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I realize this is temporary.

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I have felt like I have been a hostage so many times in my life: 

  1. For the first twenty years living with my parents,
  2. for the next eight, living with my ex-husband,
  3. for the next year after that, living with my mother,
  4. and including that year, as well as the next five years, dealing with my ex having visitation with my children (they were being abused by him and they were completely stressed out about having to go with him--something I fought a lot in court over).
  5. then moving into an apartment after that year of living with my mother, only to have our crazy neighbors hold us hostage in our own apartment for a year and a half, because leaving meant they would harass us every single day (I didn't know how to tell them to fuck right off, which I should have),
  6. then moving into a house for the next four years, in a place that scared the shit out of us from day one (it was a scary and horrible neighborhood) and we felt like we had nowhere to go, so during this time all of our mental health declined to the point of suicidal ideation for both me and my husband), 
  7. for all of these years dealing with my mother, until 2017, when I went no contact for fourteen months,
  8. then getting my family lured down 500 miles away to actually be held hostage by a blood relative of mine I had never met before for three weeks, 
  9. only to come back in 2018 and then have to deal with the wrath and rage of my mother, due to us becoming homeless and having to come back into her life after not having contact with her for fourteen months, in which she used that first year to severely abuse us and take over our entire lives,
  10. and for the next year after that having to live upstairs from her and dealing with her craziness on almost a daily basis,
  11. and then in 2020, when we moved in together in this house where we are at now.  Yay. 
So, looking back, have ever actually felt like I wasn't a hostage in my own life?  

I want to see a show of hands if you feel the same way, too, about your own life.  Have you ever felt like you were a hostage to someone or something for long periods of time?  Have you ever felt that you weren't?  I can imagine that you do (or have/had for a long time).  Because that's what narcissistic abuse does to you.  It primes you to get into situations to keep you feeling like a hostage, no matter what you do.  It does this in many ways: 

  • Financial Abuse: If you're young starting out in life, then most likely you are poor, and that keeps you financially dependent on your narc parents.  This cycle of poverty stays if you have children young, because usually starting a family before you have a career makes it that much harder to get a career later, as higher education usually isn't doable.  This is what I did and this is what kept my family in poverty and stuck with being financially dependent on my mother.  
  • Emotional/Verbal Abuse: With emotional and verbal abuse, it primes you to be acceptable of that in others.  So if you were verbally abused, most likely will marry someone who verbally abuses you.  You may even seek that out, because the highs and lows of abuse is like a drug, and if you don't get it, you get bored.  This is something that was originally not your fault, and it is something you can fix by retraining your brain to not like conflict (this is what happened to me, as I always sought out chaotic relationships, until I met the right person and retrained my brain to not be so chaotic myself). 
  • Accepting Abuse: We have learned to accept abuse as a way of life, so we never learn to move past it.  We don't feel we deserve better, so we stay.  We stay in bad neighborhoods, bad jobs, bad friendships, bad relationships, etc.
  • Cannot Stand Up for Ourselves: We are taught to be quiet.  To allow, just like the one above.  But many of us fear standing up for ourselves, so much so, it can give HORRIBLE anxiety to do so.  I used to shake horribly, and my heartrate would get to dangerous levels if I ever had to speak up for myself against either my mother or even friends or strangers.  I am better now, but I still fear it.  And my mother makes me have to do this so regularly with her, that I look like a nagging bitch if I do it every single time.  So I learned to stick for myself by asking once, and if it doesn't work, then I take action.  This works sooooo much better, and it positions me as a person who's not "all talk", the way she is.  I don't like threats.  My mother loves to give out threats.  I like just taking action without threatening it, unless I have to.  She refused to stop doing something her doctors wouldn't allow her to do, so I'll ask her once or twice, and if she doesn't comply, I just make sure she has to do it.  Like, she isn't supposed to wak on pavement too far by herself, as she's a fall risk.  So I told her to stop taking out the garbage cans down our long driveway (previously, she's fallen and broken her wrist AND another time, broke a rib!).  She refused, so I went out and got a bike lock and locked the cans up.  I didn't even tell her I was going to do it.  I just did it.  Another time, she kept moving my lawn figures around, even though I told her to stop, so I just took them away so she didn't have access to them.  I found that I cannot ask her a thousand times, she will just ignore me a thousand times.  So I just take action.  It has helped me to feel stronger and more in control of my life.  
  • Guilt: Wanting a better life away from our narc parents gives us so much guilt that it will keep us in the abusive cycle with them for most of our lives.  But we are allowed to walk away from them.  We are allowed to live our own lives.  We do not have to feel guilt for something we did not cause.  They hurt us.  They continue and will continue to hurt us, even if they've stopped abusing us outright (usually this only happens due to circumstances changing...but it's still a manipulation to get what they want from us).  So we have every right to walk away from them, at any time.  

