Crawling Out From the Lifelong Rejection of the Scapegoat

Yes freedom will come in then. I told my husband the other day, I just don't want to "try" anymore. I thought back in my years how hard I "worked" to connect with people. Now I ask "Why did I have to work so hard? Why couldn't I just be?"  Being stuck like so many scapegoats to "impress" people is a pathway to failure. Many of us can get stuck in it.  I have un-glued myself.

 Connection with others which I have had before and enjoyed is something every normal human being desires. While I have found a few real friends along the way, and felt some belonging in my old town that didn't last very long, because of my health and the Aspergers I have always struggled to a degree.

Things got bad in the last several years. Several friends died, we had to move too much, though we have been in the same place now for ten years. Friendly local people moved away. Both of us have ended up as hermits despite my best efforts. I worry about my husband too. He can still talk to people to make a living at least. I tell him it's not good we are so socially isolated. I tried to fix it and people know I have discussed even moving to fix it.

I write about this online and people tell me, they too are getting more isolated, it's hard to talk to people. Lately we both take refuge in each other and I do in my hobbies, but even as a couple we miss having people to talk to. Why is it so hard now? I told my husband ten years ago it just seems conversation flowed so much easier.

The choice to take abuse and have some people around vs be alone without abuse, obviously I chose the non-abuse option. Clearing out the decks of all the poop, you stand around on the clear deck and say "now what?"  Too much betrayal or facing the facts of the abuse, can make you feel far more wary of people. There is definite an air of fog of Aspie social blindness I walked in along with the ACON fog. Waking up and getting out of the fog was difficult. Seeing how I was seen for real was very hard. Realizing how people operated too, was some hard lessons.

I feel afraid of people now because I have felt so betrayed by the catfish, Mrs. Curses, the woman at the drop-in center and by the project friends. I am still going out and doing activities I enjoy but I know since all that happened, I am not opening up so much. This makes me kind of sad, that I have to be so closed mouth but the established boundaries to protect myself are necessary.

My narc radar has increased by far. At the bible study I left--see below, there was one woman there, that freaked me out because she was looked and acted like two narcissists so much that I had removed from my life, that it was disarming. She came up full of smiles too, but I was wary and held back. I thought to myself, "I need to avoid people like that" and did.

I seem to meet endless cool people online who become close friends, but in real life it just seems to be the litany of "judgers" and people I do not fit in with. Now I leave when I feel uncomfortable such as a local bible study I departed from for good where the women were all upper middle class, into humble bragging and upset by any statements that didn't coincide with some unwritten rules exactly. They were "nice" but it was another place I did not fit in. How come I never meet other disabled women my age? Or childless women? Those two categories seem extraordinarily rare.

 Down to earth people who are non-narcs usually have their social and family connections set by middle age. The narcs always can go get new victims. Their dance cards are always full. Their families all worship at their narc altars, the ones who don't succeed and become parasitic are taken care of, the rich ones like Queen Spider get their butts kissed.

  A disabled Aspie, trying to rebuild a social life as she edges near 50, that's feels impossible.  Sometimes I think, "Oh you must try, it's not healthy for you and your husband to live like hermits" and in the next sentence I think, "Why bother, perhaps outside of online and long distance friends I am wasting my time and banging my head on a wall"? My message to myself is to enjoy life and to do what feels right to me. I don't have to prove myself to anyone anymore. 


Queen Spider's rejection and bringing the entire family to reject me has had very serious life long effects. I lay this one at her feet. A life spent under nothing but rejection hurt me. I remember thinking the sentence, "Why am I so rejected?"  My disabilities were used to reject me. I barely survived the taught self-hatred for being fat, and for being Aspie as given out to my family. I have met other severely obese people and high stage Lipedemics who have families who LOVE them on Facebook.

Pete Walker would probably label it severe emotional neglect and abandonment trauma.  Facing their sheer NOT CARING was very difficult. Facing the fact that I was not cared about and was invisible, has been some very hard barriers to overcome. Some therapists would tell me I was one of the worse cases of emotional abuse they had ever heard of. Sadly the training regarding abused people is minimal. I was still told to reconcile even after their astonishment at my treatment. How did I become a person capable of love, when there was no love growing up? It's a question I don't know the answer to.

Now that the narcs are gone: now what? I walked away from several "friends". People who made excuses and sided with narcissists and people who betrayed and abused me, got left behind on the family front. Now the social front has become very changed, but even then why the worry? Why the feeling of such complete rejection. Why was I put in this place of constantly having to impress and "win people over"? Now I don't want to. I just want to BE.

It has brought me some bad depression for many years and that thought inside my head with her shrill voice behind it, "No one likes you". I must never minimize to what degree this sociopath tried to soul murder me and must also forgive myself that if someone grows up without any love, there will be life long implications. I have asked myself questions, in turning the tables like, "Do people feel loved by you?" My husband says Yes, to that and tells me I am an affectionate person.  My best friend loves to visit me twice a year for three days. Even if we show love to others doesn't always mean it will be received. That said, we have the right to demand good treatment of ourselves. Scapegoats are put in that place of always being told they are the ones who have to worry about what everyone else is thinking. I feel like I have thrown off some shackles.

 Even the thwarted love, that a child tries to give to a family that has rejected it, means life long implications as well. I remember trying to show love, giving cards to parents who would throw them away with a look of disgust and even trying to reach out to the Queen. It makes me sad how much energy I poured down this well.

