I got it all wrong. I really am the problem.

 All the stuff I've written previously, I got wrong. All the abusive, neglectful, exploitative, harmful, dangerous things that  happened were what I deserved, just like they said. All the times they abandoned, excluded, shunned and scapegoated me, I brought on myself. Either that or it didn't  happen. I just made it up to show off and get attention. 

All the times I thought that by "helping out" when my dad demanded it, weren't good enough. In fact they were actually disobedience because I didn't have the right spirit. When my mom's boyfriend attacked me for "shaking a baby" he was right. I was and still am a worthless piece of shit. When he kicked me out of the house, he was right. I came home an hour late and deserved it. When my mom left me alone in Alaska with strangers, I was being selfish to feel scared. When she let her boyfriend mistreat me, it was his right. 

When I had to wait on my dad's new wife, that was fair. It wasn't my home and I had to earn my keep. And they could make up the rules as they went along. Being hungry a lot with no bedroom of my own, no time to myself,  being made to get up at night with the baby, having difficulty staying awake at school, that was perfectly okay and how selfish of me not to do it joyfully. And I should not feel good about helping because there is always more to do. More to give. If I'm giving on a exhausted empty stomach, who cares? 

This is where I am right now. I can't even cry although my eyes are overflowing with tears because I'm so disgusted with the mess I am. And how I've ruined so many peoples' lives. Where would I even begin to sort it out? I can never get it right. God has given up on me because I've let him down so many, many times.

But one question. Why then do I not remember doing these terrible things that my nightmares and voices in my head say I've done? Why do I remember trying so hard to get it right? Why do I remember loving others so much that it burns and aches? Worrying for them, agonizing over them? Why will it never be enough? 

CPTSD has made me ugly and crippled

I looked at myself in the mirror and an ugly, pinched, twisted hag of face  looking back. It is not crippled by viciousness, ruthlessness, self-pity or hatred. My face has been scarred and made ugly by others ruthlessness, self-pity, selfishness, toxic shaming and viciousness. My face has been twisted into a crumpled mask from trying to stay small, from hiding the abuse and trauma, from absorbing the shaming and criticism. From the constant bullying nightmares. My face is scarred by verbal and emotional abuse. And from trying to keep my head above water enough not to drown in the cruelty. To ward the constant mental assault that convinces me I'd be better off dead. And so would others without  me. Basically, as a therapist put it, I've spent my life trying to just stay alive. 

And all this CPTSD is taking its toll. I've even developed systemic rashes that won't heal from broken down auto-immune system. In short, my defenses have been so battered that they're shot. I've been let down, betrayed, exploited, manipulated by people who were supposed to love and care for me,  that I don't even know what it means to trust. I've been gaslit so often by people trying to convince me that I'm the perpetual problem that I believe them. I gaslight myself. 

And because there is no way out, no recourse, no hope for someone who doesn't just have problems but IS the problem, I'm at  my wits' end. I'm at the last station on the line and no one is waiting. No help has arrived. It's just the end. And I've run out of rope to tie knots in. I've let the gaslighters win. They're too powerful for me. I know, as I've always known, that they are right. I am the problem. Just by being. All the good things I thought I was doing are my imagination. The nightmares are reality and my life is a joke. 

I finally get why my parents treated me so badly

Hi again. Lots of waking up going on around here, about parental abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, parentification, scapegoating and gaslighting I experienced from four parent figures. And I finally get why they treated me so badly. It has to do with their dangerous combo of self-righteous, self-centered, selfish and self-delusional. I also get now why it took me so long to see it. 

For the last six decades, I believed that I lived in a loving family with loving people. I believed this because I was told it. I didn't see evidence of it, quite the contrary. What I saw was unloving behavior. My parents not only hurt and allowed others to hurt me but encouraged them to do so. Unrealistic, unsafe and unhealthy things were expected of me. I was expected to care for and parent my adult parents. I was made to raise their children. I was not given basic essentials. I was stolen from. I was exposed to sexual predators and very off sexual behavior by my mom. I was deprived of a bed, bedroom and finally kicked out of my home. My biological parents told me that their new spouses were my bosses, that whatever they said was law and that I had to care and provide for them. 

My parents scammed and cheated their way through life. They moved to Alaska to "convert the Indians" when I was six. They had no jobs, no home and no money. We squatted in various places and I'd have had nothing if it weren't for a caring native couple. They both left me to wander alone. My dad went no contact for over a year, doing such things as going to LA to witness to the Manson girls. They dumped me at a summer camp (how I don't know as 6  year olds are too young for camp). Then she left me behind in with strangers on an a remote island 1,000 miles up the Inland passage from Haines where we started out. 

