The Winner

Quoted section lifted from here.

“Narcissists do know wrong from right. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t hide their unfair actions like they frequently do… they will attempt to hide [or excuse] the fact that they’ve done it. This is because they do know it’s wrong, and they don’t want to lose the admiration and respect of others who will think less of them for having done so.

“So… [narcissists] do what they know is wrong… Then, because they are aware that what they did is wrong and that people will think less of them for it, they cover it up so they won’t have to pay the consequences. (Narcissists don’t like consequences. Those are for little people.)

“…because they are aware it’s wrong and that it makes them wrong, they cover it up and (perhaps sometimes unconsciously) deny it, gaslighting and projecting their way out of responsibility so that nobody, including themselves, will see them as imperfect for having done it. (And if you see them as imperfect, then you’re a serious problem, because as long as you’re there to remind them they’re not perfect, they’ll have to think about the concept, and they just plain won’t.)

“They know what wrong is, and they may do it, but they cannot accept the concept of being a person who does anything wrong, because that means they’re not superior and perfect. So narcissists vehemently push away the information that they’ve done something hurtful. They do know what a hurtful act is, and yet they have to deny that they did it.

“Narcissists use a number of different ways to deny their hurtful actions (and to try making you deny it along with them so you’ll stop complaining). Blaming others, gaslighting, labeling someone who complains about them cruel, lying, making excuses, and playing the martyr are a narcissist’s typical responses. Whatever it takes to stop all recognition (by them and you) of the fact that they were inconsiderate can be expected.

“So yes, narcissists are aware that they’ve hurt your feelings and that it’s wrong, but they just cannot accept that knowledge. They deny it to prevent narcissistic injury, and desperately want you to deny it as well. And usually, they deny it so quickly and so habitually that it doesn’t even register in their consciousness before the excuses and protests are given out.

“Typically, when told they’ve hurt your feelings, a narcissist’s denial takes the forms of insisting you’re not hurt, or that you shouldn’t be hurt, that you’re wrong to be hurt, that they didn’t hurt you, that you’re too easily hurt, and that you shouldn’t complain because they’re hurt worse.”


Guess what.  I still got hurt.

Regardless of what everyone in my “family” would like to pretend, the fact is, at a time of my obvious vulnerability and grief, Susan was deliberately rude to me and hurt me.  And Joe helped her do everything in bold above, afterwards.  Neither has ever acknowledged this, nor apologized for their actions.

It’s crystal clear what the problem is and who it is.  This dysfunctional pattern is well-known and documented and factual.  Anyone who can read my story and possesses a shred of honesty ought to be able to see this is true.  And not just through my words, but also the blogs, books, and articles I cite, and the countless others that exist.

But although I’ve asked time and again for this “family” to do the right thing, the healthy thing, and step up and defend me against this dysfunctional bullshit — they have not.  They will not.  Because it’s also the hard thing.

So I’ve left.  My sister and Susan are both much happier to have me gone, because now they don’t have to be reminded of what I stand for.  Everyone else is OK with it, because it means not dealing with the fits that would be thrown if Joe and Susan were forced to be responsible for their actions.

In Susan’s case, what I stand for is of course the fact of her bad behavior and imperfection.  Though it has been vehemently denied and covered up and the blame has been shifted, I still dared to expose her true nature, and I will never, ever be allowed to get away with that.

In my sister’s case, the waters are murkier.  I stand for something in her mind — I’m not sure exactly what — but it revolves around our parents.

The simplest explanation may be that I stand for the same thing as regards our mother, as I do for Susan — the fact of her imperfection and failings — and my sister is so enmeshed with our mother that she is forever bound to defend her (and for that matter, Susan).

(She’s passed that idea on, too.  I’ll never forget the email exchange I had with one of her daughters, my niece, after I sent my email saying I wasn’t ever coming to the reunions again.  My niece said her first impulse was to “defend her mother”.  After a week or so of puzzling over it I wrote back and asked her, “defend your mother against what?”  She didn’t really have an answer, other than that it was a knee-jerk reaction, and she didn’t want to talk about it any more.)

I’m honestly happier to be gone too, for the most part.  But I’d be lying if I said the whole thing didn’t still rankle and sometimes, hurt.

It seems so unfair for them to all get exactly what they want out of the situation, while I’m the one who has to make the hard choice, to give up and leave, to miss out on having a family, to forever break off all contact with some people I care about in order to save myself from the ones who don’t care about me.

There are some people I would love to be in touch with, to see occasionally, some great-nieces and nephews I’ll never know.  I’m forced to miss out on all that, because to do that would inevitably mean hearing about and seeing and interacting with a handful who continually reject me, ignore me, attack me, hate me.

(Also, my sister and Susan are the two who are in charge of the “family” and my sister, at least, definitely dictates to those under her aegis where they can go and who they can call.  If it got out that one of my nieces or nephews emailed me, for example, I can imagine what a fit my sister would throw and she’d probably insist on reading the exchange, as she’s done before.  Her kids are hovering around 30YO, by the way.  It ought to be their choice whether they want to be in contact with me or not.  Can you say, lack of appropriate boundaries?)

Life isn’t fair, of course, but for a long, long time I really thought my “family” was better than this.

I can take some comfort in the fact that I have the strength and the knowledge and the guts to do what I needed to do, but I should never have had to do it in the first place, and I shouldn’t have to miss out on the ones that I love, and who, I assume, used to love me.  Probably that’s been tainted by now, but what used to be is still something I’ve lost.

Me paying the price for the actions of the fucked-up ones, and giving up my family — knowing that she thinks she’s won — and that she basically has won, if the “family” is the prize — is really, really hard.


