When I Surprised My Narcissist Mother-Part One
In a previous post I touched on how narcissists do not handle surprises gracefully. A surprise challenges the narcissist's belief that life can be completely controlled. A surprise is a fearful thing because it means the narcissist couldn't see what was coming and was unable to prepare themselves for it. It is a direct challenge to their "god" complex.
They are capable of certain mental gymnastics which they use to convince themselves and others that they can't be surprised. For the more superstitious types they may assume an air of prescience. They have somehow linked into the universal mind and can catch the vibrations of a looming disaster. There is definitely the air of paranoia that results from this mental defense. Eventually, the narcissist is suspicious of everything and everyone in order that they can be "right" when something goes amiss. Even a so-called Christian narcissist will talk in this new-agey way to describe their particular powers of foreknowledge. The only doctrines a narcissist holds to are the ones they like. They will pick and choose from contradicting philosophies because of their infantile logic centers. Oxymorons do not exist for a narcissist.
A hard as my childhood was with my Nmother it didn't compare to the difficulties of being a teen. My mother has always had a particular aversion to teens. I realize better now why this is. She is unsettled by their budding sense of self which allows them to start questioning things. Like her version of "reality". She is intimidated by their budding sexuality. She despises their budding sexuality. It is a dirty, hateful thing. She hated teen boys most of all.
I was what anyone would have described as a "good kid". I was obedient to my parents. I was responsible. I didn't do drugs. I didn't even eat junk food. But I was a lonely and isolated kid largely because I wasn't allowed to do the things my peers did. My social life was nearly non-existent outside my family during my teen years. After puberty, I started to attract male attention at church and school. It was attention like nothing I ever experienced before. Intense, ardent...someone seemed to really want me. Having a emotionally distant set of parents, this attention definitely resonated with a deep craving in me.
There was nothing as loathsome to my mother as any idea of me combined with sex. I was subjected to lectures about the evils of sex and boys starting at about age 10. All I really took away from those sessions was a general sense of feeling dirty even though I had not done anything or even thought about sex. As I became older, that dirty feeling only happened when I thought about sex at the same time as I thought about my mother. If I could keep her out of my mind, then sex was pretty interesting stuff. I learned to keep the two concepts apart long enough to get initiated into this mysterious, forbidden, yet enticing world of sex.
It is amazing how creative a young person can become who is determined to find opportunities. My first boyfriend was also very creative. My parents did not allow me to date at that time. They did allow my boyfriend to visit me at my home. If I was allowed out of the house with him it was always with my younger sister in tow because the general assumption was her presence would keep me out of trouble. I was 14. My boyfriend was 16. After six months of determined effort he finally was rewarded with sex. I would love to go back and slap around my younger self. I am not proud of my choices. But this is how it went down. Just reportin' the facts.
My mother never suspected my boyfriend and I of having gone all the way. My father did. But because he always deferred to my mother's perceptions, he never did anything to stop my relationship with boyfriend #1. I broke up with him shortly after turning 15.
I was sixteen when I met a twenty year old college student at a university swimming pool. His first impression of me was in a bathing suit. He was highly motivated to become my "friend". By this time I was allowed to date. Sixteen had been held out to be the magic number which would open the dating world to me. Mom kept her promise. I started dating Mr. College Guy. He didn't have nearly as much work to do to get into my pants. We carried on intensely for several months before I realized he was a jerk and dumped him. It was awfully fun for awhile to be picked up for dates in his Porsche. It was his dad's car, but the snoopy teenage neighbor girls didn't know that, so they were duly impressed.
I had become a real adept at lying. Lying wasn't something I had done much of as a kid because I wasn't very good at it. But now I had a real motivation to get good at it. Sex. Sex was power and it was attention. It was a high I craved now. I had become a very attractive female and was the recipient of more male attention than ever. Somehow I was able to convince my mother of the innocence of my dates as she would interrogate me after getting home. Because I didn't have a history of being a liar, it was easy for my mom to think I was being completely truthful. It was because she wanted to believe me. If she wasn't blinded by her desire to believe me innocent of the crime of sex, the clues were there to pick up on.
