A Narc Study – Recalling Narcissistic Abuse – My Abusive Mother

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My Abusive Mother

My mother is a covert narcissistic abuser. When I was a child, she used her abusive tactics when no one else could see her or when no one else was around to see her. She was verbally, physically, and psychologically abusive towards me.

Most of my mother’s abuses were so covert, I did not even recognize that I was being abused until years later. Her tactics were subtly used to cause me to question myself and to turn inward to where I would become silent. Other times, her abuses were more overt and just downright mean.

My mother’s favorite abuse tactics were physical assaults, beatings, vicious words, stonewalling, and the silent treatment. She was and still is a vengeful person, and even the mildest treatment of her that she considers to be narcissistic injury against her will incur her bellowing rage.

Television Soap Opera

I recall when the television was a great babysitter. It was where my siblings and I were seated to play when my mother was preparing dinner. Just before dinner time, the television channel was always tuned to my mother’s favorite soap opera, Another World. I think I was five years old at the time when I was sitting on the floor watching this soap opera. One of the characters was killed in a car accident, and the characters were upset. Being so hypersensitive, I began crying too.

Interestingly, I felt the emotions from the characters come through the screen. I literally felt pain. They cried and sobbed; I cried and sobbed. My mother heard me and came flying into the room. She asked me what was wrong with me, and I told her about what happened to the character on screen. Remarkably, I saw what I thought was concern in her eyes as she tried to explain what had really happened, and then she flatly said, “This is not real. It’s fake. It’s TV. It is a believe story because the people are acting.”

After my mother’s explanation, I literally felt duped … that I had felt so broken over a character’s death who was not dead in real life. I was crushed by a betrayal that was not really a betrayal, and I recall my mother taking this in and later using it against me. When her sister (my aunt) had come over at another time, my mother brought this situation up and told my aunt all about it. My mother and aunt had a good laugh about it, and my aunt began teasing me about my tears over a “fake” death. For a while, each opportunity my mother had when my dad was not around, she teased me about my cries for a fictitious character. It might sound ridiculous, but it was a devastating blow for me as my sensitivities were joked about.

A Game Of Chase Gone Awry

I would have never thought my mother to have a competitive nature until we played a family game of chase. Strangely, I felt that there was a semblance of family togetherness and closeness when my dad decided to implement a day of family games. Those were the times that I felt that my family might have been close, but on this particular day, a game of chase became all too competitive and violent because my mother felt insulted against a loss. This was the day I learned my mother played to win.

I will never forget how a game of chase quickly soured one Sunday evening as we ran around in the yard tagging each other. Children play for fun, and as I watched my mother playfully chase after my siblings, I thought to bring myself into that game of tag for the sake of mother-daughter proximity. To my surprise, when I thought I was playfully tagging my mother, she interpreted my touch as something else. She took my moment of contact as a type of assault. The look in her eyes are unforgettable.

There was a dark settling within her eyes as if another entity arose and took control of her. I had seen this gleam of darkness cast across my mother’s eyes on other occasions when I felt that she was not completely herself. Those were the times that I sensed her rage arising from within her pushing her into an attack. Those were the times that I could hear the eggshells cracking beneath my feet. Those were the times that I knew that I had cracked one eggshell too many and had awakened the beast within her.

In a simple game of chase, my mother was insulted by my touch. I did not even tap her hard. In my child mind, I was simply playing a game. I never realized she was not playing the same game with me until the look in her eyes told me that she had snapped. At the very moment that I playfully “tagged” her, she was in the game for the win. She chased me with such a fury that an overwhelming sense of fear that I knew that I needed to run away for my dear life. If she could have literally taken my life in the moments of that contact, there was a deeper part of me that knew that she would have done so.

My mother chased me behind an area in the yard where my dad could not see us. She grabbed me by the arm and jerked my body around to face her. She then punched me in my stomach so hard that I felt a gulp of oxygen expel from my body. More than a physical pain arose from my body; a deep emotional pain welled up within my gut. She literally growled at me with the most hateful smirk on her face. She told me to never touch her again. In the moment that I made eye contact with her, I realized that the eyes that I saw were not that of my mother’s but an insanely mad woman who embodied her. I was more than afraid. I was in terror.

I took a deep breath and withheld my tears. In those moments, I realized my mother literally hated me without ever having to mouth the words even though she had told me she hated me many times over. In that playful game of tag, I knew that I would never play another game with my mother again, and I did not. I think at the time that I might have been seven or eight. Nevertheless, some of my gullible innocence left me that day. I knew that I was never going to be safe around my mother. I constantly looked over my shoulder, looked into her eyes to know which part of my mother that I was dealing with, and listened to the changes in the tone of her voice.

