― Gabrielle Zevin, All These Things I've Done
I wrote my first novel in my early 20s - it was about drug abuse, schizophrenia and the close but complex relationship between two sisters. My own older half-sister died in 1997, aged just 35 years old, having lived her entire adult life in the torturous grip of paranoid schizophrenia, institutionalised for over a third of it, her daily life since the age of 18 having been an endless chemical mindfuck of barbiturates, anti-psychotics, amphetamine, temazepam and various other medications and drugs, both prescribed and illegal. The unrelenting agony of what she endured during her tragically short and anguished life - which included being raped numerous times and having all three of her children taken away from her - is something I cannot bear to think about. I literally cannot bear to think about it, so I can only guess that my mother's psyche has caved in on itself in an effort to block out the trauma of what her firstborn child went through (and, doubtless, a tsunami of not entirely inappropriate guilt about it).
My older half-sister - let's call her Elle - was rejected by her birth father (my mother's first husband, who by all accounts really did sound like an absolute bastard), and our mother, aged only 22 at the time Elle was born, was not quite ready for the responsibility of motherhood. (She wasn't ready for it in her 30s or 40s, either but hey, nobody's perfect, right?)
So my grandparents - my mother's mum and dad - became Elle's legal guardians. THAT is what my grandparents did for my mother; that's how much they adored and doted on my mother. They actually RAISED HER FIRSTBORN CHILD FOR HER - they gave Elle a loving, supportive and comfortable home life and basically acted as surrogate parents, while my mother went and lived her life elsewhere, and managed to find the time to meet and marry her second husband (that one didn't last long, either), and several years after that, her third husband, my dad. I know little else about this period of my mother's life and frankly I don't care much about what she did or didn't do, and what did or didn't happen to her during this time. The fact remains: she abdicated responsibility for her firstborn child. I am sure she had her reasons for doing so, but I simply don't care what those reasons are. She did it, and it was her choice to do it, and that choice had horrendous consequences. The fact she has never faced up to this is one of the main reasons she has transmogrified from someone who was undoubtedly once a kind, reasonable and pleasant woman into a twisted Machiavellian villain who would rather see her daughters suffer (all three of us) than face the pain of The Truth.
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| Three sisters, circa 1983 |
Now let me try to explain why I still have so much anger against my mother; why when every time someone who presumes to "know" her leaps with such passionate alacrity to her defence, it stokes a raging fire within me. She abandoned her firstborn child. That, in itself, is possibly just about forgivable, if you can allow for extenuating circumstances that nobody (with the possible exception of my mother) knows about, and that I can only guess. But anyone with the smallest glimmer of normalcy would feel GUILT about that, for the rest of their life. I know I would, but then again, I've made the mistake of applying normal emotions and reactions to my mother for most of my life, when it's clear the rules do not apply to her. Instead, my mother uses her tales of woe - tragic first daughter who went mad and died, husbands who mistreated and/or betrayed her, middle daughter who is a total bitch (i.e. has the balls to tell THE TRUTH) - as a means of gaining sympathy and admiration. ("Goodness, you have endured so much, what a strong and amazing person you are! If only your daughters realised how fortunate they are to have such a courageous, devoted and loving mother...")
I am dumbfounded by some of the bullshit gushing praise her friends have given her over the years, every single one of them UTTERLY IMPERVIOUS to what lies beneath that piously heroic exterior. And of course, my mother laps it up. She doesn't say "Well actually, y'know, I should accept some of the blame for a lot of the crap that's happened to me." No, of course she doesn't, the unrepentant, incontrovertible, self-satisfied, cold-blooded martyr that she is. Not once has my mother looked back on her life and thought: hey, what's the common denominator here? Is this just a matter of loads of really shit things happening to a really good person, or am I a shit person attracting exactly what I deserve?
When Elle had her children - at 21, 23 and 26 years old - my mother did little to intervene or help, although I am sure she must have experienced a LOT of distress over this, which I would never dare underestimate. Hell, I know the woman IS a human being with a heart, even though I myself have experienced only tiny, fleeting glimpses of her humanness, and even less of her 'heart'.
Yet while her own parents had bent over backwards for her when she was a young, unprepared mum, my mother never once presumed that, as a 'grown up' mother now herself (indeed a mature woman in her 40s by now), maybe it was time for her to stop being selfish, time to finally put her daughter first. She knew those babies would have to be removed from Elle; she knew that poor lost soul was incapable of looking after herself, never mind a child (note: Elle loved her children. She LOVED them, because as crazy as she was, the 'mothering' part of her was absolutely intact.) And our mother knew that every time a baby was taken from her, it worsened Elle's torment. Perhaps our mother felt she had no other choice; what, realistically, could she do? Well, I know one thing with certainty: she COULD have done more, and she SHOULD have done more. If Elle wasn't crazy with schizophrenia and drugs already, she soon became crazy with grief: can you even imagine having all three of your babies taken away from you?
I do believe that sometimes insanity is a 'sanctuary' for abused or damaged people, the ultimate 'buffer' against the agony of real life, of truth. As the blogger at House of Mirrors (see Resources) says, Madness is their [the narcissist's] preferred choice over reality.
Obviously, it's ultimately self-destructive, but that's kind of the point: some of us just want to escape from life, because reality is so intolerable and brutal. What makes my mother's insanity different from my half-sister's insanity is that my mother PROJECTS hers, so that EVERYONE ELSE feels insane unless they concur with her. It's relatively easy to concur with my mother because she appears, superficially, unassailable. Her 'version of the truth', which at its core is mostly comprised of delusions and spurious beliefs and is therefore pretty far removed from reality, is presented with accomplished aplomb as "All You Should Believe In"; it is presented as a compulsion, not a choice. And I believed in it for far too long. My reality was distorted by someone too sick to see it.
But Elle took all her pain out on herself; nobody was punished for it but herself, and she never expected anyone else to believe in her hallucinations and delusions. In her more lucid moments, she knew she was crazy, whereas my mother has no such insight into her disordered mind. And, ultimately, Elle's craziness made her more human. It had the opposite effect on our mother. (See my post Are malignant narcissists evil?, which also quotes from the 'House of Mirrors' blog: "Mental illness is not the cause of malignant narcissism; it’s the result of malignant narcissism…") [my emphasis]
If anybody needs me to justify my 'No Contact' decision, I respectfully ask that person how much they value their mind; their sense of what is Real, Right and True. I ask them to use their imagination to spend one day in my shoes as a child, living in that tense, frosty house with a sick, psychotic woman consumed by fear, fury and hatred. I ask them to try to have a modicum of respect for what my half-sister went through, and to understand that I am doing this because I finally understand her (at least I understand her much, much better than I understand my mother). I do not choose insanity myself, but I do appreciate why somebody would. I realise it's not really a choice at all, actually; not like the choice to abandon, neglect or abuse your children, for example.
But sometimes, yes, it really is just the best available option.
"The mind is endless. You put me in a dark solitary cell and to you that's the end; to me it's the beginning. There's a world in there, and I'm free." - Charles Manson
Many songs of the 70s and 80s remind me of Elle - "Heroes" and "Ashes to Ashes" by David Bowie, "Breathe" by Pink Floyd, "Borderline" by Madonna, "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp, but this is the song I remember first hearing with Elle, back in 1984, and the one that always brings back the fondest memories: Nena's 99 Red Balloons
Resources:
House of Mirrors: Malignant Narcissists are Batshit Crazy
I have bipolar, I also love 99 Red Balloons, I used to daydream to it as a kid.
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