Thank you Smithfield - "It is such a difficult role being the scapegoat because your whole self belief system is based on being bad, worthless, a failure.." - you have really hit the nail on the head. And, like you say, you just can't challenge it as a child because it really is about survival. It's great that you had that inner nurturing voice. That's what we need more than anything i think. Our own internal counterforce against all the evil lies and propaganda they shoved down our throats and forced us to carry and believe.
Sometimes I think I sound so angry in what I write on here and it makes me sound like this hate filled bitter person, but I have to be angry at them a)because of what they did to me and b)to protect myself from them. I need the anger to remind me that they are NOT safe for me to be around. Thanks Smithfield too for what you said about me sounding like I'm safe now, and not replying to her. Very helpful feedback.
Anyway, that was another role they pushed me into - the bolshie, confrontational one, always arguing, always challenging. FGS, I just want to rest sometimes, but I realised on one of the last occasions I saw my father that he HAS to argue with me, find something to pick a fight about, and then say it's me, I'm awkward. And yet me and DH are very happy not arguing most of the time. Of course we have our moments, but neither of us seeks out that drama; my parents on the other hand do, but they still like to make out that I'm the one who can't live in peace with other people. And in fact they crippled me so much I couldn't live in peace with other people (or myself) for a very, very, very long time.
A little while back DH said that I'm the gentlest person he's ever known - even given how angry I can get (and he's seen the worst), that was perhaps the most wonderful thing he could have said to me. To have that affirmation that that gentle, loving side of me is the one that is real and authentic and seen by the person (adult) closest to me in the world is wonderful. And it would have been unimaginable not that long ago.
Sakura, thanks too for saying what i said made sense to you. I wish that like you I'd been aware of their agenda before my wedding; I was aware of a lot but hadn't yet clocked just how much they needed to keep me down and thwart my happiness and how desperate I still was for them to do the opposite, and make me their number one at least for that one day. So I nearly killed myself trying to organise the perfect wedding, unconsciously trying to make them love me, and of course they managed to make me feel the same way they've always made me feel. Really not important. Not loved. And not actually connected to them in any real sense. There was one bit where my mother was on the (very small) dancefloor, quite pissed already, and dancing away with this slightly manic look on her face that she often gets when out. Things had alreayd gone badly askew but I made one last attempt to turn it into something real; I was dancing just a couple of feet away from her and so I tried to catch her eye so we could dance TOGETHER -each doing our own thing but aware of each other, iyswim? And she just totally blanked me and carried on dancing away in her own little private world. It was my wedding day, I was right there in a big white dress, but she just didn't see me - to her, it was just another big party with her family and her friends, like so many others, and the significance of the day for me, for us, for our family meant nothing to her. Or maybe with retrospect it did and that was what she couldn't stand - it meant I was getting away from them. Finally. That was just one small detail, they're all small details really but it's the way they add up - it absolutely broke my heart that I'd put so much energy into wanting to be their princess that they truly loved for a day and the day WAS perfect in every other respect, even the weather obliged, and it was all a blind alley.
That was a real scales falling from my eyes moment for me, after my wedding - that's when I realised both how much I still had invested in wanting to win their love, and how committed they are to blocking my happiness. So in that respect it was very postitive, but I've wished so many times since that we'd just had a quiet do or gone abroad - that's with hindsight though... I needed to learn it I suppose, and without having put everything on the line like that I don't know when I would have "got it", so I'm glad it happened like that for that reason at least. It pissed me off though to realise that although I'd thought I wanted it to be perfect for me and DH, and I wanted to the day to be a celebration of OUR love and commitment, I still had this unconscious "hidden agenda" where it was still all about them, damn! And in fact that hidden agenda is still there, it keeps reappearing with every significant event, but I think I'm starting to recognise the signs a bit now. I hope that next time I get into that "got to make everything absolutely perfect" state I'll remember that what I'm actually trying to do is please them and win their love, and it's a hopeless task.
