I love you.

I love you. Here. Bye. Here are 13 things I wish I knew about dysfunctional families as someone who went no contact, and my life got a lot better. Everybody has a role. Golden child, black sheep, invisible child. It was assigned at birth. It has nothing to do with your worth and everything to do with your parents' inability to see you as individuals. Your siblings may not remember childhood the same way as you did. That doesn't mean your version is wrong. It means that they had a different version of your parents. If their role was the golden child, it may serve them to keep you as the bad one, because their job is to keep mommy and daddy happy. And if your parents are still together, there's likely a head narcissist and an enabler parent, and they have a trauma bond where one holds power over the other, and they abuse it because they know they can get away with it. Your parents don't hate you, they hate themselves. They're full of shame and unprocessed grief from their own bad childhoods. Your pattern recognition ability and your ability to tell the truth scares everybody. Because if the family is built on a foundation of lies and manipulation, boundaries are an if format. Instead of saying, please stop making comments about my weight, say, if you mention my weight again, I'm going to leave and go home. And then follow through because you deserve to be taken seriously. Don't be surprised when boundaries piss people off. They're not used to you standing up for yourself. They'll say you've changed, or that you're trying to control them. Don't even blink. Use the Jade technique, which means don't justify, argue, defend, explain. You can say, if that's what you believe, that's your reason. The reason everything ends in an argument is because your family never learned how to communicate properly. When you bring up something real that upsets you, they never hear it or why you're so sensitive? That's called DARVO. It's a manipulation tactic that flips the blame onto you instead of them taking accountability for something that they did. Accountability is too scary for people who are immature. Your resistance to not answering their calls does not mean that you're a bad son or daughter. It's your nervous system saying, these people haven't treated us very well. That's not avoidance, that's wisdom. Your mother talks about you behind your back to control the family narrative. She can't afford to think anything she's done is underdeveloped. She apologizes to keep everyone siloed. And that keeps her protected like a toddler tyrant. You're allowed to bring up your bad childhood, not to punish them, but because you deserve the chance as an adult to say, that deeply affected me. And I'd like to talk about it. Nobody's parent is perfect, but a good parent can sit with you and say, you're right. I could have done better. And I'm sorry. You cannot wake an entire toxic family system to behave better. You will get hurt trying. To let go of the family you wish you had and accept the family you have. It's wise to guard who has access to you. And I promise, life gets a lot better when you release anybody to talk down to you, denies your reality, talks about you behind your back, plays the victim, and the problems that they created. This is your life. Anybody like character assassination or manipulating you is going to be a final act of self-love. You're not crazy. You're doing great.