My mother cheated on my dad and then had a series of affairs with married men. Then they got a divorce. When my dad finally came home, he (34) started dating a 17 year old. Then he married a lazy selfish woman who disliked me and used me as her servant. My dad scapegoated me for the rest of my life. While running a foster care home, my mother moved her unemployed, violent, pervert boyfriend into our house when I was 11. She lied about it, moved herself and her boyfriend as far from the children as possible and left me to care for four special needs children under four. She allowed boyfriend to whip the children. She threw me in the path of a dangerously sociopath foster kid who molested me and then got mad at me for reporting it. She took a girl to have an abortion (while claiming to be pro-life). 

So all this sounds like gutter trash behavior and it is. And it might be to some extent understandable if they didn't know better. But they were not raised like this. My grandparents on both side were good, kind, caring people. My parents went out of their way to do the most despicable things knowing full well what they were doing. They were warned not to. They got in legal trouble. But it was all someone else's fault, often mine. In short they did what they wanted when and where they wanted and expected no censure or repercussions. 

But for all the blatant immorality, the irony is that my parents considered themselves very moral upright people. They preached God and religion and told other people how to live their lives. Hell, they even called themselves missionaries and preachers. This is that dangerous combo I was referring to: self-centered and self-righteous. And they treated me so badly for the simple reason that I was the one roadblock in their fantasies. 

I was the "x" they couldn't factor out. Not by anything I did or said. Just because I existed. I was the reality that showed up all their unreal, irrational, delusions. I was the truth they couldn't ignore because I remembered all the crazy they had done. I lived it. I don't know if they have been afraid I'd bring it up or if they actually felt some conscience pricking. 

They needn't have worried about me. I never would have told. I was too empathetic and caring. I wanted to believe them. I defended and protected them. Regardless, they began launching very early, systematic gaslighting about every single thing that happened. They lied, covered, blamed, trauma dumped, weaponized, manipulated, exploited, twisted and shamed me into silence. Whatever self-care I might have exercised in telling someone and getting help was torched on the altar of their ruthless selfishness. 

There were only two times I confronted anything (and then only minor stuff none of the really bad stuff). That was a few years ago, I mentioned a few things to each parent. Their responses lying, self-pity, gaslighting, shaming, blaming, distorting, covering, trauma dumping and abusive anger all over again. Which was unpleasant but not as scary as I thought it would be. And it served to affirm that A) I was right, these things happened and they were that bad and B) they've been acting this way for years. I just couldn't see it. 

So finally, why did they treat me so badly? My parents don't like not getting their own way. What they want changes without warning as frequently as I change underwear.  They not only expect others keep up and not to question but to applaud every bad, hurtful, stupid thing they do. They expect their version of everything to be accepted. They have lived so long in their narcissistic fantasy that they believe their own lies. And woe to those who they believe to be thwarting them in what they want. Heads will roll.

So despite the fact that I did everything they expected, I was in the wrong for just being there. For surviving. Because they can twist and lie all they want, to others. But they can't lie to God. He knows. Now if they just confessed and admitted, He'd forgive. But they want it both ways, to do wrong things and but not to feel wrong about it. They want God to not only accept their wrongs but to say they are right. It's actually Him they are punishing for not letting them have their way. But Him in the person of me. 

How abuse and parental gaslighting destroyed my ability to understand right and wrong

 Hello my friends. I've been working for the past year or so, to recover from parental abuse, neglect, exploitation, endangerment, abandonment, parentification, scapegoating, toxic shaming and gaslighting about it all. Well I say recover. But really it's more like just beginning to wrap my mind around it. Today I'm going to explore further how abuse and gaslighting by my four parents (mom, dad and two stepparents) has destroyed my ability to understand right and wrong. 

Notice I didn't say know right from wrong. I "know" what accepted as good vs. bad behavior. I know and understand that I'm supposed to treat others (loving, kind, helpful, etc.) What I don't know or understand is just what loving is supposed to look like or how other people are supposed to treat me. All the toxic shaming and scapegoating and gaslighting I lived with has sabotaged my ability know that I should expect to be treated with common respect and to protect myself from disrespectful, hurtful behavior. 

I've said before that it's like I have emotional leprosy. I  have no protective layer. My life was  characterized by constant boundary smashing, inappropriate expectations, unrealistic demands, Draconian punishments, deprivation of basic resources, exposure to unsafe people and situations, parental exploitation for personal gain, scapegoating, weaponized religion, toxic shaming and then gaslighting about it all. Everything about normal childhood was knocked sidewise and ruined by parents, their spouses and kids. So my normal was very abnormal and unhealthy. 

