The poison barb of the narcissist

Don’t kid yourself; they never get better

I’ve been visiting family of late.  In large part thanks to their support during my transition and divorce, financial and emotional.  Though both have come with strings attached.  What do they say?  

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Or an expression which I like more:

Never a borrower nor a lender be.

Over dinner the other night, my dear old Dad waxed lyrical about me, about his pride in me, and offered his unconditional love and support.  I felt myself melting.  Wanting to hold him, to kiss him on the forehead.  He had tuned into my emotional heartstrings and was making them hum.

Of course, I am conscious of never, or almost never, having such feelings for him.  He is a master seductor though.  Isn’t that what narcissists are good at?

Going to see him, since he was pretty much dead two years ago, has become a kind of pilgrimage for my siblings.  Even the Godless one, who abhors him, went to help take care of him.  For months.  Months.

Not me.  He lives on another continent, and my own feelings of him are to not forget his abusive ways.  Getting on a plane to see him, therefore, has not been a priority.  He may not have hit me, and I may have the dubious honour amongst his children and spouses of escaping that, but verbal abuse is perhaps even more pernicious.

Don’t we say that these words that people say to us are reflections of their own inner demons?  I see that with him.  And in some ways I am proud of him for being less of a shit than his own father, someone I accuse of sex abuse towards me…I suspect I am not the only one, but giving my father credit for possibly breaking a cycle so evil as that, is worth something—even if it is setting the bar in the gutter.

So, I found myself feeling an uncharacteristic warmth towards my father, almost enough to melt the icebergs on my heart in his regard.  And my retort, unspoken but held in reserve, to someone who criticizes me for not making the pilgrimage to see him, is “where was he when I was growing up?”  And in truth, when he was right in front of me, he was unwelcome, because of how verbally vicious he could be.

Later that same evening something came up which reminded me of his toxic worldview.   He used to say what a horrible and mean place the world is.  The brutality of it.  That was his justification for bursting our bubbles as children.

In a way, it became a gift to me as a parent, a father, in that I was able to identify it for what it was, and to isolate it, quarantine it, treat it, kill it.  I told my children when they were still very young about safe words and gave them a safe word to use with me if I ever harmed their life dreams.  Had my father done this, he would have used it to twist the knife.  Only one of my children ever used their safe word, but I was immediately compliant, the expression of surprise and relief after its use, the power of one word, suffused my child with life force…and that on its own was worth it.

My father repeated his saw, “the world is a brutal, mean place.”  We had spoken earlier that evening, joked at one of my sibling’s youthful views, and reminded our father of the brutality of his response…and that is how we got onto the subject.  It was as if he was “sparing” us or preparing us for the cruelty of the world.  His wife got on the bandwagon and underlined her own alignment with this thinking.

But I remembered of how I thought how unhelpful it was to me as a child, how little I wanted to hear it, how little it helped me to be told the million ways why I couldn’t do something, rather than the faith of a supportive parent who just believed in me.

So, I told him so.  Told both of them.

“I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with you.  And I believe that worldview is harmful to you and harmful to the people around you.”

“Well, the world is nasty.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“The people in it are.”

“I disagree.  At their worst, people are selfish.  But at their best, the foundation of society is neighbourliness.  We have an innate desire to pursue joy.  Your worldview is robbing people of the agency of their own happiness.”  [I do actually like this].

We talked about it more, and they kept tweaking their position when confronted with it, but I didn’t go to where my real thoughts lay, which is that their view was so toxic to their children that the damage is real and lifelong.

“I love this family,” my father wheezed.  “I’m so proud of all of you.”

But the next night, all hell broke loose.  We were having a discussion about what some of us wanted to do in the morning.

“I want to go to X to get a coffee and a croissant in the morning.”

“I don’t like their coffee,” his wife said.  Never mind that we go to this place every time I am in town, every dang day.  “I want to go to Y.”

“What’s Y?” I asked.

“A chain,” one sibling noted.

“Their coffee is much better,” she said.

“If you say so,” my sibling said.

“I’m going for the croissant,” I said, “one of the best in the nation, baked fresh on the premises by someone I know.  I’m happy to pick one up for you.”

Somehow that meant I was a selfish bastard.  It’s okay, I’m used to the drunken rants of my parents…only this time, I was injudicious and said, “that’s the alcohol talking.”  She lit into me.  Then my father lost it.  He doesn’t hear so well, and he doesn’t really have it all anymore, but he dug deep into his nasty playbook from the good ol’ days and shouted, “if you don’t like it, you can leave.”

It was bizarrely incongruous.  But what I felt in that moment was that was exactly what I wanted to do.  It was midnight, so I didn’t.  But the next morning I did.

Before I left, he was waxing lyrical about how he loves the family, cherishes us all, etc.  But I hadn’t shaken the feeling that he had told me to go.  Disproportionate rage.

I stood by his bed and he asked why I was leaving.  I told him white lies, that I needed to get things done.  His wife, of uncertain agenda, agreed with me, “yes, it’s probably best you go, you have a lot to do.”

I asked him, “do you remember our discussion last night?”

“Yes.  I wanted you all to know that my wife is a saint to me, and that I wouldn’t be here without her.”

“That’s true.  Do you think anybody disagrees with that?”

He couldn’t quite answer on the first try.

“He’s saying that you don’t appreciate what I do for him enough,” his wife said from the couch behind me.

“I’m asking him,” I said, and amazingly, she looked down, but was clearly revelling in what she felt was her triumph.  It is wonderful that my father is able to recognise her contribution to his life.  But the reality is that he builds her up to be the one to tear her down at some later date and time.

He tried again, “she goes out of her way to make a family, she’s the one.  She’s the one who takes me to the doctor, she’s the one who looks after me.  Without her I wouldn’t be alive,” he repeated.  I did think to myself ‘she is your wife’.

It was all about him.  His needs.  And if we weren’t helping him, we should be helping her to help him.

It was a relief to leave.

At times I have felt pangs of guilt for not making the pilgrimage to see him more often.  But I also think about how I barely saw him growing up…and have almost no memories of him until I was 16, other than him being verbally cruel.

And he was melting my heart as we spoke to me that first night, so complimentary, so worming his way in the way that narcissists do.  So, it was good to be reminded of the truth, to remember why I pushed him out of my heart as a child, weathering his assaults with a kind of affirmation, “you’re not my father.  You’re not my father.  You have no right to speak to me this way.”

My sibling and I mused on the subject. They were more offended by his wife’s words.  They were disproportionate and aggressive, but stem from so many resentments she has unrelated to me, to us, and are uniquely her own.

She described her childhood, free of conflict, free of money worries, in a household where her parents never raised their voices…but today, the frown lines which crease her face reflect what it’s like to live with an abusive man.  I feel sorry for her.

To my sibling I noted, “it’s nothing new from her…she gets aggressive and resentful whenever she drinks.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s our father who was beyond the pale.  To make the leap from ‘doesn’t want to go to a different coffee place’ to ‘you don’t support my caregiver’ to ‘if you don’t like it, leave’ reminds me of how toxic he is.”

Five hours after I left I was with the Den Mother.  So glad to be in her presence.  She watched TV and I watched her.  And then, when I was so tired that I went off to bed, I found that there was a weighted blanket on the guest bed. Unspoken need met with quiet forethought.  I slept beautifully and felt the toxicity ebb away.  It will be a long time before I return to see my parents again.