A Tale of Two Legacies

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

― Charles Dickens

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It’s strange isn’t it, to feel good for no reason, and to have that feeling just be there inside of you.

Perhaps it isn’t strange, maybe I’m strange for thinking it’s strange to feel good.

Why do I need a reason for it, I don’t really, in fact I prefer it not being attached to anything in particular.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt this way, just copacetic within. The last couple of years have been rough, and I decided the best way to deal with what was going on if I was going to go on, survive the long haul, was to set myself into grim determination mode. I’ve become so used to feeling a generalised sense of bad that it became the norm, and I grew accustomed to being dead set. So much so that in some ways it felt good feeling bad.

I didn’t think too much about it. I just felt it rumbling there like gas in the intestines.

Then over the past few days I realised that it was gone, as though I’d let all the air out in a giant and satisfying fart, and suddenly it felt peaceful inside.

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“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.”

― Charles Dickens

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The strangest part of it is that I didn’t really notice that I was feeling good, until I did, and on the two occasions that I noticed… as I was enjoying this curious case of the feel goods…

First a piece of hot ash flew into my eye, which hurt as though I’d stabbed my eyeball with a hot poker… but I still felt good even though I was in searing pain. And the pain passed quickly…

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“All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire – a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.”

― Charles Dickens

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Then a few days later (yesterday) a moth (an interesting view of the symbolic significance of a moth) flew into my ear and decided to flutter in the ear canal, trying to get out of the mess it had gotten itself into. It was so caught up in its distress… it didn’t consider the distress its distress was causing… me. Making me dizzy, a shivering wreck of adrenalin rush, and many shades of panic. I soon flushed the moth out after pouring an entire bottle of fizzy water into my ear (did I mention I was in a state of panic), then applying a vacuum nozzle to it (I cursed myself for not thinking of using the hoover first). And I still felt good…

I did have to go to the doctor, my partner insisted – I don’t like doing things like that. Apparently my self medication had sorted the problem out, but it’s best to be sure sometimes, I suppose…

There was a weird little incident at the doctor’s which reminded me of times forgotten. Something came up in my medical history which I thought was lost, which I had lost (which I didn’t actually know about or have to lose) which showed that once upon a time on a rare occasion my mother had done something practical where I was concerned.

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“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

― Charles Dickens

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I was pondering this revelation, trying to wrap my head around it on the way home… feeling good about even a visit to the dreaded doctor… so strange…

And finally, as soon as I got home, I had a large dose of bad news about the case involving my mother. Something needs her signature on it and she’s decided to hold the signature hostage and ask for a ransom for its release.

Any logical person would give their signature away in this particular scenario. It is a formality. And if the tables were turned I would give mine to her regardless of this and that. Because I’m an adult, a logical human being… who can be childish and illogical, but knows that sometimes that’s just not on so turn it off.

But she’s a narcissist… so it’s game on as usual. An opportunity for her to pretend she’s all that she imagines herself to be and yet prove that’s she’s none of the things she imagines and pretends to be.

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I’d have been flabbergasted if she had behaved any other way than being a complete rabid nutter.

Usually I’d be frothing at the mouth having caught the rabies from her, but instead I feel good and it is seriously strange.

The matter with my mother concerns a legacy. An inheritance. And how people deal with such things as death, life, leaving a mark on the world in life and death, and… and the feel bads are a legacy of that legacy, and of being the child of my parents who were adept at making me and everyone else always feel bad, because they felt bad and needed others to shoulder their burden for them – they’d give you their feel bads so that they could have your feel goods. They always felt much better when making others feel awful. This was the norm.

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“Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seeds of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.”

― Charles Dickens

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Someone today commented on one of my posts (thank you for sharing, sam, hope you don’t mind my using your wise advice in this post) about Narcissists –  What is the best Revenge against a Narcissist? – with the words below:

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“If you’re dealing with a narcissists, you may be you’re own worst enemy. MOST narcissists are locked in a child like state inters of their interactions with others. If you interact with them as adults, as you would other adults, you will always be on the losing end.

Interact with them as if they were children … no need to fear them, or apply some mystical power to them … you’re problem is you’re trying to interact with a child as if they were an adult.”

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The problem with you… with me… is… whatever the problem with the narcissist is that they don’t want, will never own, and you have to have because they don’t want it. That’s their legacy to you, me, other narcissists (because they do this to each other too), and everyone except themselves.

This is something which I have always known but which took me a while to understand. There are many levels of consciousness, and one level does not necessarily comprehend what another level does, especially if you are placed in a position where you can’t allow yourself to know what you know.

When you grow up with narcissists… or are in any way involved with a narcissist, in a relationship with one… you can’t know what you know because it ruins their version of reality, and that’s never allowed!

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“Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.”

