Personally, I can only imagine as I did not grow up in one nor was I allowed to raise my own. However, I am reading a political book right now, about a very famous/infamous (depending on who would hear the name) woman and her hidden subtitle might be “Growing Up in a Healthy Household.” I am withholding her name because I want to focus on my intent here. Her book is a very controversial but factual storyline about a life changing event in our country. Her father is a previous Vice-President and the two of them wrote a book together. Her mother has written several books, one of which she brought up in this book – that I will be reading next. As she writes about her family, brought up for various reasons, it is to share different things within the context of her book. For me, it kept hitting home, what it must be like to have two healthy parents.
Growing up with a narcissistic parent, you make do. You try to follow the rules, deal with the lack of boundaries, cry a lot – even though your told not to, become a scapegoat when you are the oldest (often but not always), get yelled at, compared to, and told things like “Why can’t you be more like…” When I looked back at my “diary” in a little pink book from this middle school time period, I never said a word about physical abuse or emotional abuse and certainly nothing about narcissism. How did I know? I complained about not being allowed to do something or what a day I had had or whether I was going to my friends house to hang out. You would never know from the outside looking in and you would not know from the inside looking out. You are a kid with no psychological training.
In memory of my step/adopt father, Antal Végh, who came to this country in 1956, at the age of 19 and died only eight days before the 40th anniversary.
What would my dad say now, if he saw the country he escaped to in 1956, to have freedom, in the wake of communism in Hungary? I wonder what he would think of his daughter, standing in line at Kroger, in New Albany, Ohio, for thirty minutes around 8pm because they only had one cashier. No more “Three’s a Crowd,” customer service rules there (from a long ago commercial). An impromptu and unplanned demonstration, you might say, was going on with those of us in line. We refused to use self-service because most of us were in our 50’s and 60’s and understood what self-service meant. We lived through having the luxury of gas station attendants who washed our windows and changed our oil for free. What started with one lane for “self-serve” at a gas station went to all self-serve and people in a kiosk who couldn’t care less about your car.
I had the unfortunate experience the other night, while at the same Kroger’s dealing with an angry kiosk employee. I had rapped on the window because I kept saying hello and she didn’t answer. I peered through the window around the corner and saw her standing there, out of view. When she got to the window she replied “You didn’t need to tap on the window.” I replied that I had tried calling out and she did not respond. Kroger Fuel will not accept Master Card, so I have to go to the kiosk to pay. I know what happens to pin numbers at the pump, by ne’re-do-wells. So, what would my dad say to my having to stand in line for food? He refused to go to any restaurant, when he was alive, if there was a line. This is because, in Hungary, he remembered food lines and would never approach one ever again.
A Frequent Blog of Devotionals Inspired by A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, The Way of Mastery, Choose Only Love--Plus More . . . with Celia Hales - https://www.amazon.com/author/celiahales
Jeannine Vegh 