Something amazing happened this week. In my quest to understand what the fuck happened to me in my life I dug deeper than just childhood sexual abuse. I looked at all the toxic relationships in my life dubbing them ‘pseudo loves.’ There were multiple pseudo loves in my life who were men that pulled me into their world and manipulated me for their benefit. I discovered that all my pseudo loves were narcissistic. I thought what’s up with that. I further discovered that my mother was a narcissist and abused me more than I ever realized. Finding myself sucked into one pseudo after another it has come to light that I was set up as a child to seek these relationships as an adult. Holy Shit. More than an epiphany happened. My whole world was illuminated. I not only realized the connection, I could see and feel it. Literally shaken down to when I was a child.
Reading about mothers who favor one child and ignore the other rang a bell as well. My sister was the perfect one and ignoring me was an understatement. I learned about dissociation when I called it introversion at eight years old “elective mutism” and more recently my dissociation from family and society was “anti-social.” I was always a people pleaser because no matter how hard I tried I could never make my mother happy. She taught me to clean the house perfectly as many times she’d make me do it again and again until it was perfect. Then I was responsible for cleaning the house every week. When I was fourteen she put me on Valium because I was easier to manage. She didn’t teach me many life skills except what benefitted her – cleaning and cooking. She saw me as a clone of my father, who she hated. She forced me to eat everything on my plate which led to anorexic tendencies later. She left me alone every Friday and Saturday night when I was about thirteen while she hung out with her boyfriend the bartender, while Karen worked hat check and Craig worked valet, the three went off until almost dawn while I stayed alone at home. The worst thing she did was not protecting me after discovering my brother sexual molested my older sister. Holy Shit. My mother was not so compassionate and wonderful as she portrayed. When I realized she was a narcissist and I learned what a narcissist is and does, in that moment, I forgave myself. I realized all of this mess I’ve been through, the crazy stuff I’ve been doing, the pain I feel regularly – it’s cause and effect. In the simplest terms if I was late because I had a flat tire it would be beyond my control.