The Narcissist
The Narcissist is my father Jack Elden Myers. The below image is a great representation of how I have come to understand his world view.
Through his life he proved himself to be; fully self-absorbed, a pedophile, child abuser and regular consumer of child pornography. Later in life his sexual tourism landed him in Costa Rica where he found a teenage girl who through the circumstances of poverty was willing to be with him for a price. There was eventually a child involved that has never been proven but I have no doubt is my little brother. This because of not only the financial support he provided on a monthly basis but also the love that he showed for that child that he never really showed for my sister or I. Yes, he showed much love for my sister, but that was an unhealthy form of attention. Maybe it was because he was later in life and able to reflect on how he treated us. Maybe this lead to his changing, like he could make up for it with this kid. I will never really know.
The things that I have seen him do and the things that he has done to me are inexcusable and totally inappropriate. The pain that he has caused both directly and indirectly to so many children may never be measurable but I can attest that the pain was real and deep. I am grateful that his sexual tastes did not involve young boys. I cannot say as much for my sister based on what I personally witnessed at a very young age. The images that I carry with me are a curse to this day. I wonder what the world looks like to people who have never seen such things.
When the narcissist looks in the mirror they don’t see themselves, at least not a real image of themselves. They see a reflection they project onto the mirror. An image that is not reality. They see the perfection they want to see in themselves reflected back.
To me Jack was the dictator type of narcissist. The one that was absolutely critical of everything I did, always setting me up to fail, one upping me. If I brought something to show him that I did and was proud of he would point out any little flaw he could or explain how I could have done something different or better. There was never a time when he could just give a little praise or credit. It always had to be about him and anything I did could never match up to what he could do, or what a friend of his could do. This went on his entire life.
To my sister Tenley he was something completely different. When she was born he made her his mirror. When he looked at her he saw the perfection that he wanted to see in himself. He projected that reflection on her. An image that is far from reality but that is how narcissists live. They live in a dream world where they see what they need to see in order to feed their ego. When Tenley was born he instantly made her his mirror. He focused all of his energy on her like she was his little golden nugget that he would cherish forever. After all, he was looking at himself in the mirror.
After spending a year and a half projecting his image on this little baby I was born. When I was born he ignored me from day one. At this point he really didn’t need me, he already had his mirror. I have been told by people who were around at the time that when I was a week old he would come home from work and walk right past me as if I wasn’t even there. I have three children and I couldn’t even imagine doing that. All of them were life changing to me and I couldn’t wait to see them when I got home. But to him I was just a distraction. It is because of this, at this time that my nuclear family was split in two forever.
Jack had no interest in art work unless it was an exact replica of reality. His reasoning was “Why would I be interested in someone else’s perception?” He would never listen to music that had a human voice in it and he took pride in the fact he had not watched a movie in decades.
Morality
As a reference I will start with a link to my father’s writing on Morality or you can just take a quick look at the general definition of Morality.
As I got older I started to realize that it was my father where I got my sense of morality. Where I learned to respect people. He was in no way racist from what I know and in his entire life I never heard him curse. Not once! When he was in the hospital I was having lunch with the Tenley and one of my father’s business partners and friends of more than 30 years. We were talking about dad and he was answering any questions we had about his work life. He asked if I had any other questions about him so I had to ask if he ever cursed around the office. When he said that he did all the time both Tenley and I let out gasps of shock. Really, I am not making it up. In my entire time on this planet I never heard that man curse.
Where I learned that doing the right thing is what you should always try to do. As a child I always thought he was very honorable. He always came across to me as such a highly moral person. That was his front, his shield. In reality he totally understood what was moral. He didn’t think that things he did were wrong. He just knew that most of society did so it had to be kept secret. Hence the shield. But being a narcissist you are coming from the position that you are “normal” and its really the majority of society that is just dead wrong.
