My earliest memories are marred with neglect. As early as the first grade I was responsible for waking myself up, preparing myself for school, and waking up my mother, who would begrudgingly take me to school - late. I would arrive at school with no lunch, and no money in my school lunch account. I would spend lunch begging my classmates for bites of their sandwiches and leftover chips; some teachers would notice and slip me a few dollars to buy snacks from school. At this age, it seemed as though the only time my mother had an interest in helping me, was in the shower. She would unlock the bathroom door from the outside, and peek behind the shower curtain, amused by my shock and embarrassment. Cooing like an attentive mother, she would “help” me shower – which involved her massaging my breasts while singing (“I must, I must, I must increase my bust!”) and vigorously washing my vulva – so much so that it would hurt me to urinate for the hours that followed. Soap would sting my vagina, where she’d gingerly insert her fingers to check for my hymen. “Good girl” she’d say “nice and clean”. When I grew old enough to prepare food for myself, there was rarely food in the house that could be packed for school. When I’d beg her to pack me lunch, I’d excitedly open my bag to see a tortilla, or maybe a single slice of bologna in a Ziploc bag. My requests for more food were interpreted as attacks on her motherhood, and left her in hysterics culminating in the conclusion that “if my lunches aren’t good enough for you, then you can make them yourself.” The issue of having food made accessible to me was never addressed. Again, I resorted to eating leftover snacks at lunch. While there was food available to buy at school, I had no money. My dad was making a high salary as an engineer, but that was, and still is, “his money”. Because of this financial abuse, my mom resorted to stealing bills from my brother and I after holidays and birthdays, enacting her own type of financial abuse on us. Sometimes it would be overt – claiming she’d pay us back, or mollifying us with, “I’m going to spend this on you anyway”. Other times money would just disappear. Confrontation was met with gaslighting - “I wouldn’t do that to you, are you sure you counted your money right?” This drove me to begin working under the table at age 13 - begging parents of my younger friends to let me tutor them. My swim coaches would let me “assistant coach” on the weekends for $20. It was enough for me to eat at lunch. Swim practice was my only solace – 2 hours a day without her. But on the occasion she decided to show up to a swim meet, she would use what she observed as ammunition, fragmenting my sense of self-worth by comparison to my teammates - a hallmark of narcissistic abuse. “Why aren’t you as fast as the other girls? As lively, as skinny?” When I was made to feel too insecure and inadequate to be around them – for fear they’d see me the way my mom did – I’d make friends with the boys, then be chastised for being too easy, a slut. One of my parents’ favorite things to tell me was: girls will never want to be friends with you, and boys will only want to fuck you. Equipped with this knowledge, at 13 I went to a birthday party with my teammates. An older boy came onto me, kissing me, and touching my genitals through my pants. I didn’t like it, but this is “what boys did”, this is what my parents had predicted for me. Other mothers who were present told mine that I was being inappropriate. I was berated for dishonoring her, for being a whore. I was never given the opportunity to explain that I was molested. (When I tried to confront them about this a few months ago, I was gaslighted, and my father’s response was not one of sadness or guilt, but a dismissive, “boo-fucking-hoo”). As punishment, my mother stopped speaking with me for 6 months, essentially forgoing any of her responsibilities for me – a tactic she would employ all my life. During this time, my father lived in the house but was often physically and emotionally absent, leaving my mother the job of parenting. I was responsible for finding rides to school and swim practice, and left to walk 4-5 miles when it was inconvenient for my friends parents to drive me. No one alerted me when dinner was ready and there would be no food left when they had all cleared and it was safe to come down. My mother’s harassment intensified – sometimes casual comments about how I looked or acted like a prostitute – other times she would tease me for the size and shape of my butt, and the presence of a chubby prepubescent tummy. Though absent for most parenting tasks aside from draconian discipline - characterized by violent verbal explosions and manhandling - my dad would join in for the sexual harassment; it amused him how much my butt jiggled when I walked, or how big my breasts were getting on such a small frame (“You would think that the size of your boobs would be proportional to your maturity!” - a statement I despised because it functioned to both sexualize and infantalize). As I was leaving the house one afternoon wearing a shapeless full length dress, my father told me he “hoped I got raped” so that I would “finally realize how people looked at me.” The reality is, it wasn’t other people who considered me deserving of sexual violence, it was my own father projecting that image onto me. I wondered if he looked at me the way he looked at the porn stars he’d watch – in the upper right hand corner of his computer screen - when he was helping me tie my shoes at age 5, or sitting next to me on the couch when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. I knew for sure when he hugged me with an erection this past May. This projection of me as a “whore” became especially problematic when I first contracted pink eye from classmates at age 14 – my parents denied me treatment claiming that if I didn’t want pink eye, I “shouldn’t have sucked so many dicks”. This perception of my promiscuity – in spite of never becoming voluntarily intimate with another person - served as the basis for my parents to bar me from leaving the house, a refusal to let me see my friends, and a near constant surveillance on my journals, text messages, and emails. My brother and I have found small microphones in common areas, and my dad brags about cameras he has posed at each entry point of my childhood home, programmed to text him with an image that triggered the motion sensors. He regularly uses this to monitor our comings and goings.