My dad liked Bobby Bare and this is the version of the song I remember.  It was played on road trips and in our kitchen.  We sang along, and I still know all the words by heart, from sheer repetition.  Maybe my dad found in this song what I am seeing in it today – that there are worse things than “losing”, if what you “win” isn’t worth having.

And each morning when I wake and touch this scar across my face
It reminds me of all I got by bein’ a winner.

But that woman she gets uglier and she gets meaner every day
But I got her boy, that’s what makes me a winner.

And if there’s somethin’ that you gotta gain or prove by winnin’ some silly fight
Well okay, I quit, I lose, you’re the winner.

But my eyes still see and my nose still works and my teeth’re still in my mouth
And you know I guess that makes me the winner…

And a Pony

What do I want?  I want them to OWN THEIR SHIT.

I’ve asked them to be adults, take responsibility for their actions, and do the morally right and healthy things.

And they’ve never done anything else I ever asked them to do before, either.

Maybe I have been looking at this the wrong way.  I’ve asked them to take back their shit.  They won’t do it, so I’ve been flinging it at them.  That has helped, but it’s slow going.

What I need to do is find a way to abandon the shit, to process it, to get it off my plate, and that has to be a way that doesn’t depend on them doing anything.

I had a dream a while ago, which I already wrote about before.

In it, I was carrying around a wooden box, not heavy in itself as such but I could tell the contents were very heavy.  And it seemed like I’d been carrying it for a long time.  I finally put it down, and there was the suggestion that I was putting it down for the very last time, and that I was challenging, daring my sister to PICK IT UP.

It seems that every time I think I’m “done” with this shit, sooner or later it comes bubbling back up again.  Closure never really happens.

Maybe it just takes a long, long time to process everyone else’s bullshit.  A thankless damned job if ever there was one, but it seems like it’s one I am determined to do, if this blog is any indication.

Of course, if they don’t like the way I’m doing it, they are free to take it off my hands!

Fighting Back

All the events, and stories, and jealousy and anger and manipulation and blaming and lies that got us where we are today, were set in motion 40 years ago or more.

I was a kid.  I was a helpless baby at more-or-less the start of it, when my mother was hospitalized.  I was only 6YO when it culminated in The Divorce.

It was a horrible, stressful time for the whole family.  Mom and the kids hated actually living with Dad day-to-day.  They all missed their previous location.  Dad had a new job, an important job.  And there was a new baby.  These three things alone would cause a great deal of stress.

If you look at the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory there are a few more things to add to the list:

  • Change in health of family member
  • Pregnancy / Gain of new family member
  • Sex difficulties (I’m going to lump “being a teenager” in with this one)
  • Change in financial state
  • Change to a different line of work
  • Change in number of arguments with spouse
  • A large mortgage or loan
  • Change in living conditions
  • Change in work hours or conditions
  • Change in residence
  • Change in school/college
  • Change in recreation
  • Change in church activities
  • Change in social activities

I’ve kind of lumped these all together — for instance, Dad had the job change, while the kids changed schools — but no matter whose point of view you take, they total well over 300, which is the lower limit of the high-risk category.

OVER 300 POINTS: This score indicates a major life crisis and is highly predictive (80%) of serious physical illness within the next 2 years.

Frankly, it isn’t surprising that someone got sick, although Mom’s illness wasn’t physical, but mental.  And you might be able to count my sister’s suicide attempt as “serious physical illness”.

What did the teenagers have to cope with?  New schools, no friends, no teachers or mentors to confide in — just a bunch of nuns and priests who would probably advise them to “pray about it” and “be obedient” if they were consulted.  I think you could just about count on being invalidated if you went to them for help and understanding.

Mom is too sick to talk to, and she can’t be held responsible for any of this anyway.  They hate Dad and are used to blaming him, but that’s no longer safe because now they are dependent on him for everything, not just money.  And of course they are not allowed to be mad at God or blame him for anything — remember, “He doesn’t send you any more than you can handle!!”  😀

It’s bad enough that they are already feeling like outsiders at school:  now they have to take turns staying home from school to run the house while Mom is sick.  But it can’t be Mom’s fault she is sick…

…it’s the baby who “made Mom sick”.

Side note:  You know, I’ve always kind of accepted the responsibility for that part.  I always accepted it was the fact of my birth that made Mom go crazy (although obviously still not my responsibility).

It’s only recently that I found out it probably wasn’t — Mom was probably schizophrenic all along, and was at high risk for post-partum psychosis.

What actually made Mom sick, if you have to assign the cause to a chain of events, was her refusal to have a medically advised hysterectomy, coupled with her refusal to accept sex as a normal part of marriage.  I’m pretty certain she thought the jeopardy to her health that would be caused by additional pregnancies could be easily eliminated by simply eliminating sex altogether.  Her insistence on following church doctrine became her excuse:  can’t have a hysterectomy + can’t use birth control + can’t risk another pregnancy = Voilà!  A “get out of sex free” card!

This is similar to what I believe was her real reason for not learning how to drive:  that too was a “get out of doing something for other people” card.

But that bastard husband of hers, who was supporting her, still wanted some.  A pregnancy resulted.  “Look what your father did to me.”

What’s comical about this to me is, isn’t avoiding sex in a marriage just as much going against god’s will as using birth control?  I mean, it IS birth control.  Yet somehow abstinence is considered an OK method of birth control to use, even within a marriage.  SMH.

…it’s the baby who “made Mom sick”.

This stupid baby with diapers to change, who is just a bunch more work, and really, really easy to label and blame as the cause of all their problems.

It makes sense that my sister is the one who holds this grudge the most deeply, because obviously she was the one most affected.

