A Real Life Romance (Part 1)

Diary 4 Minutes

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Serial Fiction Part 1

I want to talk about my step sister and her husband. Since her name means ocean, I will call her Oshina and her husband Oland for the sake of the story. I liked her and her husband a lot, and still like them, but due to the narcissistic nature of my birth family, I instinctively knew that I couldn’t show a conspicuous affection or friendship with them. If I did, my narcissistic relatives would recruit enablers and flying monkeys to engage in a psychological warfare to destroy the relationship. If you haven’t had any experience of narcissism, you probably think I am talking nonsense, but if you have been exposed to narcissism before, you will understand me. You may say that I was just paranoid and it probably was merely my overreaction or paranoia, but growing up in a narcissistic family, one has to be vigilant–any show of personal character or independence or real affection will be stamped out so that one cannot develop anything other than what can be of supply to the narcissists. So I kept a cool acquaintance with Oshina and Oland, while secretly observing their romance–they made a great couple.

Now just a little background of my family which can assist my description of the romance later on. If my father had been rich, I probably would be bitter about the fact that my step-mother got all the money from my father while I got nothing. However, at the time of my mother’s death, I was already 19 and an adult. My father didn’t have much although he was considered a man with a good salary. He spent a lot on his own travel and his own amusement, for which I had no share. Whether he earned more money or not, it didn’t concern me at all. I couldn’t care less whoever got his money.

My parents were both narcissistic–my mother being a more outgoing and aggressive narcissist while my father was a covert narcissist. They had a bitter and combative relationship–no surprise there–which resulted in so much acrimony that neither could stop talking negatively… well…just about everything. Whenever my mother had some alone time with me, she just started to spill all the venom–every small and big imperfection of my father was dwelled on almost with a savage relish. On the other hand, my father had his more detoured way of expressing his anger, which was manifested in his degrading of the region my mother came from, my mother’s relatives, who had inferior habits, thoughts, and customs.

At the same time, they considered their marriage sacred and looked down upon people who went through divorce or talked more honestly about their failings. My mother was the most famous (according to her own opinion at least) matchmaker in the community (at the southern border of Mongolian Steppe) we lived in. I am not religious enough to believe that human beings are created by God, but I certainly think that humans are created by somebody who’s very whimsical and mischievous, or evolved through a naughty or roguish biological process. How else can you explain all the ironies of our life? I mean my mother, who hated her husband and children with a bright hot blinding passion, became the best matchmaker. Isn’t it ridiculous? And needless to say, she enjoyed all the praises people piled on her –her narcissism required such supplies.

When my mother died of a traffic accident, my father cried like a baby and gathered a tone of sympathy from people around us. I was so shocked at his performance that I had to avert my eyes. What a perfect image of a grieving husband. The only problem was that he hated her and she hated him. Actually he performed so well that people (mostly women) started to tell him that being such a good man, he could not possibly live without a wife. There were several available single or widowed women in the community who were charmed by my father’s “affectionate grieving husband” image, but my father was more ambitious than that. One of my mother’s friends who had moved to a big city a while ago wrote long letters to my father to persuade him to marry a widowed woman in her neighborhood. My father loved this idea but he professed his everlasting loyalty to my mother, which prompted my mother’s friend to write even longer letters of persuasion. I tried to keep as far away as possible from my father’s “love racket”, but he wanted to read those letters aloud whenever he had a moment with me. He had never showed a shred of interest in my life, but he always thought that he had a claim on my interest and considered me nothing more than his narcissistic supplier. His life had an imaginary grandeur (according to him) and deserved all the attention from others in his opinion. So he read the long letter to me and told me that he was finally persuaded to take the leap into a new marriage.

Little did he know that my future step mother was a tough cookie out of this world, whose people skills and quick instincts could outdo my father’s antics by a mile… And my father wasn’t a match for her. And I watched them fight and secretly cheered for my step mother, who had a no-nonsense attitude that could vanquish any narcissistic “vampire”.

