Baby W,
I just now got word of your impending arrival. In about three months from now, you will make your cherubic appearance, and your Grandparents will be enraptured by you. I wish I could be gladdened at the news of your existence, but the wheel of time reveals to me a most troubled future for you, for I have already walked more than a mile in your shoes. I have marched in them for the last 34 years.
For a child begat of the union of an empath and a narcissist, there are truly only two ways your future can unfurl. You may be saved by your mother. She has the strength of will and heart to ensure that you do not follow in the footsteps of your Narcissistic father. This is assuming that she is able to remain whole as she stands up against him. For someday, she will see the crack in his facade, and her reality will crumble. Her middle class, comfortable life, the nice house, the nice car, the comfort of having a man in the house, eventually, she will have to give all of that up to save herself and hopefully, to save you.
For soon, your father will realize that you are the reason he is no longer number one in your mother's eyes. He will seek attention from other women, as he always has. His workplace is rife with them. Your mother at first will believe the stories about working late, tutoring those who need special one-on-one time with teacher, endless amounts of "band practice," but someday something will happen that will be so atrocious, that she can no longer look the other way.
Perhaps he will slip her a sleeping pill, because she has been sexually aloof of late, or better yet, just take her in her sleep with no protection, ensuring more bastard children. Maybe he will seduce a coworker and try to coerce your mother into a threesome, because nothing says wholesome, loving family like group sex with your co-worker while your child plays with her children in the other room. May God protect you from your father should he resort to taking his sexual frustrations out on you.
When that day finally comes, it will be up to your mother to save you, because no one will believe your stories, your trauma. Your friends will chant, "But your dad is the cooooolest! How could he be a dick? You must be exaggerating!" His coworkers will think he is the bee's knees. Even his new wife and step-daughters will be cheering him on as a stand-up citizen, while you know in your heart what the man is like in the privacy of his own home.
It was ultimately the will of my mother, her attentive doting on me, her knowledge of my shortcomings (disabilities), and her insistence that I overcome them that formed who I am today. Had I taken after my father...
Let me say it this way: Narcissists are not born. They are created. This personality disorder develops as a survival mechanism in people that have no true "self" as a result of either over or under-parenting. What I'm telling you is, that should your father raise you alone, you will almost undoubtedly end up like him. That will be your defense to his soullessness. When you look into his eyes, you will only remember the man that rages in the privacy of the home. Your friends (and especially their mothers) will think he is the coolest dad that ever existed, while your rage burns under the surface against all the injustices and neglect you suffer at his hands. He expects you to be a physical extension of himself. He doesn't understand that you are a unique person with desires and wants not in alignment with his own.
God help you if you are a girl. Someday in your adulthood, you will have perspective on what a 12 year old girl should and SHOULD NOT look like to a 40 year old male, especially one that is her own father. If your mother does not protect you, and spell out for you how wrong these things are, you will come of age already objectifying yourself in a way that will take years (...decades?) to heal.
I know your mother will adore you. I have no doubt about that. My question is, will she have the strength to fight for you when the time comes? The doubts cast upon my soul in my time of trial were more intense than anything I could have imagined. I still have recurring neurological discomfort in the base of my skull as a reminder of a bout of Bell's Palsy three year ago, brought on by the psychological abuse of your father. Whenever I think about him, the back of my skull begins to throb, reminding me of all those times he lied his face off to me, and I just believed it without question. It's a physical, VISCERAL reminder of what a two-faced demon he is.
I honestly wish you the best of luck. This is so obviously a stacked deck. Baby W, I assure you that I didn't turn out so bad. I've actually found a way to make peace with why your father is the way he is, and why your mother protects him so fiercely. Someday, I will find a way to make peace with you, hopefully when I see your mother step up to be the fierce lioness I know she is, protecting her cub with all her might. Hopefully, I will see my own mother in her, and forgive her everything, and I will be able to wholeheartedly cheer you both on as you tackle this life together.
Love,
D
