Life. Chaim. חַיִּים

Intermission - How Scapegoating Works: Dysfunctional Family Edition

PRELUDE

If you have been designated the family scapegoat your life is misery. But fear not! We can work to change that! I was the world's most beat down Jewish scapegoat imaginable in a hard-hearted white supremacist gentile family and now I'm me! Now I'm free. It took a lifetime but I did it. And these fuckers had their claws in deep, believe me!

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

And it's the scapegoat, according to the family. YOU are the cause of all misery. YOU are the bearer of the family shame. Dysfunctional families tend to play hot potato with Family Shame. Nobody wants it. So they have to find someone to pin it onto, so the rest of the family can continue being emotionally immature trainwrecks, while convincing themselves they're all highly functional Correct Adults.

THEIR STUPID PROCLAMATIONS

Everything good about you will be the rope they use to try and hang you later. Are you financially responsible? YOU'RE CHEAP. Are you creative and outgoing? ATTENTION WHORE.

THEY ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU

Once you start bucking free of their control, they will really freak out. Oh no! The scapegoat! It's leaving! Where shall the Family Shame now go??? Nobody wants the flaming potato! DAMN THAT SCAPEGOAT FOREVER! They were ALWAYS CRAZY YOU KNOW! JUST LIKE THEIR DIRTY JEW MOTHER!!! SHE ALWAYS HAD SUSPICIOUS EYES YOU KNOW! WE TOLD YOU IT WAS A MISTAKE TO MARRY THAT WOMAN!

BRUTUS BRUTUS BRUTUS

If they manage to weaponize your mental illness, PTSD, and triggers (which they all installed, so they know just how to smash those buttons with their big panicked white supremacist meathead fists) to kill you, then they can convince themselves you were the problem the whole time. LOOK SHE WAS ALWAYS UNSTABLE. SHE CERTAINLY WASN'T RIGHT ABOUT US HAVING A LOT OF ANTI-BLACKNESS AND JEW-HATRED AND MISOGYNY AND QUEERPHOBIA ALL INTERNALIZED ALL SMASHED GROUND RIGHT INTO THE MEAT OF OUR SOULS THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH US IT WAS ALL HER THE WHOLE TIME!!!

These are the lies they need to believe. Do not oblige them. Get out there. Live your BEST LIFE NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES. BE SO MORAL AND ETHICAL AND JEWISH THEY WILL DIE OF SHAME EVENTUALLY.

You are a beat down emotionally abused cute little blob of a human. You need to cultivate some Main Character Energy for yourself. I promise it's ok. It's the first time in your entire life. You won't turn into an evil person. Not if you get yourself 5 or 6 different rabbis and keep checking in with them and keep studying Judaism and make sure you're aligned with the MAJORITY of your people and the MAJORITY of Black America, then you will be gold, babies, you will forever be 

ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY

Some things are worth dying for but there are way more things worth living for, believe me. I spent a lifetime fighting my way through the Forest of Thorns, walking the Path of Pins and Needles and Pain and I MADE IT OUT. SO CAN YOU!!!

PS

Sometimes escape is a group project.

PPS

The day I decided to become a maggid was the day my little baby sister looked at me with nothing but contempt falling out of her eyes voice face voice and said, "Don't make Judaism your entire personality, Leigh. That would be boring."

Fk you. You're just ignorant.