As someone else whose abuser is a parent, how do you deal with the rumors they spread about you, especially within the family? My mother has poisoned a lot of my relationships, and I'm just not sure how to be okay with the thought that I'm a good person with good intentions, and there are people in and out of my family thinking I'm monstrous. I know there's nothing I can DO, I just don't know how to...forget about it, or accept it, and be okay with it.
I can’t tell you what the best or right way to handle this is. I can only tell you how I’ve handled it.
For a long time, it was deeply upsetting to me that, on top of everything else they took away from me, my parents took my family, too. When I told my truth to my family, exactly one relative believed me. The rest of them believed the lie, including one of my most beloved relatives. And that hurts the most.
It sucks that people you and I care about believe lies about us. It sucks that there’s nothing we can do about it.
That’s the important part: there’s nothing you or I can do to change the story someone else tells themselves about us. They have to realize that you aren’t the story someone else has told them about you, and we can’t make them do that.
So what I’ve done is accept that I can’t change how someone else views me, when that person is invested for one reason or another in believing a lie about me. I accept that it hurts. I accept that it’s a loss. I grieve the loss.
And I do all I can do, which is continue to live my best life, be honest and accountable to myself and the people I love, and not let the story someone tells themself about me dictate who I am or how I live my life.
That’s massively oversimplifying it, but as I said, I can’t tell you HOW to do it, I can just tell you what I do and maybe give you a target to aim for.
From one scapegoat to another: I see you, and I am familiar with the pain you carry. I’m so sorry.
My mother told all her friends and family that I was a drug addict after I was with someone busted for possession of pot in 1980.
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