Contagious Blindness

I'm open about my struggles to the degree that it's appropriate in my everyday life.  I don't go around with a giant black A for abused or a scarlet S for scapegoat stitched onto my chest, but when people ask, I tell the truth.  When people tell me about their challenges and struggles in dealing with family issues, spousal issues, parenting issues, I try to engage in honest dialogue that reflects my truthful experience. 

There are a couple of reasons for this.  First, having been raised in the vortex of deception that my narcissistic Crazymaker parents created, and having removed myself from that particular cesspool, I value truth above all else.  I want to live authentically, and I practice the principle of authenticity on a daily basis.  When I screw up, I admit it.  When I do well, I allow myself to be proud and to take credit.  When I'm asked what I think... I say what I think.  This particular trait seems to be rather rare in our world and societies, at least in all the circles that I'm familiar with.  I'm not trying to be unique, I'm just trying to stay sane and I wholeheartedly subscribe to the maxim that we are as sick as our number and depth of secrets.  So, I tell the truth. 

Second, telling the truth helps me to keep my stories straight.  I've said before - the truth doesn't have versions, it just is.  Honesty, therefore, is a link to reality for me.  I've found that if I am not consistently honest about what I've been through, what they did to me, how it affected me and how I'm coping, I will quickly become confused.  I don't think I'm alone in this, but I'm pretty sure that this concept is difficult for anyone who wasn't raised with Narcs to understand.  You see, I was indoctrinated from all sides from an early age on with the idea that the Narcs had the power to change facts, history, dates, times, events and actual true accounts of reality by simply saying it wasn't so.  When they decided that the painful truths of the past or present were just not meshing with the pictures of themselves that they wanted to display on the mantle, they simply changed those truths.  They made them into bastardized versions of the truth.  And their versions of the truth - subject to further revision at any given time - became the New Truth! 

There were (and are still, I'm sure) so many instances of this revisionism, gaslighting, stonewalling and outright lying in my life with the NFOO that it truly becomes difficult to know what the truth really is.  It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack... that's piled on the back of a truck... going 70 mph down the highway... in the dark... which someone constantly removing parts of the pile and someone else constantly adding more hay to the top.  Bad metaphor, I know, but, hey it's the truth.  So, when I find the needle of truth in that mess, I hold onto it dearly.  Because truth, reality, what really happened is so very important to me.  They really can't change the truth, you know, no matter how hard they try.  It just is.

But, inability to change the truth won't stop them from trying.  Furthermore, it won't stop them from trying to cover it up, either.  They're basically professional level liars and manipulators, and they haven't gotten away with it for their entire lives by doing it poorly.  They have a system, they cover each other, it works.  Unsuspecting non-Narcs who come into contact with them are easily rubed.  How could they not be?  The Crazymakers have justifications, rationalizations, revisions of history, explanations and misdirection on their side.  EF, family lore goes, could have sold icicles to Eskimos.

Jonsi asked in the coments of my Invisibility and Dark Shadows post:
"I wonder Vanci...did anyone you ever met growing up or in your young-adulthood ever tell you that they thought your family behaved strangely or that they were abusive?"

Oh my, Jonsi!  What a normal, normal question to ask!  This made me laugh out loud, not at the question, certainly, but because it would have been so ludicrous if this had happened.  Here's the why:

They moved us around every year for a reason.  It's entirely possible to maintain a perfectly perfect projection of a facade of perfectness... for a short period of time.  I don't know how much of the grand master plan of physical isolation was completely conscious on the part of NM and EF and how much was below surface, but I'm absolutely positive that they knew at some level that if we stayed anywhere too long, people would get close.  And when 'outsiders' get close to a family as fucked up as ours was, they see through the veneer.  Most 'normal' people, granted, would turn a blind eye (and of the few who did get close to us in one way or another, the great majority did just that,) but those who got close enough to see some of the truth behind the castle gates and might have done anything about it had very little time to act or react.  They usually only began to suspect, it seems, as we were loading up the moving vans.

Even when physical isolation wasn't possible, the Crazymakers created an airtight shelter of emotional isolation.  Here's a small sample. 
When I was about 11 years old, I began to gain some serious weight.  I know now that this was partly a subconscious attempt to make myself unattractive; having been sexually abused wreaks havoc on a girl's self image, particularly as she enters into puberty.  I'd imagine I was doing some hormonally driven emotional eating too.  With the small amount of safety that my newly unattractive body gave me, I started to open up a bit.  I had a couple of close-ish girlfriends for the first time in my young life.  I started writing.  I had a teacher who took an interest in helping me into 'gifted' classes. 
I started to get comfortable with myself.  Oops.

