Aunt Confused

                                                     

                                                                                     [snippet from photo of Jon Lewenstein]                                    

 This is the same Aunt as Aunt "No Pictures for You!" I have named her Aunt Confused because I believe she was another scapegoat, but one who has remained within the fog life long with incredible damage done. She is another person my mother destroyed my relationship with. Yes, there are parallels with my story of Aunt Scapegoat!

I grew up with a woman that whispered in my ear while at a family meal at Denny's and told me,

"The mafia's coming after me"

as she popped multiple blue pills into her mouth.

She would get drunk and high and one could tell. Is this something a 9 year old should have dealt with?

I dealt with that and other crazy stuff as a child, the two times she lived with us.

This was my father's sister. She was the product of the 1950s, New Jersey culture, and of an alcoholic father, enabling mother, and narcissistic brother who became my father who was around 5 years younger. She had and has serious problems from earlier drug addiction to possible multiple personality disorder. What can I tell you but to say at times it seemed she "switched"? There definitely is some kind of personality disorder in the mix there. I have never been diagnosed with one in case anyone is interested, and have seen enough therapists in my life time.

At this point you may be asking, "How could fivehundredpoundpeep have such disturbed aunts on both sides of her family?" How can someone's family be this crazy on both sides?" But it was. Recently I watched a video forget where, where the presenter said, that narcissists will seek out other narcissists. Water will find it's own level. "Romance" and connection blossomed between two dark souls that slithered out of dark families.

Narcissists do drive people to insanity. There is a special sort of soul murder at the hands of sociopaths and narcissists. I am not sure sometimes how I myself even survived. Sometimes I think Aspergers gave me some distance with an analytical mind surveying the insanity from above, knowing the people I was surrounded by were not normal. Spiritually I sought out God to rescue me from insanity too.

If you are in a family full of cold and cruel individuals, you will also have the ones you see who have cracked up. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger they say but many people are destroyed in family systems like these. You see the human emotional casualties strew around like chopped and tossed firewood. Aunt Scapegoat and Aunt Confused are definitely among their number.

 There had to be incredible abuse back there somewhere for her. When talking to her even in recent months and years, she would seem lucid and then would segue her way into talking about how the mafia was after her, or she was being watched or how all her neighbors were her enemies and trying to steal her husband. Her third husband is now deceased and she lives with her daughter, but the odd talk still would pop up from time to time.

I was doing some family research, and founds this old gossipy neighborhood newspaper that covered
my father's neighborhood. They actually reported on his birthday party at the age of 7. It looks like big money was poured out on this festival especially for the late 1940s and for a lower middle class factory worker who had been disinherited and cut off from his own father who was a multi-millionaire.

  Is it possible to be spoiled into being a narcissist? Was she the scapegoat compared to my academically achieving in math and science father? It makes me wonder. My father was an obvious golden boy, he would go on to earn a full ride 4 year scholarship to a well-known Ivy League university. He would go on to marry a golden daughter who outshined her four living siblings from the farm.

 One thing as I look back at the past, my father put his sister down constantly. He had no respect for her and no love.  I grew up being told Aunt Confused was trash, was "crazy", and even at one point my own father told me, "She's a sociopath!" as he told me she would hide beneath his bed to scare him as a kid. Perhaps that was a dose of projection?

One creepy thing, is both of my parents would express outrage that she dared to leave her abusive husband and leave her children behind. When I became an adult and learned about domestic violence and volunteered at a shelter in my 20s, this lack of mercy over a woman getting beaten by her husband  totally disgusted me. I don't understand why she left her kids behind perhaps it was her lack of money, but grew up being told she was the devil incarnate by both parents!

 She and her husband lived at home with her parents, my father's parents and grandparents. She married young and had two children. Her husband was a factory worker she married right out of high school. He worked at the same factory as my grandfather. He was an alcoholic and beat her to the point of punching and black eyes. What gets me is thinking how could an abusive husband go full froth with her parents there? But he did. Things were so bad for her that she disappeared, leaving her two children home with her grandparents and husband she was fleeing from. My early memories of the grandparents on that side are very vague. [When I was very young, my parents had me and my brother live there too for some months when my sister got sick]

She would disappear. Literally off the map for several years. She paid one visit to my family and then went poof! My father was angry about this too, but when we moved out of state, she reconnected with him to her own detriment. During this time she hitchhiked the roads being homeless.  I suspect did what she had to do to survive. Why didn't her parents help her throw out the abusive husband? That question comes to my mind. But anyhow she disappeared, got divorced from afar and got rides with truckers. She found a nice one to rescue her. She would marry an African-American trucker [her second husband] who had a side line business as a pig farmer his relatives helped with while he was out driving truck. They lived in the wilds of the state my family just moved into. It was a very small town and extremely remote, poor and rural. I never met her husband but sadly he died. She reached out to my father out of desperation being left penniless with his grown kids inheriting just about everything. My father loaded up us kids into the family sedan and my mother too, and we drove up there.

As we drove up to the trailer on a muddy road, my parents argued. My mother expressed her disgust, with the rural area, it's poverty and everything else. There was outrage over her choice of husband as well with mean-spirited racial overtones.  We would drive up to her trailer and knock on the door. I was around 13 years old. I remember her looking shell-shocked, but she gave a wary smile and wave and "Hiya!". I had not seen her for a few years. The trailer was in horrible shape and had become a hoard, with piles of trash piled up. Bottles, piles of dirt,  rags and newspapers laid scattered all over the floor.  Obviously her grief and new loneliness had pushed her over a new edge. I walked gingerly in behind my father and my mother was there too.  My parents yelled at her, "What in the hell happened here?". She didn't respond.

She then laughed and said, "I made youse lunch!, it's in the oven!" My father handed me a oven mitt, and said "Go see what roadkill she made for us!", I went over to the oven, and opened it, and in it was a ROTTEN PIG'S HEAD! It had been cooked, but was at least 3-4 days old and left unattended. It's eyes bugged out, it's ears flopped. Flies poured out of the oven. "It's still good!" my aunt cried. I literally swooned across the table and almost passed out. My father yelled at me, "What in the hell is your problem?" but took a few steps closer and looked into the oven.

My father's response to all this would be getting her committed to a psych ward. That would happen twice in the few years that followed. I remember mutterings about speed induced schizophrenia. She speed loaded diet pills to remain under 200lbs. This definitely wasn't the full picture. I doubt the psychiatrists warned her about her brother or narcissism and sociopathy though.

However one thing that followed is my parents started to use her to abuse me further. They laid on the threats to commit me as well. At the time they scared me saying they would force me into an institution for life. No psychologist or counselor ever was ever sought for me. Why not? I would have told them about all the abuse. Multiple times, they would slap me in the face if I said the "wrong thing" and scream "You're just like Aunt Confused!" with a sneer of disgust.  My Aspergers brought me severe abuse. 

If I had not been a quiet and dutiful student, with a 3.5 grade point average, and had run into even a little bit of trouble as a teen, I could see my parents using something like that to destroy my life. I knew enough to hide my worsening OCD problems and to internalize any risky Aspie meltdowns into withdrawing instead. Constant comparisons reigned, "You are as crazy as Aunt Confused!" "Do you want to end up like Aunt Confused?"

I would hear this for years. Double-tag-team scapegoating. My father was a cruel brother as well as cruel father! The evil mindedness shown towards the mentally ill was something to be disgusted by as well. This has continued to this day, where any mental health problems are seen as an "in" and something to condemn a person by. As someone who has done volunteer work with a depression group and been part of one and worked with young people with emotional challenges earlier in life, their attitudes sicken me. That is narcissists for you! This aunt got no mercy from them either just like Aunt Scapegoat. They had no mercy for my physical problems either.

