Why do I want to believe NM's lie?
First, thank you to mulderfan for a thought provoking comment on my What It Feels Like and What It Really Is post. As it concerns her own NFOO, she said:
"I unmasked my NF long before I truly "saw" her [NM] and now I often say, she is the more dangerous of the two."
This is the way it has been for me, too. ENF was, and remains I can only assume, loud, confrontational, overt. His abuses of me were primarily tangible acts - outward acts of aggression and rage. In a way, he's the monster who showed up with a name tag that says, "Hello, My Name Is: Monster." Of course, I didn't understand this as a child or young adult, as the Monster he was is the only Monster - called Father - I'd ever known. But, once I woke up to the atrocities he committed, they were so easy to identify. Easy to move past? Hell, no. But it was easy to see clearly that, yes, this was abuse and yes, he was abusive without a doubt.
NM was a shadow lurker in her abuses - she manipulates, revises history, plays the victim, blames the victim, strategizes, forms alliances, spreads rumors, makes shit up, plans ahead and above all, denies, denies, denies. She's like the Ollie North of Narcissistic Mothers, going around and stirring shit up until it reaches a boiling point and then sitting primly in a corner and announcing that she just can't remember any of that. What was Ollie's favorite phrase? I do not recall.
Was she abusive? Is a man who hits his wife considered abusive if he hits her in the stomach instead of the face? If he doesn't leave a mark, is that still abuse? Of course it is, and yes, of course she was abusive.
That she recruited others to carry out the grittier parts of the anguish she inflicted on me and on others is neither here nor there; her desire to keep her hands clean on the surface does not diminish or excuse her abuse in any way. In reality, anyway - in her mind it's a different story, if, of course, she can recall.
It's tough, though, to see a behind the scenes abuser as clearly as one can see the more outward abuser. And if that deceptive abuser is one's mother, oh man is it tough to separate the reality from the fiction.
We want mothers to be good, our own as well as mothers in general. We need to believe in unconditional love and inherent care for our hearts as well as our minds and bodies and souls. Traditionally, this kind of love comes from mother the same way that the food on the table comes from father. I know, I know, it's so damn stereotypical, but it seems to be true in our society that we glorify and often deify 'a mother's love.' As if having the physical capability to produce offspring is an automatic qualifier to be 'a good mother.'
In fact, I remember NM proclaiming on more than one occasion as I worked through the tedious process of drawing tighter and firmer boundaries to protect myself (which she violated without fail,) that she was A GOOD MOTHER! Interestingly enough, I didn't have the cajones at the time to have accused her of being anything but. She was already laying the groundwork of her protest against any possible accusations (or, ahem, truth,) of her significant failings - to love her daughter, to protect her daughter, to treat her daughter like a human being. As the Lady MacBeth, so NM; methinks she doth protest too much.
Eventually I saw her for the Monster she was and is, and I couldn't deny the truth anymore. No matter how she spins it, she's just as if not more abusive than ENF was or is. Poison held in a pretty container can kill you just as well as poison that proclaims itself.
I've heard it attributed to Alice Miller and that might be the case, though I've heard others cited for some version of one of my favorite sayings, too:
Once something is known, it cannot then be unknown.
I believe this to be an absolute truth, because I have tried six ways to Sunday to unknow some of the things I know and there's just no way it's happening. The truth will out, and if you try to shut the door on it, well, it finds a way, or at least that's been my experience.
So, why do I try to unknow what NM is? Why do I find that there is some tiny little part of me that wishes I could believe the lie that she is really just a pathetic and ill old woman who's made some mistakes but isn't really evil and rotten to the core?
I'm sure that there are many answers to these questions for me, and I'm certain that my work in this area will reveal a whole lot more about who I am and what I need.
In the meantime, I think it's this: everybody wants a mommy who loves them for exactly who they are, and it's a tough pill to swallow that mine simply... didn't... doesn't... never will.
Working back around to the realization of another absolute truth is the saving grace and reward in this circumstance, though: her lack of love and care and inability/lack of desire to be a good mother doesn't have a single damned thing to do with me. That's not a rock I need to carry.
So, in honor of mulderfan, again, Fuck Em!
Love,
Vanci
