Hello my friends. If yesterday's post on normal things dark tetrad parents ruin for their kids was the darkest, today's is the most disgusting. Today I'm looking at how narcissistic dark tetrad parents pirate their kids' childhood and taint innocent things. I'm doing this to sort out why I was and am so dang broken when it comes to normal child behavior others seem to take for granted.
And I learned my lesson yesterday when I forgot to cover this entire writing process in prayer. The devil got into my head and gave me a hell of a time for daring to call out evil behavior. So please, if you're reading, offer up prayers, incantations, duas, whatever your belief system dictates, for us as we take this deep dive. This is treacherous territory and I'm playing with fire here.
So what exactly does a narcissist break in their kids' lives? In a word, childhood. They steal her birthright to be a child. To think, feel and behave, like a child. They usurp that role for themselves and force the child to be the adult and parent. They punish her for normal child things and then do those things themselves only in a really creepy, demented way.
I'm going to give you some examples but not in a cohesive, outlined way. I'm going to bombard you with them randomly, to give you some experience of how bombarded I was by these chaotic experiences. By peppering you with one weird after another, I'm trying to give some idea of the endless and constantly shifting chaos, the crazy quilt of stress and anxiety that was my life. Crazy WAS my normal and the only consistent thing was inconsistency. All these memories are jumbled in my mind and are confusing AF.
Normal things like hugs, cuddling, being rocked or snuggled, I didn't get. I don't recall ever sitting on an adult's lap as a child. I suppose I did but it wasn't frequent. Having someone stroke my hair, hold my hand, any tenderness wasn't there. Things I did habitually with my kids, didn't happen with me. Before they divorced, my parents were very hands-off. When they both got married again, they detached even more from me. I've always said they divorced me from their lives. But yet still expected me to parent and do for them like an adult. The only touch I recall was getting hit.
I grew to think that they didn't touch me because I was somehow untouchable and gross. I assumed, because I was told, that I got hit because I was bad. And then later, when I was a tween, the touch I got was sexual in nature. And the spankings. When I was going on 14, my dad "paddled" me. Beat would be a better word. Because I failed him in some way he wouldn't explain. But I assume it was for something he expected me to do for him and his wife. Some adult responsibility which I was unable to do if I wanted to.
See, I was taught that if someone wanting something from me, it was my duty to provide. No matter how age inappropriate, icky, humiliating or simply not my job to do, it was. To refuse would be selfish. . As you can imagine, that teaching got me into some sick and dangerous situations. It put a target on my back for perverts.
Yet I was told that any harm I experienced, I brought on myself because I was dirty. My parents preached a very rigid doctrine of moral purity. They made me vulnerable by not teaching me how to be safe and to just be a servant to all. They drummed modesty down my throat till I thought that wearing anything but a turtleneck was slutty. So, I was to offer myself up as a sacrifice for anyone who wanted a piece yet when (not if) I was molested, it was my fault for being easy. Or I was exaggerating or showing off. I do not remember any time when they took my part of defended me. I do remember them joining in the persecution and making a public spectacle of me.
So the humiliation and not having my back was pretty weird, but the repression wasn't that uncommon back then, unfortunately. Women, especially moms, were pretty buttoned up and then blamed for causing men to lust. As if. But it didn't end with just shaming. Would that it did. At least it would have been consistent. At least the entire family would have lived by the same principles.
But not mine. I was singled out while their other kids got away with everything. I was their scapegoat. And even my two parents lived very (by their own standards) "immoral" lives. So now juxtapose all their puritanical dogma, shaming, enslaving and betrayal of me, with their blatant adultery, infidelity, fornication (right in front of me), immodesty, and pedophilia and you'll have some idea of my childhood.
When I was 5, we moved to Alaska to be missionaries, I was told. We squatted in different places and neither parent worked. I was left on my own all the time. They lived off the charity of the Tlingit native tribe. No mission work that I ever saw, occurred. He'd go off on months-long self-styled "mission trips" with teenagers. Then he lit out to go convert Charles Manson's girls in L.A. Meanwhile, my mother was hooking up with men behind his back and leaving me to play downtown at the docks. Then she took me to an island 1,000 miles away, dumped me there with strangers and left to go to Seattle.
Then she moved us back to Michigan. My dad went walkabout in Alaska and was incognito for a year and a half. I just learned that this constitutes child abandonment. My mom became the proverbial "swinging single", having flavor of the week hookups, cheating with married people, "shacking up" (as it was called then) with boyfriends. She dressed as a "hooker" for a church (?!?) Halloween party. She wore go-go boots, bikinis and mini skirts (when everyone else's mom was wearing twinsets and slacks).
