Are you the Family "Loser"?

Biological family is a prison.

Is that an odd thing to say....?

My husband joked with me and said, "What do you want the world to be run like the Brave New World? Remember Mao and other's experimented with removing the biological family." I admitted he had a point.

One now ex-friend [the Army person from the multimillionaire family] who is due to inherit millions from her parents in their late 80s, used to tell me that human beings were like chickens, and they would "peck to death" the weakest ones. She used to bother me saying this. It was kind of a strange obtuse thing to say to a disabled woman. Sadly there seemed to be a taint of truth to it at least for the least empathetic human beings on this planet. I guess she was one of the strong chickens but I digress.

I saw this old Dr Phil, it's from 2012. In it, a young woman in her 20s who lived at home with her parents and her own son, accused her mother of favoritism for her jock brother. The walls of their house were covered in his framed Jersey's and other sports awards. She was right. He could do no wrong, he was the golden child and had the arrogant attitude to go along with it. Dr. Phil sadly failed here too to address the realities of narcissism though he told the mother, she needed to show some love to her daughter and positive reinforcement. Obviously we had a girl here, who had trouble in school and got pregnant out of wedlock. She was considered the "family loser". Sadly as I watched this, I kept thinking her only way to have a happy life, probably would be to escape all those people. They were already destroying her self esteem. The show made me want to cry. She was stuck in that mud of pleasing people who never would accept her and used her as a scapegoat.

They always say family should be a soft place to land. Dr. Phil referred to family being a soft place to land and I found myself sneering at the TV and saying "Yeah right.". I suppose real families should be ones that do love and support each other, and there's probably ones out there like that.  However in America, in this dog eat dog country, so focused on competition, now competition doesn't simply exist at the office and the sports field, it exists at home too. In other words people never get a break from it. What is this doing to our young people? I believe the suicide rates are jacked up to the hilt in America for a reason. Now average people are told they are not "good enough" to make a decent living, you have to be a "superstar" [with plenty of narcissistic and sociopathic traits, and lots of friends] to make it.

How many young people's lives are being destroyed by their own families? Millennials are coming out to a dead job market, all the logistics of the normal life script are harder and harder won. Many attest to cold attitudes from their parents especially if they failed to become winning trophies. I think about how I was relegated into being a throw-away and have had negative thoughts about people who breed so much, they have extra children they can ditch into the trashcan. If one is an ACON, the doubling up of facing financial failure or other life problems and dealing with no "soft place" to land can be a double whammy. I remember how I was told everything that happened to me was my fault, and how I had nothing to show for my life. I get the feeling lots of young people today are going through what I did. So wonder they are depressed, and these shallow parents, actually are ensuring "more failure".

My family had it's own jock too, Uncle Narc and his baseball star son who got a full ride baseball scholarship. The generation that came up after me was odd, they were kids I didn't understand, they were all centered on success and conforming to their parents. The narcissists got their Eagle Scout, first chair orchestra placements, and baseball star, Unlike my upbringing, Uncle Narc invested in his children and spent hours driving them to baseball practices and dance practice. I was expected to be a success with no such investment, so I'll give the guy that, he put some effort into his kids "making it" but I often had the thought what if one didn't make it? The fall out probably would be a lot worse.

I find myself wondering though about families and who "makes it", is there any love in such competitive system, where to matter as a human being to parents, you have to make it career wise? I realize my family screwed me up here, telling me, that I had to be this certain person to be worth anything and then doing everything they could to sabotage it. With narcissists too, I think of the parents who didn't come to any of my graduations, and even when I had a DIY art show in 2006, that was written about in two local newspapers, she didn't show up there then either. There was no investment.

The more malignant Narcissists more often sabotage their kids to "fail", perhaps Uncle Narcissist while he is on the narcissistic spectrum is lower on it, because he invested in the kid's success but sadly if any of them fail in the future,  they may be asking for it. In narcissistic families, perhaps even the golden children and successes know deep inside they are not loved the same way. 

A lot of people from foreign countries, say something is wrong with America. They say it is all competition, and no cooperation. They say Americans live to work instead of working to live and have lost a lot of the joy in life. I would say this is true. These are things I have questioned about this society. I have even focused on the sickness of putting people in the "loser" vs "winner" categories. Some years ago even here, I wrote about the conservative people I met who were all focused on achievement. They wore me out. Everything was a competition. Are people like this ever happy? Ask yourself here, do all the successes in your own narcissistic family know it's game over if they ever slide down to the bottom? I know with all the successful teens right now, if any of them graduate and can't get a job right away, I can tell some of the golden children are already being hired by Dad's company, they will be facing the music.

