Greetings,
About a year ago I started gathering up materials intended for family members who would be inclined to read, to invest, to understand in measure how to be supportive (and decidedly nondestructive says I!) if they were so moved. Though my siblings are largely invested in their own lives and cannot be relied upon to be much more than reliably judgmental, I have drawn some comfort for making a discreet study of what might constitute humane support and feedback. Defining a compassion playbook of a sorts helps to maintain personal boundaries when most every other instinct would prompt me to disassemble the same absent caution.
I cannot overhaul my family or remaining family members to suddenly (or even gradually!) become respectful and literate with regards to matters rooted in the total experience of C-PTSD. What odd comfort I can provide for myself is to catalog within my mind materials that allow me to posit a humane template of what I'd do in their place, of what 'found family' might be capable of if they were so-moved and so-motivated, whereas a regret much further movement or evolution on the part of my two remaining siblings is unlikely to materialize. Not all families are bedrocks of support, not all families evidence hitherto undiscovered potentiality even as we'd love to embrace a dynamic that for many a complex reason never was. Admitting such doesn't invalidate the merit of our need for love, for acceptance, for understanding. Separating the expectations from the inadequacies of the cast (poor casting in this instance!) may be as close as I get to healing.
I feel bad, for I very much wanted a family I could closely identify with, one populated with engaged and intelligent individuals able and adept at supporting each other in both the best and worst of circumstance. There is nothing wrong with this basic desire, whereas wicked cognitive dissonance is risked to allow my unsatisfied wish and over-scaled need to sour what lukewarm function exists between us each. Like many children, I was wired to believe my family was the best there ever was, while surely I merited notice as a junior royalty - a prince of sorts. A great many bad things occurred that somehow didn't immediately shake this core if not hardwired impression, with the damage registered only with the passage of time. My siblings are also like-impacted, whereas for not given to reflecting upon corrosive patterns of interrelation modeled by our hapless parents, risk repeat. I do reflect, I do read, I assume reasoned responsibility to both alter and improve how I relate to others.
My ascribed social support network 'system' is staffed by so many dysfunctional ghouls. I hope in time to meet someone I can prep regarding behaviors they'll not fail to note in relation to many a person, for there is so much to see. The cruelty and uncivil displacement indulged in my many an unhappy and deeply dissatisfied relation has exhausted my capacity for direct compassion. What is left is a detached but ever-refined capacity for pity for I am not them, and they are decidedly not I. So many macabre curiosities posing as grounded and vital adults then. Afford them food, but do keep your distance; i.e. don't rattle the invisible cage they occupy. Thanks...
M.
