The December Came

  Then December came.

  My sisters graduation was the second weekend. My mom had called one day, I was heading home from a neighboring town from dropping off a kid for my job.
I was already tired and weary of talking to her. She lets out, \"Your sisters graduating next weekend and your dad can\"t go but I need you to work so your sister can have it off. I can\"t wait to see her walk the stage.\" This one thing pissed me off because several things happened at once: she said I HAD to work and that she was going to hers, even though she was working, and she refused to go to mine two years previous. I was instantly pissed when I asked, calmly, \"So your going, huh?\" \"Yeah! This is a BIG accomplishment. For her graduation present we are going on a cruise next year...\" and then at that point I saw red and finally answered the work question, \"Yeah, no, I\"m not working that weekend, I have other things to do.\" which because a small argument because I work weird hours, with her mind you, and after working the weekend, I really don\"t want to see people.
  Her graduation came, coincidently it wasn\"t the weekend she had said, but the following when I had to help set up a baby shower and make food. I made sure the family knew I was helping my sister-in-law set up for the baby shower, my first Nephew. Sis in laws family sucks also, so we kind of stick together at this point and find a sounding board in each other.
  I sent her a congrats text and later got one back from her saying she wished the family showed up. Me, understanding, said I am glad mom got to show up for a little bit, at least, rather than not showing up at all. I wasn\"t being bitter but she was mad and was looking for a fight and blew up at me.
  In the grand summary of all she text yelled at me, was that I was bitter, I sucked as a sister, I am a bitch, she said I hated her and if I did just to tell her, I\"m jealous...It was another last straw I really had with my family. Each fight I had with them the less I wanted to be around. We had a birthday dinner for my brother and I even brought Christmas presents to the restaurant so I could avoid them on Christmas (I didn\"t get that lucky, by the way.)

  That dinner was miserable. I was late because of a Christmas work party and I was unfortunately, sober. My poor husband had to spend more time with them than I did. Most of that I spent sitting in silence, moping, honestly listening to everyone be Merry talking about everything under the sun. Luckily no one was paying attention to me when Mom asked my sister if her and her boyfriend were ready to move to Mobile in a few weeks. If someone had been watching they would have seen the blood drain from my face and see the sadness there.
  No one had told me...like when my sister had a lump in her breast. Or when I got the basic phone call from Alabama informing me my sisters car had flipped twice off the road.

  I was upset and it took my husband and I going to the mall to get my mind off of that for a minute. I didn\"t call her, I didn\"t text, I literally stopped talking because I was miserable. My coping method is to be by myself when I\"m that far in a hole.

  This has had to be one of the most miserable feelings I have ever had as an adult. I\"ve spent many sleepless nights dealing with my inner turmoil. Going over each moment in my life, analyzing, reading articles that others have written about the same thing I am going through. Reading uplifting quotes about how this too shall pass, but not believe a damn word I read. I am not who I was a year ago and I don\"t like this person. I\"m stuck, I\"m lost, and I don\"t know who to trust, because I have been burned by friends and past lovers and now, family.

  I feel like my whole world has been knocked out of balance and I can\"t get things cleaned up fast enough so I don\"t completely melt down.
 

The End of November

The End of November.





  It\"s been a tough one so far, my husband and I are dealing with family from both angles and we can\"t seem to get a grip. We ended up moving into a new rental in September of 2016 and we were allowed free reign to paint and plant things, so it was nice. My brother moved in with us because I knew he was ready to leave their house and overall rent would be cheaper than any place he could afford. I threw him a bone, he took it.

  To not be a hard ass I came up with four rules of the house: shut off the lights, lock the doors, wash the dishes you use, and clean your room. The main rule is: If you dirty it up, clean it up. Everyone abides by it for the most part, but my brother found enough time to complain about it enough to my mother. My mother: the only house she saw that I lived in was the apartment I moved into in 2013. I had invited them over for dinner at all my other places of residence, that I would cook, but they didn\"t want too.

  My husbands family had spent more time at our homes, even friends would spend the night, but my family could not be bothered.

 At some point you stop being hurt by it and you stop asking.



  Back to my brothers complaints of my rules: our mother ended up buying him a mini fridge, coffee pot, microwave and paper plates, because I asked him to wash my dishes he left moldy in his room.

  We yelled at each other for a solid day via phone and text. The fact that she was enabling his bad behavior, in my house, killed me. At least in our little house I can somewhat have some control, because the rest of my life is hectic, I can control the dishes, the placement of the couch and what we eat for dinner. I just want one ounce of control, but I was loosing it to someone who did not pay the bills.


