Laugh or cry!

 

“The devil...the prowde spirite...cannot endure to be mocked.” ~Thomas Moore~

I first saw that quotation years ago, quoted by C.S. Lewis in probably the "Screwtape Letters" or possibly "That Hideous Strength" and I'm too lazy to go look it up, as the writer of Hebrews says, 'somewhere it is written' I think I can get away with it in a measly blog post no one will read if an author of Scripture can!  But that isn't what this post is about, rather I've been aware of that quote for years but only this morning do I begin to understand its power.  I've been obsessing a bit lately about my narcissistic mother/extended family because I've also been dealing with one in a prominent place at church, have been for years, had she treated any of our other volunteers like she treated me, I would have been horrified, and I'm horrified I let it go on so long for me too, but I was conditioned from the earliest age to take all forms of abuse without question or complaint, to be a shock absorber and take all sorts of damage to keep the family's image pristine, or in this case, to allow the church to function efficiently.  

But I've been on a journey the last decade to discover that I too am a person of value and deserve to be treated with kindness, respect, and dignity, not to be walked on, abused, and repeatedly disemboweled mentally and emotionally.  In dealing with this venomous lady I have awakened what I thought were dead giants in my inmost soul, but rather they were only sleeping.  I need to exorcise the fiends if I am to find peace, but obsessing over it doesn't help, it only drags me down into lightless depths wherein a balrog might dwell.  This morning it hit me: laughter!  What is laughter but joy in audible form, and what is joy but the very light of Heaven for a moment shining upon a mortal soul?  And what do narcs hate above all else: the very idea of God, for they are their own little gods and will have none else.  They speak all their proclamations with the authority of the Eternal Word, though they weren't in the beginning nor are they with God they only think they are God.  They took the serpent at his word and believed, 'ye can be gods,' what is life but a journey back to Eden or a continuing progression into an ever darker and deeper howling wilderness, until all that is left of creation, reality, and perception is one's own precious self, like Gollum and his precious.

I am not talking cynical, mean, malicious laughter, cruel and unkind, nor even at laughing in the presence of the narcissists themselves, but rather going through that toxic cesspool of memory and laughing at the satire and parody, like perusing the Babylon Bee or the Onion, innate within a narc's own projected reality.  There is sadness in it, pain and sorrow and grief, but instead of turning it inward to fester, rather laughter will lance the wound and allow it to drain, to have the pain exposed to the light of day where it will shrink and be sanctified rather than remaining a terrifying shadow of doubt and dismay to be dwelt upon endlessly in the meager hours of the night.  I was close to making this discovery with our church narc once, I jokingly said something about 'I don't give a sermon when I lead music' being rather shy and not liking any sort of spotlight, because she goes on for about 10 minutes every Sunday in a teary eyed fashion about some 'thing' that has happened that week whereas I can barely ask people to stand!  The result was a fifteen minute lecture on how profound and prophetic of a ministry she had and how everybody else (meaning me) was just a weak imposter, she had been ordained of God to minister to this congregation and heaven help the person who got in her way!  I really wish I had a recording of it, my paraphrase doesn't do it justice, at the time I was perplexed, insulted, and somewhat amused, now I can laugh at it in delight at the preposterousness therein.  Now to exorcise a million other older and more painful ghosts.

My life really could be a farce, but perhaps in laughing at the various episodes I can finally find peace!:

All my Christmas presents and birthday gifts were always for her, I never got to keep or play with or even look at a single one and got in trouble if I dared complain (as a child of 8 or 10!) that my cousin and brother got toys and candy which they could rip into right away but I was supposed to sit on the couch silently and watch while 'my' collectible barbies were safely contained in a laundry basket to be taken home and secreted in a certain closet, where they would remain for decades, simply to decay.  She collected barbies, not me, but that's what she told everyone my sister and I wanted.  Three decades later I took six of them, removed them from the sacred boxes, now falling to pieces along with their clothes, and mailed them off to a friend who had three girls aged 7-11 who had 'weddings and parties, parties and weddings,' or all the fun I was never allowed to have, boy was she mad, but then again she thought I sold them (not that they were worth anything in their condition and there was no longer a market for them, I might have gotten $10 a pop but not the $20 she paid or the incalculable millions she assumed them to be worth) and was probably irked she hadn't done it first!  It was very gratifying that someone got some fun and use out of them even if I couldn't, and that was a gift far better than toys or candy!

