Dear Advocate and Jessica, I am a psychiatric nurse, a certified case manager, and Narcissus' mother. I found your site while surfing for info to help me understand my son. Narcissus' letters were almost too painful to read. I recognized my son over and over again. I don't think anyone can understand the agony of being a parent to Narcisuss. My son blames my husband and I for everything that has ever gone wrong in his life, which took a decided turn for the worse about a year agowhen he turned 17. Some tendency (genetic, who knows) made him overly sensitive as a child, and what he believes was awful treatment from his parents would in my opinion be called "good enough" by most people, and in some ways, better than "good enough." (And I'm not talking about what money can buy.) The testing that you describe does not only happen with a therapist. We are tested unrelentingly, and as his parents, it is not confined to weekly therapy. We have become discouraged and exhausted, and as he gets older we seem to fail the tests even more. And yet we love our son, and have never made a secret of it. I have come close to concluding that the only way for our son to grow (because he is "stuck," as you described) is to push him out into the world. Perhaps he will only transfer his "testing" elsewhere, but maybe it will be to his therapist, a doctor who seems pretty good. but really, who knows? I don't know what is more painful -- to continue to live with him and bear witness to his pain and disintegration, or have him move out and try to make it in the world. He is a very unpleasant person to live with, as Narcissus admits. We may simply have to do it to keep our own sanity. I don't know what the goal of this epistle is ... maybe just to vent. Our Narcissus is breaking our hearts, but his letters gave us a better understanding of what is in his. Unfortunately, being human, I don't know if I can develop the sainthood required to become what he would consider a "good enough" mother. Maybe this letter is to let everyone know that Narcissus mother is not necessarily a bad one, despite all the pain he felt in his childhood. Sincerely, N. M.
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