As a girl, and the oldest, she would have been expected to do the bulk of the mothering chores.  It was her senior year, yet here she was living the life of a teenage mom, without even having the benefit of having had the sex to go with it.  And if she attempted suicide, obviously she was deeply affected.

I wonder if my sister looks at me and thinks, “Look what my father did to me.”

A friend once pointed out to me that if things had been normal, if my mom had been healthy and done her job and not enmeshed and parentified my sister, if she had been free to be a normal teenage girl, my 17YO sister would likely have loved me to pieces.  If you don’t think that realization broke my heart, think again.

To all this injury, add the insult that Dad and I went on to have a loving relationship, and instead you probably have a recipe for the kind of relationship my sister and I have failed to have.

A helpless baby who couldn’t fight back was the only safe place to dump all that shit.  I became the scapegoat for them, as my dad was for my mom.  They had her example to learn from, after all.

I know of one other family who had a similar situation.  A knitting friend told me once about a family she knew — they were cousins or some such — with a lot of children, spread out over a lot of years, such that the oldest children were almost adults when the youngest child was born.

The youngest sibling was a woman who was now estranged from the rest of the family, because she was universally considered by the rest of them to be the cause of the mother’s death.

The woman who told me the story said that nobody ever talked about what had actually happened, so for a long time she had assumed the mother had died in childbirth, or shortly after.

At some point she found out that the truth was that the mother actually died SIX YEARS LATER.

It had nothing to do with the youngest child at all.  Yet the rest of the family somehow found a way to make it her fault.  It was probably their way of coping with the senselessness of what was happening to them.

Their scapegoat was only 6YO, and she couldn’t have fought back against the blame that got heaped on her.  She was a safe place to put their psychological garbage, their difficult-to-deal-with anger and grief, because she was too young to do anything but accept it.

No wonder they never talked about what actually happened, because the truth would destroy the warped story that they concocted to make themselves feel better.  And no one would then want to admit how unfair it was that they blamed this child her whole life for things that weren’t her fault.

And no wonder that poor little kid is estranged from the rest of them now.  That’s what happens when the helpless baby finally starts fighting back against the injustice of what has been heaped on her.

All that shit, years and years of tiny little things said and done, or not said and done.  Hugs not given.  Phone calls not made.  Letters unanswered.  Outreach ignored.  Happiness for another’s accomplishments eclipsed and snuffed out by jealousy.  Criticisms made, trust betrayed, snide remarks, bullshit apologies or none at all, excuses made for the fucked-up behavior of everyone else but me and Dad — we two who never, ever get defended.

Love not given.

Acceptance in the family withheld, always out of reach.  Just being born wasn’t enough –in fact, being born was my original sin, and keeping me out of the family is probably my well-earned punishment for that.

It all comes back in one big wave of shit, sparked by one unforgiveable-because-still-unapologized-for incident (which conveniently allows people to easily invalidate it all, and me, by saying, “Geez, is she STILL upset about that?”)

And you get this blog to go with this fucked-up family, these broken relationships.  That’s the only part I’m responsible for.  If they hadn’t done what they did, and failed to do what they failed to do, I wouldn’t have anything to write about.

The rest of these things are entirely the result of other people dumping 40 years’ worth of pain, trauma, and emotional garbage on someone else, instead of working through their own shit like responsible adults.  And now it’s come back home to roost.

It’s a shame for them that their target grew up to be wise enough and strong enough to figure out everyone’s bullshit.  And I know it won’t truly change anything with my siblings, but I’ll be damned if I don’t fight back somehow, and put all this shit right squarely back where it belongs.

They have admitted that they were angry.  They never asked themselves what they did with that anger.  They transferred it to me and never, ever looked back.  It is a high, stinking pile now, but that’s what happens when you don’t go back and clean up after yourself.

I know my writing won’t change my siblings, but it is changing me, and healing me, and that’s worth doing.

What DO I Want?

For a while now the million dollar question here has been, so what do I want?

You’d think that would be easier to answer than it apparently is.  For one thing, people who have been raised by narcissists don’t always have a good idea what they want.  They’ve spent a lifetime always deferring to what the others want.  They’ve been trained that that is the simplest way to deal with the toxic person: give them what they want, in order to avoid an argument, a confrontation, a fight.  But this is at the expense of themselves, their own identity.

The lack of boundaries between a narcissist and their prey can cause a lot of unhealthy shit to happen:  parentification for one, which in the case of our mother and my sister happened to such a degree that my sister basically IS our mother.  Almost a carbon copy.

Viewed from a distance, my sister’s life looks rather suspiciously like our mother’s might have been, in an alternate universe.  It might even be a person’s attempt to vindicate our mother by “proving” that everything would have been fine, if our mother had married a “decent” man, instead of our father.

Some similarities and differences:

My sister spent most of her life as the SAHM to her family, while being supported by a financially successful man.  They had four kids, but she wanted six — just like her mother. / Her husband apparently wanted to stop at four, and while I have no idea what choices were made to accommodate that wish, it obviously was honored by some method.

My sister has lived her whole adult life in Chicago, where my mother grew up, and she married a city native. / My “bumpkin” father took our mother away from Chicago and big-city life, eventually to small-town Iowa.

My sister is extremely religious, just like our mother / although interestingly, she married a Jewish man – but on condition that the children be raised as Catholics.

Exasperated by the behavior of her two younger children, both boys, my sister once tried to get my two oldest brothers to come to Chicago and beat them, physically punish them, because her husband (rightly) wouldn’t.

Shades of our mother, keeping a tally of the boys’ transgressions all week so that when Dad came home on Friday, first thing he was supposed to do was physically punish them for it all.  (Shades of the Catholic god, too, come to think of it.)

