Narcissistic Mothers & Toxic, Alcoholic Parents: Our Proof That Monsters Do Exist

107 Pages·2012·0.67 MB·English

by  Halo

Narcissistic Mothers: Proof That Monsters
Do Exist
By Percy Halo, Rebecca Rivers, Linda Johansson
©2013 Percy Halo, Rebecca Rivers, Linda Johansson
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Meet Percy’s Monster
Chapter 1b – Welcome To My Monster Mom
Chapter 1c – Apples and Arguments
Chapter 1d – An Unforgettable Christmas
Chapter 1e – Beginning of The End
Chapter 2: Meet Rebecca’s Monster
Chapter 2b – Living With The Grandparents / The High School
Years
Chapter 2c – The Engagement
Chapter 2d – Wedding Bell Bliss / The Final Nail In The Coffin
Chapter 2e – Mom Moves Home
Chapter 2f – Closure
Chapter 3: Meet Linda’s Monster
Chapter 3b – Our Mothers’ Sins
Chapter 3c – Poor Mummy
Chapter 3d – Isolation and Loneliness
Chapter 3e – Misguided Hope
Chapter 3f – Freedom at a Price
Chapter 3g – Two To Tango
Chapter 3h – The Worst Was Yet To Come
Chapter 3i – My Life Now
References
Introduction
Publisher’s Disclaimer:
This ebook is being published for casual information and entertainment purposes
only. It is not intended to be, nor should it be used, as a professional manual of
any kind on any mental health issues – including narcissism. Any information or
recommendations you use from this book you agree to do so at your own risk,
and without regard, blame or consequence to the authors or the publisher of this
book. If you feel that you or someone you know needs help with mental health
issues, we recommend you see a licensed mental health professional.
Publisher’s References:
Don’t forget to check out the other “Narcissist In My Life” books in this
series, also! (Just click the ones that interest you!)
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD): When Narcissistic Parents Lose
Their Children – A Social Worker’s Perspective
Narcissism In My Life (Series): Jen’s Story – How I’ve Coped With a
(formerly) Close, Toxic, Narcissistic Friend

Narcissist In My Life (Series): Gerald’s Story – How I Coped With a Life
Sucking, Narcissistic Family Member
Narcissism In My Life (Series): Lina’s Story – How I Coped With a
Controlling, Narcissistic Father and Ex-Husband

Narcissist In My Life (Series): John’s Story – How I Coped With a Toxic,
Narcissistic Church Leader
Narcissist In My Life (Series): Helen’s Story – How I Coped With a
Married, Narcissistic Lover
Chapter 1: Meet Percy’s Monster
Chapter 1a – Let’s Start With Catharsis

