Hi all! It's been a roller coaster of a couple weeks involving a business trip and an injury that's kept me from posting - who knew that an index finger could cause such excrutiating pain while typing? ;) Although I'm becoming fairly good at this whole hunt and peck style of typing, I'm having trouble reconciling that I simply cannot type as fast as I can think! I'll be healed up in a few days and will return in force - lots of thoughts cookin' in the old brain - but until then I wanted to re-post this comment I received from KFL5 on my The Big Picture post with a request that anyone with ideas for her respond with their own wisdom and experience.
She asks:
Thank you for this post! Glad I'm not the only one with thoughts like these. I sent my mother an email in Dec. saying that I'd like to communicate via email for a while because phone conversations have not been constructive, and that I think everyone of us should be accountable for what we say to each other (in my mind, verbal abuse from her and my 2 siblings; gaslighting and denial of horrible things said to me, etc.). She has completely ignored the letter's content, but sent a cordial email on Christmas and another for my birthday. That's it. Anyone else deal with the heartbreaking feeling of abandonment when you are finally able to set some emotional boundaries? How silly of me to think that my NM would actually have a heart and try to work through our relationship. Nah, easier to just ignore the elephant and keep up your Emily Post facade. Do I wait until eternity for a response? If I give in first and acknowledge that she ignored my email, am I feeding her N supply??? Please help, experienced folks! Your blogs are keeping my head above water. Thank you for your courage and honesty! K.
I, of course, have many thoughts in answer to your questions, K, but I'm going to have to save them until I can articulate without having to backspace every two characters. (Grrrr!!!) I will say, though, that in my opinion you opened up a conversation that you feel you need to have honestly with your mother regarding the non-constuctive and hurtful conversations, and her response is at the very least, dismissive. By following the 'letter of the law' while refusing to acknowledge the actual core issues, she's either denying - yet again - that those issues exist or she's making it a game to try to ensure that you break your own tentative boundary BEFORE she does, thereby making you - yet again - the 'bad guy' while absolving herself. (I can hear my own NM here, "Well, I followed all of Vanci's silly little rules and she still isn't happy!")
I won't tell you what to do, but I will tell you that I think you are asking yourself - and all of us - the absolutely right questions and I acknowledge the difficulty of your doing so while admiring you for your courage. Keep asking!
Love,
Vanci
Showing posts with label gaslighting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gaslighting. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
What It Feels Like and What It Really Is
Any survivor of abuse, and I am convinced that all ACoNs are survivors of abuse to some degree or another, can relate to the process of having to separate reality from fiction. It's a difficult thing to do, and that might be the understatement of the year.
We take for granted that the world around us is tangible, real and mostly unchanging. A rock, when touched, feels like a rock. It's coarse or gritty, perhaps smooth or polished, but it is unflinchingly solid and it feels, always, like a rock.
To learn how to discern between what we have known as the truth and what the truth really is, well, it's a tricksy process. Like touching a mold of jello and discovering that this, yes, this gelatinous mound of quivering slickness, this is what a rock really feels like.
How do we really know? We take for granted that rocks, as we know them, feel like rocks. Chicken tastes like chicken. Water is wet and wet is what water is. Red is red, not yellow or mauve. Right?
How do we learn to see truth? Changing our idea of what we've known as fact goes against human nature. We are not, inherently, creatures of faith. We need tangible, hard, cold, factual proof. Evidence, that's what we crave. And once we discover, uncover or simply remember the truth, once we have our proof, what do we do when the certainty of fact as we now have it butts firmly up against and clashes glaringly with the former certainty of fact that we used to know. How do we know the difference? What is it, really? Jello or a rock?
My mother, in the reality of presence that she presents to the world at large, is a kind, lovable, caring person. She talks the talk and walks the walk that supports these presuppositions, as long as you are willing to take the surface value of her projection as fact. She's a frail and weak old lady who's had a lot of health issues and really just wants to be around young people. Just don't scratch the surface. Push against the idea of herself that she wants you to believe as the 'good' matriarch, as the mother of the year and world's finest grandmother and you'll discover the rot inside the polished shell. In the tradition of the essence of all emotional vampires, she vants to suck your blooood. But, the veneer is good as she's a master manipulator. It's difficult to see through, especially when we, as good people, want to believe the lie. Most people wouldn't ever think to crack the shell in the first place.
