Coming to Terms With Reality (Part One)

When I was living in the mountains outside Denver, Colorado, the mosquitos loved me. They could not get enough and I was constantly covered in mosquito bites.

Apparently, mosquitos are not the only pests I attract. I thought I had escaped the narcissistic curse on my life when I ran in 2018. I am now realizing that I am once again stuck in a relationship with an emotionally abusive narcissist. This time, I have neither the support system nor the resources to escape.

I have decided to take this realization and make it worthwhile though. I have decided to review my journey through a life that has been ruled by narcissists. Knowledge is power, and perhaps I will find answers to what I have been doing wrong.

The first narcissist in my life was my grandmother. She was a terrifying woman who stood 5 ft 11 inches tall. She lived with us, and she ruled our lives with an iron fist. I was her favorite target. It was the days of "Children are to be seen but not heard," and I was most definitely not allowed to be heard.

Actually, come to think of it, I was little more than a slave. Her abuse was emotional, physical, and psychological. I was not allowed to play outdoors with the other kids in the neighborhood. I was not even allowed to know them.

I was sent to a school that was just far enough away from home that there was no opportunity to see school friends on the weekend. To make matters worse, I was attending an elementary school where my mother was a teacher. When third grade came around, I found myself in my mom's class. It was a recipe for being bullied like no other. I was awkward and uncomfortable in my own skin. How was I supposed to know how to interact with other kids when I was not allowed to do so outside of school?

I was a complete misfit all the way through elementary and junior high school. My weekends were my sanity as my father recognized what was going on, and through sports, enabled me to escape for a little while. Grandma even tried to take that away from me by suggesting that I be grounded for the weekend each and every single week.

There was a fear that she instilled in the family about me attending public school beyond the fifth grade. As such, I was sent to an all-girls catholic school for two years where I was miserable. The bullying followed me.

To make matters worse, I had become extremely introverted and afraid to ever stand up for myself. I was terrified of meeting new people.

When I first transferred to the co-ed college prep school in the eighth grade, I was far outside the radar of the more popular group. I was definitely at the bottom of the social list there. To make matters worse, a couple of weeks into the first semester of eighth grade, I contracted pneumonia. I was out of school for at least three weeks. I vividly remember a couple of incidents at home during this time.

I was sick enough that the doctor had us come in to the office on a Saturday. I remember that the doctor, my mom and my grandma were discussing hospitalization. I remember my grandma insisting that I would be better off at home instead of in a hospital. Somehow, she won the conversation. I was so sick that I had to be carried from the office.

The moment that my mother had left for work the next day, I remember grandma coming into my room. She began to scream at me for some sort of mess I had made. I remember that I could barely lift my head off the pillow. I mumbled something about letting me sleep. The next thing I knew, I was being unceremoniously dragged out of bed by my hair and thrown to the ground. She started yelling that she knew I was faking how sick I was, and if I was going to be home, then I better be doing chores. Mom had taken my temperature before leaving for work. I had a fever of 104.

I vaguely remember things going black, and I woke up on the floor a short time later. I tried to crawl back to bed, only to realize that all of my dresser drawers had been emptied on my bed. This was a favorite punishment of hers. I was required to have everything put back in my dresser in perfect order before I was able to go back to bed. As I developed a social life throughout high school, I remember coming home late and exhausted from either being out with friends or my job at the movie theater to find my bed covered. It never mattered what time it was, the scene replayed itself too many times over the years. Several of those times, I remember yelling back that I had not done anything wrong.

On one of those instances, I had left a single sheet of paper out on my desk. It was the night before final exams began, but I had been called into work. Final exams at a college prep school make college look easy. On that particular night, the contents of my desk had joined those of my dresser. It was one of the few times that I burst into tears from seeing all the work that needed to be done. I was slapped across the face for crying about it. That one time, my mother stood up for me. The drawer emptying had taken place after mom had gone to bed. I think I finished that chore at about 4:00 in the morning, having come in at midnight. I was awakened at 6:00 to do more chores before leaving for school at 7:00. Two hours of sleep before finals.

Fortunately, the first day of ninth grade in September 1975 changed my life. To this day, I still don't know how we connected, but Kathleen is still one of my best friends. I believe that it was her mother that recognized that my home life was a disaster, and Kathleen's family soon became my second family, my rescuers, and my lifeline.

My grandmother was not happy about this. She did everything possible to poison the waters at home. She did not like Kathleen and she made no secret of this fact. By that point, she could not stop me. I became very involved in competitive sports, something that Kathleen was extremely talented at. Kathleen was also one of the most popular girls on campus from the moment she first stepped foot on the property.

