What was it like being daughter of “Boss Level Karen”?
On one occasion, around 1990, when she learned I intended to get a job at a local grocery store, she called the manager whom she knew personally and threatened, “If you hire Sharon, I will never speak to you again!” That translated to, “I will ruin your life with gossip.” Everyone knew the implications, so I didn't get the job.
When I conferred with the Matriarch about hope to enroll in an online college she responded with, “I don't care to talk about that garbage!”
Hopes or dreams as any other person might have? The matriarch had long since instilled crippling self-doubt to insure I was self-isolated and vulnerable.
She monitored any associations I kept. As soon as she had their ear, she filled them in on “Sharon's mental problem.”
When my ex-husband, the estranged biological father of my two children came to visit with us she learned of it. She gave me an earful how I was “behaving like a wh @ re”.
In the matriarch's eyes, I was her daughter... a 30 year old child, her property to treat however she may... but who or what was he to me?! The knowledge that anyone ... any person... were present to witness my activities while imprisoned in isolation were a real threat to her gossip narrative.
The matriarch regarded herself as the center of the cosmos, with all answerable to her.
The perpetual double standards were too much to bear.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Office of High Commissioner, prolonged Isolation, or solitary confinement, “This deliberate infliction of severe mental pain or suffering may well amount to psychological torture,” and “The severe and often irreparable psychological and physical consequences of solitary confinement and social exclusion are well documented and can range from progressively severe forms of anxiety, stress, and depression to cognitive impairment and suicidal tendencies.”
Born on the Autism spectrum, it was difficult enough alone to attempt socializing, but when a Narcissist parent, skilled in the crime of manipulative relationships is targeting you, it becomes impossible.
I have came to realize that if it were a problem I had, she was entirely responsible for it.
Around 2003, for the first time in my life, I acquired access to the internet. It was a personal culture shock, transitioning from years of social isolation to a sudden exposure to the world.
Prior to this, the only form of socialization approved by the matriarch, and to keep the peace, was the occasional visit I was pressured into making at her church. A social outlet she dominated through networking. Every person in attendance was under the spell of her narrative which amounted to nothing more than idle gossip.
Although some had never seen me, or perhaps saw me briefly in passing in a span of a couple years, they seemed to feel they knew everything about my life and despised me.
Why would I want to attend? So many bad memories attached to religion because of such people.
