Hello my friends. Another day, another night of CPTSD nightmares and they just get more disturbing. But the more I really look at what's happening in them, the more I realize the horror dark tetrad parent abuse. But, also, perhaps, a way too. But I can never find healing till I unpack just how horrifying the horrors were. That, I'm learning, is why I cycle endlessly through these trauma dreams night after night. My mind is trying to find a way out.
Last night's nightmare might have been one of the scariest but also most eye-opening. So first, some background on why it was so scary. When I tell you what happened, I'm pretty sure you're going to think, "that's scary?" What no haunted houses or killer clowns? Well, if you've ever been a child victim of dark tetrads (malignant, malicious, manipulative, arrogant, vicious and bullying) you know that they make killer clowns look like Pooh Bear. Give me Pennywise any day over my dad.
And if you knew my dad, you might wonder what I was talking about. Or any of my four dark tetrad parents. They present a very different, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde face to others than they do/did to me. I got all the venom, spite and rage. It's like I was a catalyst for it, that I somehow did or was something that unleashed all this ugliness.
Well, at least that's what I was told. It's your fault, Marilisa. You're too sensitive (c'mon folks, sing along, if you follow my blog, you know the litany by now) You're too sensitive. Disobedient, selfish, disloyal, disrespectful, a bad seed. A letdown, failure and disappointment as a daughter. God has no use for you either.
Funnily enough, family members have since let slip that they saw signs of dark tetrad behavior in my parents. That it was them, not me. Doesn't do me much good now though, does it? The damage is done. Would have been nice if one of them had told me that then. Might have saved me from some of this nightmarish trauma. But I was left to cope alone, and thinking I was some kind of horned, two-headed monster. What kind of terrible kid am I that even my parents don't love me? That has led me to the darkest of dark places.
And all that comes roaring out in my dreams. It will be hard to explain unless you've experienced the twisted, malignant abuse of a dark person. They don't deal direct or cleanly. They ambush, backstab, set you up, give you false hope, lie, future fake, twist, deceive, sucker punch, blindside, dissemble, pit other people against you and trip you up. Gaslighting thy name is dark tetrad parent.
I'm crying just recalling some of the many times this happened. My stomach feels sick as it so often did. I'd forgotten how often. So many times which I'd thought were buried but which my dreams wont' let remain covered. I'm overwhelmed with fear but I don't know what of. I'm shaking with anxiety and looking for someone to kowtow to to make it better. I'm confused and unable to think clearly because their attacks come out of nowhere. When I actually thought things were okay. Then BLAM! BIFF! SOCKO!
In my dream last night, a lot of confusing things were happening like they always are. My arrogant, narcissistic AF brother (whom my dad has always let get away with murder) was taking over a medical facility to hold a prayer meeting. I told him to take it elsewhere as the staff needed to care for patients (very unusual for me, I never confronted any of them as it wasn't safe). My dad, who had been turning a blind eye as he always did, swooped in out of nowhere and began screaming at me for saying something to his precious son.
I couldn't make sense of what he was saying and he was frothing he was so mad at me. I had never said any of the things he was accusing me of. It was all vindictive lies and smear campaigning. I began to go into fawn and placate mode, crying and apologizing. And that just incensed him more. And it was about that time that I began to wake and with it came some awarenesses.
This is exactly what my all my four parents did on a regular basis. The sneak attacks and setups were real. Are real. I have been viciously screamed at or toxically and passive-aggressively vented on so many times. I've been frog-marched to the wall, pushed up against it and fired on. Without warning. And every damn fucking time, I'm not prepared and take the full on blunt force trauma smack dab in the gut.
Only in this dream I did another unusual thing for me. I yelled back. I defended myself. I told him to leave me alone. I called out his lies. Then he began doing even weirder things. He tried to suck up to me and schmooze me into feeling sorry for him. While still haranguing me about how awful what I did was. It's so weird but then it was weird. At one point he was laying across my legs and causing me great back pain. I told him to move (normally I just let him do whatever he wanted).
I think this is a metaphor for all the times he made me do backbreaking things without caring how much it was hurting me. He and his wife made me do pretty much all their heavy housework and using methods they never would. I had to mop floors on my hands and knees and use an ancient heavy vacuum. I had to iron mountains of clothing. The doctor said I shouldn't be doing much lifting but still they heaped chores on me. It was so bad that I started early onset arthritis in my 20s. If they were doing these things, they'd have taken the easy way or not done it.
So while I might have had an epiphany or two in my dream, the sick feelings of shame, dread and self-disgust were just as potent. Maybe moreso even. And I realized they were memories, not dreams. I used to think the sick feelings were from things I'd actually done. Now I think they were from my father's palpable, larger than life rage. He was so viciously angry that it seemed to have a life of its own.
Same with my mom's husband. The way they would scream at me is mind-numbing. My mom and stepmother were just quietly seething passive-aggressively angry. The atmosphere was heavy with it like a thundercloud. And it took nothing at all for them to storm up and rain. Which never cleared it away. And I was in the path at ground zero.
I think that is what has always made me so sick with shame about all the abuse. I must be a pretty evil, vile person to have made them so angry. But I knew in the pit of my gut that I had. But how? How could I cause so much anger in people at so young an age. How, please will someone for the love of God tell me, how people who called themselves parents could be so furious with me. Not just annoyed, royally white-hot enraged. And so much disgust. What could I possibly have done?
I recall my dad's wife pouting, clearly mad and quietly whispering to him things that seemed to be about me. He would round on me and shame me for upsetting her. I recall so clearly this weird voice he'd used to tell me dramatically that "mummy is very disappointed in you." Disappointed hell, she was pissed off like she always was. Or he'd fake soothe her by wondering aloud that "maybe Mary could help?" Oh for fuck's sake, Jack. At least do Mary the courtesy of asking her directly not playing your damn hinting game. Or better yet, tell your bitch-ass wife to grow the fuck up, stop being so damn pouty and lazy and do her job.
Right out of the "how to guilt others into doing your work for you and humiliate then in the process" playbook. And I fell for it every damn time. It makes me sick to think how I'd beg cry to be told what I could do to fix it. And they would sigh melodramatically, they supposed I could do (insert task) but they were still mad at me. When I think of all the free labor they got out of me with that gaffe and still maintaining their condescending moral superiority, I could scream.
I never asked what it was I actually did that so upset them and no one ever said. My mom and her husband did, in no uncertain terms, but most of them were lies and fabrications. Or things they should not have placed on me in the first place. And this scenario plays out nightly in my dreams.
And still I believe I must have done something wrong. Why else would they be so angry and upset with me? I don't recall ever being sassy, disobedient, pouty, rebellious. But they said I was. I recall myself being VERY biddable. I can't think of anything that would make me so seething mad. Maybe quick mad, yell then hug and apologize. But that would have been over something that they did to hurt themselves or others.
So nope, no explanation fits except that they wanted to be angry with me because they disliked me. Or they didn't use self-control and needed a scapegoat. But nothing answers why they did. Don't parents basically love and enjoy their kids? Don't they want what's best and even occasionally sacrifice for them. Don't they mostly think the best of their children? I did. But I guess that was too much to expect of my parents.