After a fuckton of therapy, I am still having difficulty adjusting to the knowledge that my mother is narcissistic & is pathologically incapable of seeing beyond her own narrative. It's all so subtle in my case. It'd be so much easier to get my head round if she'd actually stuck a knife in me. How do you do it? How do you blow it up big in your head so you can reclaim yourself BIG & take back your authentic identity? My dm does a great line in woe-is-me passive aggression. She makes a great martyr. Reality is, she was never there for me. And yet it's all about how I've abandoned her!
Even knowing her history doesn't make it any easier for me. Her mum got pregnant in wartime to some bloke she was dating, but he got another woman pregnant at the same time. He couldn't marry them both, so he chose the other woman. My gran married another man who 'took her on' but she didn't love him. My gran then had a miscarriage but was left lifelong in a marriage she didn't want. My mum was born to a bitter and resentful mother. My dm then married a bad man at 18 to get away from her own mother. She took her anger & resentment out on me.
Even though I know all the details I somehow can't get past the pain she caused me to leave her behind and move on with my life.