Ken

I had awful parents, and I am trying top get past that. I had a therapist who recommended I attend ACOA meetings, but I was too passive to actually keep going. Then I moved to a place where there are no alcoholic parents, no co-dependance, and life is always beautiful all the time. Or maybe there is a LOT of denial...
Background: My father was a child molester (girls only, thank you Higher Being) who was diagnosed as paranoid-psychotic when I was ten, and he went away for good. How I wish that had been the end of it, but my step-brothers started molesting me at that point, which continued until they went away to foster homes and then juvinile detention. Anyway they were also gone for good. Yay!!!
Mom becamed an alcoholic and a ****, and decided she was a failure and tried to kill herself again. (She had tried when I was eight, probably to get away from Dad who would beat us up and tried to strangle my 15-year-old step-brother.)
Anyway, after the second suicide attempt, the rest of us kids ended up in foster homes too. My family tried to be nice to me but I started acting out in very babyish ways, crying myself to sleep and wetting the bed. Mr. foster wanted to send me away, but Mrs. Foster felt sorry for me. They had a big argument about it one night, kind of like the arguments my parents used to have. I got to stay, but I really wanted to go home. My social wowrker gave me a good talking to about it, so they must have talker to her about all the trouble I was. I stayed for a year and a half. I was very, very lonely, but after a while I learned to be quiet and not act out. I even stopped crying at night.
When I finally did go home, I tried to be very good so Mom wouldn't kill herself and/or send me to another the foster home. We never talked about the foster homes, of course, or the suicide attempts. We didn't talk about Mom's alcoholism or her boyfriends (always married, for some reason) I DID NOT talk about the night I got up to go potty and Mom was screwing her boss in the middle of the living room. I couldn't get past to get to the bathroom. Mom slapped me the next morning because she was hung over, and my bed was wet. Mostly, I think she slapped me because she knew I knew. I never said a word about it.
It was covertly forbidden to say anything about the foster home because if I had liked it, then Mom was not as good a parent at the foster parents. My older sisters liked their homes and didn't mind saying so. It made me so mad when they's critisize Mom! Didn't they know SHE MIGHT KILL HERSELF?
On the other hand, if I hated the foster home, then Mom was a failure as a parent for sending me there. I chose to keep my mouth shut and never say anything bad about her. and not think or feel anything bad; not feel anything at all, ever. I didn't, either until long after I had left home, not even when the bitch tried to kill herself AGAIN when I was fourteen.
My role in the family was the Lost Child. I was forbidden (on threat of becoming an orphan) to grow up like my father, or to grow up at all. My older sisters enforced that message because they were insecure and we alll were dysfunctional. I am sort of glad because I might have grown up to be a pedophile if they hadn't. I'm sure that is not the message they tried to give me, but it came across clear to me, however covert it was. I have struggled with that message all my life.
I didn't understand until years later how pathological my own behavior was. How it was destroyng me.
I don't intend to critisize my parents. What is the point of that after all these years? I just want to get on with my life and I find I can't. I try to talk to my wife about it, and she does understand, except it isn't healthy to only talk to her.
On the Co-dependance questionare, in Secrets of Dysfunctional Families, I scored enough points to be rated Moderate-Severe Co-dependant, even though I didn't give myself points for not having friends. It asked, "Are you satisfied with your friendships?" I decided that even though I had no friends and hadn't had any since first grade, I was satisfied and didn't give myself a point. Probably should have.
If I took the questionare again, I suppose I would rank higher because I am maybe more honest with myself. I hope I am more honest.