Birthday Devalues and Discards – My Parents

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Birthday Devalues

Since childhood, I have never really made a big deal out of my birthday because, in general, no one else really has in a manner that I could say was sincere. There are, indeed, a few exceptions where those who have celebrated my birthday were truly sincere in celebrating me. Yet, with those people that I perceived to have cared for me, there has always been some devaluing or discarding behavior on their part to make me feel as if I was not important enough to celebrate.

My focus was obviously different when I was younger as I do not recall putting a whole lot of focus on my birthday, but back then, I had ceased wanting to celebrate it in a big way if it meant a party celebration. As an introvert, I do not like celebrations in such a major way since I feel socially awkward around large groups of people. Acknowledging my birthday was all that I needed as recognition. It was not until developing friendships with narcissistic people that I came to understand how birthday celebrations take on different meanings. Seemingly, my birthday came to mean the same thing with my narcissistic friends as it did with my narcissistic parents.

With all of my narcissistic friends, I have experienced being devalued and/or discarded on my birthday. Either I received acknowledgment in a way that takes away the satisfaction of being acknowledged or I was not acknowledged at all. This has also happened with my family as well. I would say that being devalued and discarded began the moment I came into the world. My birth signified negative feelings in some of my family. Needless to say, my birthday has always significantly increased the amount of drama narcissists decide they want to create for their own benefit. With any narcissist, their celebrating my birthday has always had very little to do with celebrating me.

My Parents

There were times when my birthday rolled around and my own parents behaved in a manner that showed they hated even acknowledging me. Looking back, I had to have been in the idealize stage of the narcissistic abuse cycle with my parents in order to be in their good graces when my birthday rolled around each year. They often made promises to me that they never kept. There were even times when my birthday was seemingly forgotten until the next day. There were even a host of reasons given a to why I was not celebrated in the same fashion as my siblings. I felt that I was treated far worse and acknowledged much less. My being the oldest was one of the excuses that I often heard as to why my birthday received less fanfare, and until this day, I still do not know what that means.

There was never a rhyme or reason as to why I might experience such erratic changes to my parents celebrating me each year, but soon enough, I became immune to what I can only say was their rejection of me. I simply rested in the knowledge that I would grow to be an adult and could move out and celebrate my birthday on my own. Plus, my dad stressed how birthdays were not really as important as people made them out to be, and I was conditioned to believe it. Yet, I could not get over the fact that my parents would fail to acknowledge their own child’s birthday no matter what importance or lack of importance that others placed on this significant day. I was their child. Was I not important?

I longed for their acknowledgment, but I could see so many signs that showed me that they just simply could not acknowledge me with sincere happiness. There were times that I truly believed in my heart that they were both annoyed that I even had a birthday. Neither of my parents wanted to see me too happy on my special day and would sometimes snatch the joy I felt right away from me as if I did not even deserve it.

It was a hurtful feeling to know that I might have meant nothing to them. If I showed emotion from lack of acknowledgment, then I was told that I was being too sensitive to something that others may not even get to celebrate because so many people do not live to see their birthdays. Yet, these same speeches were never given to my siblings in the same way … just me.

I recall once being ridiculed and shamed in front of a friend on my birthday as my friend and I were laughing about something during a meal. It was a sucker punch to the gut that demoted me to a level of silence. I was so crushed that I feverishly fought back the tears to keep from feeling more embarrassment. I did what I normally did when insulted and humiliated by my dad. I took those tears and hurled them down to the depths of my being where they flowed like a swelling river. I dare not let tears arise to my eyes, and if they managed to reach that far, I would never let them escape. Plus, I would usually be warned not to cry or I would suffer a consequence. What could be worse though?

These hurls of insults would often come out of nowhere and would mostly sting and lift a layer of rawness within my gut if the insults came from my father. With my mom, I always knew what to expect, and she would never insult me in front of others as image was everything to her. She needed to appear a certain way – as the loving mother. My dad, however, needed to always exert that he was the dominant one. My dad seemingly took pleasure in diminishing me in front of others. He seemed to be all about public humiliation. My mom would wait until people were out of sight before dishing out her insults that cut me to the quick just as much, but public humiliation is a whole other terror.

After some time, I shrunk inside of myself often fretting another birthday. I dissociated myself from having a birthday. At some point, it no longer mattered to me whether I was wished a “happy birthday”. There was always going to be a reason why my birthdays would not be happy ones. Once I let go of holding onto my birthday being celebrated by my parents in a way that was different than I came to expect, I no longer bothered thinking about it anymore. I silently celebrated myself and dreamed of a day that someone would celebrate me.

Currently, my parents celebrate my birthday in a more genuine way than they ever did when I was a child, adolescent and young adult. In fact, they sometimes go out of their way in sending me cards and gifts. My parents have called me with early morning wake up calls, sent me texts with wonderful greetings, and sent me cards and gifts in the mail. I guess it is better late than never, but it makes me wonder what has changed with them.

Maybe it is because they are older now, and they realize the value in loving me. Maybe they realize that my distance from them ignites the guilt they have for not having acknowledged me in the past – particularly when I was a child. They do have grandchildren now, and they go to extremes to celebrate them in a way that they did not even celebrate my siblings. I do not really know the actual reasons for their change of heart, but it sure is a greater difference in comparison to when my birthday meant my being devalued along with my feelings being discarded by them.

I have also considered that maybe my parents are hoovering me back into a more continual mode of contact since I have placed limits on my contact with them to the point that I have even gone no-contact at times. Whatever the case, I get from them now what I desired from them when I was a child, adolescent, and young adult. I am grateful, but I also take their well wishes with a grain of salt depending on what is actually going on in their lives that requires me to have some type of presence. Yet, I do wish that things could have been different in the past. Nevertheless, I graciously thank them now and move on. What else can I do?

For the most part, I have moved beyond to past to accept my parents for who they have been to me and who they are to me now. I love them, but they are primarily the reason that I came to view birthdays through the cycle of narcissistic abuse. They gave me first hand experience with what it means to not matter on my birthday, and they opened me up to being able to comprehend the devaluing and discarding abuses I would face with narcissistic friends throughout my life.

Stay tuned for the next post in which I share similar experiences regarding narcissists and their lack of celebrating me for my birthday.