My biological family are devils posing as people.
It was a wretched experience, that process of breaking down the nature of the relationships and lack thereof. Weighing and assigning value – or negative impact – to my biological family’s presence and influence on my and my girls’ lives, my personal immediate family’s healthy state of existence.
This dreadful task took months of unraveling, unpacking my subconscious. Time had no choice but to tick by before I could climb out of the black void, having been thrown into that place without light because the blinding truth hit my inner eye.
What a horrible process it is to have to evaluate whether to go “no contact” with one’s family.
First doing the analysis of what was in my/children’s best (non toxic) interest. That first step is interminable. Delving into memories purposely and subconsciously buried because the deeper they were, the less power they had. With the power buried deep, the toxic assaults could be stepfordly ignored. Then, once the shields dissolved, it became no longer possible to unsee what my renewed vision understood. Ugly realities sparked a necessary process. Undergoing the pain of having to parse facts from mere perception, truths insisting to be revealed, no matter the excruciating process.
Then executing the decision, that agonizingly, burning, soul threatening determination. Heartbreakingly realizing that this choice is absolutely unavoidable.
Finally, mourning, grieving. Working upon understanding as a mechanism to cope. Continuing to peer using a microscope, at that which had been previously hidden. Forcing my acclimation to the reality of my biological family’s disfunction; whilst despite myself, continuing the simultaneous grasping at wisps of wishes it weren’t so.
Then. After an emotional eternity, finally achieving the tightest seal on my emotions possible for me to attain. The closest I could get to the illusive wish for closure. (except during holidays and societal focus upon “family” which never fails to stick me with sharp hooked barbs)
None of it was my initial choice. All of this torturous process started happening because a GMO mutant straw broke my camel’s back. Where memory and accuracy is concerned – all of my (almost ridiculously) careful close examination began happening – at a point in time – timing as close can be to when the toxic shower was raining full blast. Time when clarity is best achieved because the circumstance is unavoidably in one’s face. Time feeling urgent, yet needing to be tempered, because clarity requires patience and unmeasured opportunity to manage a decision that jibes with peace in one’s heart. Ultimately working to achieve peace of knowing that a terribly difficult, nearly unbearable decision – is nevertheless the good and right and healthy decision to make.
Then comes death.
Death represents finality in opportunity. A person being alive provides a single hair of reassurance should there be a desire to “take it (the decision to go no-contact) back'”, keeping alive the elusive fantasy which is never going to actually happen, that mere mote of dusty yearning which lingers next to “possible” though “improbable”. Those who are shunted into the category of toxically unbearable to have in one’s life, can always be revisited if the shunted one is alive. Being alive gives access, a potential “opportunity” should some change in heart manage a reversal in choice to go “no contact”.
The emphasis here is my biological father being alive means that should the process of my having undergone the first, second, and third (as delineated above) analysis end up being tossed in the food processor; chopping reasoning and good judgement into tiny bits … well, being alive means a chance, you/I can seek a “do-over”, a “re-do”.
Being in the world of the living lets choice stay alive. Choice, knowing there is option – floating out in the realm of potential. The choice in and of itself also up to choice. A decision to be taken or not. But remaining an option. That original determination could be “taken back”.
Never mind that this is unrealistic. That heart wrenching wish that these devils were different. Wresting with the facts unearthed, the horrible treatment by those whose nasty nature strains to reverse my natural optimism. Yet my wiring maintaining fragments of wistful hoping, bits of burnt wishes wanting, wishing that the devilishness isn’t woven into the texture of my biological family’s very being. Fantasy leaving open the option, however unrealistic and remote, that I could break “no contact” because by some miracle, a vital sea change in the psychological make up of my biological family occurred.
The truth of toxicity is the confusion and self doubt it feeds upon, and then uses to manipulate. Toxicity is an expert at pulling wool over one’s mind. Wishing and hoping only perpetrate the myths of the possibility, wanting what is actually unattainable. It took months of therapy aimed at piercing through my own bullshit of coping (by not seeing). Plodding and wincing throughout the examination of my life from childhood till the occasion of a final rift.