I would spent a lot of time with Aunt Confused after she was more stabilized when she lived in a trailer in my family's town. I would leave my family's 6 bedroom house near a country club to sit in her trailer in a seedier part of town and watch TV.  In my early to mid-teens, I would prefer her company to that of my cold mother. I knew something was wrong with her, but she didn't yell at me or criticize me every minute. She was nice enough to me at least on the surface, but sadly there was rejection there too, that would come. We would talk about current events and share meals of home-cooked hamburgers with fried onions on top and reading Globes and National Enquirers. My family would mock me for spending so much time with her. Sadly my parents scapegoated her so much, they got my GC sister to reject her and even my brother to express disgust with her "craziness", and to make up rude nicknames for her. Neither of them talk to her or her daughter to this day.

                                                  From Pinterest snippet of photo by Andre' Gamma

My mother did what she could to destroy that relationship. One day when I was around 15 years old, Aunt Confused simply moved away and didn't even say Goodbye to me. I think my mother forced her in some fashion to leave town seeing our growing "closeness". My mother never allowed me to be close to anyone and always did what she could to take people away from me. This devastated me at the time. I would later get some phone contact and write letters but it was never the same. The same thing that happened with Aunt Scapegoat, happened with her.

She would move back to her home state and meet a financially comfortable older man, married him and moved with him to Florida. I would only see her once in person 30 years. She forgot about me, and kept me at arm's length at the behest of my mother and would not visit even when I asked as an adult years later.  One odd thing is she would send my brother and sister $1,000 dollars on their wedding days for presents but ignored my wedding and did not attend. This should have given me a clue.

 Aunt Confused was scared of the narcissists in her life. She never confronted my cruel father but submitted to him.  She had cloying respect for the man who committed her twice and who never stood against her first abusive husband. Where did I come from? I refuse to submit to any narcissist or abuser. I match none of these people. While she called me "her buddy" even to two months ago, she betrayed me as well multiple times when it came to the narcissists.

So she was no loyal ally. She would throw me under the bus in a milli-second if it kept narcissists pleased. I realized this was true too when I was teen but I was desperate for love and digging for what crumbs of it I could find. I did truly love her too but here too was cast aside. She put my parents way above me.

For years, I took the few morsels that came from her and now realize, there really was no relationship anymore and I was fruitlessly trying to recapture the days of my youth where I and her could talk to one another. There was only feigned niceness and more rejection. My narcissist mother is friends with her son's wife who displays the same personality. There is some massive control via that network. Her son controls her money and could be a possible guardian over it so perhaps you can see where I am going with this.

 She decided to bow before the narcissists like Aunt Scapegoat on the other side of the family. I found out I was chopped liver very recently. Like Aunt Denial, I took her crumbs of a kinder tone of voice with me and didn't face the facts of how much she lied to me. I suppose it was easier. I also ignored too long how she took my mother's side on everything and served as her enabler. She also does fear my mother. She lied for my mother as well.

 While she would admit some of the narcissist wrong-doings to me, my mother always came first to her. I never will understand this. The second to last time I spoke with her, she kept telling me that my mother loved me. If that is love what is hate?

She knew of the abuse I faced, and as an adult, I have faced facts, she served as another enabler too, too mentally ill to really lift a finger herself to help. While I worked to form a stronger relationship with her over the last year, there was my mother, always put first even though they live 1,000 miles away. Her grand-daughter would not invite me to her wedding but would invite my mother. I tried to talk to her about all this and how it hurt me but it was a fruitless venture. I went no contact with her recently after she refused the pictures. It does hurt but I see no other choice. She was telling my mother everything I told her. I could not trust her. I asked her not to even let it be known we were still in contact.

It was scary to have that cousin call me and use threatening language. Aunt Confused never tried to fix the relationship or reach out to me. Sadly I think she is glad I am gone. She doesn't care. The relationships my mother have destroyed are endless. My would be family is so sick on both sides. I'd rather be alone then sacrifice integrity and my well-being to any of these people anymore.

Looking at her story, she is just like Aunt Scapegoat. Driven to mental illness, scapegoated to the max, abused, stockholmed, institutionalized, left in extreme poverty for a time-though she was driven enough to find husbands to take her out of it in this case, and submitting to the wicked. Narcissists destroy entire families. 

Does Hoarding and Narcissism Go Together?

The other day I was binge watching this year's Hoarders show.  This one showed Sherry and her son, and there was this scapegoat daughter in the mix.  Sherry and her son were both hoarders. They lived in complete and utter chaos and filth, with some strange codependent relationship that seemed to border on emotional if not outright incest. They were totally insulting and rude to the daughter, Lauren, who lived in normalcy. The scapegoated daughter was definitely the healthy one in the mix, while the two scapegoaters were very severely mentally ill. They were very cruel to her, and put her down even as she tried to help them. I felt sorry for her, and wish I could have shouted through the screen "Go no contact!"  She wasted her time begging for crumbs of love from these moral monsters. Her family members were just gross. I hope one day she can wake up and see them for what they are.

I was rather angry at Dr. Tolin who didn't tell Lauren to go no contact but who said a few pat words about her family not treating her right. The counselors of the world need to stop pussy-footing around malignant narcissism and sociopathy. Lauren is wasting her time seeing those two as "her family", they will never love her. Her brother and mother don't care about her and never will

Then there was the story with Carol. Be forewarned, she will give you the willies. She moved in days after her "best friend", Bea, died. One son told us it was "ruled as a suicide". Carol then married her husband. He was a rich guy, and she cleaned out the money shopping and hoarding until she dropped. She even had a second mortgage taken out on the house. One daughter, Missy, discussed Carol's financial shenanigans and seemed to believe Carol was out to use the family from the start. The house was a beautiful mansion which was completely trashed.

The husband was an absolute push-over and the adult kids you could tell were horrified by all the proceedings.  You could tell they were disgusted and one got the feeling there was a lot not being said between the lines. Was Carol having an affair with the husband to start with? The adult kids did accuse her of using their Dad and lying. Even Dave the milquetoast husband called her "very controlling". Just watching her in my opinion was watching a malignant narcissist in action using DARVO, projection, and fake tears. At least in this case because Carol did not own the house, the Hoarders people were allowed to clean things up even with her protestations. Sadly soon after this clean-out, the father died and the family were forced to sell the house.

Some of the most nasty personalities have been showing up on there. Watching Hoarders to me sometimes is like watching malignant narcissist personalities in action. I know hoarding is it's own mental illness so not every hoarder is going to be a malignant narcissist or sociopath. Some of the hoarders on that show definitely fit other mental profiles, but there are a lot of malignant narcissists, who are abusive to those around them.

 There's many mental illnesses that play into it here, but definitely some very toxic people have been put on display. Sometimes it drives me nuts personally watching people with loving adult children who love and care about them take them for granted. It also is hard to watch the sheer selfishness as objects are chosen above people. There's part of me thinking why do these people even deserve to have families? Sadly many times you can see the dynamics in the house played out where the whole family is kissing the person's ass who is completely trashing the place and destroying their lives. They all give in and do everything they are told. Why won't they just get a shovel and giant box of trash bags and get to work? Dysfunctional dynamics have to be going on within a family that allows a house to be destroyed via hoarding.

How many narcissists are hoarders? The two women mentioned above definitely are ones. While writing this article, I went and asked Google, "Are Hoarders Narcissists?" I found this video, and this vlogger definitely things many hoarders are narcissists and describes her reasons why.



I won't name names or details, as to which of my now ex-friends were hoarders or not, but there was a few hoarders I had for friends. There were three friends who had major problems with hoarding. Five all together if you count two main relatives who were hoarders, and one I spent a lot of time with in my early years. This included Aunt Confused and later Aunt Scapegoat.

