and not even attempting another visit after they have woken up is pretty cold. I had my own times where no one but my loving husband was there for me in the hospital when I almost died of leg and other infections. So her pain is more then believable.

Many ACONs face having children taken away or influenced by narcissists and others to have nothing to do with them. If there are mental problems in the mix, these definitely can be used for smear campaigns and to teach the children and adult children not to have compassion but only shame and dismissal.

Remember when Sinead O'Connor had her debates with Miley Cyrus, and she told her, how the mentally ill are treated like dirt?  She stated "When you admit to mental illness, you are treated like dirt". This is very true. This is absolutely correct. Her family's reaction to her mental illness seems to be the absolute same as narcissists. Narcissists are cold and cruel when it comes to ALL medical problems and mental problems even more so.

One thing I am reading comments on the articles, and most people don't have sympathy or compassion for her. One commenter even wrote if your whole family has turned it's back on you, it's your fault! They are mocking her displays of emotion instead of having any understanding for what she has gone through. ACONs are more then familiar with how that works too. I do fear for her, I am praying that someone intervenes who knows the truth about narcissism and what the solutions are. Losing her children too had to be horrendous. Why didn't her cold family and exes even allow for supervised contact? We may not know the whole story there, but something is very wrong.

One thing I always respected Sinead O'Connor for is she has spoken out against child abuse. When she shredded the Pope's picture in 1992, she was right about the child sexual abuse that was being hidden at the Vatican. In the song lyrics she changed the word "WAR" to "CHILD ABUSE" and then ripped up the Pope's pictures. When the sex scandals in the Catholic church broke in 2002, it vindicated her warnings. The world didn't want to hear the truth.

Breaking the Chains of The Narcissist Family's Lies and False Expectations.

 

 

 

There is one insidious the way, narcissists damage us.  Narcissists abuse us with their endless expectations especially if we are dealing with high achieving narcissists. They lead us to set up false expectations about life, and if life does not measure up, then we can be thrown into severe depression.  Part of healing is dealing with reality and the way things really ARE, not the way we want them to be. Part of the healing process is tossing out their LIES ABOUT LIFE.

 

The other day the revelation came to me, that it was insanity for my family to expect a woman with serious Aspergers and severe physical disabilities to achieve their same upper middle class lifestyles. This was completely utter stupid cruelty.

 

This happened to me:

 

"One of the most frequent themes of rumination that I see in patients suffering from depression is a gap between who they feel they should be, and how they actually experience themselves. This discrepancy leads to painful self-attack, which can eventually become emotionally deadening."

 

Coming out of this stuff, is finally getting rid of a lot of my depression. It's like I am FINALLY getting an OBJECTIVE view of my life replacing REALITY with the LIES they told me.

 

What are some of those LIES?

 

The false judgments on me as a person

 

The refusing to see my circumstances

 

Telling me I'd never get married

 

The upper middle class assumptions and prejudices.

 

Their views of people who have less as lesser. Even if I never personally judged the poor myself and always had compassion for them, their judgments of the poor became part of how I saw myself. My husband always worked hard. I worked hard before I got sick.

 

The belief in the system and in selling out to it.

 

This includes believing the politicians, belief in globalist wars, belief in "some animals are more equal than others" if you understand my Animal Farm references.

 

The belief that bad things happen to bad people which has actually taken over far too many Christian churches as a whole but that will take a whole other article.

 

The belief that only success counts.

 

The belief in competition at all costs. This is one reason families are breaking up in the USA, they are competing with each other. There's no more semblance of a families who stand by each other.  Do we need more proof that Americans have become a hardened crazed nation then to glance at the possibility of Trump being president?

 

I think of how all the LIEs have HURT ME and hurt me bad.

 

The other day I thought someone as disabled as me did deserve some care and help. I have met people with disabilities like my own even SINGLE ones like Aspergers who had families who cared for and helped them. They did not throw them away or call them a loser. They knew they had challenges to face the rest did not share. I think of young me even gasping for breathe and gaining weight I did not want, facing so much utter pain and fatigue and never one ounce of mercy and I came to the conclusion, "These were people are/were evil. It wasn't you! It wasn't you!"

 

I  needed to have a bowl of hot soup given to me, a pat on the back, medical help, and to be told "We will be here for you if you need us". If strangers and professionals can give me the soup, the smile and tell me "You deserve care". Why couldn't my family?

 

Since I have been busy taking out the narcissistic trash in my life, all of the people who are gone now, had no empathy towards health and money challenges, I felt relief. I do not feel alone, I feel more RELAXED. I feel HAPPIER. I feel some semblance of a light ahead and a breaking up for YEARS of depression.

 

I think about how the heavy expectations weighed on me, and how the expectations themselves were BASED on LIES.

 

There seems to be a growing expectation that we should be able to secure the perfect spouse, the perfect career, the perfect home, engineer the perfect children, and so forth to be happy and if that doesn't happen according to our plans then something is wrong that needs fixing. While we all likely believe that we should have high expectations for ourselves I wonder if unrealistically high expectations are counterproductive and destructive.

Maybe Hollywood is to blame. Perhaps watching the lives and fortunes of the rich and famous influence our views of what kind of life we should expect. For example, are we likely to feel better or worse about our lives after watching the Academy Awards later this week?  Perhaps our increasingly self centered and narcissistic culture plays a role too. If it's all about me (i.e., my needs, my pleasures, my success) then we may never secure what we feel we deserve and are entitled to. So many people seem to have unrealistic expectations of what they can expect from a spouse, a career, their children, and life in general. They want it all and they want it all perfect.

 

After reading this article I thought, Why not just be happy with WHAT I HAVE and stop listening to those who have chained me up with the chains of their narcissistic and perfectionistic codes? Poverty still stinks, but I am done blaming myself for being low on money. I believe perfectionism is a poison used by narcissists to destroy so many. Both of my parents would brag about how they were both perfectionists and that it was a positive on their life. All I saw it leading to was people who were never satisfied with anything. Even though both parents were far wealthier then me and lived easier lives, they never were good enough. I remember my father being angry he only made over 6 figures a year and not a million. My mother was never happy either. She constantly cleaned and redecorated. Seriously. It was crazy.

 

The unrealistically high expectations that the article refers to are indeed destructive as hell.
When my parents expected a young woman with Aspergers who had severe physical disabilities to make 6 figures too, they entered the realm of insanity. They left reality far behind and they took me along on their crazy tour. I was lied to about myself, about my life and even about what reality was. My view of myself and my life was put before an insanity mirror of "you can have it all" and that to be a success, I had to fulfill these endless tenets. Don't forget she even showed up at my blog to call me a "loser". Who does that? It's insane.

It is so cruel how I was set up. My health was destroyed. They almost succeeded in totally breaking me and destroying my mental health and then they kicked me in the face for not "succeeding" and not "doing" enough.

The illusions are being vanquished, and it is taking time here, but I have worked through these things step by step.
 

