An Education in Narcissistic Violence

It is quite common to find Narcissistic tendencies in many walks of life, including close personal relationships, the world of work and social gatherings and interactions. And it should come as no surprise that the condition, more often than not, first comes into play during a person's early years of development at home and at school. Eventually, narcissism can progress well into adulthood and is a major cause of problems between us as individuals. Here I will touch upon a few examples of how it affected me during my early years in my life at home as well as at school during my secondary education.

Way back in the mid-sixties I was a very thin, undernourished, introverted ten-year-old boy who was scared of his own shadow. As a result of this, I passed a truly horrendous time at a Catholic secondary modern school. It seemed like not a day passed without me getting a thump or a full-on beating, from teachers and fellow pupils alike. In fact, I am of the mind that these days my so-called teachers would end up in jail for quite a long time for the brutality they dished out on a daily basis.

In my first or second year, there was one particular event that to this day haunts me still. Looking back, I have come to realise that it was an early experience of gaslighting and guilt projection. Sadly, it did lead to the death of an adult male.

There was a boy, who I shall only name as Steven, who was jealous of a good piece of work I had produced in metal work class. One day, to scupper my progress, the boy threw a coat hanger I had made into a bath full of acid. And that was just the start of his evil actions.

Later on in that session, whilst I was changing the bit on an industrial lathe, Steven came up behind me unseen. Very stealthily he reached under my outstretched arm, which was inside the top of the lathe holding onto a chuck key, which was inserted into the chuck.

Steven touched the green button to start the machine and suddenly I felt my arm being dragged inside the machine. I quickly let go of the key and pulled my arm out of the machine. My elbow flew into Steven’s face and almost broke his nose. Good, served him right. However, that only made him more determined to cause me harm and hurt me.

Later on in the day, waiting in a corridor to go into a biology lesson, Steven stood behind me. Suddenly, he stepped from behind me and spat a horrible gob of green snot into the left ear of a boy called Barry, in front of me. Then Steven very quickly jumped back behind me.

Barry in front of me turned as he felt inside his ear. He pulled the big disgusting mucus from his ear and called me some disgusting name or other. I plead my innocence and indicated that it was sly Steven, all to no avail. Steven called me a liar and Barry believed him. “I’ll get you for that later,” Barry said. And most certainly, after school, in the street, he did indeed get me. In fact, Barry and about fifteen other schoolboy thugs beat the holy shit out of me and almost left me for dead.

Coming out of the school’s main gate, only about 100 yards from home, I was seized by the large gang of bloodthirsty thugs and frog-marched across the road to a short passageway at the end of a parade of shops. I had a cigarette thrust into my mouth and was forced to breathe in.

Then the gang of about fifteen schoolboy thugs formed a circle and spun me around whilst shoving me from one side of the tightly knit circle to the other. Then, when I was suitably dizzy, I was shoved onto the ground. Barry jumped on me and sat on my chest. With my arms trapped by my sides by his strong legs, Barry grabbed my two ears tightly and started to lift my young head and bang it back down repeatedly onto the hard pavement with great force. Then, when Barry tired of the effort of doing that, he stopped and started to punch me in my defenceless face.

Sitting on a nearby wall was my elder brother, who had been instructed by my mother to look out for me. He sat and did nothing. The fact of the matter was my brother hated me and took great joy in seeing me get beaten up. When I later asked him why he had not intervened, especially since he was fifteen years old and easily able to help me, he gave me the lame excuse “I was waiting to see how long it would be before you learned to fight.”

Fortunately, a female neighbour intervened and rescued me. I had a fractured skull, a broken nose and two black eyes. This was Narcissistic collateral damage at its worst. I can tell you, when I got home my mother screamed in horror at what had happened to me. I was sent to the hospital and my father was sent around to Barry’s house to inform his parents about what their son and his cronies had done to me.

About two weeks later Barry’s father went to a twelve-story block of apartments, went up to the roof, and jumped to his death. I am not saying that he did that because of what his young son had done to me. But maybe it was the last straw in a highly dysfunctional family.

As for the school, they never did seem to understand that extreme physical violence begets extreme physical violence.

Well, I have to say that event was the worst of it, though it was not in any way an isolated incident. I got beat at school, in the street and at home by my elder brother and sister. I also got sexually abused by that elder sister and a nearby male neighbour. They both told that ten-year-old, very afraid boy that I was, that if he ever said anything to anybody, they would kill him. So he said nothing.

I did at one point take to playing truancy to escape the violence but got caught out after about two weeks, more’s the pity. I spent the entire four years of my secondary education in what they called a remedial class and finally left with not a single qualification. I was good for nothing.

On a less depressing note, many years later, after one dead-end job after another, I went to evening classes for three years to get enough qualifications to go to university, where I got an excellent first degree in 1984. I then went back to university for my second degree in Education in 1994. What a world of difference that education was. I absolutely adored being at uni.

And to put an end note to my dysfunctional family; I was one of eight children and these days I have contact with only one. I haven’t spoken to my elder brother in decades. Not a very nice person at all. A total and utter asshole in fact.

The real end to that family was when my mother passed away in 2012. Four of my brothers and sisters had so abused my mother in her old age that she disinherited them. And they were so angry that two of my younger sisters came around to my mum’s house, where she reposed in her coffin, to give me a damn good hiding because my mother had left me a substantial sum in her will and them nothing. It might surprise you to hear that both of those awful females are professional nurses working in state hospitals!

Amazingly the police failed to prosecute with the excuse that it was “Not in the public interest.” Really? Am I not the public? Oh well, good riddance to bad rubbish.

I have to say, my last day at that school was a day of pure, unadulterated joy. No more beatings by violent idiots, both pupils and staff. How little did I know what was to come. As I was soon to discover, the big world of work outside, was ten times worse.