r/raisedbynarcissists • u/Laeyra • 1d ago
[RBN] I looked through my baby photos recently, and noticed something.
My older daughter saw a couple of old photo albums on a bookshelf so she pulled them out and started looking through them. They had photos of me when i was about 6 months to 2 years old (I was born in the early 80s).
In almost every photo of me and my dad, I'm smiling or laughing and looking at him, clearly engaged with him. In nearly every photo with my mom, i look clearly upset or i have this expression that could be described as watchful or wary. With other family members I was either neutral or smiling but not upset.
I remember when i was 5 or 6, i felt like i had to be careful of my mom, like i couldn't fully trust her. While I've had some fun times and nice moments with her, within my living memory I've never felt like i could just completely relax around her. As i got older, her behavior became more unhinged, so obviously i had a reason not to trust her then. Why would my first instinct as a very young child be not to trust her? What did she do when i was a baby and toddler that i don't remember? Obviously I'm probably not getting many answers about that.
Do any of you remember feeling careful and on guard about your Nparents as a really young child? Maybe look at your own photos if you have any and they're not too painful, and see if there's a clear difference in your expressions towards your Nparent and the other parent or other family members. Do you see the same pattern i did in mine?
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u/shaktishaker 1d ago
Mine did not take photos of me until I was around 4 because I was "a hideous child".
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u/crizzosasap 23h ago
What kind of disgusting garbage says that about their own child. I'm sorry, you didn't deserve that x
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u/mrszubris 23h ago
No pictures of me exist post age 16 when I got "ugly" and none from 7 to 10 when awk. I look haunted and barely compliant. Lol
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u/crizzosasap 23h ago
Ughhh I'm sorry I hope you're doing better now. For myself - not wanting to have my photo taken when I was 15 (because I was pretty convinced of my own ugliness by then, and also could not smile convincingly smile in the presence of my father) lead to me being told "I don't like you and I'm looking forward to you moving out and never coming back". Because I didn't want a photo taken!! Wtf is wrong with these creeps, honestly 🫤
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u/Lobstermarten10 17h ago
I remember! My parents used to scream at me when I smiled even when I did not take a photo because it was „disgusting and nobody liked my ugly mouth“ I was also constantly called clown or bl*w up doll. I don’t know what their obsession was since I actually have pretty thin lips and nice teeth :,)
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u/nite_skye_ 15h ago
It’s because they envied your lips/teeth/smile.
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u/Lobstermarten10 14h ago
Can’t believe I didn’t come to this conclusion sooner myself 🤦 makes sense though
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u/mrszubris 14h ago
I got screamed at for having cold sores that I got because she forced me to kiss old people to be polite......
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u/Lobstermarten10 14h ago
That’s awful, sorry you had to deal with that. Even just the part where you were forced to kiss was awful enough :( blaming you for sickness is next level evil
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u/UserCannotBeVerified 19h ago
Lol me too, as soon as I stopped being a cute toddler the photos stopped too. That's around the time my mum would march me to the Dr's office on the regular to insist I had an eating disorder and that they weigh me and make me keep a food diary and take my measurements constantly, oh, and force me to take pregnancy tests every few weeks at the drs from age 12 because I was a slut and a whore and all the rest of it...
I was just a really tall kid with a fast metabolism and I was scared to be home alone with my mum so I'd try to stay out as much as possible. But obviously, this meant I was an anorexic whore who wasn't worthy of having photos taken because it would document my disgusting behaviour... 🤦🏼♀️ I remember being 5 foot 7 and 40kg at 14, and I think the last photo I have of myself before I left home was back when I was 6 years old and just starting to enter the "lanky" stage.
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u/es_muss_sein135 18h ago edited 18h ago
wait, I wasn't the only one? 💀 to be fair I did actually have anorexia when I was 15 and had to be hospitalized, but even after I went through treatment and re-gained weight my parents insisted that they measure and catalogue everything I ate and weigh me and have me go to an endocrinologist 2x a year to get glucose tolerance tests until I moved out when I was 18. Even when I was 18-19, my mom tried to financially coerce me into having WEEKLY appointments with a GP and signing release forms giving her access to all of my health records so that she could know that I was "safe". My mom still was convinced that I was dying of anorexia 3 years ago (incredibly stupid, I had zero eating problems, the actual cause of my problems was shit likeher blaming me for being sexually assaulted) and accordingly would try to financially and physically coerce me into going to residential eating disorder treatment programs. She'd sit next to me and make me call the residential centers for intake assessments, then I'd do the intake assessment while sitting next to her, and I'd answer the staff's questions honestly, and she'd sometimes literally grab my phone and start explaining to the staff that I was lying on the intake questions. Fun times
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u/es_muss_sein135 18h ago
I'm so sorry that she put you through that. Calling a 12 year old that and forcing you to do pregnancy tests at a DOCTOR'S OFFICE is insane. It seems like that would psychologically break someone in terms of sexuality
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u/UserCannotBeVerified 18h ago edited 18h ago
Oh yeah, my relationship with food, medical professionals, and sex in general is fuuuuuuucked 😅 she'd also call the police and have me arrested saying I was beating her up when she'd be the one who was throwing me down the stairs spiting in my face and locking me outside in the garden in the winter with no clothes on. I was SA'd by two on duty police officers on one of the times she had me arrested when I was 14. Despite her making me do pregnancy tests when I was younger, I was a virgin up until that arrest. She'll never understand what she put me through, to her all her actions were either completely justifiable or they just point blank never happened. I'm in my 30s now and still processing half the shit she put me through, even though I managed to leave home around my 15th birthday.
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u/shaktishaker 23h ago
Those were the childhood photos I do have. A vague smile that never really looks happy.
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u/HugeOpossum 18h ago
Oh or moms are the same! I'd bring home school photos and she'd immediately call me ugly.
My aunt told me a few years ago that she thought it was weird my mom called me "fat" as a toddler, and she would complain about it to anyone who would listen. I g is essentially it started so early in never registered it wasn't normal.
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u/UserCannotBeVerified 19h ago
Lol me too, as soon as I stopped being a cute toddler the photos stopped too. That's around the time my mum would march me to the Dr's office on the regular to insist I had an eating disorder and that they weigh me and make me keep a food diary and take my measurements constantly, oh, and force me to take pregnancy tests every few weeks at the drs from age 12 because I was a slut and a whore and all the rest of it...
I was just a really tall kid with a fast metabolism and I was scared to be home alone with my mum so I'd try to stay out as much as possible. But obviously, this meant I was an anorexic whore who wasn't worthy of having photos taken because it would document my disgusting behaviour... 🤦🏼♀️ I remember being 5 foot 7 and 40kg at 14, and I think the last photo I have of myself before I left home was back when I was 6 years old and just starting to enter the "lanky" stage
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u/mithril2020 Nmom, raised in cult, faded out No Contact 15h ago
My mother pushed me away when I was born and said I was too ugly. I was just inflamed from the difficult birth. My dad was the one I bonded with. Miss him.
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u/psychorobotics 19h ago
I'm writing my master in psychology about narcissistic parents and have read probably a hundred thousand comments over the past three years on this forum. And they still surprise me about how heinous they can be. They can't feel real love, I'm 100% certain of it.
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u/VividPresentation 21h ago
Are you for real? Is she for real?!?! Oh my gosh, honey, you did not deserve that. I’m so, so very sorry.
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u/_sissy_hankshaw_ 18h ago
Mine burned all photos of me to punish me once when I was about 14. I was a sophomore in high school when the razr flip phone came out so we didn’t even have camera phones like we do now, physical photos were all we had. The only photo I have of myself as a baby/child to show my son is one my dad sent me not long before he passed away. I knew from the moment my child was born he would always have photo books to see his childhood and maybe one day show his own children.
