Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Family

How dementia ruins everything, part two

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I know that I can only change myself. I mention that because I’ve been musing about family and getting frustrated with my parents. Different reasons for each one, but frustration just the same. I don’t bring any of it to my father because he can’t help how he is (dementia), and it’s just how he was before, but worse. Actually, that’s the hardest part. He’s hitting me in all my sensitive spots, but I have to just remind myself that he’s not himself. But he is. But he isn’t. Before I get to that, here’s yesterday’s post.

Here’s the problem. My father before his dementia was a selfish, or rather, self-absorbed person who never thought of anyone else. He was also deeply sexist and said sexist shit to me all the time. Here are some brief examples. He was always scolding me for not putting on a jacket when he was cold. He never asked if I were cold, which I rarely was. Now, one of the things he asks about often is the weather. And he gets stuck in the loop of being concerned that I’m cold.

In general, he doesn’t think women can do anything for themselves. Or rather, that’s what he tells himself even while my mother does everything around the house. This was even before his dementia, by the way. He’s been like this all my life. I know it’s a self-protective mechanism, but it’s so ugly and distasteful.

Fortunately, the explicit sexist shit does not show up, but it does rear its ugly head in sly ways. Such as, him repeatedly asking me how I get places. He knows (or knew) that I drive, but he has somehow forgotten that. To be fair, I can’t say that’s for sure a sexist thing, but it certainly feels like it. Also, his harping on my health might be because of the medical crisis, but I have a hunch it’s more a neg than anything else.

That’s the problem with my father–past behavior has shown me not to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know who he was in the past, and it’s hard not to apply that to the present. But he’s not resonsible in the present for…how do I put this? He’s not of sound mind (dunno about body). So he’s not trying to be offensive on purpose, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a quick flash of ‘not this shit again’.

However. The cruelty of the dementia has far outranked the impatience I feel when he hits one of my buttons. It’s really sad what’s happening to him and since I only talk to him for five minutes (at most ten) at a time, I can deal with the bullshit that comes with it.


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The cruelty of dementia only intensifies

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I intended to write a post about dementia, which I still will. However, today on Ask A Manager, there was a post from a man who is in the same industry as his well-known (and well-loved) father. The letter writer (LW) is estranged from his father, and he wrote in because they are both up for prominent awards in different categories. People seem to assume they’re in entertainment, which does make sense. Anyway, the LW did not want to take any pics with his father (which he feared the organizers would want for marketing/promo reasons), and he wanted a diplomatic way to tell the organizers that he didn’t want to be seated at a table with his father, either. I learned in the comments that Angelina Jolie’s children are speaking out about how awful Brad Pitt is (some are his biological children and some are not). I am not surprised by it, but it just brought out a feeling of profound sadness as did reading the comments.

So many people with abusive parents with whom they were either estranged or low-contact. In a weird way, it was comforting to know I wasn’t the only one. Also, to see a steady stream of ‘it’s not your problem’ as to the question about what to do in this situation (in response to managing the father’s emotions or other people’s reactions to the situation.

It’s hard. It’s isolating. It’s lonely. Having very dysfunctional parents, I mean. In my case, it’s tempered by the fact that my father has dementia–which is just getting worse by the day. I talk to my parents on the average of once every other week or so, but during the trying times, my mom has been known to call me several days in a row.

I have accepted that I am her therapist/emotional support person. I do what I can to not let it bring me down, but I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that I heave a small sigh of weariness as soon as I hear her voice. Not to mention a constriction in my chest. I have to put up a shield as best I can and not let it get to me too much.

Side note: I gave up on my parents being parents to me a long time ago. I never expected it from my father because he has never been a good parent. In fact, I would say he hasn’t been a parent at all except monetarily. He once hounded me to know if I was grateful for the money he had spent on me/given to me, and  I was in a very rebellious state at the time (mid-twenties), full of seething resentment over so many things. I was so very angry, and I was not having any of his shit. This is me saynig that I was a brat at the time .I will fully acknowledge that I was not at my best.

However, with his next line, he destroyed any illusion that he wanted to be my father. Or rather, that he knew what being a father meant. He looked at me with such hatred in his eyes and said, “Why should I love you then?”

And with that, I saw him for who he really was. There was no way to hide the man behind the curtain any longer. I mean, I knew before then that he did not love me and that he never really wanted to be a father, but it was unspoken and merely felt. See, in our family, we don’t say that shit out loud.


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I keep my mouth shut

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So I’m continuing on with my musings about family dysfunction, how difficult it is to be so different, and how I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. And, yes, I’m going to tie them together somehow (or not). I’m not too fussed either way. In the last post, I talked about family dysfunction mostly. I will touch more on that, but I want to start by musing about masking. I didn’t even realize to what extent I did it until I talked about it with A. It’s such a part of me by now, it takes conscious effort to take it off.

I am on my guard almost any time I interact with someone, online or in the real world. I am constantly monitoring the temperature around me to know if what I am saynig in acceptable or not. In the Discord I’m in, there’s an in-group and an out-group. Or rather, there are a few (cishet white) guys who are pretty dominant and others fall in line behind them. It’s not deliberate and they don’t mean to be, but god grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man.

