Knowing the Narcissist : A Letter to the Narcissist – No. 135

You have been my best friend, my big sister, someone I admire and look up to. You are 4 years older than me. My beautiful blonde hair, blue eyed, funny, vibrant and charming big sister. I never considered until recently of the possibility that you could be a narcissist. But it’s hard to tell because addiction and narcissism seem like they are one in the same. drugs have you acting like nothing else matters but you and what it takes to get your drugs. You went from being a soccer mom who devoted herself to her children to living on the streets addiction to heroin in a  short period of time.

I have always admired your care free spirit when it came to dating. I always wished I could be like you. You were always done with one guy and on to the next in a blink. You had the ability to leave a relationship when you pleased. I was different, I would always cry and dissect my relationships and ruminated. You never did that. I wanted to be like you. I wanted to know how you did it. How you can turn off your emotions to someone you were just so deeply in love with. I thought I was an alien. Maybe I felt things too much. I wanted to be normal and fun and carefree like my big sister.

You always pointed out how sensitive I am. Not necessarily making fun of me or saying it in a bad way, just pointing out that things upset me or brought tears to my eyes more than they should.

You taught me how to tie my shoes, you taught me how to drive, how to shave, you shielded me from our toxic parents, you took me to my first gyno appomtment and got me on birth control, you snuck me into bars and night clubs. When I was in high school, you let me get drunk with you and your friends. Maybe you weren’t the greatest role model, but you didn’t have much to go by with what we went through as kids . I felt like I was lucky for having you to look up to and it made me sad that you didn’t have someone to look up to and teach you things. We have another sister who is just a year older than you. For some reason you guys never got along. You said she was crazy. I wasn’t old enough to understand the dynamic with you guys growing up. She was my big sister that I loved and looked up to just the same as you.

You started having babies when you were 20. Now I believe it was to trap men. Even though you broke up with all of them. And it hurts to say it but I feel like you use your children to emotionally manipulate. And it’s hurtful and wrong.

When you brought my beautiful nephew into the world, you were 20 and I was 16. When I turned 18, I got an apartment with my friends. You begged me to let you come stay with me. You were living with your in-laws in a beautiful house with the baby and boyfriend. They had a wonderful and normal family. their family was amazing and wholesome. Much different from ours. Normal, like what you see on tv. You made it seem like at the time, that he was emotionally abusive. You left your boyfriend/father of my nephew and immediatly moved in with me and my teenage friends. You worked as a bartender at the time. And quickly met someone new online. Your relationship advanced quickly. I pointed out the red flags. He was oversees in the military and began sending you his paychecks. You had never even met him in real life. And you got a tattoo of his name before even meeting him in real life. After bringing a hurricane through my apartment, the relationships I had with my roommates were dampered…through triangulation and lots of encouragement from you to increase the amounts of alcohol consumed. You brought so much chaos to what was the first normal teenage/young adult experience I almost had. But I allowed it. But I just recently realized that you were sort of the catalyst.  And that was the beginning of you finding my “weakness” through the love I had for my nephew.

You immediately got pregnant with the second baby’s daddy. Then followed it up with a wedding.  6 months you guys had known eachother and you were pregnant and getting married. You were his 3rd wife and he was 23 at the time. He told you his other wives were crazy drug addicts. You ended up seeking custody of your step daughter and got her away from a toxic environment. Who knew he would soon do the same to you.

There was a time where life was good. I got married and pregnant and we got the cousins together and had fun. Until my husband began making our get-togethers awkward and uncomfortable. You never liked him but you tolerated him. Until the night he yelled at you and your husband for bringing over “junk food” to our house. He exploded on you guys. You guys didn’t come over much after that. And i began to drowned. And I believe that’s when you started to as well. I kept trying harder and harder to fix myself so that I wouldn’t upset my husband and maybe he wouldn’t have so many explosions. I tried to do evrything right. It took so many years to figure out that there was nothing I could do that would make him happy. And his drinking got worse. I stopped drinking when I decided to have children. Because I didn’t want to expose them to the toxic patterns that I grew up in. Who would have known that I chose a partner who was just like Dad? Actually you were the one to tell me he was just like Dad. Only you said it to manipulate me but despite your intentions, you are telling the truth.

 Your husband then began cheating on you. And left multiple times. You would tell me that he called you fat and said that was why he was cheating on you. You found him with another woman outside of a bar and you hit him in his arm.  I couldn’t believe it when you told me a police officer, who presumably knew your husband, immediatly arrested you for domestic violence. You caught him cheating and then immediatly spent a night in jail. I think you started using pills after that.

you began seeing another man. You divorced your husband and had another baby with the new guy. Who was a heroin addict. And you moved even further away.

 I miss you. I miss my sister. I miss my best friend. You are changing. Meth has changed you. You think it makes you beautiful but it tricks you. You were already beautiful. Now it is taking your soul. And making you think it’s giving you what you want but it is the devils drug and it’s lying to you.

3 years ago your daughter called me and told me you were doing drugs. Heroin and “Ice”.  Hearing her cries begging for me to find you and get you off the streets so you didn’t overdose flipped some switch inside my head. I couldn’t stand to hear her cries. Her pain was so deep and so grave. I could only feel a portion of what she felt and it overtook me. The depth of her pain was overwhelming.

