Hi friends. I'm working on healing CPTSD from abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, enmeshment, scapegoating, invalidation, shaming, parentification and gaslighting by four narcissistic parents. Yes, four. Two bio and their two new partners. Having divorced parents was very unusual in the time and places I grew up in. Having a mother and father who were dating was super odd and earned me some ostracizing.
And don't get me started on how strange it was when my mother moved her boyfriend into our home. In middle class suburban Michigan, that was verboten and immoral even by people of no religious affiliation. Then them getting married and having new families added a new levels of weird to my life. So today I'm exploring how divorced narcissistic parents who remarry gaslight their kids with stepparents.
I've been looking back through the years of my life and find that my memory is patchy and confusing. The memories I can recall are predominantly frightening. My experiences were very out of sync with other kids. They were characterized by strange, chaotic, dangerous, unstable, self-serving, out-of-control behaviors on the part of parents and their new partners who were allowed to do as they wished with me.
Reading up on legalities regarding "stepparents" they're aren't responsible to the child for financial care BUT they also have no authority over the child. That rests only with the biological parents unless they cede control AND the step parent adopts the child. Well that was all kinds of messed up in my life. No one wanted to cede control of me because I came with money and benefits attached. And because I fulfilled so many roles in their lives: confidant, surrogate spouse and parent, servant, scapegoat, target. But none of them took care of me, financially or otherwise. They all acted like step parents with no responsibilities to me and parents with complete power over me.
All four felt entitled to order me around. My bio parents encouraged their new partners to step right up and boss me around. And they each had their own expectations that contradicted each other. It was exhausting, confusing and miserable. I had to be four different girls with flip-flopping rules that changed without warning. They didn't co-parent, they did their own thing with me. Then blamed me when the others' expectations contradicted. They never collaborated and just let the others do what they wanted when I was with them. They turned blind eyes to horrific things. It's so confusing I can hardly explain to myself, let alone you.
They didn't know what they others did because they never asked and didn't care. They ignored sexual assault, bringing a teen boy into the house then shaming me when he molested me, moving me out of my bedroom and into the kids' bedroom so my unmarried uncle and his girlfriend could have my bedroom, couples shacking up in our home, working my ass off to do my stepmother's work, being deprived of medical care, the list goes on.
And I never told because that would be disloyal, they said. And I was afraid of the consequences. And no one cared anyway. My biological parents left me completely at others' mercy. It was as if I ceased to exist for them when I wasn't there and available to serve them. And when I was, I was there as a servant, not their child. They couldn't have made it plainer that they didn't care if they'd shouted it from the rooftops. I have been so unutterably alone most of my life. It was so scary that I had to blank it out and just fake it or it would have blown my mind to smithereens.
And then no none took responsibility for me either. Food, clothing, medical care, housing, bedroom were catch as catch can. I had to get a job at 15, to provide basics for myself. And not because we were poor. I was the only one deprived of these things. Everyone else had plenty, including luxuries. My child support was used to fund my mom's unemployed husband's pipe dreams. Which he then ran into bankruptcy and kicked me out. She was still collecting child support which paid for their stuff, and I wasn't even living there. And I was living with an elderly lady and struggling with no food beyond the free school lunch.
My dad lavished gifts on himself, his wife and their kids. And would lock me in the baby's bedroom at night so he and his wife weren't troubled by their children. I was what is now called hidden homeless a lot of times. And a free live-in nanny. There was never enough to eat for me but plenty for others. I had to ask to get something from the cupboard. And had to work like an unpaid employee in their adult foster care home, feeding, cleaning up after and waiting on the residents. I couldn't have outside activities or get a job because I had to so many chores. I had no place to do homework let alone time to.
And the gaslighting was off the charts. My dad would call my stepmother "your mummy" when I was supposed to do something for her or when I'd supposedly upset her. She was only 14 years older than me and a very immature 14 years at that. She never acted motherly, only bossy, arrogant, lazy and pouty. My own mother was no better. She was a very childish covert narcissist but she was my mom. I felt so guilty to her when my dad would pull that. I still get triggered hearing his voice in my head.