I had a therapist once tell me they thought I could have attachment disorder but then she said to me, "But you have a conscience and love other people and want to connect, you do not have the symptoms of that disorder, you just have the lack of an early bond"  She went on to add, "I do not know how you managed to escape it." She said someone must have come in that you attached to. I said "Maybe it was that one aunt I lived with for a short time and who I wanted to stay with. It was a big controversy. I loved her. I remember with a surge of happiness even 40 plus years later, the feelings I had around her. Maybe she saved me in ways that would be unknown."

I had a cousin use those feelings against me, recently. I don't trust him anymore. He was the one I last let go of but he managed to wiggle in. "I have a video of you and my Mom [the Aunt that loved Me] during that time you were living with her, my Dad and brother" and he showed me a still from it. I am smiling and happy in the still and my aunt is looking at me and smiling. I never smiled in photos from my parents, so to see myself happy was a good thing. I still miss that aunt. Her death in 1987 is and was suspicious to me. The fact I was standing in the room and heard them all say she died with no alcohol in her system and then I read her son's blog 25 years later from the time of her death where he writes she died of drunk driving into the tree, I am disturbed beyond belief.

 I wanted a copy of that video, so I decided to answer back. I suppose some could call this "taking the bait". Hey I am not perfect. I only own two pictures of that aunt, one is her high school photo and one she is smiling with her three sons.  Now I doubt any video will be sent me. Perhaps my mother put him up to it. If they have sunk so low to use this time of happiness against me, it will tell me how completely evil they are. I will see if a video shows up, he said, he would copy and send it to me but for now I am wary. It reminds me of that scenario where Aunt Confused told me about having pictures and then turned around and refused to send any and that my mother told her not to and she was going to obey, instigating my no contact with her.

 Since I have cleaned the slate of toxic people, I have asked myself, how does one find good people and avoid the bad? I know that most people build on having a loving family and have connections through this. I am so rootless, and that has affected me in a bad way.

I and my husband outside of internet connections are basically living like hermits. I have become a hermit. Sure we see some people like clerks, people at the food coop, people at the self help group, I know a couple names of people in the art class I am taking but we are very isolated people. We don't go to dinners, or anyone's house.  Since I've gone no contact there's none of the forced marches to see people barely tolerating us. There is relief in that but one can be troubled in asking, why have I failed to connect and is there something wrong with me in the fact I haven't or maybe I am wrong about how socially connected everyone is.

 Maybe I am NORMAL especially for a disabled Aspie with my older long distant friends and husband. Maybe the narcissists messed me up there playing social comparison games especially a Queen Bee mother who was always bragging about how popular she was. Maybe I got caught in this trap too of trying to replace the family I never had.

 Lately I don't feel like talking to anyone outside the internet and even online, I am sticking to old Aspie friends and other friends I've known for some years and people I've written here for some time. Life forces me to talk to grocery clerks, pharmacists, and the lady who makes tasty burritos at our local Tacquiera, but I never have become so silent in my life. It's weird. Maybe the real me is more of an introvert or maybe I am simply tired, and flowing along after the final family cut-off. Maybe the multiple holes in my back from people stabbing me in the back hurt and I can't afford anymore holes.

We have conversations between each other, about how sometimes it just seems safer and nicer to stay home together and how it just doesn't seem people are the same anymore. He jokes about "hiding out in our apartment" and it really feels that way. We used to go out with our heads held high, eager and enthusiastic to get involved in the arts, to meet people and it became so difficult. I mull over, "What have we done wrong to end up like this?" He says "Nothing".

Even for the charities that have helped us, it's better to stay polite, thankful and distant. I would give back if I was ever in the place to. I don't want any "project" friends anymore. I don't want anymore upper class women of 15 years age or more JUDGING ME. It even occurred to me in my old rural town, that there was this woman, I was friends with for a while and even did some art class volunteering with at a church, who was one of those upper middle class charity friends, she was best friends with the lady who dumped all the boxes at my house. I've repeated patterns in this town, that I even had happen in the earlier years in my old rural town. Perhaps I was enacting some repeated behavior trained by mother, finding these older women who felt naturally superior to me or would be narcissists and trying to please them, "working" my way up, via volunteer work, or the rest. This is a pattern that must be broken.

My husband has told me, "Don't fall in that trap again!" Maybe I want some people in my life I don't have to impress. I would rather be alone then be in any relationships like that again. Being alone in fact has been preferable to that. Also if you can't be real with people and they are upset with how you feel, think or believe, then the friendship has no hope anyway. It will never go deeper. I knew with one it would end when she was telling me what to think and what to feel.

 I do have beliefs many people do not like. There's probably strong even spiritual reasons I feel so out of sorts. Many here have written me telling me, "yes, people are changing and not for the better". The Christianity alone is enough to get thrown out of many circles but in even there I have failed to "conform" to the church world, so there you go. I don't match many people. Inside there always has been a psychic struggle where I thought, "If you only just conform, you'll have more friends" but I can't do it. I have to be me.  I also know what I believe and don't want to change it to be "popular" or acceptable to some. 

  Whatever personality was formed in the crucible of severe abuse, while this standing firm saved me, it also has led to some troubles in life too. If you are too different, a lot of people won't understand you. I often was in the place of watering myself down, to be polite and things like that but aren't friends people you should be able to be yourself around? Even if I never will fit in, maybe it is time to say, it is what is and it's time to accept it. I don't want to be like some of these people I left behind too. I'm done trying to impress others, I want the freedom.