One thing struck me thinking more about that topic, I had my own values, I didn't agree with those people. Their drives for success bored me. Same with the family, after I was deep into no contact, I had thoughts about life and thought I never wanted the dull suburban life, I never wanted to be them. I couldn't count body bags for war for the government to make bank or send legions of young men to their deaths in the Middle East like the ex-Army friend. I couldn't be any of them. So if your family calls you a loser, look at their lives? What are they doing for all that money? What have they accepted for it?

In my case, though I chose an alternative career when young, I was focused on success too. I wanted to make it. I and my husband had an odd conversation the other day, I don't remember what it was that started it. We turned to each other and said, "We really did try". I said well you made it with your books, he's publishing a book he co-authored this year. I discussed my hang-ups from the family with my husband. He has said, "They judge everything by monetary success". I said, "That's true". We talk about battling time and never giving up.

My family called me a "loser" so much, I know it was part of the abuse. Every black sheep goes through this. I would suggest to everyone if you are around people who are busy calling you a "loser" or if you have a family like that where they have already labeled you the "throw-away" that is "not good enough" or "has nothing to show for their life", get as far away from them all. They will only bring you down. Don't make the mistake of thinking into your 20s and 30s, that once you make it, they will then love you, because that won't happen either.

My husband was very supportive of me and once wrote me a list to show things I accomplished in life, to circumvent the trash my family told me. I think both of our self esteems have gotten better being away. I still have to work on mine. While I've been pretty sick, I have noticed life is blossoming more for me, I'm doing lectures at my UU fellowship on the transcendental movement, teaching myself sewing and getting more ideas. Being freed from the expectations of narcissists can help people "succeed" far more.

My husband wrote me this:
"Here's the list you asked for: But don't take my word for it. Here's a list of the things I've seen you accomplish:

1. Staying married -- and in a relationship -- for 23 years with Mr. Peep. In this society, no small achievement.

2. Becoming an art teacher. Yes, I know it didn't become a lifetime career, because your health short-circuited it. And you didn't make a lot of money doing it. But for the time you were in it, you enriched your students' lives in ways that would never have happened, had you never set in foot in their classrooms. That creates a longer, deeper legacy than all the billionaires who spend all their time shuffling money around.

3. Surviving those terribly debilitating earlier illnesses of your life, including your big weight gain. If you were someone who was content to play the odds, you wouldn't be here with me today.

4. Growing and flourishing as an artist, to the point of one-off shows that made money, -- hell, I don't know anyone else who's come near you in those departments!

5. Growing as a writer, including your blog-- including one with 68 followers (!) -- something that leaves me awestruck, knowing how many are quickly abandoned, or never get off the ground.

6. Creating your own comic, which will hopefully be the first of many more to come -- again, the effort and care you've invested in that project has put you leagues ahead of those who rabbit on forever about doing one, but never actually follow through. Believe me, I've seen that, too.

7. The effort and time that you've spent helping out friends when they hit a rough patch in their lives. Not all your efforts panned out, but when I see you sending a box of food to someone that needs it -- that tells me you care about others. A small ripple in a vast ocean, as the saying goes, but a big one in a society that preaches rugged individualism on such a comic, exaggerated level -- even the Lone Ranger wouldn't recognize it.

8. Your dedication to the weekly pickets, when time and circumstances commit. It means you're not waiting for a better community, and/or world, no matter how remote that possibility seems right now.

9. Your co-organizing, hosting and promoting of our monthly readings that we did at the Library for about three years -- again, you didn't wait for somebody else to do something, which turned out to be a classic DIY activity for both of us. Three years in Clubland (quote-unquote) is a lifetime!

10. Your commitment to those amateur publications in the late '90s, which lasted a good two or three years, and laid the foundation for you to become a better writer (whereas before, you probably thought of yourself mainly as a visual artist).

11. The handful of songs we've co-written, based on your lyrics -- such as ************ -- which have turned out well, and something that I'd definitely like to pursue more closely in the future.

12. Your turn to provide one -- but I think I've give you a nice head start. So, while sickness sucks, it hasn't been all about that. To me, at least.
I leave you with that nugget from the Fleshtones ("I Want The Answers") that I read you yesterday, for a further bit of perspective:
I wanna know why money doesn't just fall down from the trees I wanna know why fame doesn't just blow in with the breeze Why do the bad things feel so good When the good things find another neighborhood? Why does the upside always bring me down while the downside finds me lifting off the ground?
I wanna know why if I'm so good I didn't die young I wanna know why, maybe then I'd have a Number One Why does everybody wanna steal my act? And then I waste all those years, I'll never get 'em back Why does everybody always wanna bow at my feet When I can't earn enough just to make ends meet?
Gimme, c'mon, and gimme the proof Gimme, c'mon and gimme the truth
I want the answers, Just give me the answers, I want 'em right now!"