I didn’t know it at the time but I think it was a codependency switch that flipped. I don’t know exactly. But Instead of teaching her about healthy boundaries, I took down all the addresses she gave me of all the drug houses you were at. And I went to all of them. I wanted her to feel at peace. I wanted to take her sadness and sorrows and worries because no child should ever feel that much sadness and that much grief.

That’s when I saw that the drugs had taken you. You were an amazing mom. Now you had lost custody. And you had given up. And when I tried to get you to go to treatment you tried to tell me that your daughter was manipulative. You said she was lying and that you weren’t doing drugs. And I was infuriated with you. I hated you at that moment. I hated what you were doing to my niece. What your addiction was doing. That’s the first time in my life I had ever felt angry with you. The way you were acting towards my niece and the way you were treating her!!!!! I didn’t understand it. I knew you were out of your mind then. This was not my sister. The thing that really infuriated me was that you went on and on about the abuse you endured living with your ex and how he was a psychopath and all the things you said… and now your daughter is saying he is being physically and emotionally abusive to her and you just invalidating her. It wasn’t enough to get you to stop doing drug.

What the fuck!!!! No! You can’t invalidate her. YOU ARE A FUCKING ADULT!!!! She is a child stuck between two very sick people. She ran away and her dad put her in jail because running away is against the law. She spent all of the holidays in jail while worried that her mother was going to overdose and die. I tried getting custody but I have no rights. He told her that she is just like her mom and asked her why she cries for her mom because he tells her you are “just a junky”.  The only thing I could do for her was to validate her and let her know that I love her. I tell her that you love her and that addiction is a disease. But I can’t take her pain. As much as I have tried. I can’t fix things.

I hired an interventionist. Do you recall, you tried to beat her up… she suggested after that, that I file paper work for you to be forced into drug treatment. I thought maybe if you could be sober for a brief period of time, maybe you could realize what was happening. I was very naive and didn’t quite have a good grasp on what addiction is. I will be honest, I still don’t. I just know it fucking sucks.

 I took off work and took you to court. I tried to get our mother involved but she said you were fine. Everything is fine. If you don’t talk to anyone when they are in crisis then everyone is great. Denial is a wonderful state. She doesn’t know her grandkids and doesn’t care to know them. They are better off. I took you to court and they said that you were incapable of making rational decisions, but they had no open bed available at rehab. So they said you had to do outpatient. Which you didn’t do, and they didn’t care. The rehab said you would have to call and want to go to rehab to obtain a spot. So court ordered rehab was just a bunch of crock and a waste of time.

After the hearing, your drug dealer boyfriend threatened me. I have children and I was beginning to wonder how much more I could invest in trying to help you when I couldn’t seem to even get through to you.

My niece continued to call me asking how you were and where you were. And I had no answers for her. So I began doing missing persons reports on you. So I could give her an answer. Then you got arrested. Your boyfriend got enough time for you to be out on the streets with nobody enabling you.  So you called me. You got a scholarship to a nice rehab and you were doing amazing. 3 months and I felt like I had my old sister back. But it didn’t take long for you to start using again. You lied about bringing drugs into my house and I can no longer allow you in. I have children to raise and I cannot handle this anymore. I love you and it hurts so bad to see you struggle but why can’t you take the wheel!!!! Why can’t you get better and be there for your babies!!! I don’t understand. I don’t understand. Addiction fucking sucks. I am so tired. And I feel like I have taken time away from my kids and nothing I have done has seemed to help. I am burnt out.  Between this and working in healthcare during a pandemic I feel like I had severe compassion fatigue. The government had made it to where the nursing home residents couldn’t leave their rooms for the length of the pandemic and they would tell me that they would rather be in prison. They asked what was the difference. And the virus spread throughout the building despite them being in their rooms. So some of them died of coronavirus and hadn’t seen their friends or family in so long. It was tragic.

I decided that I needed to take care of myself before I made myself sick. Spiritually, mentally  and physically.

I have learned about codependency. And about boundaries. I have learned that I cannot control you or be responsible for how you feel or the consequences of your actions. It’s just really fucking hard sometimes to see someone you love struggle. There is no way this shit is a choice. No fuckkng body would want to live like this. Nobody!!!! I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

Thanks to HG’s articles, I have been able to learn about different types of manipulation. Because when it comes from someone who has taught you everything, discernment can be difficult.

It’s hard when someone tells you that you are the only person they have left that believes in them. Or they try and make you feel guilty by bringing up the emotional and physical abuse they endured at the hands of your biological father. But I have recently come to the realization that I can only control me. Though, what my dad did to you and made you feel like was awful and should not have happened, I cannot take on his feelings of guilt. That is for him to carry. I can not control another person nor can I take on their guilt. Because by doing so, I have delayed my own healing of my own trauma.

It’s hard to go no contact after that. Even though I feel myself getting better with each day that goes by of not answering my phone. But I feel so guilty. I am just tired. And torn and I don’t know what the right the to do is.

Dad has switched from alcohol to heroin. Mom has turned into a really mean drunk. Neither one of them contact me very often and when they do their conversation is one sided. They don’t care to hear about or talk to their grandchildren. I wish they could live differently. I am coming out of my fantasy world. The world of seeing only the potential in my family.