I Didn’t Realize My Mother Was the Villain until She Was Dead
Seeing the storm from the inside out is an almost impossible thing to do.
People have a habit of confusing the facts when they first come across my stories. They see the horror show that was my childhood, and then they see the self-possessed person who is standing before them now. They make a lot of assumptions. They shouldn’t. I’ve done a lot of soul-crushing work to get this far.
The first assumption that most people make is usually that I’m already across some magical finish line that they’ve been dreaming of for years. They see me going no contact with narcissistic family and think it’s come easily or with effortless boundaries.
The biggest assumption, though, is that I always knew what my mother was. People see the assertive person I am now, the clear vision that I have, and they imagine it was always that way. They think I always saw the narcissistic games going on around me and always broke away from the mold.
That’s simply not reality - not for me and not for any other survivor of narcissistic abuse.
In truth, the story is a lot more complicated. Did I always know something was off with my mother? Sure. Did I always disagree with my family? Feel uncomfortable with them? Of course. I spent my childhood being emotionally brutalized. I don’t know if I ever felt “safe” in my home as a child or an adolescent.
Why?
Because I was a traumatized person in a home full of traumatized (and traumatizing) people. Worse, I had the most confusing of mothers on my back, her tendrils twisting into every facet of my life that she could possibly manipulate or control. She was a master of twisting my brain so that I saw the world like her, so that I acted, reacted, and made the same poor decisions she did for herself (and others).
That’s why, for a long, long time, I had no idea who my mother really was.
I didn’t know that she was a narcissist. All I knew was that she was a controlling, overbearing, scary person who I didn’t trust with my most intimate feelings or experiences. I didn’t want to tell her anything about my life. I didn’t want her to know my friends or who I was when I wasn’t with her. I had to live in two different worlds around her and I never felt entirely safe in either.
I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal.
I didn’t realize that she had failed me so, so many times.
I didn’t understand why I couldn’t make her happy; why she always had something to complain about.
None of that changed until after she died. I couldn’t see my mother for who she really was until she was gone. Only as she slipped through the final veil did her veil lift over my own life. That’s when the worst parts of her were revealed and I was introduced to the concept of narcissistic parents. That’s where I found her. That’s where I saw my mother honestly for the first time.