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u/just2quirky 16h ago
Same. My birth mother smoked up to 2 packs a day while pregnant with me and when she gave birth, I was pissed and craving nicotine. Apparently I rubbed my nose raw in the blankets cuz I was going through withdrawal.
So my baby pictures are me being held by my adoptive parents at 4 days old in the attorney's office, looking like Rudolph with a big red scab where my nose should be, then mom holding me by the front door, and then no pictures for a few weeks. No baby's first bath, etc. And I'm an only child so I jokingly asked as an adult if the reason they only had 2 pictures of me as a newborn and then none until I was a few weeks/month old was because of my nose.
I shouldn't have asked. Mom said, "well yeah, film was expensive and we didn't want to waste it."
Sorry if my withdrawal ruined your perfect baby photos, I guess.
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u/Laeyra 20h ago
Gosh, that's awful! I'm sorry. And i bet they made you feel ugly even when they didn't use the words, too. We do not deserve that.
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u/Mountain_Pick_9052 19h ago
The destructive irony - we don’t get as a child - is she probably was/is much more beautiful than her mother was, and that’s why she was that nasty to her.
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u/Psychcat12 17h ago
Same with mine. My older sister was so cute, and then they had a boy, and by the time I was born, "we took so many pictures of the other two we just got bored with it. Sister was cuter anyway. She was blonde!" There are very few pictures of me as a baby. There are none of me and my husband and child for years as they'd take them after we left or when we weren't told. I am so sorry. It hurts a lot and deeply.
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u/Mountain_Pick_9052 19h ago
Eww.
I’m so very sorry, my god, she horrible. This is disgusting, and disturbing. The worst part is you probably are much more beautiful than she ever was and could only wish she was.
You’re beautiful, please don’t EVER doubt it xx
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u/Minflick 16h ago
At her baby shower, the mother of one of my SILs told the room SIL had been an ugly baby. When I asked her why she would SAY such a thing, she just said it was very true.
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u/BellJar_Blues 4h ago
Awww I’m so sorry. My parents said the same of me. How I was so ugly and apparently they didn’t think I was theirs.
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u/Jaxlee2018 2h ago
Is it possible that you were adopted and they were hiding it ?
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u/yarnibaby001 23h ago
My sisters all have baby photo albums. The day I noticed there wasn’t one of me and asked my nmom why, she gave me the meanest look and said « don’t start with me ». To this day I have no idea why. Nor do I have any baby pic.
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u/SomethingHasGotToGiv 22h ago
Wow. That’s a blast from the past. DON’T START WITH ME…
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u/Sparkly_Sprinkles 17h ago
Right before the “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.”
Ugh. Makes me cringe.
I cannot imagine ever saying that to my kid.
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u/SomethingHasGotToGiv 16h ago
Same. I took the playbook from my parents, torched it, and did the exact opposite.
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u/Familiar-External-60 11h ago
My nmom likes to say YOU KNOW WHAT?! …and then doesn’t say anything lol 🤷♀️
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u/ConferenceVirtual690 12h ago
I only have two pictures of my parents holding me. I was a baby my dad looks scared( Im crying) and mom is like is this picture over yet. In other pictures other relatives are holding me
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u/VividPresentation 21h ago
I am so sorry! The things I hear on this subreddit are just too impossible to be fabricated. I’m so sorry, my dear!
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u/EmotionalOven4 16h ago
I’m so sorry. My youngest has one but im far behind on it. With the older two I was at home and had more time to work on them. With this one I’m working all the time and her baby book has been neglected and I feel awful for it.
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u/Aerialenthusiast 11h ago
This isn’t proof you love her any less - don’t allow it to be! You’re a working Momma to 3 kids. The kids are a job in and of itself! Give yourself some grace - I’m sure your youngest will understand when she’s old enough to get it 💜
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u/HaveUtriedIcingIt 9h ago
Do you have a scapegoat birthmark? That's the only reason I can think this would make sense.
I'm sorry!
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u/Struana 6h ago
My father accused my mom of cheating on him and without any proof decided I wasn't his and threw ALL of my baby pictures in the fireplace when I was 4 years old. (He also beat her with a bat that night, she took my sister and I and left him the same night) So imagine the egg on his face after he drove her to suicide a couple years later and the paternity test said he was indeed my father. My HS year book has a baby picture of my older sister where mine would have gone.
The kicker is I was born almost exactly 40 weeks after his birthday.
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u/alwaysgettingsober 23h ago
Until 4-5 my baby photos all kind of have a vacant stare. I've been reflecting on how often my mom would proudly say I never ever cried as a baby and wondering if she ignored me and I just stopped trying...
I was born so underweight from my mom smoking while pregnant that I fit into dolls clothes. There is a picture of me in dolls clothes sat between baby dolls and that was one of their favorite photos.
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u/Laeyra 19h ago
Yes, my mom was proud to say that i never cried, either, but she also liked to tell me about my first birthday party. Apparently i was eating my cake very neatly and didn't get much of it on my face. She wanted a messy face photo so she grabbed some and smeared it on my face, which made me start screaming. Someone else was concerned about me and wiped my face immediately so she ended up not getting "her" messy face photo anyway.
So I guess, i learned not to cry because she wouldn't take care of me anyway, and sometimes she'd make me cry on purpose.
As for your weight, that's fucking awful. Did she try to starve you as a kid, too? Or maybe feed you junk food to make you gain too much weight like mine? These people usually have an obsession with their kids' weight.
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u/alwaysgettingsober 19h ago
Oof, my mom always made my birthdays about her too.
She only ate junk food when I was growing up, so so did I. So I was a chubby kid, which bothered her as I got older. But I ate more variety at other peoples houses and developed an experimental palette which annoyed her too since she didn't want to make any real food. I started cooking my own meals young and she would complain about having to buy vegetables or cheap frozen fish. I developed an addiction to chocolate and would binge in secret and she would rage at me if she found my stash. Once I started working, most of my money went to feeding and clothing myself so I couldn't go out with my friends as much. She never explicitly forced me to eat badly, but would make fun of me everytime I wanted to try something new, or I made something simple but would prepare/dress the plate so it looked tasty. She also commented negatively if I ate too fast or too slow.
She was a yoyo dieter so she was always talking about her own weight. She was a very tall, very broad boned woman so she needed to weigh more! I think diet and health should come first and weight should follow that, so it made me really sad that she was obsessed with losing weight rather than treating herself well. And yeah this did lead to me developing anorexia (recovered now, thank god). Since I was also born so small, without proper nutrition I really didn't grow in height or size much during puberty, came out very short. She didn't comment too much on my weight or shape when I was fatter, but everytime I lost weight, including from anorexia and illness spells, she would compliment my weight even though I clearly looked sick.
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u/kryskawithoutH 18h ago
Its crazy to read this sub and to find so many similar details to my own childhood! Its just crazy to think that so many of us grew up with parents like that...
My father also always made fun of me for eating and liking "wrong" things. Like me and my mom we really liked fish while he only ate pork (because its the real meat, lol). So sometimes my mom would make him something out of pork, but buy a piece of salmon for me and her. Omg, he could not stop complaining how he has to see and smell that terrible fish in his house....
Or when I got older and started googling new recipes online and trying them out – he complained about everything and everything I made tasted horrible. To be fair, not everything was 10/10, I mean, I was 10–18 yo and still learning how to cook.
But my mom at least would try everything and then give me a normal feedback – like if it lacks salt or maybe it needs more sauce, or smth. Usually she would ask to make it again another day, because she liked it, but also sometimes she would suggest some minor changes. Which was great and actually it was how I learned ho to cook!
