Family Narcissism

I always thought that when my parents died we would bury the narcissism with them. I was dead wrong! My sister seems to have embodied the very characteristics not worth emulating.

But then I remind myself that I escaped the family regime and my siblings did not. How many families are like this?

I'm reminded of the two brothers in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. This is how it is for my sister and me.

She wears our mother's clothes and talks about her being a great entertainer. I talk about the child abuse and threats and maltreatment. 

Thank God my high school teachers helped me run away. My mother was threatened by my youth and talent, and she threatened to give me a colostomy. I've learned later in my life that I do have a long intestine which caused problems for me as a child. Apparently I had inherited my father's intestine.

My mother's ex-husband was my biological father. She married (eloped) when she was 16 and he was 18. He was a tall, lanky, sun-tanned blue-eyed lifeguard. She was a budding artist who had been sexually abused and had to escape her family.

She just repeated the abuse. She was a psychological mess, taking valium and speed, and I pictured her going through life like a gorilla with a chainsaw. A chainsaw headed for my guts. So I escaped.