May 30th, 2016: Part I

A match may start a fire, but once the fire is burning, putting out the match won't stop it. The problem is no longer the match. It's the fire.
The Terminal Man (1972), Michael Crichton" 

I think I've always had trouble with blame. Blame and forgiveness, actually, but forgiveness is for another day. 

I started out, as all young people do, blaming my parents for everything. They were behind every bit of misery in my life. That's fine. That's what kids do. But as I aged, it didn't go away. So now, at 53, I still blame them. I try not to, but I just plain do. I say I don't. I try to act as if I don't. But I do still blame them. And now that I have kids, probably more than ever.  I seem to be going backwards.

That Chrichton quote has been a favorite for many years because it urges me to take responsibility for my own life and not worry about who did what to whom. It was all so long ago.

But was it?

Lately I've been looking, again, at some possible symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and it is undeniably who my mother is. I feel sorry for her, but I'm also trying to open the door to feeling sorry for myself. Not in a bad way, but more of a "HEY. THIS IS REAL. THIS IS STILL HAPPENING. YOU CAN'T BE BLAMED FOR EVERYTHING. THERE IS BLAME TO SPREAD AROUND." kind of way.  Trying to let myself say, for real, loudly, "I'VE BEEN SCREWED OVER BY UNCONTROLLABLE CIRCUMSTANCES. I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE OKAY."  is not easy.  This opens a whooooole new can of worms, entirely separate from my bipolar. I think. Or not. Circumstances can't affect brain chemistry, but it can exaserbate symptoms, and I know for a fact that's true with my anxiety. The OCD? Maybe. I don't know.

But right now I'm at: Okay, she's a narcissist. Now what?  I want to go back and look at myself chronologically and point to all the places where her narcissism clearly led to that end result. I want to know if I'd interperet that event or series of events the same way if I have my "She's a narcissist" glasses on.  How would my reactions about my own behavior change, if at all, when I look back on it through that filter?

"Will I ever be good enough?" is a phrase I came across online yesterday when I was poking around, looking for narcissism info for lay people and "victims". Is that the right word?

Hell, I don't know. I don't like this. I feel like I'm going backwards instead of forward. Placing blame. But logically I know that sometimes you really do have to back up to move ahead. 

I'm fighting this. I'm confused. I want to be an adult. She'll never see me as an adult. She doesn't even want me to be an adult, does she?  I have no clue. I have to go eat some yogurt now.