Christmas with a Narcissist
If I’m being honest with myself I love the holidays. Honesty can be tough sometimes though when you have the past experiences I have had. I was raised by a parent with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). NPD effects roughly between .5 to 1 percent of the general population. Everyone has some degree of narcissistic traits but people with NPD have them to a degree that it interferes with their ability to have healthy relationships or raise the children they bring into the world.
It also makes the holidays a tough, bittersweet time. The holidays of my youth weren’t always filled with warmth. They were definitely not what you see on the hallmark channel.
In narcissistic relational dynamics a parent will usually pick a golden child and a scapegoat. My sister was the golden child, I unfortunately was the scapegoat. This showed itself in that my n-parent would usually ignore me for most of the year, leaving me in isolation, while spending a lot of time with my sister. At Christmas one year, she forgot to even wrap the presents that she got me. Another year, my dad had to talk her out of returning all of our gifts after we found them in the house a week before December 25th.
My parents divorced when I was 12. Her and my sister moved out, leaving me with my dad. That year, she made the decision to out spend my dad to “make us love her more.” I got a Playstation, which I liked, but did not make me love her more (funny enough, genuine affection, which is free would have). For the next year she told us that she would not be doing this again because it was not worth it to her. In subsequent years, I would get gifts that showed that she had very little idea of who I was as a person but it at least beat the motivational book I received when I was 11.
In 2017, I went home for Christmas for the last time. I was in the process of transitioning from male to female and about to social change my name before doing so legally. At the time I even remember saying to myself “this would be the last time I get to be a part of this.” Why I didn’t leave earlier is complicated. Being raised by a narcissist is akin to being raised in a cult. It’s hard to leave even though there are so many signs telling you to go.
Sure enough I was disowned for the last time (the 5th time overall) in October 2018 for editing myself into a family photo that I was excluded from. The official reasoning she gave me was that in her mind I was just transitioning to hurt her and that it had “gone far enough.”
This will be the second Christmas I spend without seeing family. Just like last year I will be going out for Chinese with friends. It may not be the hallmark movie, there are no physical gifts, no carols, etc. The people are genuine and for someone who didn’t get that a lot growing that’s one of the best gifts anyone could ask for.