Only recently did I grasp the idea that my father is a narcissist. I always wondered why I felt so strange and out of place in our home. Why I can not let go of my trauma ladened past. Why I keep obsessing over how wronged I was. I felt like I sounded like a broken record. like I was reliving my past over and over again. Like a spirit with unfinished business here on this planet, destined to walk the empty land after dusk searching for my soul.
Finally, after all the years of therapy I think I have an answer to why if felt so alone, anxious, sad, depressed, out of touch with myself and this world. Why I was in a career I hated, why I had trouble expressing myself to others, why I felt so empty inside. My fathers father was abusive to him, and most likely a narcissist himself. I guess he just passed down this trait to his son.
My brother and I have no plans on having children. I like children but I don’t want any of my own. When I think of having a son, the first thought that races through my mind is that he will disappoint me. I am still struggling to form my own identity, and I am in my early forties.
When I was growing up, I always felt like my siblings, me and my father and mother were not really a cohesive family, but more like a group of strangers that happened to live under the same roof. Nobody really knew each other, but we shared a home, nonetheless.
My mother, I realized recently, who endured the same emotional abuse, as me and my brother, I saw as an equal, or of lesser status on the totem pole. My relationship with her deteriorated after I realized I could not rely on her to protect us from my father’s abuse. So, instead of retaining the role of mother, she was demoted to runt, someone to be manipulated and pushed around. Just another sad individual that I shared a living space with. I think she gave up on her role as mother, too. She still cooked and cleaned, but she seemed to resign herself to her shitty existence.
it’s all quite sad, really. I am sure this plays out in thousands or even millions of homes. When you are raised by a narcissist, you either become one yourself or if you are the more empathetic type, you suffer the full consequences of the narcissistic abuse in agonizing silence. I would surmise that the more thinking types, are prone to becoming narcissists themselves. The cold analytical thinkers, who have a proclivity to competing and attaining material wealth. The feeling types, well, they are mostly not much for aquiring material wealth, and by their very nature they go out of their way to treat others well. They get shit on and shit on themselves, for that matter.
My brother and I are both empaths, and narcissists are drawn to empathetic individuals, like a moth is drawn to a flame. Empaths provide narcissists with their supply. I only wish I had known as a child to just keep my mouth shut and not provide the narcissist with what he needed. My father is a coward and a sad old man. His legacy is the hurt and shame that he brought into his family. How short life is. Make sure to treat others well, because the only thing left, when you dead, are the memories that live on in your loved one’s mind. Make sure they are fond memories.
Personal Development Journey 