Good Grief!

Who knew grief could be so good?

Certainly not plesant, but liberating.

So here's what happened:

Two weeks after meeting my birthmother I woke up sad. I mean, REALLY sad. It seemed to come out of nowhere. One day fine. Next day, so down in the dumps I didn't want to talk to anyone and in the middle of the day burst into tears and had a good, hard long cry. Very dramatic. For me. The sadness lingered for days.

The gloom finally lifted. And then I realized I'd never felt that way before. Ever.

And then came the anger. Okay, rage. Pissed off at my mother for using her sick 15-year old daughter as an excuse not to keep me (learned my mother hadn't taken care of her in years as she'd moved in with an aunt), pissed off at the social worker who didn't do a better job screening my adoptive parents, furious with my self-absorbed a-parents for stealing my childhood and making me their emotional caretakers.

Sadness and anger.

Two emotions I was NEVER allowed to express in my adoptive home.

Once I allowed myself to experience the grief that my mother did not keep me, to feel the utter sadness and bleakness of this fact, I realized this was a totally new emotion. I don't think I ever felt sad before. Not in a real, honest, visceral way.

When the worst had passed, I was able - in stages - to feel better until I was finally happy. Really happy. The sun came out and the air smelled fresh, met a friend for lunch and we enjoyed a great gossip. Later, I'm going out with my 14-year old daughter and friends, then I have a hot tub date with my husband. I mean, what a great day!

So why why why was I so cut off from these two emotions?

Two reasons:

1) adoption related issues; no need to explain, right?

2) Narcissistic parents.

Since I've picked on my Dad so relentlessly in this blog, I'll use my mother as an example. Besides, I can remember it so clearly, probably because my oldest daughter is the same age as I was when this happened: 16.

My steady boyfriend broke up with me, triggering major abandonment issues. Of course, I didn't realize that's what it was at the time. But I was distraught and panicked.

Where does a boy break up with a girl back in the late seventies? His mustang, of course, parked at the curb. I run inside my house, choking back the sobs. And then, just as I was winding up to let loose, my mother sees my face. Her eyes widen in alarm. She asks what happened.

At this point, I can't keep it together and can hardly get the words out because I'm sniveling and hiccuping and gasping and flailing about.

So she slaps me. Not really hard but enough to get me stop. "How dare you scare me like that!" she yells. "I thought something bad had happened to you, like you were raped or something. Don't you know what you did to me? Scaring me like that? How dare you. For Gods sake, he's just a boy. Who cares. Get over it. He was just using you anyway."

So much for a shoulder to cry on.

To keep the peace, I had to swallow my tears and go to my room and be quiet. If she saw red eyes or kleenex, she'd launch into a lecture about what I was putting her through with my dramatics.

As I've mentioned before, she had a similar reaction to questions about my adoption. "Why do you want to know about her? She's not your real mother. I am. Don't you know what you're doing to me?"

This was my mother's favorite refrain: "Don't you know what you're doing to me?" It was said every time I showed the faintest signs of pain or anger or, God Forbid, disagreement.

To survive, I had to be if not happy, at least compliant and devoid of any scary emotions that might upset my mother. Did I mention I was lonely? An only child stuck with parents who were incapable of empathy.

One has to realize one's parent(s) are narcissists before one can even begin to get in touch with the person trapped inside. Where else did she have to go except underground?

And here's one of the most disturbing things. That narcissism isn't some rare, pathological affliction. I think we could form armies and take over the world if we children of narcissists ever decided to get together. And what would our war cry be? "Empathy for one and all?" "Death to narcissists?"