Hi again. Lots of waking up going on around here, about parental abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, parentification, scapegoating and gaslighting I experienced from four parent figures. And I finally get why they treated me so badly. It has to do with their dangerous combo of self-righteous, self-centered, selfish and self-delusional. I also get now why it took me so long to see it.
For the last six decades, I believed that I lived in a loving family with loving people. I believed this because I was told it. I didn't see evidence of it, quite the contrary. What I saw was unloving behavior. My parents not only hurt and allowed others to hurt me but encouraged them to do so. Unrealistic, unsafe and unhealthy things were expected of me. I was expected to care for and parent my adult parents. I was made to raise their children. I was not given basic essentials. I was stolen from. I was exposed to sexual predators and very off sexual behavior by my mom. I was deprived of a bed, bedroom and finally kicked out of my home. My biological parents told me that their new spouses were my bosses, that whatever they said was law and that I had to care and provide for them.
My parents scammed and cheated their way through life. They moved to Alaska to "convert the Indians" when I was six. They had no jobs, no home and no money. We squatted in various places and I'd have had nothing if it weren't for a caring native couple. They both left me to wander alone. My dad went no contact for over a year, doing such things as going to LA to witness to the Manson girls. They dumped me at a summer camp (how I don't know as 6 year olds are too young for camp). Then she left me behind in with strangers on an a remote island 1,000 miles up the Inland passage from Haines where we started out.
My mother cheated on my dad and then had a series of affairs with married men. Then they got a divorce. When my dad finally came home, he (34) started dating a 17 year old. Then he married a lazy selfish woman who disliked me and used me as her servant. My dad scapegoated me for the rest of my life. While running a foster care home, my mother moved her unemployed, violent, pervert boyfriend into our house when I was 11. She lied about it, moved herself and her boyfriend as far from the children as possible and left me to care for four special needs children under four. She allowed boyfriend to whip the children. She threw me in the path of a dangerously sociopath foster kid who molested me and then got mad at me for reporting it. She took a girl to have an abortion (while claiming to be pro-life).
So all this sounds like gutter trash behavior and it is. And it might be to some extent understandable if they didn't know better. But they were not raised like this. My grandparents on both side were good, kind, caring people. My parents went out of their way to do the most despicable things knowing full well what they were doing. They were warned not to. They got in legal trouble. But it was all someone else's fault, often mine. In short they did what they wanted when and where they wanted and expected no censure or repercussions.
But for all the blatant immorality, the irony is that my parents considered themselves very moral upright people. They preached God and religion and told other people how to live their lives. Hell, they even called themselves missionaries and preachers. This is that dangerous combo I was referring to: self-centered and self-righteous. And they treated me so badly for the simple reason that I was the one roadblock in their fantasies.
I was the "x" they couldn't factor out. Not by anything I did or said. Just because I existed. I was the reality that showed up all their unreal, irrational, delusions. I was the truth they couldn't ignore because I remembered all the crazy they had done. I lived it. I don't know if they have been afraid I'd bring it up or if they actually felt some conscience pricking.
They needn't have worried about me. I never would have told. I was too empathetic and caring. I wanted to believe them. I defended and protected them. Regardless, they began launching very early, systematic gaslighting about every single thing that happened. They lied, covered, blamed, trauma dumped, weaponized, manipulated, exploited, twisted and shamed me into silence. Whatever self-care I might have exercised in telling someone and getting help was torched on the altar of their ruthless selfishness.
There were only two times I confronted anything (and then only minor stuff none of the really bad stuff). That was a few years ago, I mentioned a few things to each parent. Their responses lying, self-pity, gaslighting, shaming, blaming, distorting, covering, trauma dumping and abusive anger all over again. Which was unpleasant but not as scary as I thought it would be. And it served to affirm that A) I was right, these things happened and they were that bad and B) they've been acting this way for years. I just couldn't see it.
So finally, why did they treat me so badly? My parents don't like not getting their own way. What they want changes without warning as frequently as I change underwear. They not only expect others keep up and not to question but to applaud every bad, hurtful, stupid thing they do. They expect their version of everything to be accepted. They have lived so long in their narcissistic fantasy that they believe their own lies. And woe to those who they believe to be thwarting them in what they want. Heads will roll.
So despite the fact that I did everything they expected, I was in the wrong for just being there. For surviving. Because they can twist and lie all they want, to others. But they can't lie to God. He knows. Now if they just confessed and admitted, He'd forgive. But they want it both ways, to do wrong things and but not to feel wrong about it. They want God to not only accept their wrongs but to say they are right. It's actually Him they are punishing for not letting them have their way. But Him in the person of me.
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