Black Sheep

Dictionary.com describes a Black Sheep as ‘a person who causes shame or embarrassment because of deviation from the accepted standards of his or her group‘.

But what if those ‘accepted standards’ are NOT acceptable, what if those accepted standards involve lies, concealment, masking problems to keep the peace regardless of who gets hurt?….

As I sit crying my eyes out after a particularly spiteful email from my oldest brother, I wonder if I will ever be free from my family’s judgement.

If you’ve read my previous blog posts you’ll know I’m estranged from my birth family after a distressing and abusive childhood and many years of being gaslighted as an adult.

I naively reached out to my oldest brother asking if he would help me process some of the stuff we went through as kids because he was there, he knows. My other brothers are neck deep in pretense trying to convince themselves that what I say hasn’t happened because if they acknowledge the truth they may have to do something about it.

So brother J responded to my email. But instead of offering me support he chose to attack me and belittle me and threaten me because my birth family are all cut from the same, damaged cloth and thank God my saving grace is I am different from them.

I am Autistic. I may be their scapegoat but I am also their conscience. I am a good person who always strives to do better and right any wrongs. I am not perfect; I am hot tempered, outspoken, impatient. But I am also kind, generous and unfailingly honest. Why then does it hurt so much, their deliberate and spiteful rejection?

It hurt enough to make me punch and slap myself hard in the face which I haven’t done for years. Afterwards I felt stupid; my head ached, my cheeks and temples were tender. There was a nagging pain behind my left eye.

My psychiatrist says my family are toxic. He tells me they’ll probably never apologize, that I’ll never get the answers I need. It hurts to hear these things said out loud, it feels disloyal that a stranger is judging my family without ever hearing their story or understanding their hurts. He says I am brave and resilient and lucky to have such a good man in my husband (this part is true 💖). He says I should ensure my family are not allowed back into my life for my own wellbeing and safety. My husband echos this sentiment frequently; ‘forget about them, they don’t deserve you’.

And I know he’s right, but still it is so hard to accept this estrangement. My sons have lost half of their family. They are innocent of any wrong doing, just not important enough for their maternal grandma and uncles to admit the mistakes of the past and try to put things right.

People ask why I write so openly about such private things. The truth is, I can’t stop writing because it’s the only therapy I have and the pen truly IS mightier than the sword. My writing is an act of defiance, a promise to myself that I won’t be shamed, I won’t be silenced. My writing is my legacy to my sons so that one day when they’re older than can read about my life and understand why I chose truth over lies and freedom over emotional imprisonment.

It is very hard for me to trust anyone right now. I’m so weary of people sweeping family dysfunction under the carpet. I used to believe that I could forgive anything as long as the other person involved wanted to work with me to put things right. Now I realise that my strict moral compass is polar opposite to the deception, false promises, and fake intimacy that my birth family share. Even those who stand by me, who know I speak the truth, keep a safe distance to protect themselves. And I understand that. I respect that. But God it is so lonely going through this on my own with only my husband truly in my corner.

I visited a friend recently, someone who is estranged from her relatives like I am. She told me something that struck me as so wise, so insightful, that I wanted to share it here. She said she used to think that the ‘black sheep’ was the bad guy in a family, the person who’d done something terribly wrong, who’d let people down. Then she realized that the black sheep is often the person in a family who dares to ask questions, who holds others accountable for their actions, who strives to be different and make better, kinder choices than their siblings or their parents. The black sheep is the one gifted with self reflection. Who can look at themselves and recognize where they need to change to be a better version of themselves.

So I guess I’m the black sheep in my birth family and I’m at peace with that. I was born different. I stand out like a sore thumb, I wear my heart and my truth on my sleeve. I have very little filter and I love with a fierce loyalty.

I was selected by my mother, subconsciously I hope, to be her emotional punch bag. My guess is that this was her way of coping with the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and her husband (my father). As an adult she used my poor mental health against me and pretended she was on my side whilst privately chipping away at how others saw me, with her gross exaggerations and lies. My brothers bought into her victim persona and chose to sit on the truth rather than face their own demons, a cowardice I don’t understand and can’t relate to. My grandfather, who I begged not to push me away, threw me to the wolves. His stubborn pride would not allow him to admit he’d turned a blind eye to the abuse my mother suffered and in turn dished out to her children.

When I read this back, see it staring off the page at me in black and white, the injustice I feel is enormous. I’ve spent 45 years loving and caring for these people who didn’t understand me and only mocked my differences. Am I really so unloveable that they would sacrifice me rather than tell the truth?

But wait, it’s not all bad. For the first time in my life, I can invest fully in my husband and sons without the nagging responsibility for ‘fixing’ my birth families’ problems. No requests to borrow money or perform favours at short notice. No guilt because I have a better quality of life than them (which my husband and I have worked so hard for yet they always resented). No judgement or ridicule or demands that I change to fix their prescribed way of being, adhere to their strict timekeeping, hide my feelings on demand. No more being lied to.

I read an article yesterday about a lady who met the man that killed her father and how she forgave him. It sounds unthinkable, yet she describes how she had to forgive him for her own sake and well-being. On one level I know she is right, she is brave, she is dignified, she has freed herself by letting her anger and resentment, go. On another level I know I may never get to that point because the people who have harmed and persecuted me, lied to me, betrayed me, they are still doing it. The spiteful email from my brother. The abandonment of my sons; not a thought given to the impact on them when my mother and brother began bombarding my husband with coercive and threatening emails and messages. The cowardly silence from my other siblings, not just a rejection of me but of their nephews, destroying the close bond they had with their cousin.

But there is a silver lining. I will get stronger, more resilient. I will focus forward. One of my sons asked recently why we still have photographs around the house of my birth family. And for a second I wondered, should I take them down? Do I want them staring back at me after all they’ve done? But I told my son that we have the photos up because I still love the people in them. They are in our past but they are part of our history. We have shared happy memories with them which I know were real. To deny this would be like trying to erase part of our lives.

A relative I have huge respect for has urged me to live for now, for today and tomorrow. To be happy in the moment and not get eaten up by broken promises and unanswered questions. This is sound advice that this black sheep is going to try and follow…one day at a time….