Feeling like an "other."

[Cat of the Canals]

I have some memories as a pre-teen of feeling a strong sense that my family was "different." I couldn't exactly put my finger on what was different at the time and I'm not sure I would have identified it as a strictly negative thing. (Nor would it have been positive, though. I definitely felt some confusion over it.) I just remember having a pretty clear feeling that "my parents aren't like other parents."

I think as I became an adolescent, I started internalizing that feeling and began to think that I was the one that was different. PDmom is very extroverted and social, and the fact that I'm the opposite made me feel like there was something wrong with me for a long time. Before I started coming Out of the FOG, I thought the lack of closeness with her was because I was "weird."

I'm curious if others have similar experiences. Mostly, this is the first time I've connected that early childhood "my family is different somehow" feeling with the PD stuff.

[Leonor]

Hi Cat,

My family was definitely "weird" when I was growing up. My mom remarried when I was in grade school and we moved to this very tony town, where divorce was anathema, everyone had a gazillion siblings that all looked alike, none of the moms held jobs besides those approved for rich ladies, like real estate agent or part-time boutique owner, and the dads were all corporate lawyers or Wall Street types. They were all blond or redheads. Total Stepford!

Kids always thought I was odd. For example, I went to Catholic school and my classmates would ask if I was Jewish (they sensed I was different in some way, so in their weird racist world, I must be "ethnic" in some way.) I was from a (hushed whispers): "broken home." My mom was a "working mother." My very working class dad was considered "poor." Even when we were older, one of my college boyfriends suggested I not mention my mom's divorce around his parents!

So I felt odd, I was odd, but I also thought they were odd. This was the MTv, Murphy Brown era, latchkey kids, the Cosbys and the Conners ... In another way, I was totally normal. What was up with these people? What Planet Preppy did they come from?

I could also see the fissures. For one thing, they were all raging alcoholics. The kids were all kind of personality-stunted, clannish and uncurious. The parish religious were child predators. And our village had a disproportionate rate of suicides and even a homicide that just was not discussed in company.

So I think that my oddness was a blessing, in the sense that I was able to see cracks in the surface in my family. It was - is - painful to see the generational abuse in my family (which, just the generation before, would have fit perfectly in that ridiculous town). I still have migraine-inducing cognitive dissonance. I have intense periods of relentless self-loathing. I trend towards dissociative personality when I feel stressed. I feel like my mind is a little cracked, too.

But I also have a hypersensitive b.s. detector, and I think that comes from being so long on the outside looking in. I can look at the wall and say, "Yeah, it's darker in here, because you just came in the hall and turned the lights down, duh!"

[Jolie40]

Hi Cat

we moved when I was a preteen & luckily a group of girls at new school let me join their group
going to their homes, their parents were so friendly & welcoming & normal!

after we moved, one parent would stay out late drinking & when they came home PD parent would be hysterical/break things- not normal

around that time found the big wall hanging pic of PD parent behind dining room buffet
it was all slashed up with a knife- not normal

as a teen, we all went to family counselling & counsellor said they treated me as SG
this confirmed to me that it wasn't right how they treated me
in HS, sometimes after getting off bus I'd walk around house several times cause I just wasn't ready to face PD parent

[theonetoblame]

Oh ya, were were the weird ones on my street for sure... We moved towns when I was 6 so I started in the local school in grade 1 even though my cohort had been together since kindergarten. The children on our street all seemed to have grown up together and some of their parents were friends.

On one occasion when I was about 8, my mother was detoxing from sedating medication the gp had cut off, she developed a seizure disorder and was taken to hospital by ambulance (where she stayed in the psychiatric ward for a couple weeks). As they were wheeling her away, the local kids lined up along our driveway and kicked dirt in her direction, a couple even threw little stones towards her, while they eyed me in a menacing manner. I was bullied a lot by that group, and never really had local kids I could play with.

About a year later I was in a nearby field and one of those kids ran up and shot me in the lip with a 'spud gun', which is basically a plastic cap gun with a piece of potato stuck in the end. It actually cut my lip, and I was lucky to not catch it in the eye. I ran home crying just as father pulled in from work. He snapped, loaded mother and me in the truck and tore off down the street, into the field, and then chased the kids around the field in his truck. In the moment I thought it was great, I remember yelling "get them dad!!!". They were running and yelling, jumping over fences to get away -- NOT NORMAL. this also didn't help with my outsider status  sigh, conflict resolution was never his strength with me either.

