How Dare You?

I've been pondering something that NM said in one of our short on frequency but long on counter productivity meetings with my therapist.  My counselor's requirement after meeting NM once briefly was that should she want to take me up on my offer to meet with him as a mediator/witness, she would need to bring her own therapist.

She was seeing a therapist at the time because her doctor threatened to stop writing her prescriptions for, get this, methadone and hydrocodone at the same time, unless she sought counseling to 'explore other ways to deal with chronic pain.'  Huh.  What my seventeen years of pushing and pleading for her to get help wouldn't do, one threat of her losing her fix did.

Typical narcissistic self-fulfillment behavior, I see very clearly now, but at the time I hoped it was a sign of her desire to get better and have a better relationship with me.  Stop laughing, I didn't know any better!

Anyhoo, there were two meetings with her counselor and mine.  Then there were almost four years with no meetings.  Then we had a meeting in June.  Which was essentially the same meeting that we had all those years ago.  Lord, this shit does get redundant!

One of the things that sort of slipped by me in the second meeting all those years ago was this.  As a defensive posture against my awful, awful attack (in her mind,) NM said,
"And you go around telling people that our family is dysfunctional!  It's like you just want to hurt us."

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!
Oh.  Me oh my.   How dare I call them dysfunctional?!?

Here's the thing.  Dysfunctional in its literal sense means that a thing that should function... doesn't.  It's broken.  Not working.  Out of order.   Improper.  

My NFOO was and is broken.  Dysfunctional.
My father physically, emotionally, mentally,verbally, spiritually and sexually abused his children.  My mother emotionally, mentally, verbally and spiritually abused her children.   The crimes that they did not commit personally  against their children, they covered up for each other.  These are not functional behaviors.  This is sickness, rot, disease and degenerate malignancy.  If the point of life is to grow and develop, my childhood was the evolutionary equivalent of a person walking into a desert with gills and flippers.  In other words, a huge step back from enlightenment.  Ahem, dysfunctional.

Childhood aside, look at us now.  NM, you have an entire branch of your 'family' that hasn't spoken to you voluntarily in four years.  You have an almost forty year old grown daughter (plus husband and son,) as well as a mid-thirties grown son (plus wife and one or two stepchildren) who ALL live with you in a 2000 square foot house either because they aren't allowed to or are too scared to launch away from the Clan.  You are all variously addicted to narcotic substances, some legal and some not so much.  You couldn't tell the truth to save your life, I think.  Your other daughter is a hateful and evil Narcissist and your son is a failure at life with the unwarranted ego of a Prima Donna, i.e. a Golden Child.  On what planet is this the definition of functional?

There are certain truths in my experience that are simply factual and not up for debate.
Grass = Green
Sky = Blue
Alcohol in my system = Disaster
NFOO = Highly Dysfunctional

Yet I am in the wrong in NM's mind for daring to call our 'family' dysfunctional.  I love how she made it sound like I was randomly throwing unjust and unfounded accusations around willy-nilly to anyone I happened to cross paths with, like I was accusing her of being a leader of the KKK or saying that ENF had four ears, when in reality all I did was tell the truth.  It's so... so... classic.  Just fucking textbook Narc stuff.  Make the truth-teller the bad guy and you've got a bona fide all purpose lifetime get out of jail free card.

I don't remember responding to that high-brow accusation at the time; I'm sure that we'd already moved on to some other area of How-Vanci-Is-Bad, but I see clearly now what she was really saying.

"How dare you out us, Vanci?!?  How dare you refuse to be responsible for our crimes!?!  How dare you not believe exactly what I tell you to believe?!?"

Oh, I fucking dare alright.  I dare to tell the truth no matter what, and to keep doing it until I die.

Dysfunction is dysfunction.  I'm not trying to fix what's broken anymore in the NFOO, but I'll be pointing out the broken and shattered pieces every damn time I see them, to anyone who needs to know.

I dare to, because it's the RIGHT thing to do.  And no matter what I'd said or done, NM never would have been able to grasp that.  No Narcissist would want to, even if they could.

Love,
Vanci