Toxic Blood: Introduction
Advice given to those suffering emotional abuse and neglect far too often emphasizes how to ignore the trauma and seek reconciliation no matter what, an approach that all too often hinders healing and perpetuates abuse cycles. Instead, we need to teach how to discern whether relationships are repairable, or it is best to walk away. It is important to illustrate that even if accountability leads to removing family from your life, it is still worth pursuing for the personal healing and wellbeing that it brings. It is important to give voice and lend courage to people who are having difficulty identifying abuses, placing clear boundaries, and cutting off unrepentantly toxic people from their lives.
I am speaking, not just to those whose abuses were obvious and acknowledged, but to those who suffered in miserable silence, unaware that what they endured was not OK and should not be normal. In an ideal world, most of these things would never happen to anyone, but instead I think it is far more common than we, as a society, want to admit to ourselves.
I contemplated for a great many years before deciding to embark upon writing out my story. It would be a hard pill for many people mentioned herein to swallow, and I had a great many insecurities and doubts. Would anyone outside my family even want to read it? Would it have any value outside myself? Would the process of writing it be cathartic, or would it result in drowning in the poisoned water that has already passed under those burned bridges, or some combination of both? Would my personal narrative distract from others who suffered more obvious and egregious abuses, or would it help to expand discussions about the impact of long-term emotional abuse, especially for people who wonder if their abuses are “bad enough” to be valid? In the end, I decided that if I did not write this, I would probably spend the rest of my life wondering if I should, so I have put it out there, for better or worse.
This material is a memoir about the abuses and traumas I endured as a child through adulthood, mostly from my immediate family. In it, I describe how I found myself despite the actions of my family, and provide a critical examination of how their behaviors and words affected me. I lay out as many details as I can about my own thoughts and emotions, especially regarding why I stayed in abusive dynamics for as long as I did, and how I eventually broke free from them. I delve into my understanding of the motivations, potential thought processes, and shortcomings of my family members as I seek to make sense of the senseless neglect, constant lies, and unending manipulation. In doing so, I hope to make sense of such behaviors for others as well.
When I started writing this memoir, it was with the caveat that I might or might not actually finish it and publish it for the world to read. There are a lot of things about my childhood and youth, a great many interactions with my family, that repeatedly turned circles in my brain. I believe that happened because I never had closure with my blood family, and due to ongoing staunch denial I expect I never will. As a young adult I realized that seeking any sort of apology or even acknowledgement from them would only lead to more lies, further gaslighting, and other emotionally abusive and manipulative behaviors.
Any chance for closure comes solely from me, so my brain did this cyclical dance, seeking closure from reexamining scenarios and reevaluating particular events. I would contemplate the things I wanted to say about what had happened, things I wanted to tell my family and have them understand without deflecting, denying, excusing, or gaslighting to dismiss their problematic behaviors and make themselves out to be the victims of baseless accusations. The monologues danced circles, desperate for an outlet that was never going to happen, because I knew the people who most needed to hear and understand my perspective would double down on the gaslighting rather than admit any wrongdoing. It was not healthy for me. It was not accomplishing anything. It just kept the wounds open, scrubbing them so frequently they could not finish healing.
I started writing this memoir because I needed to create a new outlet. I needed to write down the events and give them solidity, so they would no longer dance circles in my brain like a caged animal. When I started, I did not know if it would be enough to write down a few events, or if I would need to share it with the world. I did not know if it would be a healthy release, or if it would just become a new unhealthy obsession, another circle for my brain to pace.
Writing this memoir was exactly what I needed to do for my own sanity and healing, including finishing and sharing it. Not only did writing my story give solidity and validity to my experiences with my family, but it allowed me to explore them in greater depth and look beyond the major points that had previously been my focus. It allowed me to understand myself, my resilience, in ways that would not otherwise have been possible, and through that understanding, achieve greater healing and peace of mind.
My abuses were mostly emotional and neglectful in nature. Aside from a few spankings with a belt as a small child, I was never hit. I was never yelled at until I was grown and started placing boundaries. I never experienced any of the obvious abuses which immediately throw up flares and are easily identified.
No. The abuses I experienced were far more insidious than that. They were dismissal disguised as love. They were constant lying to hide selfishness. They were constant manipulation and gaslighting. They were behaviors that were easy to dismiss and excuse as individual events, but because they were pervasive and ongoing, they were tremendously damaging. I will carry the scars of that damage with me for the rest of my life.
When I look back on my life, I do not think about it in linear terms. I see a vast interconnected web of people and places and events that all influence each other, with threads that meander around, perhaps disappearing for a time, only to rise back to the surface and make themselves known once more. As with my memory, you are not going to find a neatly laid out chronological accounting of my life story, but perfect chronology is not important to understand my story and what I wish to convey.