The wack of my realization that my “bio family”s neglect, lying, and general behavior caused more injury to my daughters’ and my mental well being. Injury much more insidious and harmful than any physical damage caused even by a direct strong kick with a steel toed boot straight into the faces of my daughters.
My girls, the two people I can identify as my absolute unconditional loves. Hurt them, beware my fire. Hurt me? Eh. I was raised and trained to self blame. Unusual apparently I am not, according to studies evaluating the psychological impact upon the adult children (aka such as me) of such abusive families. Analysis clearly revealed common sense, it is usual for that a soul to placidly bear toxicity this soul has been accustomed to throughout life, trained to be submissive.
BUT, being a punching bag oneself is one thing. Commonly, toxicity is eventually turned upon the loved ones of the beleaguered soul, those loved ones begin to bear the brunt – loved ones who are oft times the children of the beleaguered soul. Stand back, for then an awakening occurs.
Once toxic behavior is unleashed upon the beleaguered soul’s own children – when the grandchildren are impacted (meaning my children for example) THEN what had been a nonexistent defense raised on behalf of one’s self, morphs into existence. NOW the attack upon one’s children fuels that defense of the loved ones, spurring one into a fiery mandatory insistence that realization be achieved.
I can and have taken plenty of harsh hits. Times have been when I didn’t nearly recognize some statement or action/inaction was even toxic. But brainwashed ignorance had applied only when messing with me.
Ahhhhh so. Fuck with my kids? Oh no no no no. My love for them creates a spotlight of alertness that makes me SEE. And once the miles thick insulation of bullshit became clear glass, it had no choice but to shatter. The heartbreaking yet required determination. A determination that was foreseen but required a journey perhaps as treacherous as hiking death valley all alone. But I wasn’t alone. Therapy provided my intelligence with crampons for climbing out of the valleys, up those sheer cliffs, in order to see those truths dwelling down deep and that had been blurry up close. Using therapy crampons enables one to climb up upon the perch above the valley of dark self blame. Allowing visibility so that a person can see below, above, across, and all areas in between.
Those months of analysis upon every perspective possible to imagine. Straining with the effort to keep the scale of evaluation fairly and properly balanced. All analysis’s resulting in an unavoidable conclusion. My family are devils posing as people. Yes. My biological (and his married-into), family. My biological mother. Revealed from behind their masks of charisma and false kindness.
In actuality: these people are a raging narcissist father; an enabler and narcissist rage re-director step mother; spoiled selfish gasslighting/flying monkey narcissistic step siblings; and biological borderline disordered (amongst other disorders) mother. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_monkeys_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
Bidding HIM fare well. Oh how crushing to realize my very own father’s vehemently proclaimed love for me and my children is nothing like healthy love is defined. Not at all. My biological father who would at times say, “of course I love you, you are my daughter!” The father who – usually immediately before, or after, making such a proclamation – would next rage incoherently at me (and as my girls were getting older, had begun erratic stunningly surprising rages aimed towards/at my children). Equally devastating was his timing. Just when my girls and I possessed absolute need – my “biological father” and “rest of the family” would utterly abandon us … at least until he (the narcissist king of the family) felt it suited him to re-connect.
Fare Well. The title of my letter. A proclamation of my own. Delivered in the most straightforward, the most mindful manner I could possibly muster. Vetted by people I love and who truly love me, because I did not want to be petty nor cruel. I genuinely wish them all a fare thee well.
Far from me and my loved ones.
For years now my proclamation has lain mostly stagnant. Basically unchallenged, no efforts made by my “bio family” for any sort of reconciliation ever, NOT EVER. No proffer with any earnest aim of achieving a meeting of minds and any realistic examination of how to change the “family” dynamic to a healthy one.
Of course, this lack of what would amount to a “healthy” “productive” response by these “family” members makes total sense, given some of very reasons which underlay my decision to go “no contact” in the first place. (Meaning that their use of abandonment and silent treatment as punishment; their inability to empathize; inability to engage in self reflection of any true sort – all that makes predictable, although heartbreaking, that my bio family is unable to be emotionally healthy and instead is mired in dysfunction.)
