Still Life

Over these last few months I have been doing a lot of decorating/renovating work in the house. One thing that came to the surface, as I got on with this work, is how much I procrastinate when it comes to renovate things and how much resentment and irritation I feel over it. Thinking about it one day, I wondered where this came from, since - realistically speaking- renovating and replacing things that break is an unavoidable part of life. Why was it such an issue for me? When I dug a bit deeper, I realised that this was a learned behaviour, a flea from my FOO.  My parents never took any joy in doing anything in the house. Since they rent, their mentality was that there was no point in "making it nice just to leave it to the landlord", (which would make sense if they'd only been there a couple of years, but have now been living there for nearly 40 years.) As I thought about it further, it struck me how Ns are like a Still Life painting: they don't learn anything new, they don't grow or change, they remain exactly the same as they have always been. When I think of my relationship with them, it's the same. It has remained at the same point that it has always been (not better, not worse) since as far as I can remember, and that it's odd, because when I think of my relationship with my husband it is completely different: we have changed and we have grown together and though we still have things to work on as a couple, we are closer than we were when we started our relationship. And that's how it should have been with my FOO. But it's not, because they're like 'static beings', stuck in a loop of their own creation, where everything is always the same and remains the same. They keep the 'loop' constantly in motion so as to give the impression of 'moving', but the loop is like a merry-go-round: it moves fast, but doesn't go anywhere. 

They want their lives to look like a Still Life painting because that's what they live for: a "perfect" picture of themselves. Except that that only remains the same in the painting, the fruit the painter captured went on to rot eventually. In Spanish, the term for 'Still Life' is 'Dead Nature'. I wouldn't have put it better myself. 



Naturaleza muerta

"Thy truth, then, be thy dower."

        Yesterday afternoon I was watching a documentary about Shakespeare's play "King Lear". It's part of a series called "My Shakespeare", in which well-known actors explore some of his plays. As I started to listen to actor Christopher Plummer relate the story of King Lear, it struck me that I knew nothing about that particular play. Considering my passion for literature, how on earth did I make it to my forties without not even knowing the basic plot? I don't know how it has escaped me for so long... but I digress... 
         In the first scene, Plummer relates, King Lear tells his daughters he is going to divide the kingdom in three parts: "the portion each daughter will get depends on how eloquently they say they love him."

KING LEAR
Tell me, my daughters,—
Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state,— 
Which of you shall we say doth love us most? 

Plummer continues: "King Lear is hoping to give the best portion to his youngest and favourite daughter, Cordelia. But he has miscalculated the family dynamics." The dialogue that followed blew me away, see if the dynamics look familiar to you too. 

KING LEAR
Goneril,
Our eldest-born, speak first.

GONERIL
Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter; 
Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty; 
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour; 
As much as child e'er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable; 
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.


CORDELIA  [Aside.] 
What shall Cordelia do? Love, and be silent. 

LEAR
What says our second daughter,
Our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall? Speak. 

REGAN 
I am made of that same mettle as my sister, 
And prize me at her worth. In my true heart
I find she names my very deed of love; 
Only she comes too short, that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys, 
Which the most precious square of sense possesses,
And find I am alone felicitate
In your dear Highness' love. 


KING LEAR
Now, our joy, 
Although our last and least, to whose young love 
The vines of France and milk of Burgundy 
Strive to be interess'd; what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

CORDELIA 
Nothing, my lord.

KING LEAR
Nothing? 

CORDELIA 
Nothing. 

KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing, speak again. 

CORDELIA
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth, I love your majesty
According to my duty, nor more nor less. 

KING LEAR 
How, how, Cordelia? mend your speech a little,
Lest it may mar your fortunes.

CORDELIA
Good my lord, 
You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I 
Return those duties back as are right fit, 
Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry 
Half my love with him, half my care and duty: 
Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, 
To love my father all.

KING LEAR 
But goes thy heart with this? 

CORDELIA
 Ay, good my lord. 

KING LEAR 
So young, and so untender? 

CORDELIA
So young, my lord, and true. 

KING LEAR 
Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower!

Cordelia's predicament is the predicament of every ACoN. She stands her ground and refuses to give flattery and adulation, even if it means losing everything, and that is the predicament that we find ourselves in too. When King Lear says: "Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower", I heard it as if King Lear was speaking to me directly and not to Cordelia. I understood the meaning as if it had been said to me too. And then it dawned on me that it has been said to me: it's the "unspoken" dialogue that takes place between Narcissistic parents and their child who refuses to worship them. The words are never uttered, but the message is transmitted, nonetheless, and it hangs loud and clear over the child. It's a form of meta-communication which every ACoN understands perfectly. 

