The Gift of Life

There's a recurring theme among NParents, one that rallies them around the war cry of, "I GAVE YOU LIFE and you therefore OWE ME!"  They bring this up most often when all other avenues have been exhausted - sort of an against the ropes haymaker punch thrown wildly when all the jabs of gaslighting and the hooks of guilting and the one-two throws of fear and obligation haven't worked to their favor.

Often it's implied that this gift of life is all that is required of the parent in order to ensure lifelong obedience and compliance by the child, followed by ultimate loyalty by the child who's grown into an adolescent and coming full circle in the adult child who will sacrifice their own needs, wants, desires, lifestyles, security and souls in order to remain subservient to the NParent.

In my experience, this last-ditch effort to call to attention the one act of the narc that none of us can deny (they did, after all bring us into the world,) is nothing so much as a sign of desperation.  It's pathetic and gross.

First off, my parents didn't give me life.  My parents provided an egg and a sperm, and I happened to grow from that.  Read up on your biology, people.  It's typically self-aggrandizing of the Narcs to take credit for that infinitesimal magic that takes two biologic donations and creates a living, breathing human being from the fertilization of an egg.  As if the Narcs had any control over the particular happenstance that made that little swimmer spark with that particular ova.  It's one of the great mysteries of our world how conception actually happens - why that egg, why that sperm, why at that time and not the millions of other encounters? As if the Narcs had a special say in creating the exact match that would form Vanci.

Second, this statement usually comes from NMothers, just before they begin to explain to you why their pregnancy with you, ACoN, was the most difficult pregnancy ever to be chronicled on the face of the planet, possibly even in the Universe.  The want so badly to be recognized with an award and a ribbon and a triumvirate choir of angelic verse for enduring the ordeal of pregnancy (and you!) for nine whole months.  I'm not dissing the difficulty of carrying a child to term; I've done it twice and frankly that was plenty for me as I know it's not an easy task.  But really?  Really really what is it?  Pregnancy is what a mother's body is designed to do.  Is it easy?  No.  Is it hard?  Yes.  Is it Mother Nature's natural expectation of us in order to continue to propagate our race?  Yes.  Is it special?  Only in the context of the miracle of birth being special for every woman who's ever had the privilege of carrying a child.

What's really special about pregnancy, I think, is that we are honored with the gift of the ability to nourish another human being in the most intimate of ways.  It's a give-give proposition, and it's called the Gift of Motherhood for a reason; having a child is a privilege, not a right.  I have plenty of friends who've been unable to conceive and have worked their patooties off in order to be blessed with the privilege of raising children that did not biologically begin with them, so I feel confident in saying it again:  having a child is a privilege.

Then there's the mathematical angle to consider.  Assuming that my NParents worked for a standard amount of time in order to introduce Mr. Sperm to Ms. Egg, then NMother endured 40 weeks of pregnancy, then she was in labor for approximately five hours, we can calculate that her selfless contribution to my coming into this world was... adding up... 40 weeks, 5 hours and about five minutes.  Let's round up to ten months and one day, shall we?  So, I owe my mother less than a year in exchange for her GIFT OF LIFE to me.

As with all court sentences, I'm going to allow credit for time served.  I did seventeen years of daily hell.  For seventeen years, I was abused on a regular basis; mentally, emotionally, verbally, physically, sexually and spiritually.  I left after that, and that stopped the physical and sexual abuse.  I stopped the spiritual abuse by proclaiming that I was 180 degrees different from my NParents on this front - oh, and, amazingly, when your NFather is a minister actively leading a church at the same time that you're outing him for sexually molesting you, well, they stopped talking about Jeebus around the same time that he resigned from the church to make sure that no one else found out about his perversions.  But I digress.

So, from the time I was seventeen until I was thirty years old, I was only mentally, emotionally, verbally (and financially) abused by my NParents.  17 years X 6 different types of abuse = 96 years I've paid, plus 13 years X 4 different types of abuse = 52 years I've paid.  That's 148 years I've paid against their 10 months and 1 day.  I'm feeling generous, so I'll assume that on certain holidays and vacations there was no abuse for short periods of time - I'll knock five years off my time served.

So they can take their "Gift of Life" and shove it where the sun doesn't shine, for the next 143 years, please.  Then we might talk about being even.  They were lucky to have me, and they blew it, so they lost the privilege of knowing me and created their own private hell where they will never get what they want from me.  If there's any justice, that'll last for eternity for them.  Or at least for the next 143 years.

Love,
Vanci