GoodPersonEffed
Brevity is my middle name, but my name was TL
- Jan 11, 2020
- 6,727
When I was sixteen, the almost two-year pattern started of me regularly running away from home because of the abuse or actually being kicked out because I wouldn't be compliant to the abuse.
My dad was a cop, but not a protector. He was an enabler. But he didn't utterly condemn me, either. In fact, he once went out to lunch with me after I had run away, but he didn't do shit to change things.
Around that time, there was a girl around my age who looked similar to me who was murdered. My dad was a homicide cop, his coworkers knew me, they saw the resemblance. He had to view the body. He broke down crying when it wasn't me.
After I returned home, I was heavily guilt-tripped by my mother "for putting my dad through that." I didn't have the bullshit detector nor the backbone that I do now. I took on that guilt.
Now looking back on it, such a huge what the fucking fuck? How was I responsible for that in any way at all?
This was just one of the many mind-blowing gaslighting incidents of my childhood, really of my entire relationship with my parents. I don't know if anyone else experiences this, but I mean it when I say mind-blowing. I don't know how others manage such utter ridiculousness. There's such a chasm between reality and my parents' perceptions, and it just feels so weird, I don't even have the words for how confusing and soul-level offensive it is. A lot of my life has felt so weird. I guess there are savvy or grounded people who can handle such bullshit and not feel assaulted by the fog of unreality, but sometimes I think it's because they're manipulative, too, and instead of fighting it, they would have used it to their advantage.
Can anyone relate? How do you deal with this? I mean, I went through all these hard-core mindfucks and here I am still getting caught up in worrying about how they'll be impacted by my suicide. I carry that mindfuck, and it feels like another chasm I can't bridge, like I'm on the wrong side of it, because giving fucks about people who treated me like this and ultimately discarded me for holding them responsible, and then continued to fuck with others' perceptions by using my photo and saying I'm still in contact so that their reputations are safe -- aaaaargh! And what sucks is that my parents genuinely think they're moral and ethical and act with common sense, they're not intentional, Machiavellian manipulators, but themselves were manipulated to function that way.
I can't hate them, I can't get through to them, I can't help them, and I can't stop caring about them. It's a feeling of impotence, and I hate it.
My dad was a cop, but not a protector. He was an enabler. But he didn't utterly condemn me, either. In fact, he once went out to lunch with me after I had run away, but he didn't do shit to change things.
Around that time, there was a girl around my age who looked similar to me who was murdered. My dad was a homicide cop, his coworkers knew me, they saw the resemblance. He had to view the body. He broke down crying when it wasn't me.
After I returned home, I was heavily guilt-tripped by my mother "for putting my dad through that." I didn't have the bullshit detector nor the backbone that I do now. I took on that guilt.
Now looking back on it, such a huge what the fucking fuck? How was I responsible for that in any way at all?
This was just one of the many mind-blowing gaslighting incidents of my childhood, really of my entire relationship with my parents. I don't know if anyone else experiences this, but I mean it when I say mind-blowing. I don't know how others manage such utter ridiculousness. There's such a chasm between reality and my parents' perceptions, and it just feels so weird, I don't even have the words for how confusing and soul-level offensive it is. A lot of my life has felt so weird. I guess there are savvy or grounded people who can handle such bullshit and not feel assaulted by the fog of unreality, but sometimes I think it's because they're manipulative, too, and instead of fighting it, they would have used it to their advantage.
Can anyone relate? How do you deal with this? I mean, I went through all these hard-core mindfucks and here I am still getting caught up in worrying about how they'll be impacted by my suicide. I carry that mindfuck, and it feels like another chasm I can't bridge, like I'm on the wrong side of it, because giving fucks about people who treated me like this and ultimately discarded me for holding them responsible, and then continued to fuck with others' perceptions by using my photo and saying I'm still in contact so that their reputations are safe -- aaaaargh! And what sucks is that my parents genuinely think they're moral and ethical and act with common sense, they're not intentional, Machiavellian manipulators, but themselves were manipulated to function that way.
I can't hate them, I can't get through to them, I can't help them, and I can't stop caring about them. It's a feeling of impotence, and I hate it.