Victim

 

Your dad passed away in 1979. In 1992 you’re a single man. At the age 52, with no kids and a low income. Over the years you protested your mother’s continual putting you down and now protested her ‘controlling’ meals by skipping two of them. You sent her a letter critical of them, which apparently really rocked the boat. Revenge was hers: she secretly gave your two brothers $3800 more than you and secretly set you at a low percent of her will and each of them at a higher percent [for the next 16 months, as you just by chance found out years later. She and your brothers wrote you that you were to know nothing of her financial affairs. It was like getting a death warrant.

At one point your brothers said if she did not give equal amounts in her will, they would make up the difference. This noble gesture counted for a lot, but didn’t make up for what happened the rest of the time.

At her passing in 2002 your two brothers were on her financial power of attorney, checking account, money market account, two trusts, and were executors of her estate – all in secret, with your brothers going along with it.

Your brothers drew up a fraudulent plan to buy you out of two properties. An accountant said it would have cost you $170,000.

You also had claims of $100,000 against them but couldn’t rock the boat as you got most of your income from them as they managed two income properties the three of you owned. With your low income, what would this have been like if you had been married with kids? You stopped seeing your brothers around ’03.

By ‘017 you were in a better position and sent your relatives an 11 page summary of it all – a great relief after 14 years. One replied briefly and another did, writing he didn’t see the cruelty. Amazing. The rest didn’t reply. Didn’t they think of the anguish you’d gone through for years, or how devastated your dad and grandmother would have been by all this? Didn’t they think how such destructive patterns could appear in their families? No, and so continued the ‘head in the sand clan’.

The breakdown:

1. The cruel You learn that nice, educated, professional, successful, popular people close to you can be callous, blind, controlling at any cost and never face the facts.

2. The shallow Many are also nice and professional, but don’t face facts. They look out the window and roll out platitudes, slogans, humor, excuses and feel-good stories, shrugging off your past misery – even suggesting you have the wrong attitude. Blame the victim. They are as destructive as the cruel. Some are lawyers. Some are highly religious and self-righteous. Some you’ve known all your life see your two-page summary and dismiss it in a blink. You send them the comments of ‘the humane’ below. No effect – poof, gone. What kind of people are they? What kind of parents?

• They tell you not to hate people. You don’t hate them; you hate what they did.
• They say forget it. Ask rape victim to forget.
• When you pursue justice, they call it a grudge.
• They say you should get over it, but you had to work on it for lawyers and for your old age.
• They say stop or it will eat away at you. Wrong; if you don’t deal with it sensibly, it surely will eat away at you.It’s always in the background.
• They say you’re bitter. About what happened, yes, but that doesn’t make you a bitter person overall.
• They say ‘paranoid’. No, realistic.

You ask them, ‘What if it happened to you or one of your kids?’ Long pause …….no answer.

3. The humane They have understanding, empathy, compassion, pity, mercy, caring and vulnerability because they face facts. Regardless of their education, money, and position, they are good Samaritans with big hearts. They listen with patience and feel your pain. It shows in their faces, voices and comments:

I have read with deep sadness about your family. – The family had definitely been cruel. – It was dysfunctional. – Hard to imagine, too much competition. They did me a favor by opening my eyes. Surprised I’m still in one piece. Don’t have a THING to do with your brothers. – They are poison to you. – You have a hole in your heart. Hard to believe a family could shut one member out so completely. How did you ever live with the unacceptance? It would be like being a stranger in your own home. – How did you keep your sanity? – Your mom showed such favoritism. – Why would any mother treat her child this way? Your mom doesn’t fit into any loving, caring or usual sort of mom. Any mom who treats a son like that isn’t normal. She missed out on having you in her life. Why did she even have you? – That your other relatives didn’t respond to your eleven pages of complaints begs belief.

 

You treasure such words. They are more ‘family’ to you than your family lessons from cruelty and denial.

Lessons

• Fun has a hundred fathers; trouble is an orphan. You’ll go through trouble mostly alone.

• Everything is political: those with more power, money and social life get better treatment.

• Blood is thicker than water: nephews and nieces go with their parents over their uncle.

• Sometimes when you wonder if you’re crazy or everyone else is; it’s everyone else.

• Some lawyers and the judicial system can be very flawed.

• Apologies mean little or nothing without compensation.

• Don’t expect a lot of justice and if you get it, it may not be worth the effort.

• You can’t believe how some ‘big’ people can be cruel, and some ‘little’ people can be compassionate.

• You learn what it’s like for those with terrible burdens.

• If ‘the cruel’ did this to you, imagine what they do to minorities, refugees, gays, animals and others. You have more empathy for such underdogs.

• You will understand why some veterans come home from wars and give up trying to explain combat, because few people understand or try to.

• Most of all – many people believe what they want to believe. Facts mean nothing to them.

• You won’t believe it till it happens to you.

• Such relatives were cruel and live in denial which itself is cruel. Better to be alone than to see them and make small talk as if nothing ever happened.

Be fair and kind to those with less power. When others try to take advantage of them, fight.