A Major Shift In My Perspective: My Mother – Part 1

Maybe it’s considering that life is much shorter than I once knew since I feel like I’m aging at a rapid pace. Maybe it’s considering how I’m a lot like my mother in terms of various behaviors. Outwardly, my mother has always been known for her outer beauty. From as far as I can remember, it was always the first physical trait anyone would notice about her.

I’ve even considered how my mother and me are not that much different in terms of characteristics as it pertains to quirks and modes of operating with people, and I’ve come to see a lot of her in me, even in terms of looks. I don’t have her beauty, but I do resemble her enough to where one former colleague who knew her well would say I looked a lot like her. Needless to say, I’d often shrink back from what should have been a compliment because of how dissociated I wanted to remain from her.

In a past that doesn’t seem all that long ago, I’d often distance myself from the similarities I saw within myself that reminded me of my mother. I didn’t want to be like her in any way – especially the narcissistic parts of her character. Yet, as if I didn’t realize before, the more I learn about autism and how it affects me and my life, the more I realize that I inherited similar autistic traits from my mother! I’d never truly considered this before because I was trying to avoid being a narcissist.

Despite always seeing those autistic traits within my mother, I was often very confused by them because, on the one hand, my mother could be (and still is) a very calculating person. I’ve always discerned that when she did wrong against me and my siblings or anyone else, she always knew what she was doing. She was a planner by design and by any means necessary, and she always stayed one step ahead of anyone she made a target.

In essence, my mother is a very crafty and intelligent woman, but I would always marvel at the fact that she could seem very docile, childlike, oblivious, and meek at the same time. It was so confusing for me as a child, but even into adulthood I couldn’t make sense of this. Although she was cunning at manipulation, in fact, the best manipulator I’ve known to date, the behaviors that weren’t at all narcissistic would always throw me for a loop and make her not seem like much of a manipulator at all. It just never made sense.

Up until I began doing research on narcissistic personality disorder, I’d always dealt with the spiritual aspects of my mother’s behaviors. I knew changes within her existed based on what I’d see in her eyes. Since the eyes are said to be the windows of the soul, her eyes were the only indication for me to know who or what I was dealing with when it came to a lot of her often sinister behaviors. Mind you, she wasn’t always behaving in sinister mode, which is why I often peered deeply into her eyes when she didn’t know I was watching her. I knew if I saw the sign of an entity (or entities), I was dealing with channels of her narcissistic behavior full on and strong.

I am only speaking from my personal experience here. So I don’t want anything I say to be taken as a fact for all narcissists. I don’t know all narcissists. I only know the ones I’ve personally dealt with, but I do know the eyes, and I’ve always recognized and discerned what I saw within them. I do know when I’m dealing with something far more sinister than the disorder of narcissistic personality itself.

When the eyes of a narcissistic individual I knew would go dark, or even jet black in color, or there’s a darty look of fear or shiftiness within the eyes, I knew there was something far more going on than a personality disorder. This change in appearance also includes a change in the tone and sound of voice to the point I would often do a double take to make sure I realized who I was communicating with at the time. It was never solely the individual.

Not every narcissistic individual I’ve encountered has displayed dark eyes or voice changes, but all the narcissists I’ve known have, and I actually have experienced these as real things that I could neither unsee nor unhear during the occurrences. In fact, I wholeheartedly believe that according to Ephesians 6:12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”, but you can take that as you will.

Those times where it appeared that my mother was calm and even helpless, I knew I was dealing with a true aspect of her actual personality. Oddly, I always felt like her true self was ‘masked’ in some way … that I was dealing with a different person where she was concerned, and I was often unsure of who I was going to get. The deeper she seemed to be in her narcissistic mode, the less I got to experience the actual person of my mother. It seemed that true moments with my ‘real’ mother was rare, and when I did experience them, I now look back and know I was experiencing actual characteristics of myself as an autistic!

Stay tuned as I delve into more about what I’ve been discovering about my mother, myself, and our dynamics in the next post.