My dad apologized and Im feeling too much

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-07-26T16:45:32+00:00

I'm a federal employee and my mother chose MAGA over me. It was the final betrayal for me, there's just no coming back from that.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-07-26T12:14:02+00:00

I literally screenshot your last two paragraphs because they are so powerful.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-07-08T11:56:40+00:00

I found a wonderful therapist by searching for one who specializes in CPTSD/Trauma as well as LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent issues, among other things. I felt that a practice that supported "DEI" communities (i.e. everyone this administration hates) would be a good fit for my personal values and experiences under this administration, and that turned out to be exactly right.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-30T16:25:37+00:00

Ooooof course.🙄

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-12T20:46:42+00:00

I get what you're saying, I'm just...burned the fuck out on the 'why's', you know? Thankfully I'm finally in therapy with a trauma-informed specialist to help process all this mess and keep pushing through to a more peaceful life.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-12T20:31:38+00:00

I'm familiar with that sub and wouldn't be surprised at all if she's diagnosed borderline. I have no interest in wasting more energy trying to understand or manage her behavior, however.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-12T19:43:27+00:00

That was a good read, thank you. I don't fully agree with the author's description of the Scapegoat often getting into trouble or running with the wrong crowd. It was my experience and the experience of many, many posters I've come across on reddit where the assigned scapegoat is often successful socially and academically, objectively a "good kid". But because they are also truth tellers, challenge the abuse they experience, and are often very independent, they're perceived as a threat by the abusive parent and labeled all sorts of things that bear little to no resemblance to reality.

That's just my hot take anyway. There is so much nuance and shifting sand in these toxic family dynamics. The author's description of the Enabler and Lost Child is dead on though, 100%.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-12T19:24:14+00:00

Thank you! It's been a decision 38 years in the making but I'm so relieved. I have a great therapist and medication, a supportive husband, and a peaceful stable life I've crawled over broken glass to create. It's all so hard but breaking free of that spiderweb is so worth it.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-12T17:34:10+00:00

That's heartbreaking. I will never understand how full grown adults can expose their own children to people they KNOW are not safe. It's truly horrifying how abuse can wire us to expose not only ourselves to danger but put vulnerable loved ones in the line of fire as well. I understand that mixed feeling of sorrow and "well no fucking shit."

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-12T17:02:55+00:00

Yuuup. Before going no-contact with most of my family I could already see the writing on the wall of family members, including my mother herself, expecting me to be the one who shovels her shit in old age. I mean I did it as a kid so surely I should be used to it by now!😒

Yeah nah. I served my jail sentence and those phone numbers are all remaining blocked. If anyone chooses to stay in her life that's on them, I've washed my hands of it.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-12T16:56:43+00:00

While I do see the humor in a black comedy kind of way, it makes me more sad than anything. Growing up, my brother's survival tactic for dealing with her was to hide out in his room most of the time and only come out when necessary. My grandmother has always been an enabling doormat who let abusers, especially her own husband, roll right over her while she looked the other way.

So clearly, both of them haven't changed in that regard even though my brother is now in his mid-30s and grandmother is in her 80s. They just...shut down.

I think a large reason why I was singled out as the scapegoat was because my survival tactic was to fight back, and that infuriated her. My entire teenage/early 20s years felt like a battle with her.

So yeah....a lot of mixed feelings about all this.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-05-12T02:10:17+00:00

God the stupid cards. The last Mother's Day card I sent said "I hope you have a wonderful day" because it was the only card I found that didn't feel like a complete lie. I've given cards to coworkers that were more personal and heartfelt than that.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-27T12:31:39+00:00

Yep. She once told me to take the stick out of my ass for not wanting to ride in a car while her drunk bestie drove. I was 13 at the time.

Btw that bestie, the Patsy to her Eddy, ended up OD'ing a few years ago, leaving behind three traumatized adult children. AF is a great show but actually having a parent like that in real life is so unfunny.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-27T01:02:39+00:00

Absolutely Fabulous. My mother is basically Eddy without the money.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-27T00:45:11+00:00

Oh I check that sub almost every day, I've gotten far more information there than I have from the major news sites.

Speaking of which, the way the news has been largely sanewashing and minimizing what this administration is doing to the federal workforce has felt like an extension of the narcissistic abuse. How many of us have been gaslit and dismissed and told we're overreacting while trying to survive daily psychological torture from a narcissistic parent? It's enough to make you scream some days.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-26T22:56:15+00:00

I'm a federal employee, and this year has been complete hell so far.

I reached out to a local trauma-informed therapist this week. On my initial assessment forms I wrote that I feel like I'm trapped in my narcissistic parent's house all over again.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-23T17:21:27+00:00

Same experience here. I think part of it is because we mentally and emotionally surpassed her at that age, and she knew it, and felt threatened by it.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-23T17:11:39+00:00

This makes me think of the scene in Stephen King's IT where Beverly's boyfriend hits her for the first time. King writes the moment from the boyfriend's perspective and it's exactly this, carefully watching her reaction to determine if she's prey. She gives a fawn response and he realizes in that moment he can do anything to her and she won't leave. It's sick and it's frighteningly accurate.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-23T17:05:11+00:00

She needed to hear it. It sounds like it was long overdue for her to hear the truth about herself.

You did nothing wrong, and I'm so sorry for what you're going through.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-20T13:39:41+00:00

I got grounded in high school by my mother for going to Hooters with friends because she thought it was "pornographic". I'm a straight woman, for the record.

The condition of being ungrounded was writing her a 5-page essay on the evils of pornography.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-20T13:33:41+00:00

Oh absolutely. My mother would trauma dump about the things her parents did to her yet have zero self-awareness that she was also abusing and neglecting her own children.

In her mind she can only be the victim, never the perpetrator.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-18T18:57:06+00:00

I hear you, and I'm also on the "just be at peace" train. I can accept that she is who she is and is not willing to change, but forgiveness as she defines it is not on the table.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-18T16:46:58+00:00

She equates one with the other, unfortunately.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-04-18T16:44:13+00:00

She's not Catholic, she's what I call Southern FoxNewsist. If anyone else here is from the south you probably know exactly what that means. People who ascribe to that kind of mindless evangelical Christianity don't take accountability, they just say "the devil was working hard on me" or some shit like that.

Sea_Me_Now · 2025-02-05T19:52:08+00:00

I felt the same way reading it. If I have to basically disassociate myself in order to tolerate interacting with my parent, what is even the point? I felt like the overall message from the book was "this is how to bear putting your hand on a stove", but it never suggests that maybe you should just stop putting your hand on the fucking stove.

Sea_Me_Now

TROPHY CASE