Really really scared - addressing my traumas with all involved

[mourningme]

I am terrified. Life will never be the same affter this. After I stop protecting them and start protecting myself. I have been quietly erroding for 30 years. I do not know life without swallowing my pain, being dissmissed, being ignored for the sake of their comfort, constant dissociation due to coninuing to hold up the "family" ruse face to face with my unexposed perpatrators. No one cares about the view from behind my eyes all these years. The sacrifices I MADE as the burden of the perfect FOO seemed to fall on my shoulders-the one who was a very hurt, confused and betrayed little girl. In my case, becoming a mother myself has brought on the traumas I endured, and the questions....SO MANY QUESTIONS. The obvious one being WHY. Why wasn't I protected? I was abused by the same person who tortured my mother her entire childhood. My parents left me in the care of this family member with full knowledge of who he was. I was abandoned with a monster and my brain can not unravel that mystery. I would have to be savagely murdered to put my own daughter (who coincidentally is now the age that my abuse started...and why my life is falling apart now as I relive my childhood through her.)
I am fixated on my parents negligence more than the abuse itself lately because I feel that NONE of my traumas needed to happen. My entire life could have had an entirely different trajectory and I cant understand for the life of me how my parents rationalized their decision. How they continue to rationalize this decision and are clueless as to why I am no longer able to act perfect. The denial is just too much to take.
I only get feedback when I do not provide people whatever function I am in their life. No one cares why they just resent me for not being what they want me to be.
The future with this out in the open is unknown and scaring me so much.

[Phoebes]

Hi mourningme,

I feel so much pain in your words, and each one resonated so much with me in this post. This journey is scary and difficult a lot of the time, especially at first, but one that is so worth it. Once you realize what has happened as you have there's really nowhere to go back to (the former protections your mind provided). I started this particular part of my journey(the ONLY meaningful one) about three years ago once I went NC with Nm and others in the family, and immersed myself in literature and pertinent videos about narcissistic abuse, being the scapegoat of the family, etc. Out of the fog (website) is a great starting place. There's a lot of junk out there on youtube but a few very helpful ones as well depending on your situation. Just looking through and finding what resonated with me was healing because I could see that my relationship with my primary abuser, my Nm, was not as unusual as I thought.

After getting a handle on what happened (and why), I've been able to heal more, but it's taken some grief, and it's not easy. But, my thoughts lately have been almost identical to your post. I think I "get" it now but acceptance is a hard part for me.

"I feel that NONE of my traumas needed to happen. My entire life could have had an entirely different trajectory and I cant understand for the life of me how my parents rationalized their decision. " Absolutely feel the same. I'm working on this one myself.

I'm sorry for the long response below. It may need a "Trigger warning" but I hope if it resonates with you somehow. We are in this together and have so many similar experienced, it's truly uncanny.

I intellectually understand that something or things happened to my Nm at an early age that caused her to become narcissistic and lack empathy, and even become sadistic and likely psychopathic. I understand the triggers for her rages and abuse (me being me, instead of me being her-no one mirrored before-that was now my job). I understand how my brain protected itself by trauma bonding to my abuser. I understand that now admitting to any fault would be the same as death to her, which is why she can't ever be sorry. I understand why she has twisted the entire story around on ME as if I am the abuser and she has done nothing wrong-projection and gaslighting. But none of that understanding makes me feel much better. I still wonder WHY. What human could do this to another human, much less their own child? I'm invisible and my life is completely dismissed, until there is something to deny or criticize.

I am extremely resentful she squashed everything I wanted to do, put me down and ripped me to shreds from birth to present, and "doesn't see it." I knew the price of "defiance." Anything I did anyway on my own accord was met with annihilating rage, shaming, degradation. So, when I am so terribly hard on myself for not just breaking free and being as authentic and successful as others I know who followed their dreams, I try to be easy on myself a little bit for knowing I was in a no-win and it would have been unlikely a person who was unconscious of the trauma bond/stockholm syndrome would have been able to make such a choice and had such personal autonomy and confidence.

It's interesting, but I was thinking on this lately that for a long time as a child growing up I was jazzed about music and art. I wanted to play drums, sax, piano, as well as I was above average in my art skills and loved to draw and paint. I also loved soccer and wanted to excel at that. Looking back, and being triggered by many things current day reminding me of the little encounters, there were too many times to count that I was denied the right to do these things I loved. I also was denied things like skateboarding, riding my bike on the street in our quiet neighborhood, things other kids were doing my age. It was under the guise of "protection" and "love." "Because parents who love their kids don't let them get disappointed by doing these things they will fail at." 

