Ive been stepping back this week, thinking a lot, reading a lot and reflecting on my childhood and my own perspectives. After feeling blindsided, Ive done loads of reading about NPD: thank you for those people who recommended websites, Ive looked at them all.
Ive learned over the years its a futile event waiting for my mum to have a normal reaction to any news. Lotta, my mum says the "oh right" or "oh" to pretty much everything me or my brother says to her, then changes the subject to her. Today I sometime amuse myself by telling her news "I may be made redundant" to get the "oh right, its been a lovely day here and I went to the shop" response
Many years ago, in my thirties I had cancer: I told my mother who said, as per any news "oh right" followed by "I think most cancer is curable" then she decided to visit and spend a few days at our house which was very stressful because as always conversation was based on her, her feelings, her opinions. Bizarrely my cancer never came up her conversation, she never asked a single question about it. It made for a very awkward time, me sitting there post mastectomy, pre chemo...my mother yapping about everything and yet never once mentioning the cancer.
And she has never mentioned it since. Never asked about follow ups, never asks how I am, nothing. However, to people in the street, people she meets its all "my daughter had cancer" to get the attention she needs for her own validation.
Stupidly I believed people when they told me she doesn't talk about it because its too painful for her, and I actually felt for her feeling this "pain": Now I know, she didn't mention it because she is narcissistic, emotionally unable and unable to express any kind of normal reaction.
I was always bewildered that my mother could not react at all to show any concerns to me, yet show great emotion to other people about my cancer but I can see its text book NPD behaviour.
I then had 12 hour reconstruction surgery. Again never mentioned.
Many years later, she decided to tell me during an argument (me challenging her) that she did all she could when I had cancer, she did her best by putting money into my bank account because she knows cancer is caused by stress and I had a high credit card bill at the time. At the time she never told me about this money, and I hadn't noticed. But true to form, she brings it up years later.
Recently she has taken to telling me she has spent more money on me than my brother. I just nod.
Accepting this is it is the journey I am on at the moment. Sometimes she will talk about her family in a rose coloured way, particularly how close she was to her brother, how kind he was, how grateful I should be because he brought me up when my dad worked overseas for some years. Yet I found him to be very critical, judgemental and shamy. He would always comment negatively about my weight, minimise my achievements, tell me I needed to buy drinks for people in the pub and his acceptance of me was based around my weight. My mother refuses to listen to this, preferring instead to tell me he was very kind and should be grateful he brought me up.
Its only recently I have become aware I have been emotionally abused. Like many others I have felt it was my fault, I needed to be better, I should have been thinner.
I would love to have a relationship with my mother based on normal activity such as spending time together, her being interested but I know that isnt possible. But I am ok. I have built up my esteem and I know i am the things she isnt; I am compassionate, reliable, enquiring and I am open to feedback. I still have enormous issues expressing my desires and wants even when it comes to a hug from my partner. Ugliness has been ingrained deeply into my mind from past criticism, and my desire to shrink away is still there.