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Are they my issues or their issues?
My dad died recently and I do not miss him at all. He was the true definition of a narcissist. Everyone in his life worshiped him like a saint, except for me and that is why he despised me. We recently found out he was in a relationship with a woman he worked with, who adored him as much, if not more than my mom did. He had a tight-knit friend group with his work colleagues and basically lived a double life.
He and I have not gotten along since I was 5 or 6. My 10 year old diary has pages and pages of "I hate my dad." All of the screaming matches in our household have involved me and I've always been blamed for them and shamed for my psychological issues. Basically, he had the same issues as me but mine were spotlighted and I was told that my issues were ruining the family. Starting at age 11, I was manipulated with therapy by being forced to go, and throughout the years I was threatened to have it taken away if "my behavior didn't improve." When it was suggested that my dad come to the sessions he didn't want to. He came to one once and put on a big fake show, making himself seem noble and honest. In reaction to the therapist saying something he didn't agree with, he went ballistic about it as soon as we got home and my mom said, "wow I'm surprised, she usually knows what she's talking about." I guess my mom served as his voice in a lot of this because she spewed out most of the insults toward me and never dared challenge HIS behavior.
Currently, my mom is seeing a therapist and she really wants me to go therapy and quite frankly, I don't want to. I understand my emotions and why I feel the way I feel. I'M ALLOWED TO BE ANGRY and know why I have been angry my entire life. Needing therapy is an object of shame in this household and I refuse to submit to that. The other night my brother told me I'm a crazy bitch and need a therapist to help me work through my issues. Meanwhile, he's the one dating multiple girls at a time and has absolutely no shame about it. I don't think he even registers that it's wrong and he may be hurting someone. Why shouldn't a person like THAT be in therapy? When I bring this up to my mom she tells me to leave him alone and let him do what he wants. Today we fought about it and she said I'm jealous of him because I'm not dating anyone.
Because my parents have been so obsessed with maintaining their perfect little image, everyone thinks my dad was this fantastic, perfect human being and everyone shows so much sympathy for me and thinks that not having him around must be so hard. My mom's sisters cry in public because they "miss him so much." They'll try to talk to me about my feelings and how I'm coping and when I tell them the truth about the way I feel they change the subject and treat me like I'm 13. I think they are really weak women because they align their emotions with popular opinion for the sake of going with the crowd, even when their niece who they "love so much" is trying to reach out to them on THEIR invitation. If I dare say anything negative about them, I'm a villain, because according to my mom, "these are the people who are there for her."
But anyway, I do not miss him one drop. I do not miss the feeling of tension that would overtake my entire body and mind every time I'd hear him walk through the door home from work. This whole experience has led my family and me closer to the truth. I am not insane after all; he indeed did do evil things. Basically, I'm happy about things I should be upset about and upset about things I should be happy about. It kind of makes me feel comfort in the idea of jumping off a bridge. That's another thing: there is a history of suicide in my dad's family, including my grandma who attempted it 3 times (so all those times she was "sick in the hospital" were for that) and her mother committed suicide. I am suspicious that my dad's "unexpected heart attack" was not a heart attack indeed. I will not commit suicide but do admit that at times, I find comfort in the thought of it and found comfort in knowing the truth about my grandma. Thank god, I am now a college grad and moving far, far away from home next year. But until then, how can I deal?
