Hi friends. Today on my path to healing CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse, I'll share some stupid things people have said to me in response to hearing my backstory. I come from a Christian background, so a lot of it is quasi religious and said by fellow church members. Some of it is just faux positivity nonsense. It was all said in in hypocritical, ignorant arrogance (a deadly combo). And all of it has hurt like hell, kept me in confused conformity and set me back decades in healing. This gaslighting invalidation happened even in counseling which I why I quit going. It convinced me that I really was the problem my family said I was and that keeping silent was the only option.
So to start, I rarely ever tell anyone outside of a few trusted people and this blog, about the neglect, endangerment, abuse, abandonment, scapegoating, invalidation, enmeshment, manipulation, exploitation and cruelty I experienced from my four narcissistic parent figures (two bio and their new partners). And for the very reason outlined above. I have rarely ever experienced compassion, just shaming, blaming and self-righteous judgementalism. And if I needed more of that, I'd just go visit my family of origin.
The most baffling things people have said in response to things I've shared is to immediately defend my parents. No matter how shocking their behavior. Like abandoning me or sending me to play alone at 5, 3 blocks from home in a park where a known pedo hung out. Or exposing me to sickening sexual deviance. And openly having affairs and living "in sin." Like making me slave for my dad and his new wife on my hands and knees. Like leaving me with strangers in a strange place 3K miles from home, so my mother could go God knows where. Like dumping me at a camp, at 6. Like my dad leaving me alone with a very dangerous mother for two years while he went on a "mission trip." I put that in quotes because turns out it was just a big adventure. Like mom turning a blind eye and quietly approving her boyfriend screaming and threatening me. And then leaving 11 y/o me with him and four special needs kids under 5 for a week. All while marching us all off to church weekly, and praying, preaching and Bible beating. These are only a few of the terrifying things they did.
I don't dare to tell anyone because they somehow always seem to find a reason why these behaviors weren't so bad. Well, the few I've told. I've learned from experience not to share because I only end up getting burned. I'm serious. I told a church friend about my dad abandoning me to be a missionary to the "Indians" his words, in Alaska. And she said "oh that's so noble of him (!)." Noble? To leave his 6 year old daughter???
My father has also, since I was 5, been threatening to kill himself. To me. I was the only 6 year old who knew what suicide meant. I would cry and beg him not to and say how I'd miss him. And he glibly said he didn't care. He weaponized his own self-proclaimed depression to get me to exonerate the bad things he did to me. He told me how no one understood and everyone was so "critical" of him and then called me "too sensitive" when he continually berated and bullied me. But when the few people I've told always feel sorry for HIM! Oh poor Jack, how he must have been hurting. Now I see it was just a power move to groom me into feeling sorry for daddy and letting him exploit and abuse me in anyway he wanted to keep him alive. The one who actually self-harmed, and didn't tell anyone, was me. I've contemplated ending my own worthlessness so often. Alone. But God forbid Jack feel any guilt for his actions.
After moving us to Alaska when I was 5, ostensibly to mission to the Indians, their neglect of me went off the charts. No one saw to it I ate or had a bed, clothing or a place to go to the bathroom. I have almost no memory of either of them being around much. I have no idea what they did. I do know that my mother and probably dad was cheating on the other. And on me. In a town where I knew no one. I wandered by myself down by the docks. The random fishermen who happened to be there were more concerned for my safety than my parents.
Then, out of the blue, my mom decided to divorce my dad. I didn't know what this meant. I'd never heard of anyone getting divorced. No one I knew was. Another word I had to learn to young. She coldly told me and said to get over it. And so I did. No one has ever since asked me how I coped. Except my husband and a friend when I was in my 50s.
And being their only child, and them being narcissists, they set about remaking their "best new lives" without me. Well, I say that but really it was without responsibility to me. They were never what you'd call responsible but now they rewrote it that their marriage was a mistake and so apparently was I. And one they could just erase on a whim. Yet I was expected to be completely obedient, subservient and cultishly loyal to whatever new reality they chose to dump on me. And what's really galling is to realize, at 61, how they managed to con everyone else with this nonsense.
I've since realized that they didn't divorce each other as much as they divorced from me. I didn't know that children are the biggest losers in a divorce. I didn't know because the focus was always on my "poor mom and dad" and how they'd suffered. Even though there were no real grounds. And believe me, if there had been, I'd have been the first one they dumped it on. I see now that my narcissist mother just wanted a cast change in the Nancy Show. She was bored. I was actually told I was "lucky" because theirs was a "good divorce." Whatever that means.