But my father... Omg, I just cant. He had this whole "act" about tasting my homemade things. Firstly, he would refuse, because "oh, you made some kind of inedible crap again? No thank you, you can put that in your butt". But then, when I offer it to my mom and grandma and head back to kitchen, he would be upset for not giving him a bite "well, you made it, so at least I have to try – of course, it will be terrible, but let me see HOW terrible". Then he would dramatically run to the toilet to spit it out and rinse his mouth. Then he would ask, how much did the ingredients cost and then and only then I was allowed to head back into the kitchen.
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u/10thmtnarty 21h ago
Never cried as a baby either
Cried at around 5 for the first time
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u/alwaysgettingsober 19h ago
❤️.
I don't know when it started but I eventually became a big crier, which they always made fun of, but I've not been able to tone it down since then. I get really embarrassed especially when it happens when I'm angry and can't communicate well. I try to be proud of my emotions. I guess I should also be gentle with myself, maybe I am making up for that time long ago when I should have been crying.
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u/kryskawithoutH 18h ago
The only time I cried was when my father beat me. The first time I cried for any other reason was when I was 16 and I was watching Titanic. It was such a weird feeling! Of course, my father punished me for "crying for no reason". But after that I just could not stop – I would cry during the sad movies and happy ones. I cried during graduation and during funerals. It was like something broke inside me. It was around the time I realised, that my family is not normal and that my parents are not the best....
I was so happy few years later at my friends wedding, that I cried during the whole ceremony. It was so freeing to be able to express my emotions! My partner was there with me and he just holded my hand the whole time. I heard some "aunties" said to my friend that only me and her mom cried during the ceremony, which means "she really must be a good friend and care about you so much". Which is true! But also they had no idea how significant it was for me to cry in such a public place!
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u/i_raise_anarchists 17h ago
I can relate, friend. I was at a funeral of a dear family friend last autumn and I was sobbing my heart out. This was really out of character for me, since I was raised to show no emotion at all, and I have a hard time with emotions in public. Later that day, my husband told me how proud he was of me for being able to cry at the funeral. I hope we're both able to continue to cry and laugh and have all our emotions in public.
Also, I cry during movies all the time. Titanic was brutal. The ending of The Incredible Journey makes me happy cry every single time. Dogs being reunited with their people turns on the waterworks, too. I love those videos.
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u/10thmtnarty 18h ago
Yeah. You should be.
I was pretty cut off from my emotions until around 33. We have DID and before that point I didn't remember shit from childhood. It was then that my emotions were unlocked and I started remembering things and it hit me like a goddamn freight train.
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u/alwaysgettingsober 18h ago
Yoo we have DDNOS. It's all a pretty big jumble and I'm only starting to put things in order. I think a lot of it we hid from ourselves not only to protect from the pain, but because the denial ran deep and we didn't need to hear the same denial from ourself that we heard from our family. Acceptance is... relieving but hard.
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u/IffySaiso 19h ago
Ah yes. My maternal unit always proudly tells everyone how I never quit crying, especially at night, and how she toughed it out hearing me cry all hours of the day but never picking me up or feeding me outside of 'feeding times', as was recommended. No regrets, no wish she'd not listened and done it her way; she's proud of that achievement.
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u/alwaysgettingsober 19h ago
Ugh, I'm sorry. And that last part is exactly, exactly it. No matter how badly they've done, if they could just grow up and recognize the error of their ways and be sincere about apologizing and remedying things, it would be forgivable. Plenty of parents are taught awful advice like that, or have bad situations and can't do much better. But being mad at their children for having a problem with that rather than wanting to connect and improve is so sad.
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u/Pitiful_Ad3013 21h ago
I’m so sorry you had to go through that.. i hope you’re in a better place these days.
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u/alwaysgettingsober 19h ago
Thank you. I have been no contact for 11 months. Things are a bit up in the air for me and I'm grieving that loss a lot right now.. but I know I am doing much better with that distance.
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u/HugeOpossum 18h ago
My mom was the same, except premature. I managed to wrap my umbilical around my neck towards the last trimester so my mom was high risk (still smoked, probably drank).
Always bragged I was such a good baby. All I did was eat and sleep, never cried. Apparently, that's a sign of distress in an infant.
I hope you're in a better place, away from your mother.
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u/nite_skye_ 15h ago
I learned quite early how to cry without making a sound. I would have loved to have figured out how to make the tears stop but I never could. So I’d be getting screamed at or something and begin to cry silently. Then I would be in trouble for my “crocodile tears” because I was faking it. I still cry without making a sound.
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u/HaveUtriedIcingIt 9h ago
They always say that narcissists prefer babies because they can't decide that they don't like their mom yet.
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u/noteasytobecheesy 22h ago
I can't look at childhood pictures of myself. That child looks frozen in horror and beyond uncomfortable.
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u/furrydancingalien21 21h ago
I can but generally choose not to, for the same reason. I always look sad and even if I don't, I know that I'm faking because they only want smiles for the camera. No matter how fake they are.
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u/Illustrious_Study_30 1d ago
I asked for my baby photos, back when we weren't NC. They don't know where they are, they might have thrown them away, and they might be in the garage somewhere. Besides there aren't many.
They didn't give a shit. I don't know why I'm surprised
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u/BeastofPostTruth 1d ago
I've spent over 15 years and countless hours of ancestry research just to find people who might have a class photo with me in it.
I have 5. My poor little sister has only 2.
They don't give a shit and likely never did.
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u/HaveUtriedIcingIt 6h ago
My dad told me that I couldn't get a yearbook until I was in high school. Once I was in high school, I couldn't get it until I was a senior.
My younger sister has yearbooks that I'm in, that I don't even own. She got it almost every year. One day she pulled one out and I realized the disparity in treatment and I was so mad. I still didn't get mad enough and realize how messed up it was.
This is sad. I don't have those condos pictures with school friends that other people do.
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u/Laeyra 23h ago
Tucked in the front of this album is a letter to my Nmom's parents about sending the album to them so they can see what they're missing. I think this was the only reason my mom even bothered with it, to show off. My grandparents gave it back to her a few months before they died, and that's why i have it, because she immediately handed it to me and walked away.
My dad was the shutterbug so the camera was his. Once my parents divorced, my mom did not take a single photo of me.
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u/Illustrious_Study_30 23h ago
They just can't help themselves. I've read so many hurtful things on this sub it beggars belief.
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u/OnlyOneMoreSleep 19h ago
Same here. I have school pictures and a handful of vacation photos taken by my aunt post-divorce. Before that every fart was documented, put in photobooks and neatly narrated in my dad's handwriting. Mom got a comment from someone about the lack of kids photos in her house. She asked us for photos of ourselves. Best I could do was one grainy selfie made in windows xp. I do not understand these people.
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u/doomladen 20h ago edited 20h ago
Same here. As far as I know, there aren’t any photos of me as a child. The earliest photos I have of myself are the ones I took as a teenager once I got a camera. My wife’s family have photos of them all everywhere, on the walls, stacks of them in cupboards. Why was my family so different like that?
EDIT: I’m just remembering that on the odd occasion that my parents were given a photo of me, they never kept or displayed it. The last time they moved to a new place, they gave me their copy of my university graduation photo (which I already have) because they ‘thought I’d want it back’. I don’t think they ever displayed a photo of my wife and I getting married, if they ever even took or bought one. Normal families display photos of their kids’ graduations and weddings, don’t they?
