Growing Up Grateful

Tomorrow I will be forty. I have lived all of my life under the shadow of my fathers’ charming whimsical eccentricities. I have also lived under the shadow of his long reaching ego, selfishness, madness and perversion. I have no intention of throwing a dead man (my father died when I was sixteen) under the bus or spilling sappy words that beg for anyone’s dis-empowering pity. My intention is to tell a story that might lift a veil over the hidden nightmarish world of living with a narcissist. Because growing up with a narcissist is learning the rules of life in chaos and contradictions. The narcissist’s world is an elaborate cage built to hold their victims. Being raised by a narcissist will fracture your mind and you can spend a lifetime trying to piece together your sanity. Perhaps healing would be easier if someone tells their story.  These are two true stories about my Dad, the narcissist.

Story One – Being Daddy’s Girl is the Best

One day our family had come down off the mountain and had gone shopping at the small mall in Glenwood Springs. It was unusual for us to be there, especially Daddy. I was in a hurry to get to the pet store where they often had kittens or puppies in the front window. I asked if I could go to directly to the pet store but my Dad said no. Oddly, he told me he wanted me to go with him in to Zales, the jewelry store near the mall entrance. He led me inside and asked the sales lady to show us a small row of rings from the case. Sitting against the black velvet display were four thin gold bands. Each had a tiny fragment of a diamond in it.

Daddy pointed at two of the rings. One was a simple band with  white gold in the center. At the center of the white gold was a diamond chip. The other ring was a delicate yellow gold band that arced in a V with a tiny diamond chip buried in filigree. “Which ring do you like?” Daddy asked me. I have always been decisive and I did not hesitate to answer that I liked the V shaped ring. He smiled and said “Me too”. Evidently he had come to the store days before and looked at the rings up ahead. Then he looked at the sales lady and said “We’ll take it!” My mind buzzed. Even though he had just asked me which ring I liked, it had not for a moment occurred to me that we were buying anything. After all, the shinny little ring sat under a bright red sign that said “Sale! $99.99”. It was an absurd amount of money in our world.

I awkwardly put my arms around my large father and thanked him. “But why are you getting it for me?” I asked him. My Daddy smiled at me with his unforgettable crooked smile and set his warm hand on my shoulder. He said these incredible words “I am the first man to love you so I wanted to be the first man to give you a diamond.” My eyes felt hot and blurry. He put the ring on my finger and I glowed under his approval. Nothing in the world felt better than having Dad’s favor. I was ten.

 

Story Two – Being Daddy’s Girl Could Have Been So Much Worse

 

We had been living in a mobile home for a few weeks when I asked to get a kitten. I had owned a few cats where we had lived before in New Mexico but they had all mysteriously disappeared a few days before the big move to Colorado. We had lived in an R.V. for the first six months in Colorado and now had a real home with a yard and neighbors. I was told I could get a new kitten and in my eleven year old world what could anyone want more?

We found some folks who had a batch a black kittens that were ready for homes and we promptly went and got one. I named my kitten Licorice and fell in love with his patient disposition. I had several cats growing up but Licorice would be the one I was most fond of. He let me dress him in doll clothes and carry him around on my shoulder like a baby but what I loved most about him was that he was my cat. He followed me and slept with me and I felt certain that I was as special to him as he was to me.

Daddy did not like cats. At the age of eleven I was not unfamiliar with stories of dad mistreating cats in the most horrible ways. These stories were told in a comedic way and to my great shame now, I laughed and loved to hear them. I had in fact seen my dad hurt stray cats in ways I will not describe here because the knowledge of such realities is a burden I do not wish to share. But in general, my dad had not hurt my cats so I had not given much thought to the other animals. The cats I had before Licorice seemed to ignore Dad and he seemed to ignore them most of the time. Licorice was not like other cats, he was friendly. He would come up to my dad and purr as he rubbed his head against his steel toed work boots.

Dad had started a new habit of “playing” with Licorice. Dad would grab the cat by the scruff of his neck and shake him. He would grab his tail until the cat would hiss and swat at him and then dad would put his large hand over the cats face and shake him again. The cat would finally be in such a tizzy that it would growl and moan, frantically trying to get away from dads increasing grip. It was at this crescendo of “playing” that the cat would begin to cry a pitiful whine that would break my heart and I would intervene and take Licorice somewhere safe. This became a regular routine in our home. I was very distressed by the treatment of my kitty and began to dread my dad coming home from work. I told my mom how upset I was. She said “Yes, I wish he didn’t play so rough with the cat too.”

One day Dad was “playing” with the cat especially rough. My cat was screeching particularly loud and I was feeling as desperate and frantic as my poor little furry friend. I started crying and yelling at my dad to “please stop!”. I was crying but not from heartbreak. My fists were curled up in little red hot balls and my neck was itching with the red blotches that break out when I get very angry. If I had just been sad then Daddy would have laughed at me. Making me cry was like a little game he enjoyed playing when he felt like it. But I was not sad, I was wildly mad. In the world I grew up in, only one person was ever allowed to get angry and it was not me.

My dad stood up still clutching my cat in one hand. Licorice was like a Tasmanian devil flailing to free himself. Dad pushed the cat in front of my eyes. “You see this cat?” he said quietly, “the only reason this cat is alive is because you obey me.” Then he threw the cat across the room and it hit the wall. Licorice yelped. A scream caught in my throat. Licorice went from wall to floor and got up lightening fast and ran out of the room. I started to follow him afraid that he might be injured but dad caught me by the arm and held it tighter than was comfortable.

My legs were shaking and my throat was beginning to croak and whimper involuntarily. Dad held my arm and brought his face close to mine. “Things could be worse for you. There are dads who do worse things. You are lucky I let you have a cat and other nice things. You are lucky I don’t beat you or rape you like some dads do. Things could be worse. You don’t know what kinds of things people can do.” He let go of my arm and I ran away, but those words, I would be trying to run away from those words for the rest of my life.

Conclusion

It is only now, thirty years after my ten year old self watched in horror as my father punished me by hurling my cat across the room, that I see the truth. After thirty years of trying to believe that the proof of a father’s love is in his giving you gifts and not beating you, I understand. Today, after thirty years of being grateful that I didn’t have it worse, I know the rules.

You can not be called a good man and abuse animals and people. You do not get to be called a sweet man and be a pervert. It can’t be called a gift if you use it as leverage to keep the recipient compliant to your wishes. You do not love someone if you are entertained by their suffering. These are the rules that the narcissist will try to hide from you because these are the rules that will bring their empire of lies crashing.

This is an ugly story and it is not the only one I have to tell. But here is the catch. Tomorrow I will be forty and for the first time in my life, I am not grateful to that man for anything he didn’t do. I am uncaged. I am no longer a player in a game designed so that I can never win. I am free of the confusion. Now the beautiful thing is learning what to do with my freedom and trying to be brave enough to share it.

If I could write a letter to the wild Dandelion of a little girl that I used to be, I would say:

Dear Dandelion,

You do not have to be loyal to people who try to hurt you. If they wanted you to tell better stories about them then they should have behaved more honorably. It is not your fault. Love,

Geri Rene