Alcoholic Narc Parent

[Agnes]

I grew up in the 70’s with parents who partied and pretty much left us kids to raise ourselves. After they divorced when I was about 7, I lived Witt my mom until I moved out at 18. I grew up feeling like she literally owned me. I used to tell myself she was just psychic and controlling because of how much she worries. I have always felt like a human doing and not a human being, with no voice, no right to exist, etc. My mother has always had a flair for the dramatic and doesn’t what she wants, even with nearly 40 years of being clean and sober. She does not have emotional sobriety. No matter how much she works on herself, she just can’t see past her own self interest. My kids have pulled away from her and it’s an everyday miracle that I still talk to her. As I work through my divorce with a covert narc husband and learn about all this, I see that she primed me for these types of relationships. She bought a house 3 homes down from me a year after I bought my first house. I was amazed at the lack of respect… but not really. To this day I cannot stand to have her touch me or try to compliment me. I engage her to help or visit mostly because I’m now her only child and she is aging. I can’t not love her because she’s my mom, but I cringe in her presence and now enforce very strong asshole boundaries with her. She is poison, and she is my mom. Sometimes I secretly wish her health would take a turn and that her end would come sooner than later so that I wouldn’t have her still working her claws into me. It’s awful, and I’ve never said that, but it would be a tragic relief. I feel like something is very wrong Witt me for saying that! I know it’s just a consequence of the abuse and neglect and manipulation and disrespect.
Relateable?

Topic

[Rebecca]

Very relateable, not your fault, and not awful of you at all.
Wish you were still here so I could still talk to you, but you’re probably not since this was three and a half years ago. (Darn it. Sounds like you and I would have had a lot to talk about.)
To me she sounds maybe more like histrionic rather than narcissist. (The show-off, dramatic aspect of her, in particular. Although I could see how that could be narcissistic too. But if she is the queen of drama queens and everything is all drama, drama, drama to her, then I’m kind of thinking histrionic.)
Whatever her problem is, or whatever her problems are, good luck with everything, you’ll probably need it.
Hope everything works out okay in the end. (Or at the very least, better than it has been.)
Really wish there were more people here at these boards to talk more about these things.
(Hey, if anyone comes along who is wishing the very same thing, please do feel free to let me know.)
Putting out a message in a bottle here today just in case there is ever anyone here to answer it.
Good luck to everyone with any similar difficulties.
Hugs.
Have a better life, in the future, if you possibly can.

[Author]

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