Pseudomutuality

I never realized the amount of damage all the emotional and psychological abuse I was suffering from by my narcissistic mother until I got into another situation recently with someone who I thought was a good friend but who turned out to be equally as damaging as all the other addicts, narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths I have encountered throughout my life.

It has not only been devastatingly hurtful and paralyzing but it has also triggered my C-PTSD, something I have lived with since I was nine years old. I have fallen back into that dark place I resided in for nine years of my life from the time I was nine until I turned 18 when I finally took steps to end my life. I wound up in a coma for two days and yet my narcissistic mother was still clueless. My PTSD was also triggered when I got the diagnosis of my chronic illness back in 2005.

I was always aware from the time I was four years old that my life would not be easy and that there were some serious problems within my family and this world but I was just a child. Being the youngest in the household I learned to follow the status quo which was to stay silent, keep to yourself and keep up appearances; never allow the outside world in, otherwise, they would figure out just how dysfunctional things really were and still are. I was silenced to the point that I, literally, did not speak for almost five years.The silence for me became deafening. I learned to keep my emotions to myself but that led me to become a ticking time bomb and at eighteen I exploded!

As if that wasn’t bad enough to experience the abuse and trauma suffered by my grandmother then to feel responsible for the death of my grandfather when I was only nine years of age for not speaking up when my sister and I were sat down and told that my grandfather first shot my grandmother in the back and then turned the gun on himself, killing himself, triggered, what I later learned was, PTSD. I was there, at my grandparent’s house, the week before the horrific event happened. That was the night when I saw the gun and witnessed for the first time the extreme verbal abuse of my grandfather by my grandmother. I tried to intervene, I tried to stand up for him but she turned her anger towards me.

This was the one and only time anything was told to me about my grandfather’s death and the only time, to this very day, anything was ever said about this tragic event. It was already well established that we were not to talk about it. It was buried like everything else. We must keep up the facade of a normal family so much so that my mother had the tragic event kept out of the news media. We were to carry on with life like it never happened but I was nine and carried the guilt of knowing I could have saved my grandfather’s life if only I had spoken up about him having a gun. This guilt lingered until the day I swallowed four bottles of pills, September, 25, 1989.

My grandmother survived the shooting and after she was released from the hospital my mother brought her home to live with us. I was confused, why would she come to live with use when she was so abusive to me and she was the reason why my grandfather was dead? But that was my mom’s mother and she promised to take care of her but it was at the expense of my sister and I. We were always put on the back burner, my grandmother took precedence, always. I began to realize my mother lived in this place called denial. I began to speak up and became rebellious against the dysfunction and abusive nature of my grandmother.

For the next nine years I lived in this haze of dysfunction, abuse, neglect and despair. I lived in a shell with secrets I wasn’t aloud to share with the outside world. I grew numb to all the madness and the more I rebelled the more crazy they said I was. I knew I was considered the black sheep. I could sense the resentments building up towards me because I stirred the pot once again. But after five years of not speaking I vowed to myself I would never allow anyone to take my voice from me ever again! At that time I became the crazy one and the scapegoat for all the family’s issues.

After my suicide attempt, I spent my twenties soul searching for who I am and where I fit into this crazy world realizing that I was robbed of my childhood; not to say that there were not some fun, happy, times, too, there were, however, those times were hard for me to really enjoy because I was so shut down emotionally. I learned how to fake being happy and so I began looking for love in all the wrong places, desperately looking for anyone who could rescue me from my life but the only “love” I had ever known was so destructive and dysfunctional I gravitated towards what was familiar with every relationship I entered into. Dysfunction was all I knew so I sought out what I knew and became everyone’s saviour. I now know that my love for helping people grew out of this dysfunction and I became everyone’s saviour because I, too, needed saving.

This soul searching journey that began in my twenties has continued on, it has led me to write this book and has led me to where I am today. However, my journey is not over and although I have made it through many obstacles I still have a long journey ahead until I can heal emotionally, physically, psychologically and spiritually from all the traumas and ill health I have suffered throughout my life. And part of my healing process has been the discovery of, and acknowledgement of, my psychological abuse by the hands of my mother and my now ex friend. And even though I grew up in a toxic environment and I have always been surrounded by toxic people and addicts, I now understand what a narcissist truly is.

written by Dana Toliver copyright2010