Exiting the Scapegoat Role -- A Journey Out -- Chapter One -- Debra J.M. Smith of Informing Christians

The Secret, The Violence, and the Gaslighting

I saw something that a child should never see. I witnessed something that a child should never witness. And I had to say no to something a child should have never been put in the position to have to say no to. And when I told the one, I should have been able to tell, I was dismissed.

Decades later, I had to endure another person, the golden one, attempt to make me feel guilty for having told the person I should have been able to tell. This golden person, who had also seen and witnessed what I had, a person who knew personally that I was telling the truth, tried to make me feel guilty for how things played out.

Such a story is practically as old as time. A story of the golden one and the scapegoat.

In fairness to the golden one, she was raised, encouraged, and taught to treat me in this way. You see, just as she knew my role, she knew hers. And she played her role quite well, very well.

The golden one never endured the additional trauma that fell on me. The very person I should have been able to trust for protection not only failed to protect me from, what will be from here on referred to as "the secret", but she also failed to protect me from physical and verbal violence, she encouraged it and even joined in with another brand of torment, gaslighting.

While the golden one was not protected from the secret, she kept the secret and was safely protected in every other way by the one who should have protected us both, our mother. She did not endure the physical or verbal violence from our father. Nor did she receive that cruel special brand of torment from our mother that our mother took such pleasure using on me.

My role as the scapegoat did not start with the secret. The secret simply escalated what was already happening and furthered my mother's anger towards me. From birth, I was assigned the role of the scapegoat. Just as the golden one was assigned her role from birth.

It had nothing to do with either of us and everything to do with our mother. While outwardly, she appeared to be a very put together, dignified, intelligent and very beautiful woman, who appeared to be a very fine woman, inside she was nothing of the sort. She had worked for and retired from the federal government. But her personal life was quite different. She was very insecure and as a result sought control over all of us. You see, that was her role that she assigned to herself, a role she played out to her own detriment.

My father, an extremely good-looking Airforce-man in his day, put a ring on my mother's finger quite quickly after they had first met. Years later, deciding to go into business for himself, he left the Airforce and became a hairdresser and later owned a small chain of beauty salons, upstate New York. I would one day be employed by him.

The secret took place in two distinct phases—beginning when I was just twelve years old and then culminated around age fourteen when I had to stand firm and say no.

I was the one who stopped it. Yet, instead of being recognized for having done the right thing and basically protecting us all from a terrible fait, I paid the price from that point forward as if I had done something wrong. The trauma I had already experienced in that home was heightened tremendously, continued by all three of them until the day I was kicked out of my then home at nine-teen years old, an event they all three took part in, and an event that also resulted in me being fired from my job as a hairdresser with my father.

Left simultaneously without a home or a livelihood, my mother and the golden one had stoked the temper of my father who kicked me out. Yet, he was the only one of the three of them who ever felt any true guilt for what was done to me—living with that guilt right up until death, never realizing that the event was manipulated by the other two, and never knowing that I had asked to come home the next day and was explicitly told no by my mother. In truth, my mother, the one who should have protected me could not have cared less whether I lived or died.

Five months later—after being homeless, living with someone else’s family, securing a new job, and saving money for my own apartment—I was asked to go back to work at the job I had been fired from, being told I was needed there. Yet, I was never asked to live back in that home. I went back to work for my father.

I believe my father was mentally ill, and that he saw me as an extension of him instead of as an individual, that this is why he saw no boundaries between him and me, that this is why it never dawned on him that one day I would be an adult. Yet, enough was expressed to me by him in my adult years for me to know he had tremendous regret, heavy guilt, and remorse.

My father was never able to tell the truth, nor was he ever able to stand up to my mother to stop the continued wrongdoing that was done to me right up and through both of their deaths. And sadly, he participated in the final wounding—a betrayal I knew was coming before I was even out of my twenties because of something said to me back then. It was confirmed after the second one died, when the final slap was spelled out in black and white: "my daughter Debra is to receive nothing." A final slap that to this day I do not know who it hurt more, me or him.

I simply could not imagine having to die with that on your conscience—knowing what you have done, and knowing you let someone you love, who you did such wrong to, get punished by the one who should have protected her, knowing you actually participated in that punishment because you did not have the courage to tell the truth.

As for me, while it did not hurt as much as I had previously thought it would, it still hurt to know they both went through with it. But I take comfort in knowing it did not hurt me in the way it was intended to hurt me. The intent was for it to upset me because of the monetary loss. What was not factored in was that it was never their money that I wanted. And if I could not have from them what was truly important, then I did not want their money.

After being kicked out, the physical and verbal violence from my father ended. But the cruelty from the other two continued stopping only with the death of the one who should have protected me, my mother, the year following the death of my father, and then by me walking away from the golden one once and for all.

The golden one had the power as an adult to finally do right by me after the deaths of our parents—to stop her own cruelty towards me and to correct the injustice of those two wills. She could have done right by me but chose not to. And I did not push the issue. Again, if I could not have what was important, then I did not want the money.

My parents died having never known that to me, their value was so much more than money. And I cannot help but wonder if the golden one will one day die that exact same way: believing money is her ultimate value, never knowing her true worth. —If this golden one had simply chosen to make things right with me, acknowledge the truth, set the outcome of the wills right, and then expressed to me a real need for all of what had been their money, I would have told her to keep it all. And she would have given me something that I could have held on to for the rest of my life, the knowledge that one of them finally did right by me. The knowledge that one of them finally saw me as a person of value, a person worth something. But it wasn't to be.