In the last post, I talked about my mother and how she was not going to change. Which means it’s up to me to adjust how I react to her. Before I ended up in the hospital, I had managed to find a faux-equilibrium. I say faux because I still did not want to deal with her and dreaded it, but it didn’t send me into a deep depression the way it did when I was in my twenties. We talked maybe once a month and then I put her out of my mind for the rest of the time. She would send me an email once a month or so when she wanted me to edit something.
Then, they came here and everything was thrown into chaos. I found out how little they actually cared about me–or rather, it was confirmed. I already knew, but it had never been clearer. And it made it nearly impossible for me to go back to being fiercely noncommittal.
Theoretically, nothing had changed. I already knew that my parents didn’t see me as an individual person with thoughts, feelings, hopes, and emotions of my own. I was simply their child and everything that they foisted upon that ideal.
My mother has commented in the past about all the ways I have disappointed her. As much as I don’t care on a conscious level, there is still a part of me that wanted that approval. I was tweeting about it a few months ago (before the Eloning), and a Twitter friend responded that his mother had been dead for years, and he still did things to try to happy. He knows he wouldn’t (even if she were alive, she would not look at him with anything other than utter disdain). If I remember correctly, he had not been talking to her when she died.
The idea of ‘but, faaaaamily’ is so endemic in our society. In most societies, probably. There is a reason for that, naturally. Strong families would be the foundation of a strong society. I actually don’t have a problem with that. There should be ties between people who have the same blood–at least I guess that makes sense.
Honestly, I have seen so much family fuckups, I’m not sure that’s even true. Here’s the thing. Should it be the case? That people with the same blood should be closer, I mean. It’s something people don’t want to talk about much, and in fact, many people would not be happy if you brought it up (that blood is not necessarily thicker than water).
I wonder if we would be happier if we let go of that fiction. I read several advice columns, and there is always the obligatory lip service to how important family is. Unfairly so, I think. Especially over at Slate. I appreciate that Alison Green of Ask A Manager is very pragmatic about family. She doesn’t waste time chastising writers for having familial issues. In fact, she’s often the one to tell them to, well, not cut the cord, but not talk to their parents about work stuff that isn’t their business. She’s very frank about how parents often don’t understand the working world, and sometimes, she strayed into personal life as well. Such as with the letter wrtier who got a job as the personal assistant to her father’s girlfriend, and it went spectacularly horribly. The boss/girlfriend wanted the LW to go to therapy with her (the boss) and the boyfriend/father, which was what caused the LW to write into Ask A Manager. The LW’s mother was downplaying it, and Alison said the LW may need to cut down on info to her mother as well.
It’s funny that the work advice columnist is the one who’s best with the personal problems, too, but it’s not unexpected. She is terrific with advice. I agree with her 90% of the time, which is very high. I can’t think of another columnist with whom I agree 50% of the time, let alone 90%. The one thing upon which I really disagree is pranks in the workplace because they have such a high chance of going pear-shaped.
Here’s the thing. I think we’d all be better off if we didn’t try so hard. Yes, there are families in which the members love each other and want to spend time together. Yes, there are family members who are ride-or-die with each other. There are families in which the good of everyone is put above everything else.
Then, there are families in which the members are cruel and abusive towards each other. There are parents who hate their children and vice-versa. Often at the same time. That was one of the things that got to me when women used to try to convince me to have children. When I mentioned that I didn’t like children, they said that it would be different when it was my own. Which was such a fucking lie. And an obvious one at that.There are millions of people who hate their children. Clearly. Who mistreat their children. Who treat their children as an extension of themselves. If you strip away the myth of ‘family’ it’s easier to see how horrid people are to each other sometimes.
It’s always been strange to me that you’re supposed to put up with shit from people who supposedly love you than you would from a stranger because–uh, family? I don’t really even know the reason (again, beyond the basis of society). If I wouldn’t put up with a stranger berating me, calling me fat, or telling me why women are inferior to men, why the fuck would I tolerate that from someone who professes to love me?
There’s a truism that when there is an unreasonable person in a group, people will work around them or plead with the reasonable ones to bend around the will of the asshole. It’s because there’s a chance you can get the reasonable person to bend whereas there is no chance of doing that with the asshole. It’s the Missing Stair Syndrome in which when you first notice a missing stair, instead of fixing it, you say, “Oh, that stair is missing. I’ll just go around it.” You warn other people about it so that they could go around it as well. Over time, it just becomes how things are done–you avoid the missing stair. You tell other people about it. If someone dares to question how it happened, you don’t respond (or don’t remember). It no longer seems reasonable for someone to ponit out that you could, you know, fix the damn stair.
I want to find a therapist who will help me deal with the family dysfunction and to tamp down the rage I feel in my breast at all the bullshit. I don’t want to be angry when I listen to my mother whine yet again about my father, while not being willing to do anything. I’m old enough to know that nothing will change on her part so if I want to feel better about our, ah, relationship, I am going to have to be the one to change. Or at least adjust my thinking so I don’t get pissed off, hurt, and disappointed time and time again.