Weird side effects of parental neglect and abandonment

Hi friends. I am trying to sort out the ways that parental neglect and abandonment affect me today. I have a lot of brain damage also called CPTSD from growing up in very disturbing and confusing trauma I experienced with four very narcissistic adult authority figures. I do not call them parents anymore because they weren't. I received very little of the care that a child needs yet had a lot of inappropriate expectation to be the adult and parent them (meet their needs, fix their issues, support them). And then later I was expected to care for their children as well. I was excluded and not given basic things every kid needs. And then gaslit that this was all okay. In my youth, I was very confused, disoriented and dissociated a lot of the time, as I tried to navigate adult expectations without even the tools of childhood. 

So the weird side effects are that I don't know what it is I don't know. It's like like being put on a hockey field without equipment or knowing the rules of the game or even where you are, what you are doing or why you are there and then being expected to play the game correctly. Living in CPTSD is extra difficult because although you don't look different, my brain is damaged and you can't think or feel in any kind of normal way. So you do a lot of faking it, watching other people for cues and making a lot of mistakes. Which make you look and feel kind of ridiculous and incompetent. 

Which is I guess kind of what I am. And that incompetency, that ignorance of basic things, is one of the most awful side effects of parental abandonment, endangerment, abuse, neglect and especially parentification. And parental gaslighting. That dream-like sense that there are things I should know and feel and should be doing that I can't and don't because I don't know what they are. I say dream like because that's  how many of my dreams (nightmares, actually) play out. I'm plunked down in the middle of unfamiliar situations with unfamiliar people in which I'm expected to do things for people that I have no idea how to do let alone even what it is  that's expected of me.  It's a generalized feeling of constant failure. Only this is real life. 

It makes even basic things like right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, safe vs. unsafe, me vs. them, impossible to conceptualize. I've said before that I don't know, for example, where others stop and I begin. I was taught only to care for others. That they mattered and I didn't. So I didn't develop a sense of self, a protective skin so to speak, that I was unique and separate from others. To take care, to speak up for, to defend and protect myself all that was wrong. 

I was  exposed to so many frightening situations, and gaslit into thinking this was all normal and fine (for me, not for others), with no caring adult to help me let alone even care what was happening.  Adults who were creating the dangerous situations and allowing other adults to endanger me. Adults who were exploiting, manipulating and hurting me, egged on by my parents. Parents who pitted their spouses against me and leveraged my inability to protect myself against me. Adults who expected terrible things, set terrible examples and expected me to do as they said NOT as they did.  

All this has had disastrous consequences that dog me today. And it's made more difficult by the fact that it's all in my head and not visible to anyone. On the outside, I look pretty normal. On the inside, I'm a confused, scared kid constantly looking over my shoulder. If I was missing a leg, it would be clear that I would  need some accommodations. When you're missing a childhood, a sense of identity, self-defense mechanisms and adults who helped rather than hurt, that's not so clear. But it's just as difficult. Maybe even more so. Because there's no prosthetic, no crutch to help compensate for these disabilities.