Toxic Families and the Coronavirus

Toxic families by definition do not love the designated victims of their clan. That’s because, deep down, underneath their many surface shows of love, they don’t really love anyone within the clan. People in the toxic family are liked and disliked; they aren’t loved, because true love is unconditional.

To give an example of the truth of the above observation, I’ll discuss the non-reaction of my elder siblings, my brothers R. and F., and my sister J., to how I may have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak. No attempt has been made by any of them or their families, as of this writing, to contact me and ask if my wife and I are OK. No attempt has been made to my knowledge, anyway, and if they wanted to know, they’d ask me in a pretty upfront way; there’d be no need of subterfuge.

Now, granted, I have to be fair about this. I have made no attempt to contact any of them and see if they’re OK, either. But my reasons for not contacting them are far weightier than theirs are for not contacting me. I, to be perfectly frank, feel no affection for them, nor do I pretend to, as they (golden child J. in particular) pretend to for me.

Throughout my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, my three elder siblings bullied me, belittled me, shouted four-letter verbal abuse at me (usually over relatively trivial things I’d done to annoy them, or just for the sheer fun of making my life miserable), and worst of all, they believed every invidious lie our late, probably narcissistic mother told them about me (and about other, unfavoured family members). I’ve covered all these issues in minute detail, with many examples, in these blog posts, among others, in case, Dear Reader, you aren’t convinced that I’m justified in not feeling any love for them.

I went NO CONTACT with them, because matters really got so extreme that I found any form of communication with them, for any reason, to be utterly intolerable. No contact really means no contact, even during a pandemic. Though they’re undoubtedly mad at me for my refusal to talk to our mother just before she died (as well as for the YouTube video–me, under my original name, reciting an old Philip Larkin poem–that R. shamed me for making), four years have passed since then, and surely they’ve calmed down about that by now.

One of their rationales for treating me like dirt for all those years is that I “don’t care about anybody” but myself. I’m sure they see their view about me reconfirmed in my not contacting them about the current pandemic.

What’s being implied in this judgement of me is that they are so much more caring about other people, including me. Now, I’ll be charitable and assume that, in light of this health crisis, R. is concerned about the well-being of his family, as F. presumably is about his family, and J. is about her two sons; just as I’ll assume they’re concerned about each other’s families. All well and fine.

But these are all cases of them liking each other because they’re all the favoured members of the family (i.e., it’s conditional love). I doubt that R., F., and J. care much–beyond paying lip service–about the health of our cousins, L., S., and G. They didn’t do anything to help S. with his mental illness, that’s for sure. (Check the above links for the story about that, to see what I mean.)

As for me, I worry not only about my wife’s health and that of her family, but also about the health of my child students, many of whom don’t seem to be taking the crisis seriously enough (as opposed to their ever-worrying parents)…and we all live in East Asia, just next door, so to speak, to China, not far away in Ontario!

I also worry about Americans with their poor healthcare system, as well as Europeans and the limitations of their own healthcare systems. In both parts of the world, profits are prioritized over saving lives. Worse than that, the US is keeping sanctions on countries like Iran and Venezuela during this pandemic. That’s real selfishness (and cruelty), way beyond mine and even that of my toxic family.

But to get back to them, my point about R., F., and J. is that, if they’re so much more caring than I am, they should be demonstrating that caring by at least trying to contact my wife and me. If they’re going to judge me (and I’m sure they are judging my silence!), they’ve got to judge themselves by the same standards. I did (see above).

Now don’t get me wrong, Dear Reader: I’m in no way angry about R., F., and J. not asking if I’m OK. On the contrary, I’m really happy they’ve been silent! A phone call from them, or an email, a letter, a FB message, a comment here on my blog, or on Twitter, etc., would trigger my trauma in the worst way. So let them stay silent…please!

I only bring up this silence of theirs to make a point: it reconfirms what I’ve always known about them: they never really loved me.

So they shouldn’t be at all surprised at my lack of love for them.

This is not the first time this family has failed to show a sense of solidarity. I’ve complained in many of the above-linked posts about our mother saying that neither she nor the rest of the family wanted me to make a visit when J.’s husband was terminally ill with cancer (because the Asperger Syndrome Mom fabricated about me makes me “different”…”tactless and insensitive”); and none of the family showed any interest in helping our cousin S. get any psychiatric help. (See why I haven’t asked if the family is keeping safe from the coronavirus, and why they haven’t asked if I’m OK?)

And they fancy themselves to be so close as a family. They fancy themselves so much more evolved, so much wiser, so morally superior, so much more mature, and so much stronger than I am.

I have no illusions about my own moral strengths (few) and my moral weaknesses (many). It’s high time, however, that they lifted away the veil of illusions about theirs.

But this is the nature of the toxic family: to pretend in public that they’re loving, while they bully and demean their victims behind the scenes. The abusers refuse to admit to the darkness inside themselves, but project it onto the family scapegoats (like me).

Why should we, their victims, show them a courtesy they have never shown us, and never will?