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I've known a narcissist in my life. The fact that your Dad was able to fool many people who didn't live with him and thought he was so great, knowledgable and noble is not odd at all. they have a way of coming off that way to the world in general and the one I knew got to work up to a very prestigious position in one of the biggest billion dollar companies in the US. And what ever he wanted he got when related to his job. So he felt he was hot stuff. But this man had gone through 3 or 4 previous marriages and his current wife, my friend, didn't find anything wrong with him. He got so used to seeing me around with her that he forgot to hide his tendencies and i saw him yell and behave terribly pound the table and demand she do something instantly. He scared the crap out of me approaching me once that way while drunk. He was a weekend drunk as well. I also had a husband with his own set of mental illness, not narcisstic but he was verbally abusive. Although he made a miscalculation marrying me as I was not the typical type a narcissist or mental ill man goes for in a wife, they tend to go for emotionally weak and controllable women they can mold into something other than themselves who will find nothing wrong with him. My husband was constantly telling me i needed to see the church counselors as I had terrible personal issues..Same story. So I've been there. However I WAS an adult and you're not and didn't have a choice. Either way, what your Dad and My ex was doing is called 'deflecting'. A mentally ill person will deflect attention away from themselves because deep down in their subconscious perhaps, they realize that theres something not quite right about them but too afraid to find out what it is so they hide it and hide it well, choosing to associate only with weak people. He could choose your mom. He couldn't choose the mentality and strength of his children however. So tho mom saw nothing wrong with him which meant there is a good chance she had some version of another mental illness herself, you did. Even your siblings could have been born weak humans or have some mental issues too. The fact that you're the only one who was strong meant you were actually a constant thorn in his side and actually a fear to him of you of all people being able to expose him and his narcissism. So he had to attack you, point the finger at you that you were the one needing counseling. I know how it feels cus I had to face being the strong one who was constantly picked on by my ex husband. It irritated him even greater if I fought back. so i learned to put on an attentive face and took my mind else where while he blasted me with a verbal tirade of abusive words for 20 minute straight or more or coming back for more. I would not recall anything he said, because my mind was focused else where, is an escape mechanism some abused people use to get by. But he would get even madder if he didn't get a response of some sort either anger or cowering. But no response, he'd rant and rave. So basically for me, It was a damned if you do, and damned if you don't life with him. I learned the hard way that there was no pleasing him, even if I following a dozen different suggestions of is to a tee...finally it clicked that he was the one with the issue not me and i finally stopped putting in the effort and let the house go, and imagine him wanting to use me for sex.I was never pleased. I used my escape mechanism there too.
When I had a married couple, friends in another state who offered for me to come live with them after I decided to leave him, I took them up on it cus no one else could take me in and on my income I would not be able to leave him and he wouldn t agree to a divorce. This is fairly recent for me dear. I did feel trapped at the time. My out was thru friends, your s is through becoming an adult and now responsible for yourself.
I suffered 30 yrs with that man, for you, it's more like 2/3's of the time I did and with his friend being the narcisstic guy, and me trying to help strengthen and be a friend to that guys wife, I was basically surrounded by lots of mentally ill people quite often.
From your writing dear, I can already tell that you are not the mentally ill person, never have been. You did what you had to do, to survive. Now that Dad is gone, if you continue to allow yourself to hold on to the anger for too long, you remain a victim the rest of your life. Not saying anger is wrong. Yes, you should feel angry. No human should treat another that way, especially not parents. I feel badly for you that there is no one in your family who seems sane so I am going to say that the best thing for your own mental health and chance of ever healing from this form of terrible abuse is to cut yourself off from seeing your family ever again. Maybe someday you may come to a point in healing where you can handle occasional short visits but that should be left up to you.
In case you wonder, I do not find it odd for you to find comfort in the thought of suicide, it may be one of your coping mechanisms. However, he's gone and you don't have to associate as an adult with any mentally ill people ever again unless you want to. So really, the coping mechanisms are not longer needed, just a habit at this point that may actually cause difficulty in relating to normal balanced people in your future. YOu are young enough to want to have someone older in your life to look up to yet, a mother or father figure...not in the sense of like a parent but adults you decide feel like very close friends you can related to, so close they feel like family in the normal sense of the word, not the family you actually had and have. As an adult you get to choose who feels like family to you, because these people will be much like you in how they operate in the world even though having their own unique personalitys. But you may not be ready for that for a while.
