My family's pretty evil and it took me a long time to realize they were abusing me. My grandfather was a psychological operations officer in the army and a PR executive and he used his experience and intelligence to run our family like some twisted military dictatorship. His agenda was power and control, nothing else mattered to him. He was a master at warping minds to get people to do and act how he wanted, and since he lacked a conscience, there were no boundaries of decency with him. Anything went as long as it worked.
My mom was considered something of a child prodigy who graduated high school and went to college when she was 14. Her heart was pure darkness without even a speck of light. Her favorite thing to do was to destroy peoples' minds. She broke one of my girlfriends and she ended up going inpatient in a mental hospital for a while. I remember before we broke up my girlfriend said she was beginning to think my mom was fucking her up. Yeah, she'll do that to you.
My father was the son of a charismatic business owner and politician. He was like a sociopathic hippie who created a false reality that he was this kind, charming, altruistic man, while in his private life he loved underage Taiwanese transvestite prostitutes, cocaine, and kidnapping and torturing people who "fucked with him" (and that could be anything, really).
My two older brothers are cold-hearted, abusive assholes. One brother is manipulative, sadistic, and power obsessed ... he's basically a con artist for his career. The other one is less manipulative, but is just as brutally cold-hearted and obsessed with domination and power. He raped a girl when we were in high school and everyone covered up for him ... the story got out that SHE was the one who raped HIM! And it stuck. My family's good like that.
One aunt on my father's side was a terrifying woman who ran off with an outlaw biker gang. A few other scattered aunts and uncles are wretched people. One uncle on my mother's side was an executive for a technology firm that moved its operations to China; he knocked up the daughter of a Communist party official and they had to flee the country when shit started hitting the fan. My brother lived with them in Hong Kong for a while and he told me one time they went into a gambling den, my uncle threw down 10k on one hand of cards, lost it all in a round, and just shrugged it off. His secret second family moved to the US and they're lurking down south somewhere. There are a few family members rumored to have had mafia connections, but I didn't interact with them too much. But I wouldn't be surprised, I ended up dating a girl whose Sicilian father was in the mafia, and I met some interesting people, so I guess this crap's just been a part of my life.
And on and on and on. This oh so wonderful family of mine turned me into a scapegoat and a resource to get their jollies off in dominating me, humiliating me, torturing me, pushing my buttons, getting their sexual rocks off (but never getting so close as diddling me, oh thank god).
They warped my mind since I was a little kid to believe I was this horrible, evil person and encouraged me to befriend and date these people who I can only describe as psychopaths. I don't think it was intentional, I just think they wanted to be friends with their parents because they liked some pretty evil people. So my whole life had been straight up psychological, physical, and emotional violence with high-grade brain warping stuff going on.
You'd never think these would be evil people, though. They're all intelligent, cultured, upper-middle class professionals. The sorts that New York Times would write about. But underneath it all they are truly frightening people that you want nothing to do with whatsoever. There's this whole sadistic, cruel, manipulative, utter lack of conscience thing going on with them that somehow skipped me ... which made my life an utterly excruciating hell growing up around them.
How I escaped was a pretty long process of throwing myself out into the world, exploring my mind, reading books on sociology, social psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and sorts of things like that. I went out into the world with a completely fried brain and a lot of messed up stuff happened to me in the process.
It's taken me 4 years of excruciating pain figuring out what the hell happened to me. My family still tries to track me down ... calling me at my desk at work, sending me weird things in the mail, tricking me into thinking they've changed and they care oh so much, only to drag me into the long con again. They robbed me of my entire life and put me through living hell, isolated me from the only people who ever cared about me, and gave me philosophies and beliefs that have almost gotten me killed in the real world.
Now that I'm 32 this is the first time where I feel like I understand things better. Where I can finally have my own life free from violence and torture and danger. But even now it's not easy because I have to teach myself how to function out there in the world. It's like I'm an immigrant in my own country without a family, a refugee from some demented prison camp run by sadistic guards and a wanna-be cult leader or dictator.
It has not been an easy road, and it's probably not going to be an easy road from here on out.