There were other boys that I kissed and did a little petting with, but so far had only granted the great gift to two by age of seventeen. I guess I want you, the reader, to know I wasn't a complete slut. Don't know why I care...but perhaps it is the vestige of shame that covers my memories of those years that motivate me tell you the extent of my bad behavior. It is important to the story to let you know I was more or less sexually active from the age of 14 because it was a span of three years that I completely deceived my mother.
My mother baby-sat kids since I was the age of six. She did it all through my teen years. She used me as a surrogate baby-sitter the older I got. I was doing her work for no pay. Especially during the summer. She would dump me with all the kids off at the public swimming pool for several hours several afternoons a week. The upside for me was the glorious tan I got every summer and a bit of male attention too. I would have rather been allowed to get a job each summer, but that wasn't an option for me. Mommie dearest didn't allow such a possibility. I was too useful at home as a slave. My slave labors included taking care of all the barn animals (cows, horses, goats, chickens), gardening, hacking weeds out of the pasture, moving irrigation pipes, mowing the large lawns, washing my dad's work truck, harvesting, canning and freezing of the produce from the garden, cleaning the house, doing laundry, all in addition to free baby-sitting. Summers were a thrill a minute at my house. Many of these responsibilities continued on through-out the school year as well except for the outdoor chores. Although, taking care of the animals was year-round. I threw hay for cows, goats & horses, watered them, milked the goats, helped with castrations and de-horning, mucked out the chicken coop, fed & watered the chickens, gathered and washed eggs. Can you get a sense why sex was a nice diversion for me?
My mother liked to run a little bit of a reform school for miscreant kids. Somewhere along the way a male cousin started living with us. He was about five years younger than me. Mom was sure she had her own two children in perfect shape so she, with an air of superiority, would "straighten out" other people's kids. My cousin was a large distraction for her as he had some serious behavioral problems. Lying, drugs, stealing, animal abuse, etc. It was during this time I began my third sexual involvement.
By this time I was a very unhappy teen. I had become even more isolated when my mother decided homeschooling was for me. Starting with my junior year of high school I began homeschooling. It was a program that didn't require parental involvement, so I was completely on my own. This was a very depressing period of my life. Being home all day, every day with my mother was a special form of torture. She had no respect for my time. As was usual. At any point during the day she would call my name and I would have to appear before her immediately to do whatever task she needed at the moment. That she was interrupting my studies never seemed to occur to her. I started to fall behind in certain units like chemistry and Spanish. Two difficult courses to do without a teacher. I was feeling desperate and alone. My only solace showed up in the person of a handsome 20 year old from church. We started dating. After a few months, when he got his own apartment, we started having sex. Without protection. I became pregnant the first time we had sex.
In a few short weeks I suspected the worst...that I was pregnant. A sister-in-law of my boyfriend created a pre-text for my mother so she could take me to a public clinic to get a pregnancy test. By the time the test came back I was around twelve weeks pregnant.
There is probably no way to describe the intense fear and panic I was experiencing at this point. I had not been looking to get pregnant. It was worst of all situations I could imagine being in.
My parents had, over the years, dished up extreme punishment for offenses which in comparison to me getting pregnant were nothing. So it was stretching the limits of my imagination to try to figure out what would be my punishment for this. I didn't know how far they'd go. I feared the most extreme scenarios some of which included being jailed at home for untold years, or worse. If my mother could practically lose her mind with rage at some imagined or even real offense as she had so many times in the past, then what would she do with this news? I started to lose weight and withdraw into myself. I was scared shit less.
When I told my boyfriend I was for sure pregnant, he was delighted. He immediately asked me to marry him. It seemed like a really good idea at the time for reasons stated above. A glimmer of hope of how I would survive this started to come into view. But how do I get married at age 17 without parental approval? My boyfriend's mother came up with the suggestion of elopement.