Some may find it weird that I befriended so many hoarders. As I said, I suck at cleaning but I throw things away, I want things to be clean and nice even despite my lower socio-economic standing I had my carpets cleaned just a month ago. In my family there were two major hoarders, there was Aunt Confused who hoarded out a trailer into trash and left the pig's head in the oven, and there was Aunt Scapegoat hoarding her trailer to the point she had to have a forced clean out by other relatives. I see a pattern here as both aunts, both had severe narcissistic related problems with one being a covert narcissist and one a full blown although more on the border-line wing.

With Aunt Scapegoat, during the earlier years in no contact while I was writing those articles, I realized that Aunt Scapegoat was narcissistic as well. She never thought of the needs of those around her, she was parasitical even during the years she was healthy enough to work, and she did things like having people come visit from 2 hours a way only to refuse to answer the door.  She would even keep her door shut and locked with one cousin coming to the door. Oddly the family would say weird things like, "She is just that way". So in many ways she matched the predominant behavior of the family. My fond feelings for her were based on rose-colored glasses childhood and teen memories, but even with her, I was stuck in the mode of begging for her affections as well, and they were anything but freely given. My feelings towards her did change, and I realize it was her choice to ignore my gifts, cards and attempts at a closer relationship.

I had three college era friends who became hoarders or showed major possible signs of it and where attachment to objects came first. My mother while neat, put THINGS first, so I can see how that pattern came about in my life. Our entire life was spent around the fixing, cleaning and organizing of things.  With a few of the friends, their hoarding was less noticeable in college, they were maybe sloppy like me in our dorm rooms but full hoarding came out in their adulthoods.

Some may say who are you to judge? I am bad at housework, however I can throw things away. I don't get attached to all objects and if someone said I could have organizers and cleaners in here tomorrow, I'd jump at the chance. My apartment is under constant inspection, twice a year, monthly doctors so even if I wanted to become a hoarder, it couldn't happen. I had the carpets cleaned two months ago.

But watching these shows I had some revelations, while I grew up with neat freak family members the fact that two hoarders arose out of my family did not surprise me. Looking back, I definitely was befriending other people with severe problems where hoarding was a red flag sign. What else was there? I would end up ending all friendships where these problems existed after my no contact.

Some may find it weird that I befriended so many hoarders.....in some ways it makes sense.

Some psychologists here would say that water floats to it's own level. Broken people will find other broken people. ACONs have the danger of re-enacting family dynamics in friendships, and I did to the max. I realized when I was befriending people deep into hoarding and other behaviors, this was a sign I was befriending other very troubled people.

I have strange memories in my head of these friends during my young adulthood. One friend let maggots take over her sink, as I visited her just acouple years after college. She was poor but this was beyond the squalor issues that can come with poverty. The dirty mattresses on the floor and other lacks were bad enough, but I was wretching over that sink. That was not normal.

One other friend she let two cats pee up her house, I went on a visit, where the smell of cat pee all over gave me asthma attacks and once I even left early because I could not take it anymore. There was trash on the floor of every room and piled up boxes. This lasted for years and was true of several visits during the late 90s and early 2000s. She kept every piece of clothing she ever owned back to childhood. This was not normal either. I have the feeling this friendship was ended and cut off, due to the problem of hoarding. She would not let me visit. I saw her last home in 2001 or thereabouts, and she had become a full hoarder, and black trash bags filled up the entire second floor of things she "had to go through".

Another friend told me she had gotten complaints about the things outside her house. She used to trouble me, she could afford organizers and cleaners in her case. It never made sense to me. I used to think why go through that hell if you can hire someone to just clean it up? I hadn't seen her house since 2001 either. One reason that friendship ended is because objects even new ones became her whole life. I felt like all emotions were shut down, she cared far more about her things. She also was against my no contact as well.

All of these friends with hoarding and other problems came out of ACON families themselves. One came out of a family where they scapegoated and screamed at her constantly even when she was an adult in her 40s. She identified and stayed within the family accepting her role. I was unable to. This made it clear why this friendship was doomed to failure. Another friend, her mother was a complete malignant narcissist who even verbally abused me calling me "the fat lump", and telling her that she should get a thinner friend. Enmeshment was the name of the game there where this suffocating mother called several times a day, and that friend chose to identify with her family too.

 In this case, I think she served a golden child role while others were scapegoated around her mother. Still another friend whose mother was so cold, she gave me the willies and who became the most severe hoarder came out of a very dysfunctional family like this too. Narcissism predominated.

Lest someone thinks I am trying to make myself out to be perfect here, I wonder at times if I could have turned into a hoarder myself.  Cleaning was always difficult for me. My ADHD made focus impossible and continues to this day. When I was young, my car was full of trash, and my husband remembers sitting in it with a foot of papers under his feet. It even saved my husband then boyfriend from getting a ticket once when he borrowed my car.  He got pulled over for speeding. The cop asked for the license and paperwork and the car was way too messy for him to find it. The cop threw up his hands in frustration, and gave him a warning.  In my case, I didn't put objects above people and could throw things away but some of those signs of dysfunction touched my life too. Did the narcissism I grew up with affect me in living this way? It would take years to get a semblance of order out in my own life, but I purposefully avoiding becoming a hoarder. As everyone knows, housework is the bane of my existence. 

Watching Hoarders became a lesson in what I wanted to avoid in life. My husband sometimes gets upset at me when I watch it, because I start cleaning saying we cannot turn out like that. He says it makes me worry about housework too much. Some weevils took over our kitchen last week. They probably came from a food pantry a few months ago in a bag of flour. We had to throw away bags and bags of flour, corn meal, pasta and everything they like to eat out of the cupboards. I think if I was a hoarder, the place would have become the Weevil Palace. 

With time, my changes did keep the predators away, I shut down vulnerability, put the empath crap to rest because all it did was get me used, and it changed my life, however socially it's rough, connection is far harder to find. There's also the issue, that after I went no contact, I walked from all of my family and at least half of my friends. The deconversion also has wiped the friendship slate clean with even the loss of a friend a few weeks ago.

Sometimes lately I have asked, why do I keep losing people? It's tough. I am not a cold person, I wanted some connection. Wanted the friends to care, or show emotion that simply wasn't there. The price of the family I had, has been too immense. There's life long repercussions. While I have and have had healthy and loving friends, my life, became very dominated by narcissists or those who identified with them.

I would end all these college friendships where they were hoarders after I went no contact. In my experience the two went together.

I am examining patterns. I met other people who were hoarders and while I was friendly with them, I am keeping distance due to my past experience. To me, it's a red flag sign.  I can't deal with it. Maybe some healthier people can't deal with messy me, so I have my constant conflicts, but it was too much. If people love and get attached to objects more, trying to get close to them, is not going to happen.  People who love objects and where things come first, it is a problem. It's not what I stand for. Narcissists are known for putting objects and appearances first.

 Maybe some hoarders are just people with OCD who aren't narcissists, and I've had trouble in that area myself without hoarding, but some major baggage can come with hoarding.

I would talk to the fellow past ACONs friends about leaving toxic families behind or reexamining their lives and treatment. In other situations, I wanted some to question fundamentalist religion but sometimes you do outgrow your friends. They aren't going to walk down your path. While you are being open and trying to have them understand it doesn't always work.

 I am not the person I was in college. Hoarding to me is tied to depression, darkness, and giving up in some cases. It's also tied for some people in my opinion who love objects more than other people. It's all very sad. Watching Hoarders I did think, what a waste. Seeing people brush aside all these people to put their things first made me sick. I even said to my husband while watching these shows, "Look at these people with those huge families, all trying to reach out and connect to them, and they don't even care!"

"You're Crazy!" When the Scapegoat is Labeled Insane

This happened to me. 

To understand this article in context make sure you read: Aunt Confused.

One insidious way a scapegoat is destroyed by a narcissist is their mental health is maligned. This will be another heavy post as this is something I am pondering lately. Many of these soul murderers will actually do things meant to drive someone to insanity and then they can play "rescuer" swoop in or use someone's break down or mental health problems to feed. They want you weakened and want you under their control. When someone is seen as "crazy", the rest of the world automatically devalues you. The entire family will then reject the scapegoat and take nothing they say seriously. You are the "crazy" and "bad" one. You are "insane." 