The narcissists in our lives (and I have no doubt that we have all met one), are
irritating, manipulative, unprofessional, and often just plain difficult to try to
build our lives around. They make absurd demands, throw tantrums and are
riddled with insecurities that we have to work around, smooth over or pander to.
It’s like trying to have a logical, adult relationship with a three-year-old, and it
can be one of the most stressful things in your life.
So my sympathy goes out to those of you who, like me, have to deal with your
narcissist on a personal level – in my case, my mother. Her increasingly erratic
behavior and wild acts of self-destruction have had an overwhelmingly negative
impact on my life.
The stress has broken down my relationships, interfered with my ability to work,
and at times hit me quite hard financially. I’ve rolled into work late and tired
because she just had to be reassured, at 3am, that she was the best mother in the
world and that I loved her. I’ve lost partners because not only is she too difficult
to deal with, but they cannot stand to see me torturing myself trying to set her
straight (and because, of course, those late-night phone calls affect them too).
I’ve been screamed at for my disloyalty, and I’ve been told I am a complete and
utter bitch that she wishes she’d aborted because I didn’t give in to her every
need. I have spent countless hours worrying, fretting, crying, arranging and
fixing things in response to the actions she has taken or the things she has said.
I started counselling my mother through her life, being her advice guru, life
coach, mentor, shoulder to cry on and frequent verbal punching-bag when I was
twelve. I’ll let that one sink in a minute, yes, twelve years old, a little girl who
had just started high school, as we call education from ages 11-16 here in
England. Now, twelve years later, at 24, I am tired – too tired to carry on.
There’s only so long you can live on a roller-coaster, and more than a decade
later, I have decided to finally get off. It took four suicide attempts, umpteen
rows, scratches, screaming, a car crash, several broken relationships on my part,
that caved under the weight of her insanity, numerous emails that still, years
later, bring me to tears to try to read, dozens of late-night phone calls, gallons of
gin, one attempt to section her, and finally she has pushed me to my limit. I have
cut her off and can only hope that from this distance she can do no more harm.
Some, like my dad (who has been divorced from my mother for 9 years), think I
should have done more, that I am bowing out early and shirking my
responsibilities. I mention this because to me, this is one of the big reasons it
took me twelve years to sever such a cancerous relationship (the other biggest
reason I consider far more idiosyncratic, and will mention later).
When your narcissist is someone closely related to you, others consider that they
are your responsibility – they are your relative, so you should fix them. My dad
was especially good at this sort of guilt-trip, as he not only made it my problem,
and mine alone (since she clearly couldn’t sort out her own issues, nor in his
opinion should be made to; a fact I found baffling considering she was 53 and
should have been left to clean up her own mess years ago); but he made me out
to be uncaring, lazy, and, most ironic of all, selfish.
He pushed the problem onto me, as though she were my teenage child who had
gone astray; and all the while, completely deadpan and missing the irony of the
statement, he would repeat, “she’s not my problem.” What he didn’t seem to
comprehend, what I have only just come to realize recently, is she wasn’t my
problem either. She, as any other person, belonged only to herself, as did her
problems. I had just acted as her mule, lugging the heavy weight around for a
while.
Whilst realizing this for myself was the first huge step I took to ridding myself
of my narcissist problem, the second, and arguably harder part of the process
was trying to convince those around me that I wasn’t being irresponsible, or
indeed, narcissistic myself. This has been my greatest challenge so far in my
effort to let go, to get rid of this enormous problem, and I’m not entirely
convinced I’ve yet surmounted it.
However, in learning to let go of the feeling that I am responsible for someone
else’s actions, I have also learned to not care if others think me cruel or unkind:
they do not know the effort I have made, or the lengths I have gone to. They do
not know the emotions I feel, or the strain it has put on me. And most
importantly, they do not have to live my life.
To me, cutting my mother out of my life was extremely difficult, but also
probably one of the best things I have ever done, and I am learning to not feel
guilty about it. I have come to realize that I have more than paid my dues, and
that at this stage, it is she that owes me: apologies, patience, respect, love. But
I’m not asking her for any of those things. All I ask is for peace, and in severing
my relationship with her, I realize a very small part of me is taking a leaf out of
her book: I am thinking about what I need, and whilst it is far from selfish, it is a
healthy step away from the selfless martyrdom upon which my relationship with
my mother has thus far rested.
But as I say, the most difficult part of letting go is convincing others around you
that not only is this the right decision, a good decision, but that it is neither cruel,
nor selfish, nor irresponsible. It is in fact the opposite, as you are breaking the
narcissist’s gravity, that ability to make the world revolve around them. My dad
was by far the worst person for this (in fact, thinking about it, it was only him
and my mother herself that thought my decision was in any way wrong –
everybody else wondered why it had taken me so long to come to this inevitable
conclusion). My break from her was recent, and my father and I talked about it
over the phone for some time. It went something like this.
“Dad,” I tried to explain, for the fourth or fifth time, exasperated and losing
patience, “Dad, I’ve done everything there is to be done, but at the end of it all,
she needs to sort out her own life. These are her problems, and whilst I’ve put
her in touch with people who can help, and I’ve made appointments and
meetings for her, and I’ve told her how to make it better, if she ignores my
advice and skips her doctor’s appointments and doesn’t do any of the stuff I told
her to do, well, there’s nothing more I can do. I can’t force her to grow up.”
“So you’re just giving up? You’re heartless, you know that? She’s your mother!”
I wanted to tell him that being my biological mother meant nothing, given that
our relationship had been reversed for at least half of my life, and that even in
the case of parents, respect is not innate. It must be earned, and she had done
anything but. I also wanted to point out that she would never do the same for me,
that she had never been reliable or motherly in any way, shape or form, and that
I was merely accepting the futility of a situation wherein there was nothing more
I could do. But I didn’t say this. Instead, this is what I went on to say.
“I am not heartless.”
I got very angry at this point, because I knew he had no idea the amount of effort
I had put in to keeping her stable over the many years she had been screwing up
her life, and my head.
“I have spent time and money trying to fix this, but she has to do certain things.
She needs to stop drinking, and I can’t make her do that. I can’t afford to pay for
her to go to a live-in rehab, and she won’t go to the free walk-in one I arranged
an appointment with. Her depression won’t get better, because the pills won’t
work if she’s drinking. She keeps spending money she doesn’t have on gin
instead of bills or rent or even her medicine,” I pointed out (my mother being
severely asthmatic, had two inhalers, plus her anti-depressants to pay for, but she
ignored this in favor of buying booze, and, far too often, kitsch little knick-
knacks from the charity shop around the corner, as though cluttering her house
with more shiny crap would distract from her crippling debt and the eviction
notice, which she had hidden, along with a six-month-old stack of final
demands, at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards – out of sight, out of mind,
un-dealt with).
“If she doesn’t stop drinking, then nothing will get better. She knows that. She
just refuses to do anything about it,” I said, pointedly.
But my dad wasn’t listening. In his eyes, I was trying to pass off my
responsibility onto him, the ex-husband, and that seemed inappropriate. “Well,
I’m not paying for her to go to rehab,” he said.
“I never suggested you –”
“And she’s going to end up homeless, more to the point! Can’t she live with
you?” he interrupted.
This was a major point of contention for him: that I seemed to be fine with the
idea of my mother on the street. Truth was, I had called the emergency housing
people on her behalf, but because the eviction was undoubtedly her fault, they