Chapter 22
The Paradigm Shift V
It was nearly 20 years ago that my half-brother came to stay with me and my wife. He had enrolled on a University degree in the city and was to live with us for the first 3 or 4 months. He experienced a little of what my home life was like. I was later to give him a job in my practice where he met his future wife; my pre-reg student.
Three years later, the day came that they were to move away. The pain I felt inside was beyond words to the point that I refused to see them before departing; a hugely hurtful action for my kid brother to experience. I was punishing him but didn’t have a clue as to why. I was riddled with fear disguised as anger. I was so resentful. After all, I had always been there for him and consciously unbeknownst, he was leaving me and my two young children in the lion’s den. A den that I’d been responsible for 50% of its build.
I wasn’t to speak with him for some time.
I was 15 when he was born. A complete surprise for my mother and the man that sired him; step dad #1. From the moment he entered the world, my protective instinct was on fire. So keen in fact that I’d take him out often in his pram to the park. To my girlfriends. Anywhere I could. Anywhere but the flat where we lived. A teenage boy pushing a pram is fabulous ‘cannon fodder’. But despite the jibes, protecting him was more important. Three years later, when he was to contract chicken pox, I was to be his main nurse before returning to University after the Easter break. When I broke out in ‘the worse case of chicken pox’ the doctor had seen, and unsure whether I was to be hospitalised, it wasn’t my mother or step dad that were to bring me back home but their friends. Mother was never there for the many of my operations and illnesses so it was no surprise.
My brother wasn’t the only person I’d wanted to be rescued by. Every single friendship and relationship in my life were borne from an ulterior motive; for me to be their caretaker and thereby rescue me through me being in the role I was groomed for throughout my childhood. When it all went to shit, I’d blame them for not putting up with my behaviour when that service wasn’t required. On the rarity I met someone who wasn’t toxic, I’d run a mile. I really didn’t know how to receive healthy love.
It’s the strangest thing; you are screaming out for help all your life but you don’t actually posses the vocabulary or understanding or actual fucking memory to get anywhere with that request. So you self harm, both in private and in front of others. You sob, much to their distain, in front of your brothers after drinking. You overdose. You ask the policeman to taser you. You hurt others. You show your poor daughter your scars on the way home from visiting your mother after being triggered. I had learnt, through being scapegoated, that no one would listen. I’d had a lifetime of all the fingers being pointed at me. No one on the station platform ever heard my cries for help.
You beg God to relieve you of your suffering and let you die during the later stages of active addiction. You can neither live clean nor exist whilst using anymore.
But thankfully, God didn’t listen. The Universe had other ideas, for it was never just about me. I was to survive to write this blog. To find the other Stones.
The repressed memories and emotions I’d carried all my life have been slowly unpicked at a pace set by Great Spirit. She has shown me the way- where even the red herrings have proven to be invaluable; Chapter 14, I write of my autism (EDIT: I needed to concentrate on my cPTSD to ‘See’. It is far more common for autistic children to have a narcissistic mother than one who is autistic (described in this article). I’m still currently awaiting an ASD assessment ). Things are still too painful back then for me to accept that these are symptoms of my understated diagnosed cPTSD, not Autism. There are marked similarities which I clung to.
But why was this invaluable?
It was to later tell me that a significant person in this Story was beginning to self-reflect. Something of a rarity and offered me, my son and hopefully my daughter, hope. Upon my son mentioning the possibility of Autism, my ex-wife explained that she thought she may be Autistic having begun noticing things about herself. A first for her. Autism is often confused not only with PTSD but also with narcissism, as described in this article.
You’d think that Seeing the generational narcissism throughout my family was painful enough? That discovering I’d been a scapegoat for others to blame would have shattered me to small enough pieces that couldn’t be broken any further? Or the grief of losing all your family whilst they are still very much alive would be enough?
No.
Ten minutes following my final act of ‘No more!’ to my latest narcissistic dance partner and any future toxic relationships, the Universe decided I was finally ready for the next, and most significant stage;
I received a message from my son in which, for the first time, he mentioned the duration of his ‘brainfog’ that he’d been assuming was ADHD following my own diagnosis May 2022. I was to discover a growing body of research that demonstrates that severe ADHD in adults is most likely due to major childhood trauma and not genetics per se. He’d been describing his difficulties over the past two years as our relationship grew stronger. But many of them didn’t make sense to me and were definitely not ADHD related.
This is his text:
I screamed with the realisation,
‘Nooooooooooo!!’ as the tears ran down my face.
I left my wife in 2010. Shortly after I made my first suicide attempt still blind to the abuse in my life. Upon visiting me in the hospital after a few days, my estranged wife’s first words to me were ‘I think I’m pregnant by my new boyfriend’. Leaving her didn’t fit with her picture perfect life and she was still raging.
Both my son and daughter continued to live with their mother until recently.
My estranged daughter now lives with her partner and my grandson. She continues to enable her narcissistic mother in her role of ‘flying monkey’ described in this article. She told her brother recently, ‘It’s all Dad’s fault! Everything got worse when he left’, without realising what she’s actually saying. Her toxic ways, nurtured by her mother, are currently being directed to both her boyfriend and my son, which is breaking his heart.
Following his ADHD assessment last month, my son, like me, is about to start trauma therapy on the advice of his psychologist. Most of his symptoms are attributed to PTSD and not ADHD.
Every morning I pray, that one day, my daughter will be sat with me and my son at our kitchen table. We will hold her and let our Love flow so that she can shine again, whilst ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ by Bill Withers plays once more, as it does every morning, in what has become our beautiful and safe home of healing.
‘This is what we have caused. Can you See now?’ I, the enabler no more, ask my ex-wife from afar.
I am publishing, from draft, this chapter as we drive away with my son’s furniture, the last of what his mother can use as a bargaining tool to control my beautiful boy, with my best friend at the wheel.
It really is an awesome day to be alive.
Thank you Universe ❤️
Just one more now.
Powerful to see that we can deepen and unwrap more of who we are through our most unhappy experiences in life