The Beginning...

My parents grew up together in a small rural area of Indiana.  My mother can still recall the first time she saw my dad.  HIs family was moving into the farm that was her grandparents.  She recalls teasing her little sister that she was going to marry the boy.  Little did she know that she would actually be the one to marry him years later. 

My father was the second of three children.  From what I have been told his mother was but a child herself when having the kids and his father was an alcoholic.  The early years for dad were very hard.  His needs were not emotionally or physically.  He bounced around different places, including foster care.  At some point his father's mother saw and add in the newspaper from a couple wanting children.  Somehow it was arranged and my father and his older sister was adopted out to this couple.  They were an older couple, whose son had been killed during WWII.  Not sure why they wanted more children, some say they wanted workers on the farm and some say that the woman was distraught after losing her only child.  Either way the you children were packed off and given away.  He was eight at the time.  Common sense tells you what an awful situation that must have been for the child, but both him and his sister accept and honored the fact that had it not happened they would have been worse off.  Unfortunately the new family wasn't necessarily the saviors they needed.  Family and neighbors have spoken about how hard the new father was on my dad.  I have heard of whipping that my father endured.  All of this breaks my heart.  I know this is where my fathers narcissistic personality disorder was born.  A child does what a child needs to do to survive.  Unfortunately my father never dealt with his childhood which only cemented his mental illness.

My mother, on the other hand, grew up in a nice family.  Well known and liked in the farm community.  She did well for herself and after high school was one of the few girls who went to business school.  My father at the time had gone into the Airforce and apparently there were some letters exchanged back and forth between the two.  The have never shared much about their dating and what led to the marriage.  No great love story was ever shared with us children.  My memories of my mother growing up were of a woman surviving everyday with a sad acceptance of her life.  She was good to us kids but looking back it is so apparent she was miserable. 

There are four of us children.  My oldest brother was born in 1960, my other brother followed in 1962, the along came my sister in 1971 and lastly me in 1975.  I don't remember a whole lot of my brothers living at home.  Just clips of memories here and there.  I do remember the animosity that always hung in the air between my oldest brother and father.  When the two were in the room together the air felt thick with an uncomfortable tension.   My other brother was an easy going guy and I always enjoyed being around him but he was off at school and never moved back home so I don't have very many early memories of him.  My sister is the one I shared the most time with.  She was a pretty and personable young girl.  I was always aware that my father favored her.  Apparently he reminded him of the younger sister he lost when he was given up for adoption.  She always got what she wanted.  When she was around ten, I remember her having to mini motorcycles and a mini snowmobile.  I didn't touch them, they were hers.  Unfortunately his favoritism of her is what I believed stemmed her borderline personality disorder and created the unhappy, unsuccessful, woman she is today.  Now as for myself, looking back, I don't remember ever really feeling connected with the family.  There was always some sort of drama my oldest brother and my sister was stirring up.  I made sure not to be of any trouble.  I was always observant and aware of the emotions flowing through the family.  I never wanted to add to them so I stayed quiet and did what I was suppose to do.  I found my connections with my friends and their families and school was always a safe place to be free of any emotional misery.  I thrived well because of those things.  I kind of just blocked my family out, made my own life.  I am still friends with those kids I spent my first years in elementary school with. 

I looked back at my early years with fondness, life was easy back then and I built my life around my friends and school.  But it is in those early years that I realize that I was unconsciously falling into the role of caretaker.  My survival skill came in the form of being invisible not making any waves.  My oldest brother took on the scapegoat identity and my sister took on the golden child identity.  My other brother and I were very similar in our coping methods.  I remember being awoken one night by my parents fighting.  My dad had come home very late and my mother was upset.  I remember laying in bed being as quiet as I could but my sister was yelling at them to shut up.  I so wanted her to stop because I was afraid it would only make things worse.  I knew better than to ever add any fuel to the fire.  The term walking on eggshells describe my life at home perfectly.

My life changed for ever on Mother's Day 1983.  I remember going to the florist with my father and picking out some purple mums for my mother.  When we got home a fight between the two began.  Evidently my mother had planned to go her parents four hours away.  Since my father had taken me, she had to wait for my return.  By the time we had returned there was no way for her to make it in time for the gathering for her mother.  I can recall the fighting and I know my mom left the house but the events after that I have blocked.  That was the night my father walked out on the family.  The little girl, I was, was so sure that the fighting had to do with the type of flower I had chosen.  I knew I had not gotten the right one.  For years after, I could hardly look at that type of flower.  If one was mixed into a bouquet I would immediately pull them out.  It was as an adult that I finally found out the story that led up to that day.  The years after that were awful.  My mother was consumed with hatred for my father and the divorce was a very bitter one.  We spent every other weekend with my father.  I don't think we had ever spent that much time with my father in my entire life put together.  Visits consisted of my father trying to pry information out of my sister and I and then returning home to give my mother a debriefing of the situation.  My father was always calm and light hearted and did an excellent job of making my mom look like a crazy woman.  I get it now.  I understand why she was the way she was.  She had been emotionally abused for over twenty four years by this man.  She knew what he was capable of, we thought she was just making outrageous stories up.  She wasn't.  My heart hurts for her, she has never recovered from that abuse. 

In the following posts, I am going to tell of various stories of examples of my father's npd.  For me it is a way to reflect, accept and rid myself of carrying around.  I don't hate my father.  I understand he is mentally ill.  I have no control over him or his life but I do have control over me and my life.  I hope to be able to identify where some of my unconscious caretaking habits came into play.  I need to change these.  I want my children to have a healthy role model to grow up with and not a broken one,  I want to thank you in advance for sharing in my journey with me.