I visualized myself as a cowboy and John Wayne was my movie hero. We moved a couple times and eventually settled into a very modern Eichler House in Concord. My younger brother arrived 4 years after me. My family conveyed the image of living the “American dream”. My extended family marveled at the attractive look of my parents and us kids living in an ideal house of success and luxury. This portrayal of the perfect family would soon show cracks in the foundation and would crumble. It was all an illusion to mask the true reality of a very broken family system. There was a division within this family and it soon became clear that there were two sides. I protected my mom during the fights. As a result I lost all respect for my dad so my dad gave up trying to groom me into his image at a very young age.
Dad became a very successful real estate broker who gained wealth from the housing boom in California during the 60’s & 70’s. He was really good at playing the game and became very well respected despite being violent and abusive to us family members in private. He wasn’t a drinker or smoker, he didn't do drugs of any kind. Unfortunately, my dads claim of being a "born-again" Christian didn't help him change his destructive, careless behavior, his dark side. There were some deeply rooted obsessive compulsive behaviors hidden deep inside, He had a very self-centered egocentric mindset. He was an authoritarian, a man obsessed with gaining power and control over other people no matter how much damage that was required. His extremely toxic mental patterns stemming from his past still remained. He had been a spoiled child who always got things done the way he wanted. My dad was a malignant narcissist which became a personality disorder. The forgiveness he claimed to have now (according to his faith) gave him a way to increase his abuse of power, continuing to control and damage other people while feeling righteous and justified through his faith in this creepy version of “Jesus”.
I didn’t start talking until I was around 5 years old. Being an introvert, I observed things around me while remaining silent and shy. It took many, many years before I fully realized that there was something very sinister going on in the family. Meanwhile, it all became "normal". My mom always warned me about my sister, she could not be trusted. However, she was always very favorable to my dad, he always treated her special. She was being groomed and very much tied into the same narcissistic personality disorder as him. However, with Lisa it much more cleverly disguised. She learned to act very sweet and lovable on the outside. However, there was always a deep hidden darkness on the inside along with a self-serving, egotistical game plan that became more and more evident later on . She has always felt a need to dominate and control relationships, always uses gaslighting and manipulation tactics even if that means lying, cheating & stealing. My older brother always had a similar mindset within the family system. Although, his narcissism is a bit different. He needed to be on center stage. This caused lots of conflicting dynamics. Us boys were more favored by mom in this family. I tended to be the quiet one, never wanted attention, always stuck in the middle of the conflicts. I grew less and less tolerant of the game. Meanwhile, this was the late 60’s and the outside world became more and more conflicted as well.
At the age of 8 in 1967, the outside world became entangled in more and more conflict. Everything caught on fire with the Vietnam War and the resulting rebellion of the hippy movement. I was very aware of what was going on and felt very small and very fragile in all this crazy stuff. Nobody was there to help me sort it all out. I went from being a child of the American dream to a witness of the American nightmare. In the days ahead I felt the pain in realizing my dad wasn’t there to protect me. Instead I realized that my dad along with my sister were both conspiring to find weakness in order to damage me. It was a betrayal that went very deep. However, I was taught to suppress those feelings, to set up the walls of protection and soldier onwards with the ‘hand-me-down’ broken tools that I’d been given. In reality I was a frightened child who was lost and trying to find his way home in the dark.
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