any SGs ever thought this re PD parent

[Jolie40]

 when younger, thought there had to be an explanation for how I was treated by PD parent & enabler

often thought that I was the product of an affair
that is the only explanation that fit for why I was disliked, unloved, even hated

has anyone else had this thought?



DO know that I was an accident (not planned) as overheard parent tell a friend that I was an accident

[Andeza]

Since I was adopted this obviously couldn't be the case for me, although I am the product of a one night stand and therefore the skeleton in someone's closet. I knew intuitively from a young age that there was no logical explanation for my uBPDms treatment of me. I decided that she must be crazy if logic wasn't the deciding factor.

I do remember asking God why this family? I know He had His reasons.

[D.Dan]

At first, I just assumed I was unlikable by anyone. Then when I was 10 yo, I discovered that people liked me if I met them without uPDmom or my uPDsis.

After that, I started calling it "the curse of the first born" because I was told, implied to, and forced to, to sacrifice myself in multiple ways for the good of everyone else in my immediate family. I was convinced at this point that my uPDmom only hated me and none of my other siblings.

I was the sacrificial lamb.

[D.Dan]

Oops, I seem to have missed the mark.

I had hoped I was switched at birth up into my teen years.

[JustKathy]

Unfortunately, I look like a clone of my mother so I never had that thought.

But wow, Andeza, you were adopted by a narc? 
When I was a teenager my Nmother got approved for a foster child. She wanted another boy so my brother would have someone to play with but she "returned" him when she realized she couldn't control him. It's horrifying to think that someone with NPD could fool an adoption or foster agency.

[Andeza]

Yes, it is horrifying, JustKathy. And my uBPDm had to play her cards just right to get me at all or the crazy would have shown up. That means she masked in front of social workers and lawyers for an extended period of time (years) to obtain me. Also, when she was younger, she presented a more "normal" face to the world. As she has aged the mask just slips more and more each year.

If I recall, there's at least three of us that are adopted here on Out of the FOG. WomanInterrupted was as well. I'll never know how the heck her Didi and Ray managed to get her. They seemed pretty overt.

I do remember when I was very, very small wishing that my biomom would want me back, despite having been adopted at birth. Then I found out she's freaking crazy too. *sigh* Can't win, dang it.

[Nominuke]

I always wondered about this.

During the eulogy at my mum's funeral it became clear that I was the result of an unwanted pregnancy. And the penny finally dropped that my unDad held it against me my whole life.

I'm sure in his mind if I hadn't been born he would have been a millionaire married to his 5th much younger glamour model wife by now and that it's all my fault he isn't.

So for me at least I think it was part of the reason I was scapegoated.

My sibling on the other hand was born a few years later after a particularly rocky patch in the their marriage (a healing baby) as it were and went on to be the golden child.

[Hilltop]

No I can't say I have ever thought I was the product of an affair however I do know that my dad wanted a boy so I was a disappointment.  I was told I was suppose to be a boy, it was suppose to be one boy and one girl and I came out wrong in that regard.

I also wondered if I reminded them of a relative they didn't like.

[Olive]

My mother said she always treated me like the whipping boy.  In some cases there was clarification. I have the letter she wrote to her father, dated when I had turned 9.  She tells him she had an affair and my father hit her hard enough to knock her out of her shoes and across the room. She had called him a monster and attempted to stop him from beating my brother who had gotten a C in conduct due to a fight at school. Then he told the neighbors he was going to commit suicide, "That poor man."  What she doesn't tell him is she flew into a rage out of the clear blue because my sisters and I had taken a toy off our dresser without permission.  My sisters ran, but I was last and she hit me across the back so hard I couldn't stand, so, she helped me to bed and said, "You told people things."   In the letter, she explains that my father had planted bugs in the house.  Every member of my family has an explanation for why she hated me.  I wore glasses.  I was nervous.  I was the middle child and they don't fit in.  I was goofy. When I was 13, she said she could never love me because my father beat my older sister when I was born because my birth injured her. The teachers knew there was something wrong with me.    

My brother was not my father's biological child and when he beat him he would yell, "You're nothing but a little girl." 

They weren't the only parents who felt burdened if they had girls.  When my parents were divorced she did not receive child support and there was no reason for her to continue to care for us. Her mother was an alcoholic.

In my father's case, I know he had a very sad childhood.  Five members of his family who were responsible for his care died when he was nine.  Then his mother died.  He was sent to ta school for boys (where they found lots of children's skeletons.  My mother was pregnant out of wedlock when he married her and she did not produce a male child.  Both of their families were well off and made heroic efforts to help them. I never met my father's family but I've studied them.

I think my mother was learning disabled in a very competitive academic family, She was trying to compete with a cousin who lived on inheritances in third world countries with two children.  These women are still alive and healthy in their 90s but all of the people who supported them have died. 

I wonder if there are enough sane people out there to take care of the children of the mentally ill.  I hope things have improved since the 1960s.  It's very hard for people to recognize and even harder to supervise. It's given me some closure to place these events in historical perspective and I am thankful for all of social support we eventually received.

[Jolie40]

thank you for replies all


be good to yourselves this December
buy yourself a gift or at least some chocolate