It works if you work it...

You know, I did many, many years of therapy:  women's group therapy, mixed group therapy, one on one with a woman, one on one with a man, conflict resolution (my personal fave), and family therapy (bombed, totally, no one else there with me).  And through the process, I got to lift up the rocks and look at the slimy things beneath them.  Only thing was, once I did that, there were no tools to deal with the muck.  All I could do was put the rock back.  But recovery and the steps worked really well.  Probably the most significant steps for me were four and five, the "fearless and thorough moral inventory" that I shared with my sponsor, a fellow AA who was far from shocked, since it was pretty much her story, too.  The resentment part was the most fun.  I got to see that, though I denigrate my narcissistic mother for gunny-sacking my faults back to the cradle, I still hang on to a lot of her barbs, too.  Like the time she flew all the way to Honolulu to see my first baby only to tell me he was "funny-looking".  My son is now 43.  Perhaps it is time to let that go?  You think?  This book I am reading tells me that this is typical behavior for an NPD person.  It was important to her that I know that her children were far prettier than mine.  How sad is that, anyway?  The important result of doing the steps (three times all the way through now, and many times piecemeal when stuff is up, and really, every day) is that I got to see MY part.  I have never said anything to my mother about her behavior.  Oh, wait, I take that back.  When she criticized my children for not calling her at Christmas, I remarked that it could be a reflection of all the birthday cards she never sent them.  And I found that she quieted right down.  Now that she is 91, and due to ride that big Greyhound in the sky soon (oh, please make it SOON), perhaps I can let her have it?  In a kind and constructive way, of course.  Not wanting any more stinky karma here. 

The sweet smell of validation...

Now, I am 68 years old.  And I have done about 8 years of therapy in one or two year dollops, and 22 1/2 years of recovery in AA.  That's a heap of healing.  Yet, my wounds still are only scabbed over, and recent events sent me spiraling into active bleeding.  Again.  My father died.  I always knew he would predecease my mother, and I was lucky that he lived to be 91 before that happened.  Hard to grieve this man.  He never valued me, since I was female.  And neither did my mother, for the same reason.  Okay, they are from THAT generation, and I should get over it.  And here I am, flailing around in anger and angst.  Again.  You see, somewhere inside me there is this little kernel of hope that things will change.  Suddenly, my mother will remember that I was the only one who showed up, year after year, on her birthday, on Mother's day, on my father's birthday and Father's day, even on their anniversary until I spent an inordinate amount of my hard-gained $$$ on a special gift that she turned a contemptuous eye toward.  My little brothers (63 and 65) were not there.  Oh, nonono.  Yet they are golden.  I am past the point of thinking this is my fault.  But it is still my problem.  I cannot in good conscience walk away from my aged mother.  Perhaps I am still hoping there is a pony in all this shit?  Well, not exactly.  You see, I have to live with ME.  And I want to know in my heart of hearts that I am a good person.  My mother won't do that for me, but I can.  Recently, I bought a book for my Kindle (and if that isn't the niftiest little thing, just push a button and poof, instant literature) on narcissistic personality disorder.  I know all about this from a course in abnormal psych I took (only three years ago, I went back to college at 61, my mother said "how stupid"), that mother is one of those.  And this book says that it is common for an NPD mother to single out one child upon whom to spread her hatred and loathing.  And I am getting that my methods of dealing with her are truly fine.  Like, I give her three nasty barbs, then leave.  Sometimes she doesn't shoot at me.  That doesn't mean she had stopped.  I never visit unless I am well rested and spiritually fit.  And I don't tell her ANYTHING about myself.  It would just hand her ammunition.  I am pretty sure I will go to my grave still shredded inside by this woman.  And I know that I am such a different person because I had here horrible example before me all my life.  I care probably too much for other's feelings.  I let my children be who they were meant to be, even when that was not comfortable for me.  And I pray for this woman.  Somewhere, sometime, she was damaged, too.  She just chose to pass her pain on rather than walk through it.  So, while she sits in her tiny chair in her tiny house in her tiny town and rules the world, she is essentially weak and ineffectual.  Poor thing.

Nothing going on at the moment, but I expect chaos any time now.  Actually, I always expect chaos, having walked into it, tried to jump over it, had it drop on me like a meteorite from hell, most of my life.  Yes, I am wounded.  My childhood left me shredded and just wanting to know what love was, since it was decidedly absent in my otherwise Betty Crocker/Emily Post home life.  Thus began the years, decades, actually, of flailing about, redesigning myself with every new leap into the ooey gooey mess of pseudo-love.  Let's see.  I went from preppy Mademoiselle college student to baby wife in the jungle of LA with her first godawful employment at the phone company, in Watts, to battered woman/baby divorcee sleeping with anything that would stand still long enough (my Sex in the City phase), to young pseudo-intellectual wife married to much older pseudo-intellectual cold fish (and dead battery), to young single mother PWP princess (that's Parents Without Partners, otherwise known as a good excuse to screw other losers) bed-hopping around suburbia while working for the local Devil Wears Prada boss clone, to marriage with a Republican three piece suit where I was mom to three of his, one of mine, and one of ours, ranging in age from 14 to 0, and I worked, too, to booze-sodden three time loser, to sidekick of NRA RVing blue collar guy with season NFL tickets, to sitting in jail on Christmas (surprise!) because of drunken escapade, to new recovery, to wounded relationship with another sort-of-recovered old fart, to bohemian west county wild woman living on the edge of the world becoming an artist, to retired single woman returning to college, schlepping around campus in hoody and All-Stars mufti, to my current status of older than dirt gal in the little yellow house, working at being a professional artist and taking care of two sweet little dogs.  Phew!  Of course, none of this would have been necessary if my folks weren't my folks, and had let me be who I was supposed to be in the first place.  It all began because I was female.  Not okay.  And they gave me a masculine name, one that got me Be a Pilot brochures instead of Be a Stewardess.  One that got me enrolled in boy's gym in high school, that seething cauldron of embarrassment that was almost unbearable without being totally humiliated.  One that almost got me drafted!  Mother named her dogs Samantha, Amy, and Sarah.  Go figure.  So, here I am, scarred by life.  And, if you looked at it from the outside, it all looked idyllic.  We had a swimming pool when I was a kid.  I was not born into an Untouchable caste in New Delhi, or the DC ghetto.  I am not even black.  But I learned in a therapy group (lots and lots and lots of therapy here), pain is pain.  Recently, my father died.  Not a terrifically big deal - he was 91 and frail.  And it ripped off the scabs and sent me spiralling into the wounds.  Again.  And I am 68 freaking years old!  It never ends, this healing.  I do know, however, if one never touches the wound, one never knows where one is wounded, and one never heals.  At least I'm working on it.  Every freaking day.