VA: Everything a Little Girl Could Ever Hope to Have
Aug 29th, 2007
(20 votes, average: 2.95 out of 5)
Loading ...Once upon a time, when I was 23 years old, I went out to eat alone at a restaurant. Midway through my meal, I had decided I needed to use […]
Original post: Everything a Little Girl Could Ever Hope to Have
She had everything from the start, that’s why she has a distorted view of how life should be, and when she no longer has it, she passes that smack in the face by reality to her children. That’ll be my guess from the info given.
I don’t think that’s where this story is going. Pictures are not always the best source of truth…
In any case, this is the kind of story we come to your site for, V. I’m on the edge of my seat for tomorrow.
Everything I’ve read V say about her mother & her childhood, I’m convinced her mother has Borderline personality disorder. I’d done a lot of research on this because I suspected my father of being borderline, only to find out he was narcissistic. Borderline, Narcissistic, and Histrionic personality disorders are all very similar, they are cluster B personality disorders.
His unending need for attention, history of failed relationships, and the unpredictable rage that he uses as a means to control those around him are all signs of his NPD. No amount of appreciation was enough to fill his need, and no amount of explanation or apologizing could calm his rages.
Having a label for him is not an excuse for his actions, but it does make dealing with him somewhat easier for me. I have the confidence to say “this is his problem, not mine,” when he’s giving me or anyone else shit. I can’t change how he feels or how he reacts to the world, but i can change how I react to him.
I’ll play the guessing game since I’ve nothing better to do right now but I don’t think it’s quite as straightforward as V’s mom having a personality disorder although clearly she does. Maybe she was born with it but I think her inability to empathise with her daughter (note she has no such problem with her son) may have been exacerbated by her upbringing. I think the clue lies in the title, the little girl in the pictures has everything a little girl could hope to have in the MATERIAL sense. But doesn’t anyone else get the cold feeling she wasn’t given everything a little girl could hope to have in the emotional sense? What V is describing in those pics brings to mind not a happy fulfilled child but some weird kind of human dress up doll, a puppet turned out all shiny and pristine and told to smile for the camera in company before being put back in her box until the next showcase. The grandmother seems to me to be ALL about outward appearances, maybe she learned too late to relate to her own daughter emotionally so grabbed the chance to do so with her grandaughter. Can’t wait to find out.
Or perhaps V’s mother was simply cruel because she chose to be. If we really thought that there was no free choice involved in sadism, our penal system would look quite different (psychotherapy rather than punishment). Some evil shouldn’t be explained by chemical imbalances or childhood trauma.
Besides, if V’s mother’s childhood explains her behavior, why didn’t V turn out the same way? (Sure she can be harsh, but only in the way that we love her for…)
I wasn’t going to guess the end of the story, but after reading everyone else’s guesses, I have to point out the obvious…
if her grandma had nothing to hide, then why on earth was she so defensive? A normal reaction would have been, “Of course she did, honey. Why do you ask?”
Not snappish, defensive, and so eager to prove something and condemn an innocent childish question. She jumps pretty quickly to blaming V’s mother for “wanting attention” when all V even did, was ask a neutral, simple question.
Clearly all is not right. Not to mention, why exactly do you think V made a point to say that she doesn’t hate her mother becuase her mother is simply a product of her environment? She wouldnt’ say that if it is true that her grandmother did this wonderful job of raising her.
Anyways, I love these entries, and I will be on the edge of my seat waiting to hear the rest of the story until tomorrow!
Karen; painting people all black or all white is classic BPD. Having talked to other people who’s parents are diagnosed, they often have the same dilemma & it causes family issues. One sibling is favored & lavished upon, while another may be loathed. With women, it is often a daughter who is loathed; for her beauty & youth, reminders to the BPD of her own mortality. (The movie Mommy Dearest always comes to mind as an example.)
Granted, like you say, I have a feeling this article is going somewhere; it’s not a black/white situation. It seem’s V’s grandmother lavished her mother with gifts, but perhaps not the attention she craved. Her grandmother wanted the house to look happy from the outside, but perhaps didn’t care what everyone was feeling on the inside. Such childhood can bring out one’s predisposition to a condition such as BPD. It’s often nurture & nature: a poor environment for learning about how to regulate mood & emotions combined with some problem in the amygdala.
I also have found that children of parents with BPD or NPD often turn out much like V (if they don’t turn out to have a personality disorder themselves) they are all the stronger as individuals for it. When one grows up analyzing a parents every word & action, trying to avoid their rage, one tends to be quite perceptive in general. I think often these kids grow up to be very caring individuals; they have practice caring for their own parents, in addition to perhaps caring for siblings the parent has abandoned, or caring for and apologizing to friends/neighbors/other family the parent has left in their path of destruction.
Oh I do agree Kathaclysm that V’s mom has a personality disorder but like I said I’m pretty certain it was exacerbated by her upbringing. Wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that Granny Dearest had her own version of Joan Crawford syndrome. Interesting someone should ask why V didn’t turn out the same, well, yes it made her the strong, successful person she is today but there are clearly residual issues she still battles with. I may be wildly out on this one but V doesn’t have children herself which is sadly another unfortunate side effect for children of abusive parents is they often choose to remain childless for fear their ‘genetic inheritance’ might make them equally bad parents.
Karen, I think we’re on the same page, but perhaps V’s next posting will enlighten us more. There are definitely kids who grew up in perfectly happy/healthy households who turn out totally f-ed up, it’s not common, but it happens, (though I don’t think that’s where V’s story is coming from).
I was thinking the same thing about V not having her own kids (from what we’ve read). It’s a difficult decision. I’ve seen my siblings struggle with it, and I still haven’t had kids myself. If V’s around my age (which I can only guess at from her comments of popular toys when she was a kid) she still might some day.
It’s not just fear of what one might be passing on to one’s kids genetically. It’s hard to know how to be a parent when one’s primary examples were absent or mental, and sometimes when one grew up parenting one’s own parent, they’ve had enough. Of my own siblings who have kids, I see them struggling in different ways, and dealing with their struggles in different ways; I say I’d do it differently, but who knows? And since they still have a relationship with my father, it’s really difficult to see him flip out on my nieces/nephews just like he did to me when I was that age. I wouldn’t trust my own parents with kids if I had any, and I’m sure it’s kinda an odd conversation explaining why grandma & grandpa don’t come to visit.