What a surprise. Father actually did not call.

pasajes4

Well-Known Member
I have to agree with the " they just don't get it". My son's father did not get it. You could see it on his face. he struggled to understand how people could see things differently then he did. I do believe that it is a brain thing. It is hardcore wiring at it's worst.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Cedar, your mom sounds like a narcissist, although there are many overlaps in symptoms of both. Antisocial is actually a tad worse as they have so little regard for human life that sometimes they go off the rails and kill randomly with no regrets except for hoping they don't get caught.They have no ability to feel at all. I think narcissists are a bit better, in a rather ironic sense.

I just learned about it because that's how I am. I like to do research. It wasn't to learn how to make my family beter. I was well aware that it couldn't happen. I did try to protect my siblings a bit. I was the oldest. But I also was a kid with special needs, overly sensitive myself, and trying to survive. So I didn't do a very good job of being a go-to person for either of them. Also, being the black sheep, my siblings were afraid to stick up for me and, in the end, this becamse a lifelong pattern and they both loved mommy so much that they talked themselves into agreeing with her. Or maybe they just DID agree with her. Heaven knows, I was NOT an easy kid. I had tantrums and rages. I had a mood disorder and was sad a lot. I had learning disabilities and did poorly in school and, later on, cut school because I learned it was a place of failure. I gave up on ever doing well. So there are reasons, I guess, why I was the black sheep. My brother was sick with Crohns and that did seem to make my mother overly protective of him and my sister was the quiet one who tried not to cause a stir at all. She paid for it. Anorexia, which she still has, although she denies it. She wakes up at 4am every day to go to the gym and give herslef a knockkout workout and is 5 foot 4 and if she reaches 100 lbs. she knows it's time to diet). When my ex saw her for the first time in years he said she looked like she had last stage AIDS. But she doesn't think she is too skinny. So be it. There is more as well. Drugs...cocaine was her main one until she thought it had given her a stroke. Two abortions before age nineteen. One was with her ex husband because "we couldn't afford it then." I'm pro-choice, but I think that's an insane reason to have an abortion. They were buying a house at the time. Ok, so some may think that is ok. I can't. It wreaks to me of selfishness. She has been suicidal at times too. I am quite sure she has borderline traits.

My brother has been in therapy for at least twenty years. I'm not sure why. We don't discuss it. Never did.

But my family believed in "a house divided, is a house we can control." So my sibs and I never really discussed our issues in detail and had on-again, off-again relationships. I never want to see them again. It hurts too much.

I know this sounds terrible, but this seems to be the one place I can say what I want and how I really feel. I don't know why. Somebody who knows me could find out about this site and that this is me. But I don't really care. My kids would feel sympathy andnd I have never kept anything from them. They all know the story. So does my husband. And nobody else matters.

Ok, here is my confession. I cringe to type it: I may not go to my father's funeral when that happens. It is not because of him, it is because of my DNA collection. I would rather go visit his resting place with my husband, lay flowers, talk to him there...do it alone in peace and quiet. It should be about him, not them and if they're around me, it will be around them to me. Will I actually not go? I don't know. I honestly don't. But since he is so old, I am trying to plan...I know I'll get a call one day...and I have to know what is best to do. For me. He's dead, and I believe that the dead continue to go on in spirit, with new understanding, and that all makes me think hard about this. What is a funeral anyway? A place where a lot of people who don't like each other pretend to like each other, hug, and cry? My mother's was a joke. "She was a beloved grandmother" said the rabbi. (She hadn't seen MY kids since Julie was six years old and she was in her 20's at the time.) It was hard to be there. But at least the sibs were all speaking at the time. I went to support THEM. This time I don't have that excuse.

"Divide and conquer" The cry of the narcissist who wants everyone to herself. An alternate reality from most of us.
 
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Nomad

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Lord...you Can'T make this stuff up!