I expressed my desire to slim down to NM.  She put me on 'slimfast.'  No kidding.  Almost 12 years old, going through puberty, gaining weight to hide shame, and she put me on a fad diet that A) doesn't really work and B) truly isn't healthy for anybody, really, but especially for a growing girl.  So, I became hungry, shamed by my hunger, sick to my stomach and generally ill at ease.  Oddly (unless you grew up with Narcs like this,) we ate dinner out in restaurants more during this six month period than any other time that I can remember in my life with the NFOO.  And at every single dinner, when the waitress would get around to asking me what I wanted, EF would say, loudly, in his best preacher-man voice, "Oh, she can't have anything!  She's on Slimfast!"  And then NM would say to him, "EF, don't say that!  You know Vanci's sensitive about her weight/dieting!"  I would get upset, of course, and my cheeks turn red when I'm ashamed. I was a glowing beacon of chubby shame sitting at a booth in public place. 

So, NM would pat my hand and say, always within ear-shot of the waitiress (audience,) "Oh, don't be upset, it's not your fault, Vanci.  It's my genes, you know, and so my fault that you tend toward chubby.  I've had to work so hard all my life to keep the weight off..."

Unless you grew up with this, unless you've had this happen to you, well, at worst to an observer it just seems weird or it seems like these are parents who don't have a firm grasp on the finer etiquette points of social conversation.  At best it appears to be the dialogue of two parents who are lovingly trying to help their overweight daughter to be healthier or fit into society better.  No one thinks, "Oh, that nicely dressed married couple over there with the big smiles and the promise of a nice tip are trying to cover up that they routinely torture and humiliate at least one of their children." 

They are just so damned good at the show of it all.  They have layers and layers of nice painted on the outside; so many that it's really impossible to tell where one lie starts and another begins.  They just seem like such nice people.  There's a comment I've heard often, and it's totally true!  They do seem like nice people, because they act like nice people, and they're good at this charade, because the maintenance of this farce is absolutely critical to the maintenance of the style of living and life they want to have.   If they seemed rotten, they'd never be able to get away with it - if they acted on the outside like the monsters that they truly are, CPS would have taken all three of us kids away pronto. 

So, unfortunately, no, dear Jonsi, no one ever said those things to me.  Most outsiders weren't allowed to be close enough to see beyond the masks.  Those few who did make it through weren't allowed access for very long.  Of those who did glimpse the reality of the NFOO, most were treated immediately and intensely to the blindingly convincing show of Narc-y Nice Nice.  I don't know of any outsider who ever infiltrated to the core, honestly.

And this is the last piece of this answer, and the reason for this post's title.  They lied so well that 99% of people believed the lies.  Further, they created a lose-lose for me: tell the truth and we'll destroy you, go along with the lie and we'll leave you alone, sometimes.  But mostly, and this is the sad part for me, they held so much of my self-worth in their palms, that even when I was the subject of the abuse, I was willing to lie along with them to cover up their 'sins.'  After all, even if I didn't believe it was totally my fault, did I really want to create a situation that would leave our family homeless?  Take away EF's livelihood?  Destroy my mother?  Hurt my sister?  Devastate my brother?  So I drank the kool-aid, you know? 

And then, I grew up.  I had lots and lots of 'friends' and acquaintances, too, but they didn't really know me.  How could they?  I learned inauthenticity over my baby food jars.  I, too, as the child of manipulative narcissists, can make you believe anything I want you to, should I choose.  And with all those friends and acquaintances, I chose to make them believe that I was fine, just fine, can't you see how fine I am.  This repression of my pain, primarily, is what led me to the bottle... the release of this repression is what started me down the road to healing. 

I don't think that the outsiders we came into contact with were neccesarily stupid, though.  I think they just fell victim to the sway of the Narcs, who are very good at their brand of hypnosis.  At least that's what I'd like to believe; I really want to think that if there had been any adult in my life long enough to see the reality of my childhood, they'd have spoken up.  I'd like to believe that if I'd been capable of being authentic with any of my friends or acquaintances in young adulthood, they would have seen the reality of the situation and come to my aid.  I'd like, honestly, to believe that people are generally good at a core level. 

And so, that's what I am - honest and authentic and very, very open.  I hope beyond hope that my openess, my authenticity, my 100% real and true story can help someone else.  And I keep my eyes peeled and my tongue at the ready because I want to be sure that I can be that voice to someone else if the opportunity arises.  I want to be able to say (and I have in the past and it's helped others,) "Listen to me, please.  You have a right to be treated with decency; you have a right to be treated with respect; above all, in all circumstances, you have an absolute right to defend yourself and an absolute right to safety."

Does it make a difference?  To others - I hope so.  To me?  It makes all the difference.

Love,
Vanci