And my sister has worn our mother’s wedding ring since her death.

WTF is up with that?

It’s not like it’s a fancy piece of jewelry.  It’s a very plain band, and I am not even sure it’s silver, because as I recall it doesn’t shine like silver and it isn’t quite as white as silver.  It could be stainless steel.

Somewhere I once read that “people wear jewelry to tell you something about themselves.”  It’s a pretty good truism.  Wedding rings, fancy watches, expensive engagement rings, too much jewelry — all those things tell you something significant about the person wearing them.

My psychologist friend says that NO ONE wears their parents’ wedding jewelry — not as a casual thing.  Grandparents, sure, but not parents.  Whatever my sister’s reason, it is significant far beyond just a piece of jewelry.

My guess is that my sister wears it for the same reason our mother wore it for over 20 years after The Divorce:  as a constant, daily rebuke to the man who defaulted on his vows to her.  Carrying the torch, so to speak.

(BTW, remember that by the time Mom died, Dad was already dead.  Talk about holding a grudge.  And they tell me that holding one for a dozen years is “unhealthy”.  But I learned from professionals.)

My guess is informed by something I know about our mother:  she had a necklace that was a large black heart.  And every year without fail, she wore it on Valentine’s Day — as a rebuke to the man whose fault everything was.

I don’t know where that heart necklace is now, but if my sister knew about that “tradition”, I’ll bet money that she has it and wears it — although probably not on Valentine’s Day, because that would signify her own husband.

No, my money would be on October 16th, our parents’ anniversary, and October 18th, the date The Divorce was final.  And possibly October 7th, Dad’s birthday.

Bu here’s the thing:  while my sister may have, consciously or unconsciously, “proved” her point, she really hasn’t.

Because our parents’ marriage didn’t fail because Dad was a bastard.

I am the proof that he wasn’t a bastard -that he was capable of being a good, healthy, and loving father.  (Which may be what the big problem is that she has with me.)

So where exactly was the problem in that marriage?

Did it fail because they couldn’t communicate?  Well, who can communicate with a narcissist?  They either get their way or throw a fit.  End of “discussion”.  My father was fond of saying that “in an argument between a reasonable person and an unreasonable person, the unreasonable person will always win.”  I think this is pretty clear evidence of what the communication was like.

Did it fail because Dad traveled a lot, and was an absentee father for a large part of it?  But Mom and most of his kids preferred it that way.  Or at least they believe that they did.  And plenty of people manage to maintain a marriage and a home with one partner traveling all the time.  Look at military families, to give just one example.  But you have to have a partner at home who can keep it together.

I think it failed mostly because Mom wasn’t interested in, or wasn’t capable of, 1) taking care of anyone or anything besides herself, and 2)  solving her own problems, instead preferring to have others solve them for her.

Praying about things instead of actually doing something about them is the ultimate example of this.  Mom was a champion, so my sister of necessity became more competent at running a household than our mother.

One example:  my siblings lament the fact that when Dad came home on the weekends, he never wanted to eat out or go anywhere.  Well, of course not.  He had spent the whole week away from home and eating out.  But equally of course, Mom and the kids had spent the whole week at home, eating in.

So what is the obvious solution here?  Well, how about if Mom takes the kids out to eat once a week while Dad is gone?

Except that she couldn’t, because she didn’t drive.  And that’s Dad’s fault.  It’s his fault she can’t drive, and it’s his fault he isn’t there to take care of her/them.

So: one really big difference between my mother and my sister is that my sister learned to drive, and took on the responsibility that goes with that.  I can’t overstate how much of a difference I think this could have made in our parents’ marriage.

I don’t know for sure what my mother’s real reason was for refusing to learn, but I think she figured out that if you can drive, you are expected to drive other people, such as your children, to places, and she didn’t want to do that.  She much preferred the opposite, being chauffeured everywhere.

While I am convinced that this is the true reason our mother never learned to drive, it obviously couldn’t be the reason that was given whenever someone asked.

So — ask anyone else, they will tell you it’s Dad’s fault.

Oh really.  Now there’s a shocker.


There are two instances (that I know of) involving my sister, our father, and money, that I think are significant.  One reason I can say they are significant is that they are obviously significant to my sister, as they are the stories that she chose to tell.

Remember that to our father, money equaled love.  Money — or being a good provider — is how a man shows love for his family.  (And it’s no accident that my BIL is 1) very wealthy and 2) very generous with that wealth.)

Anyway, with all the dysfunction going on, by the time my sister was in college, our father had to be aware that he was basically hated in his own home — hated by people who still needed his money.

So.  This became his lever.  I’m not going to try to say that this was a good or healthy way to respond to the situation — it wasn’t.  But it was what he did.  He used money, or the threat of withholding it, to exert some influence or control over his wife and his daughter.

In the case of our mother, she basically earned this response.  She originally had control of the household finances, and at one point she chose to spend Dad’s earnings on a private detective to spy on him, betraying his trust.  So he took away the checkbook, and made her account for all her spending.

In the case of my sister, I don’t think this was fair to her.  She really hadn’t done anything to earn this treatment, other than to be so enmeshed with her mother that she probably couldn’t see straight.  And that certainly wasn’t her fault.

One of the instances, which shows a crucial difference between my mother and my sister, involves my sister’s tuition check for college.

One Christmas our father wrote out her tuition check for the next semester — but he didn’t mail it.  He propped it on the mantelpiece, with the threat being that it might not get mailed.

She took it and mailed it off herself.  Of course Dad still had the power to stop payment on it, but he didn’t.  I think this was a kind of test, which she passed by showing that, unlike our mother, she had the wherewithal to figure out a solution to her problem, and the guts to execute that solution, as simple as it was.