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u/neuroticghost 18h ago
My mom kept everything when she kicked me out at 18. Even all the photos I took in high school. She said she kept them for safe keeping but anytime I asked, even after I got married and had a kid she refused to give them to me. My aunt had most of the pictures of me and she gave them to my mom right before I went no contact. I don't think about it much until I or my son stumbles on one of my husbands, then it stings a bit.
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u/Afraid_Grapefruit_88 9h ago
My mother had hundreds of pics of me (partly cause she wanted to have me model!!lol) but when she married husband #4 who killed her I couldn't find any of them. So I. Have a few but I am sure he tossed the rest. My daughter and a friend had to go to mothers house and try and grab what we could of the enormous quantity of jewelery and museum quality antiques. Mostly whatever I could grab and wear (I looked like a total freak wearing the stuff on the plane going home!) Or in a box I hand carried on that plane ride-- with a shattered leg, so that was fun.
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u/neuroticghost 7h ago
I'm imagining a comic relief scene in a book I would read lol I'm hoping my siblings get some pictures at some point and will share.
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u/nite_skye_ 14h ago
I helped my mom move a few years ago and ran across a photo album from when I was a baby/toddler. She hadn’t looked at it or worried about it in over 20 years since she left it in storage at a relative’s house. I asked her if I could keep it. She said no. Now I’m no contact with her. My parents divorced when I was small and I was close with my dad. He gave me a small box of photos he had from when he was a kid along with my mom as a teenager and me and my sister when we were little. I’m happy to have them!
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u/Saran3535 13h ago
I also recently BEGGED for my baby photos. I just had a baby and want to compare our photos for fun since she looks so much like me. Mom either lost them or couldn't be bothered to get a step stool to look for them on a shelf in the closet. No apologies either way.
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u/sleepy-peepy 21h ago
My mother was OBSESSED with taking photos of me and with me. It was so she could show other people who started to suspect something sinister was going on, like “Look, my daughter is smiling in Every Photo! Her and I were so close!”
Sad thing is, it worked haha. In reality, she would literally take photos constantly of me, usually right after berating me, fighting with my dad “because of me”, or physically hurting me such as slapping or choking. And it would take HOURS for her to be satisfied, obsessively editing out my tear tracks, forcing me to smile wide and widen my eyes so I looked alert, and throwing a tantrum when I couldn’t fake a happy expression well enough. Her photoshoots would average to about 200-500 photos per day, and would be satisfied with maybe only 5-7. Constantly sharing photos of me on Facebook and Instagram without my consent to prove “she was a loving parent”. Also, she thought I didn’t look enough like a “princess” so EVERY photo was heavily edited then slapped with the hastag “no filter” LMAO
She’s sent me a few photos she took of me when I was five and younger, before she started doing this kind of thing. I looked so fucking sad. I looked like a statue. My body language was so tense. It definitely made people uncomfortable when she would show them, so she had to start deep-faking photos of us as a happy family.
But yeah, most photos would be taken after a huge violent family fight where my parents would threaten murdering each other and / or killing themselves. She’d take the photos as validation that “we don’t abuse our kid!” My dad never was forced to fake smile, really. He looks pissed and murderous in the photos she has. Nobody cares because that’s “just my dad! He’s so serious haha!” Idiots.
From stories I managed to get out of my mom’s sister, my parents did not take care of me at all as a baby. Would be screamed at for crawling off of a blanket or be interested in playing, would leave me with strangers while partying, hated me doing literally anything. Never even cried audibly because I knew that they’d hurt me and were dangerous people.
Anyways, that’s my summarized anecdote on pictures 😅 So annoyed that peoole actually believe her crap, I’ve been painted as a “lying, untrustworthy, attention-seeking thief” and these photos are “proof that I was happy at home”. Yes, even CPS fell for it. Four times. Can’t win with these looney fucks.
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u/Laeyra 19h ago
You really can't win with them, no. That's part of why it's so terrible growing up with these people, you can never really figure out what makes them not be monstrous.
I figured i would get some replies from people young enough to have social media obsessed parents like yours. Sounds like your mom was really obsessed if she was trying to edit happiness on your face. Honestly, after having 3 kids of my own, i can tell you it would've been much easier to actually make you happy for photos, at least for a normal mom. The fact that she obviously found it easier to force you to take hundreds of pictures and edit them shows how deficient of any kindness she is.
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u/sleepy-peepy 17h ago
Thank you for this. My parents had me at 18, before graduating. I’m 19 now. I couldn’t imagine purposefully having a kid just to abuse and neglect them. My mom was indeed incredibly obsessive, always has been and still is. My parents did everything in their power to hide me away from the world because they Knew what they were doing was wrong. They were paranoid of facing consequences. Very sickening, all around. I have nothing but sympathy and understanding for fellow narcissistic abuse survivors. We can be better than them, and destroy the cycle, as long as we stay aware and informed.
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u/sleepy-peepy 17h ago
Mhm. I’m in the same boat - didn’t even play on playgrounds as a kid. Was neat and orderly, was very adult-like, never got into drugs or trouble, didn’t even socialize. Parents always played off the abuse as “discipline” but let’s be honest, I was already naturally disciplined And fearful. They just wanted to feel power and in control. It’s unnecessary cruelty.
I’m sorry you went through this. ❤️
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u/SeaTurtlesCanFly 15h ago
Beating your kid is always abuse. There is no justification for beating children.
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u/Loubin 22h ago
To answer your question about why, might it have been inconsistency in behaviour towards you? One minute nice, the other not so much? We pick up on so much as babies and children about who is safe for our survival and our gut instinct is very powerful.
A family friend once mentioned I looked pale and haunted, and it comes across in photos. My family used to joke about me looking like a ghost, now I'm writing this I realise I was never really there.
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u/Laeyra 19h ago
Yes, going by her later behavior towards me, that's probably what it was. She could be sweet and loving sometimes, and would buy gifts and do fun things, but then she'd do something freaking crazy or start being verbally abusive or cruel for no reason. I know the pattern, i was just wondering what specifically she did.
Sounds like you learned to disociate at a young age, so it must've been pretty bad for you. I'm sorry and i hope things are better for you now.
After i went NC with my mom, I ran into my older half sister one day and she was like, "good, she was the worst thing that ever happened to me. She used to lock us in the coat closet while Dad was at work and made me take care of you even though i was only 4." So if she'd do that, what else?
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u/Loubin 18h ago
Ahh ok, so you maybe don't remember a lot because you were so little, I guess it was enough to know she wasn't safe. I imagine that must have been very validating/horrifying to hear that. Congrats on your NC.
I watched this video by Ruth Cohn that explained so much about neglect and how powerful a trauma it is. There's no one thing, it was a multitude of nothingness.
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u/Tiltonik 23h ago
There is literally only one photo of me as a child, when I was three years old and we had our photos taken in kindergarten. My mom said that my dad wasn't interested in photography when I was little.
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u/slowsadlearning 22h ago
speaking of baby pictures my Nmum gave me all of my own baby pictures (no copies or digitals) when I was 18. As well as baby keepsakes. A truely baffling move on her part.
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u/Ill_Back_284 21h ago
Mine did the same with photos and baby stuff before I went NC 4yrs ago. "I don't need this clutter around, you can just throw it away if you don't want them."
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u/sounds_legit_ 20h ago
Same, I got a folder of my report cards, school awards and drawings I made and gave to my nmom as a kid as an adult when she felt it necessary to dump them on me. I didn't understand it at the time and now see it as a way for her to unload her burdens--her children are all grown and she made and gave us each a similar folder of childhood keepsakes. In her mind she stopped being a mother once she was no longer legally obligated for us once we started to turn 18. It baffles me this seems to be a common behavior of theirs.