This is a major one I am facing now. I was TOTALLY LIED to and under severe pressures. I have realized most people who were sick and as Aspie as me were taken care of by their families, some even for their entire lives. I had a friend once tell me, that even me becoming an art teacher in the shape I was in was rare and extreme. For a person who was sick most of my life, early on, I worked hard to stay alive. Facing reality is where forgiveness of myself lies. Facing reality is where even understanding and admitting truth about loved ones lies too.

 

My mother was cruel to my husband, putting him down for being laid off from and losing his jobs. She ignored reality in her cruelties. She ignored the economy. He got older, he was a caretaker for years to a severely disabled woman who almost died multiple times especially early in our marriage. Our marriage was vastly improved when I was listening to litanies of my husband's shortcomings by people who had no understanding what he faced.

 

This was their prison and prison bars. Their lies about REALITY and their prison bullwhip, can and cat-on-nine tails to whip me into submission. "You are a loser!" "You aren't good enough!" etc etc. All based in their Disneyland fantasy view of the world and love for the system.  Accepting reality is what is needed. For many ACONs we suffer under the lash of the narcissist's delusional worlds.

 

Once we see reality, we can relax and no longer beat the crap out of ourselves, just like the narcissists loved to watch us do. We do without or innovate. We do what we can do and realize that is all we can do. We know we do not control everything and that many things happen beyond our control. We do not live in constant fear feeling that we have angered and disappointed these narcissistic overlords. We make our own choices, and live life for what we deem is important and see ourselves as normal people in a world that is not easy. A world that many times can be difficult. We understand and acknowledge that many live under severe oppression, many who are judged and exploited by the system.

 

I've been beating head on wall too long. No pressures to fulfill long lists or to dos or measuring up. Come on in this body even them judging me by the rules of their psycho contest made them literally insane. Now I can be free of this garbage and deal with reality and be more prepared to deal with life. It has changed my view of myself and allowed for more self-love and care to come in the door.

.

They Left Me First!

The above snip is from my no contact letter to my mother.

A close friend of mine, has told me, "Your family left you far before you left them". And it's true. They left me eons ago.  As a child I was left, abandoned and neglected. As an adult, they would have me in the room with them but they were never there for me in any real way.

Sadly so many of us try to have a family but there is really not one there. We have a family in our imaginations that really does not exist.  NC will progress even after a few years into it, as some of these realizations come to light. My last vestiges of guilt over being no contact evaporated with this revelation. When I visited years ago, I was not wanted. Duty, obligation and control are the only reasons I was merely tolerated for the short and sporadic visits that I made to them. It was sad for years I was NOT wanted. Having people ignore you chips away at your soul while you are stuck in the fog of pretending they are a "family" or that they love you.

 

 

This is a snippet of a no-contact letter to an aunt

I think of the many events:

1. "You're Not Invited!" Invitations for me were short in supply which tripled teenage angst when it came to any rejections. Their hatred seeped into my bones. There was one time as a teen when I was lonely, my mother screamed at me she didn't want me going to the bowling alley with her and told me to "get my own friends". Once my mother invited my sister, two aunts, and other cousins, and nieces and nephews to go shopping in Chicago and to lunch. I was left out. There was no idea of renting me a scooter or wheelchair if they were concerned about my mobility. Perhaps I would have still said "No", but the offer was never on the table. They would go out for meals I never heard about until it was too late. Even last year for one family party, which my mother was not going to, one relative told another, "Peep doesn't want to come." without consulting me. We can guess who set that up! I probably didn't have money to go anyhow. There were at least 10 other family events over a series of years where she invited the entire family to dinner or had parties of co-workers and other relatives mixed together where I was no invited or found out about the party from another relative by accident.

 For one party in 2003, I showed up uninvited, there were lavish plates of food laid out on several tables all over and at least 60 people including several of my mothers co-workers and friends I never have met. My mother totally ignored me and did not say one word to me while I was there. Our only contact was when she gave me a vicious look as I stepped over the threshold.  One weird event was meeting this one lady who told me she had been diagnosed with Cushings, and this was during the time I had just been diagnosed with pseudo-Cushings. Isn't it odd my mother befriended other fat people?

This is a snippet of my no contact letter to my sister

2. "Drive By Ignorings" I live one mile off the highway, my mother has to drive 150 more miles to get to my sister's house and vice versa. I could go two years without seeing my nieces and nephews asking my sister to stop by and she would say "No". In fact this happened the week, I went no contact with her for good. It provided the catalyst for me to cut ties and to say why. She told me later in an email, "I was considering the best interests of my children", like she was going to show up to find me raving drunk or smoking a crack pipe. The fact that I was kept away from her children purposefully definitely came to my attention.

My mother who never stays home, drove by my apartment building constantly. I got two visits from my sister in 8 years where she stayed for 10 minutes, nose up in the air, looking around my apartment with a haughty air. I went to go visit my sister for a week in 2003, staying in a hotel which would amount to most of the contact I had with the nieces and nephews for life. Two hadn't been born yet and I am basically a stranger to the twins.

Another snippet of the no contact letter to my other.

It was obvious my GC sister did not want me there. Thank God I was staying in a hotel.  I'd do something like merely touch the counter, and she would bring a cloth immediately to wipe it as if I had cooties to share. The crazed neat freakery scared me, she actually had raised things a notch over my mother and she ordered her children to wipe and dry out the sink in the bathroom after every use.

My mother ignored me too. It occurred to me it was unfair that someone as sick as me who needed home health  and nursing care who was homebound at least 5-6 months of the year, was the one who had to visit her. No one ever came my way. My husband would drive, and bundle me up in the car, do the caretaking and take care of business here but the visits were painful and hard. No one was giving me a place to lie down. I often got leg infections or ill while visiting. The last two times I projectile vomited so hard, it scared me.

I saw her twice at this apartment in 8 years before I went no contact. She was always on the way from somewhere else where my home was "on the way". It was never a visit where visiting me or my husband was the main event. One time it was my birthday and I felt lonely having just moved and still in the fog and begged her to come. She was visiting someone in a town north of me and was driving by anyhow and stayed for an hour. The other time was the Christmas present drop-off where she walked in and dumped presents and walked out, refusing to even stay to talk.

It bothered me for years, that they never would visit. In some ways I was relieved of course, no cleaning and stress but the rejection stood out. It felt weird. Other people saw family members who were further flung. Other people had their families as part of their lives. I wondered what was wrong with me?  For years when I lived in my more remote rural town--they had to drive by a highway 25 miles from my house 100 more miles to get to my mother's out of state relatives, I let them use the excuse of "You are too far out of the way". Moving to a resort town right on the main drag didn't change anything for me.

My mother by the way, would visit Aunt Scapegoat each and every month, to check on her. She never missed a day of hers in the hospital.  Aunt Scapegoat lived double the distance from her.

