I had a lengthy conversation with my sister last night. She is the only one of my family that I’ve told about my BPD diagnosis (because I had to list a next of kin when I checked into the hospital). It’s been interesting to re-examine our history and our relationship through the lens of my BPD. It’s actually been rather good because there are some things that really make a lot of sense now. This change in perspective hasn’t “healed” me. It hasn’t “healed” our relationship. We’re sisters. Much of our life has been tangled up in jealousy and resentment; and a lot of that has been carried over into our lives as women. The DBT however has helped me examine our relationship, and the things that I would normally find distressing, and begin to identify better coping mechanisms so I can step forth into the future in a healthier way.
One of the problems that we keep coming up against, though, is that my sister desperately wants to broach the subject with our mother so that she can negotiate some kind of “peace” between us. This is a problem. And it’s a big problem, because when it comes to my mother, I am not ready to even acknowledge the past, let alone examine just how distressing it was and the negative ways that I “coped” with it in response. Those were some of the deepest (most distressing) cuts, and I don’t know if those scars will ever fully heal.
My mother.
What can I say about my mother? She has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but eschews the diagnosis. I’m not a clinical psychologist, nor am I her doctor, but as her daughter, the diagnosis makes perfect sense to me. I would have to admit that this disorder primarily informed how dysfunctional our family’s relationships really are.
Especially when it came to my sister.
Especially when it came to me.
Growing up, I was daily reminded that my sister and I had very different mothers. My mom and my sister was more like best friends. They gossiped together. They went on diets together. They worked together on all of my sister’s big homework projects. They listened to the same music and went to the concerts together. They wore matching clothes. I, on the other hand, was forever excluded from their clubhouse. Neglect is such an ugly word, but it sums up how my mother treated me. My mom made it abundantly clear that I was a “mistake,” and that she really didn’t want another kid. There was nothing in me with which she could sympathize. In one of my earliest journal entries, I wrote that I was a “terrible girl” because nothing I could do was “right.” She never once spanked my sister, but would routinely wail on me for minor infractions (like spilling a glass of milk when I was five). I think that as I’ve gotten older, what is more painful than the physical hurts is the emotional pain that I feel when she reminisces about just what a terrible child I was.
“You were always such a brat. And you just needed a good spanking every few days!” she laughs. “And after your spanking, you’d do okay for a day or two; but then you’d just go right back to being awful, and I’d have to spank you again! “ she laughs again.
She loves telling me this, preferably when there are other people present.
My family hasn’t never really been healthy. In my immediate family we wouldn’t ever acknowledge our feelings openly or honestly, primarily because my mother regulated the emotional life of our family. Any “non-sanctioned” expression of emotion was grounds for punishment. My father was so inured with that doctrine that he simply withdrew and became more and more emotionally absent. We, none of us, ever learned how to express our feelings in a healthy way. What ended up happening is that all that emotional energy and all that dysfunction got funneled down to and through me. I was the proverbial black sheep.
As such, I’ve done what I could to hightail it out of there. I may have “alienated the family” (my mother’s words) and abandoned them, but I’ve always felt that they abandoned me first.
Quite frankly, I’m just not ready to “smoke the pipe” yet. I haven’t really identified all of my feelings (aside from the anger) and so can’t really address them yet. Besides, if I tried addressing the past with my mother now, I know that I would want to lash out at her; want to hurt her as she hurt me. I know that that would only perpetuate the cycle. And I know from experience that it’s a nasty cycle. I want break out of it. I don’t feel like I could do that just yet. I’ve got to take my time on this. I’ve got a lot to sort out and I don’t want to rush it. I feel like this is a moment, an opportunity, and I want to do it healthfully.
It’s too important not to.
To me.
