In the last post, I ended by musing about how I sort of fell into polyamorous relationships. It was never my idea, but I wasn’t against it, either. In fact, if I had not been indoctrinated into the belief that monogamy was the only way to be, I probably would have gotten into nonmonogamy/polyamory sooner.
Side note: My mother and I used to have arguments about tradition. She would mention a tratdition I happened to disagree with (which, to be fair, was most of them), and I would state my disagreement. I know I should have just kept my mouth shut and played along–or rather, I didn’t know at the time, but discovered it through years of painful failure. The best thing to do is just nod and smile. If I can’t make myself agree (which is really hard for me when I abjectly disagree with something), then at least I can keep silent.
Theoretically, anyway.
This is something I was told that neuroatypical people have difficult with–lying. The thing is, it’s complicated with me. I can lie with ease about things that don’t matter to me. And with the social lying like, “No, that dress doesn’t make your butt look big.” Anything I deem as inconsequential, I lie with impunity.
With my mother, I will lie (or avoid the truth as hard as I can) when it’s something I really don’t want to talk about because it’s painful to me. She makes everything about her (or my father), so ifd I’m already in pain, then I don’t want to have to caretake her along with dealing with my pain. In addition, she’s the type that if something happens to you, oh, it happened to her as well–but worse. I mentioned that I fell and hurt myself once, and she came back with how she fell and dislocated her shoulder!
I’m not doubting that it happened, but did she have to tell it at that very moment? To be charitable, my story of my fall might have spurred her own memory, but still. She did it all the time. If I had a cold, then she had to talk about the cold she recently had.
Related, tangentially, she mentioned that she thought she might have autism (after we talked about my brother having it). I thought it was yet another way she was trying to glom on to other people’s lifestories as her own, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me. Tangentially to the tangential, my brother once asked if I thought my mother was a good psychologist. I automatically said yes, but then walked it back. I thought about it more, and I had to come to the conclusion that no, she was not. At least not overall.
