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.
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