There is no better and yet sadder way for me to start this new journey than to simultaneously discuss and introduce the complicated relationship, or lack there of, that I had with my mother.
I am sitting here on a month and a day after making the decision that many children struggle with… Going no contact with an abusive and narcissistic parent(s). It seems like it took forever, while also feeling like it took moments to happen. As children, we all feel an internal need to love our parents, to be close to them, to have them be proud of us. If you are the child of a narcissist, this never happens for more than fluttering moments in time. Glimmers of hope that cut deeper than a hacksaw. It is in these relationships that hope is the weapon of all weapons. The thing that leaves you hanging by a thread. Forever keeping you trapped in the nothingness of waiting for a morsel of their love and affection, but it never really comes and the moment it fades you feel foolish because you can see clearly how false it was… and yet… you still have hope.
Giving up on this relationship and this hope feels wrong, it feels like a betrayal. Especially if you are a parent yourself now, it is something you could never fathom boxing your children into that corner to have to make this decision. You could never dream of causing that amount of pain.
My relationship with my mother was something I always referred to as “complicated” and what a watered down statement. It was abusive. I felt lost at sea in a storm on a ship barely holding together with no crew, no map, and no way to steer. Every time I thought I could catch a glimpse of the weather calming or a sight of land, whether by that hope or someone I met, a friendship, a hobby, anything that filled that emptiness at all…Quickly it was cast out of reach leaving me washed back out into the deep and unforgiving sea of this relationship. I wanted to love the sea. I wanted to be the best captain and to have the ocean and I work as one, navigating the storm where I could then see all of this harshness someday as something that made me magnificent and skilled at navigating any storm that came, but that was a dream.
My mother, so brilliant and smart. When I was small, I would watch her put on her heels making her tower over people, especially me. She was luminating power as she strode across any walkway. Her life was rough, but many people would never know it. She would radiate control and power. I envied this and thought that was the only way a woman was supposed to be. Always powerful, always in control. She was full figured. Men groveled for my mother and she lapped it up, never giving an inch. As I got older, so did she, and I saw that confidence sway but never the power. Never the control. She became bitter. Clinging to the power and control and authority. Where was the difference? She was no longer young, she had gained weight, I assume because she did not feel beautiful she felt she had nothing. Men still came. She would make people need her. Rip away all of their independence and then curse them for it. While there is much more to this story that I will dive into later, this is the readers digest version for now.
Through it all, both confident or not. I could never get close to my mom. It was as if she hated me. I was not powerful, I was not controlled. I never fluttered in elegance. I was completely emotional, goofy, crying, angry… I was chaos in her world. A product of both my upbringing and trauma I endured that she could never fathom how I became to be this way. Totally responsible for her emotional cup being full, she just could not see it. As a child, I just thought she did not want or have time for me. As a teen, I hated her for never loving me and feared her. As an young adult and new mother, I was still afraid. I was hurt by any “good” I did never being enough. The constant comparison of how anything good I did always being outshined by her. Any pain I experienced, dust compared to the mountains in her life. Anything bad I did, or mistakes I made, on display and a shame I needed to carry around for the rest of my days. Forever reminded of these whenever it was convenient. I felt inadequate, a failure, something always wrong with me. I never trusted anyone either, and especially not myself but I always saw that as something I did. Something I needed to be punished for by either isolation or other means.
I had lost myself worse than if this ship had wrecked on an island unknown to any map. Worse than if I had sank to the bottom and never been discovered. At least in both of those, I was settled somewhere. I was drowning with no end in sight. There was not just one hand, but many hands that reached down and bit by bit pulled me out of this whirlpool. A team of people who loved me enough to put up flares, who sent the messages in the bottle and lit up the lighthouse. They helped me find my way.
This is not a story of violins playing and this is not a story of my mother being the evil demon. It is however, a tragedy of a woman incapable of loving herself and as a consequence could not love her daughter and could not change and her daughters inability to continue to weather the storm halfway drowning only to be brought back to swallow more ocean. One day, I had had enough. 10 years of therapy, some distance and raising my own kids and seeing some healing in being a mother to them that I never had, finding someone who not once ever made me feel weird or small, finding people who never made me question their friendship. Through ALL of the help and grace and lessons I have been given, I set myself free.
While painful, I know it is what is best. It is early in the journey and it won’t be perfect but for the first time I found shore. I stepped off the boat. From a sea I never wanted to be on. From the ironic sea sickness I always have had and was exhausted from. I was ready for dry and steady land. There will still be storms and things to weather, but it will not be alone and it will not be with me lost at sea unable to find any light. I can only hope I can now be a beacon for others who may be lost at sea for others.
Stay tuned for the many parts of this story, we’re all in this together. You are worth saving yourself and getting off the ship.
Simply,
Miss Shay
Going No Contact
Simply Miss Shay 