Hi friends. Today in my quest to heal from malignant narcissistic parental abuse, family scapegoating, CPTSD and the emotional mess my life is, I'm looking at how words like family, stepparents and half-siblings are twisted by malignant narcissist parents. These concepts are weaponized to excuse abuse (physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual), neglect, parentification, manipulation, exploitation, abandonment and scapegoating of children. And then further distorted to gaslight the kid about what's going on. And sadly, they're just some of the things such parents ruin.
The general definition of family is a group of people who love, care about, nurture and support each other. It doesn't always go smoothly, for sure. But family should not be a dangerous place. And it should not be manipulated by some family members to exploit another. And worst of all, it shouldn't be trashed and reinvented by parents, then hung as a burden around a kid's neck.
What do I mean? Well, when I was a kid, divorce among my peers was very uncommon. My same age husband doesn't know of anyone in his life with divorced parents. In my extended family it was unheard of. So my mom divorcing my dad put me in an awkward place to begin with. Weirder because it was after moving us to Alaska and running around on him while he went for months without seeing us, on some imaginary mission trip. That's the trashing of the family I spoke of. Although actually we weren't much of one anyway. We did next to nothing, including eating meals, together. I spent the majority of time alone (from age 3-4) or with other people. I can't remember anything about the many places we lived. And this wasn't due to work. It was down to them being uninterested, having other priorities and seeing me as a hinderance.
The reinventing, and super gaslighting part, came when my single parents began dating others, immediately. My mom and probably my dad too, didn't even wait till the ink dried. I was shoved into one weird situation after another through their various hookups. This was very uncommon in the early 1970s and I got blacklisted because of it. Parents didn't want their kids hanging with kid with no dad and a mom with a different boyfriend every week. At least one was married. His wife came to our house one morning looking for him and knocked my mom down the stairs.
I was told to go to school and say nothing. So I did. And if that wasn't disturbing enough, on the rare times my dad was around, he, at 34, took me to see his 17-year-old girlfriend. I was 9. She still had dolls on her bed and we played with them. I never talked to anyone about any of this because how could I? It would have made no sense in their world. As you might imagine, I got really good at hearing, seeing and feeling nothing. There's tons of pain, fear, hurt, grief, anger, frustration and shame in this lil ole heart of mine. And none of this has ever been confronted.
But the worst part of all is when they marry again and their new spouses hit the ground running ordering you around, demanding all kinds of scary and unsafe things of you. And your actual parent doesn't do a damn thing to stop them. In fact, mine encouraged them to exploit, manipulate, overwork, scapegoat, shame, mock, humiliate and use me like a personal servant.
And they have the gall to call them your parent?? Eff that noise! All this business about marriage being "one man and one woman." What about parenting being one dad and one mom?? A kid has two parents, and they, in my case were more than enough heartbreak and work. The last thing I needed was two more immature, needy, demanding, selfish, lazy, entitled, bossy control freaks in my life.
Mom's bf was a never employed, sexually, physically and emotionally abusive, vicious deadbeat. He told me sick dirty jokes and mocked my breast size (I was 11). My mother just smiled approvingly. Never once, after she hooked up with him did she ever take my part or stand up for me to him. She let him do whatever he wanted and he did. Hell, I now see she was egging him on all along. She had me kowtowing to him when they were just living together. And then she decided to open a foster home. And shit got really bad.
Shacked up was the term then. And boy if that didn't make me even more of an oddball pariah. No kid in my entire school or neighborhood (or any other I knew of) had a single mom with a live-in. Most kids didn't think I had a dad, that's how unavailable he was. And that wasn't because he was working. He just wasn't interested. He thought he was cool running around doing his thing like a frat boy. (It took my husband to point out that none of my parents have been very good at holding down jobs.) I've just learned at 59 that this is called child abandonment and constitutes abuse.
But boy did he want me back in his life when he got married. She was as sloppy and lazy as a hound dog. And had zero maternal instincts. Well, my narcissist dad wasn't about to babysit another woman and he certainly wasn't going to raise their kids alone. When I was 12, he decided to dip back into my life. He'd seen how much the other two had gotten out of me and wanted his share. No fair them getting all the unpaid childcare and housework! I owed him! So I was brought in as domestic help/nanny/housekeeper and handmaiden to her majesty. Also scapegoat when anything went wrong.
And they kept up shit-facade by manipulating words like family, parents and siblings. I was gaslit into thinking that I was actually a member of the family. More fool me. Their new spouses and kids were my parents, brothers and sisters, only when it was convenient for them. I was there to sleep in the same room as the kids, so they didn't wake their parents. I've been made to take care of "my siblings" like I was their parent. To do the heavy, grunt work everyone else was too lazy to do. (bad backs, yanno?) I'm still suffering from the damage to my back, shoulders and hips from this. Or to be the brunt of their anger or jokes. Their kids were taught to exploit me too, big surprise.
I've been stolen from, cheated, exploited, deprived of a bedroom or even a bed and kicked out of the house (at 16) for the privilege of all this. My toys were taken and sold. Nothing exists from my childhood except what grandparents saved. I've been made to sleep on unheated porches, taken advantage of, left out and kicked to the curb by all of them. I've worked since I was 14, buying my own shoes since I was 13. My own feminine hygiene products since 15.
So you'll pardon me for not calling them stepparents and half-siblings anymore. Having family was just a nightmare, literally. I'm focusing on me and mine from now on. They're my family.
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