― Charles Dickens

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It is true that narcissists are children – but not real children as children are, they are adult versions of children, twisted tots, stuck in their warped views of their childhoods which make them feel entitled, and who leave a legacy of havoc in their play… for others to tidy up after them.

Both my parents are of this ilk, two twisted children trapped in the bodies of adults who think they are adults, but no ordinary adults, not regular mortals, and expect to be treated as gods. These two children found each other and then through some convoluted capricious logic ended up with a child – who was then trained to be their parent.

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Twisted children need a twisted parent (in the guise of their child) to take responsibility for everything that is wrong, for all their wrong-doings, so that they can remain innocent, naive, and wonderful.

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“The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.”

― Charles Dickens

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When I was a child my mother was continuously telling me stories about herself as a child. To make sure I knew who was the real child, perhaps.

Every thing I did or said prompted her to tell a story, remind me that she’d already done and said things like that, and done and said them better than I ever could or would. I paled in comparison, was a rubbish child, a failure compared to her. She told these tales in such a way as to garner my sympathy for her poor little self who nobody loved and everyone treated badly. I was never allowed to feel for myself, my feelings had to feel for her. I was never allowed to think for myself, I had to think what she wanted me to think.

Someone had to love her, stick by her through thick and thin – I was the chosen one (yay me!).

She also told me tales of her dead mother and… how much she saw me as being her reincarnated mother (who had died when she was a teenager), and that’s why she called me ‘mother’ and gave me that role to play with her. I was supposed to care for her, more than that I was required to make up for all the crimes her mother had committed against her by not being there, by abandoning her – I must never abandon her, or go anywhere, do anything without her permission. Her child self was an authoritarian adult who commanded that her actual child be a submissive adult to her authority.

She still expects this of me, and still regularly pays me back for all the crimes I (and others, especially my father of whom I am the symptomatic excrement) have committed against her by abandoning her (to live my own life which is a cardinal sin in her childlike eyes). However she is not punishing me, she is being a saint, martyr and angel of a mother. It always hurts her more than it could ever hurt me!

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“That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.”
― Charles Dickens

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One of my jobs as a child was to continuously reassure her that she was an amazing mother, the best mother in the world, no other child had such a mother and I was lucky, so lucky, so so lucky… and should be grateful and express that gratitude regularly or she would get angry and have a tantrum – she hated ingratitude!

My father was the sort of narcissist who… kind of knows they’re a narcissist.

My mother is the sort of narcissist who… thinks everyone else is the narcissist. Self righteous walking the path of the saintly martyred good…

And she never hated ingratitude as much as the ingratitude of my father… for everything she had done, sacrificed, endured, etc, for him!

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“There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.”

― Charles Dickens

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My father died a couple of years ago.

I had been No Contact with both of my parents for over ten years. This isn’t an easy thing to do, even when it is the healthiest thing for you to do. Society frowns upon children who do this… but I was used to society frowning upon me. Narcissist parents turn every smile into a frown… you’re always shit, especially when society smiles at you. How dare they! How dare you get something you don’t deserve – that smile society gave you belongs to the narcissist!

Even with them out of my life… I still lived in fear of them, especially of being found by them and then inevitably dragged into one of their unfunny farces, their endless drama within dramas of epic saga proportions.

This is the sort of fear which can’t be explained… to those who don’t know it, it seems ridiculous.

No one believed my stories of my life with them, of them… so I stopped sharing those. I let people believe what they wanted to believe.

Even when people experience their antics first hand… they still refuse to believe. Everyone survives life in their own way…

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“A multitude of people and yet solitude.”

― Charles Dickens

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My lawyer did not believe… they had to learn the hard way, which cost me extra. Because in certain aspects of life you get charged for what others can’t accept. Another legacy of sorts…

My father’s death was a surprise… because he was so convinced that he was an immortal due to having survived several strokes, and because he was insane. But you never know… maybe he knew something and was truly special as he said. Maybe he was the only sane one in an insane world. What are the odds?

I hadn’t kept tabs on him after going NC.

I learned of his death from two different sources.

My mother contacted me through my partner’s family, with a letter which was all sorts of crazy, dramatic, urgent (with atrocious grammar and writing style (worse than mine because she always wins) – her abuse of CAPS is phenomenal)… I MUST contact HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was imperative to descend like vultures on my father’s dead body and frenetically grab what was left of him. No one else (meaning my father’s family and his long time live, love, and looking after partner are allowed to get a cent). She also wished me a HAPPY BIRTHDAY (and I should be grateful she’s such a wonderful mother to have remembered such a thing) in the same missive (’cause that’s her style! And it’s all right and good!).

I ignored the letter.