3. "The Coldest Time of the Year". They choose the annual family gathering to be the third week of December, the week before Christmas which was always too cold, for me to travel or see anyone. This was why I did not see most of these relatives for now what has become a ten year duration. One year I asked if they could hold it earlier, right after Thanksgiving and was turned down flat. No one cared that I wasn't making it to these gatherings. After all I didn't have money for tons of presents to hand out to everyone like my mother. So my mother was picking the date along with Aunt Denial and making sure I was kept well enough away.

In my final NC letter I pointed this out. I was purposefully being kept away. When I lived in my rural town, there was a route one could take close to my town to see the out of state relatives, but I was never offered any rides. I made the mistake once of talking her into it. That was the 2005 visit, the last time I saw the out of state relatives that my mother has seen at least monthly for years.

Response from Aunt, she took 6 months to see my PM. I didn't believe her. Pictures had been posted on a social website repeatedly.

4. "We Are Too Busy" I heard that from many of them all the time. Emails would be ignored for months. Phone calls and phone messages not returned. Some I would approach and be sloughed off immediately. There was very little time given, even long distance.

 There is a level where people are really busy and will talk to you later, I get busy and behind too. But when people tell you over and over, "We are too busy", that means they do not like you and don't really want to talk to you. The me of today, doesn't go where I'm not wanted, and well I was not wanted in the family long, long ago. They threw me away long ago.

It makes me sad today how I scrambled for their crumbs. I was set up to be so needy, lacking love and any care or attention it is a sock in the gut. This is why I was so desperate. There are times we have to face reality and see what IS.  It's so sad, how I tried so hard for years.  One relief for me over these last few years of no contact has been not having to try anymore and putting work into the investment of empty relationships. It is a relief, my energy needs invested in taking care of myself and others who are actually part of my life.

It was true, they had LEFT ME FIRST. I spent years, trying to win love and affection from people who had none for me and who took me for granted and didn't care if I lived or die. I believe when an ACON makes the decision to go no contact, that most often the "no contact" in the way that matters has always been there. They checked out first and lacked true connection. Our going "no contact" just really underlines what has already happened. They left me first! They left you when they didn't love you.

Did God Choose My Parents?

Smakintosh is right about the Buddhists teach that you are choose to be born to your parents. I also have seen this in the New Age movement. This has to do with "karma" where a soul will suffer for the misdeeds of an "earlier" life in reincarnation. When he speaks of what is born of the physical, I had the thought this is a FALLEN WORLD. I have struggled even thinking about the body I have been born into but our body is not completely "us", there is also all the spirit. I agree the parents had nothing to do with the "spirit you". DNA and biological processes on this planet just create the "flesh". "They give you the body you live in but not the spirit." 

Not Allowed to Be A Girl!

                                                 [picture source]

This is part of my abuse that may weird some of you out. Be prepared, this is where the weirdness of my freakish upbringing really shows itself. I think it was insidious and evil. It really disturbs me now when I think about it. Even beyond sexual abuse, narcissists can use sexuality itself to destroy a soul.

Remember how I was an art teacher and majored in art education for my bachelor's degree? Well both my parents were against this. Later I would have my regrets worrying they were right, but if I had a healthy body, I would have gotten a decent middle school art teaching job. I did work in the field as an art teacher under a grant at a juvenile home which included art therapy for three and half years. Well one of the conversation was very odd we had, my father sneered at me, "That's a woman's job!" when I said I wanted to be an art teacher.

Now isn't that weird since I am and was a WOMAN?

But that is what I faced among my family. In many ways I was not treated as a girl growing up. It was really sickening. I am NO FAN OF FEMINISM, and maybe you all will see why.

 My father and mother in many ways seemed to be misogynists of the highest order. Obviously you all know I am no bra burning feminist, but there can be people out there who hate women.  Feminism and hatred of women can go together. I know some feminist readers may read this and not be happy at me saying this but there are the powers that be who have used negative aspects of feminism to enslave. My father I believe married the most masculine woman he could marry who was still "straight". He used to scoff at female tears as all manipulative feminine wiles. I realized my father hated women and hated emotions and femininity. This is why he picked the woman with no emotions and the hardness of the most stoic warrior on the planet off the shelf. He wanted to sleep with girls but hated girls.  My brother's womanizing ways was his own new thing but disrespect of women definitely is something he inherited from my father.

My mother was very hard like the hardest man, she did not cry, outside of cooking she explored no womanly arts. She wore only pants and very masculine clothing. Even the Mini-Me will only wear a dress for a rare 'special occasion' but otherwise dresses in Khakis and polo shirts like a man. Gentleness among the screaming and yelling was out the door. The worse aspects of feminism were shoved down my throat. I was told my career would empower me and that I was too fat and ugly to "marry well".

                                          [picture source]
                                         
My mother's best friend who dated back to high school was a feminist nun who participated politically in having women become priests and other feminist liberal agendas. Both her and his nun and other relatives when younger worked at this boy's military school run by priests and nuns which was notorious for the things you can guess many of those places are. Seeing the place listed on a SNAP forum creeped me out.

I learned about her extreme feminist proclivities looking her up as an adult but of course as a child only knew she wore more regular clothes then the nuns teaching me. She was the first canon lawyer in the Catholic church, she quit the nunnery and got a high level job in state education. Of course those connections were not used to help me get a teaching job. Growing up, she was one of those liberal nuns, who wore the plain habit. She would visit my family household all the time when I was in elementary school and she was my confirmation sponsor. A semi-rotund woman even in her youth, my parents emulated her, after all she worked with high level Bishops and Cardinals and was "connected". She didn't like a lot of my youthful religious questions or then burgeoning atheism but I could talk to her and thought she was at least a bit nicer then my mother. She was held up as a role model to me growing up. I was told to study hard, and basically become her, and that I should never marry or have children but focus on a career and perhaps even join the convent one day.

We would move away but my mother would remain in contact with Sister Feminist to this very day. She stopped having anything to do with me when she realized I was independent minded when it came to religion. I left the Catholic church when I was 17. She would not like the beliefs I have about Catholicism today or that I am a born again Christian today.

                                      [picture source]

As I wrote before both parents were very angry when I left the Catholic church, some of my family estrangement comes from that. However even after I left the Catholic church, my father would tell me I needed to be just like Sister Feminist. Both parents wanted me to be her. They were angry when I did not match her career mindedness or drive. They knew I questioned the system too and was not ready to become a papal bootlicker and were not happy. One day when I was home from college, I and my father got in a fight while we were downstairs cleaning the basement. He told me "Why am I helping you pay for college, when you could just join the convent and get your education for free like Sister Feminist?". I told him, that I had read enough memoirs on convents including Maria Monk, and not every nun gets a JD degree, they pick some to clean the priest's toilet instead and this is not via the individuals choice. He wouldn't listen but then complained, "Let the convent take care of you, you'll never get a job otherwise!" I pointed out then how I had left the Catholic church formally joining another church at the time. He said to me, "They don't need to know!"

