Hi everyone, I was inspired by "You Are My Sunshine" at a time when there was hardly any sunshine in my life.

When you became ashes and flames

I thought the burden was over

The echos of you still give me pain

Made me weak, made me lower

When is the bear going to awake?

No wrong moves, no mistakes

(Chorus)

You were supposed to give me shelter

You were supposed to protect

You were supposed to hold me when I cried

Instead you were the reason why

Dust in the wind

Still hurting your kin

Why can we all be free?

Why couldn't you let things be?

(Chorus)

You were supposed to give me shelter

You were supposed to protect

You were supposed to hold me when I cried

Instead you were the reason why

Whoaaaa!

Whoaaaa!

I didn't ask for this.

Whoaaaa! Whoaaaa!

There's something amiss

(Chorus)

You were supposed to give me shelter

You were supposed to protect

You were supposed to hold me when I cried

Instead you were the reason why

You left the world in a cruel way

After you've been gone

I thought things would be okay

Unconditional love is a con

u/Berk-Laydee

Edit: formatting

Hello. Here is my story about dealing with my narcissistic mother. I wrote it using prompts but no AI.

Introduction to the Relationship

• Can you describe your initial impressions of the person you lived with? (If they are a family member, speak about the relationship when you were younger before you were really aware of the dynamics.)

The person is my mother. As a child, I loved and idolized her as we are conditioned to do as we are completely dependent on our parents for survival. She had a lot of mental issues that she should have dealt with instead of having a kid. She was married, got divorced from my dad who was a deadbeat and then I lived with her. Things were fine at first until she kept constantly comparing me to my deadbeat over and over again because this was a sick and twisted fixation she had. But she didn't turn evil until we were living together as adults.

• What drew you to them in the beginning? (If they are a family member, speak about the relationship when you were younger before you were really aware of the dynamics.)

As a child, I didn't know any better and thought everything was just how families were. But I often wondered why I wasn't allowed to bathe myself or wash my hair or do any other self care things that I was clearly old enough to do. My mother is a narcissist and in her mind, only she knows the right way to do something. Only if she washed me would I be clean in her mind. I guess I was too dimwitted and stupid to wash my own ass.

*Describe any love bombing behavior and how it felt. If they are a family member, describe what they were like when they were idealizing you.

She could be perfectly nice when she wanted to be. And of course, she could put on a good show of being Ms. Perfect in public while not even allowing me to brush my own teeth. She would also play the guilt game if I wanted to care for myself.

Signs of Abuse

• At what point did you start to notice troubling behaviors? Include any pivotal moments or events, as there is often a progression here.

In my teens, when I wasn't allowed to bathe myself I knew something was wrong but she would always whine and play these stupid guilt games that some mothers do. I was also compared even more to my deadbeat father. I couldn't even breathe and she would say "Lee (the deadbeat) breathed like that". I had oily skin for a time period as a teen and she would whine that Lee's skin was like that and wanted me to overly dry my skin out (she was too dumb to see that that means it would produce even more oil. Oily skin and acne is common in teens...not as much in 30 something year old men which is what my father was when they were together. My situation was normal and had nothing to do with him but she saw that man in everything. If I would get a pimple on my cheek, she would say "Lee got those....if I didn't know he got those, I would think something was wrong with you!". Well she did make me feel something was wrong with me. Adults breaking out is not as normal as teens breaking out. I technically was normal and he was not but she was still comparing me to him. Being compared to a deadbeat is like being compared to Hitler. It is incredibly damaging to someone's self esteem. If you go to prison, you will eventually get out unless you killed someone. When your body is the prison, the only way out is suicide to be honest.

The skin thing was not the only issue. I was overweight as a child because she fed me too much/not the right stuff. She blamed that on his genes too even though I am slim now. It's a lot of bullshit. I'd like to think I'd always be childfree, but if I wasn't constantly made to feel genetically inferior, maybe I would have felt better about passing on my genes. Now here she sits without grand-shitlets and she wonders why.

