A dysfunctional childhood is hard to articulate and explain to others - you feel it is normal - when there is nothing normal about it. You can't know the difference, when it is all you have ever known. You simply call it family.
Looking back into my childhood and even into adulthood - I don't recall anyone telling me we were messed up - that our family was insane and had abuse cursing through so many generations.
My mother - who is not mentally well - I saw as one of high morals and values. I failed to appreciate the mental illness of her religion that created a fake reality we called normal. I didn't see what she forgave - I only saw she was forgiving. I didn't see what she allowed with each sin she overlooked.
Even typing this it freaks me out.
She was as evil as my father - for not reacting to his sexual abuse - by leaving and protecting the children.
The ideals I had in my head about my parents and their religion were all kind - hardworking - with truth and morality baked in. In my head - I had a normal family - but on paper and in reality it was far far from the truth.
Reality is my father on the front page of the paper with the headlines "Criminal Sexual Assault". That is something you can't forgive and make go away. It is. It is more insane to believe a normal family surrounds this man. In any way shape or form.
If you were raised in this home, you are messed up.
Our discernment of truth and fiction is all twisted up and backwards.
What is up and what is down - what is right and what is wrong?
As I see my family continue to gather, I know that these sleight of hands are still at play.
There may be new individuals; but the act and drama of dysfunction are still playing along.
A new perpetrator(s) and one(s) who supports him/her.
It can be no other way.
Sexual abuse within families flows from generation to generation. IT does not die when one abusers dies.
There are new relationships in the old family traditions.
The same sentiment is there - where we are kind, we are family, and family gathers.
Where relationships are built beneath the forgiveness model where reality can and will be swept away.
Not speaking the truth or being real or seeing evil is my family's strength.
My mother's blindness defined her.
The mental dance and drama of dysfunction is just normal life.
The paper and the headlines are long forgotten, rarely talked about or mentioned. Mother and her offspring still gather in the name of family. She perhaps still speaks of being "grateful we are all here together" and she is.
Each one who continues on 'playing normal' make her normal and not insane.
I - who stand outside of this drama trauma dysfunctional play - am seen as weird, odd, mental, cold, mean, unforgiving and unkind.
Oddly, I represent the truth of what lies beneath our family. The sentiments they place on me - aptly describe our family.
I was that - until I became aware.
I am wanting to spare a child - to spare a mother - a father - the pain of not knowing - that our family isn't right. I don't want them to feel it is okay to bring children into our family. I don't want them to only see a large family of 'nice' people. I want our mental health and emotional brokenness to be known.
The first thing any new person into our family should know is what the headlines read - how traditionally the children are abused when we gather.
I have the clippings. I have a file full of 'evidence' of our truths that live in our family tree.
I wish I was told this when I was young.
I wish the family albums showed abusers.
I wish they showed why the ones who left and didn't gather, why they left.
Instead they were made out to be the cold and indifferent.
And, then the abusers and their supporters, kind family members. Really Kind???
Too many families pass on heirlooms and treasures - when what they really need to do in order to make healthy generations, is to pass on awareness and boundaries and truth of what is. Abuse of past generations needs to be talked about - shared loud and often.
It seems like a major cruelty to bring in new little ones under the auspices of family fun time.
When the likelihood of abuse is incredibly high.
There doesn't appear to have been any child spared thus far.
I am the outlier - the aunt and sister who stays away.
I can't know what they say about me - but I know what they said about the generation before me.
"She is cold and bitter and doesn't attend family functions."
"Very self centered."
"Who does she think she is."
I don't believe we are mourned or even thought too much about - mostly what they want/need is for family to be family and not to be the story in the headlines.
I recall many family reunions on my mother's side - I never once recalled a whisper about abuse that lived there. I am not the silent aunts who didn't arrive at the reunions. I am trying to speak to the next generations. Abuse can only thrive if it is kept quiet.