I once got in trouble because she had bought some expensive and trendy jeans from a coworker for $10 and she was adamant that I wear them, even though they were heavy, thick unyielding denim and they were too small, particularly around the waist, but she had bought these trendy jeans and I must wear them, even though I couldn't snap them or breath or walk whilst in them, but all that mattered was the image not the reality or my health or comfort!

When my son was little we went to visit her once, the last time we went to her house, and we spent the whole evening sitting silently watching reruns of American Pickers while her foster dog barked incessantly at my son, who sat in my lap the whole evening (definitely not normal) in terror.  I politely asked her to crate the dog, as he didn't like kids and was equally distressed, but she bluntly told me I knew nothing of children or dogs, even though I'm a mom and have been doing children's ministry for years and a licensed canine medical professional!  My son wouldn't go near a dog for two years after that, I wonder who was right!

We had a manual car when I took driver's education at 15 and we had some very jolting journeys as I tried to tame the thing, but unlike horses, you can't just sit out the bucking and break the beast to ride.  I asked her repeatedly how to manage the thing, her answer was to yell at me every time the car jolted or to say 'you just do,' in reply.  Needless to say I gave up driving the family car fairly quickly.  A month shy of my 21st birthday, I took the January term off of college to stay home and get my driver's license, all I needed to do was pass the driving test.  I needed my license to drive for my work study job which was also a research project for my senior paper, if I didn't get it, I'd lose my research and have to start over on the paper and have to go back to working in the cafeteria, so pretty important that I get my license.  My brother had just turned 16 literally a week prior and she bluntly told me he had to get his license that minute while I could wait a few more years!  I had waited 6 years, he couldn't wait 6 weeks?!  Somehow I persisted and she didn't want to fight so we both worked on getting our licenses that month.  Sadly it took me three tries, at least she had an automatic car by then, but I automatically failed twice for turning left from the wrong lane.  I had never seen or used a two way turn lane before!

I finally graduated with my doctorate, and the first thing I hear when reuniting with my family after the ceremony was my grandmother (also a narc) saying, "well I'm glad that's over, let's go get our leftovers and go home."  And that was about it for congratulations from anybody save my fiancé!

My high school graduation was looming and my mother decided she had to remodel the basement for the party, that was her reasoning anyway, though really she wanted to make the event about her.  I didn't relish the idea of spending my few free hours being yelled at/nagged constantly by both my mother and her own as we tried to hang wallpaper (even less fun than learning to drive a stick!) so I found things to do elsewhere, which wasn't hard as a graduating senior with a job, lots of activities, and good grades!  I even made one of those giant party subs (I worked at Subway) for the party which was held in the garage, but I never heard the end of how selfish and ungrateful I was and sadly I've seen preschool graduations taken more seriously than any of my own, at least as far as my family is concerned.

One day I heard her gushing over how excited the foster dog was when she came home from Target because he knew she had brought him toys or treats or something.  All I could do was think to myself she had never done that for either of her daughters!

When we adopted our daughter, after 3 years of waiting and within 6 months of giving up for good, I texted her the news.  Her reaction was that we couldn't name her the name bestowed by her birth mother (a very fitting and pretty name it was!) because it was too much like that of my brother's baby girl?!  Which was even more hilarious because it was autocorrected into 'analgesic' which is the medical word for pain reliever, which is hilarious as both my mother and my brother's wife are nurses and I too am a medical professional!

