Sorry for being the bad egg
I grew up hearing descriptors like “bad egg”.
“You act like ‘this’, we will throw you out.”
There was no hesitation — these words were dropped into every conversation, landing like bombshells. It felt like every step or misstep was measured; it was how ‘they’ knew we were worth the time.
Sadly, if you were deemed not so ‘worthy’, ‘they’ didn’t try to hide it.It was made clear in ‘their’ chosen rearing style for you.
Fallen out of favour for a minute reason — you would soon notice. Things change. There is no mercy. The complete lack of it may startle you — the total absence of restraint, when ‘dealing’ with you or when delivering ‘punishment’.
When I say ‘punishment’, I am being kind. It was not discipline. It was abuse, plain and simple.
It sounds like a harsh environment to be brought up in. But my understanding or what I imagined was that my parents had it worse. I was also reminded how badly my grand-parents and great-grandparents had it during the world wars. I felt and still believe that as bad as things got, it could not have been nearly as bad as what people had in the past.
That is not to say, that what I experienced was okay.
I had relayed my story to therapists in much greater detail than I do here. ‘Literal hell’ is how one therapist summed up my upbringing, whilst another, upon hearing my account, promptly burst into tears.
I was thankful for their assessment, as having lived in ‘the situation’ my whole life, I had begun to internalised the abuse and see it as something I’d earned. At my core, I was I ‘bad egg’, I had decided. That is the only explanation I could come up with; the only reason why everything that had happened to me, had done so.
This is a belief that isn’t unique to me, but plagues many abuse survivors. However, much of the time when I experience it, even to this day, I wonder if I could be the exception. Maybe I was bad ?— maybe I had deserved the treatment?
I look back at the times that the abuse had made me ‘act out’. There were many times I had lashed out at my own siblings. I had behaved in ways that now I understand as modelling of my parents’ behaviour and doing my best to survive. As a much younger person, I had one day come to the realise that I wanted to be a better person. But with that, I began to assess my past behaviour and I didn’t like what I saw.
The guilt that came, with my self-reflection, is indescribable. I couldn’t see how I could ever be forgiven. In recent years, I have come to understand that aside from the Complex PTSD ( C-PTSD), my OCD was an additional reason, for what I now consider as ‘self-flagellation’ behaviours. But back then, they were my only chance at redemption. It was my only chance at quietening the fire that had started in my belly and was growing in a full blown crackling fire of panic.
This guilt, and my spiral into the dark depths of it, had turned me into a non-functioning human. I was crippled. My every hour of every day was filled with intrusive thoughts, mental reviews, reassurance seeking, contamination fears and reliving moments to check if I’ve harmed. ( Now I realise these thoughts as OCD with pure-O and a real event type component).
To give you a better picture of what was happening to me, during that time I’ll give a few examples.
- My OCD intrusive thoughts centred around death. At one point, one such thoughts, occurred in the wake of a death in my friend’s family. It was their grandmother, a person I had never even met. I promptly concluded, I had been the cause. I was wracked with guilt, so much so that I tried to come up with a plan to turn myself in to the police. That said, the whole time I was completely aware of how ridiculous my story would sound — “I thought something in my head and she died.”
- I was also convinced that if a negative thought comes into my head and I am touching something or looking at something, I would instantly contaminate it. Needless to say, the intrusive thoughts kept coming, and I was endlessly backtracking my steps to clean everything I came in to contact with. What I mean by ‘contact’ is not exclusive to: touching it, looking at it, or breathing on it. It was torture.
- Whilst at war with my intrusive thoughts, I started to pray compulsively– I was trying to counteract, what I saw as ‘evil’ thoughts. This got out of control. I began to pray in my head, hold my breath and recite mantras against my thoughts. I’d lock myself in the bathroom at school and review all the intrusive thoughts, trying to counteract each one with prayer. Most times, it was a losing battle. Drained with no hope in sight, I would break down on the floor in tears, choking and wishing I wasn’t alive. I didn’t know I had OCD and was convinced, I was ‘evil’ reincarnated.
- Nothing mattered anymore; work and everything fell to the wayside. I was constantly gaining new OCD obsessions and compulsions, whilst also checking for additional reasons for why I was the worst person; why I should kill myself (as a gesture of goodwill to the world)? I was irredeemable, anyway— I knew it with all my being.
Soon, to make matters worse, the fear from my earliest memory was now reality. I was ‘replaced’ by my siblings. Any value that I had delivered before was now done better by someone else, even more so — now that I was mentally impaired in the worst way. I became the thing, I feared most of becoming — ‘useless’ in the eyes of my parents. Predictably, I had attracted disgust, humiliation, derision and more physical abuse — I was ‘useless’, after all.
I can’t say that I blame my parents for how they treated me. They needed me to be a point of strength for them — an anchor. After years of fulfilling this role, donning a mask of ‘perfection’, it cracked under pressure. I buckled under the load. The years of trauma had caught up to me and severe OCD was the result.
How many times had I prayed to G-d to help me? My childhood was filled with prayer for mercy. When I finally had a breakdown, I prayed but my faith was gone. It diminished in the face of a stark decline in my mental health. It had never been that bad, and I felt that G-d had failed me.
My parents, however, never failed me. They never failed to remind me, and everyone in the family, that I was ‘the crazy one’. The bad egg. I was soon ‘branded’ that way.
Under these circumstances, my siblings had coped better (they have their own issues though, but functioned as opposed to me). I concluded that since they were doing better, I was at fault. My parents were right, I brought it on myself. If only I had handled things differently, my mental health wouldn’t have gotten so bad. If only I’d done ‘x’ differently, ‘y’ wouldn’t have happened.
As a ‘bad egg’, I didn’t see the point in myself — my family can live happily without me.
I only bring more burden to them, with my inability to cope with things. I have let my family down — I am not the sister or daughter they would have wanted. I felt the weight of this knowledge in my every interaction with them.
Additionally, my mental health makes it impossible to even see them nowadays — it deteriorates at the mere thought of facing my trauma triggers. My OCD worsens 10-fold.
So I don’t have a relationship with them. I have faced their great anger for that. But there is nothing I can do, and nothing more that I can do to make them understand what I am going through.
Sadly, they have their own trauma which means they don’t have the mental space to hear my story — I don’t hold it against them. The dismissive attitude hurts but is understandable — I have distanced myself, estranged myself to focus on recovery.
My therapist said that I should be proud of myself. I recall the words that I had used –“I have decided to estrange myself to focus on healing”. My therapist agrees –“If I sacrifice myself, I would only become a burden”. I nod mechanically. I know that the real reason for the estrangement is not as ‘pure’ as all that.
It’s selfish and self-serving. But it feels right.
The fact is, I feel safer knowing I won’t have to see my family, my trauma tiggers, ever again. It will helping my healing, yes. But it also makes me feel, happier, which feels ‘wrong’. How could I feel happier, never seeing my family again?
It’s just an intrusive thought, I tell myself. Or is it?
Though, much has improved, the battle against my multiple physical and mental disorders, continues. I have some faith in better days ahead, but still struggle with resentment towards myself.
I guess, such is the fate of the ‘bad egg’, that I am.
