Cutting Off A Narcissistic Parent Is Not A Loss
I haven’t had any contact with my mother since my father’s funeral last August.
I don’t miss her. At all. I feel a kind of guilt due to being hardwired to believe I’m inherently bad and incapable of doing the right thing. But most of all I feel relief in not having to endure any more of her abusive behaviour that runs in a straight line from my early childhood to middle-age.
I’ve got a lifetime of trauma to process and I don’t need to add to it. It is only in getting some distance from her that I have a safe space to work through it all.
With the help of therapy, I feel like I can finally start being an adult instead of a scared, vulnerable 13-year-old trapped in the body of a 51-year-old woman. The adult in me can give my inner child what my actual child self missed out on.
I haven’t lost a relationship because there wasn’t one
From the outside, there is an assumption that I must be feeling a loss, specifically the loss of a relationship. But you can’t lose what you never had. I never had the loving, nurturing and supportive relationship that many women have with their mothers.
There are those who had ideal relationships. They like each other and enjoy spending time together. They are each other’s champions and have a vested interest in each other’s happiness and success.
Others don’t have this closeness, perhaps due to personality differences or circumstances. But there is a baseline of respect and positive regard. They acknowledge each other’s reality even if it doesn’t correspond with theirs.
For me there is just a vacuum where a relationship should sit. I don’t know what it’s like to experience anything other than disrespect, criticism, humiliation, lack of recognition and basically denying my reality. When that is the primary way of relating to someone, it doesn’t warrant being called a relationship.
My loss occurred at a very young age
I was denied a mother who fulfilled the role from the beginning and the awareness of what I lacked has permeated my life. To this day, I can’t help comparing myself to others who have had…