When I left the area from where we were standing when my mother punched me, I knew that I could not share the situation with my dad. My mother had so intimidated me that I was afraid to say anything. Somewhere inside of me, I knew that my dad would have found it hard to believe that my mother had a side of cruelty to her when it came to her children. It was then that I knew that I had discovered my mother as a different person whom maybe my dad did not even know. Had he known, I might have been protected from the multitude of covert abuses that my mother dealt out to me.

Black, Blue, and Fractured

When I was 16, I experienced a turning point with my mother. I had reached the zenith within our lack of relationship, and I was fed up with her unrelenting but silent control. My dad had no idea of the many abuses that my mother unleashed upon me. I had become fed up with a household of secrecy, confinement, and control. On an outing with my mother and siblings, I decided to express myself.

I cannot remember all that I said to my mother, but the focus was mainly on her continuous attempts to stop me from getting my driver’s license. On nearly every chance that she could get, she would instigate some issue that would prevent me from getting my driver’s license. I was not so gullible to realize that my mother’s attempts to prevent me from getting my driver’s license had all to do with keeping her control over me gaining my independence and ultimately my freedom.

With each attempt to gain independence as a growing young adult, my mother often stood in the way. My dad worked too much to even notice what was going on at the time, but he was soon to become aware of things that he had avoided for far too long. On a visit to my maternal grandmother’s house, I announced to my mother that my independence was going to come whether she liked it or not. She had little control of it. I let her know that the jig was up and I was no longer under her control. I was ready to inform my dad and anybody else who would listen what type of person she was to me.

Of course, my mother did not take too kindly to my words. I probably should have been less of a teenager with an attitude, but I was a fed up teenager. I was tired of being constricted and punished for things that were not even punishable offenses. By all accounts, I was the model child doing everything possible to do the right thing. I did not date. I did not hang out with friends. I poured myself into my studies, earned money with a part time job to buy the things that I needed for school, and stayed out of trouble. Yet, I could never satisfy my mother enough to where I was able to just actually breath without being told in a sense how many breaths that I could take.

Normally, I could drive as I had my permit at the time, but my mother would often not allow me to drive unless my dad was home. She always gave the appearance of being a great, doting mother when she was nothing but the sort. On this particular occasion, she drove and basically taunted that if she had her way, she would see to it that I never got a driver’s license. As much as my siblings wanted me to stop talking, I did not. I told my mother that I would be getting my driver’s license whether she helped me or not. I told her that she did not have the power that she thought she had to stop me from succeeding. With that, I saw a literal star.

When I say I saw a literal star, I saw the star emblem on my mother’s black onyx ring slam into my face and hit the bridge of my nose. I never saw her rage coming. She backhanded me across my face, and I felt intense pain. The slap shocked my siblings into a stupor of silence. Their silence filled my mother with such satisfaction that she began proudly proclaiming that I would have my driver’s license when she felt good and ready for me to have it. She said a lot of other things too, but all I could feel was pain and things swelling on my face that probably indicated trouble.

By the time we reached my grandmother’s home, I was screaming. My siblings were actually coming to my aid in a way that made my mother even angrier. My grandmother was never one to be on my side at any time, and if I expected any amount of consoling from her, I was not going to get it. She actually told my mother “It’s about time that you put that girl in her place for all the trouble she causes … now get her an ice pack because her eyes are swelling”. Yet, after we all calmed down, the effects of my mother’s slap were appalling even to my grandmother.

The skin around my eyes had turned a bluish black, and the bridge of my nose was reddened. My nose was tender to touch to which my grandmother immediately said that she thought it might be fractured. I had searing pain like I have never felt sense. I could not even hold my head up because my face hurt so bad. I later heard my grandmother asked my mother, “Why did you have to hit her so hard in the face?”

Only with her own mother did my mother ever show remorse, but it was not remorse for what she had literally done to me. My mother’s remorse was more of not wanting to have disappointed her own mother because of how her hitting me would make the family look. After all, I had learned very early on in life that I did not matter. They did not truly care about me. It was all about them. I existed to please them.

Needless to say, my face seemed broken beyond repair, and I had school the next day. I could not go to school looking as if I had been beaten up even though I had been beaten up. It was only then that my mother became slightly concerned about how to explain this situation to my dad. Yet, he was gullible when it came to my mother and always took her words over mine. She would have no problem coming up with a half-lie that was enough of the truth that I would still look like the villain of my own suffering.

To make me the villain, my grandmother coached my siblings to corroborate with my mother’s version of the events by simply saying that I was being disrespectful. My disrespect had pushed my mother over the brink. I was sure that the only word my dad needed to hear was “disrespect”, and he would immediately believe my mother. After all, I was the child who questioned and challenged everything when nothing made sense to me despite being raised by my dad to do so. I just did not get the memo that questions and challenges should only be posed to outsiders and not parents.

The Turning Point

When it was time to go home, my mother attempted to nurse my wounds, but by that point, my face showed a definite need for medical care (at least in my mind) because I looked unrecognizable. My siblings were unusually quiet. They looked at me with such pity in their eyes, but they were powerless to help me. When we arrived home, my mother basically threatened all of us into silence. Yet, I no longer cared about her punishments. The worse thing she could do to me was beyond this life. I was ready to face my dad with my truth … a totally different version than my mother’s truth.

