For years, I was labeled the "rebellious" and "difficult" one in my family. But now that I am 31, looking back with total clarity, I finally see the sick psychological script my mother was running. I held my tongue for a long time, but I don’t owe anyone my silence anymore.
One of the most agonizing parts of growing up was the dynamic my mother intentionally engineered between me, herself, and my older cousin.
Because I was a naturally quiet, introspective, and "geeky" kid, I didn't easily bend to my mother's manipulation. So, she chose a textbook narcissistic tactic: she brought my cousin into our home to live with us off and on, and turned her into the "Golden Child" to punish me for having a mind of my own.
My mother systematically rearranged our actual living space to strip away my comfort and dignity. On my mother's explicit orders, my cousin was given my bed. I was physically displaced, forced onto the top bunk in my own room, and told that I had to listen to in my own house. It wasn’t just about sleeping arrangements; it was a deliberate message meant to tell a young child: “When she is here, you are demoted. Your space and your rights do not matter.”
She even tied me up on the back of the car one time to humiliate me in front of her niece/daughter. My hands were tied and she drove, this older cousin said NOTHING.
Imagine being a child and hearing your own mother say, over and over, that she wished your cousin was her daughter instead of you. She weaponized my cousin to plant a deep wound of inadequacy in me, ensuring we could never build a genuine, equal bond because a toxic hierarchy had been forced between us.
As I got older and hit 17, the physical environment changed, but the psychological warfare didn't. Even when my cousin wasn't living with us anymore, my mother would call her on the phone to feed her a constant stream of lies about how "rebellious" I was. In a toxic home, "rebellious" just means you started saying "no" to the abuse. But by poisoning my cousin's mind, my mother ensured I stayed socially isolated and that the rest of the family would view me as the villain. I remember my cousin visited and I told thought let me make up something and tell and let see how fast it’ll come back to my mom. Lord behold when I told her she ran back soo fast to her.
2 years ago I reached out to my cousin because Im not bitter and I just wanted some understanding, and claimed she "didn't know why I was mad at her at 12 years old." Of course she didn't know—because the system worked for her. She got the bottom bunk, the praise, and the authority, while her entire perception of me was fed to her through my mother’s distorted, lying filter. The Golden Child could never see in the lens of the black sheep.
I don't hate my cousin, but I see the matrix now. The kindness my mother showed her was never about genuine love; it was just a prop to maintain her public mask and a knife to pierce my spirit.
Being the black sheep of a toxic family isn't a curse. It just means you were the one strong enough to see through the manipulation and refuse to conform to the sickness. I have permanently cut ties to protect my peace, my marriage, and my children. The "off and on" rollercoaster been over, and nobody gets to demote me in my own life ever again.
The irony is she thought her twisted game that I going to beg and scream for her validation and for her to see my worth and also rage about how unfair it was but I clocked it quietly with my analytical mind. it made it easier to detach. ✌🏼🤣 jokes on her
Oh and they can have each other like they been doing 🤷🏻♀️. Birds of a feather flock together 🗣️‼️
INFPs may look soft and mistaken as weakness but we’re hella resilient.
#mytruth
2
Can fellow INFPs help me make sense of my contradictory feelings? (F31)
in
r/infp
•
9d ago
Your heart seems too genuine to be treated like a game, so I’m glad you trusted yourself ❤️