Ever wonder why you turned out the way you did?  As it’s not really my way to be too introspective, I didn’t spend too much time on it.  Lately, though, I’ve begun wondering about what makes me, well, me.  Here’s what got the whole ball rolling.

I’ve a friend who recently figured out that her mother is suffering from a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  Well, her mom doesn’t suffer, but everybody else around her sure does.  I have found books, and support groups, and lots of help for my friend, and at last she seems to be finding some peace.

But now I’ve begun wondering about my own childhood.  There’s an old saying about how when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.  And with over 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with NPD, there are a lot of nails wandering around loose.   Example: imagine a seven-year-old child whose mom is trying to type a college term paper.  The slightest noise would set off screaming and throwing, so everybody tip-toed until she was done.  Even at seven, I knew better than to make noise, so I went into my room, closed the door, and played quietly.  After a time, I began to sing quietly to myself, as seven-year-old children will.  After a minute or two, the typewriter stopped.  My first inkling something might be wrong was when the bedroom door slammed open.  Through the portal stormed a demon I had trouble recognizing as my own mother, trailing a thin leather belt from one claw.  She dragged me to my feet by my hair, and screaming something about how she needed silence for her work, she proceeded to lash me from ankles to shoulders with the belt.  Everywhere it bit, I bled.

I cannot tell you how long it went on.   The demon finally tossed me in a corner and left.  I didn’t dare so much as whimper, lest the demon return and start in again.  After a few moments, the typewriter again began its uneven beat, as if nothing at all had happened.  After a few minutes, I managed to crawl to the bathroom to tend my wounds. My father came in about then, and helped me with the ones I couldn’t reach.  He kept telling me to be quiet so my mother wouldn’t come in and “”finish the job.”"

To this day, people accuse me of a certain level of exaggeration about this incident.  That’s when I lift my shirt and show them the marks.  Some of them did not heal perfectly, and jokes about old girlfriends or the time I wrestled the tiger don’t erase the truth. Others say she was probably in a “”black rage,”" and didn’t know what she was doing.  Sorry, but in one of those blind rages, you pick up and use any convenient object.  That belt was chosen specifically because it would cut and bloody me.  That damage was intentional as hell.  In this day and age, she would have been thrown in jail, and her children removed to foster care.  In that day and age, they gave her a teaching credential and allowed her to inhabit a classroom for 30 years.

Good Old Days?  Perhaps not.  Of course, helping my friend find answers to her personal demons has given me a new tool for my own “toolbox.”  I’m beginning to think mom’s pathological behaviors, psychotic breaks, and screaming rages are proof of an undiagnosed NPD.  Yep, Mom’s a nail.  She’s why I defend the helpless, and fight for those who can’t.  Thanks, Mom, for everything.

photo courtesy of Google Images