Regarding issues between siblings in my family; the division was orchestrated by our parents. Both of them. For example, I was the youngest girl. My father had a Libra moon conjunct my Libra. He chose me as a partner. I’ve mentioned several times, at one point, he wanted to marry me. This is true and it’s a story, but this concept came into being, years prior, when I was eight years old.
I’m going to skip a bunch of details here, in order to spare you uber-disturbing details. Bottom line, he announced to the family, I was going to be in charge. I was designated, the mother of the family. Now, I was a skinny, eight-year old. My oldest sister is short but she is tough as they come. Like a damned rhino. She was hitting puberty, and my father just announced to her, I was in charge. She was to do what I said, etc.
You can’t be surprised, she beat me, every chance she got! Puberty. Hormones! If someone was to be in charge, the position was her birthright. She has Mars in Scorpio for Godsakes!
I’m telling you about this so you can better understand psychopathy. Not from a book, but from the front line. Sewing division is a thing. Making people turn on each other and enjoying the resulting pain and chaos, is a thing. Putting them in untenable situations and watching them squirm. Making them act like puppets.
You see these scenarios are surreal. My father would come home from work and ask me how “the kids” behaved. I was to assign them chores. I had the power to tell him, my sister beat me up, in which case he would beat her. He put terrific pressure on me, but there was no way I was going to give him actual information and this made me a failure. I failed in this role as the “mom”, who was supposed to report to the “dad” on the kids, see? I innately preferred to perform well and this hurt me. I felt I should be able to think of something, but the power I had was fake. If it were real, I’d have used it so that no one got beat, ever again!
Our brother was exempted from all abuse. How do you think we felt about him? And how do you think he felt? Layers and layers of sadistic gaslighting.
Of course, I said everyone behaved, but this may or may not be accepted on any given night, depending on nothing. Psychopath in the catbird seat, see. Little girl sitting next to him, belonging nowhere, but she’s got the gavel in her hand. Psychopaths do things like this to people; and they do them all day, every day.
You see why I’m so sure I’ll never align with a perp. I made this decision long ago, but then fast forward to today. Look at our world. Men turned on women, women turned on men, wives against husbands and vice versa. All orchestrated.
We’ve also got kids against their parents, parents against their kids- division, everywhere. Teachers against students. Trust shattered, all the way around, for a significant percentage of people. Kids growing up in this environment.
There is also race, class & status, sexuality, religion, politics, all used to deliberate divide and weaken people on every level. Many have been driven into isolation, zero trust, hate their neighbor. I don’t think this is organic any more than the separation between myself and my siblings “just occurred”.
This operation has been very successful and mind you, I’m only going one inch deep here. I understand their machinations, at a much deeper level, but at this moment, it would be real nice if people could start thinking about this. Your heart is hard, but how did it get that way?
When people gain money or power from sowing division and they like money or power more than they like themselves. Well. Here we are.
I point to corporations doing lots of this because their ‘goals’ are about 3 months long. Aka next quarterly report to the stock holders. So incentives are even shorter sighted than a toddler.
It is always very difficult to read your most honest and sadly fascinating details about your life growing up, Elsa. My Pisces Moon conjunct Chiron hurts to just try to imagine it all. I had a lunatic father, but in my case he largely ignored me, or gaslit me into just going along with whatever he thought right. My dad only saw women as sexual objects, and I often wonder if he had not neglectfully ignored me, if I would have been subjected to that sort of horrific abuse. I harbor so much hatred toward my father, I try to let it go but it is always there in the back round. I always secretly rejoice whenever I am out in public and get to witness a father doting and mentoring his children so well. One day, I saw a younger man going to a lot of trouble to buy a special toy. I said to him, “What a good dad you are, I see you and I understand you are really trying”. Tears formed in his eyes as he looked at me and he choked up a bit while telling me that he “Really needed to hear that”. I got a psychic impression that his child’s mother was trying to drive a wedge to isolate him from his child.
@Sherry This is the beauty of a Pisces Moon. That’s incredible the way you showed empathy to a man for his trying so hard and you saw that. It’s no wonder he teared up. Bless you!
If more people could be like this we’d have much less divisiveness in this world.
