Thanks, everyone, for your input. I am also reading Susan Forward's (I think that's her name) 'Toxic Parents'. These books are bringing so many of the feelings and emotions that I always have lived with into sharper focus.
Tracee, I can so relate to your mom-I'm 50; I didn't go through the type of trauma that you describe, but I still got the message that I was 'worth-less...' as Bradshaw puts it. My parents were functional (every night) drinkers, but our big family secret was that my brother was gay, and eventually had a sex change operation. I was just not allowed to talk about it or question it or express any emotion about it at all. I was point-blank told to lie about it to anyone who asked about my brother, that people just 'could not' find out.
My parents were so completely wrapped up in his/her drama that I just got left to do whatever I felt like. They just were not ever there for me, you know?? Most of my memories of my mom at that time are of her sitting at the table, smoking and wringing her hands while she literally cried into her beer. "What am I ever going to do?" was her most frequent sentence. Daddy just sort of checked out somehow. I don't know any other way to explain it. He was there physically but emotionally he was dead.
Geez-the whole family SHOULD have been in therapy, but I definately needed some help-I was only 10 when this all started for crying out loud!! And the sex-change took place when I was a junior in high school in 1974. I was always so ashamed, so afraid that someone would find out about it.
I can remember so vividly in high school feeling like I just wasn't as *whatever* as the other girls and that feeling never left me. I went into 9th grade at the top of my class, a cheerleader, friends with the 'good' kids. But I just never felt 'good enough'; so I started hanging with the druggies since they could've cared less about my family. God I was so screwed up on drugs for a long time, but my parents just didn't even notice. I finally checked myself into rehab when I was 22, over the loud objections of my exah. Even then, it was like they just didn't care enough to deal with it. It was all up to me, they had their hands full. End of story.
Even later in my life, when he was still drugging and I was trying really hard to live "right" and raise my kids, he would just abuse the hell out of me-physically and mentally-and they would tell me to 'work it out'. I 'worked it out' for 25 years; it almost killed me.
My daddy died last August 19 after a long battle with cancer (and yes I took care of him the whole time while drying mama's tears and dealing with my exah and trying to raise my kids and run a business). The last time I admitted him to the hospital, the last day he was really lucid, it was just him and me there. He started crying and telling me he loved me. He never said those words, nor did my mom, not in my whole life. I said that I knew it, and he said (still crying) that he hadn't done a very good job of showing me.
I didn't get it then. I get it now, at least I am starting to. I am just beginning to understand the extent to which they just abandoned me. And what it has cost me in terms of really poor life decisions. I have always thought it was somehow 'wrong' to even look at this whole situation-disloyal, ungrateful, whatever you want to call it. I was just a little girl who needed her parents. And they checked out.
Thanks for listening! Feels good to get it out.
((hugs))