So the big issue right now is anger. Would you agree I had a right to feel anger towards my ex? Darned tooting right I had every right. Although I was older,almost 50 when I left him so I had also learned much in life, that anger if held on to for too long could actually end up hurting me in many ways, rob me of joy in life, the ability to move forward, affect my health. My mental health was stable due to my christian beliefs at the time but my physically health suffered. The stress of that kind of life will eventually affect your body, its a scientific fact dear, stress needs an outlet so either it affects a people mentally or physically. I had so many things wrong with me, and constant headaches, a few migraines, ulcers, etc. etc...
So if you continue to harbor anger too long, the stress continues and can still have an affect on your body. Your body has its own breaking point at which it can't handle the stress anymore and either becomes ill one way or the other. So if you value your health and don't want your terrible father to continue to have ability to affect you long after death, then I suggest, you decide to be serious about seeking some help, some kind of counseling, not for being mentally ill but the repercussive effects of being the child of someone who was. Lucky for me, unknown to me at the time, the male of the couple who took me in used to be a counselor during his army days and was able to as a friend give me free help with counseling to get past my issues.
I will say, counseling isn't the only thing that helped. Now this may be a stretch for you as you've not considered any kind of spiritual beliefs before. bUT i've always been able to pray and hear from God. I am telling you because there is a small chance if this rings true for you too in belief, this one thing can vastly help you get over all that hurt and anger not by forgetting it but by your thoughts having a different perspective on what was really going on.
At one point, I felt God telling me that what I was taught about one life and hell was wrong. That there is actually such a thing as reincarnation and soon i was coming across many books on the topic. What i came to believe after all that, is that god has given our souls a will so we have choice. He won't renig it just because some people are choosing to do evil, do things so contrary to what He is all about. I also learned that he never stopped creating souls. So with the earths population growing, it stands to reason, there are all the returning souls, reincarnated over and over to keep refining who they are as souls so they become more like God. This is important because until we do become totally pure like him we can not exist in heaven, the purity of it, prevents us from entering, not because God or angels stop us. So, on earth there will be what some term old souls, those much more mature but still refining who they are and brand new souls who are in the bodies of people who do such unconsciousable things, murdering, torturing people, etc etc... and the those in between and then the ones who somehow discover their hidden strengths and abilities from past lives, being basically deep down a much more advanced soul than others. And no, there's no guarantee that a parent will have a mature kind soul. Unfortunately yours didn't. I also learned that some of the horribel things we suffer in life cant be labeled bad or good because they are just a tool meant to help our soul advance even further by being presented with a life situation of being treated terribly and having every right to hate or seeing it rather as someone having to had to be the bad guy, like Judas selling out Jesus. He could have been angry that someone that close to him would do that to him. He wasn't. Well, not exactly the same scenerio but the lesson is still there. Heres another way to see this. Diamonds weren't always diamonds, they started out as an ugly lump of carbon. The only thing that turned them into diamonds is going thru extreme pressures in the earths crusts, greater than any other rock and thats what creates a thing of beauty like the diamond in the end. If not for the availability of the harsher aspects of life or the people who get thrown into our life that have that harsh effect on us, there would be no force helping to make us grow even a little better as a soul. Since I believe in reincarnation now, I can forgive and I actually have no anger at him any longer because I CAN
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I don't really think you need therapy, unless its something you want to do. Do you have feelings of guilt about not feeling bad about it? That's the only thing you might want help dealing with. You shouldn't feel that way if you do. I don't think any of us are obligated to love anyone just because we are related to them.
I think you deal with others by comforting them when needed. I know you didn't have the same feelings for your dad as other family members. Respect the fact that they did love him and now miss him a lot. You can do that for THEM because they are feeling a loss...not because you are. Do that and they will probably leave you alone.
Regarding your brother and his dating ways, not much you can do about that. It sounds like he isn't off to a very good start. He will learn one of these days if he's lucky. So will the girls he is dating. They will talk & word will get around that he is bad news. Payback won't be fun for him.
Congats on graduating college. Hope your moving leads you to a good place.
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