One-and-a-half days to go until I am on my ownnnnnnnn….Now I have two songs I could use as the ‘before the cut’ video. The one based on the title, obviously, but also that first sentence. What to do? I could include both or just add a link here for the latter one. Lea Salonga, of course, because she is queen. I will brook no argument about this.
My mom is getting teary-eyed about going while I’m tamping down my glee as best as I can. It’s astounding that we have had such a different experience. Well, not really. My mom has always ‘forgotten’ the bad times or put a positive spin on them. How quickly she does it astounds me, though. When we had the darkest week in which I yelled at my father because he was yelling at her and making her cry, she wanted me to apologize to him (not for that, but for something related). She brought it up again a few days later that he was really hurt by what I had done (refused to let him tell my brother lies about what the fight was about), I lashed back, stung, about him shouting at me. She said I had shouted, too. I looked at her in amazement and said I shouted at him because he was yelling at HER (and she’s the one who brought the fight into the living room where I was), and she said, “Oh, right. I forgot about that.”
That’s the moment I knew that she was too far gone for reason. I’ve always known that she’s on his side, but that moment really told me all I needed to know. I had been defending her and she still somehow wanted it to be my fault. Or ‘both sides’. When in actuality, it was my father having a paranoid delusion that he was a slave of the family because we refused to let him drive (he really can’t) and that we were all keeping him here against his will. Which would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking insulting. My mother does everything for him and I’ve been helping when I can in the last two months.
When I was in my twenties and thirties, my mom badgered me to have kids every time we talked. When she visited, she brought it up every day. I wanted to scream every time she rattled on and on about how having babies was a woman’s duty or how precious being a mother was. I never said it to her, but she had a very fraught relationship with her mother and we were not close at all, despite her belief that we were (rose-colored glasses again). One good thing about turning forty was that she stopped talking about me having children, but then started saying I needed to get married so I’d have someone to take care of me when I’m old. Which, I mean….
That’s not a good reason to get married, period. Your partner may die before you do. You may divorce. They may decide they can’t take care of you. Etc. But, I was particularly incredulous that my mother would try to use that bullshit on me given that in her position, there is no way in hell my father would take care of her, even if he were able, which he’s not. When she had to have her shoulder surgery, he was worse than useless, in part because she was no longer able to cater to his every whim. The cognitive dissonance from her was incredible and it took all my strength not to point out her outrageous hypocrisy.
My recent trauma has clarified many things about my family. Not that I had any illusions about it, but if my dying twice and coming back twice couldn’t make a dent in the family dysfunction, well, nothing will. My parents are 82 and 79 and have honed their dynamic to a T. All their defenses are well-fortified and almost impenetrable. My mom will have brief moments of recognition, which makes it even more frustrating when she goes back to denying that anything is wrong.
I was having a chat with a Twitter friend about family abuse and the ramifications. He said something about the worst part is the hope that things will change, even when you KNOW they won’t. He’s right. I bring things up with my mother, knowing it won’t make a difference. And yet, there’s a small part of my brain, that six-year-old child who wished with all her might that she had a father who wasn’t a narcissistic asshole. Not that I knew that was what he was at the time. All I knew was that he didn’t care at all about me and would probably prefer I had never been born. I think he got married and had kids because that was what he was supposed to do. He never should have done either.
I have mentioned more than once that I’m grateful for being alive. I should be dead and having escaped that fate, I have to embrace my bonus days. That doesn’t mean everything else is magically better, however, and my family is one of them.
I have to keep a wall up the entire time I’m around my parents because there’s no knowing when the dysfunction is going to kick in. My mom said that it’s not like my father is bad all the time or even most of the time. I countered that the inconsistency was what made it worse. She knows as a therapist all about Pavlov and his findings. Giving the dog food every time he pressed the button or none of the times created an expectation of when he would (or wouldn’t) get a tread. But, rewarding him randomly made him the most anxious/eager because he never knew when he’d get the treat.
It’s the same with abuse. It’s the fact that you never know when it’s going to happen that is the worst part. When my mom said he wasn’t bad all the time or even most of the time, I said of course not. That’s classic abuse technique. No one is going to stick around if the abuser is consistently mean. It’s the good times that pull you in and make you think the abuser is going to change.
In the last two-and-a-half months, I’ve learned to do everything with one ear out for my father. Always being aware of where he is and calibrating his mood. Not that it matters because he can go from ok to nasty in a blink of an eye. My shoulders are rock hard from all the tension of waiting for the other shoe to fall. And if he gets upset for whatever reason, it can be hours before he gets over it. Or it might be seconds. Again, you just never know.
One incident that is seared in my brain goes like this. I was going outside for my morning constitutional. For whatever reason, my father chose to walk downstairs instead. Probably too cold. My mom had to choose which she was going to do. She started walking with me, but then went back to appease him. I finished my morning walk and when I got back ,the front door was locked (we leave it unlocked when we’re out on the morning walk). I pounded on the door until my father opened it to let me in. I told him he had locked the door while I was outside. I was angry. I said he had locked me out in a forceful tone.
Five minutes later, he came storming into the living room, his face thunderous as he demanded to know if I was saying he had locked me out on purpose.
Oh, wait. I know what happened. To back it up, he got mad at my mother at breakfast for reasons and refused to go out walking with us. When she asked why, he wouldn’t say, but added that Minna would know why because I was there and had seen it happen. Uh, no. I did know he was angry, but I didn’t know why. It turns out he was mad because my mom cleaned the table half an hour after he did. It was disrespectful and meant she thought he was worthless, apparently. Except when he cleans the table, he just swipes ineffectually at his own spot and nowhere else. She was wiping crumbs from her place across from him. So, yeah, I saw he was angry ,but I had no idea why because no sane person would take offense at that.
Anyway, that’s why he wouldn’t go out walking with us and ended up downstairs instead. My mom went out walking with me, but came back because she knew he was still smoldering at her. He went downstairs in the meantime to walk. I think I got this right. At any rate, after I got back in and told him what happened, he came into the living room, furious that I would imply he had locked me out on purpose. I hadn’t, but I did think it was possible because he gets petty when he’s mad.
Then he got confused about which door it was because we have two front doors and I check the weather by sticking my arm out the door we never used. So he thought I had gone out that door…and profit? No idea why he would think that when I was talking about the other door being locked (the one we actually use). He got so mad at me even thinking he had done it on purpose. But he also couldn’t remember that I had gone out that door and not the other one.
But, the point of that story is that I was the one who was wronged (by being locked out) and he still got pissed off because of a perceived slight. That’s just the way it goes with my father. And it doesn’t help that my mother takes his side more often than not. One day and a few hours until we leave for the airport. It cannot come soon enough for me.