She would flirt all the time, and behave very seductively. She has hit on my boyfriends. She plays the ingenue, dressing in weird baby doll dresses, even when pregnant, making wide-eyed, coy pouts and talking in this babyish voice. Think of the old Love's Baby Soft ads. While, I as a child, was dressed in strange, body-shaming clothes. My hair was badly cut in unflattering styles. My health was not tended to. There was money for anything she or her boyfriends wanted, but not for me. Things given to me were stolen and sold.
Icky sex stuff was as common as Saturday morning cartoons for me. She brags to anyone who would listen about sleeping naked, paraded around naked and was accidentally on purpose caught. When staying with us, she came out naked despite my husband and sons sleeping nearby. And asked me for a Bible because watching LOTR with us, made "her spirit restless."
I recall a punchup when I was 8, when her boyfriend's wife caught them at it in our kitchen and knocked my mom down the stairs. My mother forced me to listen to her anecdotal sex stories. She moved her boyfriend into our house, set up an apartment for them in the basement, kicked me out of my room so her brother and his girlfriend could sleep there, and put me in (illegally) with four foster kids under 5. She and her boyfriend mocked me for my "small tits." When my dad finally did come back, he started dating (I use the term loosely) a 17 y/o when he was 36.
My life has been a revolving door of endangerment and sexploitation. And yet, through it all, they maintained a guise of Christian holiness and purity. I was trotted to church every Sunday. She played the organ. He demanded to preach (though not ordained nor even of the church he wanted to preach in). Morality was for everyone else, not them. It boggles the mind how they got away with it all. I'll never figure that one out.
One thing I do know though is that my childhood was permanently ruined. And, as if losing the innocence of childhood isn't bad enough, there's more. Remember I said, that dark tetrads rob your childhood FOR THEMSELVES? They didn't just want me not to have a normal childhood. They wanted mine. They lived like perpetual spoiled teenagers. Both did very immature, hurtful things. They were precious with themselves and reckless with me. They routinely made impetuous, selfish, irresponsible decisions that put me in terrible situations with no concern for my safety. The only consistent in my life was chaos and and inconsistency. And endless expectation and demands to be the designated adult.
Because dark tetrads don't just want to play their part. They want it all. They want to be adult, parent, child, debutante, party girl, teacher, preacher, boss, baby, whatever suits at the time. With all the perks and none of the work. They leave the heavy lifting to others and claim the rewards with none of the sacrifice. They do what feels good, to hell with consequences. Someone else will suffer those. This someone did.
How did I not see this hypocrisy then? Why did I just accept that this is how mommy is even though she tells me to do very different things? Why did I believe the gospel according to Daddy when the one in my Bible was so different? I guess it just goes to show that dark tetrad parent gaslighting, shaming, exploitation and invalidation are real and really potent. They didn't touch me in ways they should have and then touched me in very sick ways and encouraged others to do so too. And I just absorbed it all as my just desserts.
They were so successful at destroying my innocence that even now, the thought of being touched makes me sick. I feel like a weirdo using the word. Normal things like hugging, pats on the back, stroking, massages, just feel wrong. I hug people because I think it's the right thing to do and because or if, they seem to expect it. It doesn't come easily or comfortably.
And don't even get me started on morality, modesty, purity or seductive vs healthy behavior. I have no idea how to begin framing those. They've all been fouled up beyond repair for me. Thank God I have a patient husband who has helped me overcome some of it. I'm finding that I really enjoy being hugged by him. He encourages me to dress how I want, it's okay. He reminds me that I am a moral person. But the bulk of the shame is still there.
Even my concept of innocence is effed, from a child's perspective. I feel grubby and tainted. But I think, approaching this as an adult, whatever that is, might help. No, let me rephrase that: as a parent and grandparent. If I look at how I think of and do things with my kids and grandkids, I might, just might, be able to reach the kid in me.
Because for all that touch has been destroyed for me, I was able to hug and give healthy touch to my kids. I enjoyed rocking them, brushing their hair, giving them back rubs and snuggles. All the things I did not have. Their touch was good, their little hands so warm and trusting, in mine. The way they'd pat my face and cuddle up under my chin.
So having said that, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I never did lose my innocence. That they didn't succeed in taking it. I think innocence is something you can't steal from someone, it's innate. They can only distort it for you. They do this by exposing you to unhealthy things and not teaching you healthy self-care tools to navigate. The very fact that these things were PUT IN my life by people who were supposed to protect me FROM such things, is the problem.
They are the agents provocateur, setting up stumbling blocks for the child. Because they know that her childhood and innocence can never be theirs. It is hers and hers alone. They had their time to be kids. And as for innocence, they destroyed that for themselves when they chose selfishness. So the best they can do is play saboteur, destroying as far as possible, any good thing for the child. And making her feel that she's the one to blame.
But the winds of change, they are a blowin'. Selah.
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