Hi friends! I've written before how I developed CPTSD from my four dark tetrad parents mistreatment, including abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, scapegoating, shaming, invalidation, enmeshment, triangulation, parentification and gaslighting, to name a few. Some of those terms may be unfamiliar or confusing (they are to me, too). So let's look at what each meant in my life. Today my journey to heal CPTSD from dark tetrad parent abuse requires a look at weird ways my parents parentified me.
First let's explore parentification. What it means is that a child is forced to take on parental roles. She's subjected to adult expectations, particularly being made to do what her parents should be doing for themselves and for her. It's role reversal. She is made to care not only for her parents as if she was their parent but also their other children. Narcissist parents also play both ends for the middle. For all the work the I did for all of them (two bio, two step parents, their 5 children and foster kids), I was and am still treated like an immature, disobedient child.
The parentified child is given no actual authority, just responsibility. The parents retain inappropriate authority which they use arbitrarily. They demand respect which they haven't earned and don't demonstrate respect for others. They neglect care of the child and then act weirdly and confusingly over-caring when others are around. They turn a blind eye and leave the child in egregiously dangerous situations and then act nonchalant and remorseless. They ignore the child when she's doing something unsafe and then feign concern when she's hurt. They act chaotically and unpredictably and then all of a sudden set strange, random rules. Essentially they act like perpetual 13-year-olds and expect their child to behave like the adult.
They place mountains of inappropriate expectation on her. But she's never allowed even basic rights. If she displeases them, which she always does because they're implacable, it's catastrophic. She's treated worse as a kid than anyone has ever treated them in their lives. They expect her to do to perfection, as a kid what they've never done as adults. AND most gaslighty of all, I was indoctrinated to believe that this was God's will for me. Talk about a win-win situation. They get their work done for them, their needs met by their child as if they were the children and they still get to retain this image of being the parents. It's the ultimate dark tetrad parent con game.
You may be wondering right now if this isn't just normal. Isn't that just training kids to be responsible? If you really think that, I'm honestly really disappointed in you, but let's look at why that's so not so. Parentified children don't just help out (boy was I conned by THAT term). They perform responsibilities which are the parents' jobs. Dangerous, heavy work that child bodies are too small to do without injury. Like ironing, mopping floors on their knees, vacuuming with those ancient heavy vacuums. Scaling snowbanks to hang diapers on the line, then taking the frozen ones down.
They do EVERYONE else's work for them at the expense of their own health and wellbeing. After school, I would hit the ground running with the long list of chores my stepmother had for me. I worked up till dinner which was scant at best. Then had to clean up, get everyone's vitamins ready, help with the kids till they went to bed, etc. Only then was I allowed time to do homework and I often stayed up too late just to get it done. Then next morning up at dawn to lather, rinse repeat.
Now, she, on the other hand, had to have at least an hour "to herself" to "wake up." She had the occasional part time job but mostly just sat at home. Yet she needed lots of "down time" after doing the slightest thing. And hours of TV before bed. And she slept in till almost noon. My dad needed " his alone time" because he worked. Adults were always pratting about how exhausted they were from their responsibilities and how maybe I should just do a little more.
My mom's boyfriend, who later became her husband, just sat on his ass watching TV till 3 am (keeping me up and walking and talking in my sleep which he made fun of me for.) He slept all the time and didn't even cut wood for the woodburning stove. He would throw oil or tires on it, so we all froze most of the time, especially me being made to sleep on the unheated front porch. When I was co-sleeping with their babies.
And speaking of that, being made to sleep with the babies and get up with them was a weird way parentification. Not the weirdest but anyway. Every time either set of parents had a baby, Marilisa always wound up in the baby's room. Not that the baby was put in my room. That would have been bad enough. I was placed in the baby's room, which was ironically as far from his parents room as possible (them needing their beauty sleep yanno). At one point I was locked in the room with the baby.
