Garden of Hades

My father was a gardener, and not just a regular gardener, mind you.  He planted and maintained a garden large enough to keep our entire family of 5 in a yearly supply of vegetables, raspberries, strawberries, kohlrabi, eggplant, and just about any other item you could plant in a garden in the midwestern United States.

His garden was always a source of pain for me.  It was another area where I could never do anything right.

“You can’t plant peas that deep!”

“You missed a bunch of the beans when you picked them and now the crows are eating them!  Did you even bother to look under the bushes??”

“Why did you pick these raspberries?? They aren’t nearly ripe enough!”

On and on.  Failure after failure.  It was horrible.   To this day I don’t have any interest in gardening because it brings back so many painful memories.

But none of the above incidents were anywhere close to my most painful garden memory…

I was about 14 and it was early May.  Every year, during the first few weeks of May, my father would borrow a rototiller from one of our neighbors and till the entire garden in preparation for planting a week or so later.   My father was a high school teacher and coached girl’s track at the high school where he taught.   On the first Saturday in May he had an invitational track meet that he had to attend that was over 100 miles away, which meant he was going to be gone all day.  Knowing that my father always tilled the garden the first week of May, I went to the neighbor’s house the morning of his track meet and borrowed their rototiller so I could till the garden for my father while he was gone.  Due to the size of the garden, it took over 3 hours to till the entire plot.  I tilled the garden, cleaned up the rototiller, and returned it to the neighbor, thinking I had done my father a favor.

Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished.

The next day (Sunday) we were sitting at the dinner table having dinner and I asked my father if he had noticed I had tilled the garden.

His response:  “Yes, but you didn’t till it deep enough, I’m going to have to do it again”

I was crushed.  Instead of acknowledging my efforts he again told me that what I did was inadequate.  Instead of thanking me for helping him he told me I had wasted my time.

A few days later I learned that the neighbor had found a broken tine on his tiller after I had borrowed it.  It was one of the inside tines which meant the broken tine wasn’t readily visible.  I had no idea it was broken.  It could have been broken before I had ever used it, but it was assumed that I had broken it.  My father was furious.  Now I had embarrassed him because I had broken a tine on the neighbors tiller and he would have to pay to have it fixed.

I never tilled the garden again.

Stephen Bach

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The Scream

Edvard Munch “The Scream” 1893

I remember the time being about 8PM on a weeknight toward the end of my last semester of high school.

I lost it.  I lost it hard.

Recent events had overwhelmed me to a point where I just couldn’t take it anymore:

– my parents had subversively managed to end my first real relationship with my first real girlfriend after calling her a whore and refusing to even meet her.  We had been dating for about 5 months during which time my parents had never met her.

– my parents had refused to contribute toward my college education, even though college was touted in my family as the most important area of personal development a person could achieve.  I couldn’t afford it without their help.

– I had recently received a speeding ticket trying to rush home to meet curfew.  Now my insurance was going to go up and I could hardly afford it as it was with my minimum wage job and having to make car payments, too.

I plain lost it.

I was laying on my back on my bed and the tears just started coming and they wouldn’t stop.  I started screaming.  Louder and louder.  Screaming as loud as I could.  Pounding my fists into the bed and screaming.

After about 20 minutes my parents came into my room.  My twin younger brothers were standing in the doorway.  They all watched me as I lay on my bed and continued to scream.  At one point when my screaming let up for a second, my father said “Are you done feeling sorry for yourself yet?”  I just screamed louder.  I remember one of my brothers, who were about 12 at the time, say “Maybe we should get him some help” to which my father responded “He’s just feeling sorry for himself”  My entire family watched me lay on my bed and scream and pound my fist into the bed for about the next 40 minutes.  After an hour of screaming and crying, I finally ran out of energy and rolled over and buried my face in the pillow.  Everyone left my room and there was never another word said about what happened that night.

Stephen Bach

So You Want to Go to College?

One of the discerning factors regarding a child’s value in my family of origin was education.  The higher the GPA, the better the child.  The fancier the school a child was accepted to, the better the child.   Unless you were the scapegoat.  For the scapegoat there was an entirely different rule book.

As I mentioned in 3.65, I was a fairly typical student in high school and graduated with a 3.0 GPA.  I took the ACT during the summer between my junior and senior year of high school and scored a 29.  My class rank was top 30%.  Once my senior year started, I applied to 4 different schools using my own money for the application fees and was accepted to all of them.  Two of the schools were private institutions and I knew my parents would balk at the bill, so even though I really wanted to go to one of them, I knew there was little chance.  The other two schools I was accepted to were public institutions, one of them being the premier public institution in the state.