As far as I was concerned his family and partner could have everything he left behind, they’d earned it by sticking by him. Didin’t matter what I thought and felt about them. Although I would later learn that his family had parted ways with him, and the only one who stuck around was his partner – because she was made of true grit, or more to the point she had something to prove which involved being sued by my mother for being a witch who had cast a spell upon my father (Yes, my mother actually went down this ludicrous route, more than once). And besides, someone had to look after him, poor him…

Narcissists always get you with that…. someone has to love them, care for them, look after them, poor love. That pretty much sums up my entire relationship with my parents – someone had to be their child and cater to them, poor them! Poor them for having such a terrible daughter!

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“In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease–a terrible passing inclination to die of it.”

― Charles Dickens

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My father’s partner contacted me through a friend of a friend (it’s actually more complicated than that but for brevity’s sake… and this is long enough as it is… and there is more to come). She did not go into extended drama, even though she had lost her nearest and dearest. She simply told me that my father had died, and that she was following through on his wishes to find me and give to me what he wanted to give to me (I recoiled… due to primal instinct).

He wanted me to have what was left of his life once he had died, he had not created a will, but he had made his will known to her. She hated me (as that was a legacy of shit which went down many years ago, manipulated by my father when he was in his narcissistic prime), so this was unexpected and unusual. She could have kept quiet… but, then again, she needed someone to do battle with my greedy mother and she didn’t want it to be her – enter the sacrificial lamb (as always) from stage left or right, doesn’t matter as long as the lamb is lead to slaughter.

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“Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world – the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.”

― Charles Dickens

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My father had finally managed to obtain a divorce from my mother, and he died shortly after it was confirmed. As though he was hanging on to the bitter end… hoping for a bit of sweet. Which is why he had not written a will, as while he still could write such a thing, he was still married and he refused to bequeath anything to someone he had learned to love to loathe.

My mother promptly set about overturning the divorce as soon as he was dead. Because when people are dead you can do whatever you want… with them and their wishes, final or otherwise. When he was alive she liked to fanatsise about what she could do with him if he were dead – and I’m not joking or exaggerating.

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“I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.”

― Charles Dickens

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Her methods were in a cloak and dagger manner – she was supposed to notify his next of kin (me) that she was challenging the divorce. She pretended she had, claimed I was dead, and a billion other lies disguised as truth to suit her purpose. She knew that no one would perform rigorous checks on her lies (no one cares enough to do so, they have their own lives to distract them), especially when it is just a part of their job.

A narcissist relies a lot on others to be careless… for them to get what they want. And someone who is just doing a job for the sake of having a job, but who hates their job… putty in a narcissist’s plan.

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“He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.”

― Charles Dickens

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My mother sees herself as above the law – the laws of the legal system and of nature. As many narcissists do. That’s the norm for them… abnormal, maybe, for the rest of us, but they’re better than the rest of us, and we’re only here to applaud their greatness.

For the past couple of years… what should have been a simple legal matter has, of narcissistic course, devolved into not a simple legal matter.

My first lawyer (my first Barbie) quit because they couldn’t stand dealing with my mother, which is funny because when I first hired them, they wanted to to be the vessel for a reconciliation between a loving mother and her misguided errant child. She worked her narcissistic mojo on them and they fell for it even though I had warned them in advanced of the shenanigans she’d pull.

You just can’t warn people about narcissists… they always think you’re the crazy one and that they know better than you (especially when they’ve been influenced by the narcissist). Until much later when they’re too embarrassed to admit they got it wrong, and that creates more complications in a complicated relationship status.

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“I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.”

― Charles Dickens

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My second lawyer… was in all probability a narcissist, and I really didn’t need that kind of person dealing with things. Sometimes fighting fire with fire just burns everything to the ground. And I wasn’t in the mood to tell them what a great lawyer they were as they effed everything up even more than it was already effed up. Been there, done that… doesn’t work, says the T-shirt.

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“Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.”

― Charles Dickens

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My third lawyer… has made some doozies of mistakes due to not listening to me about my parents, and the shitstorm skidmarks they have always preferred to make on the world, whether they were dead or alive or in between. But I could understand… I wouldn’t believe me either if I wasn’t me (and even then…). It all sounds so crazy. It is crazy. It makes you crazy.

I have had to prove my existence, my identity, give proof of life and being so many times… I’m beginning to doubt I’m real.

This is partly what happens when you deal with narcissist mess in legal matters, and partly the cause of going NC and trying to disappear. And partly… well. life’s a frigging mess, isn’t it. We all pay for the legacy of what came before… be it family or society, we’re a part of the human race… running, rushing… headlong into hell, but calling hell heaven and heaven hell. Or something like that.

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“The great grindstone, Earth, had turned… …and would never take away.”

― Charles Dickens

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I am and have always been my own worst enemy… due to trying to evade, avoid, survive my ever loving parents, who are so wonderful, I’m so lucky… and such a terribly ungrateful child.

