Bad Luck or Judgement?


Another twist in the tale
  
 So I have been rambling on about how distance gives these odd perspectives on things you thought you knew and starting to reframe the past looking at what it might look like if I wasn't responsible for my own abuse. 
Like many families where emotional abuse occurred there was an obvious lack of  resources.   

There are a number of things I'm going to lump into the category of resources, and in our family there was a lack of money, a lack of time, attention to be given, a lack of care and a a lack of affection.  I was not an only child and when there was little to go around there was competition  for what there was, and I have come to realize I always lost. Not pretty much always, or usually - but actually - always.

I thought. as I was told to, that I was bad and generally less deserving. I took the blame for this upon myself, as children do.  I hadn't appreciated it wasn't a level playing field, that someone had their thumb so heavily upon the scales.

I think this is why I find myself able to pity, but not to forgive.

The popular current theory about Narcissists is that they are damaged by their own childhood and that the damage runs so deep that they are unable to do anything except absorb and continue to propagate those narcissistic traits.

But at least at this moment, I believe this is a lie.

When they have two children and they treat then differently ..[and that wasn't part of their own experience] how is that accounted for. You are clearly demonstrating the ability to behave better with one child than the other.

The more you look at the possibility of a lie - the more horrible it becomes.

 If I could use the phrases - "That's how she was- she couldnt help herself - it was ingrained from her upbringing"..it would be simpler - but It would be a lie.
It would absolve me of "badness" and her of "blame" and whilst our interactions might be too destructive for either of us to bear, we could at least walk away absolved of guilt. It would be possible to philosophize that the universe is just a bit shit and it was nothing personal.

But that's not the case.

When you actually decide to give what resources there are to one child alone,
and then constantly tell the other that it is their own fault there is nothing for them,
that's just all kinds of fucked up. There is no way to philosophize your way out of that.
Its an actual decision, not something drifted into accidentally.

  What about when its a decision made over and over again?

and some of the resources that the losing child is deprived of are ones that are in no way finite...

compliments aren't finite
love isn't finite
emotional support ?
and on and on it goes.

As a child it is devastating to see the things you want and need being given to someone else, and not ever being given to yourself - and being told its your fault because you are not good enough. If someone ran an experiment like that on children they would be considered a monster.

I don't know why I was chosen / not chosen _ I have seen no convincing research which shows why one child in a family is golden and another becomes the scapegoat, and perhaps that's a good thing because any thing about myself which caused me to be chosen would undoubtedly allow me, the most judgemental person who judges me - to blame myself.

I will never get to know - I am trying to see that as a good thing, but it doesn't stop me resenting that the tossed coin came down that way.