By January I had received all my acceptance letters, and I decided to go to the better public school.   The next document I received from the school, once I told them I was hoping to enroll, was the housing contract for the dormitory.  The housing contract for the dormitories arrived around March 15th and it was due by May 1st with a deposit of $500.  It was critical to get the housing contract sent back to the school, since there were very limited dormitory space and if the contract was not returned on time, there was little chance a space would still be available and I would have to find housing off campus at a significantly higher price.

My parents and I had filled out the financial aid paperwork in January, and it came back around March 1 with a required parental contribution of $2000 / yr for me to attend the school I chose.  I asked my parents if they were willing to pay the amount the financial aid paperwork said was their contribution.  I didn’t get an answer.  I had the $500 for the housing contract, but I didn’t have the $2000 / yr needed for school, so I didn’t want to turn in the housing contract and end up being out the $500 if my parents weren’t going to contribute.  I wouldn’t be able to save enough money on my own either, since my parents were having me make car payments for the car I was driving and I also had to pay my car insurance and I only had a minimum wage job.  My parents had the money.  My mother’s father had recently passed and they had received an inheritance from his estate that was at least 10X more than their total contribution would be for my 4 years of school.

April 1st I ask again…. no answer

April 15th ….no answer

April 27th … no answer

On April 28th I again conveyed to my parents that if I didn’t send in the housing contract to arrive before May 1st, I would have to find off campus housing at a significant higher expense.  Still no answer.

May 1st came and went without me sending in the housing contract and I still had no answer regarding whether they would be willing to contribute their parental contribution that was stated in the financial aid paperwork.  I was very frustrated.  My parents had always stressed how important grades and education were, but when it came to actually putting up the money so I, the scapegoat, could get a college education, they balked.

Eventually it was July and I still had no answer.  At this point, I wouldn’t even be able to find off campus housing anymore, so I gave up on going to the premier school in the state and applied at the local community college and was accepted.  My financial aid paperwork that I received to go to the premier school in the state said I was to get a government loan that was just enough to cover the tuition for the year at the community college, so I took the loan.  I used the $500 I had saved for the housing contract on books and ended up living at home for a year while attending school.  Living at home for that year was a nightmare and I moved out in June of the following summer.  My parents were so convinced that I wouldn’t make it on my own that they wouldn’t let one of my twin brothers, who were currently sharing a room, move into my room once I moved out.   Finally, 6 months after I moved out, they relented and let one of my brothers move into my old room at my parents house.

Unable to afford an apartment and school at the same time without any financial assistance from my parents, I dropped out of school and signed up to join the Navy.

Following my time in the Navy, I returned to get an engineering degree from the premier school in the state that I had been accepted to when I was a senior in high school.   My parents contribution to my engineering degree: About $500 for a few semesters worth of books.  I found a way to get my degree, in spite of my parent’s best efforts to make sure I didn’t!

The story continues…

This following event occured on Christmas about 18 years after I had graduated high school; after I had served 8 years in the Navy and received my engineering degree.

My mother had remarried to my stepfather after my father passed, and we were all invited to one of my stepfather’s children’s homes for Christmas dinner.  My brothers and I had not really had much of a chance to get to know my stepfather’s children, so I thought it would be a great way to spend some time with them.

After we had all finished dinner we broke into a few different groups.  I was with my now deceased brother, my stepfather’s daughter, and her husband.   My stepfather’s daughter asked me why I had joined the Navy.  I told her it was because my parents wouldn’t pay for me to go to school.  I had been accepted, but they refused to pay the amount that financial aid said would be their contribution.  She looked at me a bit perplexed.  She knew my parents had paid for my one brother to attend Yale and had helped my other brother significantly while he attended the same school from which I had graduated.  I didn’t really go into any more detail.  Eventually the night ended and we all went our own way.

Then 4 weeks later I receive an email.  The email is from my narcissistic mother (NM).  In it she goes into great detail about how she had overheard what I said at Christmas and how terribly wrong I was; how her and my deceased father had been told by the high school guidance counselor that I would fail if I went away to school and that they shouldn’t waste their money (Seriously, what kind of guidance counselor would say something like that?); how I was prone to making up stories; how I had proven that I wasn’t responsible enough to handle going away to university.  The entire email was her refusing to accept responsibility for refusing to help me go to college, even though a college education was touted as the most vital aspect of personal development by NM and my father.

