Maeve (Big M) was not always a cunt. She could actually be nice when she forgot she hated you. Big M’s parents were very abusive towards three of their four children prompting their offspring to move out before age of maturity. The sisters seemed close in the early years, but they also had a very rocky and confrontational relationship. Big M followed in her mother’s footsteps and got a job at the hospital working in the nursing department. She eventually moved to University Town after getting a job at the local school in the research department and married an art professor. One day after coming home from work early, she found her new husband in bed with a male student. The marriage was dissolved soon after this eye-opening experience.
Big M moved back to the City and found an apartment in the West End. In the meantime, her sister Iris (a.k.a. The Queen of Darkness) had married, given birth to two children (the demon spawn), and when her marriage disintegrated Iris walked out and left her husband with two children. Big M stepped up and moved in to care for her niece and nephew as though they were her own. Sally is 6 years older than I am and her brother Patrick is 2 years younger than Sally. During this time, Roxanne and I lived in The North and Maeve was having a relationship with Jack.
Big M eventually left the City to move to The North with Jack - Jack likes to point out that she only had $32 in her bank account at the time. Sally and Patrick never got over Maeve 'abandoning them' and resented Roxanne and I, and still do. Big M would later accuse Jack of keeping her in The North for 20 years isolated from her family. Not quite true, but that is how she felt.
Sally was the older sister I never had. She was tall, and Big M told me she was beautiful. Sally is who I was supposed to look like – nearly 6 feet tall, dark hair, large green eyes, and most days she looked like a duck – she thought she was gorgeous and wore really tight skirts and dresses with a protruding gut. She eventually got herself a modelling job (with Ford models) and when they told her she needed to lose 10 pounds before her photo-shoot, she was no longer a model.
Big M never attended a post secondary institution in a student capacity. She did work in various health care settings, which is what would save our family’s finances later. Big M is an ill woman, not just mentally but physically; she is also high maintenance and a hypochondriac. She is incapable of telling the truth because her mind, in my opinion, interprets the world differently. That is my conclusion. She lives in a fantasy world where she is perfect, she knows everything, and all those around her were put on earth to entertain and serve her every need. Jack is the same, I just was not able to see it because he has mastered the art of manipulation.
Big M hates children. She hates anyone who is not white. She hates anyone who is not Irish. She also hates most Irish people. She is medicated (on and off) for anxiety and depression (self diagnosed). Jack once told me that Big M had been to a psychiatrist in her early 20s and was told she had a serious mental disorder and would need to be medicated. Big M never returned and instead saw her GP and requested anti-anxiety medication. Jack is certain Big M was told she has a narcissistic personality. Big M was diagnosed with Lupus in 1989 or 1990, and blames me for her autoimmune disease. She also has diabetes, which she did to herself; she has had spinal surgery, knee and hip replacement surgery and she is a breast cancer survivor. Many of her ailments were preventable – had Big M focused on a healthy diet she would not have ended up a 420 pounds diabetic in her 40s and probably would not have needed any surgeries.
This is just a bit of background about Big M. I do not normally pay a lot of attention when she talks because it is often nonsense. One time, she told my dad and me that her grandmother invented the microchip for Microsoft. Back in the 1900s in Ireland… in a hut with no electricity. Yes, she was dead serious. People who believe their own bullshit are dangerous. Big M would not know the truth if it hit her in the face. These people slander others and live happy lives surrounding themselves by the chaos they cause. They honestly do not care about others because they are not capable. They live for attention-seeking and feed off any friction. People like Big M live forever -pickled in their own hate.
Having told you how much I dislike Big M and in an attempt to represent my youth as it was, to show the good with the bad, she’s also one of the most generous people you will ever meet and when you’re on the receiving end of her love bombing, you feel on top of the world. I would highly recommend you read the article I linked to the term love bombing, in the previous sentence. My memories, feelings, and thoughts are all tied to guilt, shame, fear, anger, and betrayal when I think back to my caregivers. That also means I loved them, which I did; I currently struggle with whether or not I still do care or love them - my head is a very confusing place to be. I did love them both and would have gone to the ends of the earth for either of them for the longest time. I am so happy I woke up to see them for the people they are.
