Living With A Narcissist

When my dad died when I was 7, my cousin who was 30 years old at the time had gotten custody of my brother and me. At first everything was fine and going well. Then by the time I turned 12, everything changed. I was grounded for absolutely everything. At that time it was just me lying about little things. As the years progressed, the things I had gotten grounded for got ridiculous. If something wasn’t cleaned right or done right, I was grounded. If I had a small pile of clothes that weren’t in the dirty clothes basket, I was grounded, and my room was searched. My brother and I had shared a room for a couple years before my cousin’s oldest son had moved out and my brother had moved into the other room with my cousin’s youngest, but once her oldest moved out and my brother moved into the same room as her youngest, let me just say if that other bed in my room wasn’t clean and strictly just have extra blankets, pillows and sheets on it, I was grounded and my whole room was searched. She would purposely find every reason to ground me and yell at me. If I didn’t get grounded for a whole week, she would go through my room while I was at school and once I got home, I was yelled at and grounded.

When I had turned 12, I had lied about something and my cousin had gotten so mad that she grabbed me by my hair and dragged me all throughout the house. Once she was done with her burst of anger, she had me sit in the kitchen by the bathroom. Maybe 5 minutes later, she had me sit on the floor in the bathroom in complete darkness. I don’t know how long I sat there in the bathroom, but I remember pulling out clumps of hair from when she was dragging me by my hair. When she opened the door, she told me to get up and she started acting all nice like nothing happened. That was the last time I have ever trusted her. When she had done that, I knew in a way that she wasn’t to be trusted. She swore she wouldn’t hurt me like that again and she didn’t but her and her husband did hurt me other ways. One of the things she would ground me for, I swear it’s literally the stupidest, was having pens, pencils, markers, highlighters and paper in my room on that other bed. For some reason, she refused to allow her 2 kids, my brother and I to have any food, drink or anything that wasn’t our clothes, dressers, deodorant, bed, blankets, pillows and sheets in our room.

When her youngest son had moved out and went to bootcamp because he had just joined the marines, my brother ended up getting his own room, but that’s beside the point. My cousin continued to ground me for everything. She has grounded my brother maybe a total of 3 times. He would have his room a complete mess and it would smell so bad, but she didn’t care. He would have soda cans, soda bottles, and clothes all on his floor and he would just get told to clean his room. If I had my room somewhat like his, meaning a little messy, she would search my room then yell at me and ground me.

There was once that she had searched his room because there was cups missing from the cabinet that weren’t with the dirty dishes, so she went to his room and found them. Let’s just say the stuff that was in the cups, you’d be disgusted if I told you. She had searched my room that day before she went through my brother’s room to find the cups. The reason she did was because a friend of mine and I were passing notes in class a few days before and my cousin had found the paper where I was telling my friend that I was feeling suicidal and that I was cutting myself because I was really depressed. Well, my cousin had yelled at me for cutting myself and grounded me for a month. She didn’t want to hear about why I was suicidal or why I was cutting myself.

When I was 19, on February 12th, 2019, I was admitted to the hospital because I was going into labor with my very first child which I ended up losing that day. While I was put under the knife so I could get a C-section, my cousin was making every decision that I was supposed to be making. She refused to allow my brother to make any decisions let alone my own boyfriend. To this day, she still tries to control my life and doesn’t want to make any decisions for myself.

I could tell you everything that she has done but that would be a never-ending story. My cousin has mentally and emotionally tore me down. She has given me severe trust issues and I know that I could never trust anyone like I used too. She has made me realize that not only is she a narcissist but she’s also two faced. Let me just add this in, she has told me when I was 16 that she could kick me out once I turned 17 but she won’t because that would mean she wouldn’t be getting the survivor’s check that the state was giving her for my parents being gone. So pretty much at that point, she was only keeping me because of the $830 check she was getting from the state for me. Pretty sad, am I right?? I have since moved out and am living with my amazing boyfriend. For once in my life I'm happy and I don't have to worry about constantly being yelled at for every little thing.