By the time I entered high school, I was involved in both club swimming and high school cross country, I was on track to be an International Baccalaureate scholar, all while working as a swim instructor to maintain some semblance of financial independence. With the notion that I was performing as perfectly as any 15 year old could, I thought I had mastered the art of existing undetected and would be able to quietly complete high school without stoking their wrath. But at 16, my dad’s periodic absences and overnight stays “at work” confirmed the suspicion that he was having an affair, launching my mother into a downward spiral of depression and mania. The depressive episodes left my mother functionally useless, lying nearly comatose in her bed for days and weeks at a time, highlighting the negligence that characterized my early life. The little food in our pantry became ever more meager, and some nights I would come home from school to find that every piece of food in the pantry and refrigerator was expired or molding. During bouts of mania, my mother would curse me for being alive, sometimes restraining me against walls to scream that if it weren’t for me, she would not have to stay with my father, and be a “martyr” to his treatment. When she had the energy to drive me to school or swim practice, her mental sky would be clouded with such bitterness and anguish that she would drive erratically, braking and accelerating violently, or swerving into other lanes. Through gritted teeth she would justify herself with, “I’m imagining I’m killing the other woman.” Other times I would be roped into being her therapist, listening to intimate details of my parents’ personal and sexual relationship, or be coerced into helping her search the house for evidence of my father’s affair. This is how I came to know that while we had nothing to eat in the house, my father was taking his mistress to concerts, and buying her a new phone and tablet. My mother’s inability and unwillingness to function during this time reified my role as de facto parent, both to her and my brother - a tactic I would later learn is common of abuse by a narcissistic parent. In my “outside life” I was working two, and sometimes three jobs – as a swim instructor, tutor, babysitter - to pay for groceries for me and my brother, in line to be captain of both the cross country and swim teams, and taking the most AP’s available to a sophomore. To the casual observer it would seem inconceivable that I was waiting to start my homework until 2am when my parent’s fights petered out – often too loud and violent to focus on anything else or drown out with music. I’d wake up for swim practice at 5AM, pick up the glass off the floor, put the furniture in its proper place, and try not to look at the bruises on my mom’s face and arms. My parents used this image of success to “motivate” my brother to do well once he entered high school. All it motivated him to do was attempt suicide – taking the leftover Tylenol+Codeine from my wisdom teeth extraction a few months prior. He told the school counselor it was a suicide attempt before my parents – and likely for good reason. When they found out, they berated him, crying “how could you possibly think we don’t care” and ”how selfish are you to do this to us!” My brother and I knew these were merely alligator tears – a week later it was as if nothing had happened. They continued to antagonize my brother for his less than perfect grades; inconceivable to them was the fact that his performance could be a result of our family’s instability and lack of emotional support. No one inquired into mental health care for my brother, and without our insurance cards, I was in no position to do so. The stress of mediating between my parents, acting as confidante to my mother, a mother to my brother, and a provider to myself, all while maintaining the image of a scholar athlete left me with little time for personal enjoyment or development. By my senior year, balancing now college applications and standardized tests, my grades began to slip slightly, leaving me with a C in AP Calculus BC as admissions were released. I submitted a letter to the Cal admissions department at this time explaining my situation so as to not have my admittance rescinded. While working in high school, I saved up as much money as I could, but since I was spending a lot of it on groceries and living expenses, it wasn’t enough to afford rent in Berkeley. I’ve been relying on my dad for rent and tuition, but part-time work at cafes, and freelance work (tutoring and babysitting) have allowed me to pay for everything else. Even then, my dad will sometimes forget to transfer me rent money, or claim that he can’t support me on a given month because the impending divorce is taking a lot out of him. This has put me in the position of covering my rent with my meager and often inconsistent income, leaving me without the ability to feed myself for days at a time, or buy myself proper clothes for the wet winter season. I thought that living away from home would allow me a healthier space, but the inconsistency of his support is incredibly taxing and disorienting, leaving me prone to bouts of debilitating anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. So much so that a former therapist of mine has diagnosed this reaction as “complex trauma” – made worse by the fact that I am forced to maintain contact with my family in order to continue attending Cal. While I would like to have the support of a mental health professional, my budget will not allow me to continue intakes with other therapists who will not be able to help me after the first few sessions. I am still in contact with my father because he finances my education, and I have not been in contact with my mother for nearly a year - though I was forced to spend time with both of them this past May for my brother’s high school graduation. That visit was immensely traumatizing; my cries for consistent support were met with ridicule and disbelief. Angered at the seeming implication of his inadequacy as a parent, my father threw me on the ground and restrained me - one hand on my shoulder, the other around my neck - so I would be forced to listen to a barrage of insults and threats. I was wearing a sundress, which had flipped up to expose my crotch when I hit the ground. My father’s eyes flicked between mine and my exposed crotch - never before had I felt so completely dominated. I made the decision then that I cannot be dependent upon my family any longer if it means continuing to put myself in the way of their emotional, financial, sexual and now physical abuse.
Submitted December 13, 2017 at 02:07AM by su-cculent http://ift.tt/2C84Jrw raisedbynarcissists
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