A Letter to the Narcissist – No. 15

I was 5 years old when she brought you home. She was 9 years your junior with 2 small children, a low paying job, and no contact with family due to her having brought shame on them by having children out of wedlock. I imagine you couldnt contain your glee but then you didnt have to because it was all the more effective to appear smiling at me and inviting me to a game of hide and seek. You remember dont you? I hid, and while you found me, you looked at me crouched there and into my eyes to announce “not here!” So you could leave me there and return to your seduction of her while she prepared lunch. Of course, I didn’t know all of this then-just that I was confused, that you lied, and that I didn’t like you. I also know that you never smile at me again unless she is in the room. I emerge from my hiding spot to announce: “you found me”. You reply that you did not see me. I say “you’re lying”. My mother is horrified and you are not smiling. She orders me to apologise. I do not and reply that lying is wrong.

You continue to visit. She seems happy and tells me to be a good girl so I try to like you. You largely ignore me except to tell me that I must be smart because I ask a lot of questions and tell me that children should not question adults. My mother adopts the approach that children should be seen but not heard. You turn your attention to my baby brother and I tell you not to touch him. I am sent to my room. This is where I will be sent on your subsequent visits. Seduction of her is complete.

Soon after we move in with you and she must give up her job for a time. We are now completely dependant on you. Bravo. There is a violent incident but it does not involve us and is offered as evidence that you love and will protect us but it was not now was it?

Soon there is arguing and crying that in time becomes violence. I am threatened to stay in my room door closed with my brother but I hear everything. I hear that my mother is a whore. Strange isn’t it? We all know that it was your mother that left you and all your siblings to run far away with another man and cease contact with you all. You could never face her as the true whore when you grew up and interacted with her, so you spent a lifetime substituting and punishing others for her. That is not the action of an omnipotent God but rather a shameful coward. You can protest all you want but that clawing, empty, cavernous feeling deep deep down tells you what we both know. Not very bright for a god. More accurately cowardly projection.

I tell my mother we should go back to live at our apartment. She says things will be better now and I will have a new brother or sister and isn’t that exciting? I feel only fear. She is not happy anymore and sleeps a lot. She never plays with me and we never see the friends who visited us at our apartment. Bonded to you with child and isolated. All going according to the manual thus far.

As I grow older and take on a mother role to the others as she is either working, sleeping, or suffering your abuse. You will repeatedly criticise me but tell her that I am a better housekeeper and mother than she could ever be. Of course you are really talking to your own mother but you lack the intelligence to identify that. Not very bright for a God. Triangulation.

She is like the walking dead and I wonder with disgust if you view me as her replacement as you make comments about me developing into a woman. You tell me that I better pray nothing happens to my mother and that if I dont keep my mouth shut it might. That I won’t see my siblings again because “two of them” are yours.

She keeps me up at night with her when you are out hoping it will dissuade you from violence when you return.  I am scolded when I fall asleep. You do everything you can to make me cry but I just stare and answer when required until you fall asleep. My school suffers from lack of sleep and time spent wishing you to be wheelchair bound or get cancer.

I meet someone equal to you physically and agree to marry him if he will accept my mother and siblings also. She says she will leave now that she will have a place to go. We marry and she reneges because of course-she has been subsumed by you.

I am separated from them physically but never let go and constantly monitor until they can leave themselves. You and she can have each other in sickness. After all, it was her right to do things her way,  or at least that’s what people tell me now.

And well, you know the rest…on and on checking the boxes to your illness. Yes, that’s what it is–mental illness. Not greatness, not power, but an illness so debilitating in showing you your weaknesses that you take pieces of others to attempt to become whole.

But you did not become whole. You became a shadow of yourself. Lonely and unable to keep up the facade as more people witnessed the mask slips and distanced themselves.  So much so that at your funeral when people offered something kind about you I smiled and said: but then you can be forgiven for not having really known him. It caused confusion for some but there were plenty who gave a knowing look and a quiet nod of acknowledgment. What they suspected to be true.

It was the cancer I had always hoped for you that  finally arrived. You told me and I pledged to keep contact. You were delighted thinking I would be helpful as is my nature to others. Oh, and I suppose some control over me. But it was really only so that I could watch you die and I hoped it would be painful. Funny that it was me you had the nurse assist you with calling to tell me that you were “not good” at the end as I am not “one of yours”.

Oh I came. We had some time together separate from the others. You could hear and understand but not communicate so well. I had no such difficulty. I explained quietly that you had no control over this, just as you had not really had any control over anything. She was sick also and gave you what you needed believing you could save her, but you were not that man. You were small and cowardly and never achieved anything of any value to anyone. You were not a master of illusion but only of your own delusion. You never could break me. You got her but she was broken to begin with so where’s the power in that?

Your mother was a whore.
You were never loved .
You are a coward that no one will remember.
Those you deemed weak are all still hear.
You couldnt even fool a 5 yr old.

Enjoy the blackness that is coming up from your insides to consume you.

NA