The email really stung…. bad….

The worst part:  She not only sent the email to me, she copied every person that was at the Christmas party!  So not only do I get reminded of NM’s perception of me as a failure, everyone else that was there also is told I’m a failure, too, including my stepfather’s children who I hardly even knew!

Stephen Bach

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Just the Three of Us

I have been the family scapegoat for my entire life.  Part of the dynamic of the scapegoat is that the scapegoat can never do anything right, no matter how great the accomplishment of the scapegoat.  All the scapegoat’s accomplishments must be disregarded and ignored.  My narcissistic mother (NM) would take this to extremes.  Not only does NM disregard and ignore my accomplishments, she will go out of her way to NOT even to have to acknowledge my skills and talents.

Here’s an example:

I’ve been playing guitar since I was 13. There are a myriad of painful memories related to my musical endeavors that I plan to eventually share on my blog.  After I graduated college after my stint in the Navy, I started my own band.  I’ve been playing in my band for about 15 years now, and have played well over 300 shows.  I’m fairly respected in the community for my skills as a guitar player and if I’m not out playing with my own band, I have many friends that will invite me to sit in.  NM has never seen me play a show.  All my spouse’s parents and girlfriend’s parents have seen me play, but NM has not.

I’ve played quite a few shows in my hometown where NM still lives.  It’s about 100 miles away from me.  One night, about 10 years ago, while I was setting up for a show in my hometown, my bass player came in to the bar where we were playing that night with a load of gear and said “I just saw your mother outside”.  Evidently she and my stepfather had gone out for dinner to the restaurant next door and were just on their way out.  I asked “Did you say anything to her?”.  He said “Yes, I told her you were playing here and invited her to stay, but she said she had to get home”.  I finished putting down my load of gear and walked outside to see my mother and stepfather rounding the corner on their way to their car.  My drummer, who was outside collecting his drums said “Was that your mother?”  I said “Yes”.  He looked at me with a perplexed expression on his face that said “How come she didn’t stop in to listen to you or even say ‘Hi’ to you??”.  I just turned away and grabbed some more gear and headed back into the bar.

About a month later I was on the phone with NM and she asked about my band.

NM: “So was that your band playing at the Wooden Nickel last month?

Stephen:  “Yes, we had a pretty good night”

NM: “So who’s in your band?”

Stephen: “Well it’s myself singing and playing guitar, Chris does some singing and plays bass, and Mike on drums”

– long pause –

NM: “So that’s it?”

Stephen: “Yep, just the three of us”

– another pause –

NM: “So you do all the guitar playing and the singing”

Stephen:  “Yes”

NM:  “And there’s no one else in the band”

Stephen:  “No, just the three of us”

NM: “Huh, I didn’t think you were good enough to do that”

Talk about devaluing my accomplishments and refusing to even acknowledge my skills and talents!  Yet another example where I, the scapegoat, accomplished something that she should have at least recognized and NM refused to even acknowledge it.

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Little Liberace

One of the aspects of having a narcissist for a mother is that she sees her children as extensions of herself, and uses them as tools to gain her narcissistic supply.

Below is an example of an episode where my mother used me to obtain a full syringe of narcissistic supply.

My mother was a church organist and it was required for all her children to take piano lessons.  Piano lessons started in 3rd grade for all the family children.  I truly enjoyed my piano lessons and I really learned to enjoy music, which is definitely a positive outcome of this point in my life.   I still play and perform music to this day.

My narcissistic mother (NM) established a near-military discipline when it came to piano practice.  I was to practice my lesson for 30 min each day, and if I missed time for any reason, i was required to make the missed time up.  To ensure I practiced the full 30 minutes, my NM set the timer on the stove.  If I left the piano to use the bathroom or any other reason, she would add on additional time.  If I had missed a day of practice, the timer on the stove was set for 60 min, which is a crazy amount of time for an 8 yr old to focus on a single task.

Shortly after starting piano my NM determined that my skill at the piano was a potential source of narcissistic supply.  She decided that I was to perform recitals for my extended family and show everyone how talented I was so NM could bask in the praise of her talented children.

Here’s how that one worked:

After about a year of piano lessons, NM decided that I was ready to perform recitals for my extended family when they came to our house for holidays – aunts uncles cousins nieces nephews grandparents neighbors pets whoever was there.   She would consult with my piano teacher to determine which songs I needed to learn and I would be required to practice the songs to perfection.