She denied me basic safety and protection as a child, from the world outside the doors of my childhood houses as well as the world inside those doors - my siblings, my father, herself. When I excelled in life, she questioned me to the point of forcing me to second-guess my achievements. When I shone, she diminished my glow unless and until I pointed it in the direction that best suited her purposes; most often I was allowed to be 'good' only in such a capacity as it made her and her clan look 'good.' When I rebelled and refused to play the Happy Clan game anymore, she reacted with neglect, at best, and outright deceptive manipulation, at worst. She ground on me to have relationships with others that she knew would either exemplify and glorify her, as my mother, or that would keep me in my place of subservience within the plan. I was not allowed to do anything that was for my sole and internal benefit and growth, unless it happened by chance to coincide with her desires for her own amplification of self.
All of these tactics, these strategies, were easy for her to execute when I was a child. A child, after all, wants nothing more than to be loved, particularly by their primary caregiver. In fact, a child must be loved in order to thrive. And when we, as children, need love and are given specific dogmas and rules from the only source of love near to us in order to attain that love, we will follow those rules in order to gain the necessary love we so desperately need, even if they hurt us. We don't know that it's nothing more than a carrot on a stick, perhaps with a permanent marker scribble of L-O-V-E across it. We learn that there will be no 'love' without succumbing to the stick, and that 'love' feels like nothing more than that stick and carrot routine. This is the essence of conditioning.
I'm reminded of the old saying that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist.
We have, often, an inkling, that something about this abusive false reality we are given just is not right. It's a feeling in the pit of our stomachs or perhaps a subconsciously cued story idea that we write about when we begin to learn to express ourselves on the page. Maybe we draw pictures with a dark and barely glimpsed undercurrent of terror. Perhaps we stuff our known but unadmitted pain so deeply within our souls that we think it's gone forever; denial is a powerful tool. Then it comes out sideways when we choose abusive partners or we seek to kill ourselves slowly with drugs or alcohol. Maybe we go on for decades believing the lies are reality, and then we wake up one day and something has conspired in our lives to pull back the veil. It's ugly, reality, once we have to see it for what it really is.
It felt, for a long time, like I had a caring and loving mother who wanted the best for me and who would always be there for me. Of course, I disappointed her often, usually without understanding how or why, as her greatest disappointments in me were typically at times when I was happiest with myself. I assumed that I was the failure, I was the disappointment and the problem. How could I not be? Rocks don't feel like Jello, they feel like rocks. I had always been the problem, why would I believe anything differently?
But always, there was that niggling little itch in my brain that cued me, that made me feel like I was missing something, that there was a piece of the puzzle missing and something just wasn't right.
And then one day, I saw. For real. Reality, not a version of reality, but what was true and actual and factual. That's the day that I lost my false relationship with my mother. And that's the day that - eventually - ended my relationship with my mother, too. I could only stay in the room with the monster as long as I could deny that's what she was.
I saw my mother for the truth of the monster that she really was, and is. What she'd taught me was love, wasn't, it was abuse. Red became yellow for awhile and rocks turned into Jello.
But here's the beauty of reality: what an untruth feels like can be changed. Real is real and the reality and truth of my life has become this, just this, no matter what it feels like, I am supremely and confidently aware every single day that I am a good person.
I am good.
No matter what she wanted me to think or feel, then or now.
I am good, and that's the truth, that's what's real.
The longer I do not have the unseen devil in my life, the better I am.
For that absence of evil in my life, I am truly grateful, and that is also real and good.
Love,
Vanci
We take for granted that the world around us is tangible, real and mostly unchanging. A rock, when touched, feels like a rock. It's coarse or gritty, perhaps smooth or polished, but it is unflinchingly solid and it feels, always, like a rock.