I wondered if Sister Feminist may have been a lesbian but then she left the convent and was married twice, the second time after being widowed. She left the convent after 23 years in and told my mother she was tired of working as a lawyer nearly for free. I think about all this influence on my psyche at the time. I was paired up with Sister Feminist constantly who would visit and take me on trips to Catholic basilicas in the large city my family lived in. I remember one day she bought me this pink rosary.  When we moved away my contact with her became far less but the messages remained the same.

                                              [picture source]

My parents constantly told me I was too "ugly" and that I never would be married and no man would have me. That I was "too weird". Oddly at the same time they made extreme strict rules to guarantee these outcomes. I was not allowed to date like other girls or even talk to boys. Get too friendly or flirt with a boy and my mother would call me a whore. When one of my 13 year old friend's got pregnant she threatened to throw me out of the house. I would be a virgin into my twenties, but my mother treated me like I was out ready to prostitute in the streets. One odd thing I remember it is like my family wanted me to be a spinster by age 10.  By age 24 sans boyfriend, I met my husband at the age of 25, my family screamed at me for being an "old maid". The double messages hurt me badly.

I was not only dressed like a boy, I had to do a boys work. While my sister would be in the house helping my mother cook and prepare meals and dust, I was outside digging holes with my brother and father while wearing the t-shirts and dungarees.  I was kind of the extra worker, not good enough to be shown really how to fix the car which my brother was shown with both of them under the hood, but sent to fetch things and told to shut up. So it was like I wasn't treated like a girl but not a full boy either. I was expected to be as strong as a man, and back then before my health broke I did have some strength. This including carrying heavy boxes, heavy car parts, and moving couches.

My 6 figure earning parents didn't hire a moving company when they moved, they made me and brother move everything. When my parents moved 2 miles to a smaller house-well before my mother added on to it from our 6 bedroom country club house, they had some messed up house closing, where they talked a neighbor into storing our items in a large garage before the other house opened up. This means my brother and I had to move hundreds of boxes and items not once but TWICE. My sister didn't have to move anything.

I have noticed since joining Facebook, that all my young high school mates were married in their late teens and early 20s. Many are grandmothers today. I realized they were allowed to date and see boys and allowed to be girls and women wearing pretty dresses. Feminism was not used as a hammer on their heads and they weren't told to emulate a feminist nun as their role model because they were a bit on the heavy side. Even the fat girls got married and had children. I now realize how vast the divide was between how I was treated and my classmates.

What does it mean that I had to cry to get to wear a dress and never was allowed to wear a dress in high school? Oddly I had the favor of wearing my hair long while in elementary school and was saved enforced masculinity via Catholic school jumpers but when I hit junior high and we had moved out of the Catholic system, it's like my mother wanted to dress me like a little fat lumberjack.

                                              [picture source]

 I still remember my first day in public school, wearing a flannel shirt and Wrangler jeans, every class I walked into, the kids laughed and laughed some more. In high school, I got called "dyke" by some classmates as my mother forced me into too tight Lee Jeans and tailored shirts with tabs on the 3/4ths sleeves that I absolutely loathed. I was dressed like I was a would be transgendered person going from female to male but not by choice.  Jeans were the worse thing I could be wearing on a pear shaped fat body. I would cry for years for feminine clothes even some flat jelly shoes and be denied. Ugly sneakers adorned my feet just like boys wore too. I believe many narcissistic mothers wish to desexualize their daughters and dress them ugly so they are not competition. My mother did it to control my social status and keep it low. I also had severe neglect with clothing when my outfits became few in number. There were more then a few times when I only had two pairs of jeans to wear that fit or one or two sweaters.

I avoid jeans like the plague and the day I turned 21 and was out of the house threw them all in the trash and quit wearing them. When I was around 22-23 and buying all my own clothes I started wearing dresses as much as possible. I got stuck with a few cotton knit pants for work but in the mid90s I gave up wearing pants entirely on my extreme lipedemic body. I also started wearing jewelry and bows in my hair. My mother by the 1990s when I was wearing bows in my hair and flowered dresses would be disgusted. She would scream at me to wear pants and once even machined sewed me some pants, which I never wore or asked for. She was angry that I was not dressing like her. She was angry at me for being a failed feminist.

For some reason I look back and think "Why wouldn't she buy me any dresses even to hide my bad figure flaws?", Why couldn't I get flats or pretty jewelry like the other girls? Why did she buy me so many boy clothes?" Ugly fashions in Lane Bryant and other plus sized stores didn't help either. Those stores with their horrible clothing and never any casual dresses were the bane of my existence too.  I was forced to dress like a boy. Is there any wonder that I as a fully straight girl in high school got made fun of for supposedly being a lesbian?

                                             [picture source]

My mother would only buy me dresses to go to special family weddings. I remember owning 4 dresses from age 1-18 and that's it. I was not allowed to wear them on non-special occasion days, so some dresses I only remember wearing once or twice. My mother forced me to wear ugly nylons with the dresses and bought me dresses that were too short.  When I outgrew one red prairie skirt I had talked my mother into buying, this made me cry. It was hidden in my closet since my mother threatened to take it away since I wore it so much. Makeup-nylons, shaving, nail-polish, pretty bows, flowers were not part of my existence. I wasn't allowed to have these things. As an Aspie I preferred some comfort to painful fashion but this put me way behind the fashion and popularity 8 ball. I never went to any proms or formals. That was for "other girls".Ever notice how masculine Meg is dressed on Family Guy?

For some reason I was not allowed to be feminine. I don't know why. Even with the PCOS and being I was somewhat masculinized by PCOS, I did have high testosterone and a higher degree of body hair then other girls, that didn't explain the depths of their depravities. This made the issue even more complicated. They treated me like I was a boy and by the way things got even worse.

Being a shy Aspie, I did not date much. My confidence was nil from severe emotional, physical abuse. I almost was date raped by a friend of my brothers. Well I really was not on a date, my brother left his friend and me alone in the house when I was 14 years old and he was around 16-17. This guy was friendly to me but it was to set me up. He kissed me a few times, which I went along with, after all I liked him a bit but then he jumped me, saying "Lets have sex!" I was a virgin and scared out of my wits, he shoved me against the wall, and tried to take my clothes off. I fought back hard, as he laughed, but I was able to get away before anything more dire happened. He must have been a sociopath to try and jump a girl in her own house. What if someone had come home?

I didn't say anything to my parents. When I tried to tell my brother he didn't believe me or told me his friend was only horsing around. Having your shirt ripped off and your boobs grabbed crosses that line. This kid was a real sicko and didn't stay friends with my brother but for some months he would follow me around high school stalking me there. One day he disappeared, maybe he moved away but I was relieved.

So lets just say my experiences with boys was minimal or negative. Being the fat girl there was a connection with boys being the one's who teased me. My father was a raging brute that never treated me with any love or kindness. Part of me was very afraid of men. Sometimes I think it is a miracle I ended up married, but I digress.