The other anecdote is that one summer she decided that she wasn’t going to come home to live and put herself back under his thumb.  She planned ahead, got a summer job, found an apartment to share, and so on and so forth.  She sure showed him!  And she was chagrined to find out that Dad was proud of her and bragged about her doing this.

This was significant not only because she figured out what she wanted, made a plan, and executed it.  It is significant also because she did what she wanted to do, instead of coming home to Mom.  If what she thought she was doing was snubbing Dad, well, hell.  I think after everything else, he could take that easily, if it meant his daughter was going to be OK.


So where is all this going, and what does it have to do with what I want now?

Well, for one thing, I know that I don’t want to rejoin the “family”.  I know that I don’t want to deal with the dysfunction, the narcissism, the blaming and manipulation and control issues — never mind the conservative thought patterns, the racism, misogyny, and self-righteous religiosity.  I’ve grown well beyond where I could even spend a weekend in that kind of unpleasant stew that occurs when the FOO are together.

(If anyone were to get some therapy, and really change some of this dysfunctional thinking, I might reconsider re-establishing contact on a one-to-one basis — but there’s really no chance of anything changing, so it’s frankly not an option to which I have given a lot of thought.)

For another, Dad’s decision to free himself and what was left of his family from Mom’s unhealthy influence — which influenced almost the entire family against him — is neatly paralleled by my decision to free myself from, among other things, my sister’s bizarre, distant, second-class treatment of me — which has influenced the entire family against me.

And my sister is the closest thing to my mother that is still on the planet, and for all that she has made some significant improvements over the original model — when it comes to me, I believe the old tapes are still playing and the old beliefs are still very much in force.

My sister’s deliberate creation of distance from me is, I believe, exactly equal to our mother’s distance from me.  She was thoroughly trained by our mother and she was right there when that distance developed, doing our mother’s job at least half the time — so I bet she knows exactly why it’s there.

And I want to know why that is.

I want to know what she thinks justifies ignoring your daughter / little sister for decades, and wishing I didn’t exist.  I want to know what her problem is with my physical presence:  why she won’t hug me, won’t talk to me, hardly even notices me or speaks to me (yet complains that I don’t show enough interest in her).  I want to know exactly how, as an adult — and for that matter as a Christian — she justifies blaming, criticizing, and talking behind my back.

I want to know what exactly is her problem with me.

Because then I just might have the answer as to what the fuck my mother’s problem with me was too.

And I bet it’s bullshit, and I bet it doesn’t make any goddamned sense whatsoever, when it’s brought out in the open.

Am I being blamed for my mother’s mental illness?  Bullshit.  Even the fact of my birth isn’t the cause of that.  She was mentally ill, probably before I was born.  I’m not the reason for that.

Am I being blamed for the marriage falling apart?  Bullshit.  Even if Mom  did have me as simply a desperate way to tie our father to her for another 18 years, that’s hardly my fault that it didn’t work.  What, was I somehow defective in my duties there?  Bullshit.

Or am I a problem for my sister because, as I said, I am the proof that Dad wasn’t a bastard — proof that he was capable of being a good, healthy, and loving father?  If that’s the case, well and truly bullshit.

If the reason I am shut out is because I am an uncomfortable reminder of that truth, then she has a serious problem and she ought to work on that herself instead of sloughing it off onto another person.

And I bet that’s why I’ll never know what it really is.  Because there aren’t any reasons good enough, and it’s all fucking bullshit.

If I’m right about any one of these, if I were her I’d be embarrassed to admit to me whatever stupid shit I still believe.

But I’d still like her to tell me — if only because it would be nice to finally know, and oh-so-easy to refute.

But maybe I can come to understand that it doesn’t actually matter if I ever know what it really was that robbed me of a loving mother AND A LOVING SISTER.

Because whatever it was, it wasn’t because there was something bad or wrong with me.  That’s the scapegoat version, created to allow the narcissist to shift the blame and pretend that there’s nothing wrong with her.

And it’s irresponsible, dysfunctional, selfish, and prideful.  It isn’t love, and it isn’t family.  And if that’s how it is, then I’m not missing out on anything worth having.

I may indeed have been deprived of a loving mother and a loving sister — but apparently those were never options for me.  That’s a shame and a definite loss, but it isn’t my doing, and I can’t do anything to change it.  All I can do is realize it, internalize it to the very core, be myself, and move on from there.

Post-Partum Psychosis in the Modern Day

I found this article on post-partum psychosis at the BBC.  Some highlights:

  • Post-partum psychosis affects about one in 500 mothers (another source says 1 in 1000).
  • Relationship problems, stress, or the baby being unwanted do not cause postpartum psychosis.
  • “If you have ever had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder, your risk of postpartum psychosis is high. You may also be in this high risk group if you have had a diagnosis of schizophrenia or another psychotic illness.”

Somewhere in the episodes of my first year, my mother was diagnosed with “paranoid schizophrenia,” is what I was always told.

  • “Some mothers have difficulty bonding with their babies after an episode of postpartum psychosis. Usually these problems don’t last long. Most women who have had postpartum psychosis go on to have very good relationships with their babies.”

To me this is a red flag:  while it does say that “most mothers” get over this bonding problem, there were a lot of things about my mother’s illness that were not standard.  One in particular is that she wasn’t hospitalized until around the holiday season, which was at least 7 months after I was born in early April.

I will also note here that this timing meant that my mother would have had plenty of help with the chores over the summer, until the older kids went back to school in the fall, at which point my mother would have been expected to do her own job again.

