Feeling guilty?

[poiu]

I have an undiagnosed BPD mother and NPD father. After graduating from university next month, I am planning on moving away for my sanity and physical health. This will be most difficult because they have brainwashed me for 20 years to believe that they are right and that they are the ultimate authority, that I am their property. I don't know how to handle the "can't you just tell me what I did wrong," "can we talk," "I just miss you," etc. I am caretaker, but now I need to care for myself. I feel so bad pushing them away when they are reaching out begging for me. But I don't want to reply because they never listen when I talk. No matter what I say is turned around on me and ignored. It is like reasoning with toddlers. I feel like trying to explain myself is just wasting my breath and an emotional stressor. Should I just go NC right away?

Getting to the point, I feel most guilty because I don't think I'd miss them. Ever since I was a kid, I was running away from them and their abuse. Before I started university, I went to Europe with my sister. I was crying on the plane ride home because I didn't want to go back home to them. No anxiety or anything going halfway across the world for two weeks, but put me back in my parents' control, trigger  

My dad and I don't have much of a relationship. The only time he talks to me is to yell at me and "put me in my place," though he texts me once a year for a 5-text conversation. My mom and I were never really that close. She thinks we're close, but I have never been able to trust her with anything. Even when she's 'normal' it takes extreme patience. She can be kind of nice sometimes and even pleasant, so we just have a polite relationship. I asked my therapist if it is possible to be emotionally exhausted and just "done," but she simply laughed at me   I also have a codependent sister who worships them. In this event, I'd probably lose her because she just won't understand. The thought of being free of them and never hearing from them makes me feel like flying, followed by immense guilt that I don't care more about my parents and could just toss them aside like that.

Anyone else struggle with this? Any advice?

[joinedtheclub]

Dear Poiu,

Wow, you have the same recipe as I did/do.  BPD mom, NPD dad.

When I think back to it all, I could focus on their behaviour, but it's also fascinating to focus on what I know was in my head.

Some examples:

- I knew I could never ask for anything.  Like anything.  I once asked my father about playing squash (he was a university champ earlier in life) and he gave me a ball cut in two.  After that, I knew there was just no point asking.

- I desperately wanted to learn to play hockey, but just didn't ask.  It's bizarre, but somehow I knew I couldn't.

- I knew I could never invite friends over.  Ever.    Actually, I did ask once, and it was grudgingly assented, and there was such a weird feel in the air that I never asked again.

And it goes on.  When you've got two parents with such profound personality disorders, it's like living in a prison, or, at the very least, like a whack of life and living has been kept from you.

So, going NC sounds just fine.  I went NC with my father (it helped that after my parents split he asked me to move in with my mother full time so he could rent out my room).  It took longer for me to realize my mother was BPD; once I did, I went LC.  Now, I'm ultra LC - I don't even send anything for her birthday or mother's day.

There is likely no nice future with them if they truly are BPD and NPD - I know.  I guess the issue is "are you right?"  Probably you are.  As others on this site have said, a side effect of at least one stupid financial decision I made re: my mother is that I will never feel guilty.  So, maybe you want to keep just enough contact to not be guilty.  But that just feels not right.

The ideal world for me is if I just show up for their funerals, and maybe not even that.  It's been a long couple of horrible decades, and you don't want what I've gone through.  But maybe part of the journey is going through the extraction pain and hassle and sort-of-contact to eventually make it clear to you that:

1.  your parents are not the loving people who you assumed them to be, and

2.  there is no path to joy and fulfillment if you stay in contact with them.

Yikes!  What a horrible pair of conclusions, but that's where I am now.  I wish I was smarter like you and had figured it all out just around turning 20.  Wow!

Another way to do things is to say, "No matter what, I am going to live my life for me and whoever in this world I love.  I will not sacrifice my life and living of my life to them.  If a relationship with either of them doesn't get in the way of my 'no matter what' sentence, then okay.  But if the relationships do get in the way of my 'no matter what', then the relationships are over."

Go and explore the world.  As Frederich Buechner said, "Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen."  You've seen your share of the terrible stuff and then some; now it's time to explore the rest.

You don't want to drink from the cup of regret when you're in your thirties or later and realize you wasted your 20s on an unsatiable neediness and unrelenting manipulation.

Go, be you, and live.

Take care,

JTC