Many scapegoats have gone through this, where one very horrible thing our abusers do, is tell people we are crazy so they do not believe us or disregard what we have to say about the abuse we are going through. There are many scapegoats and abused people who end up in the mental hospital. Some get ill from the abuse and are driven to severe mental health problems and suicide via the attempted soul murder done to them.  While others are maligned and are deemed "mentally ill" by sociopaths and narcissistic abusers who want to destroy their reputations, fire-bomb their lives and even send them into involuntary commitment situations.

                                                                  [picture source]

 In the past, when someone could end up in the mental hospital for years, put away Frances Farmer style, this would destroy an entire life. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Nightmares out of the pits of hell would break bodies, souls and minds. Don't think for a minute that the instigators of Satan's destruction didn't have people handed over to memory destroyers via shock treatments or being drugged into oblivion. The psychological world has helped many via counseling and even medication for chemical brain problems but there is a lot not to be trusted either. There are some great evils that have been instigated via the psychological world.

Keep in mind, even what happened to the Kennedy's daughter--Rosemary, the one who got a lobotomy and literally had her mind, body and brain destroyed by her wicked parents. When I read this story about Rosemary in People magazine, I burst out in tears. I was horrified. Those who have powerful and connected narcissistic parents are that much more in danger because those parents have the connections to doctors, judges, and lawyers that can readily ruin and destroy a life. Some are part of "good ole boy" networks, and corruption as well. Many of the sociopathic elite "successful" often have a scapegoat or "sacrifice" in the mix. Reading this article about Rosemary's mother hounding her about her weight even after having her brain cut up via doctors at her parent's orders, screams narcissists!

Rosemary, definitely showed signs of cognitive problems which left her more as prey to the narcissists. Even with my Aunt Scapegoat, her learning disabilities and deficients left her as more vulnerable prey to a narcissist family. I had a high enough IQ to take refuge in books and go "inward" and "fight back".  She did not. There definitely was the fat hatred and abuse too in Rosemary's case. There was whole taint of "You'll make the whole family look bad!" when it came to Rosemary's weight. Everyone knows the story of how both Kennedy parents were concerned that she was getting boyfriends, too and one thinks there too, they feared a scandal and wanted to "protect" their "good name".

                                                                                      [picture source]

This is Narcissism 101 garbage, when one considers an evil woman that would complain about the weight of her ruined shell of a daughter who can no longer walk and talk because of a lobotomy. Those cold dead eyes in the picture above sums everything up. This is nausea inducing. That is a narcissist and a sociopath rolled up into one. What a vile family. They give her a lobotomy to "control her" and the mother doesn't even visit her for 20 years.

"She and husband Joseph Kennedy were so obsessed with daughter Rosemary's weight they told her boarding schools she was 'getting too fat'

• Rosemary would apologize in letters home about the pounds she'd gained 
• She underwent a lobotomy in 1941 when she was 23 years old and was left unable to speak or walk properly after the botched procedure
• Her mom was known to call the Catholic institution for the disabled where Rosemary lived as an adult to ask about her daughter's weight 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3225863/Rose-Kennedy-obsessed-daughter-Rosemary-s-weight-lobotomy.html#ixzz3oCPtCVz9
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
The article goes on to explain Rosemary's reaction to seeing her mother. It makes sense. After all something inside her had to know what they had done to her, and what she had lost.

"At the sight of her mother, Rosemary, who was being escorted by two nuns, broke into a sprint and lunged at the elderly woman, beating her chest and screaming at her."

Rosemary is one of the most extreme examples but there are other ACONs even nowadays who have been involuntarily committed via their narcissistic parents. Scapegoated Daughter is one of them. 
I have read stories on message boards of narcissistic parents trying to claim their adult children's guardianship even upon entry into the hospital for  non-mental conditions like ulcerative colitis or other disorders. When someone has guardianship over you, this means they control all finances and medical and other decisions. They control where you live and your day to day life. In most states, it takes a court proceeding for someone to claim guardianship over another.

                                                                                      [picture source]

ACONs need to protect themselves. I have protection where my husband would be making the decisions if I was incapacitated but those ACONs who are single and even people in my boat need to make medical power of attorney papers. Make sure you will never end up in the clutches of your narcissistic family should something God forbid happen to your spouse. It can be tough for a scapegoat to find someone they can trust, and this can feel like too great a burden for friends, but we must do what we can to protect ourselves. You do not want the sociopaths sharing your DNA or supposedly sharing it, being the ones who decide to pull the plug or allowing emergency surgery or not.

I highly suspect my mother got guardianship over my Aunt Scapegoat. She let it slip that she was responsible for all her financial decisions. They didn't realize being disabled like I am, I know the ins and outs of Advanced Directives and other matters. I knew these things from a friend who had to claim medical power of attorney over a mother with severe dementia. Those who direct someone's money usually have named someone as incompetent and unable to handle their own affairs.

My golden child sister tried to deny it, and the jig was up.  I also realized my mother played the Aunt Scapegoat is "crazy" game. Today I don't know what to believe and question much of what I was told. There were too many discrepancies. I was told Aunt Scapegoat was mentally ill enough to be hoarding and that she was hoarding her own waste even, but then I came to this, "How on earth was someone that mentally ill able to drive herself to dialysis 12 miles each way, three times a week". Aunt Denial told me she did drugs and stole from them. But how much is truth or lies? Would someone storing their own poop in a bag  and pee in a jars all over their trailer, be responsible enough to keep track of their dialysis days? I don't think so.  It made no sense. Things didn't add up, and as I thought things out, I knew I was being lied to. Where the stories about hoarding and the rest, what she used to get her guardianship? I don't know but I do know I don't trust any of them.

My mother has played the "You're Crazy" game on me and she has labeled me mentally ill to the rest of the family to the point, they have devalued anything I had to say for years. Being an Aspie this was easier for her to do. While my Aspergers went undiagnosed and unnamed, she used aspects of it to label me insane. She did to me what was done to my aunt, just in a different way. I had the IQ to fight back, and realize something was wrong. Sometimes I am in horror, that if I had believed them on what they had to say about me, that I would have become an utterly destroyed person like my Aunt Scapegoat. She told my father I was "crazy" and every other relative.

Some memories have come back to me and things I haven't thought about in years. One of those things was how they tried to drive me crazy with all the gas lighting and tried to push me into severe mental illness and threatened me with commitment. One thing I had going for me, is I got good grades and I was very quiet in school, and today I believe if those two things were not true, both parents could have railroaded me into the institution of their choice.  I would have been destroyed and quite easily too. Perhaps fear of what I would say about them and their abuse, kept them from dragging me to the nearest psych ward, but one aspect of my abuse was being threatened with commitment. These threats peaked as I entered my early teens.

In 1982-83, my father had my Aunt Confused committed once and it could have been twice. He did an involuntary commitment on her. He made a big to do of getting her put in the psych ward and she was there far longer then today's 72 hour watches. He spoke to her with disdain, yelled at her, and told her to shut up. There were whispers of court, paperwork and "getting her help". From my angle, she did abuse pills, and was "hyper" and seemed to be afraid a lot, talking about the mafia coming after her. Since my father's family was from New Jersey, maybe the mafia talk wasn't a delusion. She still seemed afraid to the day I went no contact with her. She was relieved when I went no contact with her to be honest. She always took my phone calls with severe hesitation. She saw me as a "trouble-maker" and "rebel" who was upsetting the apple cart far too much. I hadn't seen her or my father's side of the family since 1997 but she was still in continuous contact with my mother.

