You can’t turn off darkness; just be the light. This has always been my personal philosophy even before I knew what a personal philosophy was. I was the first of two girls born to a psychopathic father and narcissistic mother in a volatile marriage filled with abuse, drug use, poverty, chaos, secrets and lies. The darkness of life with my family meant I was molded to shine a brighter light, to make life ok to live for all of us. In order to inspire the expression of love that I needed to thrive, I had to be accepting and non-judgmental of the people in my life who were my primary source of life. But in order to be able to accept their darkness, I had to learn to see their light. So from the time before I even formed memory I was shaped to be a person who can find and identify the source of the slightest glimmer of light in darkness and if I couldn’t find the light, I became the light.
Throughout my early childhood, my mother used me as a scapegoat when she did things that would make my father unhappy. If she threw out his cigarettes or marijuana or disconnected the phone so his friends couldn't reach him, she would blame me to save herself and "keep the peace" since the abuse he piled on her was much worse than what he would do to me. We developed an unspoken agreement, I accepted it without complaint because it was more painful to experience my mother being beat up than it was for me to get a beating or other punishment. So I naturally became my mother's protector and her caregiver, the one responsible for her, but I also still had to respect her position as my mother, so that left me without a real position or place in her life... I was nothing, invisible, except for my usefulness to her. But of both my parents, she was the responsible one. She worked and made sure we had food to eat and a place to live. She made sure I went to a good private school even though we barely had enough money for the uniform and shoes, or food and rent or toothpaste and toilet paper for that matter. She made sure our family had the necessities. She prides herself on being a great mother... and on paper, she really is. So I never contradicted her, she wouldn't believe me anyway, neither would anyone else.
I felt loved by my father. I was his prize. He did homework with me, took me to the park to watch him play soccer. I was a source of pride for him. He was a source of fear and pain for me, at the same time I needed him to value me. I later came to realize that his personality disorder didn't allow him to experience real love, what he felt for me was pride in an extension of himself that he perceived as perfect. If I was an extension of him, he had to ensure I was perfect. So while his abuse of my mother was brutal and vicious with an explosive malicious intent to punish and hurt, when he punished me it was controlled, calculated and it always seemed like he was doing it for me, to make me a better person, not because he used me as punching bag or viewed me as less than human, like my mother.
The relationship between my parents was a violent one, emotionally, verbally and physically abusive, so most days I woke up to the sound of cursing, yelling, screaming and my father brutally beating my mother; kicking, choking, punching, ripping her clothes off, stripping her naked and throwing her out of the house. If it persisted for a length of time, I would insert myself to de-escalate the intensity. When he ran out of steam, I would be there to clean and console my mother… those times were not about me, what I had to offer, or what I had to do, I was gratefully invisible, but not inconsequential. When my mother finally found the strength and presence of mind to leave, bred from her desperation (if she didn’t leave, he would ultimately have killed her), she left me and my sister behind since she didn't really know where she would go. She snuck out of the house one morning, with whispered good-byes to me, while my father slept. When he woke up, he was angry, frustrated and seemed lost. He had a few days of rageful, defeated tears and what felt to me like gut wrenching grief; peppered by frantic phone calls to find her. Then one morning I woke up to find my father in the living room, standing on a chair with a rope around his neck, mouthing soundless whispers to himself, he was praying and crying silent tears. I had to talk him down, but he wouldn’t even look at me. I just kept crying, pleading and praying with him, I don’t know how long, it felt like hours. He finally got down, but he told me I wouldn’t be able to stop him, that he would do it anyway when I wasn’t around, then he went to sleep. I proceeded to “clean” the apartment… I threw every rope, pill and knife that I could find out the window. When he woke up, he threatened to stick his head in the oven… I was 9 (my sister was 3). I decided I could never leave him and he was satisfied with that. So when my mother got settled and petitioned the court for custody, I told them I wanted to live with my father. They were smarter and sent me to live with my mother, but she never forgave me for that betrayal and I had enough lessons in keeping secrets to know not to tell her that my father tried to kill himself, even if it meant she might forgive me. I believed my mother loved me in her own way, but this dynamic continued to play out in many different ways throughout my childhood and teen years. Although I was a reliable and obedient child, I don’t think she ever regained trust in me. She judged me without seeing life through my eyes. She was blinded by the trauma of her own life and it was all she could do to keep us safe from the world.
Today I don't have a relationship with my psychopathic father, it's too difficult. But I still love him and feel connected to him. He's just too dangerous to be a part of my life today which includes a husband who loves me to the point of worship and three beautiful children that together we work really hard to provide a stable life filled with love and magic. My mother is a part of our life, but I have recently had to draw some boundaries that she is not happy with, so our relationship is very strained. More on that in later posts.
Love,
Lilly
All works past, present and future are protected under a CCC. Creative Common License, Lilly's Blue Life by Lilly S. Blue is licensed under a Creative Common Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivs-3.0-Unported License.
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