Narcissists are born horrible gift givers.  It's because they have to do something for someone else, and have no idea how.  Sometimes they do it right, but if they do, it's because they want something in return.  Like accolades or a good gift for themselves later.  But never is it done out of love for you or anyone else.  Sometimes it can be done out of feeling nice to you, which would happen with my mother, but only when you aren't on their shit lists.  Though some narcs, the more severe ones, will give you shitty gifts even if they aren't mad at you.  Because surprise, they are mad at you, you just don't know it.  

Now, it's not my birthday anytime soon, but something popped up in my feed about the worst birthday gifts their mothers have ever bought them.  I laughed at the article, but I also know that it's not actually funny.  Unlike those who have no idea what it's like to live with a narc parent, we know better.  We know that the mean gifts are a manipulation to either piss us off, hurt us, or show us we aren't worthy anything to them.  But it's not just them, it's everyone else, too.  Because if your mom is a narc?  I bet most of your family members or maybe even an ex or two are ones too.  

So, what are some of the worst gifts any of them ever got you?  

Here is a list of mine: 

• This year, my mother told me when my pressure cooker broke that she was going to go buy me a new one for my birthday to replace it.  Sounds nice, right?  Yet we live together.  I cook dinner every single day for my family, which includes her, and I usually use the pressure cooker to do it.  And, she lives on a budget, which I create for her, so if I took it out of "her" money, she'd have hardly any money left.  I was already going out to buy a new one when what she said was "Take it out of my money and say it's from me as your birthday gift!"  Um, okay.  She knows there is no "her money" (besides her budget) and "our money", as we share all our finances.  And it's a kitchen appliance that is used for everyone in the house.  So why would that be my gift?  Yay.  I get an appliance I was going to replace anyways as a birthday gift.  Whoo hoo.  Well, I found one at Family Dollar (of all places) for cheap and it's worked ever since and no, I did not let her give that to me for my birthday.  I'd rather get nothing.  So she went out with my husband and instead bought me a plastic fan.  I do not need a plastic fan, as we use industrial strength metal floor fans in our house (like those meant for shops).  So I returned her plastic fan and instead bought myself a pretty Farmhouse magazine from Better Homes and Gardens.  Now, my mother has dementia.  So I do not really think this one was a "bad" gift, just a funny one.  I feel sort of bad for her since she can't really buy gifts anymore, as she doesn't really know how to work online shopping anymore (when just a year ago, she was the queen of online shopping--which is why she is on a budget).  So like I said, this one doesn't actually count.  I just found it humorous.  
• Last year she bought me a clothesline.  Are we seeing a trend here?  Buying me gifts to do chores with?  Anyways, it's the kind you cement into the ground, in a pole.  It opens like an umbrella.  I did not want one of those.  She was going to buy me a (insert here), which my husband and kids talked her out of, and also told her I do not want a clothesline.  This was right after she was forbidden to go in the basement by her physical therapist, which I enforced.  So she decided if she couldn't do laundry, then I was going to have to truck all that wet crap upstairs to hang outside.  Or more so, she wanted one, because she had one at our old house where I grew up, and she was trying to recreate her life here (she actually said to me about it).  But instead of buying one for herself for her birthday, which was the week before, she decided to buy it for me, mostly because I wouldn't let her do laundry anymore (she's a HUGE fall risk and cannot go downstairs).  So I found out about before my birthday and acted grateful and just never put it up.  She bugged me about it for a bit, but then forgot about it and it's been in my garage ever since.  I will use it eventually, though, when we have our own land.  So I guess it's actually not a bad gift, per say, just bought for the wrong reasons.  
• This gift wasn't mine, it was my hubby's.  In 2013, after she went no contact with me for few weeks but then blamed me and said I was the one who stopped speaking to her, Christmas came and she decided to use gift time as a way to tell us what she really thought of us.  She splurged on my youngest son, spending well over $100 on him (he's her favorite and still is), and bought my oldest son a $8 RC car.  He was sixteen and too old for toy cars.  And then she bought me a $100 Ninja blender and bought my hubby a $1 box of chocolate covered cherries from the dollar store.  Um yeah.  That Christmas was fucked.  I didn't use that blender for almost a year because I was so angry about it.  I also returned all my kids' gifts to the store and gave them the money to split in half and buy whatever they wanted (my youngest didn't care because a) the gifts were too young for him, too and b) he felt bad for his brother).  My oldest son was almost crying that Christmas while his brother opened a ton of gifts and he just opened one that was a junky toy.  All while my mother smirked.  Geezus.  That was pretty damn mean.
