Freedom From Fear

I've been enjoying the narc-free holiday season to its fullest while surrounded by people who are lovely, loving and safe.  Though I haven't posted much over the last couple weeks, I've been thinking of you and sending out my wishes for the new year; that you will be happy, healthy and free from fear.

Fear was the primary weapon of NM, ENF, NSis and GCYB, both in my childhood and in my enslavement to the NFOO as an adult.  They counted on my fear and used it as a way to manipulate me into the position and place that they deemed me worthy of.  They used my fear to define my role as the Scapegoat and Bad Seed in order to use me to their ends and to protect themselves from blame.  That's really what all the gaslighting and mind-twisting was about, you see.  It's so much easier to remain the good guy despite your evil actions if you have a consistently believable fall guy (or gal.)

It worked for a very long time.  I was afraid of losing their 'love,' of being wrong, being bad, stepping outside of the lines.  I feared retribution and retaliation, both of the overt and subtle varieties.  I feared losing the only 'family' I'd known so much that even after I began my own family I still heeded every beck and call from the NFOO.  I was still under their spell, which was largely generated by fear of being cast out.

Even after I was reasonably sure that the structure and foundation of the family I was raised in was a sick, putrid shambles of shame, I stuck around.  I was so afraid that if I made a stand, if I stood up for what I KNEW was right against the wishes of the Crazymaker Clan, I'd be thrown out.  Banished.  I made the best of it for as long as I could even to the detriment of my family and my self; my soul, my heart, my health, my mind all suffered.   There's an old story that one cowpoke asks another who's been cleaned out by the town saloon's crooked game of Farro, "If you knew the game was crooked, why'd you play?"   And the destitute cowpoke responds, "Well, it was the only game in town!" It was truly all I knew.  But then... one day... I woke up.

I took that ultimate step of gathering my strength and my wits about me and I said, ENOUGH.  I drew a boundary even though I knew it would go down like the Hindenberg and I was very, very afraid that my boundary would bring about what I had always known would be the outcome of my bucking the system.  I'd always known, specifically since I was 13 and tried to change the NFOO dynamics, that should I step too far out of bounds, I'd be cast out.  I knew that they were all going to gang up on me.  After all, they'd certainly done it before.  Many times.

But I did it anyway, because it was right and because it had to be done.  We scapegoats are the strongest members of our clans, I believe, and if we weren't when we were originally 'chosen' for the role, years of survived abuse sure do serve to toughen us up!

So there I was, out in the desert all by myself and still carrying the piled-on sins of the members of the NFOO.  Was I lonely?  Sure.  Was I scared?  Absolutely.  Did I feel lost?  As a ball in high weeds.

I stuck to it, though, and I did this by seeking to understand.  Originally I wanted to find a way to understand them, I'll admit it.  I wanted to figure out how they ticked so that I could find a way to fix it and get things back to normal.  I was fiercely indoctrinated and well trained that this was my role, unfortunately, and a LOT of my time and energy in the first year of semi-NC was spent trying to find a way back to what was comfortable with just a few changes. I had a serious case of the IF's: if I could just be better, if I could just speak clearly, if I could just figure out a way to make it work...

I couldn't, of course, because -as I began to realize over time and with some distance from the daily ration of shit they wanted to feed me - the problem didn't lie with me.  And, sadly, they've no interest in doing better, being better, in changing.  They have a heavily invested interest in me changing BACK to what they want me to be, but that's the only problem that they see: me.

So, this stale-mate, standoff, state of perpetual No Contact remains.  I am effectively out.  My fear, it seems, was based in reality: what I knew would happen, did.

But, and here's the linchpin for me, now that I'm no longer a part of the Clan, it's been so easy to see that the result of my banishment has been 95% positive.  If I no longer have a mother, father, sister or brother, so be it, because the only mother, father, sister and brother I'd ever had were bad, mean, awful versions of a mother, father, sister and brother.

I'm free.
In the interest of trying to express on the page what I am screaming with joy, allow me to repeat;
I.  Am.  Free!

Free from their demands and vanities, free from their soul sucking and financially draining presence, free from the self doubt and manipulation that was their mainstay in the attempt to ruin Vanci.  I'm free from their labels and their late-night rants and their fucked up, sad, pathetic lives.

The 5% that I regret is that I will not be able to have a relationship with my nephew, who is my crazy NSis's son.  And that sucks.  But it's a pretty small portion, and the benefit outweighs the cost.

Mostly, though, what I relish is that I am free from fear.
I thought initially after the separation that I'd lost it all, and for awhile that's exactly what I felt like.  I sat in it long enough, though, to come to understand that what I'd really lost were the shackles of fear I'd been living in forever.  They threw me out and I survived it.  What a small step from there it was to start learning how to thrive and live in this world without fear.

I wish you all the best, and I especially wish you freedom from fear.

Love,
Vanci