Pink Brick House (Narcissistic Parents Set You Up for Narc Bosses!)
This story that begins in 1963 might be helpful to readers. Screwy childhoods yield the kind of boundaries that narcissistic bosses see as porous. Porous boundaries can’t hold up for long. They are easy to penetrate.
You didn’t come here to read about abused kids, but maybe you didn’t realize that some of the nonsense you lived through as a child caused you to be an easy target for narcissists in your adult life, at work, in love, life and friendship.
If you want to stick to the narcissistic boss talk, ignore the posts that are under the category “Childhood.”
Once upon a time, two little girls lived in a pink brick house with white trim on a quiet street that was at the very end of a dead-ended street.
The little house sat in the middle of two immaculately mowed lots on the outskirts of a small Texas town about 45 miles from Houston. On one side of the little house was a large garden that produced more vegetables every summer and fall than five families could eat.
Times were pretty good as far as employment opportunities went. There were chemical plants and a lot of new construction and almost anyone who wanted a job had a good one.
By all appearances, the two little girls were thriving after John and Cee got married. Vicki lived with her mother and grandparents in the next town and visited on weekends. Sally was a precocious seven-year old and lived with John (her new step dad) and Cee her mother.
One of Sally’s first lessons learned at the pink brick house was not to cry or tell anyone about their family business.
Another early lesson was to wear long pants and long sleeves all the time — even in the dead of the summer heat — because Sally usually had a peculiar bruise or two. She always had welts where John’s belt hit her.
John told her he would beat her good if anyone saw those marks. Sally tried hard to keep the welts and bruises covered.
John had a low tolerance for aggravation. He was likely to have rages if his wife didn’t agree with him, or did something too slow. He had rages at both little girls if they didn’t pick up a screwdriver fast enough once he barked an instruction at them.
John laughed meanly when telling his siblings about how he yelled at the girls to keep the little eight and six year old girls (and his wife Cee) “jacked up.” He liked them to be alert in case he needed something.
John screamed at the girls so often that both were flooded with adrenaline all the time.
Vicki began compulsively eating to manage the stress at the pink brick house with her father whom she had practically worshiped before she observed him being so violent with Sally and Cee.
However, Vicki could also remember in later years that John had been mean to her mother Karen.
He came into the kitchen when she was in the high chair and her mother was feeding her alphabet soup.
John was mad at Karen.
With two-year old Vicki watching, he pushed or threw Karen flat into the floor. Vicki crawled out of the high chair and lay on the floor by her mother. John stomped out the door.
Another way that Sally’s stress showed was that she ALWAYS vomited at night on the weekends. Sally’s stomach could not handle being happy and she was always happy to see Vicki when she was there for visitation. Sally felt safer with Vicki there. John didn’t like for Vicki to see him beat on her but sometimes he got too mad to stop even with Vicki there.
Sally’s panic attacks were rampant by the time she had lived with John for a year.
When Sally wasn’t being terrorized by John’s belt beatings, she spent a lot of time praying that God wasn’t going to let her die from not being able to breathe. Her anxiety attacks at night were so severe they literally took away her breath. In one instance, Cee and John angrily took her to the emergency clinic.
Once her attacks started, it was hard to stop them. Sally’s mother, Cee, had no comprehension of the emotions that went on inside of her daughter.
Frankly, Cee didn’t care.
Both Vicki and Sally were annoyances to Cee.
She loved all the other children she encountered in the family, but she never had one kind word for either girl.
She didn’t care how Sally’s mental well-being was at any time in her entire life.
John and Cee seldom took Sally to the doctor. On the other hand, every time Vicki sniffled, she had to go to the doctor and get a prescription. John and Cee wanted Vicki’s grandparents to believe they were good parents.
Cee never looked at Sally any way but with contempt. She did not care if Sally was afraid, angry, depressed, sad, or happy. It wasn’t important.
Cee felt like children weren’t real people. Maybe when they grew up, they would be real people. But not when they were kids.
Give kids food and coats. That’s really all they need.
