The Love Stories Of Two Sisters (Flash Fiction Part 3)

Image by Jess Foami from Pixabay

Flash Fiction #160

This is the 3rd part of the story. The 1st part is here and the 2nd part is here.

Shermei went out with Thon, her college classmate, who is a loving and a capable guy. However Thon was not good enough for his narcissistic future mother-in-law. First of all, Thon has an average appearance. He is in no way dashing or handsome, which was a required quality for his narcissistic future mother-in-law to parade him in front of other gossiping future mother-in-laws. Secondly, he was not the flattering type who would compliment Shermei’s mother or praise his future in-laws to the sky. Actually he has the same kind of independent spirit like Shermei. Worst of all, his astute eyes and keen judgement of reality frightened the narcissists in Shermei’s family. The young couple went out for a brief period and broke up. Somehow I suspected that the narcissists might have said something or done something to persuade Shermei to explore other opportunities.

However, when Shermei was about to graduate from college, she had a pang of regret for losing Thon. Thon went to graduate school, and Shermei applied to the same program just to get him back. And she did get him back, to the dismay of Shermei’s mother.

Cia would talk about her sister Shermei in a mildly critical tone: her change of heart is a sign of weakness and the symptom of disloyalty. Actually at college, Cia was an anxious and confused girl, who pretended to be more mature than her true self. All her seemingly “matured” opinions were from her narcissistic mother, whose words were treated like indisputable facts by Cia’s gullible mind.

And a good girl like Cia, who could have grown to be a wonderful human being, learned all her mother’s way of manipulating everything around her. And needless to say, she manipulated herself most savagely. She talked with me about Thon’s “shortcomings” in appearance, such as his height, his built, his fondness for food, which would surely make him chubby one day. And now I thought they might all be her mother’s opinions.

Anyway, one weekend we all went out dancing and met Arji and his friends, who were students from the same university, but we had never met them before. The second day, Cia brought Arji back to our dormitory. Arji was tall and handsome and lay-back. We had ten girls in the vicinity at the time. Cia clinged to Arji so forcefully that we all felt uncomfortably embarrassed since Arji had no interest to be so intimate and he tried to stay away. The second day, Cia brought him back again to parade him in front of us. And it really shocked us that later on, Arji would come to ask us, behind Cia’s back, if anybody would want to go out with him. How could he do that? When Cia was not present, we talked about her and Arji.

“Why would Cia do such a thing? Arji is not interested in her,” one would say.

“Why can’t Cia find somebody who loves her? It is really weird that she would do such a thing. I hope she stops parading him in front of us as if to say he is mine. All hands off. Why does she have to be so desperate?” Another one would say.

“Actually Cia is trying to fix us up with Arji’s friends. I guess Cia is trying hard to connect herself to Arji and his friends.” Another one said.

“I would never go out with Arji’s friend. Cia and Arji are uncomfortable enough for me.” Another one said.

At the time, we had no notion of narcissism, love bombing, mental trauma of children growing up with narcissistic parents. Now looking back, I understand that Cia was really traumatized by her mother’s narcissism. Her mind was completely hijacked by her mother. She never had one independent thought or opinion of her own. Her mind was there to serve her mother’s wish, to echo her mother’s words, to make her mother happy.

She tried hard to prove to her mother that she’s a better daughter by bringing back a more handsome boyfriend, by criticizing her sister, by being loyal to a relationship that was not working from the very beginning. In order to pander to her mother’s wish, she had to love bomb Arji into compliance, she had to display her “possession” of him constantly to fight off competition. The problem was that whenever Arji showed up, he demonstrated his unwilling yielding to Cia, his enjoyment of being love bombed, and his indifference towards Cia’s emotional needs or any other needs. This is familiar territory for Cia since her mother, the narcissist, had always starved her of normal human emotional interactions. Cia was used to it and she took on this “starvation diet” as if it was life’s blessing in disguise, or life’s challenge she had to deal with for the time being in hope of better reward later on.

(To Be Continued Here)