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Dear Anita,
Thank you. Again, you make many of my points for me.
The “I don’t know why my parents ever had me” was not meant as a literal question; it’s what I thought as a child around ages 8 – 12 years old. There were entire stretches of days where no one in the family spoke to me civilly or engaged with me in any positive way. (Just to be clear, I have two siblings: a brother and a sister.)
Yes, I pretty much was the family scapegoat as child and served the purposes you described. Later as I got older, I couldn’t handle being the scapegoat anymore, so I stayed in my room a lot and tried to avoid attention as much as possible, and I morphed into being the lost child in terms of dysfunctional family roles. The mystery comment was said in recent times, but what’s ironic is that at about the same time, my sister suggested I look into finding a meetup group for people who are highly sensitive… I have never discussed being HSP with her, so she does understand me on some level to have even come up with that, lol.
Our parents have passed, and I’m not concerned about cutting contact with the siblings because what contact there is is minimal. “Question now is how can you live a different life than your role in your family of origin, a role you didn’t choose.” Yeah, I guess that’s one way of framing it. I despair of finding a life, a way of living, that I want to live. All I ever wanted for the most part was to find someone to love and be loved by, get married and have my own family, and that has never worked out for me. My longest relationship was only 2.5 years. And now that I’m too old to have kids, I don’t know how hard I want to work to make a relationship work. I tried hard in those relationships, the best I knew how that is, to make them work and they failed, mostly with the guy ending it. In hindsight, I put up with getting very little while giving a lot, which was, after all, what I learned at home. (For the record, I have an anxious attachment style and most of these guys had an avoidant attachment style.) After the last one, I was heartbroken and felt wrecked by the rejection. I said to myself and the few people who would listen, “I don’t want to date anyone for a loooooong time.” And I haven’t. I don’t have a sense that I’m worth very much to anyone. Even though I know, logically, I am one of about 8 billion people on this planet and all types of people with all types of problems—criminal records, mentally illness, history of drug/alcohol abuse—get married, have kids, and find new relationships after previous relationships have failed, I don’t see much possible for me. I can’t see myself as worthy or attractive to anyone other than, say, someone looking for a meal ticket or someone to take advantage of. “She’s okay; I’ll put up with her for now… until someone or something better comes along… or until she gets too annoying.”
Hopefully no one says to me now, “What, so you think you’re nothing without a man?” No, it’s what I wanted. And what’s wrong with that? (I’m tired of people making me wrong/mocking me for wanting what I want, for wanting a normal life, to be treated well, to have what most people do want—this started with my family.)
Lost soul