When the day came for my recital, my NM would have all of our guests sit in the living room, the home of the piano.  If there were enough guests, she would bring in the dining chairs or the card table chairs,  Once everyone was seated, she would hand out programs of what I was to perform to the assembled guests.  Upon her cue, I would walk down the hallway from my bedroom, wearing my Sunday suit and sit down at the piano.  My recital typically took 30 min and everyone was required to sit there and listen to me perform.   I had been barely playing a year and my playing wasn’t very good!  Unfortunately for my extended family, showing up at my family’s house during the holidays meant one was required to endure my piano “virtuosity”.  Once the recital was over, my NM attempted to solicit praise for my talents from everyone in attendance of my performance.  It was truly quite pathetic.

Eventually NM learned that I didn’t enjoy playing the right kind of music (per her definition).  I learned that I liked dissonance and jazz.   NM was appalled at my desire to play sinful music:  I was supposed to be a virtuoso classical pianist and shred Rachmaninoff to the uninformed!  After 3 years of piano, my NM decided I would never amount to anything as a pianist with my fondness of dissonance and pulled the plug on my lessons.

The music story continues for multiple decades, and will be the topic of several more future posts.

Stephen Bach

His Dying Breath

I enlisted in the US Navy at the age of 19 and stayed for 8 years.  4 months before I was to be discharged, my father was diagnosed with Stage 3 melanoma cancer.  The original cancer site was a mole on his back and it had metastisized to the lymph nodes under his arm.  He had surgery to remove the cancer and a few months later started radiation treatment.  He was undergoing radiation treatment when I was discharged.

Upon my discharge, I enrolled myself in college to pursue my engineering degree.  I had the GI BIll from my time in the Navy and had saved some additional funds to pay for school.  At this time I was also married to my first wife.

During my time in the Navy, I had a very distant relationship with my parents.  When my father contracted cancer, I decided that it was time to step up as the oldest son and do what I could to help.  I was attending school about 100 miles away from where my parents lived, but would regularly make trips to see them and help out where I could.  My golden child twin brothers were living less than a half kilometer from me at this time while they were attending the same school I was, but I hardly saw them and they did little to help as my father deteriorated.

My father underwent a chemotherapy regimen, and by the time the holidays rolled around, was declared cancer free.  Everyone was very happy that he was doing so well.  Around Valentine’s day, my father and mother went to visit my father’s sister about 1000 miles away.  While they were there, my father fell very short of breath.  They went to the emergency room, and a chest X-ray showed his lungs to be full of cancer.  They immediately flew back home and my father was checked into the hospital and his lungs were drained.  He continued to deteriorate over the next two months as the cancer spread.  The chemotherapy was stopped since the cancer had returned while he was undergoing chemotherapy.  He was declared terminally ill.  My father spent several weeks in and out of the hospital and had his lungs drained of fluid several more times.  Finally, he decided that he was tired of the hospital and wanted to go home to die.  My wife and I arranged to take time off of work and school so that we could help with whatever my father and mother might need during his last few days.  My father came home from the hospital for the last time on a Friday afternoon.  He was very weak, and I regularly had to help him around during the evening, since my wife and mother weren’t strong enough to help him.  Hospice dropped of a nebulizer, which was supposed to help his lung function.  We were to help him sit up and give him a nebulizer treatment every 3 or 4 hours.

We set up a watch schedule so that someone would stay up with him overnight.  I had the first shift from 10PM till 3AM and my wife was to take the second shift from 3AM to 8AM.  Right before our shift change at 3AM, I gave my father a nebulizer treatment since I knew my wife would have a hard time giving him one during her shift since he was so weak.  I woke him and helped him to sit up.  He was now extremely weak and I could feel all of his weight as he leaned against me and attempted to suck on the nebulizer.  About halfway through his treatment, he dropped the nebulizer out of his mouth, looked up at me and said “Stephen, you have so much potential”.  His comment cut through me like a knife.  At this point in my life, I had successfully completed 8 years of service to my country and was currently enrolled in engineering school with a 4.0 GPA for my first semester, but in his dying breaths, he was still telling me I wasn’t good enough, I was a failure and not living up to what he perceived as my potential.  Here I was, helping him as best I could while he prepared to leave this earth and I’m told I’m inadequate.   I ignored his comment, put the nebulizer back into his mouth and finished his treatment.  I then laid him back down in the bed and he went back to sleep.   I woke my wife to take the next shift and went to bed.

