How To Defend Yourself With Brutal Honesty

I recently confronted my mother. I hated to do it, but it needed to happen.

I love my mother. I care for her and feel protective of her. But… her safety cannot matter more than my own. This is a hard truth I’ve finally had to confront.

I am fighting for my life, you see, and that’s clarified things. I have metastatic stage IV cancer. It’s wonderful how knowing you only have a few months to live focuses your mind.

You see, my brother is a narcissist. He is truly toxic and I am his enemy. Not because I wanted to be. He’s my younger brother, and for many years I deeply loved him. However, I am an honest person and narcissism and truth don’t mix.

Being an intrinsically honest person, I’d call out his bull sometimes. On several occasions I triggered his narcissistic rage by pointing out the truth. Of course this made me his enemy.

A month ago, before I went into surgery to remove a brain tumor, my brother called. My mother picked up the phone. He’d heard I was having surgery through the grapevine. He asked to talk to me.

My mom asked if I wanted to say hello.

“No,” I said. “I have nothing to say to him.”

There were friends at the house at the time. They were there to keep vigil with me the night before my surgery. These are loving people who care deeply for me, but not all of them are close enough to me to know my family history.

One of them, let’s call her Heather, said to me, “You really should make your peace with your brother.”

“You really should not butt in where you don’t know anything,” I responded, sharply. “Let me explain, and then maybe you’ll understand. Not that I want to get into this but since you’re going to open up this can of worms…”

She looked appalled. She had made the proper socially acceptable murmurings after all. Everyone is told to make peace before they die, right?

But I no longer have time or energy for social hypocrisies. I’m going to be brutally honest and let the chips fall. In particular, though, I am going to fight for myself.

“My brother is a toxic narcissist,” I told her. “If you don’t know about narcissism, you can google it. Right now I am fighting for my life. I only have so much energy, and I need to use it carefully. I don’t have any to spare fighting someone who will try to tear me down and destroy me, which is what my brother does. Maybe you don’t believe me. But if you can’t respect my decision then you need to leave.”

She shut up.

I hated to be so brutal, but it was necessary. I needed to protect myself.

But that wasn’t even the worst of it. I had to confront my mother later.

“If my brother tries to visit,” I told my mother. “He is not allowed in my house.”

“How can I keep him out?” she asked. “He’s my son.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I know you love him. You can’t help it, he’s your child. But I need to be safe. So you have a choice. If my brother shows up on the doorstep, you can either deny him entrance or I will have to ask you to leave. It’s your choice. But I will protect myself and you need to understand that.”

This was hard for me to say because my mom lives with me. She is elderly and she needed a place to live after my father died. I don’t want to kick her out. BUT… my first priority has to be my own safety. If my mother can’t back me up on this, then she does need to leave. And I made that very clear for her.

Emotional safety is more important than physical safety

The safety I’m defending is my emotional security. It’s my integrity. It’s my ability to feel that I belong in this world and it is the source of my strength.

Emotional pain is worse than physical pain. At least, for me it is.

By prioritizing my emotional security and by allowing myself to be totally honest — I’ve created a deep moat and thick walls around me. I feel safe enough to fight for my life now. I have the boundaries I need.

Learn to be objective

In order to really protect yourself while also respecting others — you have to learn to be objective.

When my mother advocated for my brother, it would have been easy for me to get upset. After all, she saw how he’d treated me for decades. She’s seen the emotional abuse. Had she been blind?

But… she was a mother. I had to get out of my own head and put myself in her shoes. How does a mother turn against her child? On some deep level she knew what he was. But she could not stop loving her son, and for me to ask her to do so would have been cruel and wrong.

I had to take a step back and realize that life is complex. I tend to see the world in black and white because that is my personality type. Other people see gradients. My mother is very nuanced.

Instead of being angry at my mother for not denying her other child, I examined her actions.

Yes, when my brother called, she was always delighted to talk to him. But… she never called him. She never pushed me to talk to him. She never asked him when he was going to come visit, even though I know she wanted to see her grandchildren.

That finally floored me. My mother, who loves children, who adores her grandchildren — she never asked my brother to visit her even though this would be her only way to spend time with them.

It finally dawned on me how much my mother loves me, to deny herself this deep desire of her heart in order to keep me safe.

Once I was able to put myself in my mother’s shoes and see the world from her point of view, then I realized the depth of her love for me and what she suffered to protect me. My gratitude and love for her became immense.

Honesty is tough, but it’s the only way to true intimacy

You can’t be intimate if you can’t feel safe. And you can’t feel safe if can’t be honest.

If every conversation you have with someone is surrounded by veils and fog, if politeness and hypocrisy accompany every communication — well, you might as well just be dead. You’re not connecting to anyone.

One of the most brutal truths I’ve learned during this time — telling people you love them can make them just as uncomfortable as anything else you do. Because people are not used to speaking and listening from the heart.

But when you allow your heart to speak — it is honest and it is intimate and it is loving.

I have been speaking from my heart lately, and I’ve told friends how much I love them, that they are like sisters and brothers to me, that they matter so much and that my life would not have meant nearly as much without them.

These are not comfortable conversations, but they have comforted me. Hopefully, when I’ve passed away, they will comfort my friends who are left behind, as well. Hopefully, knowing how much I loved them will give them joy after I’ve gone.

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This post was previously published on Publishous.

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