To learn how to discern between what we have known as the truth and what the truth really is, well, it's a tricksy process. Like touching a mold of jello and discovering that this, yes, this gelatinous mound of quivering slickness, this is what a rock really feels like.
How do we really know? We take for granted that rocks, as we know them, feel like rocks. Chicken tastes like chicken. Water is wet and wet is what water is. Red is red, not yellow or mauve. Right?
How do we learn to see truth? Changing our idea of what we've known as fact goes against human nature. We are not, inherently, creatures of faith. We need tangible, hard, cold, factual proof. Evidence, that's what we crave. And once we discover, uncover or simply remember the truth, once we have our proof, what do we do when the certainty of fact as we now have it butts firmly up against and clashes glaringly with the former certainty of fact that we used to know. How do we know the difference? What is it, really? Jello or a rock?
My mother, in the reality of presence that she presents to the world at large, is a kind, lovable, caring person. She talks the talk and walks the walk that supports these presuppositions, as long as you are willing to take the surface value of her projection as fact. She's a frail and weak old lady who's had a lot of health issues and really just wants to be around young people. Just don't scratch the surface. Push against the idea of herself that she wants you to believe as the 'good' matriarch, as the mother of the year and world's finest grandmother and you'll discover the rot inside the polished shell. In the tradition of the essence of all emotional vampires, she vants to suck your blooood. But, the veneer is good as she's a master manipulator. It's difficult to see through, especially when we, as good people, want to believe the lie. Most people wouldn't ever think to crack the shell in the first place.
She denied me basic safety and protection as a child, from the world outside the doors of my childhood houses as well as the world inside those doors - my siblings, my father, herself. When I excelled in life, she questioned me to the point of forcing me to second-guess my achievements. When I shone, she diminished my glow unless and until I pointed it in the direction that best suited her purposes; most often I was allowed to be 'good' only in such a capacity as it made her and her clan look 'good.' When I rebelled and refused to play the Happy Clan game anymore, she reacted with neglect, at best, and outright deceptive manipulation, at worst. She ground on me to have relationships with others that she knew would either exemplify and glorify her, as my mother, or that would keep me in my place of subservience within the plan. I was not allowed to do anything that was for my sole and internal benefit and growth, unless it happened by chance to coincide with her desires for her own amplification of self.
All of these tactics, these strategies, were easy for her to execute when I was a child. A child, after all, wants nothing more than to be loved, particularly by their primary caregiver. In fact, a child must be loved in order to thrive. And when we, as children, need love and are given specific dogmas and rules from the only source of love near to us in order to attain that love, we will follow those rules in order to gain the necessary love we so desperately need, even if they hurt us. We don't know that it's nothing more than a carrot on a stick, perhaps with a permanent marker scribble of L-O-V-E across it. We learn that there will be no 'love' without succumbing to the stick, and that 'love' feels like nothing more than that stick and carrot routine. This is the essence of conditioning.
I'm reminded of the old saying that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist.
We have, often, an inkling, that something about this abusive false reality we are given just is not right. It's a feeling in the pit of our stomachs or perhaps a subconsciously cued story idea that we write about when we begin to learn to express ourselves on the page. Maybe we draw pictures with a dark and barely glimpsed undercurrent of terror. Perhaps we stuff our known but unadmitted pain so deeply within our souls that we think it's gone forever; denial is a powerful tool. Then it comes out sideways when we choose abusive partners or we seek to kill ourselves slowly with drugs or alcohol. Maybe we go on for decades believing the lies are reality, and then we wake up one day and something has conspired in our lives to pull back the veil. It's ugly, reality, once we have to see it for what it really is.
It felt, for a long time, like I had a caring and loving mother who wanted the best for me and who would always be there for me. Of course, I disappointed her often, usually without understanding how or why, as her greatest disappointments in me were typically at times when I was happiest with myself. I assumed that I was the failure, I was the disappointment and the problem. How could I not be? Rocks don't feel like Jello, they feel like rocks. I had always been the problem, why would I believe anything differently?
