The Agony of Loss

I am a creature of habit.  

I have routines upon routines and lists within lists, and I largely live my life by them.  Part of this, I know, is due to the symptom/side effect of trauma that I live with to one degree or another everyday; hyper vigilance.  Most people who have been subjected to trauma, particularly the abuses that are perpetrated by omniscient and all-powerful authority figures while we are fragile and completely controlled by the tyrants, exhibit signs of hyper-awareness and a near obsessive need to control or plan for contingencies.  At least that's what my counselor tells me!

I like to think that I've found a nice balance between pre-planning and spontaneity, though, and I can say without a doubt that the longer I am away from the NFOO and the farther my thinking is from them, the more normalized and balanced I am.  I can, in other words, deal with disruptions well, most of the time.  

Lately, though, there have been a lot of minor shake-ups in routine, some of which have involved my sleep cycle.  I can say also without a doubt that all work and not enough sleep make Vanci a very scary girl.  So I've been taking it easy when I can and trying to be patient with myself; saying to my reflection in the mirror - "Hey!  It's okay that you don't have the energy to _______.  Look at the _______ you accomplished today.  Be grateful for _______.  Be proud of ________."  It's helping.  My routine is becoming re-established. 

But oh man oh me oh my the Narc legacy just loves to find a way to kick me when I'm down.  We say in alcohol recovery that alcoholism is a progressive illness; that even if we dry out, we have to remember that the disease is in the corner behind us doing push-ups and waiting for a chance to jump us.  And that the progressive nature of the disease means that it gets worse, never better, if left untreated.  I think that the family legacy of the Narcs might be like that too. 

I'm out.  Officially.  Fini.  Done.  Ties severed.  I have no desire to go back, I have no reason to go back and most importantly I couldn't be reinserted into the Matrix if I tried.  It is impossible, after all, to unknow a thing once it's known.  But they're sneaky, you know, and sometimes I discover that even behind my castle walls they've found a way in.  It happens in my head, don'tcha know, my own brain, trained so arduously from day one by the malignant, sociopathic, abusive and vile fucks that called themselves my parents to keep me down, just turns on me and spews some nasty crap.  It's insidious sometimes. 

I take 10 or 15 minutes each morning as part of my daily routine at work to read the small, poorly written and atrociously edited local "news" (read: gossip) paper.  Just a looksee to keep myself informed of the local general public, you know? 

I realized this morning that I read the obituaries every day with the expectation that I will see the death notice of NM or ENF.  Morbid much?  

Even curiouser, I realized that each day that I do not see a notice for either of them, my gut reaction is one of what I can only quantify as disappointment.  

I have loss in spades, but it's the kind of loss that drags on and on.  They are, after all, all living together in their clan compound only fifteen short minutes away from my house.  And by all, I do mean all: NM, ENF, GCYB and his wife and her son and NOSis and her husband and son.  And god knows who else lives there too.  So it's a funny kind of loss; mourning the loss of one's long lost relatives in the morning while hoping to avoid them in the grocery store that afternoon.  It feels incomplete, somehow, and like the disease that can rear its ugly head at any moment.  It's unfinished, a loose end.

I think that I've spent enough time in the drawn out agony of loss and I'm ready to move on.  I think I'm craving grief instead.  I re-read that and immediately wondered what kind of person that makes me.  But I have to say it's true; I long for the end.

Or maybe I'm just hurt and don't even know it yet because I am absolutely positive that when NM or ENF do pass away, I will certainly find out by reading the local gossip rag.  And when I do hear from NOSis or GCYB that it's happened, as I'm sure I eventually will, they'll have found a way to make it my fault.

What a lose-lose.  What a fucking waste. 

Love,

Vanci

On Sisters

When I was a little girl, I was sometimes made to be part of a 'show.'  Mostly the NParents coordinated this as part of a church function, where we would all play a part in the Easter Sunrise Service or the Christmas Eve Celebration, and typically the performance centered around music.

NM played the piano,  ENF had a booming bass voice, I led melodies in my soprano, NOSis was the harmonic alto and GCYB sang high tenor (and later in life low tenor.)  We all had musical ears and I'm sure we presented as a regular Von Trapp family at times.  ENF tended to pastor small, rural churches, so we were often THE entertainment.  I have some memories of this being fun, even.

NOSis and I both loved to sing and our voices blended well together.  Due in part to the structured isolation that the NParents kept us in, we often choreographed our own 'numbers' in the living room together, and I remember more than one occasion where we were asked to share our routines.  The one that's coming to mind right now was a little dance we did as we sang the number 'Sisters' from an old black and white movie with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, White Christmas.


"Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters.
Never had to have a chaperone, no sir
I'm here to keep my eye on her.
Caring, Sharing,
Every little thing that we are wearing...
... All kinds of weather, we stick together
Same in the rain or sun
Two different faces but in tight places,
We think and we act as one!"

It goes on in that vein for some time and I've probably flubbed some of the lines, but that's how I remember it.   I also remember that there was safety in my relationship with my sister.  She's four years older than me, and was far more of a strong female role model at times than my mother was, for sure.  She was one of my best friends, especially as we moved so often that she was typically my only female play mate and the only other girl I knew.  We picked at each other and fought a lot - something that I'm convinced happens in the majority of sisterly relationships, no matter how healthy - but we loved each other.  We did our best to protect each other.  That's how I saw it then, and I believe there's still some truth to that even now as I view it with clear eyes in retrospect.

I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the recipe for a Narcissist is.  Like all personality disorders, mental illnesses and diseases and addictions, there seems to be an ongoing nature vs. nurture argument to varying degrees about root causes.  I tend to believe that there have to be genetic predispositions to certain leanings combined with two other key factors: trauma of some sort and a choice not to fight the leaning toward narcissism (or sadism, or myriad other -isms.)  Either way, like I said, I don't spend a lot of time on it because I'm such a Practical Polly.  It is what it is and I can't change it.  So I spend my energy on me and I move forward.

But, when I think about my sister and the memories I have, it's hard not to wonder how she and I turned out so differently.  That caring, protective sister that I remember from the days of choreographed step-ball-changes is dead or buried so deep that she's never coming out.
Because my sister today, man, she's a raving bitch on toast.

It seems to me that our relationship changed significantly when I was thirteen and revealed in counseling that ENF had sexually abused me.  I didn't know that he'd abused her too, I really didn't.  But my revelations prompted him to admit to abusing both of us.  The metaphorical shit hit the fan in more ways than one over this, but one of the most painful things to me - then and now - was the way in which it changed my relationship with my sister.  I distinctly remember feeling two things when I realized that my sister had been abused too: horror at the thought that she'd felt as awful and violated as I did and relief at the thought that I wasn't alone in this.
But I was, because, although ONSis admitted to the abuse, she became scarily, irrationally angry with ME for revealing it.  I was, she said, trying to ruin her life and everyone else's life because... I was mad that I had to do the dishes.  She physically assaulted me a couple of times, but mostly she just ignored my very existence after that.  I'd once embroidered her a little throw pillow with the message on the front: Time passes and we may part, but sisters will always stay close at heart.  After I brought the sexual abuse to light in our family, she seemed to hate me.  I was devastated by this sudden coldness and hatred from her, but I was only thirteen and was dealing with similar punishments and ostracizations from my parents and little brother, too.  I don't know that I fully understood how to process anything on my planet at that time; I was shell shocked.

There were a lot of intervening years with some pretty far swings in our relationship with each other, sometimes closer than others, but when I made my stand in September of 2007, ONSis really flexed her muscle as the Enforcer in the NFOO.  She was the first to attack and she attacked viciously.  I'd known for some time that she wasn't right - lots of rages and seriously low lows - but I had no idea up to that point that she was so far gone.

And now, she's the leader of the NFOO in a lot of ways, from what I can tell.  She didn't fall into the Lead Narc role, she sought it out, picked it up, put it on and fucking OWNS it.  I guess we all have our different ways of dealing with trauma.

So, I look around me now and I assess - my sister is effectively dead to me, or I to her, doesn't really matter which way that swings as the end result's the same.

But...
I have other sisters.  I have my dear, dear girlfriends who've loved me from near and far throughout the last four years.  I have my AA ladies, who look me in the eye and tell me the truth, even when it stings.  And I have you: the Grizzly Fighters, the Angry Daughters, the Upsi Dancers, Jonsi on the Outside Looking In, the mulderfans and the Ruths and Judys and Lisas the Pollywantanarcissist and the Rings Swinging Forward and the veganstein, Pronoia Agape, and all the Anons and anyone else I can't think of right now and bringing up the manly rear as an honorary sister is LSV.

What's a sister?  Just a girl who understands that sometimes you need to know that it's okay that you're in there underneath your skin even if it feels too tight sometimes.  A friend who knows that you need a hug or you need to hear that you're beautiful.  Just a lady who says, "Hey, Vanci, I believe in YOU."

I lost a sister along the way, and that hurts.
But just look at that incomplete list up there:  my loss of one is a gain of MANY.
I'm so grateful for all of you.

Love,
Vanci