Agreed. My mother tried to kill herself in so many ways unsuccessfully. It was all about the drama and getting attention. Her chest was a spiderweb of scars from all the times she superficially stabbed herself over the years.
One time she called me on the phone and asked me to hold the line while she stabbed herself in the chest with a Hari-Kari style letter opener. In the background I could hear her screaming at my preteen sisters to get something for the blood....and then the phone went dead. My wife and I drove across the San Fernando valley in L.A. in record time only to discover the neighbor had called an ambulance and she had been taken to Encino hospital. When we arrived at the hospital and entered the front doors we could hear her yelling not to call the police. The hospital staff already had called them. I walked into her hospital room and just glared at her in disgust.
Though out most of my childhood I lived with this crazy woman who was my mother and who I loved dearly. I cannot tell you here how many harrowing experiences I endured as a kid growing up where she was bent on killing herself. There were times when she was drunk out of her mind and driving 90 mph on surface streets while ranting that her life was too hard to endure, while I sat in the passenger seat scared shitless that this was the end for me too.
I know first hand how devastating it is to live with someone who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. What fascinates me today is how when she was dying from emphysema as a result of smoking endless packs of cigarettes every day since her teenage years, she fought like hell to stay alive. The will to live is a powerful thing. My mother came back from the dead several times in the last three years of her life. She ended up committing suicide by cigarettes when she was only 61 years old. Although I miss her, I was so well prepared over a lifetime of false attempts to end her own live, that I felt a sense of relief when she finally succeeded in accomplishing what she had for so long tried to accomplish.
Wow. Sorry I missed this the first time.
Prime - that's a hell of an upbringing.
For better or worse, our parents shape us in interesting ways, no?
Glad you're here, all the same.