When I was 17, I had a miscarriage.  I remember that night very well.  I knew something was wrong but I was so conditioned by my parents to just ignore my own pain, that that's what I did: ignore it. 

Ovulation, back then, was painful for me.  Like, really, really painful.  Once it hurt so much I ended up collapsing onto the floor on the way to the phone to call my parents, who were at my grandparents' house.  I didn't make it, I just laid on the floor, grasping my side.  It was just the one asshole ovary that was the culprit, so every other month was pretty horrid.  And I did eventually get my mother to take me to the doctor about it.  They basically said the same thing I heard all my life: nothing we can do, just live with it.

Story of my life.  

So that night, I lay in bed (it was s strange convertible couch bed that we used to have at our lake house, but my grandparents sold our lake house and I got this strange, scratchy couch/bed), in horrible pain.  Crying.  Holding my stomach.  I hadn't had a bad ovulation in over a year and I had my period, so I knew it wasn't that.  But it never dawned me that I was pregnant and losing a potential baby.

Now, I am 40, and I am glad it happened.  At 17, I was a complete mess.  It honestly was the worst year of my life.  The abuse at home was at an all time high.  Things were just horrible.  But truth be told, I was so blinded by "young love", at the time, that I actually tried to get pregnant.  Now, I cannot remember if my miscarriage coincided with those attempts or if it was a different long-term boyfriend (both were condescending assholes), but it doesn't matter.  What matters is that while I wasn't even aware I had had a miscarriage until a long time later, that losing it was the right thing to have happened with that pregnancy. 


My mother had a miscarriage in her early 20's.  Though she called it that my whole life and to find out later it wasn't a miscarriage at all.  She actually had to birth a stillborn baby boy at 4 months pregnant.  She always said that that's she could not have children after that and that's why they adopted me.  I highly doubt that was true, I just think she didn't want to go through that again.  I don't blame her, though.  I would not had wanted to go through that again either.

At age 24 I had my second child and almost lost him at 4 months pregnant.  That was scary as fuck.  So I get it.  I stopped having kids after that because of that reason.  The feeling of almost losing an unnamed child (though I would have named him...I remember crying in the hospital bed saying "We have to name him!) was unbearable.  I always wonder if my parents mourned that baby boy silently and maybe that's a part of the reason they treated me so badly?  I wasn't a replacement for the boy they lost.  I was an imposter.

Though I do not feel that with my own children, though I did give birth to both of them.  I didn't adopt them, but then again, I don't think I could feel that way with any child, ever.  But I also never gave birth to a child that didn't make it, either.

Everyone is made up of a sum of their experiences.  My experiences shaped me into who I am today.  And my mother's, hers.  But I don't feel experiences make someone a narcissist.  You have to have something there to begin with.  Something that makes you YOU.  Experiences just shape those parts of you, hones them, defines them.  At my core is love.  My experiences, both good and bad, shaped that love into empathy and the like.  My mother's core is filled with...what?  What do narcissists have at their cores?

Oh yeah.  Themselves.  Every experience is experienced from their point of view only.  And the more experiences they have, they more they think about themselves.  Never mind the daughter you adopted, you lost a son.  So therefore the lost son comes first.  Never mind he's gone, his loss will take front and center over the child that is actually there.

Honestly, I have no idea if she even thinks about her lost son (it's strange to even type that) at all.  She probably blocked that out as she does every thing negative in her life.  But it feels like my dad was always wanting something different than me.  I was always a disappointment to him, but now I realize it was his own disappointment in himself that caused him to treat me that way.  And he would had treated his son the same way (or made him the golden child so he could live vicariously through him).  And my mom just wanted obedience (she always bragged on my dad being such a perfectly obedient child, which was what his mother used to cherish in him).  I think maybe she thought that their son would take after my dad.  Though my dad was a raging, abusive alcoholic, so I really hope that's not the truth (my mom being the queen of denial probably didn't think about that part). 

Well, I have no idea if my lost potential child was a girl or a boy.  I was only, at most, at month pregnant.  If even that.  And I don't really think about it most days, as I am very glad I never had a child at 17 (now THAT would had been a horrible mess).  I do mourn the loss of a potential child, but in a strange way.  In my own way.  But I feel if I had lost an actual child, I would not have taken it out on my actual children.  I would have hugged them tighter, loved them just as much as I do now, but with the knowing that nothing is permanent.  Taking out the loss of another child on them makes no sense.

Again, I am speculating here.  I really have no idea if he (the baby) was part of the reason for their abuse (the main parts were narcissism and alcoholism--on both my mother and my father).  But I am smart enough to know that no matter how much one blocks out something, it still shapes who they are and how they act.  I can't imagine he wasn't part of the reason they treated me the way they did.  Because that's what narcs do: they use their traumas as excuses to be assholes.  "I had something bad happen to ME so I get a free pass to do what I want!"

I don't know.  Do any of you know of any traumas your mothers had that fueled their narcissistic abuse?  I am just wondering if there is a slight bit of correlation.