At about 7AM, my wife came and woke me saying that my father’s breathing pattern had changed signicantly.  I jumped out of bed and ran to him.  His breathing was erratic and very heavy and he was occasionally twitching between breaths.  I went and woke my mother.  She came into the bedroom where my father laid and my father passed away about 5 minutes later.   His degrading comment to me was his last words.

How I wish his last words would have been different!  How I wish he would have said “I love you” or some sort of statement that showed that I actually meant something to him.  Unfortunately, he was always my narcissistic mother’s perfect enabler, even until his dying breath.

Stephen Bach

Charles Manson

By the time I was 9, my parents believed that I was the most horrible child to ever walk the face of the earth.  They decided I needed counseling if I was to have any hope of not being a career criminal or worse.

My parents arranged counseling with a man who was about their same age that would take their insurance.  I do not remember his name. It was my understanding that the sessions cost my parents about $20 each.  The sessions occured on a biweekly basis for about a year with an occasional missed session.  This occured in the late 1970’s.

The first counseling session consisted of my parents and I.  I was sitting between them in the counselor’s office.  My twin younger brothers, who were 4 at the time, did not attend.  I distinctly remember crying the entire first session, pleading with the counselor to fix me so I wasn’t such a horrible person:  So I didn’t turn out like Charles Manson.   Little did I know that I was much more like Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme:  Completely brainwashed.

After about 3 more sessions, the counselor, sensing that this was more a family issue than my issue alone, encouraged my parents to also bring my twin younger brothers into the counseling sessions.  Our sessions moved from the counselor’s office to a larger “family room” down the hall.

Within the first few months, my parents received their diagnosis:  I was passive-aggressive.  I was handed a small booklet that was titled “passive-aggressive personality disorder” and told to read it.  I read it several times but much of it didn’t make sense to my 9 year old brain.  My parents would regularly cite chapter and verse from the book to show me how horrible I was.  It was a book of flying monkeys.  I don’t doubt that I was very passive aggressive at this time.  When my twin younger brothers were born, my narcissistic mother (NM) quickly learned that having twins was a HUGE source of narcisisstic supply (NS) and I just became a nuisance.  In order for me to gain any attention at all in the family, I would have to act out.  It probably didn’t help that I was at an age where boys are typically prone to act out, either.

We continued to work on my passive aggressive issues in counseling for the next few months.  At this point we started to miss the occasional session, since my parents now had their diagnosis and it was my issue, not theirs.  The counselor knew better.  A child doesn’t resort to passive aggressive tactics unless they are given no other alternative and have no voice in the family whatsoever.  He started pressing my parents a bit more in the sessions to little avail.  My parents were masters at putting on the “happy family” face and the family sessions mostly consisted of my parents making sure we were discussing “my issue” and not bringing the greater family dynamic into play.

Then one day it happened:

It was near the end of one our sessions.  I don’t remember the exact details, but my mother and father had a minor disagreement during the session.  I believe it was about some family activity.  I quietly stated something along the lines of “I really like it when we…” and basically agreed with my NM.  My enabling father (EF) was very angry at me.  He immediately told me to be quiet and not be so disrespectful.  My NM ALSO angrily turned on me and told me to stay out of it and it wasn’t my issue, even though I was AGREEING with her.  My parents frustration at THEIR disagreement had been projected onto ME and I was made the issue yet again.   Such is the life of the family scapegoat.

The counselor, upon observing the outcome of this disagreement, stated that he thought that all I was doing was agreeing with my mother and that I wasn’t being disprespectful at all.  I can remember my heart being nearly in my throat as I thought to myself  “He gets it!  He actually heard me!  He heard me!”  I was filled with elation at having been heard for one of the few times in my short life… elation which of course I had to suppress or risk further retribution by my parents.  My parents vehemently disagreed with the counselor’s assessment and insisted that I was being insubordinate.

Two sessions later, we stopped counseling.  When I asked my parents about it, I was told that “We can no longer afford it”.  So basically what this meant was that as long as everything was my issue, counseling was valuable, but as soon as the issue started NOT being entirely my issue, it was a “waste of time”.

Thankfully, I never did turn into Charles Manson.  Today I have an engineering degree from a Big 10 school, a well paying job and I have never been arrested or seen the inside of a jail cell.  The most horrible thing I’ve ever done is get a speeding ticket.

Stephen Bach