Middle Ground Of Scapegoat Or Golden Child?

[illusionist]

I asked my partner, as he comes from a normal family background. He said yes, there are roles but they are not rigid... they don't define you, just part of you.. If you look back in time, or in certain cultures, there are definite roles that made/ make the success of the family as a whole, they depend on each other to carry out these roles. It's using your skills, qualities, to help your family. Got to agree with him.

 

[shimmerz]

It's using your skills, qualities, to help your family.

Would that not depend on the health of the family though? As far as I know dysfunctional families use skills/qualities that they have groomed you for to help the family. They just don't give a crap about what happens to you in the process.

 

[illusionist]

I see where you are coming from Shimmerz...I totally do...but don't certain cultures groom their children into roles that benefit the family, or rather, the survival of the family? These kids can be well loved but their role is priority...I'm probably taking this topic far from your original intent......I'm just looking at it from the wider picture. Excuse my rambling brain.

 

[shimmerz]

I'm probably taking this topic far from your original intent......I'm just looking at it from the wider picture. Excuse my rambling brain.

No, please not at all Illusionist. This is a great help. And Friday, thank you as well. I am just trying to get my head around it. Diary has been stalled all day because I am trying to figure this out.

I suppose I am getting the word role confused here. The best that I can tell, my role, as far as my antagonizers went, was to be the scapegoat. I didn't realize it at the time and wanted to belong to the family in a meaningful way. So I tried to fit myself into familial roles 'the grass cutter', 'the peace maker', 'the wild child', 'the A student'. The role of the scapegoat, however, superseded all so regardless of how I attempted to fill a role that was seen to be a positive addition to the family it was not to be. Until I had my first son.

Then I could do no wrong. My role was 'what a great mother my mother had made of me' as far as I could tell. She died less than a year later.

I think the difference here was that I was never seen as me....but instead as an extension of the antagonizer. I had to be what SHE wanted me to be. She didn't look at me and allow me to grow into myself. I had to grow into Herself. I have to think that there is the difference between a healthy family and a dysfunctional family. The word role had me confused, because I did feel like I was playing a role.

No idea if this even makes sense. lol. Still rolling it around in my head.

 

[shimmerz]

This ....

Not you
Not your image of me
Not carved in stone
Not your judgment of me
Not what you demand I be
Not what you are afraid I will become
Not what you refuse to let me be
Not what you wish I were
Not yours

Mine.

 

[illusionist]

Yes I understand the 'role'......I felt I was the role of Cinderella type characters...I was the housemaid who ran herself ragged with chores and was turned into someone else for her benefit when it suited her " oh isn't she just lovely....you have done such a good job taking her in, and bringing her up,"....sort of thing.....both totally for her benefit...for her reputation.

In my small mind I took the view that she wasn't my real mum, so she couldn't have natural motherly feelings towards me, so she made me what she wanted me to be. I accept that's how it was. My illogical way of thinking that way, I think, has saved me a lot of inner turmoil.

 

[shimmerz]

" oh isn't she just lovely....you have done such a good job taking her in, and bringing her up,"

lol lol lol. Yep. I had almost forgotten that one. Must be in the 'Adoptive Parents' handbook. :rolleyes:

 

[illusionist]

haha shimmerz....please look up Andy Stewart singing nobody's child. The five of us were taught to sing it and at functions we would sing it. She just loved the attention after our performance...people would go to her after it, welled up in tears and she would relay our stories to them, like the caring mother....oh how they praised her for looking after us.....pathetic!!!

Sorry Alexander brothers sang it.

Think of yourself as being a fashion accessory of the time haha

 

[Friday]

I'm coming at this from the other side. My family is weird, every family has their own special brand of crazy, although most are pretty benign... But I married into an abusive family. Like the smartest and kindest members joined gangs to get away from the violence and craziness of home. Took me years of WTF??? to even begin to grasp how they operated.

It's easy really... Take everything good... And pervert it into horribleness. For added frosting? Still claim it's "good".

All the same elements exist. We try and give them different names (teaching v grooming, for example, are the exact. same. thing.) to show one being healthy and one being perverted. But all the pieces are still in place.

ETA... The "role" I'm supposed to be filling right now? As the divorced wife? Crack-whore. Or heroin. My choice. But I am "supposed" to leave my son with my ex to be abused full time, and to sell myself on the street in some slum. Not even a decent brothel. On the street. That's what the women in my ex's family who don't totally embrace the lifestyle (of being abusive f*cks) go do / are largely forced into. Granted, they're usually 14yo hookers when these rat bastards "marry" them, and then abuse the f*ck out of them, and not 24yo xMarines. I think he wanted the challenge of breaking me, if I look at shit from a megalomaniac point of view. Also, my ex's first wife -16/17- ran away to Costa Rica. Smart woman. Girl technically, but anyone married to that prick gets a status upgrade. And I've always looked young. The levels of sick and twisted in my ex's family make me throw up in my mouth. Normal families? We don't have roles like that. It's not victim & abuser, or golden child & scape goat. It just isn't. We don't fit in boxes. We wear tool belts.

 

[shimmerz]

Take everything good... And pervert it into horribleness. For added frosting? Still claim it's "good".

Yes. This. Thank you Friday. And the problem with those of us in these horrible families is that it takes a long time and a ton of counseling and pain and suffering and feeling crazy to figure out 'good' was horrendous.

I will never forget a girl on another forum that kept insisting that she had an 'affair' at the age of 5. An.affair. Still makes me want to vomit when I think of that.

Think of yourself as being a fashion accessory of the time haha

Arm candy. And god help me if I blew the facade.

 

[illusionist]

" and God help me if I blew the facade"

Oh yes.....shitting myself didn't go down too well haha

 

[illusionist]

Tried to send you wee message shimmerz but your inbox is full.....I'm thinking of you hen X