Very well, then, if that's what it takes: "let my truth be my inheritance"

Winter's Bone

             Last night I watched the film "Winter's Bone". Though it was painful and bleak, quite brutal even, I thought it was a very accurate allegory of the emotional life of ACoNs. I related so much to the 17 year old character "Ree", who has to look after her mentally ill mother and her two younger siblings, with her father gone and hardly any help from anyone around her. To her "having a family", even an extended family that in reality not only amounted to no family at all, but did damage to her as well. And isn't just that the emotional landscape that we ACoNs grow up with? With a mother who is not a mother, a father who is emotionally absent, and having to be the emotional "parent"to your siblings (and sometimes your parents as well) without any help, any guidance or any support. 

             What is so striking about the film is how all the adults in the film are not adults at all. Most of them are on drugs and unable to be "present" for her or to offer any assistance. All they can give is "scraps". She outshines them all in maturity, common sense and sensibleness. They have nothing to offer her (emotionally) because they are all in such a mess themselves and can't get out, let alone help her. You know how we all grew up hearing about how we should listen to "older ones" because of them having more experience on life? When I was in my late twenties/early thirties I felt that there was no one to go to for answers because they "older" ones seemed to be in a bigger mess (emotionally speaking) that I was, and how could they help me? One of them even said to me: "You're working things out in your thirties that we're only now working out (in our sixties)". When she said that, I thought: "What hope is there for me then, if the ones that are suppose to show me the way, haven't got a clue themselves?"

The adults being on drugs represented to me how all the adults in my FOO (including my extended FOO) were "hooked" on Narcissistic Supply. TR has a brilliant post about how NS is a form of drug addiction (see http://inbadcompanyinc.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/narcissist-supply-one/ ) The kids (I'm including cousins here) don't get a look in because all the attention is going in the direction of the adults. Because of this, the cousins don't develop close connections among themselves either. 

Though the film is very raw and certainly not for the faint hearted, I found Ree's character inspiring: her tenacity and determination to push past all the obstacles she faces, and on her own strength; her self-respect in how she refuses to lower herself to their level; her dignity in how she says to her little brother: “Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”  

I don't know if the film depiction of the people who live in the Ozarks was accurate or not, but as a depiction of the struggles of a teenager to survive among adults who don't know what they're doing, is spot on. 

Dark Humour

On Monday eve I learned of a new "batch" of accusations coming from BiL. When I looked at these accusations closely (without JADEing) I realised that -unwittingly- he had given away that when it comes to a particular feud we've been having over the last 4 years, it is Game Over, and he has lost. 

On Tuesday morning, I was telling a friend about the situation and after I put the phone down, a phrase "popped" in my head: "I will dance Flamenco upon your grave". This phrase came out of nowhere. I was puzzled by it, but I faintly remembered this "I will dance upon your grave" being a song. So I googled it, and sure enough, there it was: on good old faithful You Tube. When I saw it, it all came back to me. This was a song from a Spanish Ska Punk band from the 80s that some of my friends were into. When I listened to the lyrics, I thought: "What do you know, it turns out that my brain does dark humour and I didn't even know it". Because the words of the song are very dark indeed, even if the music is peppy. When this song came out I would have been around 15/16 years old and the meaning of it would have been way over my head. You listened to songs and sung them out loud without giving hardly any thought to whatever it meant, or why it was written. However it looks like the person who uploaded the song to You Tube got what it was about, because he put the following dedication with it:

"With love and from the heart to all those who try (UNSUCCESSFULLY) to make our everyday life misery... ;) " 

He obviously has dark humour too ;). Fascinating how the brain works, for to bring up a song that I had not listened to for more than twenty years and that was not even from one of the bands that I liked, it's amazing.

As I went to bed, something about this song kept bugging me, because though being written in a tongue-and-cheek way, it is pretty awful. The lyrics go something like (it doesn't make a lot sense in English, but bear in mind that in the original song all the endings rhyme) :

"I will kill you with my tap dance shoes,
I will choke you with my ballet dress,
I will hung you with my dinner jacket, 
and you will die while the DJ laughs, 
and I will dance upon your grave.