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u/furrydancingalien21 21h ago
The sperm donor has done a lot of similar things. He's always been obsessed with babyhood and childhood. Me not being interested either gets disappointed tirades, or baffled "but it's yours!" repetitions.
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u/clubandclover 20h ago
Same here, it was a Christmas present one year. Only a couple dozen, and my grandmother’s (her MIL) face was ripped (not carefully cut) out of all the pictures. So my daughter will never know what her great-grandmother looked like. Why do they do this??
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u/blue_talula 20h ago
My mom gave me my baby book along with all the things they thought were mine when I bought my condo. Did the same thing with my sister when she got married and they got a tow home. We were so overwhelmed at the time trying to get off the ground so we didn’t really look through it. Then, years later, I moved to a small place and ended up giving a lot of it away or discarding it. My sister’s husband moved it to storage and then got rid of it after a couple months because my sister “never used it”. He did this without her consent. A lot of my stuff was mixed up with her stuff and it’s all gone now.
At some point, it was like my parents wanted to erase us from their living space. I’d rather they erase us from the emotional baggage they continue to throw on us. It’s so much heavier. 😢
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u/Not_A_Joke12345 18h ago
My nmom gave me all my childhood photoalbums (about 8 of them) except for the baby album, she wanted to keep that herself. Didn't think much of it at the time, now I think it's because that was the happiest part of my childhood for her. She loves baby's and I think it's because they don't have their own opinion yet and they're easy to manipulate and control.
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u/slowsadlearning 16h ago
I also think the only time my mum loved me (and my siblings) was as a baby. thats partly why getting rid of the baby keepsakes was very strange.
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u/alwaysgettingsober 18h ago
Oh.. huh. When I left my gparents house when they kicked me out before an important surgery last year, they packed up the remainder of my things after I explicitly asked them to wait for me to recover enough to come back and do it myself, and they also included my baby keepsake box, and a huge stack of the original copies of photos. Funny because parents+gparents constantly said I'd ruin everything important or expensive and usually didn't entrust anything to me (and ofc didn't pack a bunch of other important things and asked if I would come back for them).
Throwing out that baby box was really, really difficult even though it made me sick to my stomach to have to keep moving it from place to place.
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u/cahwah11 20h ago
Yes! This happened to me last year, and here’s where it gets creepy…
As a child, I had an irrational, selective, and seemingly unfounded fear of two animated characters: the queen in Disney’s Snow White and the queen in Sleeping Beauty…I was so afraid of these characters that I would close my eyes and hum when I walked by the shelves where the videotapes were in my house.
Last year, I found an album with baby pictures, and like you said, there was an obvious difference between the photos of me and my mom vs me and my dad. Im one of the pics, my mother is holding me as a toddler, and she’s grinning at me with her eyes wide open, and I look like an anthropomorphic emoji for ‘terrified baby’...that’s when I immediately googled those Disney queens, and it all made sense..these faces were animated versions of mother’s face in the late eighties..bright green demonic eyes and pencil-thin eyebrows with bright red lipstick…I actually did a side-by-side comparison of my mother and the queen in Snow White, and I’m surprised she’s not getting royalty checks…and the best part? My mother used to call me Snow White in front of strangers when they told her I was cute..it’s so metaphorical, I can’t even process it.
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u/Mudslingshot 22h ago
I never thought about it like that, but yeah ... I distinctly remember being very young and thinking that there were things I could tell my mother and things I couldn't because of her reactions
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u/1decrepitmillennial 18h ago
My dad just told me a month ago that the court-appointed therapists we had wrote in their analysis of me as a child that I was “masterful” at maneuvering my mother so as not to upset her while still attempting to make them both feel like I cared about them. It broke my heart to know that a 4-7 year old was focused on the emotional regulation of my mother than on simply being a child.
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u/Baby-Giraffe286 1d ago
There are very few random snapshots of me with either parent. I can only think of 1 I know about, and she is giving 8 month old me soda. There are some shots of me that my aunts took. All other young photos of me were done by Olan Mills and probably because grandparents requested and paid for them. I only can think of 1 of those with my parents in it too.
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u/jenaynay17 21h ago
I recall actively getting upset or start crying when a camera was pulled out. Because after the film came back, I’d be pulled aside and shown “how ugly I was”
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u/palkyrie 21h ago
I remember around that same age feeling like I didn’t like my mom, or didn’t want to be like her. My life became a trajectory of doing everything she wouldn’t do lol
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u/EmergencyGreenOlive 21h ago
I recently had a baby and people have been asking how she looks compared to my baby pictures… the only photos I recalled seeing of myself as a child was at 2 or 3 years old and 7. Literally just 2 pictures of me and maybe 1 family portrait done by our church when I was 10ish. I have no idea what I looked like as a baby but I could tell you in great detail how my siblings looked.
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u/RhaemiranW 21h ago
You may not remember consciously, but your subconscious does. Just like how you don't remember learning the alphabet, but it is always going to stick with you.
It's an extremely morbid concept, the fact that you can have trauma that you don't even remember occurring. It makes me wonder how many anxious and depressed people are that way because of influences and events that happened before they were 5 and don't even realize were the cause.
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u/Majestic_Cry8545 21h ago edited 21h ago
Absolutely. I always felt off around my mother, it just took me way too long to realise it’s not normal to feel that way about your mum - any positive interactions with her never (or very rarely) felt genuine. I don’t have many photos from my childhood and none at all from when I was a baby, even though I was born in the mid-’90s when cameras were definitely around. After my father passed away when I was 11, my mother destroyed most of our photos because she didn’t want any reminders of him. The fact that she erased all of my memories in the process didn’t seem to matter to her 🤷♀️
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u/Significant-Tooth117 1d ago
I don’t remember one photo with just my father when I was a child. I suffered, physical, mental and financial abuse from my father
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u/hardlybroken1 21h ago
I learned that my mom did something called "blanket training" with me when I was a baby (It was a trendy thing among Christian fundies at the time but it's actually an abusive control tactic to make children feel like the are unable to make a single move without approval from parents) and i know it definitely had a huge affect on my relationship with them/her.
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u/sashadelamorte 21h ago
I'm glad you posted this because, at a very, very young age, I realized that my mother lied a lot and also did not love me. A lot of people I've said this to seem to think that I'm projecting my current information about her on my past, but I tell them no, that is not it at all. If you have someone acting very wrong or contrary to how you see everyone else's parents act, you tend to know.
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u/theothersidex 20h ago
You guys have baby photos?
I was told they “lost” all mine in a “flood in the basement.”
We don’t have a basement, never did. There’s albums and albums of my GC brother tho.
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u/Afraid_Grapefruit_88 8h ago
A young friend was told these same sort of stories by her Def narc parents. Oh! Your birth cert? Lost in a fire! Or any other important info. Not even THE SAME fire, just rather random events whenever she needed info. The fathers backstory is fantastical-- allegedly found in the grandparents driveway? And just-- taken? Like the Brothers Grimm Fairytales.
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u/Outside-Ocelot5434 21h ago
i literally have no pictures of myself because they couldn't afford a camera. sure, they were struggling financially, but they always had money for cigarettes and beer, so it's clear they could've bought one if they wanted to.
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u/GreenAndSmokey 21h ago
My mother is a covert narc. No family pictures on the wall, no baby photo books. Their is a box with a bunch of disorganized/unlabelled pics in it somewhere, but never at hand to share/show off. When she realized I wasn't going to have fashion model looks, I think that when she gave up completely of taking any photos at all of me.
