Hi friends. Hey just a word of warning, if you're dealing with impacts of parental abuse, this may be difficult to read. On the other hand, you might find, as I did, that hearing others' stories is affirming that what you experienced was indeed as bad as you remember. So today I'm looking at what is probably the worst part of parental neglect, abuse, scapegoating, exploiting, targeting and excluding of one kid. In my weird family set up (which was really no family), I was the one targeted. The others did not experience this.
And when I say weird, I think you'll agree that is really was. My parents had only me and in 1969 (I was 5) moved us to Alaska to "convert the Indians." They weren't sponsored by any church and the one they happened to be in at the time they got the bright idea to do this, categorically said "NO! We won't sponsor you and you should not do this. You're not missionaries and there's no mission field there." No one in either family supported them either. But my grandiose narcissist parents went anyway.
So everything was sold including my toys and anything my gramas couldn't rescue and store. They had no jobs lined up and no place to live. They knew no one. They expected, I now realize, that they'd just waltz into town and the red carpet would be rolled out by these "Indians" about whom they knew nothing. And they expected that these people would also feed, house, clothe and care for them because they said they were missionaries. They got this idea from the part in scripture where Jesus tells his disciples to let the people of the towns they went to minister to their needs.
This sounded good to them because my mom and dad liked being cared for, especially my mom. And holding down a job was never my dad's forte. He was above all that. At no time did they envision actually doing anything besides "preaching" and running Good News clubs. And not even those materialized. The people did like my dad to play the violin and my mom to play the organ. But no one felt responsible to provide my parents food, lodging, childcare etc., for doing so. We ended up living (or I should say squatting) in over a dozen suuupper sketchy situations in the year we were there.
My dad would leave for weeks at a time to go I don't know where. Not many phones and he wouldn't have kept in contact anyway. My mom wasn't around much either and so I did a lot of wandering alone in unfamiliar places. Then after the Charles Manson murders, they agreed that my dad should go (by go I mean hitchhike) to LA, on their non-existent income to convert the Manson girls. Actually, getting my dad out of the picture suited my mother just fine. She could play the poor abandoned single mom card more effectively with him gone.
Also, she had been running around on my dad for some time, probably pretty much the whole time we were there. She was never around and just expected that the very elderly native couple who took pity on us, would care for me. I had to make myself brown sugar sandwiches from Mrs. Hammond's kitchen. I don't recall being made any breakfasts or lunches. I always felt guilty like I was stealing, which I was. Mrs. Hammond didn't mind. She saw how little my mom cared for me.
Then my mom said she had a job offer on a remote island way up the inland passage. It didn't exist. But she would make me go to summer school so she could "work." I think because they fed us breakfast. She'd get very angry if I didn't want to go and just wanted to be with her. I now wonder if she was pregnant and having morning sickness.
Because, in the month we were there, she left me for a week to go to Seattle to get treatment for a bladder infection (she said). I wonder now if it was to get an abortion. I was left with strangers, no idea where either parent was except literally thousands of miles away. Also in that short month, she decided to divorce my dad. We were still in AK and she had to go back to Michigan to do so. My dad was fine with it. He'd been pretty much gone on one long gap year, ever since we got there and he planned to stay and hang out with the bunch of teenagers he'd made friends with. He was 34. I wouldn't see him again for over a year.
There was no money because no one worked. We'd lived off others' charity. My grandparents sent her money to come home. We went home and then things got really crazy. I drove by a few of the many places we lived and felt sick with the horrible memories. I've written about those times previously and will again.
So what was the worst thing about this? The lies and gaslighting. Neither ever mentioned Alaska again except to tell others what great memories "we" had. There was no we. There was him doing his thing. Her doing hers and me doing mine. My grama who came up to see us, confirmed this. She said the minute they got there, "Jack went one way, Nancy went the other and left us with Marilisa." She probably wondered who the hell my parents left me with when they weren't there. I never told them, but pretty much no one.
My mother has never admitted to leaving me behind to go to Seattle. She lied to her doctor recently when I brought it up (she always needs someone to go with her to the doctor because she's so "feeble.") Just for shits and giggles, I brought up the procedure she had in Seattle when the doc asked about surgeries. She shut me down saying she'd had none and never been to Seattle. My dad made up stories to make it sound so glamourous. Even his other kids spoke with pride at his funeral how he went "missioning" to people. Translation: abandoned me, leaving me at the mercy of strangers, to go on a holiday.
Which is another part of the hurt and frustration. To know you're not even an afterthought. You're a nuisance and obstacle. My mom said as much when she bragged about what a great job she'd have had with the little church they were in "if it weren't for you." Well, I may have only been six but I can remember all the delusional fantasies. And there was no job. Beside the elderly couple, there were just a lot of strangers and creepy men.
None of this has ever been talked about. Not the divorce, the abandonment, the neglect, the frightening things. And that's only my life up to age 7.
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