  • It can take 6 -12 months or more to recover from postpartum psychosis. The most severe symptoms tend to last 2 to 12 weeks. The vast majority of women will recover fully. You may have further episodes of illness at a later time.
  • Over half of women with postpartum psychosis will have a further episode of illness not related to childbirth.
  • ECT or electroconvulsive therapy is still being used to relieve severe depression.

The TV program isn’t available online yet but should be here soon.

Dysfunction 101

Quoted straight from here:

1. “I did nothing wrong. You’re just oversensitive.”

It’s not that there aren’t people in the world who are highly sensitive. It’s just that even if the person being spoken to were oversensitive, this comment is only going to make them feel much worse! It offers no help, and only rubs salt in the wound.

It is a critical statement of low empathy — there’s no effort to truly understand the other person’s feelings or to consider that maybe the speaker could possibly have done even one small thing a little more considerately to try helping matters.

In addition, it’s most often said by people who are not actually dealing with someone who’s “too sensitive”, but instead, someone who is actually expressing normal dismay about a valid concern.


4. “I’m sorry you feel that way/I’m sorry if you…/I’m sorry, but…”

If a person cannot say, “I’m sorry I did that/I’m sorry I hurt you/I’m sorry I was wrong”, and dodges emotional responsibility with the kind of fake apologies and substitutions above, there’s a problem.

Healthy relationships require genuine apologies that are the result of empathy. Inability to truly sense other people’s feelings is at the root of an incredible amount of dysfunction, and unwillingness to admit mistakes is highly dysfunctional behavior.


From the same site, there is this gem:

In the simplest of terms, there’s nothing toxic people like more than:

1. Getting their way, or;

2. Causing a fight.

With Susan, you get a choice of one or the other.

Avoiding Responsibility 101

Seth Godin nails it again.

Instead of saying “we” when you’re avoiding responsibility, try “I.”

It’s no coincidence that the fauxpology I got from Susan starts off with “I’m sorry WE…”

Most of it is an attempt to spread the blame — for something that is conveniently never quite named — equally between us, along with an attempt to claim she didn’t understand what I had asked for.

Never once does she take responsibility for what she did.  Never once does she say, “I’m sorry I did this to you”.

And Joe never apologized at all.

 

Accountability 101

To continue on the theme of forgiveness, or lack thereof — I am reblogging (and heavily editing, mostly for length) this list from this article on abusive relationships, in the spirit of educating people who are apparently not well-equipped to hold themselves or others accountable for their actions.

This list is pretty straightforward and easy to understand.  It’s a good start to understanding how decent, empathetic people take responsibility for the things they have done that hurt other people.

I am not forgiving, but I have accepted the truth that things are never, ever going to change in a way that I will accept.  Because once you learn how decent people who really love each other treat each other, there is no settling for second best.  And no one in my family can even manage to pull off the first one.

1. Listen to the Survivor

When one has been abusive, the very first – and one of the most difficult – skills of holding oneself accountable is learning to simply listen to the person whom one has harmed:

  • Listening without becoming defensive.
  • Listening without trying to equivocate or make excuses.
  • Listening without minimizing or denying the extent of the harm.
  • Listening without trying to make oneself the center of the story being told.

What if, instead of reacting immediately in our own defense, we instead took the time to listen, to really try to understand the harm we might have done to another person?

When we think of accountability in terms of listening and love instead of accusation and punishment, everything changes.

2. Take Responsibility For the Abuse

After listening, the next step in holding oneself accountable is taking responsibility for the abuse. This means, simply enough, agreeing that you and only you are the source of physical, emotional, or psychological violence directed toward another person.

A simple analogy for taking responsibility for abuse can be made to taking responsibility for stepping on someone else’s foot: There are many reasons why you might do such a thing – you were in a hurry, you weren’t looking where you were going, or maybe no one ever taught you that it was wrong to step on other people’s feet.

But you still did it. No one else – only you are responsible, and it is up to you to acknowledge and [genuinely] apologize for it.

The same holds true for abuse: No one, and I really mean no one – not your partner, not patriarchy, not mental illness, not society, not the Devil – is responsible for the violence that you do to another person.

A lot of factors can contribute to or influence one’s reasons for committing abuse (see the point below), but in the end, only I am responsible for my actions, as you are for yours.

3. Accept That Your Reasons Are Not Excuses

In my experience as a therapist and community support worker, when people are abusive, it’s usually because they have a reason based in desperation or suffering.

      “I didn’t know that what I was doing was abuse. People always did the same to me. I was just following the script.”

All of these are powerful, real reasons for abuse – but they are also never excuses. There is no reason good enough to excuse abusive behavior.

Reasons help us understand abuse, but they do not excuse it.

4. Don’t Play the ‘Survivor Olympics’

This one is not really applicable, I think, unless and until anyone else is willing to admit that our mother was abusive and/or neglectful to her husband and her children.  Yes, parentifying and deliberate parental alienation are abusive things to do to children.

There is the point that “Anyone can be abusive, and comparing or trivializing doesn’t absolve us of responsibility for it.” This might be applicable to the idiotic “Susan was very upset when Dad died” excuse.

5. Take the Survivor’s Lead

If you have abused someone, it’s not up to you to decide how the process of healing or accountability should work.

Instead, it might be a good idea to try asking the person who has confronted you questions like:  Is there anything I can do to make this feel better? How much contact would you like to have with me going forward? If we share a community, how should I navigate situations where we might end up in the same place?

At the same time, it’s important to understand that the needs of survivors of abuse can change over time, and that survivors may not always know right away – or ever – what their needs are.

Being accountable and responsible for abuse means being patient, flexible, and reflective about the process of having dialogue with the survivor.

6. Face the Fear of Accountability

Being accountable for abuse takes a lot of courage.