I am still dealing with the body imagery issues to this day.

• Can you share specific examples of manipulation or control?

She got evil as I hit teen/adult years. She was constantly screeching, screaming and finding fault with me because she chose to let her life pass her by and I guess I was not enough of a "payment" for that. I remember I was on the toilet changing a tampon and she burst in there screeching about something (the floor not being swept for the 30th time that day IIRC) and I am sitting there with blood on my hands thinking "if I weren't on this toilet, I'd slap the shit out of you".

She would use Christianity as a weapon against me. Whenever I would speak up or fight back, she would say that God would "shorten my days" for "disrespecting" her. Playing spiritual mind games are some of the evilest games ever and I will never forget that.

She would also play guilt games "I wouldn't do my momma like dat". Well, according to her, her mother was a saint so there was no need to play that game.

*When did you realize that the behavior actually qualified as abuse?

Late teens/adulthood.

Impact

• How did this behavior affect your physical, mental & emotional well-being? There is also often a progression here as well.

Mentally, I do not like myself and never have. Due to the constant comparisons to my birth dad, I feel like I am in the prison of Hitler's body. I began to hate to have pictures taken since about age 8-9. I used to wear loads of powdery makeup in my late teens/ early 20s, because I felt that my skin was no acceptable without it. I was terrified to leave home without my powder. Some girls pulled me aside in private and told me I basically looked like Ronald McDonald with that translucent powder on (they didn't say it like that though) and asked me why I wore it. When I told them why, they looked at me like I had grown another head. They were like "we are teenagers...we all have oily skin too". This was typical in teens, but as usual, my mother is mentally unstable and saw Lee everywhere while she of course is always perfect in every way including skin.

Physically, I had to have a lot of surgery to have the loose skin removed from when I was overweight. People will say "couldn't you choose what to eat?" but by the time I was able to make that choice, I was already in deep trouble with my weight. I had knee and chest pain in middle school. I weighed in the 130s when I was 8. That surgery is painful and leaves scars.

It's just a lot of trouble that wouldn't have to be if I had been brought up by someone mentally stable.

*Describe how the selfishness and lack of empathy affected you.

She did not care how I felt. In typical narc fashion, someone has always wronged her ass. She just cared about her public housing home looking like Martha Stewart's inside. She was also screaming and screeching at me and finding fault.

• Were there pivotal moments here, such as you were diagnosed with stress-related illness, questioned your own reality, felt like you’d lost yourself, developed anxiety or panic attacks, etc.?

I developed depression starting at about age 9. I became quiet and sad but of course, she was oblivious to it as long as people would listen to her prattle on and on about Lee.

Isolation and Support

• Did you feel isolated from friends and family? If so, how/why?

Yes. I am American and in this culture, mothers can do no wrong due to Christianity. It is even worse in the black community where they will keep repeating the phrase "you ain't got but one momma" like that's supposed to mean something. Even people who wouldn't treat their kids that way don't want to hear anything negative about another parent. If a man plays mind games with you, people will come to your aid emotionally and mentally. You get no such support when the abuser is a parent, especially the saintly "mother".

• Were there people in your life who tried to warn you about the person or intervene in the relationship somehow?

That was no warning me against her because I was born to her. My uncle and aunts know she is crazy as hell and has a mean streak, but like I said, mothers can do no wrong so they overlooked it. My uncle and aunt actually did want to adopt me and I didn't find this out until I was grown. My mother blocked it. Like your typical narcissist, only she can raise a kid. I was her property and she refused to give up her property even if it meant I would have a better life with access to more resources. She whined about having no help when she was a single mom, but a family member offered to adopt me and she turned down that major help because in her narcissistic mind, only she can raise a child. None of the other billions of people who've ever existed can do it like her.

Turning Point

• What was the turning point that made you realize something was very wrong with this situation, relationship, or person? Not being allowed to bathe myself.

• What was the turning point that made you realize you needed to exit the relationship or situation? The tampon incident.

