Alone

How do you go from alone, independent, and happy to self-consious, confused, afraid, people-pleasing, hypervigilant and still alone? You meet a narcissist.

Mine is my mother.

I had a therapy session yesterday and my therapist asked me about some of my earliest memories. It didn't have to be anything specific but she wanted to know how old I was. I thought about it and I have slivers of memories from when I was 4/5/6ish years old. Then she asked me "what do you remember about how you were patented when you were that young?"

Ooff. I never really thought about that before. I sat in silence for at least a whole 30 seconds imagining all these little memories, and I realized something. I was alone, but I was happy. My little memories were of me playing by myself at home, or outside playing, or playing with our animals, or playing with friends. When I was thinking about all those little memories, it was like my mother wasn't even there.

After my session I thought more about how I really was such an independent child. I was wondering when did that change? The mother that I remember the most, the one who did the most damage, was enmeshed with me. Trauma bonded. So overly involved in everything I did that sometimes I wish I had a parent who gave me the silent treatment, just to get a break from her. In my late teenage summers and early twenties I was always out of the house, just to create more space between us. It never occurred to me that it wasn't always like that between us.

I realized that shifted significantly when my mother was having a really hard time. She was divorced from my biological father. We already were cut off from my extended family. We moved from Florida to New Jersey so my grandmother could help us get back on our feet. Then after about a year or so my grandmother cut contact with us too. My mother divorced her second husband and we totally started over in Pennsylvania with no one.

In my mother's world, she was losing control over everything. I'm sure she was feeling so lost and so alone. I know for myself with my own son when I am dysregulated I try and take more and more control away from him to try and create more order and stability for myself. It would make sense that my mother was doing the same to me, and unfortunately I was the perfect target because I couldn't leave. I was trapped. As she began dating and found my eventually step-dad she started becoming more controlling, manipulative, and lying to me while being on her best behavior for him.

I used to feel like I was never good enough. That no matter what I did or what I said, I would always be the victim. Everything was always my fault.

Then I remembered a section in a parenting book I'm reading and it talks about the different kind of insecure attachments that you can have as a child. There was a whole section about how you could treat your child and I realized that maybe my mother felt that too. Maybe she was dealing with similar wounds that I am, except she never learned how to regulate her own emotions. She never was able to be truly vulnerable with her emotions and feelings. She was never able to communicate boundaries and initiate hard conversations without screaming and name calling and guilt trips. Maybe she felt like everything I was doing as I was growing up was an attack on her because she was so insecure. No wonder she was always lashing out at me and making me feel like everything was my fault. It felt so terrible for her to admit that she was wrong, it was easier to lash out at me. It must have made her feel powerful to know that she had so much control over me and that I was so afraid. Sometimes I would catch her smirking at me when she hit me or made me flinch or made me yell at her. Maybe that was the first time in a long time that she felt strong. Maybe it wasn't that she was abusing me on purpose. Maybe it was more about her being in a constant state of dysregulation that when she lashed out and hurt me or hit me, she didn't care. She was constantly proving to me how I "made her" react.

For about a decade I was so angry and resentful of how she was treating me. I hurt her back on purpose to try and push her away so she would just leave me alone. The problem with anger and resentment take so much emotional and mental energy. Hate isn't the opposite of love, it's indifference. When I began healing I wanted peace more than anything and I knew that a big step would be trying to slowly let some pieces of that anger go reveal the other emotions underneath. Now as I am parenting my toddler I am feeling so much grief. I would be so sad about how I wasn't able to make my mother hurt me when I couldn't imagine hurting my son that way. When I scare my son after I scream, he cries and hugs me and says "sorry I scare you", and that crushes me. It makes me hug him tight, cry, soften, and apologize to him. How did my mother not feel like that?

She couldn't have. Not because I was unloveable, but because she has no capacity for empathy. I have so much empathy and ironically I know thats from my mother. She didn't teach me that, she made me that way. I was hurting so much I was desperate to be understood and validated, and that comes from empathy. For one of the first times I was able to genuinely be grateful to my mother for this and hold some space for true empathy for her and that actually felt good.

My mother has made so much of my parenting extremely difficult, but some things she has made so easy. It's easy for me to want to connect with my son. It's easy for me to have empathy for him and for what he's feeling. It's easy for me to offer comfort when he has big feelings. It's easy for me to know that his behavior isn't to be taken personal. It's easy for me to love him because I have so much empathy. Thanks mom.