Starting to hate myself and I need to write it out.

It isn't a very interesting story, but it is my story. I was raised by narcissists. Parents, aunts and uncles, grand parents. They were self-absorbed. They were driven to this by the accidents of their own upbringing: bad parenting, poverty, life long illness.

My own parents had children late in life. There are two of us, and older brother and me. I was born with a physical disability, the same illness my mother had. And as ironic as this might sound, it was because we shared a disease that she never knew how to relate to me. I didn't suffer as she had suffered (so I could not be her partner in pain), nor did I share by brother's boisterous, healthy, energy (which she had learned to enjoy). To her, I was an enigma and I was, horrifyingly, left to my own devices.

Through rocky times, she was unable to see how I was suffering. And I had few people to turn to, because all the adults in my life were they themselves damaged. They failed to notice my cousin' rape, they failed to act on my brother's alcoholism. No one intervened when our grades plummeted. No one addressed my confusion about how our family had fallen apart, or why life was so hard.

Eventually I learned to cope by ignoring them. On my own I failed at school and, on my own, I recovered. On my own I got into college and, on my own, I paid for it. I struggled, and, by trial and error, crafted a remarkably, unremarkably, normal life. Doing so has been my greatest success. And that fact kills me.

I didn't want a normal life, I wanted an extra-ordinary one. But all my energy goes into maintaining this small world I live in. And what fights against it? Me. It is not in my nature to be the happy, healthy person I strive to be. My nature is to be manipulative, and reactive. See, self-obsessed people can't see your problems as being more significant than their own. I was trained broken adults to deal with their problems before they would deal with mine.

I hate being good at that. It was a skill that I developed in lieu of other skills. I have trouble enjoying birthdays and concerts, because I am too aware of how I am perceived. Perception matters when opening a present at Christmas. If you're not properly appreciative, they might not like you anymore.

On the good days, I feel great. I inherited the ego of a narcissist. On the good days, the thought tickling the back of my brain is that I am the best person I know.

On the bad days I feel, deep in my bones, the twisting hurt of growing up never knowing if the people who care about you, will actually care for you. Of never knowing if people can see "the real me" or if there is a real me at all. If you're always reactive to the people around you, are you anyone at all?

On days like this I think "maybe today". Maybe today life won't be so hard, maybe today I will feel like I belong, maybe today I will feel....I will be the person I want to be.

I talk about this with a therapist, but I won't see her for a couple of days. And the writing helps.