I had a realisation a couple of weeks ago that I still actually feel more unhappy than happy, and it was dreadful and liberating at the same time. Dreadful to have come so far, and worked so hard and achieved so much and still be unhappy, above all to have married my soul mate and to finally have achieved our dream of becoming parents and still feel so unhappy. [skihorse, if you're still reading - because of all the shit I had to shovel I didn't meet DH and start ttc till the age of 40, and it was a very long hard struggle for us to get to where most people get pretty naturally and easily. So I do know where you're coming from - there is a lot of support out there around infertility, if you're not already accessing it, and I'm more than happy to share info etc with you, and I wish you all the very best on this journey, I know how heartbreaking it is.] It made me feel really guilty towards DH and DS, like I'm not appreciating them enough. I ended up saying it to DH, and he was upset, naturally, but that was also very liberating - I felt like I'd confessed the awful, ugly truth that had been lurking in the shadows for a while, and now that it was out I could start dealing with it.
Maybe I should add that we had to go through four cycles of IVF, remortgage our home, max out our credit cards etc; I did get pregnant first time in fact but then miscarried; and all this was in my 40's so the prognosis was never brilliant and you're living with the slenderest of threads of hope all the time - but we got there. You don't feel like you're allowed to be unhappy with your lot after all that; it feels so fucked up to have given everything you've got to make something happen and then not to be able to enjoy it once it happens. Well, obviously I do enjoy some of it - masses of it, in fact, but coping with the ongoing damage from the past and the misery of my relationship with the rest of my family, and the reality of becoming a mother without my family in my life, and dealing with their attempts to restore the status quo, has been draining to say the least. And as I think most parents would agree, however they become parents, becoming a mother opens up a whole new pandora's box of things - I really thought I'd dealt with so much already that it was going to be relatively plain sailing once I'd actually managed to get pregnant and stay pregnant. For me, the big challenge was to get anywhere near a normal life in the first place, the dynmaics of my family having dictated I had to be the outsider, the freak for so long, and so conclusively.
And then of course it turned out there was yet another big bloody challenge as soon as we'd got here. DS is a gift from heaven and I really do treasure him and DH - I often still can't believe we've been so lucky, to have this wonderful, adorable little boy, to have the child we dreamed of actually here with us - it's hard to put it into words when you have come so close to missing the boat entirely. But as people on here know, being a mother takes up an awful lot of energy, and brings up an awful lot of issues, and I have felt so far in over my head, so often, and I suppose the biggest thing is that the core issues obviously didn't go away when I had my son. In some ways they ballooned even more, getting to a deeper level of the onion, so they're even darker and scarier. I have a little girl inside who needs so much love and protection and mothering, and I can't split myself in two and look after them both; I can't do the work on myself when I'm with DS. But I have to do the work for his sake as well as mine. Their voice is still so strong - I'm just not allowed to have anything easy, it all has to be a great big struggle. Oh, and DS has clearly inherited issues from me - he carries a really deep distress in him that just kills me, I was so sure I could protect my child from what I'd been through but - he grew in my womb, and I've never lived in safety, so how could he not absorb that unsafety himself? I am absolutely committed to working on my stuff till he is out of that distress too. In the meantime, he wakes several times a night, and cuddling alone won't comfort him.
Having said all that, it really was liberating to voice that thought out loud, and I actually feel happier since I did. And as far as the present reality of my life now goes, it's pretty good. I am happy being at home with DS, I don't hanker after anything in particular, I think I am doing a good job of being a mum, even with all the crap, and I am not nearly so isolated and marginalised as I was for most of my life till I met DH, and even thereafter - our lives were so dominated by ttc that I still felt very much like an outsider to the rest of the world, a spectator. And I have all this because I removed myself from my family.
Whew. Very long post, I know. Done me good to get it out! Hello and hugs to everyone, reading all your posts as usual, even if I don't respond - I'm responding in my head but just not always on here!!