Hello my dear friends who follow this blog. Dealing with CPTSD and pain from four abusive and neglectful narcissistic family is pretty grim, I know. Hashing through memories of emotional torment, bullying, abandonment, child endangerment, invalidation, shaming, enslavement, exploitation, gaslighting about it all, is miserable. So today I want to share how accepting one simple truth helps free me from family enmeshment and parentification.
And that fact is, that I was not in any of their families, neither the initial one of which I was the only child, nor the two new ones they created when my biological parents split up. I was an unpaid servant, scapegoat, surrogate spouse (to all four, creepy) and surrogate parent to their kids. They gaslit me into thinking I was a family member, so that I'd do all (and I do mean ALL) the heavy lifting. But the benefits of family, no. Those I did not receive. I did the work without the perks while they claimed the perks and did none of the work. Here's how they managed it.
By gaslighting, deception, distortion, lies, manipulation and mind-messing, they convinced me that I was responsible to them but also for them. All of them. You have to do her bidding, she's your stepmother. He can harass and abuse you, he's your stepfather. Even when he was just my mother's boyfriend. You have to care for me like I was the child and you, the parent. Why? Because I say so. I'm your MOM. You're my kid. I possess you. You owe us loyalty, servitude, obedience, etc., because...
Well, that part was never mentioned. They talked a lot about their expectations for me. My dad's wife greeted me at the door with a lengthy list of demands, when I moved into their house (notice I say their house, not mine). As you would for a paid nanny and housekeeper. As I look back it wasn't just help with housework, it was all the housework, particularly those tasks she didn't want to do. My dad gave her complete authority over me and probably encouraged her to make a nice long list. My mother and her boyfriend did likewise, including placing me in a tiny bedroom with four special needs foster children under 5. They then made a cozy apartment for themselves two floors down.
But when it came to expectations I could for them, there were none. To expect, I was told, was selfish. For me. For them it was Godly parenting. See how they twisted definitions? Rules for me and another set for thee. So even minimal care and the most basic of necessities, was denied me. I was deprived of anything that inconvenienced them and everything inconvenienced them. I was also relieved of anything someone else gave me. My child support, paid by my dad for MY care only, was taken to fund toys and pipe dreams of my mother and her new husband. My toys from childhood were sold or given aways without my permission of knowledge. I'd come home to find them gone.
And about those rules for me, wooboy were there a lot. Rules, however that they did not follow. Throughout my life, beginning around 3 or 4, they'd leave me unattended, send me out to play alone in hectic, dangerous and unfamiliar places (they were always upsticksing and moving). Several times they literally dumped me on strangers and left to go I'd know where. My grandma commented when they came to visit us in Alaska (I was 6), that when they arrived "Jack went one way and Nancy went the other and left us with Marilisa." What she didn't say but probably meant was, who the heck do they leave her with when we're NOT here?" Well, gram, the answer is, no one. I didn't see my mom or dad for years of my life.
BUT when they did chance to be around, oh the ridiculous rules they laid on me. At 15, I had to walk to school along a dangerous highway because I had to work two hours before and after school. Because they wouldn't provide even basics. And yet they gave me a super strict curfew that kids who didn't work, didn't have. They put with creepy, nasty people yet dictated to me who I couldn't associate with. They punished me when a guy they didn't approve of showed up where I was hanging out. I was grounded for two months.
My sorry stepfather refused to hold a job. Yet demanded I do the housework and childcare on top of my job and schoolwork. My mom told me I had to comply because "he's my husband." Same with my lazy stepmom, issuing all kinds of ultimatums and rules and doing nothing herself. And my dad taking her side every time. Yet when I came home 15 minutes past that crazy early curfew, they kicked me out of the house. I was 16. And still they expected me to follow their rules!
So the truth I now must accept is that I wasn't a family member I was a possession. I didn't have a home, I lived at work. I didn't have family, I had employers. I had no parents, only dark tetrad (malignant, self-serving, arrogant, cruel) slavedrivers. And accepting that is so incredibly freeing. Because since the rules of normal family didn't apply to me, they still don't.
I learned to play by dangerous, unhealthy, unsafe rules no one else in my family had to. So I learned dysfunctional, overcaring, fawning behaviors. They who never cared for me, still expect me to care for them. That's the enmeshed narcissist M.O, for you. "You have no life outside me and what I allow you to have. I pull your strings, puppet! You do as we demand, not as we do." And do they play the " you have to we're you parents and we're old" card.
BUT, good news! Now that I see all this (it took me 59 years), I see that I don't have to anymore. They never kept their part of the bargain and I don't owe them anything. Anything I may have owed them was repaid decades ago. And so they're old now, well, they should have thought about that before they exploited and took advantage of me all those years. You don't get to shirk your responsibilities to your child all her life and still expect her to fulfill hers to you.
You made it abundantly clear that I was not welcome in your family, now you aren't welcome in mine. The gravy train has derailed, the ATM is broken and your primary caregiver has left the building You don't have any parental rights. You surrendered those when you quit caring for your child. You lose. And you don't even get the lovely parting gifts.
So is that weird? Yeah. I see people caring for their parents and it triggers extreme guilt that I'm not caring for mine. But I was and always have until it got too toxic for me. I have to remember that they set the terms, not me. The people I see caring for their parents very likely had a more normal set of rules. I didn't. They care for their parents because they were cared for. I wasn't. It's transactional in the best way. Mine was one-sided. And to keep trying to have a relationship that was never there to begin with, is a fool's errand that only leads to more pain.
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