[DeletedAccount53]

Originally Posted by Mallika

Hi Wendi,

Thank you so much for your heartfelt write-up. I'm sorry that I couldn't respond earlier; I wanted to get to responding when I got some time to read your post fully and give it its due attention.

There were many things you mentioned here. In relation to dealing with narcissistic people, words cannot describe how difficult it is. I'm fortunate my parents are not narcissists, but my paternal grandfather came close to your description of a narcissist. He died last year and in our culture we tend not to talk badly of the dead, but I will honestly that he was very difficult to reason with, manipulative and only thought of his feelings and opinions as valid. To that end, he made life difficult for everyone who lived with him, including his own wife, my dad and uncle, and subsequently my mom and aunt (his daughters-in-law) after they married his sons. I'm sorry to hear that you and Julie had to grow up under the influence of a narcissistic mother. All growing children need is love and care; it is very painful to read that you and Julie did not receive such from your mother.

But I think it is very admirable that both you sisters stuck through thick and thin and found a way to deal with her while she was alive. You must have been pretty young then, so it would have been pretty tough. Like you mentioned in the part about drawing the pictures of yourselves with Julie, the beauty of life is that, no matter how difficult life gets, as humans we have the ability to make the most of any situation and remind ourselves of our own worth time and again.

I'm happy to know that you are in a much better place now. Everything happens for a reason. Bad periods of time also happen for a reason, but nothing in this world is permanent. Your time growing up under your birth mother will stay with you throughout your life, but you have learned so much from this experience that you have the maturity to deal with what life throws at you. Not many young people can do that now. We only learn from experience after all. If you feel that you need any form of post-traumatic stress therapy, I hope you have access to that sort of service. Sometimes it helps having a professional help us sort through our feelings.

If you ever need to chat, feel free to PM me

I'm sorry I didn't see this until now.

Julie and I were recently given support by a counselor who our doctor knew, so we did get help for the trauma long past, but had given us bad nights. Though we bear scars from what our cruel birth mother caused, the scars don't define us. It has been difficult to swim, but full body costume hid what neither of us wished to be seen. But the help we received did help us come to terms that Anna, our birth mother was not right in her head, putting it mildly and she never got help for her rages.

Once coronavirus leaves and everyone is vaccinated, Julie and I plan visiting Geneva and Lucerne in Switzerland to find out how our younger siblings died. We are the only two sisters who survived, so our search of birth and death records may be traumatic.

There are so many uncomfortable, unanswerable questions surrounding our dead siblings. It was only recently that we discovered old journals belonging to our late mother which inside gave us reason to be very concerned. Neither of us wish to even think that our younger brothers and sister had been killed, or how they died. It is this big question that is left us.

Our late mother left us, in addition to this beautiful old villa, a large collection of what are unmistakably expensive pens and some automatic high end timepieces with their watch winders. We still don't know whether to keep them or sell them off. Except the pens are beautiful. Strange that it seems, but Julie and I have a fascination for pens. Isn't that strange that we should inherit a passion for collecting pens? It's a bit spooky, though as we are incapacitated with chest infections, once we are well again, we'll take a closer look at them.

I must go. Maman has just arrived! Praise be!

I will pm you soon I hope, Mallika. Thank you for what you wrote.