All of these reasons, and so much more, are what will keep us feeling hostages forever.  I have never known what it's like to not feel held hostage by my mother's abuse.   I have zero clue what that would even feel like.  Even those fourteen months I went no contact?  I was being held hostage by two things: One, I dreamed about her every single night for those fourteen months.  And I am not exaggerating here.  I had nightmares of running into her, screaming at her, yelling at her, letting myself be heard and her just sitting there and saying nothing, every single freaking night.  And for two, we were financially hurting to the point of having to move our family 500 miles away, sight unseen, to a place that didn't even exist, with a person who did it on purpose to abuse us.  My mother used our poverty as a way to abuse us.  She would pay for things we needed, and in turn, I had to keep my mouth shut about the way she treated us.  So I was left to constantly be putting myself, and my family, into bad positions, whether with her or at the time, with this cousin I had, all because we were so desperate.  I was so used to making bad decisions, due to the fact we had to take whatever we could get just to survive, that I convinced my family to do this stupid thing.  And it almost destroyed our lives.  And my cousin used our poverty to lure us down to abuse us for as long as she could.  It was sick and depraved and the moment we came back, my mother used our homelessness and even worse poverty to hurt us even more than she ever had before.  

And I am just supposed to sit here, in our house now, and pretend like we're all one big happy family and forget all that?  It was only a few years ago.  And that first year we moved in here was pretty bad, too.  It's only better because I took my power back from her while she was in rehab.  And that's only been a little less than a year now.  And even then, she was still pretty horrible until less than six months ago.  So, I've only gotten a tiny bit of peace.  I mean, I'm certainly grateful for it.  But I am still carrying all that.  So even though it's better?  It's still affecting me.  

The point is, I will be 45 soon.  And I will have never known what it's like to not feel like a hostage in my own life (and right now, in my own home).  I know some people never know what that feels like.  So I am lucky enough to realize it now so I can work on that after she's in home.  

But here are the lessons I've learned from all of those situations: 

  1. They were all impermanent.  They had a beginning, and an ending.  Other than dealing with my mother.  My marriage to my ex and his horribleness to the kids after our divorce: it all ended.  The houses or neighborhoods we lived in that we hated: eventually we moved.  We even left Shitfuck, Missouri and eventually we got our own car and our own money again.  Nothing stayed the same.  Nothing lasts forever.  So eventually, this too shall pass.  That's what my old shitty therapist told me once.  He's right.  I guess he wasn't fully shitty.  Just mostly.
  2. I really don't have to be the hostage if I don't want to be anymore.  I finally have a choice.  I can walk away or tell someone to shove off.  Most of our feelings of being hostage comes from not wanting to hurt other people's feelings or having them think we are awful.  But it's okay to piss people off.  It's okay to tell that neighbor who won't stop bothering you the truth "I am sorry, but I am out front to relax and read my book alone, I will have to talk to you another time."  Or, in my case "I am sorry, but I do not want to share my washer and dryer with you" (I never said that to her, my old nuisance of a neighbor, but I would now if I could go back in time).  Or "I am sorry, but your dog bites me, so I don't want him in my yard until he's neutered and less aggressive" (which is what I am going through right now with a neighbor--why is there always at least one really fucking annoying neighbor anywhere you move to??).  Now, there were plenty of times I didn't have a choice whether or not I was a hostage in someone else's agenda, whether due to financial circumstances or living circumstances or the courts just refusing to listen to me about my ex's abuse of my children (though in the end, he signed away his rights, like a good little boy...but of course, like the big asshole he was, he demanded money for it).  But I am in a better position now in life and I have more ability to choose who I let into my life (or stay in my life).  Not only that, back then when I wasn't in a good position, I still could have chosen with certain people (like Nipples, my old neighbor, who always wanted to use my apartment washer and dryer and not pay me for it).  But I didn't have the strength back then to say no.  So I just hid from her, hoping she'd forget I existed.  But I am not that person anymore.  And you don't have to be either (with some work).  I can either choose to change my circumstances, my thinking, or my actions (or all of the above) to stop feeling like a hostage.  All of us has the ability to change at least one of those things.  Even if it's hard or takes a long time, each step will get you closer to being hostage-free one day in the future (and know when I say hostage, I mean feeling trapped). 
  3. When I am free, I must remember that I am free.  Animals who are locked in cages for their entire lives have no idea how to be when they aren't in a cage, so they either a) act like they are still in a cage or b) do whatever they can to get back into that cage, because although those cages sucked and were horrible, it was all they knew.  And so the cage meant safety and familiarity to them, even if they were abused.  Some animals cannot survive without the cage, so they either never leave or always go back.  If they can't go back, some may go insane and do crazy things.  And yes, I am speaking of both animals, and humans, since we are one in the same.  You see this with domestic violence.  With narcissistic family dynamics.  And even with people who've been in prison for a long time.  Our bodies, minds and souls all become institutionalized when we're subjected to long stretches of being held hostage by our captors.  We don't know how to survive life outside of them.  And if we don't go back, many of us still replay these horrible instances of abuse, and what have you, in our brains so we feel like we are still in the cage.  Maybe it's a way to self soothe?  Since we have no idea how to be without that cage.  This is where I am at right now.  I am locked in a cage, mostly of my own making.  Yes, I still live with my ex-captor, but I am pretty free, for the most part.  And if you read my blog, then you can tell, I am recreating that cage for myself, most days.  Sometimes it's actually her, acting up again.  But most of them time, it's me, obsessing over tiny things, as though they're huge.  Because I don't know how to be otherwise (though also, I am still in the beginning stage to my healing, because it's only been, maybe a half a year, since her control of me stopped).  I need to remember that most days, I am actually mostly free.  And if I could just live as though I am, I'd feel better about my physical captivity (as I still live with my mother).  

