[Rant] Feeling It’s All Unfair: Isolation and Guilt

[kelleron]

I've been doing a lot of grieving lately over my uBPD mom and her flying monkeys. I've cried, I've screamed into my pillow, I've made this animalistic sound that sounds like a pure agonising death moan and yet this feeling doesn't go away. I've relived my childhood and teenage traumas while being grounded in my present, safe room. I've spoken with safe, understanding friends and family about it and gotten validation.

It's been like this for 3 weeks. I'm exhausted emotionally. I can kind of come to terms with it because I now realise so many things (another post on that later, maybe), but man...it just feels like I was punched in the face as a baby just because I was born.

Everything is so hard, but 99% of people either don't care or don't understand. I had to raise myself. I studied by myself. I overcame social anxiety by myself, for the love of god! And still, STILL, some enablers minimise my suffering. Cue "it wasn't so bad", "she's still your mom", "you'll regret it if you don't reconnect". None of them heard a word I said! I said I was abused, chronically stressed out, listed examples, but nothing! All those people who so-called were trustworthy family members, just betrayed and gaslit me! And they're the normal ones in society's eyes, because they are in contact with their family, they are seen as "good" while I'm labelled "ungrateful".

Heck, my country even has a LAW saying parents can legally sue their children for money if the children can afford it. Of course, the law states if they abused their child, the parent would lose, but that's the thing, why do I have to PROVE I was abused? There's no guarantee if she invokes it I'll win. It started when I was 10 - was I supposed to keep voice recordings of our yelling sessions since then? It's ridiculous! What if I lose? How messed up is it to have to PAY your abuser?!

I'm just mad at the injustice of it all. Not only was I born into a family built on gaslighting and straight up lying, I had to suffer by myself in near total isolation. Nobody believed me. Everyone, save a handful, always told me that I was making a mistake going NC. Even the bloody law is in favour of parents!

And the isolation. It's so profound in this society. All the movies, songs, pop culture all promote this warmth and attachment to your family, like they'd do anything for their families. Going on public transport, seeing happy families makes me sad. Seeing ignored children, makes me sad. Meeting friends who say "I called my mom the other day..." makes me feel alienated, like I lost a big part of what it means to be human.

Even the 1% who believe me - I feel the Grand Canyon sized rift between us. It's like day and night, talking with people who were raised in healthy homes. I can't relate to them and they can't to me. I don't want my only friends to be my therapist. I don't want my loved ones to have to go through what I did. But how, how, to deal with this profound isolation? To feel like no society could fundamentally accept you, what you're doing, how you're living. How do you even live when you don't even know what home feels like?

I feel adrift in this world, like nobody could understand me. Nobody in my real life could sympathise. And certainly society makes it blatantly clear that I should feel shame for going NC! No one congratulated me for having the guts to move out (essentially run away) the second I could afford it. No one recognises the effort it takes for us to even get through the day, when we are surrounded by reminders that we are different! I can't take it anymore! I just want to be understood and stop feeling so guilty for wanting to be happy! What's so wrong about that?!

I was just wondering if anyone feels like that - completely alienated, even when you're surrounded by healthy people who love you. Deep down, you just think nobody could accept you for "what you did", even if going NC was the only thing you could've done to save yourself.

[Starboard Song]

Cue "it wasn't so bad", "she's still your mom", "you'll regret it if you don't reconnect". None of them heard a word I said!

Few people get our experiences. I understand. And indeed, it makes you feel alone.

Our crisis was with my in-laws, so my wife and I had each other. And, frankly, several members of the family who all told us privately that we were doing the right thing.

I suspect there is no alternative -- no substitute -- for an IRL partner or friend who gets it. Neither my wife nor I could have made it alone. But we had to accept that we'd experienced a loss. Like you say, you are missing what others take for granted. And you see people with normal family all around you.

Don't try to persuade the world, or even to explain to them. Try to cut them all some slack, knowing how hard it is to understand from the outside. But yeah: you NEED one or two close friends, compadres and confidants, whom you can always trust.

I hope you can find and focus upon that little tiny network, and then realize this: for all those images, few people spend even 2% of their time actually with their parents. 98% of their time is NOT with parents. You are closer to normal than you think, when viewed in the right light. I don't mean to dismiss your feelings of loss. I mean to point out the huge territory you DO have in common with others, and that it is a great base for rebuilding your confidence.

[SaltwareS]

I have felt isolated like that but I'm no longer in the place where it seems like everyone has a close family-of-origin except me. I now see everyone has various struggles. I wonder if you're in a bubble of people who are close with their families of birth? I do know Facebook compounded that awful feeling and I eventually quit that.

But I felt so isolated, and even gave up on therapists who totally misunderstood my situation.

That law, totally stinks! I imagine you'd have to do thought-stopping exercises to distract from obsessing over that which sounds like a trap, and traps make people think about checking out of life. If it ever comes to that law coming to decide things in your life, I hope you can give it your best shot at saying you were abused, because you were abused. And if you win, you will help people who come after you. What a bad law.

Congratulations on moving out and getting away! There are more fellow travelers in the world than you realize. I hope you can make new connections lay down new memories.

[Danden]

What I have learned about other people who don't get it is this:  Many people have some issues with their own parents that they do not talk about.  When they tell you "she's still your mom" and "you'll regret it if you don't reconnect" what they are really saying is "please quit talking about this, because I am trying to push down the same feelings and I don't want to deal with these feelings, cause it is stressful for me too to keep a relationship with my mom and I want to appear to be a good person myself and you are getting in the way of that."

I agree, that law stinks.  I would think about hiding any money I have, whether through legal vehicles or by keeping it in cash, so I can't be sued.  This way you could have peace of mind in that regard.

When you see a happy family, you are seeing a happy moment, but there may be unhappy moments behind closed doors.  You only have your own life to think about, so think about that, and not the lives you imagine others to have.  You may have to come to accept the idea that, in a very real sense, you did not have a mom.  Now you have to be a mom to yourself.  A long time ago, after my first child was born, I took her to the grocery store with me when she was about a month old.  I saw a very pregnant woman and we started chatting.  She said she had lost her mom and wished she had a mom to help her at the time of her baby's birth.  I suggested she should cook some meals before the baby comes and put them in the freezer, and in this way she could be a mother to herself.  That is what you should do for yourself.

For me, the sense of isolation and alienation has always been there.  It is just a matter of finding a way to deal with it.  I have found that I live my life in many pieces.  I find satisfaction in my work, but I can't fully share it with others.  I find satisfaction with a friend and share one side of me with her, but she doesn't know my other friends or other sides of me.  Many things are like that.  Maybe that is just life.  Or life for me.  But that is the way it is for me.  If you talk about your experiences with other people, in my experience you should are very careful what you say and how you say it.  Because you are right, many people don't understand.  One way I cope is to focus on tasks, doing things I need to do and doing things for others.  This keeps me from ruminating and keeps up my interactions with others.  Unfortunately I don't have too many moments of real understanding  from others.  That is just the way it is, at least for me.