Hello my friends. As a writer/blogger, I maintain blogs on a variety of subjects, another being lesson plans and activities for kids. And sometimes it feels like I have multiple personalities. Or live in parallel universes. On the one hand, I'm writing about fun learning experiences for children and on the other, in this blog, I'm writing about my own miserable childhood and resulting CPTSD. Maybe the one is an expiation for the other, or an attempt to help little me. I don't know.
I recently began writing here, about some of the many normal kid things narcissistic dark tetrad parents fubar for their children. Writing in my lesson plans blog about children's literature, it occurred to me how even simple pleasures like kids' books are tainted for children of selfish, arrogant, manipulative and cruel (dark tetrad) parents. It's just one example of how they rob us of our innocence and how some of us spend the rest of our lives trying to reclaim it.
What do we mean by "dark" personality parents? Well what is dark? It's not just the absence of light. It's shadows and distortions from other reflected light. Things aren't as they appear in daylight. We can't see clearly in darkness and stumble over objects. It frightens us because it's deceptive. A bathrobe hanging on the door looks like a monster waiting to pounce. Who knows what horrible dangers darkness is cloaking? And who knows what's real, the light or the shadows, the bogeyman or the bathrobe?
So with dark personalities. They're false, tricky, disingenuous, misleading. They lack light of their own or rather they hide their light (we all have light). They steal our childhood light-heartedness because they are dark hearted. They take our innocence because they are jealous that they ruined their own. They want us to be as miserable and dark and twisted as they are. They are black holes, taking and taking and never filling up. And that brings me to my point.
Dark tetrad parents do not want their children to have light or light-hearted joys. They sabotage even the simplest things. They break toys. They pervert and taint. This is very painful for me to write. It took me all my life to figure out why I was always so guilty, ashamed, fearful and confused. Not that I felt these things I WAS these things. I grew up in their narcissistic cult of controlling lack of self-control.
I was brainwashed and groomed to be the sacrificial lamb on their altars of self. I did not have a life or an identity. I was a possession. An extension. A shadow. A thing. And things don't have interests, hobbies, thoughts, needs. They exist to serve. To reflect back what selfish parents want to see. And it is a very lonely, isolated, baffling half-life.
So how did this ruin even such things as reading for me? Writing those articles about my favorite children's books, I realized that I didn't just enjoy them, I desperately needed them. As a source of life. I didn't just like the characters I worshipped them. I have always felt inferior to everyone, especially normal kids. I didn't envy them their normal lives, I felt ashamed that mine was so abnormal.
No book ever written, or kid I ever met, has ever even imagined experiences which were common occurrences for me. You cannot make this shit up. My parents couldn't manage to be normal neglectful or abusive parents. I do NOT for a minute justify "normal" abuse, like hitting and beating. I just mean that this type leaves recognizable scars. Neglected kids, sexually abused kids show visible signs. I know because I've been the teacher and reported the head lice, bad smells, bruises, cowering.
My scars and bruises were well-hidden. And they weren't scars. They are open, bleeding ulcers on my heart. My experiences so damn weird that no one would believe them. And no one ever did. I went through 21 years of life and 12 years of school without anyone ever noticing how disturbingly off my life was. Or they just buried their heads. The signs were there.
Given no bedroom and being made to sleep with infants and multiple foster kids while dad and wife had a suite of their own. And mom and boyfriend had an apartment in the basement. Me having to do all the heavy housework, childcare, cooking, cleaning. Being kicked out of the house at 16 and living on my own? Refusing to wash, hiding in the house all summer. My single mom having an over-full foster home and a live-in boyfriend and moving in a kid with a known past history of molesting younger kid. Me reporting said kid for molesting me and getting shamed for it by mom. Yeah. The signs were there.
So when I would run to my beloved books for escape, I never read anything like the the neglect, quiet abuse, exploitation and parentification I was living. Even kids in historical novels who endured terrible things, like the Holocaust, had parents that loved them and would have done anything for them if they could. Meanwhile mine didn't even bother to see to it I was safe walking to school at 5. Mine left me with strangers to go 3,000 away. Mine looking on approvingly and laughing as her boyfriend called me "blisters" and "tiny tits."
I know now, because I have compassion and common sense, that I can't have been the only one living with such awful people. But I didn't then. And I did then, too. I always felt so sorry for any other kid who was suffering. And I was pretty good, even as a kid, at reading those signs. What I never could do was read the signs in me. I thought, because I was told, that I was the problem and that all they were putting on me was normal.
So I grew up just knowing, on an unter-conscious level that I was so flawed that I didn't even deserve everyday things that everyone took for granted. Food a bed, a home, rest, sleep, toys, peace of mind, love, privacy and down time were for everyone else in their family, not me. Everything I've ever thought, felt, believed, done or had has been scorned, shamed, mocked, destroyed or taken from me by one or more of the four people who called themselves my parents.
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