Really Bad Parents

Had another episode with my narcissistic adoptive father.

I wrote about it at my other blog, www.narcissisticparents.blogspot.com.

And I was just picking myself up and dusting myself off...preparing to work on a project...when he calls and complains that I'd goofed by sending him the wrong brand of chocolate covered raisins. He was pretty steamed.

I have to be honest.

If I just hear the words, "chocolate covered raisins," one more time I'm gonna scream. The man has me sending him candy shipments almost every week. If I wasn't afraid of taking the express elevator to hell, I'd wish he'd choke on a fucking chocolate raisin and release me from my misery.

William F. Buckley just died and he didn't have half of what ails my adad. Why do all the mean people live so darned long?

But here's the deal.

After that encounter, I felt worthless. I'd just been taken out by a parental figure of authority and told off. Doesn't matter if I'm middle aged. Doesn't matter if he's losing it and over 80. It's the father-daughter dynamic and he's once again just told me how useless I am.

No surprise. I then felt useless. And I couldn't work on my project. I slumped into a depressive episode and took a nap. It zapped the life out of me. And this is after therapy. I'm aware of the triggers and I do my darned best to emotionally detach. But this stuff is hard.

And, by the way, I'm fully aware of the repetition of this theme in my posts.

As you can read, it just keeps happening! Today I made the mistake by returning his agitated call...just wanting to get it over with. In retrospect, I should have called AFTER my work was done. Or not have called back at all. Maybe there's a masochistic, martyr element to being the adult child of a narcissist. The adaptive role of enabler?

Having a narcissistic parent is a lifelong nightmare.

Being handed over to a narcissistic adoptive parent is like handing over a sacrificial lamb to a monster with an insatiable appetite for braised shanks. I was handed over 47 years ago and I'm still paying the price. Thanks social worker!

Honestly, testing for narcissistic traits should be one of the first things that social workers do when checking out prospective adoptive parents. Besides making sure they aren't criminals.