So I didn't date at all in high school and in college. I was sexually attracted to men though. I knew I was in a quandary, because I was very attracted to men and I didn't think one would ever have me. I was not attracted to women. I had no interest in that side of things. My family when they realized I wasn't going to enter the convent or become a carbon copy of the wildly successful Sister Feminist then started in on me for not having a boyfriend.

                                   [picture source]

I didn't know this at the time, but I kept wondering why my mother hated this one close best friend I had. She would come visit me and my mother would huff out of the room. We would take trips together in our early 20s and while I was living at home before my first no contact, we went to a resort area for a week. I still have this friendship and we are very close but it is fully platonic. Back then I realized with my horror, that my mother believed I and this friend were two lesbians. Or maybe she didn't actually believe it but decided to cook the lie while knowing the truth. The fact we were roommates for 2 and half years help my mother build this lie with the family that I was a homosexual. My friend is not a physical demonstrative sort, I probably have only hugged her twice in the history of our friendship which makes this even weirder.

My mother told the entire family I was a lesbian. Why was my mother so fixated on naming me a lesbian when I had only attraction for men? This was her spiteful meanness. She knew it would drive a wedge in with the other family members. For a year, I was clueless while I was getting jaundiced looks and the family seemed even more disgusted with me.  I believe that many of them still believe I flirted with lesbianism to this day. This was one of her worse smear campaigns against me. When I got engaged to be married and met my present husband, I got my father on the phone, I told him, "I am engaged to ******",  He told me, "You have to be lying!"

Some years earlier, my father came up to me, this was before I met my husband, and he told me with woeful eyes and sighs, "I suppose we will have to accept that you are a lesbian, and if you want to bring your girlfriend home, we will allow it". I looked at him, and asked him, "Are you nuts? I am not a lesbian, I am not even bisexual!" He didn't believe me and I walked away.

My brother at this time actually got in a fight with both parents. He told me both my parents believed I was a lesbian and told him and that he argued with them and told them I was straight. He said to them, "She has a Play-Girl poster on the back of her bathroom door! The man wasn't naked in this photo but had a towel over his nether parts for this poster. Remember I wasn't a Christian yet, and had gotten this poster as a gift from a friend. They still argued with him. Isn't this absurd. These people really didn't even know me. At the time I was after this one young man my brother hated, and he told my parents this and that I had romance books at my apartment. I suppose my mother had to stick by her lies.

So growing up I was not allowed to be a girl. My father hated women. My brother learned to see them as sexual objects and not as human beings. The rest of the family elevated all the twisted crap of feminism. Women were not to be protected, women were to all supposedly have great careers that paid all the bills, women were not to be soft but hard as nails. I was supposed to become a super-feminist lawyer but keep perfect house like my mother and pop out grandchildren. One year I was a ready-made slut for even wanting to talk to a boy, and a lesbian for being too old and without a boyfriend. Career empowerment is what they stressed as they held me back and destroyed any idea of being taken care of by a husband or supporting me in being a female. It was all nuts! Even now the feminists still cling to the beloved corporate careers that only come to a very few! [see picture below]

Women who had feelings and love and care were seen as weak or silly. I got the double message of "Don't be a whore!" while forbidden to date at ages most girls are meeting even their future husbands and then abused and put down for wanting to be a virgin until I got engaged or met my husband. I was dressed like Paul Bunyan and then was yelled at for not being popular like one of the "Heathers". I was not given any true Christian values by my family when it came to dating or marriage.  I was dressed like a boy and denied all femininity in looks, thoughts and emotions. Mini-Me was allowed to be a girl, and I was not.

Today I am a woman. My husband likes that I am feminine. He told me he liked the bows I wore when we first met. I think the narcissists were evil to try to even take being a girl away from me!

The Latest with my Brother

I am realizing more about my brother. He is not only trained by the family system he is just a more covert version of the rest of them. Maybe not so covert as I am analyzing all this. I am keeping very low contact for now but will be reassessing this with time.  Sadly this relationship is on the ebb too. It could easily be no contact one day.

 I will have no family left [never really had one] but I just can't put up with this stuff anymore. I know I can't trust him either as he has played flying monkey and been a source of information to my mother. He would not stick up for me even when it wouldn't cost him a thing. This was always in the back of my mind, but while he can appearing friendlier and charming at times expending efforts my sister does not, the same meanness and issues of poor character apply.

The only reason for any contact is a practical point of getting information. In this case, I saw him as the relative who cared about me to a certain extent but I was wrong. I will view him like an old high school acquaintance on a social website.. I only have contact left with him and distant cousins at this point and cards to nieces and nephews. I have given up on him. I am glad I did not push myself to go on a visit, that I could barely afford health wise or money wise. This would have been a waste of my time. He's been slamming the door in my face just as much as my sister but with a bigger smile on his face.

 I haven't seen him in five years. I have noticed his actions don't match his words. I have noticed while he told me he loved me, he has the same attitude of contempt towards me and is just as mean as the rest.  He is manipulative, when I confronted him with an issue, he suddenly took ill and yelled at me for "not caring" as he had to go to the hospital the night before with chest pain, suggesting he had
a heart attack when it was really an esophageal issue.  I tried to talk to him about some things, and was treated like I was a "bother". I only private message him about once every 8 weeks or so, this is not someone I am talking to everyday. He has a filthy mouth so I've had to erase many f-bombs in the below and make some spelling corrections

Here is some excerpts from our latest conversations. Notice the excuses and contempt.  I know reading this, some will say to me, "He doesn't sound like a very nice person." The scary thing he was one of the "nicer" ones. With the family, I was always pushed away even if I doled out myself very sparsely. This rejection got hard to take.  He blew off my birthday the week we had this exchange too and couldn't even write a social website greeting.

"Wow you need to calm the ***** down. I've been extremely busy this morning. left at 8:45 and just got home. The reason you see me on messenger  {and I told you this **** before is because it is on my ****** phone."

Here I tried to send him an article about narcissism, of course he did not read it. Anything that takes too much intellectual effort is not for them. The willful laziness is beyond annoying. Of course that applied to all of them. Scapegoats will attest to how none of them listen to us.

"Now to your book you wrote last week. One when the ****** have I ever listened to mom on anything? That's always been her problem with me."

Excuses for flat out ignoring private messages over a series of month. His business? Taking 6-8 teens around to sell candy bars out of a van. He sold e-cigarettes for awhile at a flea market but I believe that is on hiatus. I am in shock, he can maintain his lifestyle on both of these seemingly limited ventures.  He does everything his mother tells him to do.

"The only reason I don't talk as much to anyone {Your not the only one I haven't seen any of my friends in months! is because Im so damn busy running a business, taking care of personal stuff and dealing with Dumbass."

"Dumbass" is his exwife who while she is not perfect I feel more and more sorry for. While she had her faults, he did treat her badly. He never defended her as my mother scapegoated and attacked her for years.

