An Introduction

For most of my life, I was convinced I had a normal childhood. That is because my parents, mostly my mother, let me know at every chance how good I had it. As I became an adult and started the surprisingly painful process of becoming an individual, I began to realize that my childhood was not the picture perfect image we portrayed on the outside.

I'm not like most children you think of when you think of abuse and dysfunction. I was neither physically nor sexually abused. The type of abuse I endured did not leave scars you can see. It is truly all in my head - but it is very real and something I live with every day.

I feel I have spent my life orbiting around the problems of one family member or another. It all seems like a never ending circle of drama and unreasonableness. It’s like swirling in a whirlpool - with ropes and life savers all around, but the victims all choosing not to save them selves because they think swirling takes a lot less effort than doing the work to get to stable ground. The longer we waited to save ourselves, the worse the problems got.

Trying to decide if we orbited around my father’s alcoholism or my mother’s narcissism is like a chicken and an egg problem. When they got married, they both brought their own set of problems into the marriage.  I don’t think my mother was always a full blown narcissist. In fact, I think she had more traits of Borderline Personality Disorder. I believe this is a direct result of the dysfunction she experienced as a child. The emotional scars she carried with her were left unresolved as she became an adult, and only got worse as more complications were added to the family dynamic.

My father is an alcoholic. That again has always been a fuzzy area for me, because he didn’t act like the drunks you see on TV. He was not violent, he did not hit me or my sister or my mother. He was a relatively quiet drunk and I think he used that as his form of escape. However, if he was provoked he would yell and punch holes in the wall. He had a job - a very good job - and was able to provide for us like a functioning person.  On the outside he looked like father of the year as this mild temper good father.  But when it was just the four of us, he was emotionally unavailable and kept to himself.  To this day I have no idea what pain he was trying to mask by drinking so much.  It was a problem that was easier to ignore rather than deal with, so it just never got better for a long time.  I suspect most of the time he rather just be alone. His emotional unavailability has caused me to question how he really feels about me. I suppose he loves me in his way – but he has never said it

Early in the marriage, Dad called the shots Mom worked very hard at keeping him happy, keeping me and my sister quiet, and up keeping the family image. Mom stayed to a very strict budget since my dad was tight with money. For a long time she bought our clothes at discount stores and didn’t have a car while dad was at work. Dad went to work and worked long hours. When he was home, he was tired and went to sleep early, so he could wake up early and go back to work. On the weekends, he would drink.

Mom hit a breaking point in her late twenties. She went and saw a therapist that helped her to see that her parents were abusive alcoholics and that her husband was an alcoholic. I can’t imagine how hard all those realizations must have been. This therapist started to work with my mom on setting boundaries with her parents and husband.  Mom wrote a confrontation letter to her parents, but I don’t think she ever sent it. If she did, it was probably ignored. Mom told my dad it was either their marriage or the alcohol. He chose alcohol. Her therapist urge mom to leave the relationship, but she held tight to her Catholic wedding vows. At that point, she was pretty much done listening to therapists and started a self directed path to putting herself first.

I think she could have been successful, but she just didn’t have a good support system. Us girls were very little and needy. Her husband had checked out of the marriage and her parents had a life time of unaddressed issues. She really needed that outside stability that therapy could have offered her. She needed someone to help heal the sad, beaten up, angry little girl inside of her. She needed someone to tell her she was good enough. She needed someone to support her and let her know she didn’t have to stay in a relationship that was abusive or involved dependency. What she had instead was no support and her religion and her mother telling her she had best stay married or she would be a sinner.


So Mom ignored the life savers and rafts that could have brought her to stable ground. Instead she started focusing on things that would give her short term satisfaction. She started falling down a slippery slope where instant gratification and entitlement became her mantra. If she felt like she was being used, unappreciated, made a fool of, manipulated, challenged … (you get the picture) she would explode into a rage of fury. As a child it was downright frightening and we all walked on eggshells around her to keep her from going off. When she did go off, there was no reasoning with her. You had to just keep quiet, agree with what ever she was saying and try to stay small and invisible until the storm ended.


My father eventually stopped drinking just after I started college.  It only happened after my mother finally did the hard work and made him accountable for his actions. I don’t know why he decided to stop, but I suspect he was tired of my mom yelling at him all the time and kicking him out of the house. Once my mother has decided to focus your fury on you, it is easier to do what she wants in order to live with her. 

Most of the time though, it is hard to tell exactly why Mom got set off.  Her fits of rage were ofter directed at my sister and me. She would normally go through the worst of it while my father was at work, but he knew what was going on.  Instead of standing up to my mother, he encouraged me and my sister to "fall in line". He has no problem yelling at us to behave, but he has never, not once, confronted my mother about her behavior. "Nobody understands your mother" he says.

Mom had the good intention of making sure her daughters didn’t make the same mistakes or suffer the same pain she did. However, she did it in such a way that she did everything in the extreme opposite of her parents. The result ended up being the same – she tried too hard to control me and my sister to fit an image of what she thought we should be. Everything in her life was out of control, I think she saw me and my sister as two things she could control and be proud of. She neglected to pay attention to who we were as people and help us accomplish our own dreams.