But always, there was that niggling little itch in my brain that cued me, that made me feel like I was missing something, that there was a piece of the puzzle missing and something just wasn't right.
And then one day, I saw. For real. Reality, not a version of reality, but what was true and actual and factual. That's the day that I lost my false relationship with my mother. And that's the day that - eventually - ended my relationship with my mother, too. I could only stay in the room with the monster as long as I could deny that's what she was.
I saw my mother for the truth of the monster that she really was, and is. What she'd taught me was love, wasn't, it was abuse. Red became yellow for awhile and rocks turned into Jello.
But here's the beauty of reality: what an untruth feels like can be changed. Real is real and the reality and truth of my life has become this, just this, no matter what it feels like, I am supremely and confidently aware every single day that I am a good person.
I am good.
No matter what she wanted me to think or feel, then or now.
I am good, and that's the truth, that's what's real.
The longer I do not have the unseen devil in my life, the better I am.
For that absence of evil in my life, I am truly grateful, and that is also real and good.
Love,
Vanci
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Making Life More Fair
The majority of my day to day life is full of contentment; there's peace and safety, joy and humor, satisfaction in jobs well done, lots of learning and growing. It's all good, most of the time, and when it's not, I've gotten very good at reminding myself that the dark clouds on my internal horizon are fleeting and infrequent. And I've been given a built in sort of barometer to measure my attitude against - I happen to work in a place that is filled with some largely, well, unhappy people.
They tend to complain a lot. I'm overgeneralizing, I know, and lumping a whole melting pot of personalities together under the umbrella of 'they,' but I'm talking about the vague sense of unrest, melancholy and joylessness that runs through the place as an undercurrent, so I feel okay about the blanket approach.
Every time I walk into the breakroom that all the departments in the building share, if there is another soul in the room, it seems that there is a gripe that needs to be aired. Today there was carrot cake and angel food cake in celebration of one of our co-worker's birthday. I walked into the room and commented on how nice the cakes looked. There were two ladies sitting at the table eating cake. One complained that there wasn't any chocolate cake. The other complained that the cakes were ruining her diet.
I thought, but did not say, "Oh shut up! There's cake! Free cake! Two choices of cake!" There is a part of me that reacts strongly, almost viscerally, to what I perceive as ungratefullness on the part of others. I think this can be directly linked to the unfairness that I was shown from an early age by NM and EF and later in life by OS and YB too. It's something that's difficult for me to talk about, though, because I was also taught early on that I am not allowed to notice or comment on the unfairness - my FOO firmly believed that lack of acknowledgement of a practice, behavior or thing has the magical ability to - poof! - make the unwanted thing just go away.
I was taught that I could not acknowledge the unfairness my parents excercised in how they treated their children, and that if I did need to point out the unfairness, well, that just meant that I was a whiner. There was something wrong with me, don'tcha know... Didn't I understand how hard they were trying to support me? Didn't I know that I was not an easy child to raise? Didn't I realize that it was easier for me to take care of myself than it was for OS or YB, as I was so capable? Really, they wanted me to believe, they were just leveling the playing field for me.
Here's how it worked ~ school was easy for me, they said, becuase I'd always seemingly effortlessly acheived A's in all my classes. Yes, all my classes, forever, at least until the 10th grade. I skipped the 8th grade entirely, just went from 7th to 9th, and still carried A's. It was more difficult for OS and YB, my parents explained, so really what they were paying compliments to OS and YB for on those report cards with A's and B's and C's was effort. Which, of course implied that my A's came with no effort, and therefore I deserved no or less praise for my accomplishments. I was minimized, as were my, ahem, efforts.
That's just one example of the way the game was played. I swallowed it for years without complaint, largely because I didn't want to appear to be ungrateful. I was trained to be grateful for scraps from the metaphorical table of love and affection, all while watching the golden children be fed a feast.