Because my father knew what was moral he held me to that standard. But, did he really live by the standard I was expected to live by? On face value anyone around may think so, I certainly did when I was young, but behind the shield it was much different. Because he had his mirror he was able to push off all the things that he thought were great about him. So he could see them for himself. She was his perfection staring him in the face. So he could tuck away the shortcuts he took in his morality. For him, they really weren’t wrong, just unacceptable. But for me it was different because I was held accountable for it where neither he nor the mirror were. They just reflected greatness back upon each other while looking through a distorted view of what is outside the dimensions of the mirror view.
Tenley explained to me how she had to remind dad that I was coming in the following day and would be staying in his guest room. And that he may want to put away all the naked pictures he had laying on the bed in that room of Claws.
I find it very hard to believe that Tenley could possibly understand morality. I believe that both Tenley and my father understood what other people saw as moral. I believe they both knew where that line was drawn, where most people they knew would hold themselves from crossing. This knowledge is used to manipulate and get what they want. They know what to say because they understand where other people place themselves in relation to morality. But I also believe to them that the ends will always justify the means. They will cross that line to get what they want and say what they have to in order to put off the perception that they have morals.
Bowling in Michigan
I think I was in Jr. High school when we took a road trip back to Michigan to see my dad’s sister and her family. While we were there dad and my uncle decided they should take Tenley, our cousin Drunky and I bowling. I don’t think I had ever been bowling before so I was excited to go. When we got there it was pretty normal stuff I guess. We picked out our multi colored bowling shoes and put them on. My uncle helped me pick out a ball that I would be able to handle and we got settled into our lane. After a quick lesson we got started.
As we played I found that I liked bowling a lot. I have a natural spin on the ball so my uncle showed me the marker in the floor where I should be aiming. He got me all lined up and I was doing pretty well. I was actually throwing some strikes every now and then and I was really having a good time.
It was after the 4th or 5th frame that I finally noticed what was going on. After each roll that Tenley did my dad would give her a nice big pat on the ass. Now this may seem normal to some, but this is not what dad did. He never did that once in all the time I spent running and playing soccer. I never saw him do anything like that. At the time I was young and naïve and didn’t see anything inappropriate about it. At the time I was really angry because I saw it as recognition. I thought he was giving her recognition for bowling well. But he kept doing it after every ball she rolled. Through the entire afternoon I didn’t get a single pat on the ass like she did, even when I bowled better than her with a much higher score. I felt invisible. My uncle would tell me I did well after a good roll but to dad it really was like I wasn’t there. His attention was fully on Tenley.
It was later on after Tenley sent the information about dad being arrested for child pornography that it really clicked in me. The emotions I saw in him that day. Dad was very much in control of his emotions. So much so that when he got overwhelmed you could tell. His emotions were so strong you could feel them. You could see it in how he gritted his teeth; he would become very awkward and jerky in his motions. It was the same of anger as it was for any other emotion. He just tried to bury them and not let them out. But when you knew him, you could tell. That is what I was feeling that day bowling. So when my mom and I started talking about the arrest that day of bowling came back to me. I had not thought about it in years. It was just lost in that file cabinet of emotions that I just chalked up to his being an asshole. That’s why I was so surprised when I mentioned it to mom and she remembered that day. She remembered how mad I was when we got back from bowling. She also just figured it was his awkwardness that was doing it. I see it very differently now.
After that conversation with mom she remembered a time when Tenley was very young. I will have to figure out the age later, but we were at my grandparents for Christmas. My grandmother came into the kitchen and said to my mom “That man hates himself so much for how much he lusts over that girl”. That was some amazing insight.
The only reason my mom or I know about dad’s arrest is because Tenley shared it with mom. She says she shared it because now that she knew about what he was she understood why mom left him. Really? Tenley really thinks that mom would have left her daughter with that man knowing what he was? I guess when you have no conscience or empathy it’s easy to believe people would act like you. The same reason Tenley thinks that me and mom left at the time of their divorce without ever giving her a chance. Even after mom had Tenley go to a counselor and gave her every opportunity to come with us. The reality of the matter is Tenley choose to stay with dad. Her “hero” for reasons she will never truly understand. She will not let herself see the truth because it’s too painful and she is too much of a narcissist/sociopath to ever face herself or reality. So she will continue to take it out on mom. Telling stories about how mom never loved her, how mom treated me differently, how mom abandoned her more than once. When in actuality it’s just not so. Sure, mom has now walked away, turned her back on Tenley. Who wouldn’t after all the shit Tenley has put her through?
