Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: gratitude28 on February 12, 2008, 05:24:38 PM
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I had a big realization with my sister's latest visit - I really do not count in the family. Not one bit. I have been written off (doubtless long ago) as the different one, the hard-to-deal-with-one, or the one who chose to move away. Whatever the justificatons, they are there. As a child, I always felt I was in some sort of competiition - which child would be the 'successful' one. I know now that my parents decided long ago that my sister 'won' the contest and I could do just about anything in the universe and it would not count for much. I would get some 'points' if I somehow brought them money or attention, but it still would never make them like ME. When my sister was here, she said that my parents tell everyone that I lived in Italy and Japan, speak languages, yada, yada, yada. I said to her that bragging about that has nothing to do with me and her reply was that they are one and the same.
I could not believe that when my sister came to visit, my mother called and texted repeatedly. She hardly EVER calls and has texted twice ever... and when she called, she never even asked to talk to my kids.
I know I sound like a broken record from my years on here... I go through all this every bunch of months... ugh. It just truly amazes me now that I realize that I am such a 'third wheel.' I am considered less attractive, less intelligent, less interesting, less everything. How can someone do this to their kids and then make excuses for it with no pang of guilt? And (SunBlue, my dear) I feel my dad is just as guilty... he is as damaging and cruel.
Thanks for reading if you could bear to listen to it all again.
Love, Beth
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(((((((((((((Beth)))))))))))))
no matter how many times I repeat all the same stuff to myself, the realization of all that you've written still startles me, at times. I surely understand the need to express it. I've been written off on several occasions, the last and most final being when I remarried this last time and refused to move back "home". I thank God often for the 1,000 miles of distance between my parents and me.
You're exactly right. We're not even in the race...
and thank God for that, too!
Gotta be one of them (or agree to be controlled by them) to join that fandango....
and that's no way to live.
Love to you,
Carolyn
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Beth,
I think the truth is You are NOT in the race and it takes such a long time to know this. It took me ever so long and it seemed to be a layered knowing, as if I got it and then something else would happen and I would be completely shocked. I think the more I accepted it the more I saw in a new way how crazy the "race" was. Thankfully I am free of this stuff with my FOO but it took a long long time to get to where I am now. I wonder while I did come to terms with it with my FOO did I act it out with XN because the results were the same and maybe I am processing all of this through my "relationship" with him. I guess I am wondering do we just replace the FOO with an N to continue trying to be included........... now that is something I have not thought of in this way before, or else maybe I am knowing it at a different level. Thank you for this post, feels like it has hit another nail on the head for me.
Hugs,
axa