I got the message loud and clear she lived with this fear of being "put away" all her life. Even last year, when I still talked to her, it seemed her adult son seemed to have a heavy decision making whether she could go on a trip or not and even over her bank account. I asked her, if her son had guardianship over her and she would not respond but something funny seemed to be going on. I lived too far away so didn't pursue the matter with her. Realizing there are two relatives with some kind of guardianship funny business going on definitely forms a pattern.

In the 80s, she seemed to keep to herself in her trailer, eating hamburgers and reading tabloids so whatever else she was up to along with the drugs, I may have not been privy to. Even though she was supposedly "insane", they dropped me and my brother off all the time to visit with her.

Like Aunt Scapegoat, Aunt Confused was trashed to me night and day. "She is crazy!". They would scream at me that I was just like her every time they got mad at me and tell me they were going to do the papers on me to commit me.  They were going to put me in the same hospital and see if I liked it. "They'll put you in the rubber room with your aunt!" They especially focused on me "turning out like her" and "You two are just alike!" Part of me today thinks I could have been better off if the doctors weren't on my parents side automatically but obviously I was scared to death. My mother would sneer, "We can put you away!" One time I went with my father to visit my Aunt Confused in the big stone walled psych ward and hospital in our town, she came down in a bathrobe to the meeting area but didn't have much to say. She was just quiet. She was cowed. She did not fight my father and did everything he said, and the same applied later with her own grown son.

Around that time I was 13, and 14 years old, and the constant litany of comparisons with my aunt never let up, "You are crazy like Aunt Confused!""You are going to turn out like her.". "We will put you away in the same place and you can join her!"  This was daily not just once in a while at that time. There were times I was scared I was going to go mad, and they helped push this along. This degree of emotional abuse on a young teen was beyond the pale. They would gaslight me. I became petrified of losing my mind as they told me over and over I was crazy and mentally ill and there was no hope for me and my future. I was a young Aspie and told my problems of unpopularity were all my fault. I "kept my nose in books" way too much too. The me of today wonders if they were trying to drive me to total insanity so they could "put me" away. If I had been born 20-30 years earlier, they definitely would have succeeded.

 My reading choices of the time, reflect some of what I was undergoing.  "Will There Ever Be a Morning?" was one favorite book of mine when Frances Farmer gets put into the psych ward by her controlling mother. I read "I never Promised You a Rose Garden" petrified that I would go mad like the girl in the book but remembering thinking at the time, "But you are not having hallucinations like she is."  At time, I wanted to know if I really was crazy like they said I was. 

My untreated PTSD already was giving me problems I did not understand. Back then I didn't know what PTSD or C-PTSD even was, I would learn at the age of 18 buying a book on panic disorders, OCD and anxiety problems, but at that point I did not know. I was scared because I was having feelings of depersonalization.  Depersonalization can come with anxiety disorders. I still remember the first time that happened and being scared to death that I was cracking up, but kept my mouth shut knowing the monsters around me would use it for my destruction.

                                                   [picture source]

One time it happened to me while sitting at the bathroom at the age of 10, the feeling of unrealness and not being me. I would stay lucid and not miss time or anything like that so no one else would know what was happening to me,  even if the feeling came over me in a crowded classroom but it scared me for years. I didn't know what was happening to me. I fortunately escaped having or the effects of personality disorders or Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID], but my anxiety problems brought me trouble at a very early age. Why wouldn't I be troubled being so severely emotionally abused and where I could be hit out of the blue at a seconds notice?

As a young adult, I struggled with anxiety and panic disorder and was diagnosed with PTSD by multiple therapists. My work life was severely affected by panic attacks and anxiety. I would hide it but it took a strong physical toll. There was a lot of time crying in bathrooms and getting myself "together" so no one would know how much I was suffering. Many female Aspies suffer from anxiety and other related problems.  I was someone who needed solace, comfort and loving support and did not get it. What is great about the last couple years is I actually have had some recovery from my anxiety disorders. As I have written before going no contact cut it down almost immediately by 80%. My last actual panic attack--I can still feel anxiety with COPD breathing problems--was two and half years ago. What else happened that long ago? I went no contact.

There was such sheer hatred shown for anyone with mental health problems. Of course if they hated me that much why not just hand me over to be a ward of the state? No they enjoyed the game and the torture. Mentally ill people were just weak to them. No one got any mercy.

Often gaslighting will take the form for scapegoats in telling a scapegoat they are crazy and denying reality to their face. Some ACONs may even feel like reality itself will crack as the lying never lets up and they are told that what they saw, heard and felt was not real.  I was told over and over that what I saw and heard was not real and I was wrong about everything. I have realized my sociopathic mother is doing it now, in her birthday cards, trying to claim she is innocent as the driven snow.  She has gotten the other stupid people around her to believe, that I am the problem and that my emotions and "rejection" of her has arisen out of a vacuum and that my "mental illness" is the reason why I have gone no contact. It pisses me off, to see her write that garbage, "You choose to believe things about me that are not true."  She told my brother, "I don't know what she is so mad about". Everything is about rewriting reality. Learning about gaslighting is definitely a door that opens up wide for a ACON and exposes the evil. Today I see through her garbage but I remember the years and years of being taught to question my own mind, emotions and thoughts. ACONs have to train themselves to listen to their own mind and emotions.

Lately I have contemplated the affect of having my emotions and personhood denied for my whole life. I am facing a big struggle lately that has to do with a lifelong effect of this. I am so upset facing it and how I was so destroyed in the eyes of others. The emotions are almost indescribable. Unlike some ACONs who struggle with an identity, I have one, but it feels like I live in a world that seeks to obliterate it and me. I have faced facts I was a severely physically disabled woman who got not an ounce of sympathy or empathy by a bunch of creeps, and also I was a thoughtful artistic Aspie, who was around a bunch of Neanderthals, no that is too insulting to Neanderthals.

I believe some of the narcissists succeed in destroying people's minds because they teach them to doubt their own reality. I held on to my own reality with a hard grip as they tried to take it away from me. There was once a therapist said something strange to me, she told me, "You have a core of steel". I don't think she meant that I was hard or cold. She meant that inside I had developed a fortress. I remember developing this fortress at a very young age and this may astound some of you but I remember being only ten years old and thinking, "I will not let them in my mind, and they cannot have it." Sometimes I think Aspergers protected me from cracking up, Aspies live in their mind. I turned inward to survive. Some therapists actually would tell me the fortress was a problem. One yelled at me, "You have built up this wall, and no one can get over it!" I said, "The wall is there for a reason." This wall saved me even when I faced some severe spiritual abuse. When I get brave enough I may write about this sometime and how disabled people get abused in the Christian world just for being disabled, without naming names. In the fortress, I was saying, "You know she's full of crap", don't you?" 

I joked once to a friend that the Stasi, could put me under the light bulb, and smack me around and I would not break. This may be the reason I got hired to work with teen sociopaths, rapists and drug dealers. They knew I would not break and yes I had co-workers who did. If two narcissists who told me none of my feelings were valid for years and years and that I was wrong about everything who called me crazy almost every waking day of my childhood life, couldn't do it, how could they? My own body has done such bad things to me even torture would be a run of the mill occurrence. Emotional torture was a given. My panic attacks were relegated to times of relative safety, after the fact.

One time I went to my mother when I was fifteen, and was depressed. I told her I was so depressed I felt like dying. I didn't have any suicide plans or anything like that but was crying and despondent. I was an unpopular teenager with no friends and feelings of understandable depression. She told me, "If you want to go commit suicide, go ahead and do it then!" What kind of mother is that? And how many of these types drive their more vulnerable children to suicide? Other ACONs have attested to the same messages given their teenage angst or depression. I walked away and kept my mouth shut. No feelings were to be shared among those who had none. ACONs basically have no family, we live with these people who hate us, and have no interest in really knowing us.