Sports
Sports were the only place where I ever got any kind of positive re-enforcement from dad. He used to say “if you’re not getting straight A’s in school you better be winning at sports”. It was the only place I ever got positive feedback from him because I was actually pretty good. I excelled in distance running and soccer but I didn’t do too badly at baseball either. As long as I did well I got positive feedback because I was performing well on his behalf. It really was about performing for him, because to him how I did was a direct reflection on him. Once I started to study his condition I started to realize what it was really all about.
You see Daddy’s little mirror (Tenley) always got straight A’s. So I never had a chance of getting his attention that way. Sports came really naturally to me, so that would be easy. And it was. Tenley hated it with a passion. She hated that his attention was on me at all let alone if he was actually happy with my performance.
As time went by and I get better at running the next thing I knew I was running a 10K race every weekend. If I was doing well he would cheer as I went by. If I wasn’t doing well I got negative comments as I went by. All I really wanted and needed when I was doing badly was some encouragement. But that was way too much for him because I was reflecting poorly on him, I wasn’t performing up to par and that embarrassed him so he had to see it as negative and take it out on me. He had to make me pay for not performing how he expected.
I remember on the same trip we took to Michigan where we went bowling. He entered me into a 10K there so he could show off his Son’s running ability. At that point I was doing very well, 40 minute 10K’s and I was still in Jr. High. But when we got there and I started that race I just wasn’t feeling it. I had a side stitch and just couldn’t keep my normal pace. It may have been because I didn’t feel like performing for him in front of his family, or that I just wasn’t into it and said I would do it because you just cannot say no to him when he expects you to do something. But I did miserably and of course that made him miserable. So he was pissed off at me and yelled nothing but negative comments in front of his sister and brother in-law. He treated me like crap the rest of the trip.
As I got better and better at soccer things seemed to also get better between us at home. For one thing I was never home during the week before bed time. I was at the park playing soccer with anyone who would play with me. I would then come home, eat and go to bed. So we didn’t really have much interaction on week nights. Then on weekends I could run a good race, play a soccer game or two and hopefully do well in at least one of them so dad could be proud of himself for the child he helped bring into this world. I even let him talk me into playing soccer in two leagues at one time. They had started up another league in Inglewood so the practices and games were close enough to make it pretty easy. The problem was the age group I was in was 13, 14 and 15 year olds. AYSO didn’t stretch it out that much, the difference between a 13 and 15 year old boy can be immense. I of course was 13 and small. So it was very intimidating. I have to admit I improved a lot because of that, but it was by no means fun and made for some very long weekends.
It was the following year playing soccer just for AYSO. I didn’t want to repeat a season in both leagues. I was good; I made the all-star team every year now. I was a high goal scorer but had many more assists as I played either left wing or left half back. I actually think I enjoyed getting assists more than goals. It was something I truly loved and up to this point was able to ignore the negative crap coming from dad. The entire time I had been playing soccer I had learned to ignore what was being said on the sidelines. But dad was living through me, I was on his stage and I had better perform or there would be a price to pay. Not later, but right now. For years I would play hard and bring the ball down field. I could dribble past 3 defenders and cross the ball for one of the strikers on the team to hopefully receive the cross and bury the ball in the back of the net. But like clockwork, if I dribbled the ball down field and then crossed it and didn’t do it just right so the ball would go over the goal and out of bounds I would hear his voice “why did you bring it down field if you’re not going to cross it correctly?”, “What’s the point in staying after the game for all-star practice if you can’t play like one?”, “what’s the point in playing if you’re not going to take it seriously?”. I never could figure out if he realized that all the other parents could hear him as well as I could. I guess he didn’t really care.