I will slaughter you with a sharp vinyl record,
A Rolling Stones one or maybe the Shadows',
You will choke with a collection of cassette tapes, 
the Shangril-las one or the Ronettes, 
and I will dance upon your grave".

It bothered me because I don't really feel that way about my BiL. As I was falling asleep, I had a lightbulb moment: my feelings about the song aren't about how I feel about BiL and my sister, it's about my "killing" their "power" to upset me. AH! That made so much more sense, and if you re-read the song, as if it was talking about killing the power/control/influence someone has or had over you, it sounds completely different.

So yes, their "power" to disturb my peace is dead, and I WILL dance upon its grave. :)

Is Not About The Nail

Sometime last year, DH sent me a video called: "It's not about the nail" which shows a woman complaining to her husband that all her sweaters are getting ruined when she puts them on. The husband can see that she has a nail on her forehead and that is the cause of her problem, but he's not "allowed" to tell her because he's meant (I guess) to be sitting there listening empathetically rather than offering solutions. (I can't say that I relate much to that way of thinking because I am the sort of person that if I am talking about a problem I want SOLUTIONS. I don't want the: "Oh dear, there..there..." -which by the way, my MiL used to do whenever I shared a problem with her and always left me frustrated. I don't share my quandaries with her anymore.) 

Anyway, the other day I was thinking about the way Ns throw flimsy accusations at you as if you had committed the worse crime in the history of mankind (i.e. "mom gave you a package for me and you didn't deliver for six months!!!!"), and you stand there perplexed, wondering why even when you explain that "it wasn't six months, it was a month and I couldn't deliver it earlier because all the roads being snowed under", it does nothing to abate their anger. And that's when I had the lightbulb moment that when it comes to Ns: it's never about the nail. Or, in other words, it's never about what they say it is, because if it was, it would be resolved the second you explain it to them, like it does with normal people. See, in reality, they're not bringing up the accusation to get an explanation, they're just looking for stuff to "throw" at you, so they can "make" you look like the bad guy while making themselves look like the "victim". 

One of the most classic examples of this is the well-known story of Satan accusing Job of only serving God for what he got out of it. After it gets proved beyond any doubt that Job was serving God genuinely, there is absolutely no acknowledgement on Satan's part that he was wrong about Job. And isn't this exactly the same that Ns do, when they're confronted unequivocally with their accusation being wrong/mistaken or inaccurate? There is never ANY acknowledgement on their part that they were wrong. 

So next time we're thrown a wild accusation by a Narc, let's remember that is not about the accusation, and let's focus on how to protect ourselves and get out of their presence as quickly as possible.

Parade's End

Ever since I learned about Narcissism, I have really struggled to see the difference between selfish and narcissistic. Maybe it's because all the selfish people in my every day life are also narcissistic. However, last week I watched the period drama "Parade's End" and I understood. In the story, there is a character, Sylvia Tietjens, who is selfish, manipulative and cruel, but as far as I could see, a narcissist she is not. There is something brutally honest about the way she doesn't even try to pretend she is anything she's not, and as awful as she is, at least, she's not deceiving herself. I can see that there is hope that someone like that would change, (not that they necessarily would - and indeed, in the story she does not) but a person who does not even admit that they're living for an "image" of themselves that doesn't exist, how can they possibly change?  

A Fight To The Death

After refusing to go along with my mother's request command last night, I found this article, completely by fluke. It fits the situation I found myself in very well. Although the writer's focus is on romantic relationships, the principle applies equally to other types of relationships: 

When someone's imposing something upon you, they're trying to remove your choice (and overstepping your boundaries)

She makes the point that: 

"Imposers dress up their boundary busting behaviour and demands as 'requests'. Just say no and then you'll see that they were never asking..."

Yes, that's exactly it: "they were never asking". It was a command, albeit a 'disguised' one. Saying no is like challenging Darth Vader to a fight to the death, because then comes the change of tone, the anger and the sulking. And their sending you the non-verbal message that they.are.not.happy.with.you AT ALL. I'm starting to suspect that these 'requests' are not just about getting NS but also an exercise of their power. It's a power struggle. So every now and then they come up with something they want you to do just to see if you'll do it and reassure themselves that they still have the 'upper hand' (i.e. power/control over us). Because if this was simply a suggestion or a request, there would be no issue when we say no, but that is never the case, is it?

I feel like I'm back 5 years ago, at the time when I had started to say no to my sister, and now I'm about to go through the same process with my mother all over again. I wonder what will be revealed if I continue to refuse her suggestions orders. Watch this space...