The abuse where they told me I was "crazy" really got bad during my teenage years. I know they turned other people against me from family friends to extended relatives, sometimes even expressing false concern when they were busy wearing a mask. This never let up. I know these messages continued behind the scenes even during my years as an art teacher and residential counselor and then later when I lived in my last rural town. I went to enough therapists to learn what my actual state of mental health was, so I could get the professional opinion about it all.  This helped rescue me. Whatever mental illness I had was the result of severe emotional and other abuse at the hands of the sociopaths. Aspergers is a neurological condition not a mental illness. It was always funny how my mother when angry would tell me to go see a counselor when she obviously has never darkened the doorstep of a counselor's office.

Malignant narcissists and sociopaths are dangerous to our mental health. Going no contact is imperative even in protecting our own minds.  One reason I had to go no contact, is my physical health was being destroyed and I was almost ending up in the hospital just from dealing with them. They do break people. I see two very broken people they managed to destroy. If they don't morally destroy someone with their poison, they will emotionally and mentally destroy someone. If someone ask me if I loved my mother, I would say no. I cannot love someone who tried to destroy me on every level.

These morally insane people do try to destroy people by calling them crazy and even threatening children and teens with commitments and more. They also set scapegoats and others up more for the predators leaving them unsure of themselves. I believe many poisonous narcissistic mothers and fathers lie about their children and manipulate the "professionals" to label them and put them in programs, some die from being put in Wilderness programs and others are tortured by the system in "Scared Straight" programs. I find myself wondering how many of the Scared Straight kids were abused and beaten at home.

This continues into adulthood was well, where sadly many scapegoats have earned the life-long title of the "crazy" one. This happened to me. The entire family sees me as a nutter. Even the ones I am very low contact with treat me like I am radioactive. I don't have much hope for those contacts either. And can see the day coming where I have no contact with anyone in the family. The narcissists hamstring you then because when you fight back and stand up for yourself, then you are already considered nuts, so your angry and hurt words are just seen as the "mental case" ranting and raving. I was told by the flying monkeys and others I was a "negative" person. I was told by family members my poverty and illness were the result of my bad attitude.  We spend so much time just trying to get some of them to validate us. I wasted years trying to do this. It doesn't go anywhere because they have this view of you in your mind that the narcissists gave them. They successfully make us look crazy.

There's literally been decades where the malignant narcissists have told them, you are off your rocker and "the problem". I ponder for myself too now the nastiness said about other people from my brother's ex wife, to the two mentally broken aunts and others my mother decided were the "enemy". She used the technique effectively that they were all "crazy" too and got dozens of people to sign on. My brother may not be divorced today even if my mother had not sought to destroy his ex-wife at any cost. He never defended her and I believe that is the core besides some of his other bad behaviors why the marriage failed. My mother has this way of making herself appearing as the "reasonable" one, she has the money and the practicality to solve problems and they all buy into her mask.

I realize this is one reason, Aunt Denial and cousins and even my own sister kept their children away from me or limited their contact. It didn't matter I had spent years working with children and very troubled young people with endless security and background checks but they all believed my mother and kept their children away. My relationship ended with my sister the day I realized she was keeping her children away from me on purpose.  They deem you even too "unstable" to have anything to do with their children. You may be a bad "influence". Or Whoops you may let a few family secrets slip.......

I have learned to avoid people who play the "you're crazy" games. I cut them off immediately. The ex-friend, who did not believe me about a narcissist abusing me in my support group, actually tried to tell me I had gone "crazy" from my high blood sugars. What happened with that fake friend was a huge devastation. I had someone just like my mother in the room.  I knew the friendship was over at that point. Once someone disrespects you and tells you that you are "crazy" and they are busy rewriting reality instead of listening with empathy and respect, that is someone you need to get away from. That includes people you are related to. Someone who calls you crazy with the spirit of ripping you to shreds, does not love you.

This narcissistic society operates the same way our parents did, telling anyone who questions the status quo, they are crazy. This is a way to devalue people and silence them. That was the goal of our narcissistic parents. We are not the crazy ones, they are.

The DNA Saga

Years ago, I asked if I was adopted on this blog.

There's a lot of paths that led me there, it was hinted at all the time, I wasn't like my family nor did I looked like them. There was also the issue of the extreme DNA, leading to the 1 in 5 million body that took me to 700lbs and diseases like Lipedema and near deafness. Of course epigenetics would be a part of this too.

I always thought my name was "wrong", this may surprise you but I was RIGHT and I'll explain why.......

Intuition for me has always been a funny thing, in me it is strong, whatever foundation it has. The Christians taught me it was evil, and knowing things before they happened or dreaming about things, was from Satan so I shut some of that stuff done. I don't consider myself psychic but friends have witnessed weird things, like me telling them I dreamed about something and then it would happen that day or I guessed at things I wasn't supposed to know.

I got an Ancestry account and DNA test, a generous kind friend helped with this, and since I was no contact, there was no asking narcissists, minions or flying monkeys what the truth of my origins was. I used second and third cousins to deduce my genetic ties. There was even a few obscure and distant relatives whose name's I recognized. I built a family tree up to 1300 people, it definitely was going to give me answers and did.

Sadly I ended up having the narcissists be my egg and sperm donors. I was saddened by this. My disappointment took some time to process and get over. My childhood was odd, I realize it is not usual for a child to be sent to relatives to live for a periods of months. This happened with two different set of relatives in two different states. Of course this only advanced my theory I was adopted or something else was funny about my origins. I lived away from home around age 5-6 with the loving aunt, and around age 4 with the adoptive/step-grandfather I believed to be my real grandfather, grandmother and their household.

Ancestry is good for finding out family secrets. I found out my father was the product of an affair or other happening [rape?] where my grandmother who had been married for 10 years gave birth to my father, but he was not that man's son. I don't even know if my father knew. Sometimes I think Aunt Confused knew, just the funny way she treated me. Maybe she always knew I was not a full niece. This is explains why I never saw any relative outside my father's immediate family growing up.

If some relatives find my public family tree they may be in shock, but I don't care. Most narcissists don't care about the past and have no interest in delving into it so I consider the risks low.

I wrote in the notes that this information is backed up via DNA. I had multiple cousins pop up from this 'new" side of the family based on my Ancestry DNA test. I could not figure out who the exact biological grandfather was. I narrowed it down to three brothers and made notes to that fact.

I was related to several of their descendants including one person who grew up in foster homes and never knew who their father was. She was labeled as a first to second cousin.

My adoptive/step-grandfather's family did know the real grandfather's family and all attended the same church. There was even one news article from the 1930s where brothers from both families all got arrested together. I did find some strains of criminality that backed up the talk from one aunt about how several relatives were most likely "mob involved". One odd thing was noticing that Aunt Confused's son followed in the same exact vocational footsteps of many of the biological family's footsteps. I don't know if he knows either.

There was always this feeling that there were so many lies. My father told me tales of his grandfather being a multimillionaire and his father [the adoptive one] being disinherited. I found no evidence of either of the families being that wealthy, one would move up in a certain career field, but that was a generation later. My father even sent me an email in 1997 telling me these tales. I still have a paper copy. That email was so off the ranch, I spent months trying to build the family tree off misinformation. He was wrong about his adoptive father and his real father.  Most were hard working people and far more economically stable then myself, but they were far from millionaires.

My name was not the "correct" one but it's my legal name so maybe those odd feelings had reason to exist. Did intuition tell me, I did not have a "legitimate" last name nor did I look like the ethnic group it strongly hinted at?  I found out I am not half of one ethnic group, I thought I was life long. I did learn I am half German and took those family lines back to the 1400s--a few second cousins were really into genealogy too, and half Hungarian.

Some may consider it odd, that someone childless is so into geneaology, but I was into it beyond trying to dig up facts about my own life. I know a man in my community who is the last of his family line who has complied his family history. Maybe it's a way to connect with and preserve the past. Maybe it's the history or trying to figure out where I came from. I did look for fat people. One great grandfather in 1911 was very fat, and upwards of 400lbs. I found his picture. There was information that he had very bad legs. The biological paternal family of my father had some very large members, I found some pictures. The pictures backed up what the DNA told me. One descendant looked just like my brother. I did get cut off from one member of the "new family" who I think got freaked out that "great-grandfather" had other children. It's funny, I was looking 3 generations back and people still got upset, but I didn't impose or make announcements about affairs, I guess they just figured it out.  So genetically I got it from more then just one line.

