I am not at fault. I am not guilty. And I am not to be blamed. For I am the narcissist. You can try your best to put the blame on me and make me the scapegoat. But I am the master of this game and I will put the blame on you before you can even realize what’s going on.
“You don’t want to end up like him do you now?”
Years later those words still echo through my mind. They act as some cruel guardian which ensures that I will never stumble, never flounder and never fall victim to the injustices which this world has in store for me.
I was shown what happens to those who are weak, those who fail to seize control and grasp the power for themselves. The consequences of failure were paraded before me on an almost daily basis to allow me to witness the full horror of what it was to be sub-standard, below par, and just not good enough.
I knew that this fate must not befall me and that it became necessary for me to clamber higher than everybody else no matter what it took or what the cost was. So long as there was somebody underneath me on that ladder as I climbed, then, as the saying goes, the devil would take the hindmost.
Onwards and upwards, climbing higher and higher to escape the consequences of vulnerability, weakness, and failure.
I was given a swift induction into learning how to stay ahead and protect myself. There were two routes available to ensure that you stayed number one and the best. Strive to stay ahead of the opposition and by the opposition, I was taught that this means everybody else and furthermore brings the opposition down so that they become subsumed into the quagmire of failure.
If your opponent is taller, chop him off at the knees. If he is better looking, fling acid in his face. If he is smarter, batter his brains out. If he is stronger, poison him into weakness. If he is wealthier, sap him of penny and cent. If he lives in a pleasant place, pollute the neighborhood. If he has a good job, get him sacked.
Figuratively speaking some of the time of course and that means to do all of those things, that it is necessary to play the scapegoat card. Become proficient at pointing the finger elsewhere, cultivate persuasiveness so that the allocation of the blame falls on the shoulders of another, practice plausible deniability so the mantle of fault never rests on my head. Never be the one at fault. Ever. Those were my instructions.
The indoctrination continued. You are not to blame, you are not guilty, you are not the problem, you did not cause the problem either. Erase sorry from your vocabulary as you do not feel it, remove the idea of apologizing as you have nothing to apologize for, do not express anything which might be regarded as guilt as that is an alien concept.
Read: Blame Shifting: Why The Abuser Blames You Even When You Are The Victim
There is always somebody else who can be blamed. It does not take long for the repeated mantra of it never being my fault to engender that sense of impregnability and a lack of accountability. Since it is the fault of everyone else it is impeccable logic is it not that it can never be my fault? It, therefore, follows that if it is never my fault then such a fault-free individual is truly superior and stands above all others.
To facilitate this it, therefore, becomes necessary to identify a scapegoat or more accurately scapegoats. The role of scapegoat slots seamlessly into our thinking. The fault is an intangible concept but it exists. Someone is always to blame. I was taught that from the beginning.
Things do not just happen, they happen for a reason and the reason that she was always crying, that he was always failing, that they were socially ostracised, that she could not pass her exam, that he never scored a goal, that they never went on holiday, that he could not hold down a job, that she was a single mother, that he had a drinking problem, that she was ugly, that he lived in a poor area, that she was never invited out, that he died alone, that she was beaten, that he was arrested, that she was raped, that he was murdered was because they were scapegoats.