• One time my ex-husband forgot my birthday for the second year in a row and went out with his father and bought a car without telling me.  And then he brought it home and I said "What in the fuck is this?"  I was so angry he went without me and without even telling me.  A few days later someone reminded him it was my birthday and then he changed his tune and said "Don't you realize I bought it for your birthday??"  I never laughed so hard at a blatant lie.  Anyways, when it came time for his father many years later to want to get out of being the cosigner for the car, they said my ex-husband's aunt would buy it and we'd pay her.  And I said "Go ahead, it's not in my name and will never be in my name, so why do I care who pays for it??"  They were all so angry with me but I, again, never laughed so hard.  I wasn't getting stuck with a debt I didn't ask for.  You make stupid choices, you win stupid prizes.  
• My birthmother (the one who gave actual birth to me) never remembers my birthdays.  She will get on a kick of of sending cards or gifts for several years, and then just quit.  Only to start again later, out of the blue.  It's confusing and stupid.  For my fortieth birthday, she completely forgot.  And then the next year, she sent me a handmade card that you could tell was copied from a real card.  It wasn't personal at all, just something she sent because she felt she had to.  It felt like it was sent out of obligation, rather than actually caring she missed my fortieth.  I've given up on having a real relationship with her.  She's incapable of being normal, just like my mother.  It's so aggravating knowing that even if I hadn't been adopted, I'd have been living with narcissists.  Same story, different people.  Ugh.  
• In 2006, my mother physically assaulted me for my birthday.  She hit me because she was drunk and didn't like that I screamed "SHUT UP!  STOP IT!" as I loaded the dishwasher when she was going on one of her rants at the dinner table about me "being a pervert" because I co-slept with my kids, who were three and seven at the time.  I hit her right back, because I'll be damned if she was going to get away with hitting me again.  And then she flew into a rage and tried to beat my ass, screaming "YOU HIT YOUR MOTHER!  YOU ARE CRAZY!  YOU HIT YOUR MOTHER!"  Like she didn't hit me first.  But nope, she's the victim, because I had the audacity as a twenty-nine year old woman to stand up for myself when she assaulted me.  She chased me around the house as I grabbed my kids and ran out to my car while calling 911 (though they didn't answer).  We moved out a couple weeks later.
• Every year on everyone's birthdays, my mother had to take us out to eat.  Not anymore.  Not since last time.  I think she did this because she wanted to flash her money around so she could feel important.  "Look, you can't take five people out to dinner, but I can!"  Plus the fact she LOVES to eat in restaurants.  Mostly because I fucking hate it.  I always have since childhood.  And she'd drag me to them whenever she could, just to pick on me.  I am not even exaggerating here.  She literally did it so she could pick on me.  See, I have severe anxiety and restaurants used to be a huge trigger for me.  I was get super nauseous. and would refuse to eat until I went home.  And she'd laugh at me for it, and make fun of me the entire time.  How is that even fun for her?  So on our birthdays, I could not say no, because my kids loved to eat at restaurants and it was a free meal for them.  When you're super freaking poor, you don't say no to a free dinner.  So I would be stuck, at least five times a year, going out to eat.  And she'd use that time to make fun of the other patrons, too.  "Look at that fatty!  Kill me if I ever look like that!"  I'd always have to tell her to shut up before anyone ever heard her (though who knows if she did).  She went through a fat shaming thing for YEARS, up until 2020.  Anyways, she tortured me for my entire life doing this, until 2017, when, for the first time, I picked the restaurant for my hubby's birthday.  Oh, yes, mother had to pick the restaurant, too, even though she'd ask you where you wanted to go, but we'd always end up going to whichever one she picked.  So that year I picked and we went to Famous Daves BBQ, and she bitched the entire time.  She got so bad, she screamed at my husband while he was driving in the parking lot.  The next day she screamed at me "From now on, I PICK THE RESTAURANT!"  I looked at her and giggled and said "Good luck with that, because you'll be going alone as we're never going out to eat with you again."  I was so angry, but whenever I say that kind of stuff to her, I am as calm as a placid lake.  I just say it a-matter-of-factly, with no emotion.  Even though inside I will be seething.   She said "Fine."  My son's birthday came around a couple months later and we went out without her (and we made sure she knew it).  And we never had to go out to eat with her ever again.  The end.  YAY!!!  Turns out, I don't have issues going to eat as much when she's not there.  Who knew??  
