Growing up, even though I seemed to make lots of friends I just figured they didn’t know the real me. That’s what my mother had been telling me during my childhood, over and over: “They don’t really know you. They don’t live with you.” I heard it so much that I believed her. The best way to describe it is that I felt like a worm.
My grandmother shared a room with me and often spoke long into the nights about her life in Germany before coming to America. And Grandma didn’t seem to care much about my mother, whom I was told was an “unexpected” fourth child. My grandma called her “kid,” never Bea or Beatrice.
What I didn’t realize as a child was that my mother was jealous of my relationship with her mother, and because of that she treated me more like an annoying little sister than a daughter.
I remember when my grandma once give me underwear for my birthday, Mom whined like a six-year-old: “But you never got anything for me!”
Reality was skewed by my mother's constant put downs, dark looks and stern tones. Emotional neglect varied with emotional abuse and turned me into an emotional mess. By the time I left for college seven hours upstate, I felt so deep-down unlovable -- even unlikable, I feared that I would be shunned: the Mr. Hyde in me would emerge in the dormitory where I’d be living.
I shared a dorm room with a quiet girl from my high school named Eileen. She seemed to like me, but I figured that was because she was so studious that she didn’t notice me much.
Sorority pledge week came and passed, and of course I didn’t participate. Why bother? Who would want to live with me? I stayed in the dorm and read, hearing the excited squeals of new pledges echoing down the halls.
In the second semester of my freshman year I was invited to dinner at one of the sororities, and then again and again for the next few weeks, and I thought “What nice people.” One of the girls finally explained that they wanted me to pledge the sorority, and I walked back to the big dorm wondering if they would feel that way if they lived with me.
I was hard to convince, but I joined, despite what my mom had drilled in my head.
And when I moved to the sorority house the following September, the people I lived with seemed to like me just fine. They liked my enough in fact, that the second semester of my sophomore year they asked my to be president of the sorority the following year --as a junior --even though presidents were usually seniors.
And I became the president and I walked around with two pins with presidential gavels, one from my boyfriend who was elected president of his fraternity. Those gavels became my shield from the sting of words and angry tones when I returned to my house in Miami.
Which gets me back to the New Year’s resolution I made when I was 20 years old on a balmy January night, mid-twentieth century. I was home, sitting outside, and vowed that I would never again think of myself as a worm, never again let my mother’s put-downs define me.
And I never did.
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Comments
HUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Lezlie
Merry season and good coming year to you and yours Lea Lane :).
Rated for 'tis the season of thought.
I'm glad you triumphed in the end.
Best wishes for 2012.
r
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1215464/Why-I-loathe-feminism---believe-ultimately-destroy-family.html
But, we only get one mother, and mine died last year, and I now wish I had done many, many things different. I had to acknowledge my own pride kept me from having a better relationship with her, and I have deep regrets now that I did not try harder, and communicate more.
Thanks for sharing and Good Holidays to you and yours.
Enough with that rant.
My takeaway? That education and friends and social circles can do more than one would think to repair some of the damage of narcissistic parents.
School was always a savior for me. It was a safe place where I grew and felt supported. I'm glad you had the opportunity to expand past those early limitations that were imposed upon you. Sheesh, with your mom. Ugh.
I had totally forgotten that my mother would say -- they/she/he don't KNOW you 100 percent forgotten
arghghgh
you triumphed, and i am happy for that and for you!
rating you !
Alice said exactly that when She came across a six foot worm.
It's a wild era.
Lea Lane. Yes!
sent you on the PM what was deleted. Thanks for you response.
WE learn here!
Live and Let Live.
Let's act courteous.
A first comment stick.
Alexander Pope reads?
He wrote ref:`a Worm.
Who wouldn't Love You?
I forget what I wrote You.
I'll reread my "private" PM.
Eleanor Roosevelt
It's such a cold black hole when mothers are jealous of their daughters, or don't love them enough, or know how to show love...there comes a point where it's up to that resolution, glad to read about your journey there.
Happy New Year to you and yours!
and thanks for the interesting stories this year : )