The saddest part to me is how well ingrained this minimization and de-humanizing became. Right as the planet was cracking four years ago, we had our final Christmas with the FOO. It was a typical one - NM and EF 'hosted' the festivites which worked out well for OS and YB as they (mid-30's and late 20's respectively) lived at the family home, too. So, true to scapegoat form, I was the only family member who lived outside the clan bubble. I packed up my DH and daughters... and the gifts... and the food... and the games and everything else Christmas-related and we hauled the 15 miles out to the clan compound.
I cooked a lot of the meal and helped to clean it up - again, this was an expectation fulfilled rather than a gift of service on my part. The time came to open presents and everyone sat in a circle with their 'pile.' OS and YB and even OS's husband had HUGE piles of gifts in front of them; 25-30 each, all but three or four from NM and EF. My DH had about eight gifts in front of him. I had one very large box.
I'd asked for pots and pans. I normally hesitate to specify what kind of gift I would like - I'm not sure if this is due to my inner knowledge that 'they' wouldn't get me something I really wanted anyway or if it's because I was conditioned so early on and so consistently with the idea that it was my role to be grateful for whatever I received, even if it was only scraps. But I was starting to grow and change before that last Christmas, and I was becoming stronger and clearer. So, when I'd been asked what I would like for Christmas, I responded in a relatively normal way. I asked for pots and pans. Simple enough, right?
I noticed the gift count, but I thought, "Well, I'm sure that my gift was just more expensive than all the smaller gifts OS and YB have. Maybe they just packed a bunch of gifts into one big box."
When I opened the large box, it was full of pots and pans, alright. Dusty, used pots and pans wrapped in newspaper. EF explained that he 'just couldn't find any nice pans' that I would like, so he'd decided to take a bunch of his used pots and pans and give them to me instead. Some of the pans still had little flecks of crusted-on food in them.
I swallowed the hurt and the pain and the shame and the absolute heart-break of the validation that I was, in fact, less important to my parents than my siblings and I said thank you. It took awhile for OS and YB to make their way through their piles of gifts, so I watched and smiled and ooh'd and aah'd over what they received. I played my role to perfect dysfunctional pitch, but there was just a smidge of uncomfortable truth breaking through my defensive walls. I was so, so uncomfortable, even if I didn't allow it to show through the outer veneer.
When we, finally, arrived home later that night, DH flipped his lid. He pointed out the unfairness and wanted to know why I hadn't said anything. "I can't believe they break the bank on OS and YB and they give you one crappy box of hand me downs! I can't believe you accept the way they treat you! They treat their dogs better than you; the dogs had more gifts than you!" And then he delivered the kicker, the line that really cracked me open - I can still hear his voice as clear as day; "No one else in the entire WORLD is allowed to treat you like they do! No one!"
And it clicked for me. It was only one tangible example of the scapegoating, the unfairness and the cruelty, but it's one of the first incidents that I was able to see from a slightly removed to normal perspective. It helped me later on as I moved into No Contact with the FOO as a way to remember that I was slighted, that the family was 'out to get me' (and keep me in my place,) and that no matter how they tried to revise history, gaslight me, diminish me or flat out lie, it wasn't true. It's not really paranoia if people are, in fact, out to get you, is it?
I carry a mental picture of that one box; those dusty/used/scratched up pans. I take it out when I need a reminder that gratitude is my choice in life, but there's no rule that says I have to be grateful for being kicked around. I don't have to be grateful for crumbs anymore; I don't need those poisoned scraps.
I'll make my own feast in life, and maybe I'll have a little of that carrot cake in the break room, too.
Love,
Vanci
They tend to complain a lot. I'm overgeneralizing, I know, and lumping a whole melting pot of personalities together under the umbrella of 'they,' but I'm talking about the vague sense of unrest, melancholy and joylessness that runs through the place as an undercurrent, so I feel okay about the blanket approach.
Every time I walk into the breakroom that all the departments in the building share, if there is another soul in the room, it seems that there is a gripe that needs to be aired. Today there was carrot cake and angel food cake in celebration of one of our co-worker's birthday. I walked into the room and commented on how nice the cakes looked. There were two ladies sitting at the table eating cake. One complained that there wasn't any chocolate cake. The other complained that the cakes were ruining her diet.
