happy sober birthday to me!

Today is an important day for me: my sober birthday.  As of today, I’ve been “on the wagon” for twelve solid years.  

Twelve years ago tonight I was sitting at a bar with a “friend.”  I was on my third vodka and tonic of the night, and I was already feeling ill.  I was 22 years old at this point, and I had been drinking from the time I was 13 or 14.  From the time I was about 18 or 19 until 22, I drank heavily.  My average day usually consisted of waking up (often in the afternoon), putting a couple of shots of whisky into my coffee, going to school and work with a water bottle full of vodka (or half vodka, half orange juice), and then ending the evening with more drinking, often alone.  I drank generally around a full bottle of hard liquor a day.  By early April of 2000, crazy things started happening with my body chemistry.  The weirdest thing I noticed was the constant vomiting.  I just couldn’t keep anything down anymore.  On top of that, I was incessantly dehydrated, as the only fluids I consistently consumed were either caffeinated (coffee) or alcoholic.  As a result, I suffered from chronic bladder infections.

That night at the bar, despondently looking down at my drink, I suddenly said to my drinking buddy, “I’m never going to drink again.”  I just couldn’t...it was like a switch just flipped!  Needless to say, my friend was pretty damn shocked.  I wasn’t.  It was this crazy moment of clarity where I just KNEW I’d never go back.  And I haven’t yet (knock on wood!).  I suffered through a painful physical withdrawal.  I never went to a 12-step program, or even sought help as I was too embarrassed and paranoid about voicing my problems in a room full of strangers.  Instead, I moved to the opposite side of the country, hoping that a clean start would keep me clean as well.  I’d just forget about it all.  I went to therapy, but mainly for reasons to do with my boyfriend at the time who was rather verbally and psychologically abusive.  I never really dealt with the addiction, but it was always there in the back of my mind as this old wound, never fully healed.  At this point in my life, I’m dealing with the repercussions of my addiction, as I’m trying to be completely and totally open about every aspect of my life.  I’ve learned that wounds can never fully heal if you perpetually keep them covered up in secret; instead, they’ll slowly fester, until you can’t ignore them anymore.  

You may be asking, what does this talk have to do with the narcissistic family, or with being raised by narcissistic parents?  What I’ve discovered recently is that I started drinking as an escape from my family situation when I was young.  My parents worked many, many hours, and were rarely home.  I was an only child; my parents were extremely overprotective and overbearing, and they kept me largely isolated from other people.  I remember what summers were like: I would have to stay at my home all day, doing what my father termed as “playing Cinderella.”  My mother would have a long list of chores each day to accomplish, including such glamorous tasks as bleaching out the grout in bathroom showers with a toothbrush, or clipping the buds off of mums bushes in the backyard.  If the phone rang, I was to answer it like as secretary, “Hello, Jones residence, Jennifer speaking.”  I avoided answering the phone, even for friends, because it was so embarrassing to speak like this.  Occasionally, I would be permitted to attend a camp - but only one that was of an academic variety (I even took a college-level physics course after 8th grade!).  I was allowed to go to cross-country practice, but only because sports were needed for a solid college application.  I couldn’t participate in any other community sports activities (like softball), because they would interrupt Mom and Dad’s vacation time in Florida.

By the time I was 13 or 14, I was extremely sad and depressed.  I had grown up as a misfit in school.  We moved many times, and I was severely bullied as my dad was the superintendent and my parents dressed me in ridiculously over-formal clothing that never fit in with the other kids.  My parents knew about the bullying since I came home crying almost every day, but told me that I wasn’t allowed to attend another school because it would look bad for my father’s job as a school superintendent.  I was also told not to fight back, because that too would reflect badly on Dad.  It was so frustrating!  That coupled with the exorbitant amount of chores (Mom’s standards were insane!) made me simply freak out over the summer months, those long, boring months of total isolation.

I started cutting my arms with kitchen knives at that time, sort of like a game of chicken, to see how much I could hurt myself and whether or not my parents would notice (they didn’t).  Then I started raiding Dad’s liquor cabinet.  I discovered that I could empty a bottle of vodka, and replace it with water, and no one would realize the liquor was gone since vodka looks just like water.  I would mix the vodka with my father’s allergy medications, just to sleep all afternoon.  I only really did this over the summer months during high school (not regularly), and replaced the boozing practice with more and more strange cutting rituals during school months.  My folks only caught me cutting once, and when I cried and begged for help because I couldn’t stop, they told me that they couldn’t take me to a therapist because it would look bad for Dad’s job (yet again).  I learned - as a result - to never show any pain.  Drinking became a real crutch, and I used it to deal with feeling totally inadequate and insecure all throughout my college years and graduate school.  I used it to numb the pain of an intensely abusive relationship with a man.  I used it to forget being raped at age 21.

My parents apparently “had no idea” I was an alcoholic.  In recent history, they would accuse me of blowing things out of proportion.  “You’re just so sensitive, Jen.  Stop exaggerating.  That didn’t really happen.”  I realize today that a great deal of the impetus behind my drinking was not only to numb how sad and isolated I felt as a girl, but it was also to try and get my parents to notice ME.  To them, I was a doll that they could dress up pretty, who would play nice songs on the piano for their colleagues, who would get the good grades in school to make them proud, who would grow up to be a scientist or a doctor or a lawyer, etc.  I never felt like any of these things.  Drinking was antithetical to their strict “moral” codes...and I thought by imbibing that I would gain some sort of notice, some sort of validation of my own existence.

This never has happened.  If you have narcissistic parents like mine, it never will.  Don’t hope for it - you’ll never get an apology.  You’ll never get a sympathetic ear (unless it benefits them in the short term).  Most times, what you went through will never even be acknowledged.  If it even comes up in conversation, you’ll hear how one of them “had it worse” so as a result you have no right to complain about anything.  You’re just oversensitive, and guilty of exaggerating your own experiences. I was so angry for so many years about this - that I could never talk to my family, get help from my family, confide in family, receive any sort of emotional support from my family.  I thought it was some defect in myself that made these things impossible; now I know it’s the other way around.

Sound familiar to any of you?  If so, my advice is to forget about trying to get your family to recognize you.  Get help for yourself, and for no one else.  That’s where I’m at today, twelve years after that final vodka and tonic.  I am my own mother now.