Hello my friends. Now that the US has just elected 47th president, one of the biggest narcissists in history, I'll be doubling down on posts about dealing with and healing from narcissistic abuse. It's no wonder my four "parents" dad, his wife, mom and her second ex-husband (the one she's pleased to call my stepfather) are rabid MAGA right-wingers. They have a lot in common with Donald Trump, including felony counts, lying, gaslighting, hypocrisy, lack of empathy, disrespect for peoples' basic rights and neglect of their basic needs.
All my life, until I finally went low contact with my mom and her husband, they've shamed, scapegoated, exploited, stolen from, lied to, neglected, endangered, manipulated, invalidated, triangulated, abused and gaslit me about it all. My dad and his wife died before I became aware of just how much they'd done these things too. What got me finally understanding what happened were constant CPTSD nightmares and Reddit. I began to see how what had happened to me was wrong. This led me to seeking out Youtube sources on coming to terms with narcissistic parental abuse.
And the more I see, the less I can unsee. The more I know the clearer it becomes. It isn't easy. In fact, it's devilishly painful and difficult. Now I have to accept what I couldn't accept as a child which was that these adults who were supposed care for me, didn't. And two of them, his new wife and her new husband, weren't even supposed to have the power over me which my parents gave them. And that I was abandoned and endangered by the very people who were supposed to keep me safe, neglected and abused by those God entrusted to care for me, exploited, triangulated, scapegoated by "family members", intimidated by those who those who said they loved me, made to parent parents and gaslit about it all.
So where do I go from here? What do I do with this knowledge? How do I manage the all-encompassing fear, shame and trauma? Well, step one for me has been to keep the remaining abusers at arm's length and grow long arms. And then to blog out my pain. And start talking about it too. It's not enough to share with cyberspace. I need safe flesh and blood people to hear.
And next is a step with heretofore has been unthinkable to me. I am making an effort to detach from the "family in my head." To use my own terms, instead of their gaslighting ones. To believe my truth instead of their lies. To say what happened and why, who did it, and what it felt like, instead of keeping quiet and small. To quit letting them tell me I'm the one being disloyal, disrespectful, shameful, sinful, and a bad family member. And start putting them in those hot seats. To stop sitting still and start rocking the damn boat.
All of those things would not only have been forbidden to me but also dangerous. But they aren't now. They have no power over me. True their voices live rent free in my head. But nevertheless, I'm an adult who can do as she pleases. If I'm wrong, God will show me. Not Jack or Nancy or Bill or Ginny. Or any of their kids. To quote Fanny Brice, if someone takes a spill, it's me and not you.
So when they start criticizing, fault-finding, harassing, when anyone whose agenda is to shame and squelch me starts, I'm going to say "so?" and "I don't care." And this is ground-breaking. A brave, new world for me. Because I have never once in my life, said those things to anyone. It felt callous. Because I was shamed into accepting any shame put on me. All kinds of religious babble about how God expects me to care about, worry about, fix, be the example for, the servant to, everyone, was told to me.
But funny thing, if this was all God's will, then why didn't my parents do any of these things? They waited on no one but themselves. They broke a lot and fixed nothing. That was others' job. They bluntly told me they didn't care. They showed me that my feelings either didn't exist ("too sensitive") or were my fault or were weaponized against me. My dad and mom literally pitted their new spouses against me. To every reasonable need I had, they basically said "so?"
It's very freeing to realize this. To put things in correct perspective. Not only is it okay not to care about what others with a track record of harm, think, it's much safer. I laugh because my husband has always done this. If people attack, try to humiliate, mock, shame, he just scoffs and says "I don't care." I used to get annoyed or maybe just worried when he did this. How could he not care? Didn't he see, as I so clearly did, that these hecklers were morally superior? Didn't he see that it was his job to be whatever anyone wanted him to be? No he did not.
And he was right. I now see that and I admire his chutzpah. His God-given confidence. Yes, I said God-given. God, we are told, has not given us a spirit of timidity but of courage in the face of harm, sin and danger. I didn't get that memo because my manipulative parents taught me wrong. They preferred me ashamed and biddable. The Bible says "instruct a child in the way he should go and he won't depart." Well, the reverse is also true. Teach a kid wrong and it'll stick in her head. She'll spend a lifetime trying to undo the damage. To depart from it.
Well, here's to departing from that wrong teaching. To finding courage not to care what people with evil intentions think or do.
No comments:
Post a Comment