But there again, people always get the wrong end of the stick. I said before that I knew no one whose parents were divorced. It was so uncommon in our time and place that there was no real frame of reference. And I was harassed by kids who didn't understand. I must be spoiled because I had "two homes" when actually I had none. And then factor in them getting remarried and having new families. There was no one to talk to about it because no one understood anything about it.
But now that we've all grown up, these same people whose parents weren't divorced, who have no clue what it was like to live with back then, suddenly are experts on it and very shaming, invalidating ones at that. I've actually been told "oh lots of kids' parents were divorced. You're not special." I never claimed to be but, yeah, now that you mention it, I am very unique. Because when I say "name me one." And then they gape like fish out of water because, looking back, they can't. They have to admit that yes, in that time and place, it was very strange.
And then add stranger to strange, living in 34 different places before you were 21. Being bounced from place to place. Having a dad running around on some frat boy long vac, claiming to be a preacher, unable to contacted, and a mother just running around. And then bringing in a string of boyfriends and making out with them in front of me and accusing me of being jealous and them moving the most vulgar abusive one in with us and quitting her job to have a foster care home in which she didn't take care of the kids and I did. And letting him sexually harass me. And then a dad dating a 17-y/o when you're 9 and then marrying selfish, lazy tyrant who used you as a servant and surrogate parent to her kids. I was deprived of all the basics, enough food, rest, shelter, medical care, a decent bed. A space of my own where I didn't have to co-sleep with their latest baby. And for all this I provided them, being the ever-lasting scapegoat, bullied, humiliated and blamed. Being both parentified and infantilized. Being expected to be the parent and adult as a child, with no power or control to actually do what was expected. While being treated like a child with no rights or privileges, by immature, irresponsible parents. And the list of weird goes on and on. It's so bassackwards my brain hurts trying to wrap it around.
And the worst, the very worst part of all, is that NOBODY DID DAMN THING TO HELP ME. Not one person acknowledged how very strange and difficult, neglectful and abusive this was. They, who were good Christian people, turned a blind eye and let me believe it was all fine and part of God's will for me. They just rolled over with my parents con job that I was their possession but never their responsibility and that their shiny new people were their real family. That they could use and abuse me at will like some kind of gardening tool you let rust in the shed till you need it. That I was just an oops and not a real person.
And so I did likewise. With no one to tell me otherwise, I just accepted all their chaos, endangerment, lies, gaslighting and exploitation like it was normal and healthy. I assumed I was just their drone, no life, no goals, no hopes or identity. And I spent my life in servitude to them all, despite their despicable treatment. Because no one said anything against it. Ever. These good Christian people all turned away like the Pharisees who walked on the other side to avoid the injured man. And what do we know about silence? It implies consent.
When once I asked an aunt and later an uncle, I got nothing but more silence and/or backpedaling. These very people who eschewed all the things my parents did, just enabled it all. You'd think that 60 years on, someone could have at least thrown me a bone and said, yeah, it was wrong. They were wrong. Or we were wrong to let you think this was okay. I never expected anyone to fix anything for me. But a word of support would have helped.
But even in this, I get more toxic positivity shit about forgiveness and rising above and understanding them. Cut them slack, you mean. Say it. You think and you have always thought, that it's my problem and not yours. That I've always known. So then why are you defending my parents? If you've kicked me to the curb, fine, get out of the way so I can try to move on. Stop shaming and invalidating me.
And then, more shaming. Oh, well, they meant well. They probably didn't dare to, were afraid, yada fucking yada. Okay so they were afraid of my parents. Well how do they think I felt?? THEY WERE GROWN ASS ADULTS AND I WAS A KID!! My sympathy for adults who can't hack it, leaving a kid to cope alone, has worn thin. Sorry not sorry.
I'll never get any help from my narcissist parents. Two are dead and the other two are soul dead. And I wouldn't want their eleventh hour repentances if they would which they won't. Save it for your God. You've slammed the door on me all my life and I'm just removing my foot from it and letting it stay closed. Unforgiving? Eh, realistic.
I think the reason that my family dismisses me is that they know they dropped the ball. They left me to carry it alone. And they are ashamed. But instead of being honest they gaslight. Fine. I don't care. At least I know now where not to look for support. I think the ones that piss me off the most are the ones with no knowledge of me or my background or family, pontificating out of their asses about how I'm supposed to handle it. .
I have no patience for belittling of others' experiences. I have less patience for judgmental, self-righteous advice. I have least patience of all for condescending, pretentious Christian pratting about what God expects of us. It's so damned pompous and ignorant and misguided. You notice they don't say we should do these things only YOU should do these things. Where were you when I was alone and suffering? In your own comfortable world. And until you have walked 61 years in my, just shut it. You do not know what you are talking about.
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