In 1983, I received orders from the US Army. I was to be stationed the entire next year in South Korea, separated from my then-wife and infant son. My wife and I decided to find an apartment for the two of them in my home town, where she could work during my year overseas. Fortuitously (I thought when I learned of it) my step-father and mother were planning an upcoming two-week vacation without my 15 year-old half-sister (because she'd be in school). I asked my mother if my immediate family could stay in their guest room during that vacation, in order to apartment hunt (I assumed they would welcome an adult and car for errands and emergencies). "No," I was told. "Your sister has been promised unsupervised-use of the house. Her boyfriend has a car."
Wow. Unexpected financial stress (paying for a motel in my hometown while four bedrooms sit empty in my family's house) combined with parental favoritism (always visible, rarely this overt) and jealousy (rarely an unsupervised hour when I was in high school...but she's permitted a fortnight) became anger. Sticky anger.
Over the next several years I didn't reply to the handful of letters sent by my mother or step-father—all I recall in the letters was their ruminations on my lack of religion and their lack of an apology. During those years I divorced my then-wife, my sons were adopted by her second husband, I married a Korean woman, and completed a few more overseas and stateside tours. Eventually (six years later, in 1989) I wrote my mother and step-father and asked to visit and introduce my second-wife to them.
Using racist verbiage, the gist of my mother's answer: 'You are welcome. She is not'.
Which caused my anger to avalanche.
Many years later (in the 1990s) after realizing my mother's bigotry only explained the last few years of our estrangement, I chuckled-to-myself over the memory of that long-forgotten sticky anger (from 1983) and pondered how those years may have been different if I hadn't stopped communicating with them.
Had I only been angry because my immediate family member(s) were never welcome in my parents home? Did I hold my anger because my mother and step-father never apologized? Would one have occurred without the other? If I'd never expressed anger and never expected apologies, would those decades have been estrangement-less?
Is the party who causes someone else to be angry always responsible for an apology? Is someone else getting angry at you sufficient reason to be angry back? If so, who should apologize first? How do insincere apologies fit-in here? Does just blurting the word 'sorry' (like a bed-wetting preschooler) ever suffice for anything more serious than accidentally stepping on someone's toes? If not (most have a keen eye for hollow apologies) how does one clearly and concisely communicate one's contrition? If one is not sorry for feeling anger at the above described decades-long series of being treated terribly by a parent, as I was, what is the fix?
Over the decades I've come to realize that, for my mother, it's always others who are unreasonable and always those same others who express unwarranted anger—while she never has reason for apologies.
Which has taught me I'm not so much my mother's son—I can, and do, say I'm sorry.
I wrote the above paragraphs of this essay in 2010. I was unaware what a covert-vulnerable narcissist was at that time. As a teenager, I knew my younger sister was a classic narcissist, but did not know covert narcissism existed nor that my mother had all the traits of a covert narcissist my entire life.
When someone asks me to explain "the benefit of knowing psychiatric labels" I tell this story. Knowing that my mother's behavior can be objectively detailed—as it fluctuated over the years between that of an un-diagnosed sociopath (glib charm, need to control, no conscience) and an un-diagnosed narcissist (no empathy, no remorse, manipulative, pathological liar)—removes my response to her behaviors from the equation. "Bad parent" explains nothing; "my mother is a narcissistic-sociopath" fills in all the blanks. It also provides insight as to why we have been on-and-off estranged for 40+ years: when I would point out her traits, she would terminate contact until enough years would pass that I would re-initiate contact and begin the cycle over. That ended when I "discovered" her mental disorder.
I can feel maudlin or morose when I see, or hear about, people enjoying the company of their extended family—it's a form of envy; a recognition of something missing in my life. But, then I focus on the decades of intentionally non-harmonious behavior which was always on theatrical display, by every one of my blood relatives, and smile in recognition that it's all behind me.
Because the answer to all the rhetorical questions I posed to myself (above, ten years ago) is that none of it was ever my fault; her fake anger and constant lies were all acts of manipulation.
Someone with no conscience and no empathy can never "miss" the bonding of extended family any more than the computer I am typing on misses me when I turn it off. My mother has never thought about any of her family members when they are not either sitting in front of her (because they came to visit her, never her-them) or on the other end of a phone (because they called her, never her-them). If she ever initiated contact, it was with hate-filled chaotic manipulation as her goal. Learning how her mind works effectively de-fanged and de-clawed the paper tiger.
To sorrow I bade good-morrow, and thought to leave her far away behind; but cheerily, cheerily, she loves me dearly...she is so constant to me, and so kind. — John Keats
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