So as I grew older, as I now realize, I became like people I admired. People who had a "real" career, something that would not incite rage. I had about 3 teachers over the course of 13 years of education who "saw me" as a unique individual who was capable. I had an extreme attachment to these teachers, much more so than friends my own age. So, I decided I wanted to be JUST LIKE THEM and be this kind of person for others. I even quit teaching after my first year to go back to art school and become an artist like I had originally wanted (and felt I was too old to start music), only to get sucked back in to teaching after a year after a year of my Nm's rage attacks and challenging money situation as I was solely on my own. That decision still haunts me. But, learning about all of this now, I realize, I did not have the self-support and understanding to follow through and make that happen the way I wanted. I was still trauma bonded and felt very trapped. I felt my mother was on the verge of literally killing me, the way she acted. I had NO idea I could have gone no contact and lived my own life (at age 25). In fact, I didn't realize this until recently (and I'm much older now).

As difficult as this was for me to digest and actually SEE what happened, it has helped tremendously in moving forward. I still feel frozen and resentful, but no longer and so hard on myself as what we have been through is very hard, and we have made it and are making it. A lot of people never find the truth about what happened to them, so I feel lucky in that. I don't know if you will choose to break ties with your abusers or not, but that is your choice and journey. I've needed to just to get a handle on all of this because my Nm is so intrusive she would not allow me the space I asked for. I hope you don't mind me responding by sharing my experience.

[Kizzie]

It is scary MM and it may be that your parents will not admit to anything and that's just a really difficult thing to deal with to say the least.  As you wrote "The denial is just too much to take" which sounds like part of you knows you need to move through this in order to move on.  It may be that you are more ready to do so than you realize and the anger is the fuel for doing so?     

Just my thoughts so plse disregard if they don't resonate with you at all 

[radical]

This takes so much courage.

You are choosing your own health and that of your own family.  No-one chose to care about you when you needed care and protection more than anything.  The important thing is that YOU are choosing it now.  Please don't underestimate how hard it is to choose to care for yourself now, in the circumstances, or the invaluable rewards of finding the strength and power to validate yourself, your suffering, your value, your needs and your importance now.

It is so good to understand and to allow the future to be open.  Whatever happens, 'groundhog day' will be over as soon as you  are able to validate yourself, and to stop seeking validation, security and love from the source of invalidation, danger and callous disregard.

I wish this was a much gentler process.  Please keep seekiing support as you walk through this.

[ah]

Mourningme,

If my experience doesn't help, feel free to totally ignore it. It's completely subjective:

I don't know if your parents are anything like my M, but in her case she let me be abused and eventually became extremely, atrociously abusive herself even though it's not in her character to be abusive at all. She was deep, deep... deep... in denial. She was being abused herself and had no self awareness or courage.

She's grown since but she still denies far more than she acknowledges. She denied her own abuse her whole life and then mine and my siblings'. She lives in an imaginary world in her own head. I guess it's a very powerful defense mechanism. I envy her that ability to just forget, I wish I could do it.
But I also know for a fact that her denial doesn't offer her much solace. She still has all the symptoms of cptsd herself.

I did talk to her about the past but I didn't ask her questions, because I could see she understood our shared history even less than I did. She could never tell me why. She didn't understand herself so she had no chance of explaining her own actions to me. So instead I told her a little bit of what I remembered and knew. What she had done, what she hadn't done and should have done. I was quiet and I didn't budge. I told her she was welcome to her "view" of things. I told her I had no problem with the discrepancies in our memories because I understood how denial and repression worked, but I wouldn't play along anymore.
When she said something that was imaginary I said so. I said "No, that's not it" and corrected it calmly and moved on. No discussion. No argument. I'm not going to argue that blue is blue.

I guess she really seemed pathetically sad to me. I did ask her a few "why" questions about concrete things. About specific events to jog her memory a bit. I asked her why she thought social services investigated us re. child abuse allegations when I was a teenager. She remembered it happening, but said "Yeah... I didn't understand why." she brutalized and traumatized me but she wasn't my enemy. She was a deeply broken person with no backbone. I despise her behavior, it was cowardly and deplorable. But I feel pity for her pain.

And I'm so grateful and proud of you for knowing deeply you would never let your daughter be hurt. I wish my M did the same.

My F denies too, but I think his denial is an offense mechanism because he's Lucifer. So do my current abusers. Trying to talk openly to any of them would be dangerous so I never talked to them. Never asked them any questions.
So I guess in my case it was a quiet thing... I phased out. I didn't confront anybody because my abusers were either too dangerous or too blind. Either way, they don't have any answers to offer me. They're even crazier than I am I'm on my own.

I don't know your parents, but I hope you won't get hurt if they can't / won't reciprocate.

And if talking openly is frightening but you think it will be fruitful and beneficial, you have every right to be scared.
But if it's scary because past experience tells you it may not do much good and might escalate without resolution, then it may not be necessary.
I think there's more than one way to stand firm and say what you know to be true. You can write, you can test the waters before you talk openly.
You have every right to do this on your own terms. I guess there may be many, many right ways to do this. My way was silence and it was better than talking.

I agree, it takes so much courage to be where you're at right now.