But this year was different. He had to step beyond being just another parent on the sidelines and he had to be involved. He got one of his co-workers who played professional football in Italy to couch our team. I know he was a good player, I had seen articles about him, but I am not sure if he ever coached kids before. He was brutal. He would line us up and shoot the ball as hard as he could at us to condition us not to move on a penalty kick and just take it. If you moved and let the ball go by you were running laps. He had lots of other brutal tactics and within weeks the other coaches and parents petitioned to have him not coach anymore. So we got a new coach. I was always against that because even though I was scared in practice and got hurt often I was learning, I was getting better and seeing the game differently. I almost wished we had kept him. But that’s not really what this is about.
The issue for me was that my father was the assistance coach. When we lost our first coach we didn’t lose my father. So he went about doing his thing helping in practice and all. But I remember one game, it was a turning point for me. I had run a 10K race that morning as I did a lot, more on that later, but needless to say I may not have been as rested as I should have been. So I was not playing up to the level I liked. But it wasn’t just me. The entire team was in a funk, this happens at all levels of play, from professional down the first year kids playing any sport. We just weren’t playing well and the other team was, so we were getting beaten pretty badly. At one point my dad started cheering for the other team. I don’t understand what could possibly make that OK in anyone’s brain. Not only are you putting down your son but now you’re putting down the entire team. As the assistant coach how could anyone justify cheering for the other team just to make your team feel bad. Is that really an effective coaching method? Humiliation?
I remember hearing it in disbelief. I remember looking at the sidelines to see what he was doing; I remember looking at the faces of my coach, teammates and the kids on the other team. All of them had the same confused looks on their faces. Nobody could figure out how anyone could do that. To this day I cannot figure out the logic behind it because there isn’t any logic behind it. It’s nothing more than a man being so self absorbed that he cannot take it when I didn’t perform for him. Because it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with him he had to separate himself from us. After all how could someone so perfect be associated with a group that’s so bad?
So as you could imagine after that game was over there was no way in hell I was getting into a car and driving home with him. I walked 2 ½ miles home from that field that day. But more importantly that was the day I stopped trying to impress him. It was the day I stopped playing for anyone but myself. Sadly it wasn’t long after that I stopped playing all together. There was no way I could play soccer or do any sports for that matter without him becoming involved and after seeing the looks on my friends faces while he was cheering for the other team was a powerful enough image to make me not want to ever put myself in that position again.
It was really funny to talk to my dad later on about his divorce. He used to always say how stupid my mom was because she could have had alimony for life but she decided against it. I never did tell him that it was because she actually never wanted anything to do with him again. That it was worth walking away from the money to not have to deal with collecting it later. It was a tie to him that he could use to hurt her, and he would have. She was smart to not take it, she actually got away that way. She was never stuck dealing with him again. Every time he would talk about how stupid she was for this I had to hold back. I could never bring myself to tell him just how stupid he really was. Oh, he may have gotten what he wanted in a court win, just because of who he was, but he would never understand just what he had actually lost in respect. Well, in his last 4 days on earth I believe he did.
Memos To The Court
Around the same time as the suicide letter Jack wrote a memo or whatever you want to call it o the courts, sort of a pre-emptive strike in court to protect his reputation and hopefully have the divorce go his way. The corrections and hand written commentary are from Tenley when she snuck these documents out of his house in her normal betrayal of her hero. She really hated him, she was just incapable of facing that, and still is to this day.
What I find funny is the statement that he never threatened suicide. Wait, wasn’t that a suicide letter I just read above? Everything with the narcissist and sociopath is a lie to build false walls around them.
Another letter to the court. This time with his corrections.
Claws
Dad’s Costa Rican Girlfriend. No that’s not her real name just Tenley’s pet name for her.
