Hi friends. I'm absolutely exhausted, physically and emotionally. I hurt everywhere. My back, hands, neck, shoulders, hips and feet ache. My mind aches. I spend a great deal of time in that rundown, uncomfortable state. I haven't had a super busy day. My nights are actually busier with the endless trauma nightmares. But just moving takes more energy than I have. I've been unable to keep my eyes open since about 5 pm. And this is just one component of CPTSD from narcissist parent abuse. Decades of dealing with it have worn me down.
And do you want to know the most pernicious, bewildering, malignant and draining form of narcissist parent abuse? Among the many ways they hurt us, the betrayal is the worst. The set-ups, sucker punches, backstabbing, spiteful digs, unexpected ambushes and sneak attacks. They way they purposely behave toward us in hateful passive-aggressive, nasty ways, to corrode our sense of self and erode any confidence we may have is just mind-boggling. I would say that confusion, with its concomitant fear and anxiety, might be the most prevalent feeling.
Malignant narcissist parents don't just inadvertently confuse their children. They go out of their way to. My four narcissist parents (two bio and two step) put me in needlessly chaotic situations on a regular basis. They left me with strangers not saying where they were going or when they would be back. They quit jobs on a whim without making financial provisions. They brought in a succession of new people into my life as parents and siblings. They moved very frequently and uprooting me. I've lived or stayed in 42 different places, 39 of which in the first 22 years of my life prior to marriage. At least 8 were squatting situations in which we lived with other people. I attended eight different schools. I come home from school only to be told to pack because we're moving. Or that I was being moved in with this or that family member.
I was the only child of my parents and the only one that experienced this chaos. Their new families had consistency. I was just sort of an after thought. Except not because I was very much expected to care for all these people as well. As if I was the adult and parent, not the child. I've spent a lot of time giving from resources I don't have. My parents made choices based on their new families' needs, never on mine. As my husband said I was shoved from pillar to post and then back to pillar. I never had a regular source of basic necessities like food, shelter, a bed or medical care. I had few possessions and those I had seemed to disappear without warning.
This deprivation was not normal for the time nor places I lived. No one in my social or family group lived with anything like this. My PARENTS didn't do without. All four had plenty of nice things, food to eat, clothing, medical care, even hobbies. I always believed them when they said "we're poor." So I would do without, thinking that was helping "the family." It took me 50 years to realized the family had plenty of money, just not for me. Which made it even more impossible to explain. You just don't expect one kid to be singled out like this. This kicking to the curb, happens a lot unfortunately, in "blended" families to only child of first marriages. I don't really care for that word because so often they aren't blended and there's a lot of exclusion, favoritism and scapegoating.
Even loving extended family misses it, sometimes. I never do. I can spot an excluded neglected "step kid" a mile away. Now. It's taken me a lifetime to see its effects in me. But looking back, I can see them now. They include:
Non-existent self-care skills. I remember, starting around 10, being invited places and never knowing to pack a suitcase because I didn't have a suitcase to pack. I wasn't used to being provided for. I only knew that if I needed something as simple as sunscreen, Midol for periods, sanitary pads, winter boots and gloves. I had to provide it for myself. And my part time job during school didn't cover those so I went without. I remember getting hives at a slumber party because my mom hadn't bothered to wash the new PJs I got for Christmas. Then she was off and a date and the girl's mother couldn't locate her so she could come and get me. That girl's mom was more concerned for me than my mom who was only concerned about being with her current boyfriend. And who knew where my dad was.
Having to do for yourself too young and not knowing how. This is part of the confusion I spoke of. No parent helped me through any situation I encountered, as I recall. It wouldn't have occurred to me to ask, even the simplest of things all kids ask their parents for. Or don't even need to because the parent is involved. I, on the other hand, was taught that my only concern should be for my (their) family. Of which I wasn't even a part. I was just "allowed" to live with them as if parenting me was an option.