Another time, I was moved out of my room so my uncle and his pregnant girlfriend could have it. I was placed in a tiny room with my mom's four foster children aged 6 months to four. My mom and her boyfriend slept two floors below. I couldn't sleep on the couch (which I did a lot in my childhood) because another of my mom's fosters who was pregnant, was sleeping there with her boyfriend. This is the same one my good Christian right-winger mom took to have an abortion with me in the car.
At least if they were going to all play house, they could have been practicing by caring for the children. But that was left to 11 y/o me. And these were and are all "God-fearing" church-going Christians who pontificate about morality how immoral others are. When I say I've been raised with insanely hypocritical, immoral, two-faced, double-standard, self-righteous religiosity, I know what I'm talking about. It took my then boyfriend and his dad to wake me up to the fact of how wrong this was. I just absorbed it alllllllll as okay.
When new parents talk about getting no sleep with babies and I empathize. I've been doing without sleep caring for kids since I was 10. I've co-slept with someone else's kids all my adolescent years. My sleep is completely fubared now. I nightmare and worry all night long, wake at the slightest sound and cannot relax. I walk, talk, cry and scream in my sleep. I wake up choking and panicking. I'm never not on call.
And if you think that's normal, then let me ask you, did YOU live like this? No, I thought not. This is abnormal and unnatural for any child to parentify them like this. What if parents are disabled, you ask? Well, then they shouldn't be making more babies for their kid to take care of. And what is disabled anyway? My step mom played that card to the hilt. She "couldn't" iron, mop, vacuum, do laundry because she had a "bad back." She was morbidly obese, too. And I had more and worse back problems as a tween. I had congenital hip dysplasia, spina bifida, scoliosis and early onset arthritis. And they knew it. So you tell me who is and who isn't "disabled."
Yet I was expected to do all their work and without proper equipment. If they were doing the mopping and vacuuming, they'd have a lightweight stick mop and vacuum. They'd have had a dishwasher. The bathroom would be cleaned a lot less frequently. But since they weren't, it was fine for Mary to lug out the freakishly heavy cannister vacuum, stand for hours doing mountains of dishes by hand, and mop and scrub toilets on her hands and knees. And if they had to iron, you can be damn sure there would be a lot less ironing to do. And if they were disabled, there were easier chores she could have done: folding clothes, reading to the kids, or simple meal prep. But nope, that all fell to me as well. Yet she had plenty of time to do her "craft therapy." While I barely had time to get homework done.
It took me sixty years to realized that I WORKED TOO! I HAD school, plus homework, plus my home duties plus theirs. I never had "Marilisa time." This just occurred to me a few days ago. Their gaslighting is so successful it follows them the grave. It also took me till just a few months ago to sort out what, if I was doing everything else, they were actually doing?
Here's what my chore list looked like, on top of having no space to myself and having to co-sleep with their kids. Dusting the entire house, vacuuming, folding clothes, cleaning the bathroom, ironing, mopping, cleaning the cat box, dishes, "helping" with meal prep (because frozen fish and boxed mashed potatoes every night required so much work?) kitchen cleanup, making milk and juice, sweeping, childcare, hanging clothes on the line, making lunches, tidying the house, babysitting plus whatever else my lazy stepmother could think of and guilt my dad into forcing me to do. It took me till a few months ago to wonder what was left for them? What housework did they actually do?
I never asked because I fell for all this gaslighting bullshit about how they had jobs and couldn't do housework too. That's the dark tetrad for you. They piss and moan about having to do things everyone does as if they are (wait for it) exalted and above the normal expectations. Adults have jobs! And they manage to do household tasks too. What would they do I wasn't there? Do it themselves. Parents parent. You bring kids into this world, YOU get up at night with them. YOU care for them. It's not your stepkid's job just because she's older and a girl.
You wouldn't treat a boy this way, making him do all that. You never made your sons do a damn thing. I was co-sleeping with them and doing all the household chores at 10. Yet when they were that age, they never so much as did a dish. If chores and duties were normal "family expectations" why was I the only one doing them? If it was so character building why weren't other kids I knew having to do all of this? Why were your other kids not made to do anything? Why was I waiting on them too? If it was God's will, why did I see no other kid at church being made to do so much? If I was helping with the family, why was I never included except for the work? Why was it never my house, just yours? Why did I have to ask permission for everything like I was a servant?