I am sorry that this is getting very long–it was much shorter when I was thinking about it in my mind. And I think I will have to continue with it on another day. And it is an interesting story. I promise…

(The 2nd Part Is Here)

Published by haoyando

Published

30 thoughts on “A Real Life Romance (Part 1)”

    1. Thank you so much. What a sweet encouragement. I am really inspired to write part 2 or even part 3. This is really my original intention of trying to put something out there to see if people like to read it. I know my writing is probably too marginal or too niche to attract attention, but you never know. LOL.

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  2. Being exposed to such instances early on in life can be quite damaging. But it does prepare you to understand life in a light that not all can see or understand. It’s like acquiring the power to recognize bullshit and walk the other way. 🙂

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    1. You are sooooo right–acquiring the power to recognize some bullshit. However, at the same time, one is also vulnerable since one can easily fall victim to other bullshit with one’s fragile mental balance. So it works both ways.

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    1. Well, thanks for the praise. I guess I am just venting my frustrations after being cooped up for so long. I guess in some families, just like in schools, bullying happens… Am I too hard on my relatives? Probably I should just stay quiet… Anyway, you have been arguably the best relative of the year…

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    1. Oh, I couldn’t agree more. I mean living or working with such a vampire can destroy a healthy normal human being. And a lot of time, we don’t have the luxury to change jobs, especially when the job is what we really want to do. One just has to include the narcissist into one’s working life and it is really soul crashing… And the worst thing about the narcissistic vampire is that they look perfectly normal, and they talk and behave in a subtle way to undermine our existence. A lot of people just unwittingly become their enablers and flying monkeys…

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  6. Trying to see an upside to your unfortunate upbringing. It’s difficult. The only thing I can think of is that you will never (I imagine) feel pangs of guilt that you have not done all you could for your parents. This is a source of pain for some people with “normal” parents.

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    1. Haha, probably I wrote it in a depressing tone. I still haven’t figure out how to make one’s experience entertaining, whatever it is. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. By the way, I hope your guilt is not something that your parents instilled in you. For example, my narcissistic parents always think children are all bad and ungrateful and needy and selfish and bothersome…

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      1. No I think the guilt just arose from a situation where, with hindsight, I don’t think I did as much as I could have done to help my mother towards the end of her life. I tried, of course, but maybe it wasn’t enough.

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        4. I see. I recently heard about a couple in our community who take their 90 year old mother in because the amount of money they pay for the senior center is no longer enough. I mean it is really tough right now since people are living longer and longer, but the life quality of old people are not improving accordingly. I mean I can’t even imagine myself being a 90-year-old. I mean people will be sick of me and wonder why I am not dying–I can imagine that.

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        5. Yes – we had/have a tiny house and my mother was suffering from dementia. We were both working, so a local home seemed the only option. It cost £1000 per week. It went okay at first until she contracted C. difficile (which was rife in institutions at the time). She lingered between life and death for several months. When I went to visit she would invariably ask “Why can’t I die?” One day she told me I was evil (due to the dementia I guess). It was a shock (but also a release) when one evening I found her dead in her room. The staff hadn’t noticed.

          Maybe I should have sold her house and used the money to buy a bigger one that would have accommodated us all. She would still have been left at home during the day. Many ifs and if onlys.

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        6. Oh, what a sad story, and you did what you could under the circumstance. Dementia is an awful disease. I am really sorry that you have to watch your mother’s physical decline like that. No wonder you have the guilt ever since. With the modern longevity, I guess dementia is becoming ever more common. I don’t know if I have the courage to end my life when I am demented. My friend L told me that I won’t have the courage… The senior care center here is sooo expensive that only upper middle class can afford. I am thinking of going back to Asia to find a more affordable place to live when I retire. I mean there’s no way I can afford to stay in America when I am old.

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    1. Thank you for agreeing with me since I was afraid that many people may not understand what I was trying to say. You are so well versed in narcissism that I don’t even need to explain things…

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        1. Thank you for sharing and you really understand narcissism. I mean I tried to talk with my friends about this, but very few could understand it. Also narcissists look so normal and they can even be idols that people admire. So hard to tell a different story…

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