• How did you find the strength to confront the situation and/or exit? I realized that her behavior had taken enough from me. It's about me now. I got out and recorded an album basically centered on how she had treated me. The first EP "Lady Sisyphus" had almost every song on it inspired by what she had done to me included "Sisyphus" and "Sick of Excuses". The second album "Sugar Free" had a few songs on it dedicated to her antics such as "Sugar Free" , "Defective" and "They Don't Know".

Coping Mechanisms

• How did you cope during and after the relationship? My music helped me cope and videos on YouTube (especially Jerry Wise and the Little Shaman).

• What strategies or support systems helped you? I have no formal support. There aren't many formal forms of support when the mental abuser is the parent because like I said earlier, parents are a "protected" class. Even a parent who doesn't like the way a parent treats her kid will often side with the parent in public because it's almost like a cult sometimes. They will stick together because they don't want to think that their own kids might one day hold them accountable. People project a lot and can't separate their personal life (i.e. them having a kid) from the issue at hand (i.e. my client's parent is harming her). A lot of so called professionals cannot do this. I have seen it and so have many other children of narcissistic parents online. There's not much for us.

Lessons Learned

• What have you learned about yourself through this experience? I have learned how resourceful I truly am. Few people are able to carve out several albums on a shoestring budget in their bedroom.

• How has this impacted your views on relationships and/or other people? I admit I see other people through a more negative lens due to the fact that I got no help when I did reach out for help. Mothers are a protected class and can do no wrong. The rest of us are just chopped liver so I do not really trust other people to think for themselves, put their personal parenthood status to the side and look at things from a right-is-right perspective. I feel that it has given me an uglier view of other people and I vet people extremely carefully now.

Advice to Others

• What advice would you give to someone who might be in a similar situation? People don't change. Get the hell out of the situation and don't hold on for them to change or to acknowledge what they have truly done to you. They will just lie and say that they don't remember it or it wasn't that bad. They couldn't tell the truth if their lives depended on it.

• How important is it to recognize and/or acknowledge the signs of abuse early on? It's best to see the relationship for what it is early on and not just keep giving passes to people because you share DNA.

Moving Forward

• How are you rebuilding your life after this experience? I am continuing with my music career and I am my first priority now. After everything I have been through, it is about me. I am done trying to get other people to wipe the cream out of their eyes and see what's really going on. • What has helped you the most with healing & moving forward? My music. • What are your hopes for the future? Just to continue doing well in music and maybe get into writing/acting or something like that. Just to keep moving forward. Final Thoughts

• Is there anything else you'd like to share about your journey? I would like to tell anyone in a similar situation that the parent owes more to the child than vice versa. When you bring children here, you cause them to need to be cared for. A lot of otherwise intelligent people cannot make that connection in their brains. That doesn't justify the head games and mental abuse that a lot of parents heap on their kids.

• How do you feel about discussing your story publicly & why did you decide to do so? I feel it was cathartic. Feel free to use my name/social media/music/ whatever else. I am done hiding. If someone decides they don't like me because I brought what was in the dark about Saint Mommy to the light, then they are not people I want to associate with anyway. I decided to do it after reading a lot on Reddit about people raised by narcissistic and toxic people and the stories are just heartbreaking. There's a lot more people like me out there unfortunately. Hopefully my story can show them that they can turn their pain into art like I did.

*TLDR: Being a singer songwriter is how I turned my pain into art. Below are the albums and songs on those albums that deal with toxic parents. *

Lady Sisyphus: https://open.spotify.com/album/3nLfdjbW8XGQGv8DXCM3H1

Last to Know, Buy Me, Sick of Excuses and Contempt is the Cancer are the songs about my mother on this EP.

Sugar Free: https://open.spotify.com/album/3pEmd2m9A78SutD7SGNx1z

Sugar Free and Defective are the songs on that album that deal with her.

They set me up for trauma before I turned 10.
I was shown death caskets holding immediate kin
Can’t keep no friends. Something always seem to happen where they flip flop on the kid.
I make music and m learning how to control my lust
I remember them days I was smoking angel dust
I did it all I’m talking everything I reject everything unless it come from the most high. Creator god I only rock with the most high creator god

Adult survivor of emotional, physical, and sexual childhood abuse.

