2020 and 2021 have been plagued by Covid-19. So I haven't been able to go home to visit my parents for 2 years. As chance would have it, the start date of my new job had been delayed, so I had been able to go to visit my parents in Asia for 2 weeks, after a 15 day quarantine.
My father is very old (in his 90s)... so old that he caught bacterial pneumonia infection from choking on food. I know it's bacterial infection because his symptoms improved after receiving a 2 week intravenous antibiotics treatment. The whole time, my mother and my sister were worried sick. They were mentally preparing for the fact that he might not make it. Luckily, he made it out of the hospital alive. Though initially very weak and delirious, he kept improving in terms of physical and mental conditions ever since he got home.
Theoretically, this should be very good news. However, I observed and interacted with my family and experienced very profound sadness. First of all, my mother is deeply deeply fearful of my father dying. So to control that fear, she began mentally preparing for his death. She said things like, "Your father has lived a good, long life. He has supported our family for long enough. He has been an excellent father. I am ready to let him go. I won't be depressed when he goes. We shall celebrate his long life and an uncomplicated death with short, minimal suffering."
Everything she said pointed to a very healthy way of thinking. However, when dad made it home, my mother complained about the doctor friend who suggested for her to mentally prepare and perhaps actually prepare for dad's funeral. She then planned a vacation "for the whole family", where they drove HOURS to get to a hotel, and tried to wheelchair my dad around in the sun with no shades, where the temperature was 39 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. My mother was ecstatic she could get the whole family together. My dad (who literally JUST got released from the hospital after an intense medical treatment), my brother-in-law, my sister, and her two adult kids, who were treated by their parents like they were small children.
Throughout the whole visit, my mom babbled continuously. Her words indicated that she was fine, happy, strong, and mentally healthy. Her actions indicated that she was horrified about the prospect of being alone; she didn't trust anybody; she tried to control everyone and everything; she would either give out angry commands (go do something for me and do it now!), or burst into tears at home, then pretended she was totally fine and no such behavior had happened. I think she is officially a "crazy person". She has no desire to go see a psychiatrist, of course. I don't even dare to bring that up. She just becomes very furious randomly. Or she would lie about seeing a doctor but not actually do it. From what I have heard from my sister, my mother goes to the doctors quite regularly for check-ups, but cannot tell a straight story about anything.
Normally I have a ton of empathy for anyone in a disadvantaged position, who feels helpless, scared, worried, and weak. Unfortunately I have almost no tolerance for lying and deceit. Throughout my whole life, as long as I can remember, my mother is the dictator type of parent, "Do what I say or ELSE!" "Eat whatever it is I give you to eat!" "Go wherever it is I tell you to go!" Outwardly to guests, acquaintances and friends, she is charming, a warm, generous host, who loves to throw parties and welcome friends and families to our homes. Basically, the person whom I experienced as a daughter was a very different person from who everyone else got to see, but at least both characters were very confident, high-energy, and strong. My mother is basically a classic narcissist.
Now the aging woman exposes herself for who she actually is: a woman with intense fear of the whole world and has possesses deep-seated self-hatred. In her prime, she ordered me around to make herself feel good. Now she orders me around to avoid feeling completely out of control. She can say the "right stuff" -- positive thinking, gratitude, positive outlook of life, but she doesn't believe any of it. At the same time, she remains overly self-centered, believing that everyone wants to take her money, or are out to get her. She also expressed deep jealousy of my "youth" -- middle-age is considered as young for an octogenerian I suppose, and practically, your own children will never grow older than you as long as you are alive.
I have always thought of my mother as egotistical and overly controlling, but I never really admitted to myself how much she lies. Her whole life is one giant lie, basically. No matter how confident she acted for all these decades, she never really believed in herself this whole time. What an astonishing pathology.
This is a person that you can feel sad and sorry for, but you cannot actually help her. She constantly misinterprets my words and action from the worst starting point of intentions. She and I possess practically complete opposite world-views and value systems. I believe in reason and logic. She seems to believe that if she acts mean enough and authoritarian enough people will obey her. That's why she still tries to sound mean and angry and order people around even though she actually feels weak, confused, and powerless. She blames me for constantly criticizing her, when she herself is her own worse critic. In fact, I now believe that a ton of things she has blamed me over the decades are opinions that she or her own terrible mother said about her. For DECADES, she externalizes all these terrible intentions to me and my sister. How dare we be such horrible people? The whole time I was just confused. For the life of me I could not understand what exactly did I say or do that warranted such intense furor.
So I read a lot of articles on narcissism, and most of them claim that a narcissist cannot really be treated. It's like watching someone drown; if you tried to reach out to help her, she will just drag you into the whirlpool with her. I kept thinking a therapist or a psychiatrist might be able to help her, but it seems like she prefers to pretend she is completely mentally healthy than to do something about the mental chaos in her head.
So that was my 2021... a family-wide mental break down. Who knows what 2022 will bring?
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