I wasn't much of a bridezilla at my own wedding, I was upstaged by my family.  My sister, sadly a bridesmaid, flew at me as a 'slave driver' when I asked her to help me pin six beribboned flower stems to the chairs in the sanctuary.  My mother refused to take pictures with my father, forcing the photographer to take more pictures of my side, containing less than a dozen individuals, that she did of my husband's side which had about three times that many.  My cousin never showed up but my grandmother insisted he should be an usher, a hint I wisely ignored.  The whole clan decided they could just take home the unopened bags of salty snacks my in-laws had purchased without asking anybody.  My grandmother complained that she had to drive a whole hour to the wedding when my husband's grandmothers had driven 6 and 10 respectively.  I was only planning to have cake and punch at the reception (early afternoon) but grandma again complained and bought $300 worth of ham sandwiches while my in-laws bought some salty snacks making for a nice little luncheon but grandma had to complain about the price of the sandwiches and said she'd take it out of our wedding gift, though she was the one who was determined to buy them.  We would be a family of two living in a one bedroom apartment and my mother convinced my side that I needed a 6 quart kitchen aide mixer as a shower gift which was bigger than my kitchen but boy did she make a show of walking into the shower, she was late of course and it was hosted by the church ladies, with it unwrapped.  Someone should write this up for a romcom or something!

I started a quilt when I was 15 but never finished, when our son was born (I was now 32), I decided to finish it.  I borrowed my mother-in-law's sewing machine and worked on it as I could, there wasn't that much left.  It really was pretty but when I showed her the finished quilt top, she said I should take it apart and start over because some of the edges weren't perfectly square or aligned.  I ignored her, paid someone to quilt it for me, and then had to use YouTube to figure out how to bind the thing, but it turned out really well.  She owns several expensive quilting machines but has never actually made a quilt!

She's always falling for scams designed to lure in people who want to make lots of money without any effort.  She bought three merchandising websites and paid someone so she would be listed 'at the top' of the google searches and assured me it was our inheritance, I'd rather have the thousands she spent on the scam!

I once asked if she'd drop me off at school early with my ten gallon aquarium half full of water, plants, and critters for a science project.  She acted like I had asked her to drop me off on the moon!  Thankfully my father could take me or I would have had to make the two mile trek afoot with my aquarium in my brother's wagon, which come to think of it, that's how she had my sister pick up the cat at the vet once!

She stayed home once for two weeks when my brother had influenza and I remember her being so concerned about him, fussing about how little he ate or drank or slept or whatever, as if she was the sufferer instead of him, he was never in any danger, just miserable, but the way she carried on he might have been dying of consumption!  Whereas my sister and I were never sick, or rather we never were bold enough to tell her.  I got strep throat a lot (stress!) and that was the only time she'd ever take me to the doctor, and once when they were probing my throat for a culture sample I said I was going to throw up, I was scolded for being a baby, and we had to switch exam rooms because I was right.

I remember her laughing at me once, so she must have a sense of humor, twisted as it is.  She had told me to come home on the bus after school rather than go to daycare (I was 6) and I would be alone for several hours until she got off work.  The front door was locked, in thirty years of living there she had only locked the door twice and this was one of those times, and I didn't know what to do.  I sat down on the step and cried.  The neighbor lady brought me cake and sat with me until my mother got home.  She laughed at my terror and called me stupid for not checking the other doors.  I'm pretty sure she did it on purpose, she's quite the practical joker!

I picked her a bouquet for Mother's Day once, bright yellow dandelions and lovely blue violets, I was so excited to give it to her that I was almost as radiant as the dandelions.  She turned away in disgust from that jubilant little fairy girl and muttered, 'weeds,' but that only shows her poor taste in flowers, for one cannot buy such exquisite blooms!

Once around Christmas, after I had moved out and was home from grad school for a little bit, my uncle and brother were going on and one about this most marvelous and benevolent gift my mother had made me.  I was absolutely flummoxed as to what they were talking about.  Those wonderful pans she had given me!  I was still perplexed even with this enlightenment, knowing that when I had moved into my little apartment I was bequeathed a mishmash of old pots, pans, and kitchen equipment scrounged from basements, thrift shops, garage sales, and the like.  My mother had given me a couple old pans as she was replacing hers, she had gotten a flat top stove and they weren't flat on the bottom so didn't work well, but they were good enough for me.  They were missing lids, the handles were falling off, stuff tended to burn onto the bottom, and they were thirty years old, but they would work well enough for a grad student.  I had no idea she'd turn around and go tell everyone what a marvelous gift she had bestowed on her penniless daughter!

