Trigger Warning -- Walking on Eggshells – Living Under a Narcissist's Roof During the Pandemic #12

The pandemic stripped away more than just jobs and normalcy—it stripped away my independence. At 50-something years old, I found myself moving in with my older sister and her husband, jobless like millions of others when COVID-19 shut down the world. I'd already spent a couple of years understanding what I was dealing with: my older sister had a narcissistic personality style, complete with a bad temper always seething just beneath the surface, ready to erupt.

I tried to contribute. I cleaned their pool. I looked for work every day. I borrowed $50 a week from my mother just to buy food because the state offered me nothing. But none of that mattered in the narrative my older sister was constructing. In her version of events, I was lazy. A freeloader. Someone trying to take advantage of her generosity.

The Job Hunt During a Pandemic

Finding work during a global crisis felt like shouting into a void. Eventually, I landed temporary work as a canvasser, getting people to register to vote. It paid about $17 an hour—decent money, but I knew it wouldn't last. The work itself was miserable. The company would drive us somewhere and drop us off to stand in the summer sun all day, waiting for people to walk by. Most people didn't want to register. Eventually, I was fired for not meeting their numbers, and I was back to square one: unemployed.

Then I found warehouse work with one of the largest food distributors in the world. Twelve dollars an hour. They worked us like machines—10-hour days, six days a week. Mandatory overtime. They told me I'd make $12.50 an hour because I had forklift experience, but here's the catch: they only paid that rate while I was actually "on" the forklift. They made us clock out of one time clock and into another to drop our pay back down to $12 an hour. So if I spent half an hour on the forklift during a 10-hour shift, I only got paid $12.50 for that half hour. The rest of the day? Twelve dollars. I imagined how wealthy the CEOs and investors must have been while they nickel and dimed the ones actually running their company.

I remember thinking, "This country treats its working class like shit." I've known this for quite some time.

Missing What Mattered

My grandson was born during this time. I should have been there. I wanted to be there. But I couldn't get time off—I was still on probation, and overtime was mandatory. Miss a day, get fired. That was the deal. I remember thinking, "I'm leaving this shit-hole company the first chance I get." Many employees stated that they run this warehouse like a prison. I agreed.

When the economy reopened, that chance came. There was a mass exodus of employees, me included. I could see the defeat in the faces of the supervisors watching the workforce walk out. I heard later they had to raise wages just to keep people from walking out the door.

I found new warehouse work at a company I actually liked, and I'm still there. They started me at—surprise—$12.50 an hour. It's always $12 an hour everywhere, isn't it? Eventually, this company also faced a mass exodus and had to raise wages to retain workers. Both companies raised their pay and survived just fine. That told me everything I needed to know: they could have paid us more all along. They just chose not to. Wages and profits have an inverse relationship—when one goes up, the other goes down. Some CEOs just had to do with a little bit less.

Eventually, I was able to travel and meet my grandson. I loved meeting him. He was six months old when I first met him. When it was time to leave, I wanted to cry.

The Tightrope

Living with my older sister was like walking a tightrope every single day. I came home from the store one afternoon with two 24-ounce beers in my hand. She looked down at them.

"BEER!?!"

"Yep."

"DON'T YOU THINK YOU'RE A BIT OF AN ALCOHOLIC?!?!"

"Nope."

"WELL I DO."

It wasn't concern. It was an opportunity to put me down. I'd have a couple of beers after work to help me relax while I watched TV. That's it. Two 24-ounce beers. Of course I had anxiety living there—anything could set her off. I knew she could use the house as leverage and throw me out before I could secure another place to live. The irony? She'd go out on weekends and get so shit-faced drunk she could barely walk through the door when she got home.

When I think about what people, who know my family and my daughter's mother, must think about me, It couldn't be good. Hypothetically, if we put my parents, sisters, and my daughter's mother all in a room and let them gossip about me, the picture they paint of me would be that I'm quite a troubled psychopath. My parents would gossip about me possibly being molested as a child. My daughter's mother would try to put forth that I am a child molester, my youngest sister would put forth that I'm a wife-beater type of a guy, my older sister now adds alcoholic to the list. How am I suppose to form friendships and bonds with people and relatives who know and converse with my family? Everyone would learn that I'm a wife-beating, child-molesting, alcoholic who doesn't want to come to terms with the fact that I was molested as a kid. None of this is accurate on any level. But I have to think about stupid shit like this.

I had been looking for rooms to rent, but no one would respond to my inquiries.

Strategic Survival

On Saturdays, I started going to the bar between 11 AM and 1 PM. That's when my older sister got home from work, but her husband didn't get home until 1 PM. I didn't want to be in the house alone with her. You never want to be alone with a narcissistic bully—that's when they feel most emboldened, most free to unleash without witnesses.

Of course, in her mind, I went to the bar because I was a drunk. The truth? It was a survival strategy. I was creating safety for myself in the only way I could. It was also a chance for me to socialize and engage in normal conversations with people that didn't result in some toxic put down, like with my family members.

She wouldn't let me set up my drums either. They'd disturb the neighbors, she said. Too loud. So they sat packed away, gathering dust, just like parts of myself I had to keep hidden to survive under her roof.

---

Living with a narcissist isn't just uncomfortable—it's a constant state of vigilance. Every action is scrutinized, every choice twisted into evidence of your inadequacy. You're never doing enough, never grateful enough, never "enough". And when you're dependent on them for shelter, they know it. That power dynamic is the oxygen narcissists breathe. I was 50-something years old, and I was right back where I started: trapped, controlled, and counting the days until I could escape. The biggest obstacle in avoiding narcissistic abuse with my family, is, of course, money. There's never enough money for me to secure my own place unless I'm trading in all of my life's energy to work as a truck driver. That's not what I'm here to do. "Fuck,"man! There's more to life than just working all of the time.