ALL MY WORST FEARS ARE REALIZED!

THE STRESS AND STRAIN THAT DREAD BRINGS ARE ALL CONSUMING! POST NO.35/N  (A 12 minute read)

Good afternoon to you ALL, wherever you may be sat right now reading this new piece of writing. I hope that it is a good day where you are and that your life has some forward motion going on in it, unlike mine which continues to have a totally circular motion, although that circular motion is now all in the reverse direction!

Jumping straight back in where I left off in the previous post and well, YES! I had always dreaded my nephew going completely off the rails, as we say. After all, wasn´t he a prime candidate for the role of "Devil´s Accessory?"

I had given ever attention to him throughout ten years solid, with the sole intention of building a stable, psychological base for this very traumatized child to grow upon. But the visits to the professional psychologist were maybe causing him to withdraw even further into himself. 

I had given the psychologist a blue-print of his circumstances and she recognized clearly that he was suffering from parental abandonment. Given also that he had no access to contact with his biological father, plus the ever increasing amounts of testosterone flowing through his veins, I FELT that I was losing ground.

He was the person that I recognized at home and out of the home, he was clearly now becoming someone else. Just as I, he suffered from a liaison with other traumatized youngsters. He had been left to be the fall guy for an action that he had not committed but by his attempt to cover up for these new contacts, he had to pay the consequences!

This brought about his distancing from all his previous friends, he was thrown out of the basketball club and team as well. And that was officially the end of my nephew as I knew him. Just as I had found out myself at secondary school, it is a hostile place when you have been cut out by your long standing group of friends.

This of course, leads to that TRAUMA BONDING with the new contacts, who are now the only ones who will accept you. I could hardly read him the riot act for not going to school, now could I? What I did not realize was that he was not going at all but neither did the school contact me and ask why he was not there!!

It was the local post lady (who herself had two children at the same school and in the same class as my nephew), who enquired after his health when I crossed paths with her! I could see it all so clearly and I was heart broken. It was all happening! Everything that I had dreaded for so long, was now all unfolding right in front of my eyes!  

OH, HOW IT HURT MY NEPHEW TO BE CUT OUT! Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash.

WAS I ALWAYS FIGHTING A LOSING BATTLE? MAYBE I WAS!

I don´t know that there is anything worse than REJECTION for pushing people over the edge, or in the case of BORDERLINE personalities, over the fence definitively. I recognized then that I was doing exactly the same as my father had with me. It was because he was constant and solid that everyday when he came home, he set about trying to get me back on the right path!

The pep talks and the instruction continued and I know that for the most part my nephew would listen to me. I certainly did not fail in my lack of care and attention. It was solely that I was surrounded by NARCISSISTS and had also brought him to live very close up with a nasty one. For that, oh, yes, I must take some punishment, that I can understand!

He had been conditioned at every stage of his life and as so many of us traumatized children, we make substitute families with other traumatized children, just like us and become fully ENMESHED in these relationships based upon loyalty. But you do have to run with the gang and play your full part!

From thereon, it was one phone call after another, or a certified letter from somewhere (town hall/police), it was TRAUMATIC for me to say the least. It seemed as though my ten years of putting up with this toxic male NARCISSIST really had served no purpose at all. I was making no progress on any front at all.

In spite of all the problems that came my way from then on as the parent of this boy, our relationship did not breakdown. I continued to try and speak to the person within always. He loved the character of JIMINY CRICKET in Walt Disney´s production of PINOCCHIO and of course, what was JIMINY CRICKET all about?

He was Pinocchio´s conscience, wasn´t he? That voice inside which is talking to you and yes, you can hear it and you know that really, you should listen to it too. But the situation that you are in is not being controlled by you yourself. Even you don´t want to do whatever! What you want above all else, is to be accepted and liked!

So, the inner ear shuts out the voice and the communal voices of your domineering NARCISSIST contacts take over. These are the ones who give you approval and appraisal, though for what is what you should ultimately ask yourself and why? "My own mother does not give me a second thought and look at all the male examples that I have around me?"

That is why ultimately I failed to keep him on a healthy path. Firstly of course, I myself was no longer on a healthy path, I was on a conditioned path and secondly, I had taken him into an environment where NARCISSISM was the norm. He had so few good, male examples that were not his teacher´s or monitor´s, as to wish to cry heavily.

My nephew was just three years old when his grandfather (my beloved father and mentor), died. What might have been had they been able to forge a strong relationship, has always been a question that I have asked myself? But living in London as we were at that time, there were certainly no positive male examples available there!

The NARCISSIST male partner of mine, was actually mostly well behaved with my nephew. Being a child trapped in an adult´s body, he could easily mess around and be foolish. As my boy grew physically, emotionally and psychologically, he found it ever more difficult to communicate with him on the same level.