And they got away with this hypocritical double standard because I had no one to compare stories with, to bounce it off or to ask for help. I was the only one in this situation. I was the oddball. So I just accepted their version. I accepted that substandard was good enough for me. That it's fine for your parents to completely blow your life apart, to destroy everything familiar, hook up with people who treat you appallingly, to remake your entire existence into something unrecognizable and miserable. To evict you from all you know and relegate you to servant status. So that's why it took me to my 7th decade to see any of this, but now that I do...
Hey wait a minute, halt. I'm not the oddball, I'm the prototype! I was here first! I have first dibs. Just because you selfish-ass people think you can rewrite me out of the picture doesn't mean you can. You're not graciously allowing me to live in steppappy's or stepmammy's house. It's my house and home! Neither one of them even earns their keep. You sold MY stuff to buy your unemployed. boyfriend a new motorcycle. And dad, you bought her luxuries and deprived me of necessities.
You both accused me of being jealous of your new families?!? What a sick narcissistic thing to say to your daughter. So you do have new families that don't include me? Huh. I thought I was family too? That's what you always say when you want something from me. Get your story straight. Also, someone is only jealous when something she had that was stolen. It's coveting to want what was never mine. Which probably fits too.
But God wasn't talking about kids being deprived of family when he wrote the commandments. He wasn't writing to kids period, but to grown adults about how they should treat people, especially their kids. What their duties were, etc. AND how divorce and remarriage and having kids with new partners is adultery and an abomination. His words, not mine.
And in my case, how could a kid who was raised to think her sole purpose in life was parent happiness, be jealous unless you did things to make her jealous? Did you maybe flaunt your new spouses to make her envious? (yep) Did you make her subject to them? (sure did) Did you exclude her? (yes) Did you backtrack on morals you held her to? (yes indeed). Did you play favorites, have double standards and betray her with someone you'd know three hot minutes? (oh yeah).
Well, I've got news. I'm not the interloper. I'm not the one at fault. I didn't come between you and your new fancy pieces. Gross what an icky thing to say. You're just gaslighting me into feeling guilty because you KNOW you are in the wrong. You are the ones breaking commandments right and left. It's not my responsibility to do anything for you and certainly not your new folks.
I'm your responsibility! I don't owe you, you owe me. You may have gotten a new family but they're not mine. I didn't ask for it. And I'm certainly not responsible to them. But you are responsible to me, all of you. You stepparents don't dictate terms. Especially not when you're both too sorry to even care for yourselves. It was my home before it was yours.
But I never knew let alone expressed any of that. Everything was flipped assupwards for me. Once they got their new families, I never called a home mine anymore. I wasn't encouraged to think of it that way. It was theirs and I was a guest, or so I was told. But I wasn't treated like a guest, just expected to act like one, being very humble and respectful. Think Jane Eyre, the poor relation, so lucky to be allowed to live and beholden to them for the rest of my life. But treated like a live-in, unpaid servant.
My dad thought because he effed up his first marriage he wasn't going to let me eff up his second one. Yes, you read that correctly. He made me his wingman and surrogate spouse and partner to both of them. They hated each other but never dealt direct only through me. They were united only against me. They triangulated, playing me off each other. I became the spouse in the sense that I was the one expected to fix everyone.
God forbid either of my parents actually take responsibility for their own marriages and kids. That's was my job. They were only there for the perks, not the work. Both my mom and dad threw me at their new pieces like an offering. And that's exactly what I became, a scapegoat for all that was wrong in both their "new" families. They let them do exactly as they pleased with me. They encouraged it all and got a kick out of watching me dance to everyone's tune. Well, that's the dark tetrad for you: irresponsible, self-centered, exploitative, manipulative, remorseless, calculated and loving every minute of it.
And that's only a fraction of the parentifying. It doesn't even start to cover the really icky stuff.
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