Due to giving to those who only know how to take, but tell you their taking is giving and your giving is taking… and you should be thankful, grateful, consider yourself lucky!

The latest drama, courtesy of dear saintly martyr of a mother…
Well….

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My father did not leave much in the way of a legacy in practical and material terms.

Even though my mother is having a hard time accepting this… as in not accepting it at all due to being delusional (but accusing everyone else of this, as narcissists do… and confuse matters when they do it).

He owned a tiny bit of money in an account – my mother went into the bank and had a tantrum.

She got that money, but not because of those particular antics.

She wanted it, and her lust for it enabled an agreement to be made… eventually, once she finally played the legal game as properly as she could (she got someone else to tidy this up for her).

He owned two houses, not grand mansions, but you’d think one of them was considering how hard my mother fought for it – so she got it. I got the little shack in a beach town which she did not want (crap, according to her), and often belittled my father about owning (it was his ancestral home and therefore a legacy which his parents left him – or which he bought because his family never gave anyone anything for free).

She got the lion’s share (which suits her as she’s a Leo – or a super Leo as she often said when she happened upon astrology – here’s a little slice of the astro of now which is kind of appropriate).

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“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.”

― Charles Dickens

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However, as usual, there’s a twist.

Her lion’s share has problems, whereas with my tiny morsel…

I’ve already found someone who is willing to buy the tiny ramshackle shack which is so dilapidated I think only family ties are keeping it together. But… due to legal effery on the part of the law, I need a signature to seal the deal. A signature which says that my mother won’t cause problems for the buyer by contesting things due to a tiny percent of a chance that she could. The buyer could risk it, as she doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on, but that’s never stopped her before and so… to make things clean for the buyer and me, the seller, my lawyer suggested sorting this detail out.

It’s a formality which any reasonable and logical adult would see as being reasonable and logical, and they’d sign… but not my mother. Because her gold mine which she got and laughed at getting, laughed at me for not getting… she effed me over, effed my father over, effed his ‘mistress’ over… HAHAHAHAHA…

OH!

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Her power rush collapsed… because as usual she saw the roses and not the thorns. And now she wants what I have because everything she has and got isn’t enough. I owe her because she gave life to me and because she suffered to do so, suffered after she’d done so and if it hadn’t been for me… her life would have been perfect, just as she’s a perfect mother. I daren’t mention that she had me because oof the same reason for everything else she has ever done… greed doesn’t have foresight.

A child has a child and then wishes it hadn’t and the imaginary child disappears because it was never real… a real child knows pretend… a narcissist doesn’t. A narcissist plays with real things in its world of pretend… and wishes this then wishes for things to disappear when it all turns sour because… of them, but it is never their fault!

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“I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.”

― Charles Dickens

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On and on and on… when and where it stops, nobody knows…

Legacy… is being tied… tied up in Gordian Knots… which even Alexander’s sword can’t cut.

So maybe I’ll just keep my father’s ancestral home and let it tumble down… because my mother is not getting one more drop of my blood from me.

If I give in to her demands… well, negotiating with a terrorist has never worked out for me in the past, it just encourages the terrorist to make more demands. The blackmailer keeps blackmailing you until… they cease to be. And she will… if I make a deal now, it will not be the end of the matter, as much as it promises to be (too good to be true… as always, not true at all) it’ll be the beginning of the next phase which I know so well.

More and more and more… never enough… for that kind of hunger…

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Those logical minds who are involved in this but who haven’t lived this as long as I have… logically agree with my stance, but they have other things which influence them.

My lawyer would really like to close this case as it has been a thorn in their side.But they know this is not the way to draw a line under things.

My partner would love to be able to ‘get back to normal’… he’s been through the eye of the hurricane repeatedly, from the start (before the start of this particular drama), and I’d love to give him what he wants, but he knows that what he wants… would cost me, and cost him because it costs me… and he supports me as best as he can (more than he perhaps should)… he has repeatedly shown me that love is not what my parents told me it was, showed me it was.

His love is not narcissistic… which is strange, and a feel good factor because it is so strange.

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“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

― Charles Dickens

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I’m done giving her stuff, giving in to her stuff… mostly just to get rid of her. It doesn’t work. And it’s time I not only learned that but acted upon it.

Hope’s a bitch, but sometimes being a bitch is a hope.

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“I understand the feeling!” exclaimed Carton, with a bright flush. “And you are the better for it?”

“I hope so.”

― Charles Dickens

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Please don’t… you know… do things like feel sorry for me… I don’t need it, you don’t need it, to do it or feel it, that energy is best used elsewhere…

Because…

in spite of it all…

this legacy… and all the legacies tied into it – legato… legatee… legati… ‘scuse my latin, Italian and stuff… like dizzylexia…

I have a strange and curious case of the feel goods.

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“The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.”

― Charles Dickens

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