My father partially hated me because I figured out his crap and was the only one who could reveal it. Also, because I had health problems. This made me "damaged goods."

My father use to say that he was a good father and yet he did such horrible things as beat me as a child until I urinated on my self for making a C on a math test and other times for very minor infractions. (I was actually an excellent student) . (Sorry...gross and sad, I know). Will spare you any more.

His girlfriend when he died (also a bit of a difficult child) freaked out when I told her. For twenty years, he had convinced her that he was a very good, in fact, excellent, doting father and for some unknown and cruel reason, I had abandoned him. She thought I was a mean witch. She could barely speak when I told her the truth.

Since I'm an only child, it was my decision re a funeral. I didn't have one for my father. He wished to be cremated. I honored those wishes. I paid to have the ashes put in the ocean. My husband says I am a saint. I can't repeat where he said I should put the ashes.

Yes, they live in an alternative universe. I guess their own!
 
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BusynMember

Well-Known Member
My dad's girlfriend (the rich one who he called fat and razzed her about her crippled daughter) also used to constantly stick up for my dad. I don't know how she could take his cracks about her poor daughter. He has a vicious tongue and made some comments about this poor college kid who suddenly could not even move her fingers alone, that made me sick to my stomach. He was especially livid when this girl decided, on her father's money, to move to her own place in another state and have a caregiver live with her (it was a hard job and poor thing had to lose many caregivers, but she did move). Because of that, her mother moved and that meant Dad had to go with her or lose her so he did and he never shut up about how horrible that state was as opposed to the wonderland of Illinois. This is NOT a slap at Illinois. It's a fine state in some ways, but it's not Disneyland and he complained about Illinois when he lived THERE.

I guess my longwinded point is that, even with all this out in the open, my dad's girlfriend thought he was "a good man."

You're right. You can't make this stuff up.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Nomad, it must have been shaming and so freaking scary for you. At least I had siblings. I had someone to protect. Because I wanted to protect them, I could see that the things she was doing were wrong.

WHATEVER SHE DID, TO ME OR TO THEM, I KNEW SHE WAS WRONG.

You did not have even that.

An only child would have no frame of reference, would have no way to know it wasn't, not just her fault, but her personally.

To beat a child to that point could not have been an accident. That was the plan all along. Even I have never been through anything that sick, that twisted.

I would have put his stupid ashes somewhere else too...but you took the high ground, Nomad.

That is the only triumph there is...but it is real, and so, we heal.

What a sick, twisted man.

Remember that movie "The Three Faces of Eve"? I think that was it. That mother had a thing about controlling the child, about breaking the child's spirit, through loss of control of bodily functions.

Stephen King's Carrie also had a mother who broke her child through torturing her until she lost control of her bladder.

That is a level of sickness and control even I never had a clue about.

Roar.

I am so mad about that for you.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I was in Family of Origin group therapy once?

And one of the ladies there peed on her father's grave.

With our approval.

She felt better after she did it, too.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I think my mom could be a version of a sociopath, MWM.

She kicked and strangled and threatened with heat. Not naked flame, but electric heaters or stove burners. She was home alone with my then two year old youngest brother one day. He came down with a full flesh burn on his lower calf. Her story was that he'd thrown a temper tantrum and gotten his leg caught under the gas water heater in the kitchen. His shrieking could not be distinguished from the cries of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum, so she said.

The eerie thing about all this is that I feel dangerously exposed in relating this story. That is how deep the secrets run, for all of us.

I will go through a time now, where I feel badly about myself for "telling." I will wonder whether I am lying.

That is how it always is.

But part of me wants to tell and tell and tell it.

Cedar
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Cedar, you shouldn't have to keep that horror inside of you. Yes, with what you have said, she may have been a sociopath.

How sick.

Also, I don't know if having siblings helped me. They all ganged up on me. If it had just been me, at least it would have only just been HER too. My dad and mom did not gang up on me together. They didn't like each other. And I was not my dad's scapegoat. I was my mom's scapegoat.