Jack, Claws and I were driving through San Jose Costa Rica. We were going to lunch at a restaurant they frequented. We were stopped at traffic light and this really dirty woman looking like she was in her late 20’s walked really closely by the car looking in. Claws said to Jack “You know you could have her right now”. I thought it was funny at first, the way she cracked a joke about this woman being a prostitute or something and just the way she said it. But then I looked at Jack and realized just how uncomfortable he was with the statement. It was one of those feelings like he was really impacted by her statement and he went deep into thought about it. It seemed odd for him to react that way and I didn’t give it much more thought. But then later when I found out about his arrest it dawned on me that she had said something that struck a nerve. Like he had been with a woman like that in Costa Rica and the subject was just too close to talk about in my presence.
A New Brother? Is he? I have never asked his mother directly but as of now I am convinced he is.
Yes, I believe he is my brother, Okay, half brother, but I am willing to submit a sample for a DNA test at any time if that brings about the truth.
Illegitimate One is Claw’s son.
My father’s business partner Steve, Tenley and I were sitting in the cafeteria at Kaiser Hospital in Harbor City where he was in the ICU unconscious. We were talking about my father in the standard way people do when they are dealing with a situation like that, where a mutual relation is on their death bed. We were talking about my father’s life in Costa Rica and his decision to buy a house and spend so much time down there. We got on the subject of his “friend” Marcela and her son Illegitimate One. Illegitimate One is right around the right age to have been born within a year of my father meeting Claws. My sister and I had talked about this already. Some of our emails can be found here.
The subject got onto Illegitimate One. I don’t remember what I said about him but most likely I gave my opinion that he was my father’s son. Steve said that he “always thought that my Father was very paternal about that child”. That was just another sign to me that my feelings about it were true.
This is one subject where my sister and I agreed. We spoke at length about it. She even told me how her friend Brian was ahead of me on that suspicion and wanted a hair sample (email). Funny, how does she base her opinion that he was ahead of me? I had a gut feeling about it as I was hearing about him for the first time coming from my father’s lips. I guess when you absorbed like my sister anything in her life would have had to come before anything in mine. It’s just not possible for her little brother to have thought of something like that all on his own so long ago. This is a pattern you will see throughout this story.
Dad arrested for child porn
Jack was served with a search warrant by ICE that subsequently led to his arrest as he re-entered the country from Costa Rica. This also lead to him not being allowed to own firearms and Tenley’s friend Michael ending up with them.
After this warrant was served Tenley went to the house and found that everything had been gone through. Tenley found this paperwork on his table. The house was riddled with bullets and all of his guns were gone. At the time Jack was in Costa Rica. She called and warned him about the search. He was arrested upon re-entry into the country from Costa Rica.
She found that they were distracted by his illegal firearms and had missed a laptop. She made that disappear. Later she would do the same with the one he had in Costa Rica. I imagine it had nothing on it because when he was first hospitalized in Costa Rica with congestive heart failure he went home for 2 hours before coming back to be admitted. What he did was clean his hard drive so nothing would be found if he didn’t make it. This was all told to me by Tenley.
“(Drunky) does NOT know. And, will NEVER know. She is too public with her life. She would post it on the internet or something. She cannot keep a secret for the rest of our lives.”
“The ONLY other people who know are my boss, the DEA agent I was dating at the time and Surrogate Family/Partner). That’s IT! I will tell you why (Surrogate Family/Partner) will NEVER tell a sole later on the phone. Let’s just say his family is in the VERY SAME SITUATION BUT WORSE. He knows the pain well. But, his brother (Surrogate Family/Brother) doesn’t know the details I will tell you of how I know. He only knows the court case as a result of the search warrant.
— Tenley Myers 2/27/2009
“I have attached just the first 2 pages of the search warrant. If you fuck with my life I will fax the entire thing to your work AND have it delivered to your ex wife. You have no idea what is written in the next 100 pages. I DO.”