There were other family secret discoveries too, I was told one uncle was murdered viciously my entire life and told he died at the hands of a jealous husband of another race. I found newspaper articles about what happened to him, he was found dead and they didn't know the cause of death, but no murder was investigated. The first thought I had was that he had committed suicide [the second would be suicide in my mother's immediate family besides the aunt that drove into a tree at a high rate of speed] and they just wrote it as inconclusive to spare the family feelings, and having someone denied burial in the Catholic graveyard like my aunt almost was. This uncle died only 3 weeks before I was born, and I have considered that this is one way I became a family wide scapegoat. The timing of my birth simply meant I was never welcomed.  Genetics proved he was not my father, as I was related to the known maternal line of my father and of course the new paternal line from the same distant community.

In other religions, people try to contact their ancestors. This is important to a variety of world religions. There were harsh faced relatives like my grandfather's grandmother or my second great grandmother and others who looked nicer.  I had some weird moments such as finding one ancestor that looked like me so much that when I put her picture up on Facebook, friends were shocked. She was like a thin version of me. Funny thing was this particular daughter of my great-grandfather, never married or had children. She was a life-long school teacher who lived independently.  As a child I saw her one room school house, she taught at in the fields on the way to my grandmother's house. If there is an after world at all, I can picture myself going to find some of these other relatives, asking what was it like and what happened? I was reaching so far into the past. Maybe outcast status in one's own family worsened as time modernized.

One thing I noticed is families lived far closer knit in the same communities, on both sides I was doing research in a particular town they lived in for the majority of relatives. Yes there was the line where people left the old country, but even in America, families stayed close by. This ended with the boomers and the new economic nomadism that took over the country. I got the feeling that others grew up with a wide variety of relatives as the norm until my mother's generation changed this. It also occurred to me on one side of the family, I was the first to leave the family church, it's hold remained over generations and generations. That was a strange idea to think about.

I was glad to find out if I was adopted or not even if the results were disappointing. Maybe I had hope for more explanations, but some of us must face sometimes we were birthed to people who were not real parents to us. I also realized there was a lot of weirdness in my childhood where there was little bonding and ambivalence and wonder how much appearances meant I never got to grow up in a relatives home where I may have blossomed. Life in the adoptive/step-father's, grandmother's home was not pleasant either but life certainly was with my aunt.

Some may get angry thinking how dare someone go and dig through family secrets, there's people out there who hate places like Ancestry because they are exposing a lot of family lies. Some people are finding out they were adopted. It is better to know the truth either way things go.



No more Family Secrets



Update: I did figure out which of the brothers was my grandfather from new DNA contacts being found.

The Demise of the American Family 4: Distance Was Part of It

 

Many Americans have no money to travel anymore. What will this mean in a world where everyone lives far away from relatives?

People can't afford to see each other in person anymore. 

During the boomer's era when a man with a high school diploma could get a job let's say at a factory, or as a school janitor, could buy a house and raise some kids and feed them, life was different then. That family had enough expendable income to go to "Grandma's house" even if grandma lived hundreds of miles away. This is another issue not being explored by sociologists very much, how declining money and expenses for travel are breaking up family. Sure some say you can stay in touch via distance. I have friends online I never have met in person, I've talked to for 25 plus years. It often can work. With family though, if you are simply not around, and you don't have people who like writing letters or emails, the relationships will die on the vine. If you all live hundreds or even thousands of miles away long enough, time will erode any possible relationships. The poorer you are, the less contact you will have with your family. The younger generations who cannot afford rent, food, and more do not have money to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars to "go home" and visit family.

We were all scattered for careers that didn't pan out. 

One thing I have noticed is social services, counselors and others assume everyone has a family. While SOME people have family networks where they live, that's far fewer. Narcissistic parents will scatter families, people move away, even the golden and lost children feel the strain around the narcissistic parent, they think "I got to get out of here!" Families broke up for careers and economics and well while it paid off for older generations that did find careers, it stripped away any notion of family for younger people.

One thing I noticed in some smaller towns I lived in, is some families were still intact, they all lived in the same town. Life for them was far different, their family and relatives were part of the warp and weave of their everyday life. I know this woman where there were 5 sisters and they all lived in town, one was deceased but they visited her all the time in the nursing home before she died.

You Separated Everyone Long Ago 

I notice the estranged parent set never deal with this issue. I have posted about their outraged anger at their estranged children but do some realize, many of us grew up without extended family simply because they were too far away? Do they realize many of us saw our families scatter to the 4 winds, hundreds and thousands of miles away? I have written about how I grew up being hundreds of miles from all relatives. Why are some of these estranged parents shocked, that families have broken up? They blame their estranged kids but don't realize the fix was put in place for families to split up years and years ago.

I saw this estranged parent on social media getting angry at estranged children claiming, "They have no loyalty, roots, or sense of history, towards their family." Well what do you expect? Those things were thrown away in the 1960s. Family were strangers they saw once or twice a year or less. They couldn't pay their rent and their jobs paid them only basic survival wages so how could they afford to run around and visit people and build relationships with them? They weren't family, they were strangers. Even on Breaking Bad, the relatives were present in each other's lives even though Walter White was betraying them. 

This estranged parent ranted about  "family being reduced to DNA". 

What do you expect? Seriously. You think there's real relationships among people who never see or talk to each other? The reality is, that for many family members all they share is DNA and no relationships. I was far closer to loving friends I met online, I shared heart to heart conversations with via email than I was many family members. I sought "family" in all the churches I joined. It worked out once but then I was forced to move away from those folks. Church could be weird watching people around their families, and most of the conservative ones became extremely family focused to the point people without families did not feel welcomed. 

When a society decided that everything was going to be monetized this means social capital as defined by the book "Bowling Alone", connection no longer mattered. Along with the third spaces, family disappeared too. All decisions were to be made based on economics and "making it". Now that the younger generations aren't making it, the system is failing, the families are gone and the economic success except for the very wealthy has dried up. The estranged parents don't even understand or realize why their adult children are so upset. 

When Grandma lives over 500 miles away for years and as an adult, you live even further away for over 30 years.

How is a kid going to see "family" as important if they lived far away from all relatives and relatives were these people they only saw once to twice a year and sometimes less? I went no contact due to abuse, but I know one reason my mother gained control of the family so easily and why so many of the "better" relationships died on the vine, was I simply lived too far away and could not afford the necessary travel to maintain relationships with family. I didn't have the hundreds of dollars to go visit one's cousin's wedding, and I also had medical problems that made long distance travel far harder. It occurred to me as I tried to rescue a few relationships with some before going no contact with the entire family, some simply had no interest in maintaining family ties. They found my desire to "get to know each other" weird. They didn't relate to it. There was this sense that everyone was supposed to have their own life, and by even displaying a desire to have them in my life, I had broken some unwritten rule. In my case I learned to no longer beg people or go to empty wells, but the default was, "We don't care, get your own life, leave us alone". 

 No one came to visit me for years except for 10 minute stop offs on the way to elsewhere and even that disappeared. No one is going to keep any relationships going with this type of distance. 

Reaching out to Strangers Got Old and They left Me Before I Left Them

What does family mean today? Before I was no contact, I used to make phone calls, I was the type to call Grandma on a regular basis and even Aunt Confused. I sent presents, cards and more. What did it all mean? I was always reaching out while no one reached out to me or did as little as possible. I've talked about how I became a stranger. As I wrote in my no contact letter to my mother "Both of us have noticed we have become more ostracized over the years,  If people slam a door in your face enough times...what happens if you have any self-respect left? You walk away." And yes the slamming doors ricocheted through my life and affected what decisions I made. You can only try and force relationships that don't really exist so much. 