I thought, but did not say, "Oh shut up! There's cake! Free cake! Two choices of cake!" There is a part of me that reacts strongly, almost viscerally, to what I perceive as ungratefullness on the part of others. I think this can be directly linked to the unfairness that I was shown from an early age by NM and EF and later in life by OS and YB too. It's something that's difficult for me to talk about, though, because I was also taught early on that I am not allowed to notice or comment on the unfairness - my FOO firmly believed that lack of acknowledgement of a practice, behavior or thing has the magical ability to - poof! - make the unwanted thing just go away.
I was taught that I could not acknowledge the unfairness my parents excercised in how they treated their children, and that if I did need to point out the unfairness, well, that just meant that I was a whiner. There was something wrong with me, don'tcha know... Didn't I understand how hard they were trying to support me? Didn't I know that I was not an easy child to raise? Didn't I realize that it was easier for me to take care of myself than it was for OS or YB, as I was so capable? Really, they wanted me to believe, they were just leveling the playing field for me.
Here's how it worked ~ school was easy for me, they said, becuase I'd always seemingly effortlessly acheived A's in all my classes. Yes, all my classes, forever, at least until the 10th grade. I skipped the 8th grade entirely, just went from 7th to 9th, and still carried A's. It was more difficult for OS and YB, my parents explained, so really what they were paying compliments to OS and YB for on those report cards with A's and B's and C's was effort. Which, of course implied that my A's came with no effort, and therefore I deserved no or less praise for my accomplishments. I was minimized, as were my, ahem, efforts.
That's just one example of the way the game was played. I swallowed it for years without complaint, largely because I didn't want to appear to be ungrateful. I was trained to be grateful for scraps from the metaphorical table of love and affection, all while watching the golden children be fed a feast.
The saddest part to me is how well ingrained this minimization and de-humanizing became. Right as the planet was cracking four years ago, we had our final Christmas with the FOO. It was a typical one - NM and EF 'hosted' the festivites which worked out well for OS and YB as they (mid-30's and late 20's respectively) lived at the family home, too. So, true to scapegoat form, I was the only family member who lived outside the clan bubble. I packed up my DH and daughters... and the gifts... and the food... and the games and everything else Christmas-related and we hauled the 15 miles out to the clan compound.
I cooked a lot of the meal and helped to clean it up - again, this was an expectation fulfilled rather than a gift of service on my part. The time came to open presents and everyone sat in a circle with their 'pile.' OS and YB and even OS's husband had HUGE piles of gifts in front of them; 25-30 each, all but three or four from NM and EF. My DH had about eight gifts in front of him. I had one very large box.
I'd asked for pots and pans. I normally hesitate to specify what kind of gift I would like - I'm not sure if this is due to my inner knowledge that 'they' wouldn't get me something I really wanted anyway or if it's because I was conditioned so early on and so consistently with the idea that it was my role to be grateful for whatever I received, even if it was only scraps. But I was starting to grow and change before that last Christmas, and I was becoming stronger and clearer. So, when I'd been asked what I would like for Christmas, I responded in a relatively normal way. I asked for pots and pans. Simple enough, right?
I noticed the gift count, but I thought, "Well, I'm sure that my gift was just more expensive than all the smaller gifts OS and YB have. Maybe they just packed a bunch of gifts into one big box."
When I opened the large box, it was full of pots and pans, alright. Dusty, used pots and pans wrapped in newspaper. EF explained that he 'just couldn't find any nice pans' that I would like, so he'd decided to take a bunch of his used pots and pans and give them to me instead. Some of the pans still had little flecks of crusted-on food in them.
I swallowed the hurt and the pain and the shame and the absolute heart-break of the validation that I was, in fact, less important to my parents than my siblings and I said thank you. It took awhile for OS and YB to make their way through their piles of gifts, so I watched and smiled and ooh'd and aah'd over what they received. I played my role to perfect dysfunctional pitch, but there was just a smidge of uncomfortable truth breaking through my defensive walls. I was so, so uncomfortable, even if I didn't allow it to show through the outer veneer.
