I mentioned here earlier this week that as per my therapist's suggestion, for my own safey I haven't spoken to anyone from my biological family of origin since Christmas of 2010.  That's when my father kept up the family tradition of hitting me even as a senior adult. Christmas of 2010 was his second chance to have a relationship with me without violence.  We had been estranged for 8 years before that already once because he had gone after me at Christmas once before.  

He has untreated bipolar disorder and PTSD and has acted it out weekly for his whole life.  That's why as a kid I went to 13 different schools from K-12. We always had to move because he'd lose his temper and mess things up for our family again, it was fight or flight for us 13 years in a row.  

Earlier this week, I was minding my own business at home when my phone rang and it was an attorney from across country.  I didn't even know if my parents were dead or alive at this point.  The last I'd heard from them was when they'd hired an ex-FBI agent to tail me at work and I'd had to report him to Human Resources.  That had gotten him to stop.

This attorney from across the country on the phone told me my parents were setting up their will and that we had a piece of property in common with my name on it.  I had no idea; I don't own anything on my own or, to my knowledge, with anyone else.  Since my divorce, I've been a renter. The attorney wanted to send me quit claim forms to sign so I would give up my part of that property.  On Christmas of 2010 after being hit visiting my parents for the last time, my sister who was visiting said goodbye by way of crowing that now she would not only get her inheritance from our parents, but mine, too. 

I signed the quit claim forms today.  In so doing, I probably signed away $70,000 US dollars, but like I said, I didn't even know my name was on the property at all.  My parents are so old it's likely the real person behind this attorney's move was my sister, meaning she got her inheritance and mine, too, after all, just like she said she would.

In therapy I learned about family systems theory and how in dysfunctional families like mine there's usually a designated family scapegoat.  That scapegoat gets the label of "black sheep" of the family, no matter what good they may have done.  I guess this is final confirmation of that being my role in my dysfunctional family of origin.  

I guess, too, that losing that inheritance is the cost of independence vs. codependence for me.  My sister has always made better financial decisions that I've made.  She married a medical school student and went on to be a rich doctor's wife.  Now she's apparently gotten herself another hefty sum by getting my half of the family inheritance.

On the other hand, my sister's life has always been in constant codependent turmoil because she wouldn't be independent.  Her marriage to a medical student who became a doctor ended in a terrible divorce.  Then after her divorce, she fell in love but wouldn't remarry because that would mean her giving up her alimony payments from ending her marriage.  She had married for money in the first place, then she wouldn't remarry for money as well.

I grew up codependent, too, and I got divorced just like her.  But I'd never married for money in the first place, so when my therapist challenged me to be independent I was able to go for it and pay the price.  Signing the quit claim forms yesterday was my final step in following through on that.

I could have used the money, believe me, it would really have helped in my move to retire to Mexico next year.  After all, one reason I'm retiring there is that I can afford retirement there like I can't in the USA.  But in my case it seems independence has had to come at a price.  That's why I'm telling myself that's why as the designated black sheep of my family I'm also the poorer member of my family.  

I wish I could have my cake and eat it, too, I really do.  I like money.  However, my parents' money came tainted.  They were pastors of a 3,000 member mega-church in South America where I grew up, but were kicked out in a church fraud scandal.  Their missions board yanked their ministerial ordination papers and "defrocked" them, and the government deported them in a police car that drove them to the airport kicking them out of the country.  

I wish I could have had the inheritance and my integrity and my independence, too.  But apparently that's not how things played out.  I have to remind myself I'm not the poorer member of my family because I'm a loser, like my family likes to say, but because I am the only one in my family to strike out on my own.  Unlike anyone in my family of origin, I have lived working in the same place for years at a time, the latest being 10 years at the same job.  I haven't made it rich, but I have made my life stable in PTSD recovery.  No fight or flight for me.

Has anyone ever had to pass up on financial opportunities to become independent instead of staying codependent?  It's new to me, I'm more used to being codependent than being independent, so I'd appreciate your sharing your experience.