New Memory Share: the Tag-Teamed Scapegoat

[Guest guest]

It seems like the 'trauma' memories I have in me that need remembering and

recasting are just endless. Today I have some very important ones I'd like to

share with the board. I hope that in writing about it, I can take more control

of the reality, and also to help anyone who might have had similar experiences.

I have mentioned before my nada's obsessions included wanting to be most

'pretty' and desirable and popular. She and my split-good sister would

relentlessly tag-team me when my fada and brothers were not around. These

memories are so traumatic that they are fully buried--I literally have blacked

out every word from the times that I was alone with nada and Golden

sister--about up until age 17 or so.

What I do remember, what I'm processing today, is harrowing. Nada and split

good sister would jump onto literally every word I said, and every action of

mine, and dismiss it in mocking disgust. They were trying to 'shame' me into

being the ugly rejected girl on the playground--and they did it SO incessantly,

and so violently, that it was experienced by me as pure trauma, existential

banishment. Example: I would serve myself a plate of food. I should mention

here that I was not an overweight child--luckily I was blessed not to have that

challenge--but this didn't matter one lick, because nada and split-good were

intent on casting me as the schoolyard 'fat' girl. So. I would serve a plate

and the two of them would roll their eyes together, and one or both of them

would say, SO mockingly, and as if I was the most ridiculous and disgusting

person in the world, 'you're eating ALL THAT?' Or, 'are you STARVING?' If I

would try to say anything about what happened in school, they would in unison

bark a monosyllabic 'HA!', dissmissing me, and say something or other indicating

that whatever I had just described was my desperate attempt to be popular, and

should be utterly dismissed because I was unpopular, ugly, and ridiculous.

This went on for dozens of years. Any time I was alone with the two of them.

Which was plenty. Literally. I am not exaggerating. Literally, EVERYTHING, I

said and did, was used to dismiss me, shame me, banish me from their PRIVILEGED

tribe.

It was also extremely enforced that my sister was the privileged one with the

men in the family. She was given luxury clothes and cosmetics. I was barred

from her closet and her bathroom like I had the plague. I remember that nada

had a very special form of wrath reserved if I ever dared to enter my sister's

closet. I was not good enough for her clothes. I was disgusting, 'fat',

desperate--she was the beautiful, skinny child. The closet and the bathroom,

being banished from them, were memories I had buried as a trauma that resurfaced

in a dream or two recently. It was so painful.

It was really very severe. Also incessant. But I guess I already mentioned

that. It was not just that they wanted me to feel ugly or desperate (though

they did)--they wanted to absolutely eradicate my existence as a human being,

worthy of dignity, and respect, having an existence, having my own needs.

ANYTHING. I said or did, was dismissed by them, with mocking derision,

TOGETHER, as a tag team. And there was no way to fight it. I was trapped there

with them--noone else was in the room/car, and I was too young to drive myself

away.

(Is it any suprise that I went running and never looked back, the moment I WAS

old enough to drive myself away).

Of all that was done--and God. So MUCH was done. Of all that was done, this

group ridiculing is the most painful, and the only thing that has caused full on

black-outs in my memory cycle. I had a basic need to emotionally connect with

my 'mother', because I was a child and that is a human instinct. So I kept

wanting to change it. I kept thinking that if I was just pretty enough, or

popular enough, or if I got the perfect boyfriend/husband, then they would be

FORCED to admit I deserved to be in their 'tribe'. Of course it never worked

that way. When I did have a boyfriend they would appropriate him to their

cause. One particular boyfriend used to roll their eyes with nada and my sister

whenever they queued him up.

I ditched his butt after a few months of that. Sigh...

--Charlie