What do you do when you feel very angry about someone’s behaviour and everyone around you insists that you are the difficult one and they refuse to criticise this person?
You feel as though you are the mad, out of line, one.
It is very uncomfortable, you doubt yourself, wonder if you are mistaken.
In this case I am one person removed from all this. I’m talking about one of my husband’s siblings. The other siblings remain loyal about this man and claim my husband is the difficult one for even mentioning he has an issue. I am loyal to my husband and start to wonder if my husband and I have folie a deux??
But I can’t argue with my inner 8 year old. They are implacable.
It is very triggering for me because of what happened to me as a vulnerable 8 year old, when no one was interested or protected me. And later in life when I raised the issues and the adults I spoke to about it did not want to believe / recognise / acknowledge that it had happened. They preferred to remain on good terms with the person concerned.
With my adult self in the room, I have to accept other people’s opinions, I can not change their point of view, however misguided, blinkered, or straight forward denial of uncomfortable facts that I believe it to be. I keep my mouth shut.
But at the same time, I am loyal to my husband, external facts have come to light to confirm what we suspected, and my inner 8 year old refuses to have anything to do with this sibling. The rest of his family will just have to accept our position too.
I have to really battle with myself for wanting more things to turn up, to prove myself right. If more recent stuff was unearthed, then they would have to believe us! I am convinced that there is more stuff buried, but I have no actual facts, only circumstantial evidence and gut feelings. And actually it is much better if there are only a few difficult historical things, so I need to keep a lid on it. (And, very importantly, I do not believe there are any vulnerable people at risk at this point)
I need to let it go!
But can I just shout here “THEY ARE THE STUPID ONES AND I KNOW I AM RIGHT!!!!”