Hello all. Long time lurker, first time poster on this particular board. I thought I was OK with my childhood for a long time. Never really dealt with it properly but I didn't feel like it hindered me too much. And then I started to want to children of my own and I fell apart, just obsessing over how anybody could treat a child in the way my siblings and I were treated so now I'm trying to deal with it and it's all becoming so stressful. I feel like all my confidence and sense of identity is melting away. I'll try to be brief as it's a long story.
My siblings and I were adopted within our family (maternal grandparents) after our mother had severe mental health problems and drug addiction and went AWOL one day. I was already living with our GPs at this point and my brother and sister were left alone at our mother's house until my aunt went to visit, suspicious at my mother's lack of contact.
Up until this point, my childhood had been mostly idyllic. My GPs doted on me and I wanted for nothing. After my brother and sister arrived, obviously the dynamic changed. I didn't respond well to suddenly having to share my room with my sister as you might expect. I was 10 at this point and had been a spoilt only child essentially and I'd barely seen my sister so she was practically a stranger. However, rather than try to facilitate a bond between my sister and I or encouraging me to be more sharing of my space, my grandmother started to emotionally abuse my sister and deliberately widen the gap between us. She would spoil me even more but deny my sister even the most basic of things. I got pocket money, my sister didn't. She would constantly tell my sister she was fat yet feed her fattening foods and make her eat them. My sister had to do all the housework. She was basically Cinderella but without the fairytale ending. My grandmother brought her unflattering and poor fitting clothes and forced her to wear them so she was bullied for how she looked by other family members and at school. Basically our grandmother was a typical narcissist and I was the golden child, my sister the scape goat. If I ever made an effort to get on with my sister, my grandmother would get really emotional. She told me she did it for me to show that she loved me and my sister didn't compare. She accused me of being two-faced and refused to talk to me. The biggest fight we ever had was when I refused pocket money until my sister got some too. I was punished for fighting for equality essentially!
While I was my grandmother's golden child, I was my grandfather's scape goat with my brother being the golden child. He would yell at me, say it's my fault that we lived in an unhappy house, chase me through the house screaming at me. If my brother did anything wrong, it was my fault. I think he was incredibly jealous of my grandmother's obsession with me which didn't help.
Most of the articles I read say that the golden child goes on to be a narcissist. I am constantly terrified that I will turn in to my grandmother. I try so hard and am constantly battling guilt towards my brother and sister. I wish I could help them in some way but don't know how. My brother is now a criminal, my sister became a teenage mother which she admitted she planned just to escape our family. Yet she's now closer to my grandparents. I've barely spoken to my grandparents in the last few years, I just feel so angry. When my brother and sister arrived, they were vulnerable young children who had been neglected and abused by our mother. How could anybody harm them knowing what they had already been through? And in my name. I hate her for saying she did it for me. I was a child for fuck's sake.
Sorry for the length of that, I needed to get it out. Trying to get to therapy but I keep backing out. It just feels ridiculous to say somebody else was abused on my behalf and I feel like shit. Maybe I am a narcissist after all. But my pain is legitimate, isn't it? I want a relationship with my brother and sister so badly but I just feel too guilty.