My boy had left him behind academically speaking, long before leaving primary school. But by experience of life, my boy was also a long, long way ahead. Well into his teens now, he was ever more independent and would go on trips around and about with his crew. He didn´t need his hand held and be met and dropped off.

This could only have triggered the NARCISSIST´S INFERIORITY COMPLEX and he became less playful and more over bearing, much as he had with me. Now though, I was keeping a lot back from him. Fines were coming in regularly owing to some action or other of my boy. There was no way that I could share this with the NARCISSIST!!!

As I was in charge of administering the monies that I was given, money would be shifting from one place to another in order to pay these fines. Fair do´s to my nephew that he did at least realize that he would have to forfeit new trainers, new skateboard wheels or whatever, for the time being. 

At least he would admit that he had done "whatever". Which does show that my years of teaching had had an effect. There was a conscience working in his head but sadly, it was destined to be over ridden by those with far less worth. I would go through the "whatever" with him and have him paint me the picture of events!

Simply by doing that I think he would see that what he had been part of had not been something that he was proud of, none the less, he had to accept the consequences of his actions. Sadly though, as a child, it is your parents who have to accept responsibility for their children´s actions and as I can tell you from experience, that becomes very difficult to cope with!

AND THEN TROUBLES OF MY VERY OWN!

My boy´s fourth year ended but of course, he did not pass the end of year exams and was therefore obliged to repeat the year. I had hoped that he might see that as a second chance but no, it didn´t work out like that at all. All of his former friends were now onto their fifth year and he was in fourth year with others one year younger than him.

He stopped going altogether and whilst we now had regular trips to the psychologist, the allergy clinic and the sessions with a social educator to provide him with an excuse for missing many hours of class, he had given up. There was no way that I could get him to attend school and the school failed miserably in even trying themselves. I FELT totally let down.

In order to cope with the trials and rigours of living with this now NARCISSIST teenage boy and a belligerent "adult" male NARCISSIST, I was working out for many hours a day. The blowing the sweat out seemed to have a very positive effect and I FELT that at least I wasn´t unhappy with my physical appearance.

To say nothing of my fitness level, my cardiovascular fitness was brilliant, just 56 heart beats per minute when at rest! I had learned much from my course on fitness monitor and really FELT that I knew why I was doing every move and the benefits that those moves would bring.

We had another trip over to Gran Bretaña the Christmas of 2005 and that was the last time that we three all went together to my home country. The next visit was in 2010, when my nephew and I went by ourselves to nurse his mother, my elder sister, to her death.

Shortly after arriving back in the New Year of 2006. I tore both my Achilles tendons! Agony and a minimum of nine months without heavy working out! That marked the beginning of a long period of deep depression for me. I began binging on biscuits and chocolate in a way that I hadn´t done since teenage years!

I was crying in long, heavy bouts and FEELING extremely sorry for myself. I had seemingly lost all sense of everything and my weight began to pile on. The more unhappy I FELT, the more I binged and the bigger I became.

My younger sister and brother-in-law came to visit in the summer and I know that I FELT so embarrassed by my body and really did not want to go to the beach, something that had never been the case before. All my hard work was going to the wall but not because I wanted it that way; I could hardly walk for the first three months!!

The following year saw the definitive end of secondary school for my nephew and by rights he should have been given the opportunity to repeat the fifth year but he was not given the choice and so it was that he finished his years as student and left school with no exam results at all. What would become of him now?

Eighty-five kilos was the weight that I had managed to reach in the space of two years. After finishing school, there seemed to be a let up of the pressure. There was no going back, I had failed, he had failed and now we would have to live with the consequences, whatever that might mean to us!

Exactly what I had worked so hard throughout fourteen years to avoid. I had become so frustrated by my lack of work outs and my loss of fitness, so much so that I got back to working out far too soon and tore my Achilles tendons again. That then meant a period of twelve months before I could begin to slowly burn off twenty-five kilos of excess fat!!!

It all seemed like the end of an era, which of course it was. I had been living around the school timetable for the last fourteen years and I have to admit that I did not miss that one bit. What a strain it can be to get a child through schooling and to have no qualifications to show for it all; what a disappointment!!!!

I will pick up the tale from this point in the next post and run through the next block of years which really bore no resemblance to any of the previous years lived and remember how I managed to claw my way back from that awful period in time!

Thank you all so much for reading me again today (if that is your case) and if it is your first time on my blog, I am happy that you have found me. Are any of you readers living with a sufferer of NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER? Are you yourself a victim of narcissistic abuse or have you been before?