With this back-story, I'll come back next time to tell of the fall-out of my decision to elope.
They are capable of certain mental gymnastics which they use to convince themselves and others that they can't be surprised. For the more superstitious types they may assume an air of prescience. They have somehow linked into the universal mind and can catch the vibrations of a looming disaster. There is definitely the air of paranoia that results from this mental defense. Eventually, the narcissist is suspicious of everything and everyone in order that they can be "right" when something goes amiss. Even a so-called Christian narcissist will talk in this new-agey way to describe their particular powers of foreknowledge. The only doctrines a narcissist holds to are the ones they like. They will pick and choose from contradicting philosophies because of their infantile logic centers. Oxymorons do not exist for a narcissist.
A hard as my childhood was with my Nmother it didn't compare to the difficulties of being a teen. My mother has always had a particular aversion to teens. I realize better now why this is. She is unsettled by their budding sense of self which allows them to start questioning things. Like her version of "reality". She is intimidated by their budding sexuality. She despises their budding sexuality. It is a dirty, hateful thing. She hated teen boys most of all.
I was what anyone would have described as a "good kid". I was obedient to my parents. I was responsible. I didn't do drugs. I didn't even eat junk food. But I was a lonely and isolated kid largely because I wasn't allowed to do the things my peers did. My social life was nearly non-existent outside my family during my teen years. After puberty, I started to attract male attention at church and school. It was attention like nothing I ever experienced before. Intense, ardent...someone seemed to really want me. Having a emotionally distant set of parents, this attention definitely resonated with a deep craving in me.
There was nothing as loathsome to my mother as any idea of me combined with sex. I was subjected to lectures about the evils of sex and boys starting at about age 10. All I really took away from those sessions was a general sense of feeling dirty even though I had not done anything or even thought about sex. As I became older, that dirty feeling only happened when I thought about sex at the same time as I thought about my mother. If I could keep her out of my mind, then sex was pretty interesting stuff. I learned to keep the two concepts apart long enough to get initiated into this mysterious, forbidden, yet enticing world of sex.
It is amazing how creative a young person can become who is determined to find opportunities. My first boyfriend was also very creative. My parents did not allow me to date at that time. They did allow my boyfriend to visit me at my home. If I was allowed out of the house with him it was always with my younger sister in tow because the general assumption was her presence would keep me out of trouble. I was 14. My boyfriend was 16. After six months of determined effort he finally was rewarded with sex. I would love to go back and slap around my younger self. I am not proud of my choices. But this is how it went down. Just reportin' the facts.
My mother never suspected my boyfriend and I of having gone all the way. My father did. But because he always deferred to my mother's perceptions, he never did anything to stop my relationship with boyfriend #1. I broke up with him shortly after turning 15.
I was sixteen when I met a twenty year old college student at a university swimming pool. His first impression of me was in a bathing suit. He was highly motivated to become my "friend". By this time I was allowed to date. Sixteen had been held out to be the magic number which would open the dating world to me. Mom kept her promise. I started dating Mr. College Guy. He didn't have nearly as much work to do to get into my pants. We carried on intensely for several months before I realized he was a jerk and dumped him. It was awfully fun for awhile to be picked up for dates in his Porsche. It was his dad's car, but the snoopy teenage neighbor girls didn't know that, so they were duly impressed.
I had become a real adept at lying. Lying wasn't something I had done much of as a kid because I wasn't very good at it. But now I had a real motivation to get good at it. Sex. Sex was power and it was attention. It was a high I craved now. I had become a very attractive female and was the recipient of more male attention than ever. Somehow I was able to convince my mother of the innocence of my dates as she would interrogate me after getting home. Because I didn't have a history of being a liar, it was easy for my mom to think I was being completely truthful. It was because she wanted to believe me. If she wasn't blinded by her desire to believe me innocent of the crime of sex, the clues were there to pick up on.
