Hi friends. So, if you're new to the blog, welcome, but warning also. What I'm writing is incredibly raw and possibly triggering. It certainly triggers me. It's not a pretty place around here right now. I'm finally dealing with the shitshow that my life growing up was. The deeper I go the more toxic ick I find. How that poor kid that was me survived in nothing short of miraculous. Part of helping her includes looking a pictures of young me. And what I find is disturbing. You can see the malignant narcissistic abuse, toxic shame and CPTSD written all over my face. And for the first time ever, I'm feeling disgust for her not with her. It's appalling.
If you aren't new, you'll know that I've been opening up about the systematic malignant narcissistic abuse from four parents, two bio, two step. What I should say is four authority figures. They were no more parents to me than the worst bosses you can imagine. The parentification, abuse (physical, emotional, sexual, social and spiritual) exploitation, manipulation, neglect, scapegoating, abandonment, endangerment, shaming and gaslighting are nauseating.
For most of my life, I've excused and defended them. I believed their gaslighting that I was the problem for everything. I was selfish, a liar, a show off, childish, too sensitive, a burden, a nuisance but also a servant, responsible for everyone. But if I needed proof that I wasn't making it up I had only to look at myself in pictures. The CPTSD, toxic shame and rigid fear were written all over my face.
I wasn't just awkward, I was turned inward. My face was usually screwed up with my mouth in a tightly controlled grimace, like I was clamping myself shut lest something escape. I know now that it was terror that the truth of what was happening would come out. See, I felt responsible for it all. When my dad beat me, my fault. When my mom's boyfriend screamed and threatened me, or sexually harassed me, my fault. When a kid in my mom's foster care tried to rape me, and she didn't believe me, my fault. When I didn't mother my dad's wife's kids to her specs, my fault. When my mom did or allowed weird, dangerous, sick things to happen to me, my fault. When she abandoned me, my fault. When my dad told me he was gonna kill himself and there was nothing I could do, my fault.
So they didn't take many pictures of me. I was the invisible kid. Most are ones Grampa took. But they all show me obviously miserable. What I was holding in so tightly was toxic shame, rigid fear and all those secrets that caused them. I was literally trying to keep my mouth closed to keep from screaming. Or throwing up. And I was so ashamed of myself and crippled with fear. And it wasn't just in pictures that this showed. My cousin whom I do not remember meeting despite him saying we hung out fairly regularly, says I always seemed distant, preoccupied, closed off. He thought I was a snob. But the truth was so much different.
By the time I was 16, I'd experienced countless things that made me believe that I wasn't fit to live. CPTSD. And it just got worse. And it shows. But now that I'm an adult, and not keeping secrets anymore, I see myself differently. I see the terror and despair. I remember the feelings and why I felt that way. I remember the cruelty and it fucking nauseates me. I realize that I'm ashamed but not of myself. I'm disgusted by how my parents treated me.
I contrast it with how I, even flawed as I am, treated my kids. I see how this toxic shame and fear made me do things I wouldn't normally have done. How I spanked my kids because my parents hit me and told me God expected me to hit my kids. They didn't hit their other kids and then shamed me when I obeyed them. It's all so disgusting hypocritical and backstabbing.
I have a long way to go to get to a better place. But at least seeing the trauma in my face, affirms that despite their gaslighting, it did happen. And sorting out who was injured and who was to blame, helps too.
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