@Elsa I can’t imagine being told you’re the head of the house at eight years old! That is just crazy. And I agree that this has been carefully orchestrated- divisiveness on every level. We don’t know one neighbor in our neighborhood and we rarely get a “Hello” back on our walks because no one trusts anyone and only cares about themselves. We have about four people in our area that say “Hi” back or stop and chat if we ask about their dog. But that’s as far as it goes. If a disaster struck no one here would care if we were okay, dead or alive. Our churches are mostly empty, and even now conflict is brewing about how to proceed in the future. It’s all so sad.
Thank you for the feedback. I would not have known this was hard to read.
Legit have no words. Miracle you came out of that functional. Not only that but to turn that into something beneficial to other people-wow
It does make me draw parallels to the humiliation rituals that happen in tv shows and music, or to public personas in general. Also driving people appart is a narcissistic power play, that was so obvious in the last couple of years. Atomization of society comes at the same time as totalitarianism is increasing.
I don’t think enough is written on the subject of psychopathy. Too many do not understand that those that choose to be on this path, CHOOSE TO BE, and the choice is reinforced. This is not the result of a bad childhood or other unfortunate misunderstood circumstances. People need to understand that people like your father exist. Not just to protect themselves from them, but also to protect themselves from making choices leading to this path. Very important. So thank you for sharing, as always!
Elsa posted: “Thank you for your feedback. I would not have known this was hard to read”.
Hi Elsa, I was referring to all that I have read you post about your early life at home. I can’t help it, I care about you as a person and I feel protective of you as I do anyone I care anything about.
My heart hurts. You deserve to be respected and nurtured in a positive manner, always. You are a wonderful person and a faithful servant of God.
Thank you. I didn’t know that was evident.
Came here for a little afternoon pick me up during a quiet moment and BANG! You got me! Your words always hit straight home, and throw light on the cobwebs. Yes, this is it. I salut you!
Very insightful, Elsa!
This past weekend a friend of mine visited the place I live to coordinate a group meeting. She is a psychodramatist/sociodramatist who has survived a civil war in her native country. The workshop was with a group of lgbtqi+ (mostly trans) Roma people. I have been through my own private trauma, have been a witness to collective trauma related to war and fugitiveness. We spoke a lot about the difficulties this group she was coordinating faced, in terms of how its members would unwittingly replicate the cruelty they have endured. The only point of light in our discussions was our common belief that we can never underestimate the strength of human resilience and integrity. The deeply held belief that the more inhumane things get, the more likely it is for small circles of human beings acting counter to the general rule of power. I bet no one would imagine that someone in your place would be making the decisions you made, when falling in line with the psychopathic behaviour would seem the safer option. Yet you did. And you kept on making these decisions till you didn’t have to make them anymore. That right there is the kind of strength and resilience we can never underestimate. So I get what you’re saying about the state of things in the world, if you ever read about medieval times, about the dark ages, it sounds a lot like that, the massive perversion of human values into a twisted image of life as a game of survival of the fittest.. but let us never underestimate the power of small groups of people to act counter to that, to choose different and to live different to the ‘common rule’.
For my part I have been trying to foster that through my job as public school teacher.. but this past year the pressure has exhausted me – it’s not just the kids, it’s their parents and ever increasingly my colleagues too… even those who are supposedly coming from a more progressive pov are turning all the more to psychological extremes. I don’t know where or how this will turn but I need to believe that there more people out there who see and understand things the way I do . . if I am seeing it surely there are others who it see it as well, right?
This has turned into a bit of a rant which wasn’t my initial intention but I think I’m gonna leave it as such.
It’s a beautiful thing how you’ve turned around your childhood script, Elsa
Thank you for sharing Elsa. I get what you’re saying and have lived through a bit of this type of behavior myself. I too see it going on all around us today, have for a long time. Maybe we were supposed to successfully navigate through those situations when we were younger, so we would have the ability to discern today.
My first wife’s father was of that caliber, a truly sick and sadistic person; he tried to kill me once in a drunk rage, though no booze was necessary for him to play his twisted games (telling his kids they were supposed to brush their teeth until their gums bled, forcing them to sleep with the vacuum if he felt they had cleaned insufficiently, among other things). Eventually he ended his own life, and I’m sad to say it was a blessing.
Miraculously she came out of her early life a kind and caring, though certainly injured, person, as well. She taught me a lot about the resilience you describe. I’m sorry that anyone has had to endure anything like that, and I’m astonished by the strength of those that transcend it. My one incident with him rattled me for months.