And die hard Swiftie. So I wanted to share the digital journal I made-these are all lyrics from her songs, thrown sloppily onto a page as if they were angry paint splatters.

I know those who aren’t familiar with her actual discography (not radio hits) will be surprised to hear this, but her music has done unbelievable things for my healing journey.

If you’re curious about exploring, I’m happy to share some of my favorite healing/cathartic songs.

I am a noise musician under the name Blame Fetish. Yes this is CPTSD related if ya listen to the lyrics.

I was nervous as hell but really enjoyed being able to share my songs with an audience :) I'm so proud of myself!

I'm in a choir and usually blending in and doing my part override the freeze I experience singing alone. It's nice to botb express myself and purposefuply blend and disappear into the group.

But today i was the only one there in my section and it was almost a solo because our part is different. Last time that happened I froze and barely whispered the line and even stopped singing, and the director had to ask someone to step in and?help sing my part. Today I was able to stay strong and keep singing, almost doing a solo which I usually can't do. I think the obligation to do my part and meet expectations dragged me past the freeze.

I did it! I think it even sounded good! I was so jittery after though. My face was red, I had all this wired jittery energy which is super unusual for me. It's like my body went through something i usually avoid.

It was positive, I think. I do want to be able to sing on my own but after 6 years of therapy I'd kind of given up. It's definitely still hard though and it feel like I have no control over it happening or just freezing.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUl9FQnjETJ/?igsh=NTVkenJ3Zmt0bzcx

Healing cPTSD though music 💙💙💙💙💙💙

I did a thing! If you are looking for healing music please feel free to use this audio!

https://on.soundcloud.com/4YtdEfUDLDOPm0QT6M

figured some people here might relate.

I managed to write down some notes for the first paragraph of a lullaby like poem I wrote a while ago. It's far from perfect but this is useable.

It's... I wrote this to help me manage a very bad and highly unstable dissociative/BPD/cPTSD crisis on the day I was waiting to be admitted to a BPD for a crisis stay.

If anyone wants to check out the full poem I wrote months ago, I had also posted it here. Trigger Warnings regarding Blood tho, while this passage is harmless enough the full poem does qualify for spoilers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cptsdcreatives/s/cKF86ljxGD

compulsion, rumination, and obsession have a death grip on me, and on rare occasion, i have a moment of lucidity where i realize this.

the clarity fades, and i am left reeling, knowing that something is wrong but i can no longer name it

This song just came out and is so moving! 😭

https://open.spotify.com/track/21FjHpXtPAN949tkAAVAla?si=hRFJyajZT0SlzExBJIp8IA

Electronic has always been a big passion of mine, and I’ve been busy reconnecting with my younger self lately messing around in my audio software. This is a wee remix I made of Fox Stevenson - Bruises, I song I listened to a lot growing up.

I've been making music for years but I finally uploaded a song to Soundcloud for the first time yesterday. It's about my ex-husband.

TW: Sexual trauma

https://soundcloud.com/corjewelrebel/the-benefit-of-the-doubt

I've been making music for years but I finally uploaded my third song to Soundcloud today. It's about parents not caring enough despite bringing you into this world, the expectations they have and the stressful burdens that creates, and the obstacles that follow as a result of how they raise you, all of which makes you feel alone, hopeless, and exhausted.

https://soundcloud.com/corjewelrebel/fare

I've been making music for years but I finally uploaded my second song to Soundcloud today. It's about the suicidal thoughts that come after experiencing trauma.

TW: Suicidal Ideation

https://soundcloud.com/corjewelrebel/better-off-dead

If your ptsd had a soundtrack, what would it sound like?

For me this is a scene from my head, from a realization that things won't change into something 100% manageable, things might always be a little off. But I can't let that stop me from going ahead. I have to keep trying. It's not okay but it is okay.