There is some dark humor and brevity to be found in the content to follow, but for the most part there is little to laugh at. I have never found humor in “comedies” which derive their laughs from the foibles of dysfunctional and abusive relationships. Those dynamics hit far too close to home for my taste. When they are played for laughs, it dismisses the severity of the emotional trauma which is inflicted upon the victims. It teaches real life victims that their abuses are not a big deal, they should laugh it off, and there is something wrong with them if they cannot do that. Presenting trauma as nothing more than a laugh track easily adds to the spiral of self-doubt which typically haunts victims of emotional abuse. Light comedies featuring abusive dynamics empower the abuser with social sanctioning that their behaviors are acceptable and normal, and establishes that they should always be forgiven even when they “go too far”.
The first three chapters of this memoir will take you on a tour of the foundations of my understanding of self and others. They inform some of my fundamental perspectives, which have shaped how I deal with the circumstances of my life. Without that foundation, the actions I took, and my reactions to events, would potentially make little sense.
The first two-thirds of the memoir alternates between heavier and lighter subjects, bouncing backward and forward in time to explain different aspects of my upbringing and home situation growing up, and provide some insight into my parent’s priorities and neuroses. Most of the events I describe are individually understandable and excusable, but when taken as a whole, it creates a staggering picture of pervasive neglect, emotional manipulation, and emotional abuse. Most of the time my parents were extremely skilled at maintaining the appearance of a mildly dysfunctional American family, but when you scratch the surface, just about everything underneath is rotten. It is in those chapters you will find most of the abuses which informed the rest of my life and underpinned the nature of my relationships with my parents and both of my brothers. It is nowhere near comprehensive. I could probably double the size of my memoir trying to include everything, but I believe you will find enough details, big and small, to provide perspective on just how damaging even “understandable” behaviors can be when they are pervasive.
In the last part of the memoir, I outline some of the most objectively damaging behaviors enacted by my parents and my older brother, and describe in detail how I came to remove my birth family from my life once and for all. Struggling against abusive family, and working to heal from emotional trauma, are worthwhile, but also painful and lengthy tasks. The path of least resistance for abuse victims is to stay in abusive situations, and it is an incredibly difficult thing to break away from. Healing and maintaining boundaries is an uphill battle, with many pitfalls and setbacks, and, at least in my case, agonizingly little to lighten the mood. Despite that, I would not change my decision to work on healing and being whole. I would not be the person I am without that decision and the perseverance to see it through. The only thing I would change is that I wish I had kicked my abusers to the curb sooner, but that is easy to understand in retrospect. In the moment it is an agonizing and intimidating prospect, and it is easy to wonder if you are judging too harshly or being too sensitive. If it were easy to leave abusive situations, more people would do so, and quickly. There is nothing easy about it, and that was the hardest part of this memoir for me to write.
You will find very few names in the content to follow. Instead, I will refer to most people by titles I have given them which are derived from the roles they played in my life. In doing so, I seek to protect myself from the guilty and others who might prefer not to be mentioned, some of whom are doubtless upset about my public admission of past abuses I expect them to deny to their dying breaths. Also, there is something strangely satisfying in denying my family the recognition and respect that proper naming grants.
But this memoir is not for them, because if they were willing to hear me this memoir would never have needed to be written. First and foremost, it is for me, and it is for any other people who find value in my story and perspective as someone who was raised with constant emotional abuse and manipulation. It is for those who struggle with the lifelong damage caused by familial abuse, that they might find the courage to set boundaries and walk their own path to recovery. My story is for those who want to better understand how familial and childhood trauma impacts people for the rest of their lives.
If you find my story resonates with you, know that you are far from alone. Yes, your hurt does matter, and if you are angry about your abuses, you have every right to be. Abuse does not have to be legally actionable to be valid and cause lifelong trauma. It simply must cause damage to the victim. If I can give voice to other people who are having difficulty identifying the abuses in their lives, placing clear boundaries, and cutting off unrepentantly toxic people from their lives, I think that is a wonderful thing.
The kinds of abuses I endured are anything but uncommon, but Western culture usually reinforces gaslighting and discourages victims from putting up healthy boundaries, especially when the abuser is family. When we do attempt to place boundaries that inevitably upset abusers, we are expected to have sympathy for their situation instead of our own. We are expected to put them first and compromise our boundaries, even though that perpetuates abusive situations and prevents healing.
I completely cut off my immediate family in 2016. That is what I needed to do for my health and sanity, and it should have happened more than a decade earlier. Even if they did change (however unlikely that is), it is no longer my problem or my solution. There are too many years of toxic and abusive interactions and too many years of chronic lying for it to be worth the risk. Those waters are too tainted, too poisoned, for anything healthy to grow there. Years ago, when I gave them another chance, they continued shitting in the pool like that was normal and acceptable, because to them it was. They just made sure to do it when they thought I was not looking because they knew I disapproved and might leave them over it.
They are not the only ones. It is staggering and disheartening how common it is for parents to behave similarly to mine, and for the most part American society lacks any tools or supports or education that might help those who were emotionally abused as children identify and recover from the abuses. I am putting my story out there, to help others find a way, to help them know they are not alone. I want them to know that they are valid in demanding respect and placing boundaries. I want them to know it is reasonable to walk away altogether should they decide that is what is best for them.
To those who would criticize me for speaking ill of others, if you do not want people to say bad things about you, don’t behave badly. This is my life, my story, and my right to tell it.