When our son was born my grandmother gave us a swing and a walker she had from when my cousin's daughter was little.  I gave the swing to someone else as our son didn't like swings and she had a fit that she didn't get it back though I had no idea she wanted it back.  So when our son didn't really use the walker either, I dutifully took it back to my grandmother and she had a fit because what was she supposed to do with it!

One Thanksgiving my mother set the silverware on the table at my grandmother's house and grandma went around after her reversing the order and then my mother went back around after grandma and put it back!

I once asked my mother if she would be interested in watching my infant son for a weekend, her only grandchild at the time, thinking that's something most grandparents enjoyed doing, boy did I get a lecture on presuming to abandon my children in her care, she wasn't a babysitting service, etc...sorry!

I've watched her sit on the couch as the phone rings and lets it go to voicemail but she never picks it up.  I've been on the other end of those calls, 90% of the time she will not pick up and never returns a message, and when she does pick up, she wants to know what the emergency is, as if a daughter can't call her own mother on occasion!  So when I just quit calling, she did finally call me once in the last five years to chew me out for not calling, but then she complains to all and sundry how terrible it is that her daughter doesn't call.

I lost my job rather tragically and suddenly ten years ago and we were in the process of moving to another state for my husband's new position, I was literally in the u-haul while my husband was following in the car with our one year old son when she called to tell me I should make a slight detour, six hours south through a major urban area, we were driving eight hours west, so I could pick up some old dresser of my great uncle's.  She wasn't concerned in the least that I had lost my job or that my entire family was moving to another state but she was very offended that I declined her most gracious offer, but I had no room in the moving van, I had a set timeline, I didn't have enough allotted miles in my rental contract for the detour, I didn't need a dresser, I certainly didn't want to navigate a major urban area my first time driving a 16 foot truck, and doubling the travel time of an already lengthy journey with a sick little kid along really wasn't a good idea either, but I'm the rude one!

My mother once told me that my singing voice was okay but nothing compared to my brother's.  The result was years of awkwardness and thinking she was right.  I ditched choir in high school due to a scheduling conflict though I loved to sing, I didn't audition with any confidence for the school musical so never got a decent part, I never auditioned for choir in college though my school was renowned for its music program, and I never thought to help with worship at church.  My brother on the other hand never went out for choir anywhere and even ditched his poor bride at their wedding when he was supposed to do a duet with her leaving her to do a solo.  Fast forward a few years and now I'm regularly leading worship at our church, including playing the piano, a skill I taught myself, and I haven't killed anybody with my voice.  I'll never get a record deal but I can do well enough when need be.  So much for her career as a music critic! 

She arranged some pictures of mine in a collage to decorate one of her walls and goes on and on about how nicely she arranged them but makes no mention of the source.  She once took a nice picture of Loch Ness and spent ten years bragging about it to anyone and everyone, about the only thing she'd talk about during that period.

She went on a trip to the Grand Canyon with her parents and my sister.  She was so horrified by my grandmother's constant nagging of my grandfather for things like breathing, that she must have realized how much she sounds like her own mother and vowed to stop lest she too one day be no better.  The sad thing is that she didn't replace the dearth with anything, now she says nothing at all!

One Christmas when our son was little I got chewed out because she had apparently set up her Christmas tree just for him and he never got to see it.  The problem was she had never mentioned she had done or desired any such thing.  It had been a couple years since we had been to her house as she was constantly ragging on me whenever he touched anything so I figured it was better not to bother or imperil her stuff.

We live 800 miles from my mother.  I tried to arrange a lunch meeting in the town where she works as we would be passing through going to and returning from visiting friends in another state.  I spent four months and weekly emails/texts/calls to see if we could make things work on either of those two days; she never replied.  We would come to her, we'd bring lunch if desired or meet at the restaurant of her choosing, but still we heard nothing.  The day before, I finally texted her and asked what her plans were.  The only reply: 'I'm busy,' and yet she complains that she never gets to see her grandkids!

She lives on Facebook, at least she did for a while, posting and reposting all these funny cartoons and memes but never does she have a spare moment to even 'like' a post about her grandkids.