Halfway through ninth grade, I made the cheerleading squad, once again thanks to Kathleen. Finally, I was able to get along with people my own age, and soon I had emerged from wallflower status.

Of course, life was still not perfect. I was never allowed to go on school ski trips or anything like that because Grandma made damn sure of it. During my Junior year, my father decided that he could not take anymore and my parents divorced. I remember standing out in front of the house screaming at him to take me with him.

Due to joint custody, grandma had no say-so as to how I spent my weekends. Things that I had not been allowed to do before suddenly became available to me and grandma could no longer stop things like school ski trips. By senior year, I was the head cheerleader, and bullying at school was a thing of the distant past. My graduating class had 40 people in it. I am still in touch, to some degree, with close to half of them.

During senior year, I got my first job. Grandma had laid down a rule that I would not be allowed to hold down a job where I had to work at night. It was my first rebellious act. I got a job at a movie theater where I promptly requested night shifts. Somehow I won that one and was allowed to keep the job that eventually led to my meeting the man who I would marry 25 years later.

When we reconnected later in life, he told me that nobody had terrified him more than my grandmother, and he meant of all the people he had ever met. Ironically, he was raised by a narcissistic nightmare of a woman who probably could have given grandma a run for her money. Yet it was grandma who terrified him.

There were other strange rules in my life, like not being allowed to go out on a Saturday night until I had sat through watching the Lawrence Welk show with grandma. She hated my listening to rock and roll music and wanted me to "have some culture" before going out every weekend.

You haven't lived until you have gone to a rock concert after watching Lawrence Welk before leaving the house. Culture my ass!

As I have grown and learned about psychology, PTSD, and abuse, the signs of abuse were clearly there. I had never been taken to the doctor to address the issue, but I inexplicably began bed-wetting for a few years at the age of 10. Any psychologist today could tell you that it was a clear sign of abuse. My doctors today also tell me that the abuse I endured was probably one of the factors that led to my fibromyalgia later in life.

In those days, we did not speak up, but friends who were in similar situations have later in life discussed how much we were affected by it. There were far too many of us.

I escaped home by getting accepted to an out-of-state college. I could not wait to get out of there. Of course, grandma had fought my leaving home every inch of the way. Ultimately, I was only allowed to spend one year at that school as she convinced my parents that I was screwing up and doing drugs instead of learning.

I later finished college with a 3.92 GPA for both my Bachelors and my Masters degrees. I left my doctoral program because I was working 120 hours a week while going to school and something had to give. However, I left ABD as I had completed all of the classwork and it was only my dissertation that suffered.

As most of those raised by narcissists do, I married young. I was only 20 years old at the time. She ultimately made sure that my husband ran from me, but not before I had given birth to my only child. He and I had discussed at length how we did not want grandma to influence my child in any way. Unfortunately, my pregnancy became high risk and I moved home so that I could be closer to better doctors.

I went into labor three months early but somehow managed to carry her to term. I saved two pills from my premature labor for a specific reason. In case I carried to term, I did not want my daughter born on her due date. She was due on grandma's birthday.

I did end up having to take those pills, and my daughter was born two days after grandma's birthday. It was a small victory for me.

I remember the day that I brought my daughter home from the hospital. I was still exhausted but had a beautiful blond baby girl in my arms. As we got to the front porch, the front door flew open. Grandma tore the baby from my arms and ran through the house to go lock herself in the bathroom with my child.

Grandma drove my husband away a few weeks after my daughter was born. I was allowed to stay home with her for exactly 4 months before I was forced to go find a job. Of course, you can only guess who my babysitter was during the workday. I remember pounding on the door pleading with her to give my baby back. She did not respond until Mom joined me in begging for the return of my child.

When my daughter turned one year old, grandma had a new scheme up her sleeve. She somehow convinced my mother that my child would be in danger if she remained with me. My birthday present that year was the move-in costs for an apartment of my own, a tiny dark, furnished studio that felt like a prison cell instead of the sort-of freedom it actually was. There was a condition that I was not privy to until moving day came: I was forced to leave my daughter in the care of my mom and grandmother, custody unceremoniously and sneakily stripped from me. It would be a five-year battle to get her back. The games played during those five years scarred my daughter for life, as the cycle of abuse was continued with my daughter as grandma's newest victim.

What I remember most about those years was the hundreds of times I would call the house to arrange to take my daughter for the day. Nine times out of ten, I would arrive at the house only to find the house locked up tight with my daughter and grandmother nowhere to be found.

My situation wasn't much different when I got custody back, I just didn't know it yet. A few short years later, I escaped my hometown for good. Unfortunately, it was in the company of an even more damaging narcissist who would attempt to take everything from me.