My sister and I paid the price. In order to get us to live out her will, Mom used FOG – Fear, Obligation and Guilt – to control us. While it is manipulative and not the best parenting practice – it did keep us in line when we were young. Problems started as we reached the teenage years and tried to assert our independence.

My sister realized on a subconscious level that there was no such thing as “good enough” so she wouldn’t try. She was a gifted swimmer, but refused to race. She is a gifted artist, but that talent has gone to waste. She's overdosed and attempted suicide on numerous occasions. She is addicted to prescription pain and anti-anxiety medication. My sister always has a vague illness or drama that she milks until people catch on and then she switches it up.  She is the type of person who is always a victim of life -- letting life happen to her rather than living her life.  She is surrounded by enablers who buy into her vague illnesses and never ending drama. I believe she is fully capable of living a full and happy life, if only she would get the self motivation to do so.

My mother, on one hand, will chastise my sister and her choices, but on the other hand fill her head with so much self doubt that her only choice is to be dependent on mommy and daddy. My father is her enabler; going and buying the prescription pills that keep her addicted. They financially support my sister, but then make her feel guilty for their going into debt. They are not providing just the bare necessities either – there has been designer clothing, plastic surgery, cable, cell phone, etc… My sister can’t function like healthy, well adjusted person because no one has let her suffer the consequences of her actions.

Then there is me. I'm your classic overachiever, people pleaser, come to your rescue at the slightest hint of a problem, doormat. I live this way because I needed to be needed and want to be accepted -  especially by my mother and father. Even so, I started to realize from a very young age that I didn't want to live indebted to my parents for ever.  I have an independent spirit and this is where the overachieving and my mother's obsession for me to do well in school actually benefited me. I realized that if I went to college and got a job and my own money I wouldn't have to be dependent on anyone and they couldn't use "things" to control me anymore. The day I went and got my first part time job, I had to do so behind my parent’s back because they disapproved. They felt as long as I was in school they would provide (control) everything for me and that I was "too good" for a cashier job.  The thing is, everyone has to pay their dues and start from the bottom. 

Even though I made great strides to become independent, my parents still held a short leash. When I applying for college, I got a scholarship for out of state. They told me I was too immature to take care of myself and when the holidays or summer came around they wouldn't have the money to fly me back home. I believed them and went to school in state.  I wanted a career in journalism and picked communications as my major. That was not good enough for my mother nor my father. Dad took my admissions form and wrote in my major for me, computer science. He said it was because I was too smart for communications...

I was miserable in my major because it was tough! I was use to getting high grades, but in some of my classes all I could muster were Cs and Bs. I felt like a failure for not getting As. Meantime, my mother is finishing up her degree in art education and is making all As and rubbing it in my face. When it came time for graduation and review of my course work, the counselor commended my on my high GPA - I thought she was crazy, but apparently I wasn't giving myself enough credit for what I was accomplishing in my tough major.

I spent the next 6 years as a micro-coder at the same company as my father... same building, same floor. Although working with my father allowed me a closeness with him I never had before, I was miserable as a micro-coder! I never felt good enough and was constantly stressed out about my code failing on these high profile products used by big important companies. The last 2 years in that position I basically gave up and had no spunk left to go further -- even after earning 3 US Patents. I finally decided it was time to go down a career path of my choosing and six months ago became a Project Manager for the same company. I don't know if it’s my life long career, but I am certainly happier and it’s a good place for me to be as I rediscover my options.

Even though I bitch about not being able to choose my own career path back then, I do have to THANK MY PARENTS as a number of good things happened as a result. The best of them was meeting my husband. I met my husband at 19, the first day of work as a co-op for the company I still work for. At the time, neither one of us knew we just met our future soul mate. It took about five years (one of which we ignored each other) to figure it out. Once we did, we were engaged and married within a year. My husband has been my rock and center of sanity ever since. It hasn't all been easy and I can quite honestly blame the drama and loyalty tug of war my birth family created for all our major fights. Having my husband’s support is one of the reasons I can make such a drastic change in my life and stop this cycle of emotional abuse from going any further.

DH (dear husband) came from a relatively healthy family. Of course they have their problems too - but over all they are a lot more stable than what I came from. For the past four years I've been trying to get my husband to "fall in line" with the rest of my family to keep the center of our universe (that being my mother) happy and not angry with us. Just until a few weeks ago did I realize how sick and unhealthy this was. My husband is a patient man, but he also has a backbone and is part of the reason I'm finally coming out of the FOG (fear – obligation – guilt) mentality my FOO (family of origin) perpetrates.

My mother has shown nothing but disrespect for my husband and my marriage. On countless occasions she has tried to manipulate me in reversing decisions I make with my husband. I feel she believes I should be loyal to her above anyone else. I'm no longer going to let her get in between my marriage. I love my husband and choose my husband over my mom's ego any day.

DH and I are expecting a son any day now. Unfortunately, about 3 weeks ago we both had the "straw that broke the camel's back" experience with my NM. I will post more about this in another post (this one is far too long already).

I'm going down an unknown road. Even though I have a fantastic support system consisting of my husband, his parents, my therapist, my friends and a group of woman I only know from the Internet, I still sometimes feel alone and unsure. I'm hoping with time and direction, I become stronger and discover the individual me that is yearning to be free.