I was raised by a perfectionist, verbally abusive father and
a narcissist extreme-hoarder mother, with two older brothers 9 and 12 years my
senior. The first 6-7 years were okay, most of the crap didn't come out until
then. Then the proverbial excrement hit the oscillating device as it were. My
eldest brother - my hero - went into the military when I was 5. The younger of
the two dived into drugs, and my parents crawled into a bottle. I lived with
increasing garbage (and I mean grade A, USDA inspected garbage normal folks
throw into their trash can) knee deep in the house, a dog that didn't go
outside (ever), and an ever exponentially increasing shell that developed
around myself. From Beaver the Cleaver to Oprah qualified. I was skinny,
redheaded, freckled and short (until I was 16), which was not cool in the 70's.
My new nickname at school was "fleabag" due to the constant and
numerous bites but kind people generally just called me "red". I will
say, throughout my childhood, I did have some staunch friends who stood by me,
many do to this day. I believe that is how I am still alive. I was the youngest
brother's target for mental, physical and sexual abuse. My parent's? Still in
the bottle, didn't want to hear about what was going on with the brother
(forgot to mention, that brother was my mother's favorite and she funded his
drug habits). I even told my mother that I was going to call the health
department on her for the state of the house, and she told me “why do you want
to hurt me?” That’s all she cared about. The emergency number for my parents at
my schools was the local bar - no joke. The people of the neighborhood and at
school would put me down, as if it were my fault. “Why don’t you clean your
house?” I tried once, I was beat up for it, physically and mentally.
Two months
before my 16th birthday, my father died, my mother went bananas, and I was sent
to live with my eldest brother and his wife oversees (they were military). Out
of the fire, into the frying pan. Now, initially this was a good thing. It was
a lot of fun and the DoD school I went to was awesome. That 9 months of my life
was almost idealistic by comparison. Then we came back to the states to a new
town, mostly military but away from my friends of where I grew up and the
overseas school. Fortunately, new friends happened but the homelife went to
Hoolies. My brother and his wife were expecting their first child, which I
thought was great (remember, my brother had been my absolute hero growing up),
and, whether that is a factor, suddenly I was an outsider. Looking back, my
brother showed very psychopathic tendencies (not murderous, just self-centered
and controlling; enter abandonment issues) while his wife was very codependent
and probably narcissistic and verbally abusive. The first indication of my
brother's distance to me was when he told me "The problem with kids is
that they grow up. I like kids". In all this, through those years, I was
to blame for everything, including things I never did. The SIL seemed to take
great joy in making up stories to tell my brother, who would believer her
unconditionally. I would receive more verbal abuse in the form of snide sarcasm
and horrible psychological tactics while she looked on and smirked. I had to
work for everything, from my own food and medications (if I got sick, which
wasn’t tolerated), and later in life watched my niece and nephew get handed
life on a silver platter and become successful. Not that I begrudged them, but
I was a good kid. I was constantly compared to them in later life. I never did
drugs, never got into trouble; in fact, I was over-diligent NOT to get into
trouble. Nothing I did was ever right or acceptable. I never met expectations as
I was never told what those expectations were. And they changed if I figured
one out. Horrible head games.
Needless to say, I found a way to escape. Back to the fire,
as it were. I married a guy in the military 10 days after graduating high
school. Fire indeed. Narcissistic at best, psychopathic at worst and a
pathological liar. I would go to psychiatrists and was yanked out of them after
a few months, as the shrink would figure out that I needed to get away and get
divorced. Stupidly, I’d tell the spouse what the shrink said. After five years
of that abuse, with a broken back, brain damage, and more emotional abuse to
add to the list, my 1-1/2 yr old daughter and I left. Enter, stage left, the
stalking and threats. Fortunately, he got remarried to someone who enjoyed
being dominated (I went to high school with her) and wrote the book on
codependency (yeah, she even told me of her therapies and diagnoses). I moved
away (far away, from one coast to the other) and ended up losing custody of my
eldest after a lengthy visitation she had with her father. Naïve to the max, I
was. I ended up in a mental hospital (low security) for a month, which was the
real first part of my healing. All through this, and in later years, that “not
being good enough” despite excelling at things (4.0 average at school, etc.) I
lived in that shell and could not cope with “real life”. The family couldn’t
understand why I shut them out, because, they’d say, “We were so good to you.
Did everything for you. You are just ungrateful.” Riiiiiigggghhhhtt. You can’t
argue with people like that. They don’t want the truth, they want to be in
control.
I spent the next several years working to support myself,
though never holding a job for more than a year but mostly a few months, in and
out of counseling, in and out of questionable relationships (same
mental/emotional/sexual abuse) but making good friends as I discovered
activities that I enjoyed, never fully trusting anyone and being the “flaky
one” of any group. Even seeking just about every religious venue in hopes of
finding some real type of “forgiveness”. Didn’t help. Never really succeeding
at anything and watching my physical health take a nose dive as I went along.
Always feeling judged, always wondering and thinking people were thinking bad
thoughts of me to the point I thought I could hear them. Freaking out at
over-stimulus and negative situations which led to a false diagnosis of
bi-polar and schizophrenia in my later years. I had to learn to separate myself
from toxic people, including my own family. Mostly I got tired of being told
what I loser I was because of all my failures.
Things started looking up in my late-40’s when I met my
current husband and we got married. The downside the relationship was his
ex-wife and her family. Oh, my giddy aunt, what a set of toxic people. I can’t
begin to tell what horrible things they did to him and tried to do to us. They
set his three kids, and even were instrumental at further setting my eldest,
against us. The kids thought we were great until about 2009 when I was unable
to work due to the mental and physical issues I had made it impossible to work
for me (and still do) and thus our income went down, while child support went
up. The kids were taught by the ex that money was everything and that if we
couldn’t buy them what they wanted, we didn’t love them. I have stacks of hate
mail from these kids, kids who used to express love to us, even called me
“mom”. They are all adults now and still try to blame us for their problems.
I was programmed to respond to everyone as if I were to
blame for everything and that I was deserving of punishment. I was just a screw
up and didn’t deserve a good life. I spent the majority of my life thinking
“Why am I here if all I do is screw up? Why am I still alive?” I even felt,
perhaps, maybe I was living a Karma life from a previous life where I was a
horrible person (though I don’t believe in reincarnation). It was for my
youngest daughter’s sake that I had to gather up the strength to separate our
family from all these toxic people. Completely, and not allow them to influence
and affect our lives. It was in my early 50’s that I was properly diagnosed
with CPTSD and learning that I was allergic to some foods, preservatives, most
anti-psychotics, and herbicides/pesticides, started to get myself healthy
again. More therapy. I found natural ways of helping my brain, psyche, and
physical health through exercise, proper nutrition, supplements (not snake oil
stuff), and standing my ground. Learning to get angry and refusal to accept the
lies and manipulations from toxic people rather than allowing myself, and my
family, to be beat up and to blame. I even protect my family from these people,
as I have the strength and experience to stand up against them and recognize the
signs. It was, and is, very hard work and exhausting.
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