I've been designing shirts for my store recently, and I was ironing something on one of them, I remembered back when we had a garage sale when I was in middle school.  My friend Cindy had made these gorgeous shirts with iron on chains and she glued pretty gemstones onto them.  They were so pretty!  She was charging $5 a shirt and asked if she could put them in our sale.  My mother said yes.  But then the say of the sale came.

And, just like narcissist fashion, all of a sudden it became an issue.

"Oh, you can't charge that much money, how stupid!  Nobody will buy those!"  she spat in my friend's face.  Then my mother took my friend's shirts, that were set aside to be sold separately from the rest, and shoved them in with the twenty-five cent shirts, hoping she wouldn't notice.

What was my mother's plan?  To sell shirts that Cindy bought and decorated for only a quarter and leave her with less money than she put into them?  Why would she ever think that was okay to do to a child, let alone anyone else?

Cindy and I took the shirts out of where my mother stuck then and then placed them back in their own spot.

Anytime someone picked up one of my friend's shirts, my mother made a big to-do about it, talking down the price and the quality.  Cindy, understandably, was very depressed about the whole thing.  Until a woman came up and said "Oh wow, these are so beautiful!" and promptly handed Cindy a ten dollar bill and took two shirts.  I loved the look on her face when she looked at my mother, who of course all of a sudden acted like her shirts were awesome.

Why didn't I see it then?  Had I known about narcissism at age thirteen, I may not have been able to do anything about it, but at least I wouldn't had been fooled.  But is that really a good thing?

Not knowing about narcissism back then meant that my mother still loved me.  It meant I had a chance to be someone she eventually approved of.  It gave me hope.  Her erratic behavior made me feel insane, but I lived for the moments she pretended to love me.  Had I known back then she was pretending, what would that have done to me?  Had I known she was incapable of love, how would I have navigated my teen years?  I was SURROUNDED by narcissists, it wasn't just my mother.  I would have felt family-less, and more alone than I already did.  Because I was alone, I just wasn't aware of just how much.

Knowing her disapproval and abuse were not my fault would have made me not internalize her words as much, but is that a better trade-off then realizing  your mother doesn't love you?  And how do you not internalize that? 
I can't get angry at not realizing it sooner.  I know now, and that's all that matters.  The fact you are here reading this, means you know too.  And it's better late then never.  I just wonder what the proper age is to be told about it.