Family Roles

Just uncovering some more stuff from my past in thinking about the roles we played as a family. My dad had the starring role as the alcoholic. What's fascinating to me is how that upsets and distorts everyone else around the "star." So my mom was frustrated, angry, negative, stressed and controlling. The oldest child in my family, "Peter," was the so-called perfect child. He was an athlete, went out with pretty girls, and got into a prestigious university. So then the middle child in my family, "John" was a drug addict. And little old me, the youngest was the peacemaker, the scapegoat. Whatever.

My mom was so angry and unhappy about her lot in life that she took it out on me. But why me? I just realized. Peter was far too perfect. How could you take out your anger on someone who was such a perfect child? And John, well he had a very serious problem. How can you take your anger out on someone who is so sick and especially considering that you're worried about said child ALL the time? The range of John's problems ran the gamut from run-ins with the law to running away to expulsions from school to being stabbed and winding up in the ICU. And then there was me. I wasn't a straight-A student and I didn't have a huge problem to compell everyone to take it easy on me either. So I was an easy target. My brothers followed suit in directing blame and anger towards me - the bottom feeder. I was punished far more severely than John for minor infractions.

Going across the street to McDonalds when I said I would be at Taco Bell -grounded 1 week

Failing 8th grade math - grounded the ENTIRE summer and I had to make the class up in summer school. And now that I am recovering, I wonder, how did my parents allow me to fail a class when I was only 13? I shouldn't have been allowed to make that sort of a choice for myself. They had no idea what was going on at school.

Making friends with a few girls in junior high my mom didn't like - banned from seeing them. They were not allowed to my house and I was not allowed to meet up with them outside.

And yet I saw my brother tell far taller tales than which fast food chain he ate at. I saw him get kicked out of schools and skipping classes and he didn't get punished at all. I saw him hanging out with friends who used with him. I grew up with a sense of very personal injustice. I quite literally could not do anything right. And when John did everything wrong, there was no consequence. The phrase "It's not fair" is like my mantra. I know I need to change that. I'm not a victim and I want to break the cycle of being comfortable in relationships with people where I feel undervalued and unjustly blamed.

Anyway, these roles in my family still persist today. John, after going to rehab at 16 and relapsing until he was 25, finally decided to join the army. He spent a year and a half in Iraq and these same dynamics were perpetuated. Everyone was worried sick about John and Peter got his MBA and landed a lucrative finance job. John is now out of the army and going to school on the G.I. bill. When I visit home, everyone is so enamored with Peter's super-success, his travels, his quest to buy a home. And everyone is so relieved that John is alive and well after all the ways it could have turned out. And my mom still takes out her anger on me. It's amazing how the saner you get, the more insanity you see.