Wondering if I'll ever know what was said in the smear campaign

[JustKat]

I don't know why I'm only just now thinking about this, more than 40 years after the fact. Maybe I'm trying to piece things together now that both parents are gone and I'm trying to understand how I'm left with two vengeance-filled siblings. (My sister's behaviour has been so despicable I'd say she's a notch higher on the evil scale than Nmother was).

Lately, I've been thinking about one event in particular. In my senior year of high school (late 1970s), my Nmother realized she was losing her control over me and placed me under the silent treatment. I couldn't take it anymore and left home a few days after my 18th birthday (I stayed with friends here and there and managed to still graduate). After I left, Nmother continued with the silent treatment for many years but allowed me to return home for the family Christmas. There were other relatives there and she had to show them she had a perfect family. She'd act like everything was just fine, treat me well, buy me gifts, and everyone in the family was just as happy as could be. I guess I was so busy working and trying to survive on my own that I just accepted my mother was crazy and tried to move on. I came home for Christmas because I wanted to see my other family members (who I thought loved me).

Since my siblings always treated me normally on Christmas Day, I must have somehow thought things were okay with us and never questioned what they had been told on the day I left. At the time, my sister was 16 and my brother was only eight. I don't remember where they were that day. Whatever they were told, it must have been a doozy: I was sent to a psychiatric ward, I was in juvenile hall, I was in a drug rehab program, etc. etc. "She fled the abuse" was definitely not one of them.

Some days I think about writing a letter to each of my siblings, but I never will because they'll never bother to open it, let alone read it. But dammit, I sure would love to have even a hint of what they were told about me.

Has anyone ever had a sibling tell them what was said in their Nparent's smear campaign? Or is it something we'll never have an answer to?

[olivegirl]

Hi Kathy,

As the scapegoat, my uBpd mother and uNpd father smeared me to the entire family as well. 

They were fixated on blaming me.  I was an excellent student and very docile but they felt that I could do more to show my gratitude for being born. 

They started really badmouthing me at around age 10 so that my younger sister and cousins would also find it necessary to shun me at all times.

Holidays were especially tough because no one acknowledged me and I overheard my parents strongly advise my sister to "not stick her neck out" to reach out to me and to let me be.

That was harsh.  At first I thought I was imagining being the outsider but then I learned as a teenager that my parents were spearheading the silent treatment.

It was pretty traumatic and I ran away for a week when I was 17 years old.

I was then realllllly targeted as unstable, crazy, defiant.

My younger sister had to witness the abuse and I feel for her.  She became the Golden Child and was very very compliant but also given more leeway.

Determined to really sever the relationship between us, my parents informed my GC sister to never trust me as I am deeply jealous of her and untrustworthy and dangerous! 

Our sibling relationship was tense and surface level throughout our 20s and 30s.

Then a few years ago my GC younger sister became trapped and married a raging alcoholic, gambling, cheater.

My self-obsessed parents not only cruelly looked the other way at my sister's desperate pleas for help but they also shamed her that divorcing her husband was not to be considered as it would bring great shame and inconvenience to them!

Unforgivably my toxic parents mocked my sister and told her that my life was perfect and that I wanted nothing to do with her. 

Nothing could have been further from the truth and while I always was very uncomfortable around my sister's spouse and kept them at a distance, I still loved my sister very much.

The abuse escalated in my sister's marriage unbeknownst to me and it became violent and my sister finally called me and she told me she expected me to hang up on her! 

I consoled her, I told her I loved her and she deserved better and I told her I would help her navigate the divorce process and that I would stand up to our parents for her.  She was terrified of them. 

My parents exposed themselves again, crying to my sister that I am rejoicing at the demise of her marriage and that I am pushing divorce because of my need to one up her and see her kids grow up in a broken family.   

My sister finally started to recognize how my parents manipulated her and as I stayed steadfast in my financial and emotional support to her, she began seeing that I truly loved and wished the best for her.

I am now NC with my parents.  My sister is VVVLC with them.

My parents claim that I am responsible for the family rift.   

