Choosing Not to Play the Crooked Game

An old question asked of the washed-up cowboy who's lost all his coin in the saloon's game of cards as he laments that he knew the deck was stacked and he shouldn't have played:
"If you knew the game was crooked, hoss, why'd you play?"
To which the cowboy answers,

"Pardner, it was the only game in town."

I played my part in the NFOO Crazymaker game for thirty years; seventeen by the conscription of my minor status and thirteen more out of varying degrees of guilt, shame, obligation, fear and myriad other dark, compelling, binding chains of emotion.  Did I know it was crooked?  Did I know it was a fool's exercise as I ran and ran and ran myself to death on the giant hamster wheel of the parameters of my service to the needs, wants, desires and whims of the Clan's members?  Did I know that the end result, the payout, the promised reward of acceptance for my one and only self as a full-fledged member of the group was a hollow, rotten promise with less than zero chance of ever being fulfilled?

I can answer this completely honestly by saying: not usually.  I'm not sure that anyone with a normal background, that a non-abused or non-neglected person or non-ACoN person, could really understand that answer.  It seems that we either know something or we don't; that harm vs. non-harm is a rather black and white area with a firm dividing line down the middle.  At least it should be.

But for me, it's a complicated question.  I was well trained to doubt my own senses.  I was told from day one by master manipulators that what I thought was pain wasn't; that it was actually love.  That denying myself basic needs wasn't a bad thing; it was selfless giving and that my desire for reciprocation of that giving was nothing more than sinful and dirty selfishness.  That having expectations that I be treated with basic respect was wrong.  That my logical thoughts didn't really make any sense at all.  That what I said or heard or saw didn't actually happen, even when I knew it did, unless they said it did.

In a million different ways, they taught me that I was worthless, and that everything good about myself - anything that I could take even the slightest amount of pride in - would be used against me, over and over again, to cause me pain until I grew to hate those once good things about myself.

So, did I know the game was crooked?  No.  I just believed that I was crooked instead, just like I'd been told.

But I did find out, eventually.  I pushed back from the table, took the pittance of my wealth that was left and attempted to exit the game.  Shit got hairy then, let me tell you!

I persisted, though, because I had seen.  I knew.  Once I saw that they were dealing from the bottom of the deck and had aces stuffed up their sleeves, well, I couldn't unsee.  I couldn't unknow anymore.  So I had to fight my out, and I sustained some heavy injuries in the process, but I made it.

It wasn't until I'd gotten clear that I stopped to evaluate the people that I'd been sitting around that table with in the first place.  That's been an education.

I saw ENF most clearly first, as his crimes were the most dramatic, had that hint of flair that really made them stand out in memory.  Then I had to look at NM as she was the other complicit adult.  I looked deep enough to begin to understand that she was guilty of her own crimes as well, and though they were more under the radar and subtle than ENF's, they were just as if not more heinous.

The only people left to examine were my siblings; NSis, who is four years older than me and GCYB, two years my junior.  These were by far the hardest relationships for me to deconstruct.
They were my cohorts in childhood, my sometimes life-rafts in surviving the fucked up tsunami tidal wave of crazy (h/t Lisa) that was my 'family.'  We fought together in some of the same gunfights, you know?  We were comrades and friends and I thought that we would always have each other.

I remember saying, "They had to live through the same things that I did, so I think we have strong bonds and we'll find a way back to each other."  So I was a little bit naive.

I couldn't quite figure out where to put the sibling relationships for a long time, because I couldn't get past the fact that NSis and GCYB were victimized by the Nparents too.  I didn't want to compare our battle scars, afraid that my knowledge that I'd been the favorite whipping girl and scapegoat would be confirmed, but I knew that we'd been on the same side at the very least, right?  I kept getting stuck in the loop of knowing that they were abused too, and I didn't want to write them off because I just knew that if they could just see what I'd seen - if they could just know the truth - they'd be able to get out too.

It took a long time and a lot of hurt for me to understand that they weren't ever going to get out, that my notion that I'd blazed a trail that could be easily followed out of the dysfunction and that they'd follow just as soon as they could was false based on one idea and one idea only.

I slowly realized that they would never follow me out of the NFOO because they didn't want to leave the NFOO.  They have stayed within the drama-filled, hate-fueled crooked game in which the House will always take ALL because that is where they choose to be.  They're not like me.

I saw the truth.
I had to act.

They saw the truth.
They slammed the door on it and held a confab to determine who was to blame for letting the truth out of it's god-damned box in the first place.  (Guess who that was, come on, just guess.)  Then they set about trapping it and burying it again.

That's a fundamental difference, boys and girls, a philosophic deal breaker of epic proportions.

I used to wish that they could find their way out.
Now I understand that they see the exit plainly, but they're choosing to stay in the game.

If I live to be two hundred, I'm not going to understand it (anymore than I can understand how a normal drinker leaves half a beer on the table because it got warm or flat or why it's so hard to get sharks with little frickin' laser beams mounted on their heads or any other ridiculous thing.)  I do, however, understand that their choices are theirs and I am not responsible for either of those things.

I'm just glad that when I was presented with a choice, I chose to leave.

Love,
Vanci

PS: Thanks to all the bloggers out there who've been dealing with sibling issues and posting about them; your struggles always help me to define my own.