  I can\"t be around my family since that day, because all I see is backstabbers. These people, my family members, people I loved and thought loved me back, had once asked me to talk to mom and see if there was any way she would consider going to family counseling. She of course thinks she is perfect and refused, leaving the family to throw me to the wolves that day when I asked for help. I got told not to drag the other family members into my lies and that I was just like my biological father and was a habitual liar and I was the crazy one.

  I spent weeks in a funk, thinking about those words, letting them play in my head over and over, asking myself if I was the one who was really crazy. I must be over reacting...

 

I Never Knew

  I never knew.

  Over the past year or so I have been watching my family.
 
  I watch their interactions with one and other and I have been analyzing their interactions with me. I\"ve been watching their facial expressions alone and also around the rest of the family. My family consists of five people: mom, dad, sister, brother and me.
  It\"s been a hard thing for me, to realize that this whole time, my mother has been a Narc. Each family member has a coping method when dealing with her.. We each, in our own way, have something different. I try to adapt and listen and if I\"m targeted I yell back, my sister cries to get out of situations, and brother and dad scream, get angry, then walk away.

  Each family member has the same sullen demeanor after an argument. I notice it because I\"ve spent most of my life feeling and looking the same way.
  I started to realize in the past few months the strangeness of my upbringing opposed to my other siblings. Things that were important to me, were not as important to my mother. That started my senior year when I had my last choir recital and they also honored the seniors, so I had asked them to come and I was told no, that they were done with those things.
  Years later, they went to every one of my brothers talent shows.
  My sister has always been more intellectual and my mom powered through to get her volunteer hours, and supported her in her academics and bent over backwards to help her get through high school and succeed. She did her FAFSA and held her hand the whole way through college.

  In middle school I struggled, high school I struggled, college I struggled. That whole time was a tug of war session in my brain based on my home life and academics. I could not pay attention because my home life was a mess because I had to deal with a lot of awful situations that children should never be subjected to. I was changed around in middle school and my classes were all messed up, I went from a school that cared about my schooling because I learned differently than the other kids and got thrown into a school to sink or swim, and then we went to public school where I was completely lost. I actually got to do a few amazing things in middle school because of my higher learning and one was going to Zion National Park and then getting accepted into Las Vegas Academy where I was planning on learning Japanese and being a translator.
Then we moved to the South and that\"s when I started struggling with high school. My parents really stopped caring after that. I got shoved into the closes school there was, while a few years later my siblings went to a like minded school like Las Vegas Academy, for higher learning. I was left to flounder at that below average school and fight daily to understand the things I needed to do in order to get the most out of the four years and then later, college.
  I always knew college was expected of me because that\"s what was drilled into my head at a young age. The problem was, I didn\"t have time to think about what I wanted to do with my life, mostly because I was stressing over the fights my family had, unfair treatment and actually passing my high school classes. I took the time on my own to look into different avenues, like culinary school, I loved to write fiction, so I looked into journalism and being an English major. It took an additional year to realize I should just stick to Culinary because my attention span was not the greatest and I knew I worked better with things if I was able to be hands on.

  I had been set up to fail for most of my life so I figured I would do something I was remotely good at. Now, I cook for my own pleasure, it has become something I can do without thinking and it relaxes me, so it was worth the three years and all the money I spent by myself on schooling.
  But I did not finish in the allotment of two years, before I finished I actually moved out of my parents house into another abusive situation and into the hands of other Narcs. I have already touched base on that.


  My parents would instill in me these words of wisdom, daily, \"Don\"t get yourself into something you can\"t get yourself out of.\" This came down to getting pregnant, or getting into financial ruin, and my actual one was getting married to a narc.
  \"Work on your marriage.\" \"Don\"t give up.\" \"Go to counseling.\"  Is what I had heard for years. I would be the family embarrassment if I got divorced. I needed to \"pull up my big girl panties\" and not run away from my problems. So, I stayed, got emotionally abused daily but I stayed because that\"s what I was told strong women do. We don\"t give up when the going gets rough, we keep on fighting!

  But when you have been fighting your whole life to be heard, or to be treated equally to others or even just be left alone and not picked on any more...you want to stop fighting. Like most young people, I had thoughts of suicide, even made mental pros and cons lists in my head about if I should or should not, which always led to me not doing it because I don\"t like pain. I\"d probably overdose on Vitamin C and throw up, because everything else sounded awful.