(this is taken today from After Narcissistic Abuse on Facebook)

If you're waiting for an apology from the narcissist, PLEASE, just let that go now - You'll NEVER get one that means anything. Even if they say the words...they don't MEAN it.

Here's why Narcissists are incapable of ever genuinely apologizing:

1. They don't accept responsibility - it's ALWAYS someone else's fault

2. Power & Control prevents them from truly being vulnerable enough to apologize

3. Their disordered personality construct is designed NOT to tolerate shame / vulnerability. Culpability, personal self blame is required in order to feel both guilty and genuinely sorry.

4. They don't have boundaries. They don't recognize that you are a separate person. If they don't feel the hurt that they caused you, then they think YOU couldn't possibly feel it either; thus preventing them from empathizing enough to offer an apology.

5. Seered Conscience - Narcissists are incapable of answering to a Higher Power, when they believe they're their own higher power (don't listen to them tell you they're a christian - that's just another "image" they pretend to have); thus, they don't have a conscience to appeal to. With NOTHING or NO ONE to convict them of wrongdoing...they're "scott free".

Today I broke my "no contact" with my mother.  She called looking for answers from my cat she has, what disease he had in the past to tell the vet cause he's sick again.  No mention of my previous call which I KNOW she heard my message.

Also, she gave my son a chair, one he wanted from the store, and she went behind his back and bought for herself.  Cause you know, it matched her living room!  That's a good reason to do it, right?
::::sigh::::

She was tired of the chair now, so now she offered it to him.  He's happily using it at the moment while playing his video game on his computer.

I played "nice".  And afterward, while talking to my husband, I came to these conclusions today:

1. She is not my mother, she is my mom. There is a difference.  A mother holds you and tells you everything will be all right.  A mother helps her daughter become a better woman, and teaches her with care how to navigate the ways of the world.  A mother loves her daughter.  A mother puts her daughter first, over everything and everyone else if the need arises.  A mother will do anything to protect her daughter.  A mother is......everything my mom is not.
2. My sister in law has Asperger's.  At first, she would piss me off with her inability to say "I love you, too" back when my children would say "I love you!"  She was irritating and I just didn't get her.  Why couldn't she be normal????!!!!  But then realized what was actually wrong with her and now we accept her "as is".  Not like she's a damaged product, but as a human being who's brain is capable of doing the things everyone else does naturally.  My mom is the same.  She is incapable.  I have to accept that, and treat her as so.  I can do as I do with SIL and see the little things she gives us.....and know that our relationship with her will never be normal.  She is 5 years older than my husband, but he's the big brother, because she is mentally younger than him.  My mother is mentally incapable of being nice (without it benefiting her).  And I just have to accept that.  She will never be a real mother, just as my husband will never have a relationship with his sister that he would like.  But instead of having expectations, we need to remember with those who are mentally incapable, our relationships are just "different".  Not wrong or right, just "different".  And we can't hold them up to the same expectations as those who are capable.
3. I don't have to let her words hurt me anymore, from the past or in the future.  So she told her friends I was a whore at 14 when I was raped....that hurt. Yes it will always hurt.  But in a different way.  Instead of hurting like an open, gaping wound, it hurts like a sore scab.  Its healing, but it still needs time.  When I look at her now, I feel sorrow for her.  I feel that deep down inside she has some sort of pain leftover from our abuse and her abuse alone from her own parents.  One day we might talk about it, or not.  I need to learn to heal alone, and not need her "motherly" form of healing.  Cause I'll never get it, this I know.  So if she says something in the future?  I will see her as a mentally handicapped person instead of a person capable of saying and doing the right things.  I want to be able to laugh it off and just roll my eyes and walk away.  Like how you'd treat a person with dementia.....if they do something mean or say something mean, you just say "Okay, let's talk about something else instead" and giggle at them, knowing they do not realize what they say.

I have more, but I am tired and have an article to write :)

But yes, but now I know, from all this time away from her, how to stand up for myself and distance myself (which I still will).  I don't now how this will go, but NPD means it will be a rocky road.  Just like always.

But not as much as last time....because we can't go back to the way things were.  And in the future I still may want no contact, but until then, this is where I am.

Peace out, my friends.  And good luck.