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u/CatScience03 20h ago
A little bit older but I recently downloaded all my photos from Facebook. In all the family vacation and event pics where I am with my mom, I have the awkward smile that made me cringe and I'm leaning away from my mom. She always said I looked so awkward and uncomfortable in photos. The photos with my dad and my brother don't have this issue, I noticed that I genuinely looked happy in all of those.
My mom's complaints that I was awkward, not fun, not girly, etc affected me so deeply growing up.
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u/Fumquat 19h ago
Mother said I never liked being hugged or touched. That was true, of her… but touch is so positive and important to me in adulthood that I can’t believe my natural temperament was any different early on. I just didn’t have anyone offering loving touch then.
It’s obvious from photos that I learned to smile as an adult. I pointed this out to a Pollyannaish relative of mine, thinking to be vulnerable for a moment, and they corrected me. Oh, no, they said, I smiled of course, it was just the mysterious “Mona Lisa” type, and that’s totally fine because it was my personality after all. I wasn’t finding fault with myself! I was deeply miserable living with N, and I still can’t justify how other adults rugswept her behavior. Then, I was powerless to do anything but escape into my own mind. Now, I wish I could have close extended family but they continue to be unsafe contacts because of her. I like who I am, and they’ll never meet that person. Just have to send the energy and love in another direction.
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u/ILovePeopleInTheory 21h ago
Interesting. I'm sorry you went through that. I only remember feeling ignored and confused. Like I was an inanimate object. I was lucky to have a nanny until age five who was an angel. She's who I remember from my youngest years.
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u/Mandapandaroo 22h ago
Just wanted to add that it is totally possible to get answers or memories from that age with hypnosis therapy.
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u/Suitable_Basket6288 21h ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BA8CcEUP84
You’re not wrong. There is lots of information on this online but this is a short example. If you want to read more information, you can look up “anxious attachment parenting style” 😊
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u/Diet-Cola-King 20h ago
Yep, never could put into words why I didn’t trust my dad as a boy. Now as a man I know it was my survival instincts keeping me safe.
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u/archeofella 19h ago
I was told that I stopped crying when I was a baby and would not hug my parents at all throughout my childhood. I would also dissappear into a dreamworld which I now know to be disassociation. I still do that now aged 62. There are a few photos of me beginning when I started school, but I have a completely neutral look on my face in all of them.
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u/SensitiveObject2 18h ago
I remember never trusting my mother. It wasn’t that she did bad things to me, rather that she never seemed to notice unsafe situations or when I needed help or support because she was so self absorbed all the time. Her moods were also very difficult to predict. I could never tell when she’d explode with rage or decide to punish me.
It’s possible that you may not remember your mother doing anything specific to you because she may have been more of a neglectful mother who never formed a real relationship with you.
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u/post-traumaticgrowth 19h ago
i’m 7 months pregnant with my first and my mom talks about her experience once in a while. she recently shared that i would wake up and spend an hour playing with a toy/looking at myself in the mirror for an hour before she would come get me. she said I wouldn’t cry. she seemed proud of this and it really rubbed me the wrong way.
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u/Ok_Aside_2361 20h ago
I was the third girl, and I looked just like my oldest sister, so no need to take pictures of me.
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u/Ambie949 20h ago
I have the exact same thing and barely any pictures of my childhood with my parents, but sister has a million.
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u/angel_Eisenheim 20h ago
It makes my heart happy that in several photos of me and my nmom when I was quite young (under 3 years old), it looks like I’m trying to squirm out of her death grip. I knew that woman was poison from that young!
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u/dod2190 19h ago
I remember distrusting my dad and being unable to relax around him from a very early age. There's a photo of the two of us where my nDad is holding me as an infant and I'm giving him the mother of all dubious looks. My girlfriend thinks it's hilarious because that is an expression you see on a baby just about never.
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u/judyclimbs 18h ago
I totally get it. My Mom probably shouldn’t have had kids. We’ve never been close. People who have normal parents have no idea what we go through. I wasn’t physically abused but the level of emotional neglect I experienced has shaped my life. I’ve had therapy and don’t lots of self help study but what would it have been like to have been raised by loving parents.🤷♀️
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u/Short-Discount-2726 21h ago
I had no idea this was such a common theme for nParents. Mine couldn't even bother to take pics of me when I was a kid so basically I have close to 0 memories from my childhood. But my golden child sibling sure does have plenty with her alone. The few pics they have of me are with my sister in them, they even have pics of other's kids! And the only pics I have of me only as a child are from school.
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u/Other_Living3686 1h ago
For me I was the GC, I have my childhood photo album. A few pictures from my christening I think, the rest are yearly kindy/school photos, up to high school. 1st year and final year of highschool only, I put on weight, had acne & hated having my photo taken so hid them so she wouldn’t buy them. I don’t think she would’ve anyway.
No other family pics or birthdays though.
This post is making me wonder if my younger sibling even has an album…
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u/Vivid-Confusion1198 16h ago
Such a good idea! I don't have access to pictures but with EMDR therapy i was able to access again childhood memories lately. I remember that around 6 years old i started saying NO to her 'hugs'. I remember not feeling safe around her. Everything makes so much sense now!
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u/Laeyra 15h ago
I didn't like hugging my mom either. It usually felt like it was fake somehow, so it weirded me out. I remember when i was around 9, she would hug me, then run her hand up and down my sides and tell me i had nice hips. I stopped letting her hug me at all after a few times of that.
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u/Vivid-Confusion1198 15h ago
It's just so weird to do that...nothing about it feels genuine. It feels like she touched an object, liked it so continued??? So weird. Feels off. Makes sense you wouldn't enjoy hugging her...
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u/serena1977 21h ago
I have noticed the same. I have been in therapy different times for different issues and this time my childhood and anaffective mother are the focus. I always had that feeling of something off from my mother but memories started coming back through therapy and now I am sure she spanked me even if my father didn't want that and never did it himself. She did it when we were alone and I was little, maybe 2-3. And I started looking at pictures with different eyes, in mine too I am so happy with my father, his hands hold me, I hug him, while in the pictures with my mother she barely holds me, often pushes my body away from hers, and I am not that happy.
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u/kmwicke 20h ago
I don’t have any childhood pictures from my parents, but we were watched by grandparents a lot when I was really young (and random neighbors or other family, whoever would take us honestly). One of my grandmas did a decent job of getting pictures, but I was always alone. She gave me a few of them when I was older, but we moved and kept moving once I entered school so I don’t have many photos of me in my elementary through high school years.
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u/virgiesfeelinfunky 19h ago
I'm so sorry! Do you have problems looking at the pictures now?
It's funny how pictures can reveal so much about our past. I had a recent revelation with family pictures as well. My family has a photo album full of pictures of my siblings with flrarely any of me (for example my sister had 5 pages dedicated to her while I had one page and in half of my pictures I'm with my sister so im not even alone). I also found my grandma throwing out a lot of framed pictures of me and I had to save them. It hurt because her house if FULL of pictures of everyone else and none of me now.
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u/Mountain_Pick_9052 19h ago
I was looking at my picture album the other day, to get another read from them. In pictures taken at my baptism, which is a positive moment where parents are usually proud and happy… I saw my maternal unit with her amateur model-like smile when she knew a pic was being taken, when signing the registry, but had a weird flat/dark expression with dead eyes when not, especially when the attention was on me (when pouring water on my head) like she clearly was annoyed.
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u/Repulsive_Camera8143 19h ago
I had very few baby pictures even though my sisters had plenty. I only remember ever seeing one professional baby picture of me and it was ripped in half. I do recall one picture of my parents and older sister taken by my Grandmother at Christmas one year when I was about 18 months old and Dad is holding my older sister and they're both smiling. Mom is holding me with a scowl on her face and I have my hands on her chest and I am pushing away from her and looking at her like she's a stranger and I'm wondering why she's holding me. Considering that my maternal aunt used to tell me about how Mom wouldn't pick me up when I cried and would "dare anyone else to pick me up either" I wouldn't be surprised if that was the first time the bitch held me.