A lot of people paint themselves into corners denying abuse, because, to be quite honest, it’s terrifying to face the consequences, real and imagined, of taking responsibility.

7. Separate Guilt from Shame

Guilt is feeling bad about something you’ve done. Shame is feeling bad about who you are.

Shame and social stigma are powerful emotional forces that can prevent us from holding ourselves accountable for being abusive: We don’t want to admit to “being that person,” so we don’t admit to having been abusive at all.

People who have been abusive should feel guilty – guilty for the specific acts of abuse they are responsible for.

If you believe that you are a fundamentally good person who has done hurtful or abusive things, then you open the possibility for change.

8. Don’t Expect Anyone to Forgive You

Being accountable is not, fundamentally, about earning forgiveness. That is to say, it doesn’t matter how accountable you are – nobody has to forgive you for being abusive, least of all the person you have abused.

In fact, using the process of “doing” accountability to try and manipulate or coerce someone into giving their forgiveness to you is an extension of the abuse dynamic. It centers the abuser, not the survivor.

One shouldn’t aim for forgiveness when holding oneself accountable. Rather, self-accountability is about learning how we have harmed others, why we have harmed others, and how we can stop.

But…

9. Forgive Yourself

You do have to forgive yourself. Because you can’t stop hurting other people until you stop hurting yourself.

When one is hurting so much on the inside, that it feels like the only way to make it stop is to hurt other people, it can be terrifying to face the hard truth of words like abuse and accountability. One might rather blame others, blame the people we love, instead of ourselves.

This is true, I think, of community as well as individuals. It is so much easier, so much simpler, to create hard lines between good and bad people… It takes courage to be accountable. To decide to heal.

Majority Rules

All I’ve done is take on the role that the majority want me to have.  There isn’t a single person in the group who has a reason for keeping me in that is stronger than their reasons for keeping me out.  Here’s how I think the scorecard looks:

  • Sister- doesn’t want me to exist because of her issues with me, whatever they are.  Happier with me gone.
  • BIL – would like to have me back, wants conflict over, but controlled by Sister.  Their kids are probably also in the same position.
  • Brother #1- would like to have me back, wants conflict over, but somewhat controlled by Sister.  Conflicted enough to feel guilty, so ignores “no contact” request.
  • SIL #1- unknown, but probably aligned with B#1.
  • Susan – doesn’t want someone around who sees through her manipulation and holds her accountable.  Happier with me gone.
  • Joe – might like to have me back, but controlled by Susan and Sister.  Easier with me gone.
  • Brother #3 – probably doesn’t much care.  Might align with Sister if it gets him a spot.
  • Brother #4 – doesn’t want me to exist so he can be the baby of the family and get the attention.  Happier with me gone.  Annoyed that I’m not 100% gone yet so continues to snipe at me via blog comments.
  • SIL #4- unknown, but probably aligned with B#4, as well as their kids.

And if you think that mess is fixable, you’re a dreamer.

The People You Can’t Forgive

An online friend’s Facebook post pointed me to this religious article, which although I am not religious at all, contains a few nuggets that spoke to me:

“That feeling of… wanting to assert your rightness or your victimhooddepending on the depth of your wounding — can take… years to dissipate… You have to go through that necessary period of feeling half dead, half angry, half in denial — this is the liminal space in which we grow for some reason.”

This might indicate to some that what I have been going through is normal.  But that assumes an acceptance that what has happened to me at the hands of my family was indeed wounding and traumatic.  Which would in turn mean that they did something wrong to me, that they are responsible, at fault, and we just can’t have that.

My family’s version starts out with where the blame is “supposed” to go, and works backwards from there to find a “reason”.  Thus:  I am wrong for holding this silly grudge for so long.

“When someone that you once trusted — and shared your heart with — betrays you, it feels like someone stomped on your soul. And they probably did.”

“The people you can’t forgive can’t fully be released until you find something better to fill the hole.”

“[Forgiveness] doesn’t entirely work unless we have a larger comfort, a safe and more beautiful enclosure to move toward. If we only empty out, and do not refill with something better, there is still a gaping hole within us.  Without something positive, comforting and loving to fill that hole up… we’re left to depend entirely on willpower — and our willpower is normally very weak, especially on those days of loneliness, stress, tiredness and hunger. So we’ve got to keep our aloneness and emptiness filled with something loving and positive.”

I feel like this is where I am now.  Trying to find something to replace all that I’ve lost.  Trying to find new logs for my new raft.

[Another thing that occurs to me about this needing-something-to-fill-the-hole:  that’s what I was to my father.  The people he loved and worked for had all stomped on his soul.  His wife hated him; most of his kids had been taught by her example, and would rather see him gone than home.  But there was one child of his who hadn’t yet been taught, and who was worth trying to save from that.]


But the really important part of this article is just one sentence:

“If you do not transform your pain, you will with 100 percent certainty transmit it to others.”

This is one of the remaining sticking points.   Everyone else in my family of origin takes the easy way out, to just transmit their pain to others, instead of dealing with it and doing the work to transform it.

Personally, if I were to try to define “sin”, I might start with this.

I have long liked two other quotes that carry this same idea:

“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.” — Roger Ebert

“If you empathize with your child, you want your child to be fulfilled in life, to be a happy person. And if you are an unhappy, unfulfilled person yourself, you are not going to want other people to be happier than you are… Therefore, it is your moral responsibility to be a happy, fulfilled person. Your moral responsibility.” — George Lakoff

There obviously has been a lot of pain in my family.

My mother, of course, transmitted her pain to others, to her family.  She never figured out how to deal with whatever her problems were.  Despite all her praying, all her religiosity, she remained bitter and unhappy, even after she was free of the man on whom she blamed all her unhappiness.  She continued to blame and transmit her pain to others for her entire life.