When we walked into the house, I immediately went to my room and surveyed the horrible damage of my face. I looked horrible. I could barely open my eyes as they appeared so swollen. The skin around my eyes were now black, my nose was red, and my lip was swollen and had a cut that I had not noticed before. That cut had to have come from the edge of my mother’s ring or the star-shaped diamond of the onyx. Whatever the case, there was nothing that could be done about my face now outside of makeup and ice.

I could hear my mother talking to my dad about what happened. Her version of events made me sound like an incorrigible teen who needed to be sent away. My dad’s response was what I expected … that I deserved punishment for being so disrespectful. There was no need for me to defend myself. Two against me was a win for them. I knew the drill. That is how it was always. So, I was not surprised to hear my dad call me to him. However, I was surprised by his reaction when he saw my face.

When my dad saw my face, I saw his pain. I literally saw the stunned pain of a concerned parent. He was shocked to say the least. No matter how shocked he was, I knew it was senseless to bother explaining my side … the truth of what actually happened even if he saw my replies as disrespectful. My mother had already gotten to him first with a great smear of me that I was unable to fix. He had already received enough reports about my behavior in the past without ever second-guessing anything my mother ever said no matter how many lies she told him. This time was different, however.

This time, my dad’s eyes showed me that he did not believe my mother’s cunningly crafted story. Apparently, the damage of my face told him something different and something he had silently avoided for years. He never wanted to believe my stories in the past, but this time he wanted to listen. He wanted to know what happened. He bid my siblings to come forth too. Although they were afraid to speak as they shifted their glances towards my mother, he told us all that we would be safe … that she could not harm us. I laughed. I hysterically laughed. I laughed so hard that my laughs turned to chilling screams of terror. The house grew silent, but there was an earthquake. The earthquake was me.

I cut into the silence with my words. I expressed how I had been let down all of my young life. I expressed how my dad was simply not present. How could he not know the abuses that my mother inflicted upon us? Was he really that blind? Or did he simply choose not to see? I expressed how tired I was of doing the right things that I was taught to do only to be met with contradictions. I was tired of living in a household that was more about appearances. I was tired of living day to day to survive. What was the point? I was unhappy living in a household where I was hated just for existing.

The more I spoke, the bolder I felt on the inside. I was not intending to disrespect my parents at all. That was never the intention. I just wanted my voice to be heard. I wanted to be seen as an individual with her own mind, thoughts, and ideas. I wanted to be loved for being me, and I could never be me. I could only be who they wanted me to be. I took that time to express myself in a way that I never could.

My mother was quiet, but I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was boiling within a silent rage that was contained in that moment. My father was pensive. There were tears forming in his eyes that did not fall. For the first time, he realized the sense of urgency within me, and it was a sense of urgency that he himself felt for me two years prior when he could see that I had fallen into a deep depression and sought out therapeutic help on my behalf.

My father did not believe my mother’s story. He believed that there was more to it, and he turned to her asking her how she could physically hurt her own child and feel no remorse for it. My mother touted that I deserved what I had coming to me. My father then turned to me and apologized on her behalf and on his behalf. He hugged me in a way that he had never hugged me before. He truly seemed remorseful. My mother was not.

My father frantically wanted to protect me and believed that my mother might hurt me worse if we continued on under the same roof together. He decided that maybe I should go live with my aunt who lived over 600 miles away. I was against this because internally I believed that my voice had now become unchained enough that I had spoken my heart in the matter. I doubted that my mother would do anything else. In fact, I knew my mother’s pattern, and now that she had been exposed to the very person that always believed her stories about me, I believed that she was less likely to do anything else to harm me. Plus, both of my parents had the concern that others would know what was happening behind our closed doors.

And Then …

For weeks afterwards, I stayed out of my mother’s path. I did not talk to her. I am not sure how we eventually came around to each other, but life did go back to normalcy without violence. The very day after my bruised face occurred, I did go to school. I dressed up my bruises with makeup. No one seemed to notice. My eyeglasses hid a lot. I never saw a doctor, but the bridge of my nose is still a tender spot to touch even now.

After speaking out to my dad with my mother present, my life became a little less constricted, and I did eventually get my driver’s license. I had somewhat silenced my mother long enough that her narcissistic personality soon faded into the background, but she also went back to work after a time of unemployment. So, for the most part, I felt that my life was better, and then it seemed that life moved on and I grew up.

Although these are not nearly the amount of abuses I experienced at the hands of my mother, these are events that stood out to me the most. These are the events that have somehow remained embedded overall even though there are others. These are just a few examples of what it was like to live with my narcissistic mother as a young person … as a child. If I could go back and redo anything, I would not. Why? Because my mother would still be a narcissist either way.