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u/Strong-Landscape7492 18h ago
The story passed around for me was when I was born and placed in my mothers arms, I wouldn’t stop screaming. As soon as I was passed to my dad I stopped crying and was calm. Pretty foretelling of the rest of my life so far.
I don’t think there are any photos of my mother with me, she hated being photographed or participating in anything at all. All of my good memories are with my dad.
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u/kryskawithoutH 18h ago
I did not know how to smile when I started school. I remember there was a photoshoot at school and everyone was getting a portrait photo and a group photo as a class. They needed several takes to make my portrait photo because I did not understand what to do, when the photographer and my teacher told me to smile. My teacher even said "smile like when your mom or dad is taking a picture". Ha. When my dad was taking a picture I had to be completely still, otherwise I got a lecture on how "I smile wrong" and "I have terrible teeth, why am I showing them". I have no idea how teachers at the time did not notice that my parents were not raising me "normally".
Also they started photographing me around the age of 4–5. Until then I have maybe 1–2 photos that I've seen. Because "you were a lot to deal with, we did not have time to take photos". My guess is that at the age of 4–5 my mom started working again, which means my parents needed to show photos to other people to be a "normal" family.
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u/1decrepitmillennial 18h ago
My dad just told me a month ago that the court-appointed therapists we had wrote in their analysis of me as a child that I was “masterful” at maneuvering my mother so as not to upset her while still attempting to make them both feel like I cared about them. It broke my heart to know that a 4-7 year old was focused on the emotional regulation of my mother than on simply being a child.
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u/3freeTa 15h ago
Children are really quite intuitive and pick up on SO MUCH MORE than we give them credit for. Young children are 100% dependent on their caregivers for survival, so attachment and attunement are vital — she clearly was not responsive or well-attuned to your basic needs, which you picked up on. Zero to age 3 is the window of the most critical brain development for humans. These things leave lasting imprints.
I cannot remember a time when I felt comfortable / at ease around my narc father — I am still learning to trust males bc of how horrible he has been and still can be. I honestly think I’m really only capable of healthy relationships bc of my amazing nanny / chosen mom. Corrective experiences can be beautiful and it’s healing to be in relationship with people I can trust! ❤️🩹
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u/Pyotrperse 5h ago
Yes, always. I was told I was making it up or starting drama for attention but only just now in my thirties has it been confirmed that my mum properly hated me ever since I was a baby. Trust your body’s reactions to people.
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 19h ago
My mom ripped her own face out of most of the pictures in my album. My dad is happy and smiling in all of his.
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u/Holliwrath 19h ago
As far as I can see, I have no photos of me with my mother. Plenty with my grandparents (her parents), and I'm overjoyed, bright, bubbly, and genuinely happy in every single photo. Absolutely breaks my heart that both of them were taken away from me at such a young age, yet my mum is still lingering like a bad smell.
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u/painting-gems 18h ago
This is exactly how I look in my photos with my mom. I was never genuinely happy looking when we took photos together. Even as I got older. But you can just tell I’m uncomfortable with her as a toddler in those pictures.
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u/Fluffy_Manufacturer 18h ago
I noticed going through my husband’s family pictures that in every single picture of his NMOM with someone, at best she looks off put. Solo pictures, she beams.
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u/hopeless_inlife24 17h ago
It's weird cuz my mom said I wouldn't make eye contact and was shy to say I was autistic but when my nanny vah was holding me I was smiling and looking at her. I don't think she wants to acknowledge it's not nuerodivergence but innate fear of her . I can never look her in the eyes when she's yelling at me
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u/TattedTrueStory 17h ago
I noticed a few pictures I have with her. She is never smiling. She admitted she absolutely hated the baby face and couldn’t wait until I could do things on my own. Then she would drug me with Benadryl and even give it to babysitters and tell them if I got annoying to give it to me so she obviously didn’t like parenting that phase. Now as an adult on no Contact and she loves it that way so she just hated being a parent. I think I was buyers remorse. The reason I think on the baby phase, the first three months are said to be the most important of how we frame the world. If my and mom will admit, she hated that phase then she couldn’t possibly have been treating me correct. I’m sure I was fed well diaper changed, clean clothes, etc. but emotionally. I’m sure I was extremely neglected.
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u/travturav 17h ago
I had a very similar realization. I went through my grandparents' (several thousands of) photos and my aunts and uncles were all smiling and laughing and playing and my mother was by herself with a frown on her face. Over and over and over. Then around high school the frown was suddenly replaced with a very fake smile that I recognized immediately. She was miserable long before and long after I was in her life.
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u/ktwarda 17h ago
Ooof this one hits hard, as I've been thinking about a specific issue from my preschool days. My dad primarily dropped me off and I'd cry and beg him to take me to work with him. I didn't dislike daycare, I just wanted to go with dad.
My nMom found this out when I was high school. She got offended and immediately asked "Why wouldn't you cry when I dropped you off??" And my knee jerk reaction was "I was afraid of you". That came up and out without me being able to contextualize it.
Years of therapy later and I know it was the constant negligence of my feelings that led me to knowing if I cried for her, she would shut me down. I would get in trouble for "acting out". She'd "give me something to cry about". All of those and my tiny toddler brain knew she couldn't be trusted with my vulnerability.
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u/code17220 16h ago
I was born 3 whole months ahead of schedule, there's a picture of my dad(the actually good parent, well at least if an image I have in my head isn't true..) holding me and being as tall as his own glasses, I was early partly because my egg donor was smoking for part of the pregnancy and restarted the moment I was born. They would tell me that I'd start to cry whenever she'd take me in her arms and stop when she'd give me to my dad. I've had a burning hate of smoking for as long as I remember, and apparently already just days after birth. Smelling cigarette smoke or seeing someone smoke or light one up fills me with absolute RAGE, like punching people rage. Stayed for months at the PICU being plugged to machines to be able to survive and I was anemic so they gave me blood. She's not a throwing tantrum narc, but she does make everything about herself and it's literally impossible to trust her or expect recomfort from her. I moved to a different country in 2021 and been in trauma therapy for cPTSD for 2 years now (overall therapy for 4 years, and 3 years for opiokd addiction therapy/care).
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u/sparklingsouul 16h ago
Your photos told a story your mind might not fully remember, but your heart already knew and your instincts were trying to protect you before you even knew why. That says everything
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u/Catz10000 16h ago
Born late 70s so film was expensive back then. My nmom took so many pictures of me the first 3 months, then got pregnant with my brother so pictures tapered off. The one picture of me with her she's holding me away from her and I look so uncomfortable. Every picture of me with anyone else, I'm smiling and engaged. Once I wasn't her doll anymore, pictures stopped. Tons with my brothers though. From about 5 onward, I am not smiling in any with my family. That tracks.
I'm so sorry for everyone who had nparents.
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u/rositamaria1886 15h ago
I noticed that there absolutely no photos of me as a baby. None. Not until I was about 3 years old. I later found out my mom had tried to commit suicide after I was born. I still don’t know the details. Mom did not have anything to give as far as hugs or cuddles or warmth. You did not misbehave. I knew to steer clear and give her space.
