So a word about my last post if you're following. I was really struggling and in a rough place. It might have read like attention-seeking or a cry for help or even a warning that I was going to self-harm. It wasn't any of those things. I was showing how convincing are the voices in my head, from decades of gaslighting by four narcissistic adult authority figures (two parents and their new spouses). I was repeating what I'd been told and what had been insinuated to me--that I was THE problem and the ONLY problem in their new lives with their new spouses and kids.
I was told was told these people were my family. But based on their scapegoating, neglect, abuse, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, parentification and toxic shaming, that this was just more abuse and gaslighting. Real families do not exclude one child. They don't make her raise their other children or parent them (parentification). They don't single her out to do the bulk of the housework and childcare. They do not force her to dance attendance on their new partners. If divorced, they do not even expect her to obey the new partners as if they were bosses, certainly not when they're not even married yet but just living together. And that's just the start of the crazy I've lived with.
And piggy-backing on this issue of me being the real problem. It's true that I was, if you look at things from my four "parents" self-centered perspectives. This won't be easy, I warn you. Because the "center of the universe" attitude runs deep with these four people. They want what they want when they want it, regardless of how hypocritical it might be or who they have to step on to get it. And it changes without warning. It was not difficult for me because I grew up enslaved to what mommy, daddy, stepmom and stepdad wanted and needed and any given moment. I was used to it never being good enough. I made excuses for them and just kept trying harder. What I didn't see was how dysfunctional this all was or that it was all just a big narcissistic fantasy and not real life. Most other kids didn't live with this tree-ring circus of chaos.
But it's their very immature, self-absorbed, demanding behavior that points the way. Self-centered people think only about what they want, think, need and feel. Mostly want. Not only did they want to make up the rules as they went along, they wanted others to unilaterally applaud every selfish thing they did. The "above it all" ness was so prevalent, that they actually preached against the very things they were doing. And yes, in my mom's and dad's case I literally mean preach. Both of them fancied themselves legitimate ministers despite having zero training. And most egregious (and confusing to me), they were living very counter to what they preached.
And they were very good at knowing what God wanted, for others. They were very generous with others' money. They had all these ideas which others were supposed to fund. They had no intention of doing any of the actual leg word. The were the preachers of the word, not the doers.
But my grandparents, on both sides, saw right through them. They were loving, but also gently honest about the hypocritical, selfish, "sinful" (their words) lives my parents were leading. And this did not sit well with any of the "big four." They did not like being crossed. So the grandparents were cast as the villains of the piece, too critical, unloving, yada yada. And it wasn't just my extended family. Reality bit down on their narcissistic fantasies too.
So they spent a lot of time disappointed, self-pitying and resentful when something got in the way of whatever delusion they had at the time, and it happened quite frequently. Except with me. I was eternally empathic, giving and eager to please. Unfortunately, this made me the perfect target and scapegoat. I was so enmeshed in their feelings, wants and needs (this part is profoundly sad) that I did not acknowledge or even know I had feelings, wants and needs of my own.
This is part of the heart-breaking brain damage that neglect, abuse, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, parentification, toxic shaming, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all, creates. I had poured myself into them, emptied myself of anything that might displease them, so entirely that I wasn't really a person. Just a kind of straw person. And the other sad part in this sad saga is that the more I poured the more was expected. It was as if they were wells without bottom. And it was pointless, because it was just peed away. I know what the scripture means about casting pearls before swine.
So how was I the problem? I was never going to be able to fulfill their dreams for them. I was never even going to be able to make them happy or content. I was always going to let them down because their expectations were too high. Selfish people can never be satisfied. You can never give enough. They are one big behemoth, like Monstro the whale in Pinocchio, everything goes in and nothing comes out. I truly could have given till I died, and they'd have just walked over my carcass and on to the next victim.
And at the very core, was the inescapable truth that no one, especially not a child, can be your prop through life. No one is responsible to make you, your new spouse, your new kids, happy. should be expected to can, or even should do things for you that are yours alone to do. And my parents, like all parents, were responsible to me not the other way around. And they not only dropped the ball, they threw it as far from themselves as possible.
And now I have the onerous task of trying to reassemble the shattered mess that is me. I saw reassemble but really it's just assemble. Just as I'm not reparenting myself, but OG parenting.
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