Narcissistic Mother

This is a vent. My mother is dead.

But I just read a comment about a narcissistic mother in another thread, and it prompted me to vent. The other commenter quoted her narcissistic mother as saying, "I don't remember doing that," "You must be exaggerating," "It never happened." Narcissistic mothers must all be stamped from the same mold because this is my mother verbatim.

She was very beautiful (Hollywood beautiful). Unbelievably, she was beautiful lying in her coffin. She was very talented in a number of areas. She had lots of friends. She even got a Mother of the Year award once. I admired her and wanted to be as beautiful, thin, popular, and talented as she was.

But she NEVER once apologized and nothing was EVER her fault. Ever. I can't remember one time. She was highly critical of physical appearance to the point of near insanity. She abused my sister horribly her whole life because she was a slightly chubby child. She once said to me that my shoulders were too narrow! She was harsh with my youngest sister too. Anything we children did well belonged to her, and her concept of personal boundaries was poor.

She was rather horrible to my father because he, too, was a bit chubby. Why she married into an Italian family with short people who were not particularly thin is a mystery. I guess she was rather stupid about genetics. He also was part of the problem. If he tried to comfort us once by saying that she was the way she was because she was an only child he must have said it a hundred times. I think one way he dealt with her was to make himself scarce by working 60+ hours a week.

Even though she has been dead since 2019, two things remain. The chubby sister is now at 65 extremely overweight and I think this is because of my mother's abuse. She still hates my mother, which is understandable.

But rather than deal with the effects of the psychological abuse, she turns her anger on me. I look a bit like my mother and she says that I sound like my mother both in the sound of my voice and the words I use. We usually get along but when she's unhappy (not necessarily with me) she uses me as a whipping girl for her unhappiness. She'll do things like hiss at me, "You sound just like Mother."

Worse than this, though, is that I most likely had bipolar disorder as a child. One of the things you don't want a bipolar child to have is a narcissistic parent.

Also, I suspect her narcissism was at the root of my parents' constant fighting. This included yelling and screaming, things being thrown, my mother driving away. Another thing you don't want a bipolar child to have is constant trauma.

I have bipolar disorder with complications that include phobias and generalized anxiety. The bipolar I was born with. I think the severity and the complications were dumped on my head by a narcissistic mother and an absent father.

It has been good for me to read about others' experience with narcissistic mothers even though I mourn each and every person who's had to suffer it. So, if you've read this, thanks for a chance to vent.