[Srcyu]

I think we'll always have to guess about that one.
"Recollections may vary" was a saying I heard recently and it's so true.  Amazingly, I did once manage to get through to my mother about two quite large incidents in my childhood that she had tried gaslighting me about.

But normally, the truth is well hidden along with all the abuse.

We do know that lies will have been told about us along with heavy negative bias. If we did ever discover some of the things said about us it would actually be a huge backwards step.

[Escaped_Goat]

Oh gosh you could drive yourself loopy imagining what they've said. I feel now that i just have to let it go in peace, there are another 7 billion people I can get to know who never knew my family. What gives me comfort is knowing thay the reasons there was an estrangement were actions caused by my FOO, not by me. I can't imagine what would have to be going on in my head for me to not just be abusive but to then lie. I've just got too much self respect. Its like they have a split in their head where they're unaware of what they are doing otherwise surely they'd be just too embarrassed with the things they claim?

[JustKat]

It was pretty traumatic and I ran away for a week when I was 17 years old.
I was then realllllly targeted as unstable, crazy, defiant.

Thanks for sharing that, Olivegirl. It also got worse for me when I started to push back and stand up for myself. The teen years seem to be the worst for us. It's the time when we're gaining independent thoughts and they can't allow that to happen. We're also doing something we weren't ever supposed to do, and that's reach adulthood. They want us to remain children forever so we can be controlled. I would imagine that the scapegoat child is often the oldest child because that child is the first one to become a rebellious teen and fight back.

We do know that lies will have been told about us along with heavy negative bias. If we did ever discover some of the things said about us it would actually be a huge backwards step.

Thanks, Windmill. I agree that discovering what was said about us could be a huge emotional setback. I'm sure that whatever my sister was told about me was some of the worst stuff imaginable. Probably something frightening, like I was mentally ill and tried to poison her when we were kids. It would have to be something pretty extreme to make her believe that she should always watch her back around me and never trust me. There's a part of me that wants to know, but I realize that I'm better off not knowing because there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

What's so crazy about these smear campaigns is that the sibling never actually witnesses the stuff they've been told. I was always so kind and loving to my sister, and yet, she talks about me like I'm an axe murderer. Heh. Who knows, maybe that's what she was told. 

[moglow]

I don't know if it helps but my experience was that mother spread a lot of crap about everyone around her over the years. There were times when she was at odds with this or that person, told me a LOAD of stuff that should never have been repeated, then somehow circled back around where they were her very best buddies. She cycled through people that way as far back as I can remember.

Thinking of all she told me about others, I assume she did the same behind my back where she blew up and invented all kinds of things, whatever seemed most convenient at the time. That kind of took the sting out for me, knowing I wasn't the only one and she'd 100% turn on anyone. She pulled no punches, took no prisoners. I'm pretty sure I don't want to know - if they chose to believe her, that's on them.

[Call Me Cordelia]

If they chose to believe my parents, at all, they've dropped me from their lives. Tells me what I need to know. And being absolutely NC, it really works for me to not have the flying monkey potential. So,  no temptation whatsoever to open that Pandora's box.

[JenniferSmith]

Years ago, a family member came back from a big family event I didn't attend, and they told me what my nmother was saying about me. This family member is not always a reliable narrator, but I don't believe they lied completely, so I assume there is a grain of truth in what they shared with me in terms of what she said.   And it was a horrible, disparaging assessment of me as a person, although made in an understated way. 

In my case, she knows exactly why I am NC from her because I explained it in a letter.  Because of this, I know that anything she says to anyone other than what I wrote is a lie, a spin, a fabrication, a way to make herself look better, etc.  And of course she needs to do that, because no normal person wants to admit to themselves that they did terrible things to their child and their child fears them and has no trust in them because of it. So of course there is a spin.

Its painful to know there is a reputation about me that has been circulated amongst her side of the family all these years that doesn't match who I am at all. Sometimes I do wonder if any of them ever question the narrative they've been told.  I wish they cared enough to find out, but it may be so deeply entrenched by now they've just accepted it as truth.  Its interesting that the violent bully is the one badmouthing me while I never went to anyone to air her dirty laundry.   Another example of how fundamentally different we are from each other.