Only knowing people pleasing and caring for others. Funnily enough, I knew very what other people needed. I've lived under a weight of obligation and expectation. I've known how to change a diaper since I was 9. I was potty training my mom's foster kids and cleaning up their accidents around age 10. I was rocking the babies to sleep. I've cooked, cleaned, bathed their kids, babysat, co-slept with their kids, washed dishes, ironed, vacuumed, dusted, mopped (on hands and knees) their things since around that age too. There wasn't much they had to do for themselves. And they did nothing for me. I was given cast offs including a pillow with a needle in it. No joke. I slept on an unheated porch through a Michigan winter because my welfare dependent mother bought her deadbeat husband a hobby farm with my child support and it wasn't big enough to house her children.
Being easily taken advantage of. And on that note, back to the confusion. You don't know unless someone tells you, that this isn't childhood, it's child exploitation. And endangerment. Now years later, I trauma dream and have all kinds of chronic pain issues from sleeping cramped up on a cot in the baby's room. Or from doing mountains of ironing. And having to scale snowbanks to take frozen diapers off the line in winter. None of this my stepmother did for herself or her children. Why would she when she had me to order around?
Disabled. I started with early onset arthritis around age 21, from overwork and neglected follow up care of congenital hip dysplasia. Instead of taking me for check ups after being braced, they dragged me to Alaska and made me sleep on the floor. They didn't even see to it I was safe and left me to wander downtown in unfamiliar places. They didn't get treatment for my ongoing strep throat and it went septic. They didn't have my eyes checked till I was almost blind. I got frequent headaches from an untreated broken cheekbone and concussion.
Destabilized and inept. As if adolescence isn't hard enough, having to care for four narcissist parents and their children made it hell on earth. I didn't know that what I was feeling was misery, shame, humiliation and guilt, but I do now. It shows in my pictures. That confusion, born of neglect and abuse, comes from not understanding why these people who call themselves your parents seem so angry with you all the time. When you are doing all their work? And why your life looks so different than everyone else's. You just never seem to get it right and your parents are the first to remind you of that. They nitpick and criticize everything. Pleasing them, an impossible task, becomes your only agenda.
Too tired to think clearly. The confusion makes you tired. The deprivation drains you. The constant demands and tapping out of your resources makes it hard to process situations. I used to say I had dyslexia because I've had so much trouble just remembering basic things or keeping things straight. My parents used to joke that I was "forgetful" and clumsy. Humph. I wish I could forget what they did to me. And I wasn't clumsy, I was bent and twisted from too much manual labor too young. And my vision was shot to hell through lack of proper vision care.
But I'm not confused anymore. I know what happened, that it did happen and why. Malignant narcissist parents purposely deprive you to keep you weak, to break down your resistance. They retard you, lie to you and gaslight you, to keep you bewildered. They render you useless for anything but service. Just trying to get a few minutes between chores which no one else has, to do your homework is almost impossible. Because they want you to fail at school so you'll never amount to anything and have to stay and care for them. They make you think you're a failure at relationships. They pot stir to break up your relationships. They set you up. They spread rumors and start smear campaigns. They flirt with your boyfriend to sow seeds of discontent. They lie and say your husband hit on them to triangulate, make you jealous, humiliate you and hopefully cause a divorce because that way they wont' feel so badly about getting one themselves.
All this is self-serving and goal-oriented. They weaken your resistance, and damage your brain so you think you're dependent on them. They think you'll come crawling back, weak and exhausted and they'll have you where they want you. Just saying, I'd live on the street before I'd ever go back to them. That is not coming home. There never was a home. It's just re-upping for another tour of duty with them.
One way out of this fog, is to know that it's not real. They've created it, not just with gaslighting but with gassing you. We aren't weak, or helpless, or dependent on them. Hell, they were never there for us!! They were dependent ON us! They just miss the free stuff we gave. Your parents called. They want their unpaid staff back!
We are more than enough. We owe no one anything. We gave already, for more than we should have. They took more than we gave. What we need to do with give ourselves what we were deprived of: rest, nourishment, care. Once we have better resources, we'll see their chiaroscuro they've painted us in, for what it is, exaggerated, orchestrated and artificially created for effect. Essentially, all smoke and mirrors.
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