My siblings were on the receiving end of a lot of that pain.  For the most part I don’t think they have dealt with the realities of what happened, with what was wrong, and with the fact of who it was that was unhealthy — and just HOW unhealthy.

I doubt that my sister has ever revisited and dismantled the pain that in her teens caused her to become suicidal.  That has been buried under a shit-ton of “Mom was a saint and Dad was a bastard.”  Blaming.  Throwing your own psychological garbage onto someone else so you don’t have to deal with it.  Specifically, onto Dad, and almost certainly onto me:  the idea that my birth is what caused all the problems, and it is my existence that somehow fucked up hers.

Or, if you start with the idea that anything Dad did was bad, by definition, then the fact that the one child he raised is less of a train wreck than anyone else would be an assault on one of your most basic beliefs, every time you saw her.  And if you’re still angry about The Divorce, yet here is living proof that it didn’t wreck everyone’s lives – that it was, in fact, a good thing for some, and particularly for the two people you learned to hate – well. That would be annoying as shit.

(In fact, you might have a strong need to believe that his paternal, nurturing love for that child was something unnatural, even dirty.)

I have a hunch that my sister would honestly prefer me to have a few more really good failures in my life, so she could point to them as proof of my basic wrongness.  Right now about all she has is that I am atheist, childless by choice, don’t have anything that looks like a “real job” to them, and that I’ve also chosen to reject the treatment of a shitty group of people.  Not a lot to go on.

My SIL Susan had her own tragedy in her childhood.  Her father would go on an annual fishing trip to Florida, but one year when she was about 8 years old, he had a heart attack and died, and never came home.  I have to assume that her pain over that is at least part of what caused her to be so shitty to me at my own father’s deathbed.

But here’s the thing:  you don’t just get a free pass.  You don’t get to fail miserably at even attempting to deal with your own shit, and instead just lob it onto someone else.  That’s not healthy, responsible or fair.

That’s not love.  What it is, is a sure way to wreck a relationship.

But apparently it is how my family “functions”, to use the term loosely.  Or maybe “copes”.

Shit rolls downhill.  My mother blamed me for existing because it embarrassed her.  My sister blames me for existing either because that is what caused everything to fall apart, or because I fuck up her worldview, or both.  Susan blames me for calling her out on her callous behavior and rudeness to me the night my father died.

I’m not sure what exactly I ever did to make all the older women in my life see me as a handy target.  OK, I maybe have an idea.

I HAD A FATHER WHO LOVED ME.   And worse, “didn’t” love them.

My mother was always very jealous.  If she was jealous of my father’s love for me and lack of it for her — WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?  Not mine.

If my mother was also jealous of my sister, and lied to her, and twisted her way of thinking about our father, and deliberately alienated her from him, and my sister believed my mother’s bullshit, and believes that our father didn’t also love her, and that bullshit led her to cut off communication with him for decades — WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?  Not mine.

If my SIL never dealt with her own painful past, and the loss of her own father, and she is so jealous of me for having mine that she has to take it out on me when my own father dies — WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?  Not mine.

As for “shit rolling downhill”, that choice of metaphor is no accident.  The hierarchy of age is a very strong one here.  Age confers rights, and righteousness (although obviously not responsibilities).  My youngest brother has no one to shit on but me (and from the little I’ve seen, his own children, but that’s mostly beyond the scope of my knowledge).  Thus in the context of our FOO, he bullies me, yells at me, thinks he has the right to lecture me and tell me who I am, how I should act, what I can and can’t say.  Now that I’ve removed myself from his ability to do that shit to my face, he leaves shitty comments on this blog.

But the fact is that absolutely everyone else in that house the day my father died was older than me, and most had had ample time to deal with their shit, and had not done so.

They all knew I was facing more grief on that day than anyone else, but they were too fucked up themselves to hold their shit together — Susan foremost among them and Joe not far behind.

In the end, they didn’t give a shit about my pain because they were too invested in throwing their own shit onto me so they wouldn’t have to deal with their pain.

And don’t tell me that it couldn’t be done.  It’s been 15 years since our parents died.  I’m as old now as they were then, and I’ve done it.  It’s been hard, and painful, and cost some money and a lot of fucking work, but I did it.  They’re all older, and supposedly so superior to me — well then, if I can do it, if I can put in the work and go to therapy and figure out what’s fucked up, I don’t see why it would be beyond them.

Except, of course, that they “aren’t the problem” and never will be.


To that I say — PROVE IT.  Prove it the way I did.  Go to therapy.  Spend the money, like I did.  I dare you.  Go for just two or three sessions, explain it all to a professional, and get them to agree with you.

And good fucking luck.  Because I know and you know why you won’t go do it.

But that is the only circumstance under which I will resume contact with anyone in this family.  Go get some help, work through your shit, and then we’ll talk.


My other siblings were, and are, probably just too fucked up to do anything about it.  Well, to do the right thing about it.  I wish they weren’t, but that’s all I can do about it.

In some ways what happened has been a favor to me, to throw off this pile of bullshit, to put down the box of shit my sister has made me carry for her all these years.  At least I get to live the second half of my life unencumbered by all their bullshit and baggage.

This feels like a place to end.  I don’t know if it is really going to be the last post in this blog — but I’ve finally finished at least part of what I set out to do, which is to tell my story.  The whole sad, angry history is finished, all laid out neatly in the sidebar, all making a lot more fucking sense than the story they tell themselves.

All anyone has to do, if they want to understand, is read it with an open heart, and a mind that is ready to accept responsibility, instead of simply shifting the blame.

Shit Together Clear