• Since not going out to eat anymore, my mother tries to ruin our birthdays in other ways.  Before, she felt as though she was always the "birthday fairy", completely in charge of everyone's birthdays.  But now that she's not, she will bitch, moan, and complain at each birthday just to make everything be about her.  She loves to be the center of attention and has no idea what to do with herself when she's not.  This isn't a physical gift, but rather an wonderful emotional gift, from a short, old emotional terrorist who just won't go live in a home like a good old person.  So instead of letting her ruin things, we send her to her room if she gets too saucy.  "If you don't like it, you can go spend the rest of the evening in your room instead."  If she's going to act like a child, I am certainly going to treat her like one.  And it usually works and she usually shuts up and/or apologizes.  It's like letting a selfish little kid be in charge of everyone's life.  Then you adopt that kid and now you have to retrain them on how to act, since nobody showed them how to begin with.  I just love cleaning up my grandparent's mistakes.
• But the all time worst gift I've ever gotten wasn't from my mother or my ex-husband.  It was from my cousin.  She told me she was excited to send me a box on my birthday filled with all sorts of goodies and fun.  She kept asking me "Did you get it?  Did you get it?"  So I got excited, too!  Well.  I got the box.  And I opened it.  And the first thing that happened was the smell.  It hit my nose like a flyswatter.  My nostrils were assaulted by the stench of old, used, cigarette butts.  If you are around smokers, or are a smoker, you know that the smell of used cigarettes is far worse than a just opened pack of cigarettes.  It's horrible.  And the entire box was caked in that smell.  I dumped the contents of the box on my table and out poured literal garbage.  Broken pieces of wooden crap she picked up (hopefully for free) at the Goodwill.  Old, dusty, nasty, wreaths.  Half used bottles of weird beauty products.  Half used bottles of medicine.  Um.  What was going on here?  Was this my actual gift?  I almost wrote to her and said "Very funny.  You spent too much money on shipping a gag gift!"  But then she messaged me and said "Did you get my wreaths??"  Oh god.  She meant to send this.  Everything wasn't just broken, but you could tell they were shipped that way.  She sent me literal broken garbage that smelled like a rancid cigarette bin.  I didn't know what to say.  I wondered if she sent the wrong box by mistake?  Like, she was cleaning out her house, and there was a box of garbage, and a box of my gifts and she packaged up the wrong one and threw the right one away.  Oops!  But no, she had printed some pictures at her work (she worked at Kinkos) and stuffed them in there, too.  So she knew what box it was.  What in the holy hell was going on?  Was this a message?  Is this what she thought of me?  I was worth nothing more than a box of garbage?  I had just met her that year, as she's my biological cousin.  And I took great personal offense to her gift, because I honestly hated my birthdays anyways (I don't anymore).  But then I found out she was just completely insane, so her gift finally made sense.  Because a month later, she tricked us into moving 500 miles away to a home that didn't exist in southern Missouri, all so we could live with her and she could torture us.  I would have sued her, but her BFF is a total insane dick lawyer, and I knew he'd skew it so we'd look like the crazy people.  Each year on Halloween I want to send her a box of garbage (she was born on my favorite holiday, which sucks), but I never do, because you do not antagonize the crazy people and invite them back into your life, under any circumstance.  Well, unless you absolutely have to.  Which is why I am living with my mother right now, due to us becoming homeless because of my crazy cousin.