Churches Aren't for People with No Families

One reason conservative circles were always hard for me, was they all talked about how important family was. My fundamentalist churches, especially the last two, pounded on it continually. Those patriarchal types with their Quiverful clans of 10-12 kids lived in the world of yesterday no longer available to most. They had money and land for all those kids and tons of relatives around them. Many seemed stuck in the lives of 50 years ago where aunt and uncle lived down the street and you could go talk to them. Church got weird sometimes, the second IFB was always preaching how important family was. What if you didn't have one? Everything was about the "family". 

Some didn't get the memo that most families were all broken up starting in the 1960s and we didn't have extended families anymore. The demise of the extended family, I believe made narcissism worse. When there was more of a community around, there was more pressure to keep the narco-paths in control, '"why are you treating your kid that way?" An abused kid could get a break at a relative's house if they were close enough. The isolation of the nuclear family allowed abuse to fester and grow within four walls. The worse could get away with more. There was no one to challenge them. There was no community to demand at least a certain modicum of behavior. 

Uncles, Aunts, Cousins etc. you don't know.

Uncle Lost Boy doesn't care that I exist. He's never sent me a card and neither has his wife. I doubt he's thought of me in 25 years. "Oh I have a niece". That's the reality today. If I was homeless could I call Uncle Lost Boy for help? Doubtful. I'm a stranger. Remember I have no beefs with him. He's too controlled and passive in the face of my mother but there's been no harsh words between us. He is far closer to his wife's more traditional working class family who all live in the same town. Who can blame him?

My father's family had nothing to do with my family. We visited them but no one visited us after 1982 when my family moved to the Midwest from the East Coast. Aunt Confused kept some contact and visited once in 1998, but otherwise went poof out of our lives especially when she disappeared in the early 1980s and didn't even say goodbye to me as a teen. That was over with. They had money for trips, but no one was interested. Oddly they kept in contact with my mother, but money and lavish presents were motivators for weddings. First cousins, simply had nothing to do with us. 

I am not the only one no one talks to because I went no contact. My brother told me he hadn't talked to my sister in 2 and half years right before I went no contact with him. My other two siblings are at least at the very low contact level and could be no contact now. I found out from Aunt Confused, that two granddaughters wouldn't even share their addresses with her. She was invited to weddings, but not allowed to be part of their day to day lives. The cousin who called me to tell me he had gotten divorced, a few years ago, told me he hadn't seen any family members in years. Some ACONS warn when the scapegoat leaves, the families break apart. Mine had broken apart before I left the fractures definitely grew. Younger people don't have the same money, time, resources, energy or space to maintain family relationships like older generations. That impact is already happening. 

This issue has been covered on this blog by me multiple times where I talked about my life as an "economic nomad" and there was never any real home. Someone may ask "What's your home town?" What town do I name? They say "move home to family for support"  to young people. Some have divorced parents so things are even more broken up. What does that mean when the family is spread about 5 different states? 

One thing I constantly noticed in the fundamentalist and conservative churches I was in, was many were in the more traditional mode, they lived among family members mostly in small towns. Now these churches were mostly the Baby Boomer generation and older. They had jobs and established lives in small towns, and extensive networks. This will not be true of the younger generations. I predicted there's going to be a lot of churches closing when the boomer generation dies off. This one thing I chafed against in all my conservative and evangelical churches. Many evangelical churches claim they grow by going out to the highways and byways and street preaching for new "converts" but I'll be frank, that's rare. Most people in the churches are family members. I've noticed with some of the estranged parents, they all are of that background, some are evangelicals using religion to shame their "wayward" youth. 

Conservative politicians were always hypocrites about "family values", they pushed those in our faces for years, while pushing idyllic 1950 visions of home and hearth, they built financial systems and took away all social safety nets that would have allowed more families and communities to remain intact. I didn't want to hear about how all the people without families were wicked. I've noticed the estranged parent movement has a huge evangelical flavor to it, where they push the same stuff ignoring the economic realities their adult children face and say their children are all "wicked". 

Physical Presence Matters

Family will break down from distance alone, physical presence matters. In history, cultures had rituals and shared events. These events built up solidarity and positive memories. That won't happen in a family that can no longer afford travel or participate in any traditions or meet-ups.  The family dinners, and family reunions of yesterday also have disappeared. I am old enough to have seen some of those things in the 1970s. Things were different then. When I was sent to my aunt's house to stay, that wouldn't happen for many children today.  Due to distance, people will be facing extreme illness, poverty and other life troubles on their own. Those with young children will be on their own or fully dependent on expensive daycare. The family is simply not there to help. As the economy gets more oppressive this means the young will have less to do with their families, even in non-toxic ones they would otherwise desire contact with. The money will simply not be there. 

Connection between family members has broken down. Now there's those of us who had to break connections that brought pain, abuse and sabotage to our lives, but there's many connections being broken now for other reasons. Family are strangers that don't even know what your day to day life is like. I see the theme with young people trying to describe their reality to their parents, where the parents take little interest, or do not relate whatsoever to what they are facing. The old days weren't perfect, some were stifled and controlled too much by their family systems. Some families were abusive or demanded too much. Small town life with a permanent reputation at the hands of your family could be oppressive. People were told to obey parents to the extreme. However, this isn't good either.

Family as Competition Clubs, with No Love or Loyalty

However there were some family values, that were different. There were notions of loyalty, duty and more. While some of these things could be used as a trap, in the "old days" one could depend on one's family a bit more. A daughter would not be left to die in an inner city with no one to help or even pushed to get a job like that in the first place to avoid "homelessness". Family used to take each other in if they faced hard times. There was unity in some families. There was some cooperation and an idea of "us against the world". Older generations did have the outlook of "keeping the family together". I've seen this meme around and there's truth in it. Many have noticed when their Silent Generation grandparent died or even a more traditional older boomer did, the family folded, no one was having family meet-ups any longer even beyond the affordability issues.

My family was a competition club. I'm not the only poor person who got mocked. I grew up listening to this nonsense. Nepotism became for the favorites instead of trying to help the family as whole. I noticed among older generations there wasn't such a severe divide economically between family members. This is definitely one thing that has happened to the American family. There was no more togetherness, there was economic competition. There's a reason estranged and toxic parents put their kids down as "losers", and then they are shocked when said adult children, walk away. They have no sense. Of course they would. Their family is not a bastion against a cold hard world but people who made everything far more difficult. 

While there were disabled people who were abused or rejected, [locked away in the attic] I know if several great-uncles and aunts got Huntington's today, instead of 50 years ago, their fate would have been far worse. I don't have contact with those family lines anymore to know how their children have fared. Family shared business and opportunities where now that seems to be only competition. Some wealthier families do use nepotism still, but many are left out of that. There was some social contract and more trust within families. Family was supposed to protect and look out for each other. That definitely has been lost in many places. Leaving a relative to the homeless shelter instead of helping them, would have brought shame in the old days. 

There were negatives, abuse could be hidden, via the unspoken message "We don't air our dirty laundry in public", you didn't go to therapists back then. There could be more secrets but family in more cases was something you could depend on more. The second Great Depression will be far harder on people because during the first Great Depression there was far more family cohesiveness and connection. 

There's some panicking because Gen Z and younger generations don't want children, "We've gone below replacement levels!" If you think about it why would they?  People aren't receiving fond memories of family but dealing with families that harmed and abused them. Even if more neutral, family connection is something for yesterday. DNA today means strangers who live far away, it doesn't mean people you can turn to or count on. I know some fortunate souls have a far different experience of family but for many people it's been a wholly negative experience. This is one reason young people don't want children, if family is a negative word to you, why would you want to add members to a family that never had your back and always left you behind?