But where to start? If everything is broken, how do I begin to collect the pieces and reassemble them into something resembling normal when I have no idea what normal ss? My life experience was one of endless inner conflict. Conflict between what I suffered with and did without and what others seemed not to suffer and did have.
My normal was abuse (emotional, sexual, physical, spiritual, financial and medical), neglect, endangerment, abandonment, enmeshment, exploitation, gaslighting, parentification, scapegoating, intimidation, harsh punishment, invalidation and shaming were my normal. And not just by one or two parents but four, with very dark tetrad (selfish, entitled, manipulative, bullying, cruel) personalities.
What I saw around me were normalish kids with normalish lives and families. In 1970, I knew no one I who's parents were divorced let alone with a dad completely out of the picture and mom living with her unemployed boyfriend with a foster care home. I knew of no one who had to care for children and wait on adults the way I did. They rode bikes, watched TV, had activities. I came home to housework till bedtime. They went to bed in beds in their bedroom. I slept and got up with babies, crammed in the kids' bedroom with four other kids, on unheated porches, on army cots and on the ground.
So how do I know my life was so different? Because of how other kids reacted. They distanced themselves a lot of the time. Their parents didn't let them over. I never tried reaching out for help because I think I knew no one would believe me or understand. It was just that weird. I know because I had no idea how to fit myself into their world. And because, as an adult, I've asked trusted friends and they find my story odd and disturbing in the extreme. Every single person I've told (not many albeit because it's embarrassing) and they express shock. They say they've never heard or seen anything like it before.
Getting back to my point of where to begin enumerating the many things dark tetrad parents mess up for kids. I guess we begin at the beginning, with the very orientation of my life. With my parents' entire approach to parenting, family and childcare for me. And what I see and what others have told me is that it was flawed at inception. The entire foundation was cracked and buckled.
I did not ever have anything anywhere near resembling normal. Rudimentary things that even the youngest and most ignorant parents know they need to provide, were not for me. Unless someone was watching. Or it was in my parents best interest to provide. They want to appear like normal parents so no one questions. And because it supports the image that they are genuinely good parents. And because they get things for making it look like they are caring for their child. Once inside the door however, it's a whole other animal.
Dark tetrad parents cut as many corners as they can get away with, on things that don't benefit them. They compete with their child in very unfair contests which they always win. They resent their child needing anything and they gaslight and shame her for doing so. Even if she isn't asking. Just the fact that she is a child dependent on them, annoys the shit out of them. And when my dark tetrad parents divorced and married other dark tetrads, all hell broke loose. Now there were four demanding, resentful, spiteful, backstabbing people to please and all their offspring too. They gaslight the kid that their whackjob lifestyles are healthy and God's will. Even though they're obviously dysfunctional AF.
Dark tetrads dislike and resent their child and make damn sure she knows it. For most parents, nothing is good enough for their beloved children. In my case, nothing is too low. I went hungry while they had expensive diet food. The dog ate better than me. He had better medical care than me. I had no space of my own and slept with their children while stepmother had a king-sized bed in her suite of a room. I slept with four foster kids while mom and unemployed boyfriend slept two floors down in their apartment. I did without so mom could treat him to a new motorcycle.
They went out of their way to be unfair, uncaring, scornful. It wasn't enough that I was abused and neglected, I had to KNOW it and FEEL left out. Much of my memory is toast. Because my brain is damaged from chaos, stress, lying, manipulation, double standards and crazy brainwashing. My brain has to be very selective about what it lets me recall. Cause it's too dangerous.
But somehow, I survived their cabal. Somehow, I kept afloat, just barely. I don't know how. My husband says I must have had a ton of fortitude and determination. And a host of divine intercessors. I think they resented that too. I was the x variable they just couldn't factor out. Which I think made them double down on their odd demands, harassment and shaming.
Outside their cult, I had to fake a lot because I didn't know what a normal kid was supposed to look like and do. I didn't know how to act so I watched for cues and play acted. I also had the handicap of being dangerously empathetic. I was others-centered and people pleasing was all I knew. This is a terrible impact of childhood trauma and a deadly habit to have in society.
I got it wrong much of the time and made people very uncomfortable with my over-fawning. Sometimes I was punished for being too kind and sensitive especially to needy older boys and men. I was taught that God expected me to let anyone have their way with me. And so I did. Unfortunately for me, no one bothered to explain that this did not include allowing creeps to paw me. They expected me, who didn't even have parental care and love, to just get that this was wrong. But not wrong as in bad for me. Wrong in some quack-religious shamey way. Wrong OF me, not wrong for me.
Ironically, or not, a lot of this happened at youth groups and at church. People who should have known better, in whose care I was entrusted, put sicko older guys in with tweens and young teens. Some wer in their late 20s! And the pervy guys did what pervs do: stalk, isolate, groom and molest. Instead of taking on these bullies, and not letting it happen in the first place, cowardly "youth leaders" shamed and blamed the victim, me.
Who was I to know that "immoral" behavior was the unpardonable sin? I never knew immoral except as example. I was exposed to icky, off adult and parent behavior all my life. My mother used to make out with boyfriends in front of me. She dressed like a hooker for a church Halloween party. She talked about sex anecdotally all the time. So I let an older guy kiss me on the bus. It's what he wanted and who was I to say no? But I was made to sit in the entrance well of the bus like the class dunce. Which was fucking illegal for a start, not to mention how it made me the laughingstock. Talk about feeling like the sl-t.
So, number one, issue. Why did no one read the red flags here? Why did no one try to find out what or why I may have allowed him to? It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to piece out that molested kids are used to letting people molest them. Maybe what they should have been asking themselves was why the hell they let 20-year-olds (there were many) on OVERNIGHTERS for 13-year-olds?!? And kissing takes two, if memory serves. Why was HE not punished? Why was he given access to me in the first place??
And it wasn't just one guy or one church or one situation. I've been used as a cuddle toy by older men in so many disturbing scenarios. Like lock-ins. Where kids are literally locked in unsupervised with these known freaks? And not one person stood by me. Not one person ever confronted the bully. They just shamed me and twisted it to by my fault.
My very sexually off mother and her sexually abusive live-in punished me for letting a creepy stalker stalk me. No one told him off. No one yelled at him for creeping on their daughter. Not my mom. She flirted with him. Not my supposedly big badass stepfather. He just yelled at me. Not my own dad. He never even knew. Because NO ONE EFFING CARED. They just swiveled that camera lens away from their disturbing behavior and on to me. I was actually (illegally) kicked out of the house over it.
And this is what happens when a child is raised by people who live by one set of rules and expectations but hold her accountable to another. Dark tetrads write easy, flexible rules and do-what-you-want guidelines for themselves. And inflexible, harsh, impossible rules and do-what-we-expect guidelines for their child. Immoral behavior is what I saw and experienced not what I did. But I never knew that. I never did get, till I was in my 50s, that the pervs and their hypocrite enablers who fed me to them were the problem, not me. All I knew is I felt humiliated, ashamed and suicidal AGAIN.
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