Canada Post is still on strike, and apparently so far apart, it’s not going to resolve any time soon. This very much sucks big time for my online shop & art sales for the holidays. I’m so thankful for everyone who has messaged me asking when my shop will be open again, you all rock! Unfortunately I’m at the mercy of the postal system as they duke it out, as are thousands of other Canadian small businesses and artists. Whenever they get back to work, I will get my shop back online & I have some fun plans coming up for the new year.
I’m so thankful for your support of me & my work, and so appreciate all of the kind comments and sales in my print on demand shops, every one helps & I’m super grateful!
So on to the next piece in this series.
To start, I’ll mention that I don’t share this for pity or sympathy, I don’t need or want that. I share to shine light on an extremely unreal situation and to help people who are going through it to maybe not feel so alone, and to help them to feel seen and heard, and understood.
The next part of me, the Scapegoat. Or as I am now- the E-scapegoat, because I got out and escaped that abusive and cruel system.
I started discovering what was really happening in my family of origin’s sick system- if you’ve ever experienced this, you know there’s a big fog that hangs over you, blurring reality and normalcy, and what’s really going on. Once the fog starts lifting and you start seeing things clearly, you can’t ever unsee it and it becomes very apparent how wrong things are and and who’s at the root of it.
Hint- it’s NOT you. It’s NEVER you. It’s never been you, not ever. Trust me.
Neither of my parents really wanted anything to do with me and made sure my siblings didn’t want to either and I didn’t know why.
Whenever I did something big or won something or achieved something, it was always met with a “meh”, “good for you”, “oh, ok”, then a look away and the subject changed.
I never understood it.
Things would happen like, I would walk into a room and they would all have angry or sheepish looks on their faces, or they’d get up and leave.
People would bring up things I had no idea about, that I had allegedly done or said, and they were *angry* at me, for reasons I didn’t know.
I would overhear things being said that weren’t true, parts of stories being told about me, oh she said this or she did that, but I didn’t know what they were referring to. Only later to find someone else was extremely angry or upset at me because of it & I didn’t know why.
I was blamed for things my parents should have taken care of, but didn’t.
Held responsible for things I didn’t do or say.
Triangulated and gossiped about, especially within the family.
Ostracized, made fun of, and pushed out.
Left out of important information, left out of family get togethers, birthdays, events.
“It’s easier” they would say. Always the excuse. I never understood what they meant by it.
What was “easier” about leaving me out? Nobody would ever tell me.
Once I figured out a few things, I found the key word, and realized I was the Scapegoat for them all.
A faceless nameless trashcan to dump all their nasty garbage on.
To deflect away from the real family issues- severe alcoholism, escalating mental health issues, dysfunction, enabling, covering up, and lying, so. much. lying.
Any time I asked a question, I got ignored, lied to, or attacked.
Any time I questioned their actions, they deflected and attacked. Then twisted everything around to be something they could blame me for. Leaving out important parts- the truth or actual facts, and choosing parts to embellish to use against me.
They also started attacking my husband, who had only been kind to them, and apparently made it a sport of sitting around the dining room table & trashing on both of us. (I was told about this later by one of the participants who got sucked into it.)
I spent months and months reading and researching and learning and googling. I started putting pieces together and uncovering a lot of aha moments and pieces I couldn’t name before. Suddenly things started making sense, as much as they could in the situation that was so unreal it was quite mind-bending. I figured out patterns of behaviours and dove into the why’s behind why the hell they would treat me that way. Why anyone would treat anyone that way.
To put it simply, it’s fucked. up. Not. Normal. Not. Loving. Just not.
It only got worse as some larger things went down and I asked some pretty normal questions that anyone would ask, and they went full on attack mode.
They disinherited me in a cruel email with a weird non-ultimatum and for reasons only they knew.
Once that happened, I went no contact.
Where else can you go?
They apparently expected me to just roll over & be like ok, that’s great, thank you, and keep taking their shit, like nothing ever happened.
Would you?
I didn’t think so.
In a confrontation with one of them fairly recently, they all believe I am “stuck” on that, & why don’t I let it go and get over it?
That shows all of their mentality, that shows how they think. It shows their lack of human decency and kindness. They have NO idea how hurtful their behaviour and actions, and lack of, were. And don’t care.
I told him that was not something you just “get over” and what they did was final & if they didn’t understand that, there’s something wrong with *them*. He then disappeared. Of course. And as expected.
It comes down to keeping up their own stories and status quo. A lifetime of blaming me and deflecting away from reality and truth. Of making me out to be some horrible person that I wasn’t so they could have somebody to blame for their own bad behaviour & cover up the real issues. Oh you think that’s bad, look at her!
I was just fallout.
Oh well, we lost our daughter, at least nobody found out our dirty secrets or held us accountable for our behaviour.
Oh well, we’ll just continue to lie and ignore it and hope it all goes away.
Oh well.
Oh well.
Oh well.
So they lost me & didn’t say a word. They never knew me nor did they want to.
I was just their garbage can, that’s it.
When they said it was “easier” to exclude me, I now understand they meant that they wouldn’t have to have me around & risk getting called out on their behaviour or have to face up to their actions or be called out in a lie (I actually DID call one of of them out on a BIG lie and she went off the rails in attack mode after that, name-calling, threats, nice behaviour from a parent).
So now I consider myself the Escape-goat. I got out of their nasty hurtful system.
I saved myself.
I am only concerned with the Truth and living my life the happiest way I can.
I never say “my” truth because that implies falseness or lying or changing things to suit yourself.
I don’t play that.
I’ll explain more on that next week.
If you’re looking for a place to start to understand being a black sheep and/or scapegoat in a family of origin like this, try:
• Misadventures with Angry Alcoholics Bullies and Narcissists– Scapegoat article- this was one of the first big aha’s I had- deep dive into this site & things will start to click
• Raised by Narcissists, Reddit Forum
• Glynis Sherwood
• Peg Streep