How my bizarre and traumatic childhood experiences defy explanation

 Hi friends. Hope your Labor Day is what you need it to be. I am working off a hangover. I've been doing that more in the past few years. Drinking too much red wine is the only way I can reduce the CPTSD nightmares and get some semblance of sleep. It's not a solution but it's all I got for now. Today I'm going to try to explain what makes my childhood experiences so bizarre and hence so traumatic. But it's not going to be easy. Because my backstory is so weird and frankly unprecedented, it defies logic, comprehension and pretty much every example of loving parenting. 

First, I know my story is unprecedented because I've been told it is. To me it was just life. Albeit it a miserable one, but my normal. Because I was gaslit by four ridiculously self-centered people who called themselves my parents, into thinking that abuse (physical, emotional, social, sexual, medical, religious and financial), exploitation, manipulation, scapegoating, neglect, constant shaming, abandonment and endangerment, was not only perfectly fine, it was actually kinda cool of them. 

That's a lot to process, I know. You may be wondering how all that could be happening to one child. Or how it could be happening and no one know or care. Believe me, that is part of what kept me quietly confused and why the their gaslighting was so successful. But it's all true. Everything I've shared is what happened. 

And what makes it even more disturbing is how strange it is. I have so little in common with other kids that it's as if I lived on Mars. At every turn, my "parents" behavior defies what parents do. This wasn't, so far as I can see, by accident. They had fairly normal childhoods and I know this because the of the trauma dumping they did to me. All four of them complained on a regular basis about how badly they were treated. They never held back or spared me details. From preschool age, they used me like a toxic waste dump. That's part of the parentification. But when they said what happened that so "traumatic" it was peanuts compared what they put me through. If there had been some really bad things, you can be sure I'd have heard it. But being so empathetic, I felt sorry for them and it distracted me from seeing how egregiously poorly they were treating. Which, I believe, was part of the plan.

And oh yes, it was intentional abuse. The things they did to me were no mistakes. They weren't overworked. If anyone was, it was me. They had to go out of their way, to do the weird things they did. And much of it was so needlessly cruel as to be inhuman. And that's the core of why it is so hard to wrap my mind around.

If they were just doing their best, and making mistakes, I'd have easily understood. Hell, I've defended the crazy and made excuses for them all my life. They didn't need to justify anything. As it they would, anyway. They were above all the rules. So they could make it up as they went along and feed me any amount of bullshit they wanted. There was really no low they wouldn't go to. And telling others about these experiences, I continually second guess and gaslight myself. Because no parent would do these things. 

When I talk to my husband, we can't really comprehend why they have done these things because we, flawed as we are, love our kids. And virtually everyone around us, throughout our lives, does too. They may do things differently but you can tell there's love. And I do not remember ever feeling that. Oh I told myself they loved me. They told me they did. But that was just so much hogwash because their behavior on a steady bases throughout my life as been unloving, uncaring, cold, calculating and hurtful. 

They do have the ability to love kids because their other children weren't treated this way. They were favored, pampered and exalted, even by me. I was made to worship the ground they all walked on. The abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, parentification and gaslighting was only for me. 

My conclusion is (and mind this is just a working hypothesis at this point) is that they did not love, like or care for  me. I was an inconvenience. I was an obstacle in their narcissistic fantasies. My original bio parents had deluded themselves into thinking they could do what they wanted at every moment. They could divorce and just start over with their "real families." I think it was me they were trying to divorce themselves from. Their families were not on board with this and were very much in reality. And because my extended family would not play along and exclude me too, this angered my parents and they took it out on me. 

I believe they were, are and have been jealous and bitter that my grandparents still loved me. They determined to make my life as miserable as possible in revenge for not getting their way. And they encouraged their new spouses and kids to do likewise. If  they had to be saddled with this obstacle that they weren't allowed to erase from their lives, they were damned sure going to get everything they could out of me. And did they ever. It was made perfectly clear that their homes were not mine, my things were theirs, and I was only there on sufferance and had been be grateful and spend the rest of my time, dancing attendance. 

Which in itself further defies explanation because while making it clear I was in the way, they expected and got so much out of me. Which I guess as I write this isn't that odd if you consider their self-centered personalities. I was only good for being exploited and so they did. It was such a black hole of expectation. What makes it bizarre is that this is the antithesis of what parents do.