Dead To Me

Dead To Me

There are some things in my life that I wish were dead to me, and unfortunately, there are some people in my life that I wish were dead to me too.

If you have ever dealt with a diabolically and sadistically cunning narcissist, you may have very well had the same wish as me … that people would cease to exist within your relational sphere … that they’d cease to exist enough to leave you alone.

This doesn’t mean I want anyone’s life to end physically, but when I think in terms of one narcissist that I have dealt with who’s made my life hell on earth since I was a child, I would not be lying when I say that it would be much easier if that narcissist were no longer among the living.

Perhaps you might say that such thoughts speak to the bitterness or hatred within my heart against this person, but I would have to disagree. I have no bitterness or hatred where this primary narcissist exists, but I do have longsuffering frustrations. AND I absolutely do not have the tolerance for their manipulative bull.

My mother is a narcissist. My mother is one of the most manipulative covert narcissists I have ever known in my life, and I could breathe a deep sigh of calm relief if she were no longer here. Currently, she is not “here” because, fortunately, she is not in my present life. I am presently no-contact with her.

However, life just doesn’t work out to remain peaceful in the way I’d hope because my narcissist mother always has a way of bringing herself back into my sphere in both direct and indirect ways. Although I don’t wish her dead, she is currently dead to me in a relational sense. Since going no-contact with her for almost 10 years, she no longer exists within my private world.

The only way my narcissist mother has some existence in my world is when she tries to finagle her way back into my sphere or if I have some type of contact with one of my siblings. Sometimes she is mentioned in conversations with my dad, but as a way to support me, he will often warn me when she is attempting to creep back into my corner. Perhaps keeping limited contact with my dad keeps me safe from my mother.

For several years, one of my siblings has allowed our mother to live with them and their family even though I sounded my fervent warnings that this was a very bad idea. Things were all good during their honeymoon season together, and they were close. Yet, for the most part, that sibling’s life has been pushed to the brink of disaster and then some.

Although it can’t be proven that my narcissist mother had anything to do with the demise of this particular sibling’s harmonious family life, there has been major irreparable damage to their family’s system. While that sibling has lost their entire family through traumatic circumstances and tragedy, my mother is still living with this sibling as a primary part of their resident. My mother pays (and doesn’t pay) her fair share of the bills and treats my sibling with the same type of disdain and derision as she treated me.

My sibling, who chose to have our mother move in with them, most likely did so in the hopes that our mother would become a built-in babysitter for their children as well as provide an extra source of income to the household. It seemed that life and my mother would give this sibling exactly what they wanted in the beginning, but when the honeymoon season reached its peak and sauntered into the territory of devaluation for this sibling, this sibling experienced a side of our mother that only I had the privilege of seeing all of my childhood life.

This sibling came into a rude awakening that life with our mother was nothing short of chaotic and disturbing on so many levels. They were so flabbergasted by what they were experiencing with our mother that they didn’t have the heart to discuss any of this with me for a few years. In fact, during the honeymoon season with our mother, this sibling would readily side with her against me so that it would appear that I was the ungrateful child of us all who never lifted a finger to assist our mother with anything.

However, what this sibling did not know, at the time, was how deceitful and treacherous our mother really is as a person, even though they’d experienced some of the fallout of our mother’s behaviors when we were children. It took them living with our mother to experience our mother’s narcissistic personality disorder for themselves. By the time this happened, they were too dumbfounded by the experience to speak about it. They, instead, chose to bear a lot of our mother’s narcissistic abuses against them in silence for a number of years before finally reaching out to me to vent about it.

My only recourse was to listen as a big sister would but offer some cautious words of advice. “Move her out! If you don’t, you’ll live to regret it over and over again. You won’t have any peace unless you move her out, and if she doesn’t move out, then you move out … and then move far away … preferably out of the state!” The sibling didn’t listen to me, though, because as a narcissist would, our mother got to them with a lot of love bombing. Plus, this sibling was deeply entrenched and entangled within a trauma bond with our mother.

As much as my sibling was frustrated with our mother’s behavior, they were also just as frustrated with me. Why were they frustrated with me? I would not get involved with the situation. I stayed out of it as much as I could without having to be present physically. I chose to stay out of it because I was no-contact with our mother. Although I wanted to support my sibling, I could not involve myself to the point that I evaded my own boundaries in the situation. If my sibling didn’t heed my cautious advice, then that was on them.

As crazy as it may sound, my sibling believed that I should take over and have our mother move in with me. The reasoning is that I’m the oldest, and I should have a share of the adulthood responsibilities of being there for our mother. That is an affirmative “NO!” I will absolutely not live with a narcissist! I absolutely refuse to live with my mother! She is allowed nowhere near me, and I will go nowhere near her.

Despite my sibling regarding my reaction as extreme, it is no different than their absolute desire to find our mother another place to live. That was nearly 7 years ago, and here we are now in the present with this sibling calling a workplace where I am no longer employed to find me, venting to our dad that he should make me do something, and voicing their opinions about the situation (according to my dad) to anyone who will read about it or even listen to on social media (which I no longer subscribe to anymore to protect my peace and sanity).

According to my dad, this sibling creates short videos which they later erase, proclaiming what an awful sister I am for not being there for our mother. Yet, the fact that I am not on social media and have no contact with people who know me that use it, leaves me with the feeling of “I don’t care”. I can’t hear nor read their opinions about me, and that makes me care even less. Even if I could hear and see what they’d have to say about all of this, no one knows the price I’ve paid to go no-contact and stay that way.

I could care less what anyone thinks anymore; I refuse to engage. Since cutting my mother off indefinitely, this has also come with cutting that particular sibling off and out of my life as well. Since they live together, calling the sibling is, inadvertently, calling my mother too. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to keep myself in the drama of dysfunction when I am striving to have peace?

I refuse to talk to my mother because I know her game. The “game” of communication is always the same. She speaks nicely and immediately devalues me and then attempts to manipulate me to get me to do what she wants. There is never any respect for my boundaries at all. So I refuse to engage. That has been the best and safest course of action for me to the dismay of my frustrated sibling and any other bystander who does not understand me.

On occasions in the beginning of my instituting no-contact, the sibling who lives with my mother would always put my mother on the phone on purpose to use me as a mediator of their arguments. Sometimes this sibling would put me on the phone to purposefully experience our mother’s narcissistic abuse. So, I decided to not only limit contact with the sibling, I decided to cut that sibling off altogether too. That was difficult, but despite my love for my sibling, I love my peace of mind and life without drama a lot more.

Someone might find my actions a bit extreme, but if you know what it’s like to deal with a narcissist, you’ll know that this is not as extreme as I could possibly take it. I still have contact with my dad. In fact, I could choose to cut my family out of my life altogether and give no one access, relocate from where I currently live to somewhere even further away, or completely change my identity to avoid contact with anyone. The latter has definitely been a thought even if extreme.

For the most part, much of my familial existence with my family is dead to me. Who I am now as a person is someone they do not even know. I don’t really even know them. The me right now refuses to engage and entangle myself in the drama. I just cannot do it. I no longer have the energy for it, and love has nothing to do with it. I desire and love peace, and I want to keep it. Rocking the boat is no longer an avenue I choose to take when it comes to dealing with narcissistic individuals. I don’t need to make any points with them.

All I want is for these types of narcississtic and toxic situations to remain dead to me.