There is a cycle I predictably engage in every time my little people visit.
First, there is the anticipation of magical moments of connection with a trifecta of teenagers. The excitement of catching up, hanging out and just being together.
Then there is the merger with reality, when they show up, want to veg out, lounge around the house, sleep til noon, and play Minecraft all day. My own circadian rhythm gets thrown off as I stay up to bond, then sleep in with them. And expectations drift downward a bit--ok truth be told--they drop into the toilet.
And then there is the knowing how much shit they have to endure in living under the iron fist that is my ex, how they are not respected as autonomous human beings, how he steamrolls over their free will, teaching by example the art of manipulation. I feel that I must balance this yuck in the other direction by teaching by opposing example the art of respect for humanity. And so I need to invest in their kindness banks, filling them up with home cooked meals, less work around the flat, and more chill time as their dad is harsh on those fronts. But it is more than that. I often feel like I need to somehow not merely be a good parent, but make up for the asshole parent by being an exceptional parent to make up for the badness that is to have an NPD parent. And that is a huge problem. I'm only human as it turns out. I'm flawed like anyone else. All of this is iced with a disgusting frosting of guilt in moving away from them in the first place....
Which is reinforced by the fact that my ex constantly blames me for moving away behind my back. He oh-so-wonderfully helped create the hostile context whereby moving away seemed the only option. And now he uses it as weapon against me, as in, "Well, she did move away and go abandon her own children..." He makes sure that everything wrong in their lives has nothing to do with him, nor his narcissism, but rather their evil mother abandoning them. Which is how his own life went.
His own evil mother did the same and abandoned him in death. And he's never dealt with that emotionally--only intellectually--murdered by his own NPD father. But all the same, it probably comes back to the same feeling. He's angry at her getting herself killed by a narc. And so he became a narc in order to not deal.
Which brings me back to why I sit in the stewpot of my own jumbled, disparate, ridiculous emotions. I try to label them, understand them, watch the cycle of them.
After my littles leave, the crash is predictable, as is the impinging guilt that will move in close like a boa constrictor. I'll suck in air for the oxygen deprivation now.