I have had to harden my heart, in order to NOT hope – hope was hope-less, demonstrated by not the slightest drizzle of a healthy attempt to reconcile having been made by “my family”. Hardening my heart was unfortunately made easier, strengthened, by my “family’s” response to my extreme boundary setting.
Rather than attempts to reconcile by addressing the truths I explored in my “Fare Well” letter, instead, only the most feeble of protestations were generated. Darkly hilarious in the irony of validating my decision, whilst simultaneously heart crumbling to have shoved in my face, unavoidable facts supporting my determination. My decision was further validated by their wee, incredibly inappropriate, and manipulatively damaging response by them, to my fare well letter. Their protests wrapped in nasty accusations, failure to acknowledge truths, and sharp attacks aimed to undermine.
These paltry, perhaps two or three “efforts” to re-connect were all couched in phrases and terms without even a shadow of the slightest sort of comprehension of the toxicity which prompted my decision. No demonstration (because of their inability) to exercise even an anorexic comprehension. Only a vacuum where a soul CAN possess perception. Never an acknowledgment, (it appears because they simply cannot understand) of the IMPACT of their abuse, neglect and gas lighting.
Horribly, the only and slight protestations made by my biological family, only served to drill the decision deeper into my soul. Because the sense behind their words, their chosen methods and means of expression, solidified the very reasons to sever the relationships that were never true experiences of familial love.
This post insisted upon being written, I suppose as a continued method of coping. Editing is itself a wrenching activity and at odds with my compulsion to publish it quickly as a sort of therapeutic cleansing of my psyche. A damn was burst yesterday, and my emotions flooded because of the card I received. This missive sent from an unknown address, the return address written on the envelope listed as from nowhere I know in NJ, yet mailed from NYC.
A communication cruel in the conveyance and consistent in keeping with how my bio family consistently related to me. Sent anonymously. No identification of the sender, no name or recognizable return address. The message itself harsh. Lacking kind platitudes of any sort – again par for the course when it comes to my “bio family” manner of communicating. The message inside the card is pictured with this post.
A card that served to stun. To cause revisiting. Awakening mourning for my father whose own personal history impacted his personality so as to make him unable to love in the true sense of the word. His absolute inability to love with kind goodness; searching his bag of tricks reveals only a void. Nothing in his repertoire motivated by positivity, only by insecurity and his dire desire to feel superior.
Hell hath no fury like a narcissist believing they are being criticized. Constructive comments, attempts to convey feelings other than fawning love, are met with his rage. Complicating and confusing, tangling analysis is a tragedy inasmuch as his personality disorder is not his fault. Tragedies he had endured when he was a child shaped his psyche, but that shape – the man he became, is toxicity incarnate. He lacks true empathy (true care, he can fake it for societal mores sake), he is incapable of demonstrated actions of support; communicating with mindful expression; refuses to even attempt genuine attempts at understanding, and is unable to love with compassion.
I mourn what I wish I had and know will NEVER have. That time is gone. It is the era of my doing the best possible parenting and loving for my own children. It is the era of recognizing positivity and just as importantly recognizing and not tolerating toxicity.
Thank you for reading through this public revealing of an enormous demon that haunts my life.
I hope some may perhaps find some scraps of peace relevant to an aspect relevant to whatever personal strife you may have in your own world. Know that you are not alone in these efforts to get/remain/continue to live your life positively and with love. Beguiling toxicity can and must be pulled back to reveal truths.
Be aware, beware, of how toxicity is made all the more dangerous by being all dolled up with conventional thinking about “what is supposed to be”. Forget convention. Go with logic, reason, facts, acts, expression – to form what is personally safely healthy for yourself and those you need protect.
Yours in analyzation as a method to achieve the peaceful life most possible to have … strength to you, whatever the circumstances,
Sincerely,
Renée
Three sites that may be helpful reading for you. There are countless articles and books to be researched on this topic… these are three quickly found in an internet search…
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-legacy-distorted-love/201105/narcissistic-parents-contact-or-not
http://narcissismschild.com/2015/02/20/keep-narcissistic-grandparents-away-from-your-kids/
http://outofthefog.website/what-to-do-2/2015/12/3/no-contact
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Parenting in Pain 