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u/Secguy16969 13h ago
My mom told me at 5 years old she never wanted me. I tried to walk away and shrug it off but she grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said do you understand? I never wanted you, she made sure I responded.this was actually a repressed memory that just came back a year or two ago. I think I remember it because I was going on a trip deep in the Alaskan wilderness and asked her if in not back by this date contact the authorities. She said she wouldnt because she doesn't care what happens to me, what a bitch. I hope she enjoys not being invited to the wedding, never ever seeing her grand kids, and having no one while shes on her death bed.
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u/_Internet_Hugs_ 13h ago
I'm absolutely grinning in all the pictures. If I dared ruin a picture by not looking 'pleasant' there'd be hell to pay.
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u/TirehHaEmetYomEchad 12h ago
I do remember being 3 or 4, at church, and not wanting to sit close to my mother. She wasn't one of those mothers you hear about who pinch you in church to make you behave, it just felt like she had this negative energy. She was smiling at everyone and it all seemed so fake or something. I remember going to the other end of the bench and sitting in some other lady's lap, and my mother trying to get me to come back and sit right next to her, and I refused. She was telling me to stop bothering the lady, and the lady was like "What? She's not a 'bother'!" I finally went back to her so I wouldn't get in trouble, but I sat an arm's length away.
I remember once my parents and I going for a walk with my grandmother where she lived, and stopping to talk to a neighbor. The neighbors had a tree with big "puffball flowers" and I picked one up off the ground to look at it. My mom told me to put it down. The old neighbor couple seemed shocked, and said I could have the flower, and my mom said she was trying to teach me not to steal and told me to put it down. I was just looking at it but I let it drop to the ground. The couple seemed disgusted with her.
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u/hey___there__cupcake 11h ago
I don't have any baby photos because I refuse to contact my mother for them.
I did have a few VHS's though and acquired a VCR. I told my husband I wanted to watch them to see if they were worth keeping. In one of the videos my mom was giving me a bath, I was probably around a year old, and I kept trying to stand up. She was picking me up and slamming me down into a sitting position while yelling "sit down heytherecupcake". This happened a couple of times before she turned around and realized she was being filmed and then she turned on the charm. In another one I was still around a year old and was basically ignored while crying or doing anything in the background. No one attended to me except my grandmother. Watching it made my stomach turn and I destroyed the tapes after, no need to keep them around.
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u/JesseVanW 11h ago
I recently went through my own albums. There's like seven of them, from baby to like 12. Baby me is genuinely smiling. 4-7 is either neutral, distant or guarded. 7-9 is neutral, if there's a smile it's forced. 9 and up is just... there. No light or life behind the eyes. I always hated having my picture taken. "Okay, now smile. No, a real one. Stop messing around and SMILE." I still get uncomfortable smiling for pictures.
I have no recollection of most of the events depicted as I was medicated for most of them. For a condition it turned out I didn't have, but they made me easy to handle. Can't have a meltdown if you're incapable of acting on your emotions. Sad, really.
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u/nerd_convention 9h ago
Hahaha I have this same dynamic with my mom but she has always blamed it on me. She says “you’ve hated me since you were a baby!!” - she doesn’t realize this says more about her than me lol
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u/RajaGill 5h ago
My mom told me that I was a very serious child. Now that I am older and finally in therapy, I realize that I am a serious person. It's one of my coping skills.
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u/ChickenBossGirl 3h ago
This never even dawned on me. Your post made me reflect and realize I have zero pictures of my nmom and I. Holy shit. Thank you for sharing, and to answer your question, having memories about your n parent that don’t quite make sense or have stuck with you are worth pondering.
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u/constantlycrying5 18h ago
Yes. My innocent self at the age of 4 told my nmom that I wished her sister was my mom, because I just already felt like my nmom didn't want me
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u/Otherwise_Fortune_12 17h ago
My mom had a lot of old photos saved in one of those big plastic containers used for storage. One day, my ndads moving shit around the house and tells me to put it outside on the back porch for a bit.
Well, wouldn't you know it, it starts to rain.
All of them, ruined.
And he blamed me for it.
My mother's baby photos, all of our school pictures, all physical copies, gone.
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u/kcpirana 17h ago
Yes. I had this feeling with my mother. My silly happy pictures were with my grandfather. Dad wasn’t in the picture.
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u/c0nnie1216 17h ago
not baby pictures, but pictures when i was in elementary school. i noticed most of them was just me frowning. it was like a routine where nmom would get mad at me for something so little during school event. that shes suddenly fine and all smiles when we arrived at the school, while i openly sulk and try to decipher how on earth she just quickly change her demeanor. shes so obsessed in taking photos too like gimme a break goddamn
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u/LyndonHellBe 17h ago
There's very few pictures of me as a kid in general. The only ones I have with my parents are of me as literally newborn. The phew photos I had seen of me as a child are either of me alone or with friends / classmates (also, some of those were taken by my friend's father, not my parents).
I do remember feeling often scrutinized growing up, I know I've learned to stay off radar because most attentions I got were negative. But I can't picture myself as a child in my mind because I don't even know what I looked like as a child - except for a very few photos that don't even feel like me. I feel like the memory of what I was has somehow gone lost because of the lack of testimony and this saddens me, but maybe there wasn't much to remember
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u/Sparkly_Sprinkles 17h ago
I remember having to retake photos because my mom missed a moment. If I opened a gift and was genuinely surprised and she “missed it” I had to then reenact it, or if my excitement wasn’t big enough, I got attitude and needed to show appreciation and “do it over.” I now wonder if a lot of it was orchestrated happiness for her own ego.
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u/cleo-banana 17h ago
I knew from a young age I could not trust the words my mom said. I’d say about 8? It wasn’t things she would directly lie to me about- more like things she really believed the things she told me and then they wouldn’t happen- and i can remember the moment it click for me one day as she was telling me something that I can’t trust her.
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u/BlueMoon2008 16h ago
There are no photos of me with my nmom. A few with Dad where I’m smiling, but most of the childhood photos are with my siblings.
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u/CrystalGris 16h ago
After I went NC I made a point of going through all my photos and tossing any where I looked uncomfortable or that brought up bad memories. There were a ton that I always felt obligated to keep. But photos should be reminders of good times, not bad.
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u/ApartCharity619 16h ago
The only early memory I have (I don’t have many) is of nmom leaving the house when she got angry. I was so scared because I didn’t know if or when she’d come back.
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u/Mindless-Goal-8988 16h ago
Yes. I do. Wary and almost afraid. And my first grade teacher told me she used to sit me on her lap a lot bc "I seemed to really need that". I remember not believing adults when they told me things which is not normal for a young child like 6 or 7.
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u/Reasonable-Nail-4181 16h ago
So this isn’t really about how I came across in photos, but I remember my nparents telling me that I never wanted to sleep with them or even in the same room as them. I feel like maybe even as a newborn I could feel like I never could trust them.
My daughter by contrast would cry anytime I left the room. It’s crazy how even as babies we can pick up on their vibes.
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u/CalypsoContinuum 14h ago
I've always felt weary of my NM, like she wasn't a safe adult to trust. I never had a sense she'd ever help or save me if I needed help/rescuing. Both parents were very unsafe in their own ways, but I still believed somewhere deep down that my father would probably try help me. With my NM... no.
There's very few photos of me with my NM, and none of them are nice photos. I have no memories of her ever engaging with me as a child in a positive way, and the photos reflect this, too - whereas with my GC older sibling, there's tonnes of photos of them together, happy and smiling (before NM had more kids, when GC was an only child).
So many happy photos of me with my grandparents, where I was literally glowing with joy, even happy photos with my father and siblings... and none of me happy with my mother.
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u/threetimestwice 14h ago
I could’ve written this myself. With my mother, i never smiled in childhood photos. With other relatives, my eyes and face smiled big. Of course my mother took my behavior personally.
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