Big M was excellent at making you feel important, loved, and worshiped. That is what it felt like, almost. I remember feeling as if I were on a pedestal, admired for being “smart” and “pretty” and a “workhorse” and “strong” and a "fabulous cook." Big M loved when I baked for her and would compliment me on how wonderful I was. I remember her thinking the sun shone on my ass. I remember feeling like my heart would BURST from joy that she finally loved me, wanted to spend time with me, and that she was just... nice. I was lucky to get up to a week of attention and affection, cuddles, hugs and kisses. I was lavished with gifts of shoes, shoes and more shoes, and then clothes, so many clothes that my closet was always bursting at the seams. The time she spent adoring me inevitable would always end in a cruel soul-crushing manner, especially if I was in her ‘good’ books for a month. Just as I would begin to trust her to be the kind mother I desperately needed and wanted, the happy glow would abruptly come to an end; and, usually with a vengeance.
The humiliating secret I hold so tight: I wanted her to love and accept me. I wanted her to give a shit. I desperately want to know why she hated me, why she would tell lies about me, why she would spread rumors about me to her own friends, family, and anyone who listened. I felt on top of the world when I had her attention shining on me so bright. I felt I could accomplish anything because she loved and showered me with compliments, kind words - so many kind words, affection, and so many gifts that she liked: perfume, lingerie, then one day, after school, I’d see my father’s face at pick-up and my stomach would bottom-out. Big M had lost her shit over something I did and my dream-life was over. I was the bitch again who 'had it in’ for Big M. I was the one who undermined her authority. I was the one who was useless, good for nothing, and a slut. I was stupid, ugly, and fat. I was not her niece, I was not a model, I was Monique’s daughter – less than.
I would love to say that I eventually got used to it; but I did not get used to it. I fell for it each and every time well in to my 40s. It’s humiliating to continue acting this way and believing that this time things would be different and she would be the mother I needed and wanted. I felt like I had to be insane, I must be insane to keep doing this to myself. Is insanity not the act of “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?”
My therapist explains or leads me to read a barrage of articles on children and their emotional needs. The funny thing is, I never felt like a kid. I felt like I was a kid until I turned maybe 6 then all of a sudden I was an adult trapped in a child’s body. I feel like I was a shit adult as a kid because my brain was not developed. I understand all of that conceptually, but my brain is at war with the facts I faced and lived - I was a responsible, workaholic in a co-dependent relationship with two grown-ups who were fucked up and whom I would never be able to please because the goal post was ever-changing. Every day I woke up determined to meet objective “X” so I would not be yelled at, but everyday I was set up for failure because those same people I wanted to please so desperately enjoyed the high or the feeling of worship and would change the rules forcing me to continually re-adjust to please or meet impossible standards. I would never be able to ‘win’.
I did not realize at the time I was trying to please them, for me, I was just trying not to get in shit. In my brain, I wanted to follow the rules, but on my terms; therefore, if they asked me to wash the dishes, I would maybe use the dishwasher if my parents were not watching me instead of doing them by hand. I would find ways (daily) to ‘buck their authority’ as they called it. My way of saying "fuck you."
After being raised by narcissists, your struggle is with self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-worth. It’s almost like being in free-fall once you escape from being under their ‘controlling’ thumb. I feel like I escaped a cult, most days. Maybe I did. I know that I cannot speak to Jack or Big M because something happens to my internal body functioning and I do not like it at all. I feel like an adult trapped in the body of a 7 year old all over again.
Healing comes more quickly by telling your story. Abused children need to tell their story to process the emotions they were denied. I was denied more than just my emotions. I was denied my own experience, personality, thoughts, opinions, and worst of all, I was told that what I felt, thought, or wanted was either silly, stupid, wrong, bad, or not worthy. When it came time to pick a career to attend university, I was left with zero choices, everything I selected was “NO” until I selected the only path they found ‘acceptable’. Big M had decided I would be either a brain surgeon or a pharmacist; I will tell you right now, Big M called me stupid my entire life so I was definitely not becoming a doctor.
The reason for my blog is to help me heal more quickly, but mostly because at age 47, I recently discovered that both Jack and Big M tell lies about me to this day – apparently, I am a drug addicted alcoholic whore. I'm tired of other people telling MY STORY. They most certainly never walked a day in my shoes.
Comments
Post a Comment
Thank you!