No, I don't mean that you are a narcissist. But chances are that if you have been abused by a narcissist, an internal loop will keep playing the insults, threats, and insinuations...even for years afterwards. This is the way it's been for me. For close to a decade, I reread emails between my sister and me, looking for some logic, some turning point to which I could return and correct our relationship. I tried to see it the way she said the disconnect happened, that she was well intentioned, that our relationship was important to her.
There were emails in which she wrote, "I am sorry. I don't know what I did so wrong that you are treating me wrong but let's forget it." Or the email in which she wrote about how her son would grow up never knowing me and that she regretted that I had only met her husband a couple of times. Those emails worked to some degree. I felt guilty: it was as though some one had grabbed me in the guts and were twisting my insides.
What I couldn't understand though was why she insisted she didn't know what she had done wrong. She had once tried to have our parents put me in a mental institute. During a period when she kept calling me at work and emailing me vitriolic curses, I asked her to stop because her harassment was causing me to hyperventilate. The next day, my mother called me, sounding very concerned. She said that my sister had rang her, saying that I told her I was going to commit suicide and that I needed to be hospitalized to prevent me from harming myself. Fortunately, my mother believed me when I told her I said no such thing. As I once wrote in an email to my sister, this is a wrong she did me.
The other part I kept thinking about when I read her email in later years is how she always mentioned her family, her children and her husband -- that I was missing out on being part of her life. Never once did she ask about my life, about my husband.
So, why did I keep hearing her in my head? I think it's because it took me a long time to unravel what she was saying. She always couched her words in terms of our family, of her good intentions. I am the type to overthink things. I try to be conscientious, even if I don't always succeed. She knew her target.
Most likely you are reading this because you also have (or had) a narcissist in your life. Recognition of the person's illness is the start of letting go of these words. Once it started to dawn on me what ailed my sister, it was as though my perception of our relationship had shifted, as though I was seeing our past interactions through a different-colored filter. I understood that my sister never asked about my life, my husband, or anything about me because my value to her was as a spectator to her life. I saw that my sister decided to deny any wrong-doing on her part because it conflicted with how she viewed herself: perfect. This idealized sense of herself is more important to her than our relationship.
It is only two months since I started to think my sister was on the far end of the narcissist spectrum. There are still days when I hear my sister in my head but they are less now. Many things that have been missing in my life have returned to me: my sense of valuing the present moment; enjoyment in the small things of life such as taking walks, reading novels, cooking; the ability to concentrate; and most important of all, slowly, I am working on my regaining my confidence.
No comments:
Post a Comment