I’m calling this the “Mom-pocalypse” – I didn’t uncover mom’s covert narcissism until I was 49 years old!
So, I won’t go over every nitty gritty detail of my youth, but there was this ever present feeling like I didn’t belong, like I was an outcast/outsider in my own family and extended family in Texas, where I grew up. My parents divorced when I was 15, and yes, HE was a narcissist, too – but there’s a silver lining coming, wait for it…
Once the divorce was final, my sister and I lived with my NM (narcissistic mother, but of course NOT knowing what narcissism was at this time). We were often left to fend for ourselves, the very definition of Gen X “latch key kids.” Once we were adults, my sister and I took very different paths – she dove into college and her career. I kind of aimlessly wondered for a bit, got into trouble, involved with drugs, etc. (I’ve since corrected those things when I became a father in 2000). Throughout the next couple of decades my mother remarried multiple times, and it just became accepted that THAT was how she was…
Fast forward to the COVID pandemic. My mother is living alone in a lake house that was willed to her by her final companion, so my sister and I did the “right thing” and moved her to my sister’s place in Washington.
During this time, my sister got all of us a 23andMe DNA Testing kit, just for fun. Well, my sister and I both took ours, but mom never got around to hers. The results come back, my sister and I are HALF siblings! So, the silver lining I mentioned earlier when speaking of NF (narcissistic father), was that he’s NOT MY REAL FATHER.
Turns out my real father is a well-traveled published novelist, is still alive, and I met him in 2022 in Orlando, FL. Turns out, he’s AWESOME! We speak weekly on the phone now.
Anyways, back to the subject at hand, we confront NM with this revelation, in a kind, loving manner, two months later on Christmas Eve (the results came back on Oct 27, 2021). She feigns ignorance and claims she didn’t know I wasn’t my sister’s father’s kid as well. I give her my real father’s phone number, so they can talk. I talked to my Dad (real one) a few days later – he relayed to me that in fact, she remembers everything regarding my conception. I still don’t know about narcissism at this point, so I let this go, whatever, she’s got her reasons, maybe she’s embarrassed? I know the truth, so I just ran with that at the time.
Skip forward to 2023, the house in Missouri is empty. My kids wanted to share expenses and all live together, so my son & I moved to the lake house with NM’s blessing. Well, the house is a disaster, and we had to “de-hoard” the house before there would even be room for my daughter and son-in-law.
Then in November of 2023 I get world changing news – I’m gonna be a GRANDPA! My daughter was pregnant w/my first grand baby! So now prepping the house is kicked into even higher gear, including getting some outside help to come help clear the junk out. We get it cleared, last load pulled out of the driveway 30 minutes before my daughter, son-in-law, and all their stuff arrived in Missouri on April 1, 2024.
Over the next few weeks, with the house now cleared of junk, we kept discovering more and more wrong with the house (that of course we weren’t told about) to the point we planned to find a rental nearby and move out.
IN THE MEANTIME up at my sister’s place in WA – my sister had been tolerating my NM living with her for THREE YEARS, RENT FREE, and causing chaos in her house. So she had asked NM to move back to her house in MO. NM agreed, and said she’d start saving up the money to pay for the move. She had ample time – more than six months’ notice.
So back to me and my kiddos at the lake house in MO – Mother’s Day 2024, my sister and I were texting, and my sister informs me she had spoken to HER Dad (NF I was raised by whom I already was no longer talking to as of Aug of 2021) – she told him I knew I wasn’t his son, to which he was SHOCKED – HE DIDN’T KNOW. Bombshell!
My sister had been doing her own “detective work” since NM was living with her, and just kept uncovering LIE after LIE after LIE – this bombshell was my sisters way of waking me up – and it worked. If NM could lie about something as big as my paternity, including lying to my now known to have been STEPFATHER, then she deserves ZERO TRUST.
I can’t even wrap my head around what she’s done. It was like my ENTIRE LIFE was a LIE. So, I then had a sit down with my kids, my son chose to stay, knowing NM was moving back to that house, but my daughter and son-in-law decided to backtrack and moved back to TX. I followed them back to TX initially, because I was NOT going to miss the birth of my granddaughter! Good thing I did, too – she was born ONE WEEK to the day after I got back to TX.
I’ll drop this tidbit at the end, NM’s final “screw you” as she realized the truth of her game was afoot. When the time came for her move, of course, she didn’t have the money – so my sister & brother-in-law had to foot the bill for her moving truck. And, of course, her car got left behind, so my sister and I had to split the cost to put her car on a flatbed and ship it to her. Sucks, but WORTH IT to give NM ZERO reason to show up on my sister’s doorstep again. My sister has already committed to calling police if she does show up somehow, and will have cops give her a “criminal trespass warning” – this means that if she shows up again, they can arrest her. We’ve all either blocked NM, or changed phone numbers. And the outcome of my son choosing to stay? NM started making HIS life difficult to get back at me and my sister for cutting her off. He ultimately had to be rescued from her and relocated with me to WA.
In an odd twist of fate, anyone who’s a Terminator fan will get this one. The date I drove up from TX to MO to rescue my son from NM was August 29th. In The Terminator franchise, that date is known as “Judgment Day” – that’s the date the family considers the official NO CONTACT date. Fate it seems, had a sense of humor! Sucks that my daughter is now 2k miles away, but as long as she’s safe from NM as well, all good (NM does NOT know where my daughter and grand baby are, just the state). Anywho, doing better now, but still have gloomy days – I’m sure it’ll get better over time, but the events of 2024 are a LOT to process! 😉