When we, finally, arrived home later that night, DH flipped his lid. He pointed out the unfairness and wanted to know why I hadn't said anything. "I can't believe they break the bank on OS and YB and they give you one crappy box of hand me downs! I can't believe you accept the way they treat you! They treat their dogs better than you; the dogs had more gifts than you!" And then he delivered the kicker, the line that really cracked me open - I can still hear his voice as clear as day; "No one else in the entire WORLD is allowed to treat you like they do! No one!"
And it clicked for me. It was only one tangible example of the scapegoating, the unfairness and the cruelty, but it's one of the first incidents that I was able to see from a slightly removed to normal perspective. It helped me later on as I moved into No Contact with the FOO as a way to remember that I was slighted, that the family was 'out to get me' (and keep me in my place,) and that no matter how they tried to revise history, gaslight me, diminish me or flat out lie, it wasn't true. It's not really paranoia if people are, in fact, out to get you, is it?
I carry a mental picture of that one box; those dusty/used/scratched up pans. I take it out when I need a reminder that gratitude is my choice in life, but there's no rule that says I have to be grateful for being kicked around. I don't have to be grateful for crumbs anymore; I don't need those poisoned scraps.
I'll make my own feast in life, and maybe I'll have a little of that carrot cake in the break room, too.
Love,
Vanci
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Not My Rock: The Big Switcheroo
The Big Switcheroo
I keep coming up against some confusion about my childhood. Well, there’s a lot of confusion, but this particular point just keeps showing up over and over. For a while it had the ability to stop me in my tracks, but the more frequently I’ve had to find ways over, around and through it, the more I begin to understand.
About those character and role labels we tend to be quick to throw around and stick on people, especially people we have a hard time understanding; no sir, I don’t like ‘em. Although it’s convenient to be able to share a common language with our current loved ones who (hopefully) understand and care about us, I think labels can create single dimension views of people and situations. They encourage us to look at sketch drawings of memories and life events that really deserve technicolor and 3D on the big screen with surround sound blasting from all sides.
They provide an all-too convenient box to place people in and often rule out mixed emotions, traits or subtleties. If I announce to you that I am a Mother, that will be the box you put me in – you’ll never stop to wonder if I also happen to be a professional sky-diver or a lead singer in a rock band.
If I tell you that I’m the daughter of a NM, you might never get to know that I am also a recovering alcoholic or that I am an artist of sorts. The whole truly is greater than the sum of the parts, typically, especially when it comes to people and human nature.
So, labels can create confusion, at least for me. I’ve had to spend a bit of time unraveling this particular knot... I blog here that I am the daughter of a NM and EF, and that is currently and for the last couple of decades been true. But the older I get and the harder I work to unearth, examine and properly dispose of (again,) the skeletons in my FOO’s origin, the more I wonder. Can a zebra change its stripes?
Because, frankly, up until a particular event happened when I was thirteen, I remember my parents differently than they were after. The event is simply explained, though, it certainly didn’t feel simple and actually altered my life as well as the lives of my FOO very significantly. When I was thirteen I told my mother that I was going to kill myself if we didn’t, as a family, seek counseling.
We did. Now, we had to see a counselor in the nearest big city ninety miles away from where we lived, because we didn’t want anyone to know that my father’s perfect minister’s (yes, really, he was ordained and everything,) family was in trouble. After six months of weekly visits, I revealed to my mother that my father had sexually molested me. He admitted it and also admitted that he’d molested OS, too.
The counselor did what counselors are required by law to do; he reported it to the police. An interview was scheduled for me with my school counselor, whom I’d never actually met, a sheriff’s deputy and a health and welfare child services worker. Unfortunately, I’d made my revelations right before Christmas break, so the interview couldn’t be scheduled until after. I therefore had two weeks at home with my lovely family, and can see very clearly with retrospect that this is the first clear, direct incident of mass scapegoating that I was subjected to from ALL members of my family. It was, frankly, what I would imagine hell will be like if there is one down there just for me. They hated me for telling the truth and they had two whole weeks with me isolated and lacking allies to let me know that ALL THIS WAS MY FAULT! I survived – don’t we always?
