My Narcissistic Mother is a Disappointment…

And that’s okay.

By the age of ten, I started to question if my mother truly loved me. I write this with no trace of sadness or rancor. It’s just fact.

I was being bullied mercilessly in school by cruel, animalistic children. My self-esteem was non-existent and I’d developed an eating disorder. My mother was there for my brother and I as we were mercilessly tortured psychologically and physically… To an extent. She was a single parent so she worked a lot. Her work hours and commute were not consistent with being able to fight feckless school administrators who did nothing to protect us.

But, she wasn’t there, either. We could not talk to her about our experiences fully. My brother and I had each other for that. We bonded over our hellish experiences, letting each other be vulnerable and as dark as necessary to cope. We had to become mother and father to each other as we listened to one another’s harrowing daily quests just to exist in peace without being terrorized.

I couldn’t talk to her about much of anything. Boys, my budding sexuality and all the feelings that come with it, and other life-changing subjects teen daughters and femmes should be able to talk to their mothers about… I was denied the opportunity to bring those up and feel acknowledged and safe in that acknowledgment. I was good enough to listen to her, but not good enough to be listened to. This resulted in very little talking to her on my part, and a reliance on my brother as my most trusted friend and confidant.

My feelings were irrelevant more often than not, I imagine. The times that they did matter, they must have mattered far less than her feelings in the end. I’m not sure, but it’s hard to imagine it any other way when one’s attempts to express their feelings are flippantly rebuffed and cast aside. Maybe she was too proud, too overworked, too anxious,or too ashamed to express softness and nurturing back then, but now? Now, we’ve just come to welcome our lowered expectations for having the type of mother that we desperately needed and wanted at one time.

That’s what you ultimately have to do with narcissistic parents. You not only have to lower your expectations, but be prepared to keep lowering them. There is no bottom too deep or too abysmal to reach for a narcissistic parent.

When discussing deeply personal experiences, like any narcissistic mother, she will ensure that her experiences eclipse my own. If there is someone to blame, she will blame me. There were times where her not having my back when she should have lead to interlopers using it against me. When I talked about my sexual abuse, it was my fault. Intimating my mental health journey was met with a stunning lack of support and acknowledgement. I’ve been physically attacked. I’ve been conspired against. I’ve been lied on.

Once, to get out of a tedious dinner with friends, she made up a story that my brother and husband were going to kill each other, and that’s not even the half of that story. When I confronted her with this, she flippantly disregarded my concerns, and telling me to “lighten up.” All because she was too craven to take her leave and go home.

I used to feel guilty about my increasing need to distance myself from her and the peace I anticipated when I knew that she was going to ignore me for weeks. Now, I welcome it as a chance to reclaim my time even further. I welcome this time as a chance to breathe and continue to live a good life; a happy life.

I love my mother in some ways. I would say my love for my mother is complicated and layered. On some layers, there is a love there. In others, there’s not love but an affinity; a respect for her strength and resilience. It’s not easy being a mother in the best of times. I can’t imagine being a mother in the worst. I respect her for the storms she weathered well.

My mother went from making disappointing decisions to becoming a disappointment. I’m not the least bit ashamed or saddened to admit it. In fact, I write this to urge other children and adults with narcissistic parents to let go and live their best lives unencumbered by bothersome parents.

I think of all the time I wasted agonizing over a problem she created and blaming myself for it. I no longer have to watch a dozen replays in my head only to come up more confused about what I did or didn’t do. I don’t have to care.

That’s the happy ending for me after all. I have allowed myself the grace necessary to divest from my narcissistic mother and her domineering ways. It is the act of divesting from all of the bullshit with my mother that has been the most liberating.

More importantly, it’s as though I am actively reaching back in time to all my younger selves who were too afraid to stand up, set boundaries, and confidently demand that those boundaries be respected.

I think of our relationship now as one a coach has with a problematic player who’s a pain in the ass. She’s my mother. She’s family. She’ll always be on my team. Occasionally, she may get her shit together long enough to get put on the court, but for the most part, she’s benched.

And that’s okay.