Chapter 25

Scapegoat Jnr II

In between the bouts of spontaneous (and much overdue) sobbing that arises by my subconscious becoming conscious during my trauma healing, I’m filled with gratitude that my son and I were the Scapegoats. We remained, as best we could, true to ourselves. We questioned others’ reality and were non-complicit enough for us to be outcasts. Yes, that comes with enormous pain, but it also is the ticket to freedom. Whilst we both go on our separate journeys, our toxic families stay in their sleeping world, oblivious (but not entirely) to their acting rôles handed down to them by their ancestors and controlled by their puppet masters.

Just like my ex-wife, who increases her social media presence to signal her virtues, I too have been busy here. I’ve found Facebook groups for fellow abuse victims and the other scapegoats where I both give and receive support. In a world where I became very lonely 9 months ago, I now feel like I have a new ‘family’. A healthy, supportive and loving one while my son also has beautiful spiritual guides around him in Canada; thank you Hugo and friends for taking him under your wings temporarily until he finds his own. 🙏🏼

Prior to leaving, my son went to visit my two brothers in the hope that they’d stop enabling his mother so that my daughter would, one day, open her eyes and her heart to what is actually going on.

My heart sank, again and again, as he worked on his ‘script’ to deliver to them. Desperate to get everything right. To not give anything away to chance or error. It’s what scapegoats do; they’re desperate to be heard. For the Others to See. It’s the very reason I write this blog after all.

There were a couple of times he’d say ‘I think I could be the bridge to your family’, to which I’d say ‘If I’m honest, there've been moments that I’ve thought the same briefly, but that will not happen. This is for you only and you can’t carry that weight, ok?’. I wanted him to have his family and for them to stop enabling his mother’s narcissistic behaviours. Surely they’d listen?

Little did we both know that he would experience the very same reaction that I had in my life in the space of his 3-4 day trip around the north of England.

By the time he returned home he was emotionally exhausted and severely mind-fucked. Invalidation and minimisation fuelled his ‘wtf’ facial expressions.

‘I See everything Dad. I See what you experienced. They did the same with me!’

This was a surreal and dichotomous situation for me; the pain I felt for him was immense. The anger and shame I felt for my brothers et al. was off the scale but there was also some perverse relief. I would never be alone again in my experiencing of my family. It was the most painful of validations I could have ever wished for.

‘But she does love you! You know that right?’ was my step-brothers ‘helpful’ efforts. The same step-brother that refused to read the articles my son sent him, citing ‘I prefer to make my own mind up’ as the reason. He has no curiosity. Just his boxes of judgements and absolutely zero knowledge. But being the expert he is and completely devaluing his nephew's experience, he is qualified to decide for himself whether my son and daughter are, indeed, being abused.

I wonder if he’d said the same if my son rocked up with broken bones and black eyes? You see, if he’d actually educated himself, he’d find out that narcissistic abuse, particularly by the mother, is the worst psychological abuse a child can experience. It’s one of those psychological torture scenes from a movie, except this scene lasted 24 years for my son and unhindered for the last 13 as I left my son and daughter to fend alone.

His step-granny, sat next to his uncle, responded to his truth by saying ‘Well I’m still going to see them’ and ‘I don’t understand why your father has blocked us’.

The visit to my half-brother was even more painful for him. He experienced the same look of disdain from his uncle’s wife as I had many many times when I tried to open up emotionally, albeit often unregulated and drunk (the norm with people that have cPTSD according to Pete Walker’s book, where he talks of the understandable martyrdom that trauma survivors occupy and where their unhealed trauma comes out sideways). She has her own trauma and no matter what I do or say, I cannot shake the unrelenting projection of her father that she casts upon me. The irony here? I’d visit them and be so fearful of her I’d get as drunk as I could. Autopilot drinking to kill the feeling of being with someone so judgemental and emotionally barren.

To soften the triggering but also, unfortunately, peddling the proverbial vicious cycle.

