Hi friends. I was just listening to psychologist Dr. Ramani discussing the difference between emotionally immature and narcissistic dark tetrad parents. And it made me wonder if my parents were just immature and not the dark tetrads I've painted them as. Which I see is more auto-gaslighting shame talking. First calling them "just" emotionally immature parents as if that wasn't hellish chaos in itself. And next, it shows how quickly I jump to the 5 E's I always do in regard to their toxic behavior: explain away, excuse, expunge, exonerate and in so doing, encourage.
And my use of the term "painted them" is telling. As if I'm purposely making them look bad. (As if I could make it worse!) That in identifying their hurtful actions bad Mary was cruelly demonizing them, ruining their reputation or destroying family trust. Well, they certainly didn't need my help on those scores. I've been indoctrinated in this dreck all my life. And the fact that even as a senior citizen, I'm still sheltering and defending them. And taking the consequences of their actions on myself. So having said all that, I'm going to enumerate the conflicting hypocritical double standards and paradoxes I lived with, to show you (and me) how they weren't just childish but selfish, arrogant, manipulative, malicious, spiteful and cruel. And how is has confused the hell into me.
Naively innocent and overtly sexual. My mother talks in this fake sincere, sweetly innocent almost babyish way. Like she's just sprung from the world freshly born. She feigns ignorance of basic sexual functions, opens her eyes wide and teehees behind her hand when someone makes a reference. Or she'll claim the moral high ground and act all righteously offended. And this same woman openly conducted a series of affairs with married men, moved a boyfriend into our house (in the early 1970s when this was verboten and no one's parent I knew did anything remotely like this). She flirted with my boyfriends and used me as a sex therapist starting around 8 years old. She forced me to listen to disgusting stuff even when I covered ears and begged her to stop. She dressed seductively and once went as a "hooker" to a church Halloween party. A costume I helped her create. I was the only kid who knew that word. She made out with boyfriends at our kitchen table and was beaten up by the wife of one of her APs. She laughed with her live-in boyfriend at me when he called me blisters in reference to my small breasts. My dad latched onto a 17 year-old when he was 35. And we all went to church every Sunday.
Bible beater and con artist and slanderous gossip monger. All my life, my mother has ridden the fence between intolerant religious bigotry and debauchery. She scams, cheats, steals, lies extorts, exploits, routinely. She does this blatantly. She preaches endlessly and supposedly reads her Bible. But she lives in complete and unapologetic contradiction. She's one of these people who wear the "Christians aren't perfect just forgiven" T-shirts and yet show zero mercy towards others. She claims all the lovely perks with none of the work. My dad proudly shows off his violin playing and shamed me for singing in the bathroom.
Ignorant, entitled arrogance with shaming deceit and scorn. Speaking of that, all four parents had a litany of sins I'd supposedly done and which they held against me. They ganged up on me and then pitted me against each other. And then elicited my sympathy against the other when it suited. All my life, I've believed I was arrogant, proud, selfish, disobedient, disloyal, mouthy, snotty, too sensitive, too critical, too "heavy" always too this and not enough that. Because my parents told me I was. Truth is I was so burdened with all my apparent sins plus all theirs, that it was a daily struggle not to end it all.
So there's more, much more, but I'm just to fried to write anymore. Thanks for reading.
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