I was an outsider for sure... one thing I have found interesting about some reading I have done about BPD men is that they tend to view themselves as an outsider to their family, intimate relationships etc., and this leads to insecurity and fear of abandonment. I think I'm lucky in that I was able to find my way as a young adult to a profession that gave me place and purpose, a place where I was an insider doing good. This internal mission has guided me through some very difficult times -- i've been knocked off this path a couple times in my life but always just drifted back. Leaving was difficult, floating back to what seems to be my calling has always been the easy part.

[Cat of the Canals]

Thank you all for sharing. Looking back, I can see now that both parents were very judgmental of most people. So maybe part of this feeling came from them directly in a snobby, "we're not like the idiots that live around us" kind of way. And maybe part of my confusion was wondering, "Why? What's so bad about them?"

[daughter]

There are weird circumstances regarding my obvious SG role in regards to my npd enmeshed parents.

Not only was my only sibling, GC nsis, overtly favored, but NM often opined "it's perfectly normal for every family to have a SG kid", using that specific label - huh?  They often expressed their absolute right "to say and do whatever they want", regardless, telling me "it is what it is, and we won't change". 

They also held themselves superior to both sides of our extended family, expecting royal-treatment from all their relatives, no matter how dismissive and disdainful their own behaviors, no matter how obnoxious their demands, no matter how inappropriate or invasive their expectations.  I think our relatives chafed under that authoritarian abuse, and consequently we were estranged from NF's siblings' families, and eventually from NM's SG sibling's family too.

I was to kowtow to both my parents, and to nsis, to be reliably obedient, useful, and selflessly devoted.  To note, I not only felt outside "magic circle" of NM-NF-nsis, my NF often TOLD ME I "wasn't part of their family", and several times that they "didn't really care if they ever saw me again". At 15, on a cruise-trip, my angered NF encouraged me to "just jump off ship" because NM was aggravated with me (for her own bad behavior towards me) - never follow-up apology, ever! 

Even as a child I've felt "other" around my parents and sister, a profound aloneness, an unsettling knowledge that my seemingly upstanding parents were unreliable, unloving towards me, and sometimes actually dangerous. Certain episodes and circumstances would now likely trigger Child Protective Services investigation, for what occurred within privacy of family home but sometimes probably visible to astute schoolteacher.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Oh my gosh yes. I felt weird from first grade. I was an "Ugly Betty" sort of character. Not exactly, but my social development was actively thwarted. I wasn't permitted to do what my peers were doing a great percentage of the time. We lived across town from my school, because the closer parochial school wasn't good enough for my mother. But she complained to high heaven about the distance (usual martyr pose) such that should I be invited to a birthday party or whatever, it was often a no because it was sooooo far. We were "the poor family" at this rich school because we lived where it was less expensive and I was taught to say, "We can't afford that," when kids were talking about stuff they did that I was not permitted. Video games, certain brands clothing (think GAP), vacation, going to the pool in the summer... I can barely swim. As an adult I realize we could have done those things easily but they just couldn't be arsed and my dad blew all the money on stupid stuff to control my mother and keep her anxious. They were also very judgmental and complained about how "materialistic" the people at school were. That was rich coming from a pair of hoarders. I was also taught that I would always be hated my whole life so just learn to accept it and shut up about it I'm watching the news.

[Cat of the Canals]

We were "the poor family" at this rich school because we lived where it was less expensive and I was taught to say, "We can't afford that," when kids were talking about stuff they did that I was not permitted. Video games, certain brands clothing (think GAP), vacation, going to the pool in the summer... I can barely swim. As an adult I realize we could have done those things easily but they just couldn't be arsed and my dad blew all the money on stupid stuff to control my mother and keep her anxious.

I definitely thought we were poor compared to my peers, despite the fact that both of my parents worked. I wore strictly hand-me-downs from a neighbor for years! But I realize now it was just that my mom was cheap about that stuff. I probably ended up being better dressed, considering the neighbor and her mom had some fashion sense. I don't even want to think about how my mother would have dressed me if she were picking out the clothes. Once I outgrew the "hand-me-down" age, she always tried to buy me these flowery granny dresses.