She actually gave me my baby pictures, the only copies she has, and I don't think it is because she's sentimental.  I also took my 'baby's first Christmas' ornament wrongly thinking at the time that she was actually being a caring person.  Boy was I wrong and boy was she mad!  I gave it back in a gift bag and bought one on eBay!

I was rifling through some of my childhood junk to see if there was anything I wanted or my own kids could use.  I didn't have much, but every item I thought to take was immediately declared my brother's and I had to argue about removing it from her house.  The couple things of my brother's I took I had permission to take.  I had also misplaced my grandmother's wedding ring (my other grandma, not the narc, it was valuable only for sentimental reasons) and kept digging through stuff trying to find it, which drove my mother nuts as I think she thought I was looking for something of actual value!  She also promised to find our old legos for my kids, but like the ornament, we just went ahead and bought our own.  Strangely my grandmother (the narc) had similar sentiments.  My grandfather collects electric trains and my father bought him a very nice one forty years ago.  He wanted to give it to my son and grandma had a fit, probably wanting it to go to my cousin, her little pet and favorite.  It was my grandfather's train, it had been bought by my father, it was still going to one of her grandchildren, what is the problem here?  I took it, mostly to honor my grandfather but I can't say ticking off grandma wasn't fun either!

In her spiel on God's gift to music ministry (herself) our narc worship leader told me that our congregation was too dumb to learn new music, that we couldn't sing anything but these awful choruses popular in the 1970s because nobody could or wanted to learn anything else.  I'd much rather sing straight hymns if that be the case, a strict diet of such was like a theological diet of fruit loops.  Rather she didn't want to learn new music and as that was all she could play, so must be the taste of the entire congregation.  I especially love that she told the entire worship team (gals my age, from varying church backgrounds) on several occasions that 'you know this song' when in fact we had never heard it before, let alone knew how to sing it in public, we could only exchange wry grins and carry on.

My sister takes after her mother and grandmother except her talents take a literary turn.  I read one of her books once, it was rather awkward and stilted, as she has no comprehension of human behavior and common social interactions and her characters show it, much like me trying to write a book on electrical engineering or the history of the Russian ballet without any research or experience therewith.  She also talks as if everyone has read her books and knows what she is talking about, mentioning characters and events in her books like they are Mel Gibson or the Vietnam war and normal people might actually have heard of them.  She also has a publishing deal with a major book company, which is always getting pushed back due to all sorts of random things (she should write a book about that!) it is always next year or six months away, and this began when I was dating my now husband, we just had our 16th anniversary, I'm pretty sure she's fibbing!

I asked for a racquetball racket for Christmas one year in college, she bought me a tennis racket, a very nice tennis racket, but a tennis racket!  I had to exchange it at the local Walmart for a cheap racketball racket.

I can't play the clarinet.  But she had bought the instrument and I had to stay in band from 5th grade through graduation for some unfathomable reason though I hated it and my instructors hated that I was incompetent.  She bought my brother a saxophone (3x the price of my instrument) and he dropped out in six months.  I had to do marching band, pep band, concert band, everything because it was a small school and anybody could participate no matter how awful.  I faked my way through 8 years of band, never actually playing anything and trying desperately to stay in step, which I also couldn't do.  I learn music by ear and once I learn the melody and beat I can then translate the sheet music into a decent facsimile on the piano, but you can't do that with a clarinet!  I can't count or keep a beat, I've tried desperately, but it just doesn't work, don't even get me started on my one and only aerobics class!  But the girl who can't sing can apparently play the clarinet?!

One easter I had invited my husband's family, my family, and even my son's birth family to our house as sort of a house warming thing and my mother was looking in the oven, wanting to be important and in charge, and about to tell me the roast was done, little realizing I was standing behind her, oven mitts on, waiting for her to move so I could get it out of the oven!

How small, how selfish, how myopic they are, their whole world is themselves and their reality and truth of their own making.  Your life is a torment if drawn into their nets, but laughter can burst the bubble and restore a right and proper sense of the true world around you, that there are such things as humility, kindness, and love!