My mother and father sat me down the night before the big interview with the police and school counselor and ‘talked’ to me. It’s the first time that I ever remember my mother having and using a voice as the primary force in a conversation in which my father was also present. Prior to that day, my father had been the tyrant of the household – his voice, his choices, his mood, his preferences were all that mattered. We did what he wanted to do. What felt what he wanted to feel. If he was angry, we were the cause. If he was sad, we needed to behave appropriately sadly as well. If he was ‘on’ and happy, then goddamnit we’d better put on those happy faces.
In contrast, my mother had always been a sort of non-person; she was really only ever an extension of him. If he was hungry, she provided food. If he was talking (and he always was,) she was listening and nodding. If he was angry, she was in the other room. I remember my mother frequently in my early childhood memories as a sort of ‘Dad’s Shadow.’ She walked behind him and stood slightly behind him always.
The conversation when I was thirteen is the earliest evidence I can see of the seismic shift that happened in my family. My mother did all the talking in that conversation while my dad sat quietly beside her, hands folded in his lap; contrite. She told me that I should, of course, tell the truth. Always tell the truth... but (you saw that coming, didn’t you?) that if I persisted in telling ‘stories’ to the police the next day, my father would go to prison for a very long time. She told me that we would be homeless if my father went to prison; that we would lose our home and that she wouldn’t be able to feed or support us. She asked me if that’s what I wanted.
I lied, of course. I was thirteen years old and being given the very clear message that I was responsible for the hypothetical ruination of the only family I’d ever known if I didn’t lie.
It changed everything for me – I went from being a straight A student who skipped the 8th grade to getting D’s and C’s in some classes. I started drinking and I had sex for the first time and then went on a run of promiscuity that I am still shocked didn’t have greater consequences. I truly don’t know how I survived the next four years until I turned 17 and moved out of the house.
I’ve recognized how it changed my life for many years, but it’s only been recently that I’ve come to see how it changed the roles my parents played, too. I don’t know the actual mechanics of it, but it seems clear that my parents traded their roles after or during that horrific period when I was thirteen.
Prior to that, my egomaniacal, aggrandizing, self-promoting, center of the universe abusive father had been the Narc and my weak, cowering, voiceless, bland mother had been the Enabler. Then, like an emotional Chinese Fire Drill – they switched.
Since then my mother has embraced the NM role – her primary manipulations center around her poor, poor self being so mistreated and abused (largely by her scapegoated daughter Vanci,) and her weak, fragile immune system and sickness (no real diagnosis in 15 years, but the addiction to pain killers is very, very real.) We should all do what she wants, dontcha know, because she might not be around much longer... Sigh.
Dad’s turned into the EF. He has no opinion unless she’s sanctioned it, his job is to support her and to keep her on that Ultimate Victim Throne. His existence, best I can tell, is allowed solely to caretake and protect NM from reality.
Weird, right? I can’t help but wondering if anyone else out there has a similar experience?
Now that I’m all grown up and have a family of my own, I have a bit of understanding of the temporary nature of some roles in families and support systems. I know how those of us in loving and mutually beneficial relationship alter our stripes somewhat based on the current need; if my DH is sick, I am his caretaker and if I am hurt or ill, he’s mine. But these role fulfillments are temporary and situational, it seems. No matter the short term hats we wear in crises, DH and I always revert back to our more permanent roles in the long run.
The constantly shifting dynamics in a normal relationship appear to be a matter of only little fissures, subtle and fleeting changes. Our zebra stripes may blur, in other words, but they don’t truly change.
In my FOO, the parental roles changed drastically and stayed that way, which makes me think that one of the underlying character flaws of either the narcissist or the enabler has got to be a complete lack of self-understanding. Not an excuse for behavior, certainly, but the more I understand the sickness, the closer I seem to get to relief.
Love,
Vanci
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