The more I read about narcissistic parents, the more I feel like I have found It.
Exhibit A: http://www.alanrappoport.com/Co-Narcissism%20Article.pdf
Or at least, it’s Exhibit A for you, my Dear Readers. For me it’s more like Exhibit F, but who’s counting? I read it and thought, Yep, that’s me. That’s me down to my nail-bitten fingertips.
I suppose, at least now that I know that this is It, I have some way of going about fixing or addressing It. (By the way LJ, on the board I’ve been reading there are quite a few women who were adopted by narcissistic mothers, in case you are interested in reading the experiences of other people who found themselves in that situation.) And it’s the same kind of trajectory that I’ve been on for the past couple of years: figuring out what I want, what I value, giving myself permission to go after it, to advocate for myself, etc. It’s all hard but at least I know I’m on the right track.
My first impulse though is still, always, to–as the article says–orient myself around other people and what they want from me. I can feel myself doing it with ED (and now that he seems likely to stick around for a while and since the acronym bothers some of you, I’ll take proposals for replacements if you’ve got them). He wants to come over and, instead of asking myself if I want him to come over, I ask myself if that’s something I can give him or not. I’m catching it, though. That’s progress, isn’t it?
The BBQ was fun; he speaks Russian, and so do many of my neighbours, so he was outside firing up the BBQ and chatting them up in their native language while I got some work done on one of my articles. I called in to work with a migraine Thursday morning b/c I had three interviews scheduled that day (shhh) and couldn’t think of any other way to get them in, and he hung around and did some work at the same time.
There’s no good segue for the next bit. Let’s use subheadings, shall we?
Parking Adventure:
So, I’ve never been able to figure out where the visitor parking is at my apartment complex and he’s keen not to get his car towed so I had to figure it out, and I called that evening and the (very rude) lady who answered the phone said she’d tape a pass to the office door, and she did, and it said we should park underground so we went to move the car from the nearby mall lot, and thanks to the near-constant rain this summer there was a big muddy garden between the sidewalk and the car. ED moved as if he were going to pick me up and carry me over it, and I squawked.
“What?” he said. “You can’t get over it in those shoes.”
He had a point. I was wearing heels. Fairly high ones. Have I mentioned that even being tall and wearing fairly high heels, he’s still a bit taller than me? Have I mentioned that height is my one shallow thing? This makes me very happy. In any case, he had a point. Walking through a big muddy garden in very high heels would be messy.
“I can do it, and I want to, so let me,” he said.
So I did.
Then we moved it and found that the parking slip was wrong so we had to move it back, but hey: I actually let myself depend on someone else for a couple of minutes, and the world did not end.
I’m all gaga for the shoes and a strapping tall man carrying you over a puddle. Lovely!
Yes send the info my way! I’d be interested in reading it!
That article is awesome.
And I LOVE the thought of you being carried over the mud!
What they said!