My siblings made it worse, at least for me. I didn't know any different way either and neither did they.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I was just thinking about my mom having said, when she learned difficult child daughter had been placed in a dual diagnostic for the first time, that I must not have been such a good mother, after all.

She did that on purpose, didn't she.

Cedar
 

Estherfromjerusalem

Well-Known Member
I am reading all your postings. Midwest Mom, Nomad, Paajes4, Dazed and Confused, Witz, and all the others. I just want to tell you all that I think you are all terrific in how you cope with the toxic parents you have had to cope with and how you have survived. Until now I never appreciated the parents I had, but I see now how lucky I have been, although I have had my own complaints and grievances, but they are nothing compared to what you have all experienced.

I salute you all!

Love, Esther
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
My father started a successful business. There was a business partner, and there were employees, and they made a nice amount of money. My mother announced to the business partner and employees that she had had an affair some years previously.

She did it to humiliate my father.

So, definite sociopath, right?

It is a strange thing, to review these things I have always known from this different perspective.

I think I will not attend my mother's funeral, MWM. I have felt that way for some time. Like you, I think I will find it helpful to spend time mourning and rebuilding at the graveside alone.

You are right too, in saying that none of us had a clue, growing up, that our lives are not normal ~ or of just how abnormal they had been.

We are fortunate to have this time here with one another, sharing in this intimate, anonymous fashion.

It does feel wrong to say these things.

Cedar
 

2much2recover

Well-Known Member
I am reading all your postings. Midwest Mom, Nomad, Paajes4, Dazed and Confused, Witz, and all the others. I just want to tell you all that I think you are all terrific in how you cope with the toxic parents you have had to cope with and how you have survived. Until now I never appreciated the parents I had, but I see now how lucky I have been, although I have had my own complaints and grievances, but they are nothing compared to what you have all experienced.
I salute you all!
I couldn't agree more! :group-hug:
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
It does feel wrong, Cedar. We are raised to love our family. I do not tell anyone off of this forum how I really feel about them. My kids know what happened, but I didn't tell them how I felt about it all.

My father has put all the funeral plans and executing of his will into my brother's hands. Both my mother and father seem to believe he is absolutely the only person on earth who can do things right because of his enormous brain. He heard a lot less abuse than my sister and me. He was treated better by far. My sister sort of caught up with Mom by offereing to pay her to babysit her twins and to also buy her health insurance. I do not know how she and her husband could have afforded Mom's fee (it could not have been low...she would have demanded a living wage) plus afford her insurance. I don't know that part of the story. My sister was not rich. However, my mother did bond with her twins while caring for them and that made it better for her and Sis.

I can't even imagine wanting my mother to babysit for my kids for an hour. Not that she would have, but still.

Anyhow, back to the funeral. I am torn about it. My father wants a full blown Jewish ceremony in which everyone sits shiva for seven days. I am not that familiar with Jewish funerals, but I know they are long and drawn out and that isn't going to happen with me. If I go at all, and if Bro planned somewhere for all to sit shiva, I am leaving right after the ceremony. It is just like my dad, being a narcissist, to want a big, elaborate ceremony after his passing. And my brotehr does exactly what is asked of him so it will happen.

But, if I go at all, I go, it's over, I'm done, I can always visit in private. I don't believe that any rituals of any religion have validity so my being there would be a farce. I do believe in a higher power...very strongly...but I don't think He or She expects us to do these rituals. Also I don't need to see a ton of relatives that I was never allowed to know (long story there...has to do with my mom and my dad's fear of her). So he's got this huge family and they will all show up and I won't know them and most certainly won't be in the mood to socialize. On my best day, I am not comfortable with people I don't 'know and that won't be my best day. if I go.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Thanks for those who understand.