Here I am talking about how my mother is manipulating him and that I am going to continue my no contact. He is not happy with that.

" I'm not going to do that though.  You need to put sh*t behind you.  You seem to have an issue with that!"

I responded to him: "I can't forgive and forget when the abuse is ongoing and that it is was the "new" stuff that down the pike to be worried about."

I had an exchange just like this with my sister, one of the last times I talked to her where she wrote to me on private message, "You need to put the small stuff behind you."

Both of my siblings have drank the narc Kool-Aid and gone swimming in it.

He wrote me then: "But  I'm ** years old, have a business, girlfriend two kids and a life. I put all that sh*t behind me."

He is trying to imply I have no life. My childlessness was something they always used to attack me. PCOS doesn't help with fertility.  The wall of iron stays up. None ever listen to me. They never take any of my feelings in consideration. So why bother? I'd rather be alone then around people like this. He isn't a very nice person. Even the craziness I talked about in this article with his ex-wife, shows how they are willing to crush and malign someone.

My mother is busy buttering him up. He flipped in a milli-second. She went to visit him [around 300 miles away] twice in two months. Before he was lucky to have her drive down once every five years.  I know there is a reason for that. It was to ensure me being tossed under the bus. He never said one word to defend me to her. In one PM he even wrote to me, "Mom doesn't know why you did what you did"!

I wrote him back and said, "I sent her a 2 page email", and I told her!" He of course ignored me.

 I also have noticed an extreme pattern of him only calling me up to brag about a new purchase or show something off. Years ago I complained about this to my husband. He got this from my parents where material possessions were the sum total of any person. He is poorer then my sister, mother and my other relatives, and always going into debt to measure up to the rest and exaggerating his achievements.

His girlfriend contacted me and he did too, to brag about moving into a 2600 square foot rental house last week.  She private messaged me pictures of the inside of one rental house and then the one they did end up renting. I didn't ask for any of this information. I know Mommy trained him for this too. My mother has been buttering up the girlfriend too, who I had to go more distant with too as her questions got nosey, and I knew the answers would be going back to my mother. She was friendly and treated me well but sadly, the Queen Spider tosses a web on everyone.  For years, most of my brother's phone calls centered around bragging, I wouldn't hear from him for months but he would call me on the very day, he bought a new wide screen jumbo TV, new computer equipment, a new van, a new car and now a new larger rental house.

Ok so this is our latest conversations, my feelings are ignored, he never stands up for me and then yesterday he writes me saying, "I wrote you down as a reference for a finance company to buy some new furniture, they will be calling you today."

This made me laugh.

Like the person who has refused me even the smallest iota of respect now wants a favor from me?

When they called, I had my husband tell them I was not home.

Today Caller ID will be my friend.

This is something new for me. I was always dive-bombing for their crumbs. Those days are over.

The Nature of Evil and NPD Families

Ever read this book?

This book saved my life when I was around the age of 18-19 and read it. It was a book that impacted my life greatly and snatched me from the abyss, my family had set me upon the edge of. There are scapegoats who succumb to soul murder.  I could have been one of them. They become at one with their abusers via Stockholm Syndrome or are destroyed due to mental illness and even suicide in the worse cases.

That was my first inclination it was THEM [who was the problem] and not ME and a short time before I made my first escape.

I don't agree with Peck on everything.  I am a born again Christian [John 3:7], yes the type that believes in bible prophecy and more but he is definitely right about many qualities of evil. He cracks the nature of evil and how it is a false face, a mask, a sheep in wolves clothing.

Those who hate the light love the darkness and they are the enemies of those who seek after truth and goodness in this world. Those who live in the lie, do not want truth. They hate truth-tellers who tend to be the ones scapegoated in the family. They twist things to their own ends. They do operate in shadows with a smile on their face in public while stabbing people they desire to in the back. They do turn others to evil except for those of us who escape.

Psalm 68:6King James Version (KJV)
⁶ God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

Notice the above verse says God bringeth out those which are bound with chains. Many ACONs understand the concept of being bound with chains, mentally and even physically. Going NC is having the chains smashed. My own chains to these wicked people simply lasted too long. Blinded by the messages in society to "love your family" even as my stomach ached around them, I worked too hard, too long going to empty dry evil wells. Inside my soul, I felt the coldness and darkness around them and knew something was very wrong.

 There are spiritual components to narcissistic abuse. I know it altered my life spiritually and otherwise. The spiritual battle between good and evil are happening for many of us.  I believe there are families where evil rules, and I came out of one. At times I have struggled with worrying I am evil just for coming from this family but have taken this to God in prayer. We all have faults but there is a big differences between a narcissist/sociopath and a well intentioned person with a conscience that knows right from wrong.  Does this mean every member is evil? Every human being has their our own wickedness to struggle with but most malignant narcissists have made a choice for evil and infested our families with it. Emotions, empathy, nostalgia, goodness, closeness, softness are stamped out by their sociopathic feet and focus on appearances.

Growing up, my parents would slap me in the face screaming, "You are too sensitive!". All feelings were hated except for anger, even joy and laughter was met with suspicion and jealousy. They tried to train me to be evil telling me I needed to buck up, shut up and go with the system. My parents both lived in spiritual darkness and were/are slaves to the system. My father would instruct me in the ways of "getting over". They did not want me close to others, and did not want me to show empathy.  I refused which made them angrier and angrier and their hate of me grew. In other words, my desire to be a "good" person even as I was in my period of religious seeking and desiring morality and idealistic goals for my life was something they desired to thwart. This is the greatest way any parent could fail.

 Among narcissists and sociopaths, any love is seen as "weakness". This message was conveyed to me constantly. Both parents hated any idealism, altruism, any love of art, any desire for greater things, later my religious faith would be under attack. One main reason I am separate from most of my relatives is covered in scripture too where Jesus warns about division coming within families.

Luke 12:53
The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

In other words I was surrounded by stone cold brutes who rejected and spit on everything I held dear. Mentioning God despite their feigned appearances of piety would sooner earn one a smack then any deep conversations. Those simply did not exist.

My father told me, there was no such thing as real friends. How sad. He would tell me how he only trusted my mother [she betrayed him massively behind the scenes] and there were no friends who would have his back. Looking back on this comment, I am sure she set things up that way for him.  Friends may have told the truth to my father or realized the degree of control he was under by his wife.  My father would tell me I was "too weak" and needed my personality to change to succeed in the world. Imagine an Aspie under those pressures.  I remember laughing around my friends accidentally in front of my parents and being punished for it where they would make fun of the very fact I was laughing! Even as I went NC last year, both my NM and GC sister would complain about the very fact I had friends.

Cockroaches flee when the light gets turned on them. Malignant narcissists fight to shut you up.  They don't want you talking. This is the reason for the years of campaigns to devalue and silence those who speak the truth. They plug the ears of those around you. There is no goodness where there is no truth. Their hatred for the truth is one reason they have turned on you!