Have kids do all work no matter how hard.
Humilate kids if you want to. Call them names and tell them they are ugly.
If kids want something small that would be no problem for anyone, tell them NO. Being mean is fun.
Tell John things to get him angry at the girls so that John likes you better.
Cee (who constantly overate, didn’t bathe often, and was overweight within a year after marrying John) habitually mocked Sally for showing emotion.
Cee mocked Vicki for being a “fatty” or a “chubby” and Vicki’s stepmother insinuated from the time Vicki’s breasts began to bud that Vicki was slutty. Cee told John that Vicki lost her virginity when she was ten years old. Of course, that was a lie.
Sadly, Cee’s opportunity to laugh at Vicki because she had large breasts started when Vicki was in fifth grade. She ridiculed her because her breasts bounced when she walked or ran.
Cee bought cheap bras for her. It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford to buy the girls better clothes. John and Cee had whatever they wanted including new furniture, nice cars, rec vehicles, and enough tools and outbuildings to run two commercial mechanic shops. Yet, the girls only had a couple of pair of play clothes and a total of four outfits to wear to school and church. When they purchased shoes for Sally, Cee and John bought shoes that were as ugly as possible and looked like corrective shoes. Sally tried to ask for more appropriate school shoes but John refused to allow her to make decisions that seemed to matter to Sally. Both John and Cee liked for Sally to feel like an ugly misfit. They chastised her and said they could not afford anything better. Those were lies.
Maggie (Vicki’s grandmother, her mother’s mother) took Vicki shopping for bras when it became apparent that Cee and John weren’t going to spend more than a dollar or two on bras from K-mart for her granddaughter whose cup size was nearing a D when she was in the 7th grade.
If little Sally’s anxiety started, Cee mocked her, told her to quit acting stupid, and to straighten up or she’d be grounded get another whipping.
In their own sly ways, both John and Cee pitted the girls against each other so that the girls grew apart and didn’t like each other when they were young.
John treated Sally like she was as good as any man when helping him do projects. They were great buddies.
He wanted Sally helping him all the time. (In reality, he treated her like a field slave.)
He thought he made Vicki resentful against Sally by not allowing her to help. He made a big showing that he didn’t like Vicki to help him. He screamed at her when she was trying to hand him things and didn’t do it quick enough. Vicki often mentally checked out to escape and he hated her lack of attention to his needs. Those kinds of things began to generate denigrating statements against Vicki for being like her mother Karen.
Vicki never felt resentful. It was just another layer of guilt for not being good enough to help her sister not have to be in bad circumstances helping her dad or getting beatings. The helplessness of watching this made Vicki lose a lot of herself to a refrain that never stopped. It would drive Vicki to want to over-medicate, drink too much, or do anything not to feel the guilt.
Cee’s method of wedging the girls against one other was to treat Sally nice when John was out of the house working the evening shift. She and Sally would team up against the other girl. They didn’t like stupid Vicki!
It was the only time Cee was nice to her daughter since marrying John. So, when Cee encouraged Sally to bully Vicki about anything, Sally did it. The few times that Vicki protested, Cee unfairly settled against her and supported Sally’s poor behavior.
As young girls, Sally and Vicki loved each other and played together for hours doing each other’s hair or playing little games they made up. Perhaps one of the sickest things John and Cee did was to make sure the girls could not be friends. they made sure the girls hurt each other enough under their manipulations that they learned not to trust each other.
When Vicki was in the sixth grade and Sally was going into the tenth, John had them helping him roof buildings that entire summer. Vicki was olive-skinned like John and the sun didn’t kill her like it did Sally. Sally suffered from bad sunburns. It wasn’t like John needed the money. He wasn’t charging for the roofing labor.
But, this act of roofing for his buddies and being the nicest guy in the world was part of his strategy.
As long as he could be that super nice guy around town, no one would believe he could lay a pinkie finger on his girls.
It worked swimmingly.
Note to Self: The best advice to a victim of narcissistic shenanigans is to live your life as well we possible. Love good people and be a good person to love.