Close your eyes for a moment and picture the person dearest to you. Yes, you have to pick one person. Is it your mom, your dad, your sibling? Now take a moment to picture the person second dearest to you. Maybe a best friend, or another family member.
Now imagine those people have to interact all the time, and they don't like each other very much. But for your sake, they're cordial and polite, interacting as little as possible and only on a surface level. These people are those dearest to you. The two people in the world that the thought of losing is somewhat akin to the thought of the sun no longer shining. They're more important to you than oxygen itself.
And they talk about each other to you. Never in the other's presence, of course. Behind closed doors, after swearing you to secrecy. One person is embellishing the truth with just enough of a lie to make it seem believable, but you don't know which one it is. They tell stories about their history together that don't match up. They tell you to be wary of the other, and one is genuine, but you don't know which one. You begin to think you can't trust either of them, but that doesn't sit well with you. They're the two most important people in your life. So you become two people. You move between them like a double agent, pretending to be two different people until you lose yourself completely. Which opinion is your own? Which of them do you really trust? Which one of you is actually you?
This is what it's like to have a narcissist in your life. It's only a taste, really, but you can begin to imagine how crazy it could make a person feel. Now, some of you are reading the word narcissist and trying to wrap your head around the concept. Isn't that what Tony Stark is? Maybe you're thinking of its correlation with Greek mythology in the god Narcissus, known for his beauty.
I can tell you for certain that Tony Stark isn't anywhere near a real narcissist, and while I don't know much about Narcissus, he's not our guy either. Mayo Clinic describes it as "[a] mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others".
And this is only breaking the surface.
Narcissists rarely display true emotion. They may come off as fakey or put on because, well, they are. They are the center of their own universe, and they think only of themselves. They only keep people around to the extent they can be used to. They suck you for money and time, they make you think they're very important, and they stroke your ego (only if you stroke their's back, and more often). I know it's a terrible thing to accuse of a person. I know the magnitude of these charges, and I know it's hard to believe that a person could really have no empathy for others. I know because I've seen it firsthand for my entire life, and I'm only just starting to wrap my head around it.
My grandmother is a narcissist, and her son is a narcissist, and her husband, we believe, is borderline personality disorder. (Which is a fancy way of saying he's a little bit of a dirtbag, and he's a perfect narcissistic supply.) But her daughter (my mom) made it out unscathed. See, my mom is what's called a scapegoat. All of the blame and hurt and shame of her family was put on her. She was the least important of them all while simultaneously being the most important, because it was her job to settle all the conflicts. Are you confused yet?
She, my grandmother, built me up to believe I was the most important thing on earth. She constantly told me I was their favorite grandchild out of the six of us. And she boldly displayed that favoritism, too. I was the favorite because I was born before any of my uncle's children. But as soon as they, children of her favorite child, were born, I was on equal ground with them.
My siblings never made it up, though. The second of my mom's children was on a second-place pedestal below me and our two cousins. Then came my second sibling. For her, it was like standing at the bottom of Mt. Everest while I was on top with my grandparents. Their love was completely out of reach for her, and it was obvious. My mom's fourth child had more love than the third, because he was a boy. He was special out of all of their granddaughters. So he stood at the base camp of Everest with the second-eldest of us, just close enough to taste it.
Meanwhile, life on the top was great. I was treated like a princess for the first fourteen years of my life. I was showered in stuff and compliments and my grandmother always made sure I knew she was behind it. She constantly said things like "you'll care for me when I'm older, won't you?", insinuating that my parents wouldn't. "Don't you ever stop loving your [grandmother] and [grandfather]." As I got older, made friends, got a job, they passive-aggressively reminded me that they should always be more important than these things. Turning them down to hang out because I had to work would get me an earful of "oooooh she doesn't love us anymore!" I wasn't allowed to put anything above them, or even on equal ground. Not my job. Not my siblings. Not my parents. Not even myself.
I can't even type out what I called them growing up. It makes me want to throw up in my mouth because it was all a game. A sick game of 'Keep Haley Happy to Get at Her Mom". They literally never cared about me in the ways they promised. I believe they're incapable of real, human love. So to whatever sick, twisted degree they were capable of, maybe they did love me. But not in the way my mom did. Not in the way they made me believe they did. They were gods in my eyes. People that I NEEDED to stay alive. This time last year the thought of one of them dying would make my heart seize up. I couldn't think of it--but now it's like they're already dead to me.
I live my life by an unspoken rule. If you hurt me, then whatever, I'm a big girl. But if you hurt anyone I love, anyone I even remotely care about, you had better be prepared because I am going to knock your teeth out. I have physically threatened boys and girls older and stronger than me my entire life, all in defense of my siblings. I've threatened more times than I can count, and followed through with it more times than I have fingers. I once hurled a basketball at a boy's head for threatening his sister. I didn't even LIKE his sister, and I attacked him for a verbal threat. I'm crazy.
But for my siblings' entire lives, for my mom's entire life, that woman was abusing them. Verbally and emotionally. She made my seven year old little sister cry every time they saw her, back when she was four and five. They refused to let her come over to their house with me because they just didn't like her, and they didn't feel like pretending they did. They constantly trash talked my parents. They made me believe my mom was an emotionally unavailable jerk because they wanted to hurt her through me. They made me think my dad is the spawn of satan himself. (And of course, they also made me believe that they loved me more than my parents were even capable of.) They put me in a position where I had to lie over and over again. And perhaps the worst, they made me ostracize my sisters and brother. The three little people in this world whom I have sworn to protect by whatever means necessary, they made me treat like dirt. They were unimportant compared to the gods my grandparents made themselves out to be. My sisters were hurt and left out by how I treated them under the influence of my grandparents. That one still hurts, and my mom still has to remind me that it isn't my fault.
But their temple has been torn down. Me and my mom--my beautiful, strong, compassionate mother-- have clawed it down brick by brick with help from my dad and other family. We broke the curse. We escaped from prison. Now we, or, more specifically, I, am doing what I was supposed to be doing all along. I'm defending my siblings from them and fighting off their pathetic attempts at connection. They've told us their last lies. I've cried my last tears over them. These people are dead to me, and now they can't hurt us any more.
I've mourned, and I've felt the loss. I've had my anger and I've had my bad days and I've had my regret, but I feel like I can move past it now. I'm healing, and I'm learning how to forget them. Not to say that I won't have more bad days, but knowing what we've accomplished, how God has carried us through this storm, I feel like I can do anything. My family is tighter and happier than ever now that we don't have to deal with them. We are stronger than them. And no matter how many times they lie and claw at our walls, we will not let them in. They lost.
We survived, and now we're going to live like we never have before. 2016, here's to you, and here's to my family's freedom.