When did I first suspect my family was evil? Very young. Get hit enough times, get locked in your room for hours and hours or have your hair pulled out by it's roots or smacked into your brother's head on purpose where your father grabs your head and knocks it hard into your brothers, you know you are not surrounded by kindness.  I knew even young, I was lied to all the time. I knew something was very wrong with my parents very early on. Other mothers soothed, smiled and hugged their children. They did not gaze upon their daughters with absolute disgust. [mine only had disdain for me even during my thinner years.] They did not push them into their bedroom when disgusted and lock the door leaving them in there for hours. They did not laugh to friends about leaving their baby for hours in a crib unattended, or about how one way-ward baby sitter used the door-locks on the bedroom room doors of her children all weekend while she partied with her boyfriend. I looked at  parents on TV shows like on The Brady Bunch, Little House on the Prairie, and Happy Days and noticed they were totally different.  While they corrected their children at times, showed them love, did not hit them and considered them as fellow human beings. My Mom of choice was Carol Brady and Dad of choice was Pa Ingalls [Michael Landon]. I knew TV parented me probably more then my parents did.

When I was an 18, I faced the facts that things had gotten even more sick. I insisted on going away to college but sadly still trapped in the place of hoping one day success and more would bring love from my parents right before I made my first no contact.. Evil seemed to grow even worse in my family.  My father had literal fistfights with my brother in the hallways of our 6 bedroom suburban house next to the country club. My GC sister while always the favorite changed massively in her teens. The day she stabbed a large serving fork into the wall going after my brother in full bore rage, told me she was modeling herself after my parents. What caused this fight? It had to do with him messing up the VCR for the taping of her and my mother's favorite TV show-General Hospital which they still watch 30 years down the road every day. She started screaming at me and my brother all the time to clean and be neater. She desired to model herself like my mother and basically became her and this worsened as we all aged. Instead of breaking away from my mother, she became more closely enmeshed. She never had a teenage rebellion but walked in footsteps laid out by my mother and part of that process was the closing down of her conscience and spirit. Later I will talk more about thralldom in this article but she definitely was in thrall to my mother as well. She had no problem just flat out lying. One high school friend, upon seeing a picture of my sister, was in shock, "That doesn't look like her at all!". Evil changes the countenance, and my sister's now dark eyes and clouded pinched face reveal her insides.

The spiritual changing of my sister is one thing I am not sure I will ever be able to get over. Why you may ask? I remember when she loved me as a child and I her despite my mother's evil influences. I still have letters we wrote each other. That person is no longer here. I seriously feel like someone who had a sister die and in many ways I am.  This is something evil can do. When someone turns away from the light multiple times it shows, it vanquishes their very soul. Yes I would go so far to say that is exactly what happened. The light in the eyes switches off.

I want my nieces and nephews to be good people, but with her as an example I am deeply worried. To be frank, she has gotten so bad, I was getting the willies around her in our last conversations.

With the side relatives, such as Aunt Confused living with us from time to time and Aunt Scapegoat even once, I was surrounded by lies, denial, substance abuse, overt mental illness and cloying, scrapping and bowing sickening subservience to narcissists. Most of the relatives were sick too and succumbed to evil. Even that cousin who used threatening language on me a few weeks ago would never dare to challenge a family narcissist in the same fashion, she saw me as a "safe target".  Her mother was on the pedestal never to be questioned.  One ironic thing was how she screamed at me for having worked so hard all her life. She is one scapegoat that took on her donkey load and more at the behest of the narcissists, don't blame me for that one! That was one way things worked too, they would never speak out against a narcissist even if angry. Cowardice RULES among the evil. Neither aunt ever defended me to the narcissists but would help them out every step of the way. The wicked ensured that my family life was run like a Gestapo office with clicking heels, betrayals and lies around every corner and boot-lickers making it tough for everyone.

Peck writes:

"It is my experience that evil seems to run in families. ^{p 80} If evil were easy to recognize, identify and manage, there would be no need for this book. But the fact of the matter is that it is the most difficult of all things with which to cope. ^{p 130} [Evil] will contaminate or otherwise destroy a person who remains too long in its presence. ^{p 65}


Evil does run in families. Both sides of mine are massively infected. One thing about the wicked is yes they will contaminate others, they will turn others toward evil. I saw the influence on my father from my mother. She would get others to team up with her to destroy others. You were either on her team and one of her choice people or someone she went after. She would flatter those she wanted to please--people more on the sidelines not privy to all her evil deeds and would gang up people against those she hated. I obviously saw her in action when it came to my brother's ex-wife. My mother had this way of bonding with other people over a "hate-fest" of another soul, where they would clamor to join her in trashing the target so she would like them. Hours and Hours of conversation flowed upon the negative attributes of her focused on scapegoat of the hour. I saw this time and time again. I know I was a target too. Otherwise how did I lose so many within my family?

I think about the evil I witnessed, being abandoned myself in the big city, the abuse, cruelties and medical neglect. I even have thought about how most people with severe disabilities are not thrown away by their families like yesterday's trash, but treated with kindness and mercy. I told one friend that in a support group, sometimes it got painful watching parents who were even there for their adult children struggling with the challenge of depression. These were families where the people loved each other and not where narcissists were out to destroy someone. Even the evil I know others have faced, Aunt Scapegoat and Aunt Confused, disturbs me to this day. The lies, and more measure up to the ceiling.

I had one odd moment of doing some recent family research in an old newspaper online was finding out even my father's mother- my paternal grandmother, was sued by one woman she had got committed to the insane asylum back in the 1950s for $25,000. This woman claimed my grandmother along with a friend gave false testimony so she would get tossed in the loony bin. Let's just say that I now highly suspect a grandmother who died when I was the age of one, was evil too.   The strain of coldness and cruelty seems to go very far back. So wonder my father was ready to commit his own sister.

My mother's constant sneers and mockery of others was frightening. I would look at other children with their parents and feel something die inside, knowing they were loved and I was not. Like the son Roger in the book, who Peck writes about whose parents never take his feelings into account, my mother made the choice to be insensitive.  My father was no better. His violent rages showed his black heart.

[Evil is] the exercise of political power--that is, the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion--in order to avoid...spiritual growth...Because their willfulness is so extraordinary--and always accompanied by a lust for power--I suspect that the evil are more likely than most to politically aggrandize themselves.....There is a remarkable power in the manner in which they attempt to control others.^{p 78}
[In describing one of his patients, Peck says] Charlene's desire to make a conquest of me....to utterly control our relationship, knew no bounds. It seemed to be a desire for power pure
ly for its own sake. ^{p 176} She wanted the reigns in her hands every moment. ^{p 158}

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.