There were other boys that I kissed and did a little petting with, but so far had only granted the great gift to two by age of seventeen. I guess I want you, the reader, to know I wasn't a complete slut. Don't know why I care...but perhaps it is the vestige of shame that covers my memories of those years that motivate me tell you the extent of my bad behavior. It is important to the story to let you know I was more or less sexually active from the age of 14 because it was a span of three years that I completely deceived my mother.
My mother baby-sat kids since I was the age of six. She did it all through my teen years. She used me as a surrogate baby-sitter the older I got. I was doing her work for no pay. Especially during the summer. She would dump me with all the kids off at the public swimming pool for several hours several afternoons a week. The upside for me was the glorious tan I got every summer and a bit of male attention too. I would have rather been allowed to get a job each summer, but that wasn't an option for me. Mommie dearest didn't allow such a possibility. I was too useful at home as a slave. My slave labors included taking care of all the barn animals (cows, horses, goats, chickens), gardening, hacking weeds out of the pasture, moving irrigation pipes, mowing the large lawns, washing my dad's work truck, harvesting, canning and freezing of the produce from the garden, cleaning the house, doing laundry, all in addition to free baby-sitting. Summers were a thrill a minute at my house. Many of these responsibilities continued on through-out the school year as well except for the outdoor chores. Although, taking care of the animals was year-round. I threw hay for cows, goats & horses, watered them, milked the goats, helped with castrations and de-horning, mucked out the chicken coop, fed & watered the chickens, gathered and washed eggs. Can you get a sense why sex was a nice diversion for me?
My mother liked to run a little bit of a reform school for miscreant kids. Somewhere along the way a male cousin started living with us. He was about five years younger than me. Mom was sure she had her own two children in perfect shape so she, with an air of superiority, would "straighten out" other people's kids. My cousin was a large distraction for her as he had some serious behavioral problems. Lying, drugs, stealing, animal abuse, etc. It was during this time I began my third sexual involvement.
By this time I was a very unhappy teen. I had become even more isolated when my mother decided homeschooling was for me. Starting with my junior year of high school I began homeschooling. It was a program that didn't require parental involvement, so I was completely on my own. This was a very depressing period of my life. Being home all day, every day with my mother was a special form of torture. She had no respect for my time. As was usual. At any point during the day she would call my name and I would have to appear before her immediately to do whatever task she needed at the moment. That she was interrupting my studies never seemed to occur to her. I started to fall behind in certain units like chemistry and Spanish. Two difficult courses to do without a teacher. I was feeling desperate and alone. My only solace showed up in the person of a handsome 20 year old from church. We started dating. After a few months, when he got his own apartment, we started having sex. Without protection. I became pregnant the first time we had sex.
In a few short weeks I suspected the worst...that I was pregnant. A sister-in-law of my boyfriend created a pre-text for my mother so she could take me to a public clinic to get a pregnancy test. By the time the test came back I was around twelve weeks pregnant.
There is probably no way to describe the intense fear and panic I was experiencing at this point. I had not been looking to get pregnant. It was worst of all situations I could imagine being in.
My parents had, over the years, dished up extreme punishment for offenses which in comparison to me getting pregnant were nothing. So it was stretching the limits of my imagination to try to figure out what would be my punishment for this. I didn't know how far they'd go. I feared the most extreme scenarios some of which included being jailed at home for untold years, or worse. If my mother could practically lose her mind with rage at some imagined or even real offense as she had so many times in the past, then what would she do with this news? I started to lose weight and withdraw into myself. I was scared shit less.
When I told my boyfriend I was for sure pregnant, he was delighted. He immediately asked me to marry him. It seemed like a really good idea at the time for reasons stated above. A glimmer of hope of how I would survive this started to come into view. But how do I get married at age 17 without parental approval? My boyfriend's mother came up with the suggestion of elopement.
With this back-story, I'll come back next time to tell of the fall-out of my decision to elope.
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