— Tenley
When I think about how Jack liked child porn, how he got busted because he purchased some online using his credit card. All I can think about is the pain the children went through for the production of this material. The innocent lives ruined for his pleasure. I get sickened thinking about how he could possibly justify it and go back for more. He may not be able to control himself. It may be a condition that we don’t fully understand yet. But the fact is lives were destroyed directly through his actions and I don’t believe he ever gave it a second thought.
Tenley told me that she had been on his computer while he was gone and found a video. This was in 2003. When I asked what age the child was she said probably around 9. As we talked about it you could see she was visibly still upset about it. Some things that you see just stick with you that way and you wish they could be un-seen but they cannot.
After his arrest and Tenley got him out of jail he told her “Tor can never know about this”. I have thought a lot about that. Did he know that if I found out that I would turn my back on him? Did he know that because I have children that I would see it differently than Tenley ever could? Did it force him to face the fact that I am 10 times the man he was?
Big fish in a little pond
One thing that is common with the narcissist and the sociopath is that they are very comfortable as the big fish in the little pond. They surround themselves with the week minded or people on the payroll so that they can control them and feel powerful. Jack did this in Costa Rica and Tenley does this all the time but doesn’t recognize it at all. When they lived in The Vue Apartments Tenley was “friends” with the staff, even while being a con artist against them. Jack referred to all of the people in Costa Rica as his “friends” but they were all on the payroll.
One thing in particular that I found totally offensive and embarrassing was when Jack first had Claws mother over to his house in Costa Rica. Now these people are poor. When I say poor I mean dirt poor. So her has Claws mother over for dinner and she looks at his house and says “Wow, this is a nice house, it must have cost 100,000 or so.” Jack thought that was hilarious considering the house.
Now what was really offensive is the fact that when he moved down there he called his house “Cabina poco” or little cabin. OK, looking at the house, for anyone to call it that they should have a very gracious house somewhere else, in his case Los Angeles. But he lived in a condo in LA. So what he was really doing was showing off, felling grandiose. And he was doing it to people who are so poor they have no concept. 100,000 might as well be 1,000,000, which is the actual value. Pretty sickening really. Especially to people he called his “friends”.
First Hospitalization
My father was hospitalized while alone at his house in Costa Rica. An interesting thing about this trip is that it could have been the last time he saw his sister alive. At this point she was hospitalized (I believe for emphysema but at the moment I honestly cannot be sure of that) and near death. He knew this. We talked about it later when the issue of her funeral came up. This was the day we moved him out of his condo in Long Beach. At this point there was no way he could get on an airplane and fly back to Michigan. His doctor would never allow that. But he put up a front that he was actually thinking about it. The same thing he was saying a few hours later about going to Costa Rica again. In reality I think he was too scared to face her. Down deep I think he had decided he was better off not facing her. But that’s another subject all together.
Anyways, back to the story. He was at home and realized there was something seriously wrong. His legs where swelling more than usual; that is saying a lot. He had been wearing special socks for years because of the swelling. At around 3:00 AM he decided he needed to go to the hospital. There is a hospital just a few miles from his home so he got in his car and drove over to the emergency room.
As soon as he got to the hospital the doctors knew they needed to admit him. At this point he made what seemed at the time I heard it a strange decision and decided to go home first. From what I heard and read there is no way he should have been driving but he got into his car and drove home for a few hours before heading back to the hospital to be admitted. He told me his reasoning was that he needed to finish the proposal he was working on for a large government contract.
When I think back on it now, and I consider the kinds of material he kept on his computer I suspect his real motivation for something like that was to “clean” his computer of anything incriminating. After all, if he died during this hospital stay someone would surely find what he had hidden. You do understand that if you die, your loved ones will find your stash of porn. It cannot stay hidden without you around to keep it hidden.
The saddest part of this trip was the fact that Jack’s sister was dying in Michigan and instead of going to see her he decided to go to Costa Rica instead. In the end he would never make it to see her. I find it very sad for her and her family considering he had the means to do it. I just don’t think he really wanted to.