 One aspect of evil, and one reason the Bible warns to depart from the wicked, is they are indeed a bad influence. Bad company corrupts good manners. If you are around people who are mean, you can become meaner yourself.  He chose his wicked behavior in the end and joined her in malignant narc-hood. As my father literally beat on my brother ripping and tearing his hair out and knocking him about for getting Cs instead of As on his report card, there was no doubt in my mind he was evil as well.  His mother never tried to protect him or me either for that matter. No normal person would watch their child get beaten and sit there idly by. Most of the time she complained and tattled on us children to earn his rage. Living with both screaming, screeching, hitting, mean people, I knew they were evil very early on. I was scared of both my parents quite actively by the age of 5. They terrorized me.

Peck is right that the wicked desire power above all else. They don't want your love, kindness, or friendship. They don't want to share the inside of their heart with you or anyone else. They want your submission. I almost went NC, Christmas of 2012 instead of June of 2013. This was the time, my mother made the rules that no one was to talk about certain topics, during a family event and I protested in a shared email with the family, she literally got the whole family to gang up against me as I wrote, "I am a Christian and cannot be told not to talk about God at all" and "We are adults no one should be telling us what to talk about." All the cowards in this exchange backed her up as they threw me under the bus to keep her pleased. It did not escape my mind, that she was always the one chosen, while I was nothing to these people. My brother wrote, "Personally I think if Mom wants us to follow these rules, it's her choice".

During the two minute present drop-off on Christmas of 2012, I have the horrific memory of her giant SNEER walking down my apartment hall to dump the presents turn around and leave. Spiritually that day watching this parade, I felt utter spiritual darkness.  Her husband obediently followed her like a puppy out the door even when I asked them to stay a few minutes.  I think this is because she knew I had relented and failed to go No Contact that week. In other words, this smirking Joker's smile was her way of saying, "You have lost and I have won". I had seen this face other times before but been somehow blind to it. How sick was that? While I knew I failed that day to break away, it strengthened my resolve to do so. Today I know my abandonment in the big city in severe poverty was part of the grooming process.

The evil deny the suffering of their guilt--the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy, and imperfection--by casting their pain onto the other through projection and scapegoating. They themselves may not suffer, but those around them do. The evil cause suffering. The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society. ^{p 123-124}

The evil do create a miniature sick society, their own cult as it were, and my family is run like a cult, where the head narcs demand unending respect. The flying monkeys will also punish you for refusing this respect. Mine would scream about respect constantly.  I was even thinking about the cousin who called using threatening language, telling me off. I know for a fact she would never dare to talk to any narcissists she had real anger towards that way. She had been ditched by several local relatives and my own siblings and mother ignored her and treated her as nothing. She saw me as a "safe target". Talk about sick! As any scapegoated ACON will tell you, the other abused in your midst who you think would form fellow allies to help you make a stand never do. They submit and give in. I know I am totally on my own. Even some of the other abused, while they may complain about the narcissists privately to you or tell you they even agree, most will go where the power is, and never make a stand for you.
  

Human weakness and cowardice gives evil a place, and once it's in, it grows. Peck is right the evil never admit their sins. My mother never has admitted wrong doing in her entire life. I have never heard a true apology or desire to make things right with another person. She always has affirmed her superiority over every living soul. She never has admitted one mistake. My father never admitted one mistake either or ever uttered the sentence, "I am sorry." This attitude exists in my golden child sister and many others within the family. There is no meeting of minds, or discussions, there is only the submission she expects and always gets from the rest.

The evil hate the light--the light of goodness that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of truth that penetrates their deception.^{p 179} Rather than blissfully lacking a sense of morality, like the sociopath, they are continually engaged in sweeping the evidence of their evil under the rug of their own consciousness.^{p 76}

The seared wicked will never repent. With malignant narcissists, you will note they will never admit any wrongdoing. Self examination is simply not done. I know when my mother called me a liar, or told me I could not hear what she said to gaslight me, she was sweeping her evil under the rug as Peck states. It was her mode of operation to blame me for her own wrongdoings and sins. Others including me were always in the wrong. I know my mother's focus on calling me a liar was really projection, she was the liar, and in her own immorality could never be capable of any self-examination. The sad thing is years ago, I would try to make things right and even told her I knew I had done many things wrong. She merely gloated.

Evil does destroy people. I look at my health and it is definitely the result. What do you think I feel about crawling out of a family weighing this much with such severe health problems impacting so many bodily systems, when before I left, I saw nothing but lithe people with rare exceptions who had health I could not even dream of? They do cast on everything bad onto the scapegoat, so they look good next to you and that is their main focus, APPEARANCES, and having the pretense to look good.

While they seem to lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their "goodness" is all on a level of pretense. It is, in effect, a lie. That is why they are the "people of the lie". The wickedness of the evil is not committed directly, but indirectly as a part of this cover-up process. ^{p 76}
Those who are evil are masters of disguise; they are not apt to wittingly disclose their true colors--either to others or to themselves. ^{p 104} Because they are such experts at disguise, it is seldom possible to pinpoint the maliciousness of the evil. The disguise is usually impenetrable ^{p 76}....Naturally, since it is designed to hide its opposite, the pretense chosen by the evil is most commonly the pretense of love. ^{p 106}

We know that narcissists are all about appearances. They desire to look good to others. This is extreme in my mother. My mother and father wanted the world to see them as good people but did not work to actually BECOME good people. They sold their souls to mammon. They wanted success and money and embraced a dog eat dog ethos to achieve it all.  They desired power and admiration over love.

 The evil wear a false mask, one for the outside and one for at home. Many ACONs can attest how their evil parents fooled the world. Mine did big time and one continues to do so to this day. I have cousins and nieces and nephews who think my mother is this loving grandmother or aunt with arms full of presents who would never hurt a fly. They and other relatives see me as the "crazy one" for fleeing away from her and denouncing her actions.  Appearances  is why I still get birthday cards to this day. She has to write and mail one in front of her husband to assure him that she is a "normal" mother and I am the cruel daughter who ignores them. Every ACON can attest to how their sociopathic and/or malignant narcissist mother or father fooled others. The world believes these disguises and this is one reason many of us go through not being believed. We will be told by others, "Your mother really loved you!" even as we share stories of horrible abuse and lies.  The narcissists know how to cover up what they really are and manipulate people into thinking they are good and decent people who only want the best for you as they actively work to destroy you behind the scenes.
The false masks fool the world, at least we are not fooled.

All in all, when I read this book at the age of 18, I knew THEN that my parents were PEOPLE OF THE LIE. This rescued me from total destruction in that I knew something with them was very wrong. That it had spiritual roots, and that I desired far more for my life and for myself. One thing I wanted to finalize here, is that Peck wrote on page 267, "Evil can be defeated by goodness". I pray to God definitely in this matter, trusting in the righteousness of Jesus Christ for my salvation, not my own. Those who seek and love truth and reject evil and lies are in a far better spiritual place then narcissists.

We should be glad we did not become them out of family systems like this. That we do desire goodness and truth. That we rejected evil. That we escaped evil and ran from it. It is not easy for me to write, that these people were and are evil and malicious. I had to face the truth though to heal and remove myself from it.