Then when I lived with my mom, she accused me of being jealous of her and her new husband. I have no idea why because I rarely ever questioned let alone complained. It was like she was a mean girl in high school flaunting her new boyfriend. He was a nightmare from the beginning. They would exclude me from activities, make out in front of me and put me in charge of her four special needs foster care kids so they could sleep together in the basement.
She'd gaslight me saying that we had to obey him now because he was her husband and head of the house. And that was when they were just living together. And he wasn't my dad let alone my husband or even hers. But I was her daughter before he was her husband. And I was STILL her daughter. She had a scriptural responsibility to me, not him. And God doesn't stutter when it comes to adultery. But somehow she made me believe it was all fine and dandy. It wasn't really adultery because his wife was a bad person. She used that one a lot to justify multiple instances of infidelity. She justified abortion that way too thought she preached against it all for others.
He'd scream at me, call me names, sexually harass and bully me. He never worked and just laid around the house...OUR house, not his. He who was crude, bullying, violent, nasty-minded and foul-mouthed, would call ME a spoiled kid and bad kid and terrible daughter. He had me believing I was. Though they were using me and my resources to pay for their lifestyle.
My mother would ostentatiously pray and read her Bible and preach about the wages of my sin when THEY WERE THE ONES SHACKING UP, stealing, scamming, lying and exploiting others. They somehow convinced me that I'm both immoral and wicked but also self-righteous for calling out their sin. Guilty consciences, I guess. But narcissists will cut their own tongues out before admitting to any wrong. And I have been unable to shake to idea that I'm some kind of slutty hypocrite?? It just boggles me.
From the moment my parents met their new spouses , they changed. They were never what you'd call caring or loving parents. But they didn't hate me, I don't think. I know I got in the way of their grandiose plans. But they didn't let that stop them and just left me behind or let me wander alone or dumped me on others. And none of their big ideas materialized anyway. I know that at least she blamed me for that. Probably he did too.
But then things really went south. When they met their new people, and now had you-know -what buddies, they were invincible. God was approving their crazy. The narc supply was so high that I'm surprised it didn't explode. Now I was just an awkward reminder that they had other responsibilities they were ignored. Now they despised but also exploited me. They mocked, backstabbed, scapegoated, bullied, lied about, put me in harm's way and confused the hell into me. They tied a millstone of shame and fear, around my neck. They gave their new people authority over me, which they did not earn, deserve or use well.
Each was responsible in various ways, of endangering, abusing, neglecting, exploiting, parentifying, scapegoating and hurting me. I was responsible to them for constant obedience very harsh and inappropriate demands, instant compliance to whims, yet they weren't responsible to me for for basic care. They considered themselves my superiors and supervisors, not caregivers.
It was all royally buggered. They expected me to serve them and yet felt to obligation to me. Even my own parents! I was expected to serve them and nothing was expected of them, regarding me. They seemed to think that by getting married again it somehow absolved them of responsibility to me. Like they divorced me instead of each other and that they could just revise the story to delete me and move on with their new families as if I'd never existed. Except for when they needed me around as scapegoat, surrogate and servant. The hypocrisy is insane. It's like driving a car on black ice. You never know which way it's going and which end is up.
The confusion alone makes me crazy to say nothing of the pain and suffering. I want to scream, in retrospect, Just fukkin pick a side and land already!! You can't have it both ways!! If I'm such a burden, adopt me out. If you want to get on with your new families sans me, fine. My grandparents would have had me. But you don't to stay on the show and keep the lovely parting gifts too. You can't have me just when it suits you. Don't give me that daughter, parent and family bullshit. Those are all relative (pun intended) to you according to your whims at the time.
And yanno what? Having said that, I'M going to pick the side and land. And I choose no contact. I'm evicting y'all and your gaslighting from living rent-free in my head. As hard as it is to accept that I was just unloved chattel, it's harder to keep living in the misery of this fake, delusional narrative of yours. Bye, now. Don't let the door hit you in the a$$ on the way out.
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