As the eldest of three children I foolishly tended to take it personally when my mother told me (repeatedly and from age 3 on !) that “having children ruined” her and my father’s lives.

Eventually I learned to respond with, “Yeah, mine too.”

But probably the crowning example would be on my sixteenth birthday: Her dinner table toast: “Having you children ruined our marriage. We had such fun before you were born. But Happy Birthday anyway, hon.”

And then my father “gifted” me with an unwrapped, pre-read (by him), oops-I-forgot “present” of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” Seriously.

I have a degree in clinical social work (comes in handy for interviewing folks as I look for stories behind the facts) and Merrill’s post “Enough about You” was the best thing I’ve read that really captured the topic. We can blab on and on and on about borderline personality disorder, sexual addiction and other psychological traits that narcissists possess in varying forms. But it wasn’t until I was reading this post that a lot of threads all of a sudden came together in this really screwed up looking quilt. The underlying thread to all of the people who make me crazy is that they’re narcissists pure and simple. They won’t change but the one thing that can change is how I interact with them. Now I see the pattern very clearly and can take definite steps to identify someone as a narcissist and behave appropriately so I am no longer getting screwed personally and professionally. Sometimes we need a little less clinical crud and more straight from the hip talk form someone who hasn’t been totally Oprah-cized.

A series of stories that only Merrill can tell would rock and educate us all. Just my two cents.

2) I’ve had lust doom twice and it’s no laughing matter. I’m currently recovering from swine flu as well.

3) I’d love to see you write a whole book about narcissism, I really would. I’m sure there are books available on the topic, but it needs the Merrill Markoe treatment. I always understood the basic definition of the word, but it wasn’t until later in life that I started picking up on the disguises it wears. It’s so much easier to sort out the people in your life when you have keen narcissism radar.

It’s a serious topic, but talk about material for comedy…it can be hilarious – like an interview I read with a former talk show host whose name I won’t mention but she’s married to a former football player and she did a show with Regis and her initials are KLG. When she was asked if she missed doing her show, she answered that the only time she really missed it was after 9/11 because she no longer had a platform.

Foo.

I

And am I reading the sign in that last picture correct? MY FEET STANK?

Merrill replies:
1. Well, what card carrying female in good standing has not to some extent been at least intermittently doomed by lust.
2. Yes. “My Feet Stank.” (Talk about someone who was doomed by lust!)