The Early Years

My earliest memories of my father consist of playing with him when he would get home from work and going to the park with him on weekends. Only he ever took us to the park. My earliest memories of my mother consist of her reading to E-Sis and I at bedtime and her yelling at us. I also remember my parents yelling and fighting a lot with each other; NM places the blame for the fighting entirely on my father. They rarely fight now, mostly they just get irritated with each other, but when they do NM still attributes all the fault to my father. He is her favorite scapegoat (SG). It is worth noting he has confided him me he goes out of his way to avoid setting her off.

Since I have no memory of my infancy, I must speculate how NM treated me based upon how I have developed. For most of my life I am certain I did not have a secure attachment style, but rather a fearful-avoidant style as an adult. It has only become more secure in recent years through much work, growth, and also help from DH. Anyway, if a baby's needs are met well enough, secure attachment should develop. I suspect based on this and her behavior when I was a child that she was rather ignoring of me and my needs. As a narcissist her needs must have been and will always be more important than others' needs, even an infant's. My physical needs were met well enough, or I probably wouldn't have made it to adulthood, but my emotional and psychological needs were neglected.

As an example of ignoring behavior, I have almost no memories of her playing with me as a small child, aside from our bedtime routines like reading, even though I can remember playing with my father and E-sis from that time period. I can remember clearly coloring in coloring books with the housekeeper when we had one, but not with NM. I think there is a vague memory or two of doing so with her, but the fact I remember doing so clearly with the housekeeper more than once speaks volumes to me. I don't think she liked interacting with me more than she felt was necessary and playing together probably wasn't much of a necessity for her, even though it is for a small child. I remember NM making us clean and leaving us alone in our bathroom to do so with cleaning chemicals you don't typically leave unattended small children with. I remember she decided to let my hair grow out because it grew too fast for her to hassle with keeping it trimmed short. Once she made a new dish for dinner that I tried and hated; it wasn't one of those "I don't want to eat my vegetable" type of of things either. To me it tasted like vomit and I said as much. But she wouldn't let me leave the table and forced me to keep eating it. To this day cannot eat that dish, even when it is made without some particular ingredients that I have narrowed down as the causes of the vomit taste. I remember being hungry and trying to open a snack, but I couldn't and asked for help. She brushed me off to keep looking at whatever she was looking at, then she raged when I went to my room and slammed the door. These are all examples of ignoring behavior, in all cases her needs were more important than whatever I needed. Keep in mind that these are my early memories, from approximately ages three to five.

Oh, certainly there are good memories, especially her reading to me, but there are just so many bad ones. I don't mean to present a one sided account, but the bad far out weigh the good and this blog is not about the good. I don't need to write about the good memories to try and understand and process them. But I need to write about the bad ones. This mixture of these memories and later ones only demonstrates the inconsistency of NM's responses to me. Her responses to my needs swung between appropriate and neglectful depending on her moods/needs of the moment. My memories combined with my previous adult attachment style leads me to believe my attachment style as an infant would probably have been assessed as being insecure anxious-resistant, also known as ambivalent/resistant, and that I would have sub-classified as passive.