My mum's a narcissist like the one in Amandaland
It was what they call in the trade “a breakthrough”. I’d been in therapy for a few months when I happened to mention something as an aside, a throwaway comment as part of a different point. It takes a lot for a therapist to use the N word, but this did it. “I need you to know that this is not normal,” he said, holding his hand up to stop me mid-flow. He fixed me with a firm, unblinking stare as I struggled to understand what he meant.
The anecdote that prompted his dramatic intervention was about my mother. How she hadn’t spoken to me all day on my 18th birthday, because she was so hurt and furious that I hadn’t given her a card to recognise her 18th anniversary of being a mum. Reminder: it took an outside source to let me know this was unusual behaviour. To me, it was par for the course. Obviously, my birthday would be at least as much, if not more, about her than about me.
Like the eponymous main character in Motherland spin off Amandaland, my mum is a narcissist – and it took me 40 years to even realise this was a problem, let alone do anything about it. “I often say there are four pillars to narcissism,” says Dr Ramani Durvasula, clinical psychologist and author of It’s Not You: Identifying And Healing From Narcissistic People. “Lack of empathy, grandiosity, a chronic sense of entitlement and a chronic need to seek out admiration from other people and validation from other people.”
She goes on to explain that narcissistic parents are not tuned into their children: “the narcissistic parent largely views the child as an object with which to satisfy his or her needs. They view their kids as an extension of themselves.”
Narcissists have charisma by the bucketload and my mum can be absolutely charming, funny and spontaneous. I would probably think she was great if I met her at a party. As a primary caregiver and nurturer, however, she was somewhat lacking.
She was a successful career woman, a staunch feminist but she often forgot to pick me up from primary school. Sometimes I’d be waiting until 5pm. It was dark in the winter. It was an unspoken no-no to have a problem of my own, with her getting so caught up in work that she lost track of time. Many children of narcissists struggle with confidence, which I massively relate to. Your own mother completely forgetting you exist – regularly – doesn’t exactly do wonders for your self-esteem.
My mum was too busy, too engaged with more important matters, to read boring little letters from the school, so I never had a packed lunch on a school trip, or the signed form, or my P.E kit. Back then, if you forgot it, you had to do the lesson in your vest and pants, so I did, over and over again. It never occurred to me to be cross with her about this, or complain, or cry, insist she did better. This was just how it was.
On the other hand, there was no separation between us. It was like I was her right arm, with about as much agency. I had no opinions of my own, either we liked something, or we didn’t. “You’re just like me!” she’d tell me, constantly. She demanded to know everything about my life, I wasn’t allowed secrets or privacy. She read my diary, never making any effort to hide her snooping, because why would she? In her eyes, it was her diary, once removed.
It didn’t stop when I left home – if anything, she dug her claws in deeper, to stop me getting too far away. Every job I considered applying for I had to run past her first, because if the position wasn’t something she could boast about to her friends there was no point in me holding it.
Frustrated by my struggle to meet a nice man, she posted a fake profile of me on a dating website and vetted all matches. When she found someone she liked, she confessed all to him (over lunch) and then conspired with him so we bumped into each other in a pub she knew I was going to for a friend’s birthday. Infuriatingly, I went out with him three times. More infuriatingly, I only know any of this because he told me. When I confronted her, she laughed, and then got cross – how dare I mind! Someone had to be proactive about my disastrous romantic life.
Yet unbelievable as it may seem, till I began therapy in my late 30s, I had never considered my mum’s behaviour an issue. She was the only mother I’d ever had, and this was what she was like. Slowly and gently, my therapist helped me realise that I am my own person, not an extension of her, just here to amuse and entertain her. I am allowed – bombshell! – my own life.
Now I have boundaries, I choose what I’m prepared to share with her, and when, rather than allowing her an access-all-areas pass to everything. She sees this as us not being as close as we were, and is angry with me about it. On my more magnanimous days I can empathise with that, but there’s no way I’d ever go back to how things were before.
Self-awareness isn’t her strong point, so my mum has no idea she’s a narcissist. She believes she’s been a perfect mother – she regularly reminds me how lucky I am to have her, and to have enjoyed such a blissful childhood. My therapist thinks there’s little point trying to make her see the truth, she would never be able to comprehend or accept it. Plus she’s never going to change.
I have two daughters of my own now. I’m the annoying one on the class WhatsApp who always knows the dates of the trips and inset days, and in my daughters’ bags is everything they could possibly need come rain, shine, hurricane and everything in-between. If there is a zombie apocalypse, they will have the right shoes for it. I’m the first at the school gates for pick-up every day, embarrassingly early by anyone else’s standards but a source of pride for me. This is my greatest revenge. I’m not just like her at all.
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