Post 10: The NPD diagnosis I am sure she got

I am in first or second year of college (say 19) and we are living in the house at Marrick (Dad had been tossed out again by now). 

I am spending every waking moment (when I am not at college or work), listening to her life-is-so-unfair stories.

She is seeing a work ordered psychiatrist due to a workers comp claim.

One day she comes home from the psyche and says, 'Sit down, I need to explain something to you'. 

Drum roll…cue the drama I'm thinking...here we go again.

She grabs a pen and a piece of paper and draws a circle. Then she draws a smaller circle inside it. Pointing at the big circle she says, 'Pretend this is the world'.

The she points to the smaller circle and says, ‘Some people think they are this circle and the world revolves around them.' 

Then she stabs the smaller circle a few times with the pen and says, ‘That’s your father, he thinks he is the centre of the universe’.

Then she screws the piece of paper up and bins it, telling me to remember that some people are, ‘Just like this and there is nothing you can do about it’.

I know in my soul of souls that she got a diagnosis of NPD that day. 

And as a true NPD, she came home and projected this ‘imperfection’ onto someone else: in this case, my Dad.

At the same time she absolved herself from any responsibility for her behaviour (past, present or future) because on being told the diagnosis, she would have also have been told there was no effective treatment. 

So she gave herself a free pass - her behaviour was not her fault and there was no point in getting treatment.

Bugger! The past decades would have been better if Dr Google had been invented by then. I am an excellent researcher.