Honestly, none of my therapists even got this much out of me. This is terrific therapy for me...lol. I tend to focus on coping skills with my therapists. Oh, they know enough, but they don't know as many of the specifics that all of you know because a session simply doesn't allow for the time it would take to tell. Also, another session is usually totally independent of the last one and things tend to get left hanging...

Thanks for listening.. Everyone.
 

Nomad

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Yes, again more validation...why I wish to address this via an article, even perhaps something more. I got an advanced degree in a field related to mental health. Immediately afterward, my father got sick and I was working for (are you ready for this) a narcissist! Long story there. I find that the men are very often misogynists and this guy was definitely one. So, life was horrible.

My dad was in the hospital two hours north of this job and the job was almost an hour south of my home. His girlfriend from hell was causing scenes at the hospital. This was confusing me and caused me to take frequent trips to the facility. I didn't know why at the time. She was his health care surrogate. He was grotesquely ill and she had him as DNR...do not resuscitate. He looked dead for a good ten days before he was actually deceased. Several nurses told me that this was wrong and when doctors did the same, she would fire them. I thought she was grieving. WRONG. She had a will drawn up leaving everything to her the days before he died. He fell into a coma the date of the will. ...which ended up being one day before he expired. Only after he was in a coma and on,life support did she agree to remove some of the life support systems. He died immediately. I ENDED UP HAVING tO pAY for that attorney's bill. He never signed the will and it wouldn't have been valid anyway. But this attorney's bill became part of the estate and I had to pay it along with his medical bills. My father left a LOT of money to his cousin and his girlfriend cleaned out his apartment of all valuables, I think when he fell into the coma.

After my father died, I found out my daughter in law was pregnant...another long story.

My job stress was getting worse and worse. If I was five minutes late for a meeting, I would get screamed at relentlessly. Male co workers could be thirty minutes late and he wouldn't say a word.

I started to feel sick. My dentist made a horrible mistake and left me with severe nerve damage.

I ended up having several autoimmune diseases diagnosed and nerve pain. I can't work a normal job. There are days that I remain in bed...like today.

So....one way I might be able to help people is use this degree and my personal experiences to write about narcissism. (I also have a degree in Mass Communications). I feel very strongly that these individuals leave a very potent, pervasive mark on their children and families. We see here in this thread the devastation. And like everyone else here, just talking about provides some relief.

Thank you for listening as well....that post a little earlier took a lot of weight off my shoulders. And Cedar, you are totally right, I felt very much alone, frightened and ashamed in that horror. I'm very grateful to all of you for listening.
 
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witzend

Well-Known Member
My dad's "poor pitiful me" only became about illnesses after he retired. Before that he was a martyr to his work & he did it "all for the kids". I hated Catholic school, and not one of the 5 of us has been to church since we left their home. He stopped going to communion when I was born because they were practicing birth control, but my mom started taking it after she hit menopause. I mean, I never figured that out until she started going again. Why didn't he? And still he never missed weekly Mass until the day he died. The entire point of Mass is Communion for Catholics, so talk about mixed messages. People came to the house to give him communion all of a sudden over the last year or so.

I could never tell you how many times my dad would mention how successful someone else's kids were. He'd take out newspaper clippings, and read from books they were mentioned in. People we didn't even know, but somehow his knowing them made him more important.

This thread has been very cathartic for me. I'm glad that it is going on like this, because it helps me to see it all in bits and pieces, just as it happened. I could never digest the sickness and irony of it all in one fell swoop.
 
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witzend

Well-Known Member
MWM - I wouldn't sweat the funeral stuff. If you're not in contact with them, you may not even receive a call in time to let you know. I didn't. Honestly, I'm glad that they took that decision away from me. I don't have a darned thing to feel guilty about. There's enough time for you to feel guilty after he dies, don't beat yourself up with "what might be" now.
 

recoveringenabler

Well-Known Member
Staff member
I saw this and thought of all of you courageous and beautiful warrior women .......I wish you all much love and much peace.......you deserve that in spades.......


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