The truth is, nobody else has the fucking right to hold us hostage for their own amusement.  Nobody.  I don't care how important they think they are or how much money they have or whatever else.  This is OUR life.  Not theirs.  They don't get to tell us what to do, or control us, or whatever else they think they want to do to us.  

So, even if our captors have all the money or whatever else, you and I deserve lives of our own.  So let's make a plan to get out, shall we?  Because life is too fucking short to spend it locked in someone's else fun house of insanity.  

And know when I say hostage, I am talking both metaphorically and realistically.  Some people are literal hostages in their own homes (I once knew a girl in a wheelchair once who was being held captive by her mother--I had to call the police to help her get it, even though in the end, she chose to stay, as it was an emotional abuse situation and even though she was being locked in the house all day, the cops didn't help her and the girl stopped talking to me once the cops showed up at her house), and other people are kept in emotional cages, full of all kinds of abuse.  So I am not trying to be facetious here by using the word hostage.  

Those parents who kept those kids locked to their beds?  Both sets...the ones who are in prison right now and the others who took their entire family off the coast of California with them into the ocean--they are/were all sociopathic narcissists.  And those kids were literally held hostage in their own homes.  So there are many, many levels of being trapped with your captors, whether physically and mentally, or just mentally. 

I would never compare my life to what either of those family's kids went through.  But I do what it's like to feel like you're going to be trapped forever in a bad situation.  

Our jobs are to find a way out.  Even if just emotionally, and not physically yet.  But physically is the ultimate goal.  Right now, we have two weeks to find out if my hubby is going to get his promotion.  If he does, it may be our way out.  I am trying to work on my own ways to generate income, but I tend to be so...I guess you'd say "sick" all the time (I'm not dying or anything, I just have health issues that act up quite frequently) that I can't even finish stuff to make money with.  Even so, I still work on those things, I just don't think they'll be fast enough to generate a good amount of money.  Which sucks.  

But hey, eventually I will edit my many memoirs and maybe they'll earn us some income?  I sure hope so.  

Until then, I just keep blogging and creating and whatever elsing.  I'm working on my garden right now, and creating a garden journal (here are the front and back cover I made for mine) so I can keep track of all my stuff.  If you want a copy, just let me know and I'll post a better quality pic for you to use.  I'm just printing these out and gluing them to a blank journal from Dollar Tree :)  I do also make ones for sale on Amazon, too.  




I just printed them and sealed them with 2X matte sealant from Rustoleum, so they won't run if they get wet (and when it's dry, it doesn't smell bad on the paper anymore).  

Okay, so off to go glue them on and plan my garden journal.  I think my next step with my mother is to take back my little corner (that I talked about before) in the backyard and not care if she gets angry with me (most likely, she won't--I just always expect her to, because she used to).  

Oh yes, and I said before how she went behind my back and bought two rose bushes for $100 and now I have to take her debit card away, she keeps spending the money I put in her bank for the rosebushes.  If she spend any more of it, I will not replace it and let her not get her plants (which will be her birthday and mother's day gifts).  It's so annoying, she knows the money is in there for her plants, and no more than that.  But, like I said, I'm going to have to take her debit card away.  Though I don't know where she put it, as I tried to find it today and it wasn't anywhere to be seen.  Sigh.  Well, I'll find it eventually.  Or I will cancel it and get a new one she won't have access to.  We'll see what happens.  

Till then.  



About Post Author

Living life with with a narcissistic parent is one of the hardest things a child can do. Because narcissism doesn't stop with mom and dad, it usually bleeds through the entire extended family dymanic. And the abuse travels with us into adulthood, usually either until the narcissist dies or we go no contact. And usually, our abuse is never talked about, for fear of retaliation or judgment. So I am breaking my silence and showing the world what my mother's abuse looks like so maybe others will feel strong enough to do the same.

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Welcome to Girl Lost.


I am a daughter of a narcissistic mother, one of way too many in this world. If you're here, then you have one too. I hope by reading my words someone out there will realize they aren't alone.

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