As a consequence of her own unhealed trauma around her abusive father, she’s stoic and won’t allow real emotions in others either. Not even for my son as it turns out, despite always using their welfare as means to berate me and consistently drive division between me and my brother. Her father's face was always stuck firmly on mine. The moment my son told his story, she projected me onto him, ‘like father like son’.

Around a month later, my son rang me from Canada; the anguish and disbelief that emanated from my phone was like being sat, front row, watching the scene in Les Mis where Cosette is abused by the foster parents.

‘She’s wished mom a happy holiday and that she ‘deserves it’ on Facebook’.

Current (and best) enabler had taken my ex on holiday to cheer her up. It had been awful that her son would just leave her 'after all she’s done for him’ so who could blame him?

She’d laid the foundations for her continued ‘caring family woman’ sham earlier on Facebook by engaging with my family as this unfolded.

All those boxes of judgements. My sister-in-law’s own unhealed trauma directing her prejudices. Zero curiosity. She told my ex-wife that she deserves her holiday after abusing my son. After manipulating. After playing victim in her Oscar rôle of ‘Little Ms Poor Me’.

My half-brother’s response at the time?

‘You know your Dad is responsible too?’ came his invalidation, deflection and lack of acknowledgement of my efforts to help my children today.

This is HIS uncle and MY brother!

Again and again I explained my rôle to my son at the very beginning. My fifty percent.

But my brother sleeps. He has no curiosity. He has securely taped-up those boxes of judgements about me. No longer willing to See the Amazon smile that lay upon them. He buries his head in the sand. When he didn’t honour his brother’s request for him to mentor his nephew all those years ago, it’s easier for him to blame others. To continue his narrative. To not look beneath the behaviours and to walk in the shadow of his wife’s domination and his own generational trauma. Looking for any reason to not believe….

‘Ah you see [my son’s name], your Dad got that wrong. I was only there for 2 weeks!’ My brother was referring to the time he came down at 15 to help me deck the back garden.

My son was retelling the story I told him about my brother staying at the family home years ago and experiencing his sister-in-law’s behaviour. Like anyone can, my son got a detail wrong. A detail that I’d already written, accurately, in chapter 22 pre-dating my son’s visit that day and the time he stayed when he was at Uni not the time he helped out in the garden.

This is why scapegoats need to work hard to be accurate because the moment you make a mistake you are pounced upon. The implication, of course, is that if I got that wrong, then my whole Story is bullshit.

I’ll never forget how my brother stood a few years ago, emotionless, at the end of my dining table after I told him about the sexual abuse I’d suffered around 5 years of age.

‘Yeah you told me that when you were pissed’ (for the benefit of those across the Pond, drunk not angry).

From that point, my love for him dissipated. Hurt doesn’t come close.

My brothers weren’t the only uncles to hurt my son. His mother’s half-brother sent this message to him only a week or so ago, unsolicited:

But this fellow is in his own bullshit (substance misuse and very likely undiagnosed trauma-induced severe ADHD). Just like his broken brother and his lovely alcoholic, codependent mother- all left behind by the death of my ex-wife’s narcissistic father. Like she does, he hid it well in public. Well thought of in the church and his skittles club whilst emotionally and psychologically abusing his wife and family. I always Saw him. Everyone kind of does but no one says anything. Just like in my family. How can you when the world thinks he’s great? That’s covert/altruistic narcissism for you; everyone believes their perfect image. It’s inconceivable that they could be the most hideous of abusers in private.

My ex father-in-law died in a car crash a few years ago, in the only thing he truly cared for; his Aston Martin.

I think it’s fair to say that my son’s fate as scapegoat jnr has been firmly sealed.

And I’m grateful.

Proper fucking-soul-singing-grateful.

I just wish my daughter could join us in that freedom. She will one day though. Of that, the Universe is certain.

Next, later than scheduled, lessons in duality for my beautiful girl.

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