Not that they are mediocre, but they are cishet white dudes who have no problem just stating their opinions like they’re facts. It’s really irritating when it comes to pop culture because I don’t feel that there’s room for disagreement. For example. Sekiro. Many people consider it the best From game ever. People will blather about how once it clicks, it’s like a dance/rhythm game and soooooo easy. They don’t want to hear anything about it not being true for everyone. Or that for some of us, it never clicked. I had a hard time finishing it once–a really fucking hard time. When I tried to go back to it after my medical crisis, I could not beat Owl (Father) who was my nemesis, and who I needed to beat again, unfortunately, for the plat. I say unfortunately because I did him on my first playthrough, thinking I would not play again and wanting to do all the bosses on this path. The only reason I would go back is to do the plat, and that would mean doing him again.

No. Not going to do it. Also, cannot do Isshin again. Oh, and you have to do all the bosses (the ones you get a trophy for) on one save, so I would have to do Owl (Father) on NG?. And then do the Shura (bad) ending on NG++? Nope. I wasn’t going to do it, anyway, and now, I can’t do it.

That’s a word that Americans don’t like: can’t. We have been told since we were kids that we can do anything! We can be anything! It’s horseshit. Everyone has limitations, and that’s not even remotely controversial. Or it shouldn’t be.


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Try to see it from my point of view

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I have more to say about family dysfunction, dating, points of view, and other things related. In the last post, I was saying what was my deal-breaker in dating someone. It’s not race, religion, or gender (to a certain extent). It’s political affiliation, specifically being a Republican. That can expand more widely into cishet white dudes because there are so many layers of privilege going on that it tires me just to think of it.

I want to say up front. This is not saying that all cishet white dudes, some of my best friends are cishet white dudes, blah blah blah. But. I just don’t have the heart for it any longer. Trying to relate to them, I mean. I think everyone should be treated with decency and respect, yes. That doesn’t mean I need to give everyone a chance in the dating world.

Side note: This is something I firmly believe–you don’t have to date anyone you don’t want to date. I don’t think it’s cool if someone is prejudiced against, say, black people, I think it’s perfectly legit not to date them. More to the point, it’s a service to black people to not date them if you aren’t attracted to them because who wants someone dating them out of pity/guilt? I had white women who felt they should date me to show how progressive they were, and believe it or not, I was not turned on by that. At all.

Here’s my point. Everyone looks at things from their own point of view. The trick is to realize that other people don’t necessarily think the way you do. And, if you want to be advanced, you could try to imagine where the other person was coming from.

This is the problem in describing abuse. There is just no way to give the complete context other people need in order to understand what has happened. Each individual instance may not be a big deal in and of itself, but oftentimes, it’s the death of a thousand paper cuts.


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Differing vantage points

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I’ve been talking about family dysfunction and abuse in general. It’s difficult to talk about because in order to have a conversation about something, you need  a common starting point. You have to have agreed upon boundaries as to what the conversation will entail. In discussing families and abuse, the person listening has to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of such things happening.

It makes such a difference. If you are someone from a  happy and well-adjusted family who does not have any friends who have dysfunctional families, then that person, let’s call them Alex, may not be able to understand where I’m coming from. In the last post, I talked about how my mother has no boundaries, and what’s more, she feels that it’s her right as a mother to meddle with my brother and my relationship. I’ll get back to her later. For now, though, I want to talk about my father.

I have a story I tell about my father to indicate his narcissim. It’s the one about when I was a kid, I never got cold. We found out when I was a teenager that I had hyperthyroidism (Graves’ disease). That was why I never got cold. My father would say, “Put on a coat because I’m cold.” People either didn’t get what I was trying to emphasize (“Why are you mad at your parent for caring if you’re cold?”) or said I should do it to placate my father.

The first is vastly more common, and they don’t read/hear what I’m actually saying. My father doesn’t say, “Put on a coat because it’s cold.” He said, “Put on a a coat because I’m cold.” Meaning, beacuse he’s cold. Not beacuse I’m cold. It never occurred to him that I would feel differently than he would.

In addition, he came up with a different narartive of his own as to what happened. He said that he would tell me to put on a coat, and I would refuse because he didn’t ask nicely. That I wanted him to say ‘please’. That’s certainly possible that I threw that out there because knowing him, he probably ordered me to put on a coat rather than ask. However, that was never the main reason. The main reason was because I wasn’t fucking cold!


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Dyfunction dysfunction, what’s your function?

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One thing rarely talked about when discussing abuse is how coping mechanisms that have been developed to deal with the abuse are faulty in healthy situations. It’s something that comes up on Ask A Manager on a regular basis because she talks about how being in a toxic work environment can warp you to what is ok and what isn’t. The wildest example I can think of is the letter writer who bit a coworker and in the update, said it was considered ok by her colleagues because the guy is a jerk. The LW’s conclusion was that people with normal jobs found them boring and hated it, so, yeah, her work environment was toxic, but, hey, at least it was interesting. Many commenters pointed out that the LW was getting warped by the toxic environment.

I bring this up because abuse does the same. In the last post, I mentioned that I was resigned to managing my parents because they weren’t going to change. The way I deal with them, though, is not something that would work well with healthy people. Basically, I just placate them and get through a conversation as painlessly as possible. I keep it as surface-y as possible as well. The goal is to not say anything of importance unless I absolutely have to.

You can imagine how this would not work well with people I actually want to be close to. You can’t shine off a friend and expect them to be happy about it. A true friend, I mean. Not just an acquaintance. When the tragedy happened in February, I told my close friends about it. I was devastated and needed the comfort/support. I would not think about holding back with them, which is the normal and healthy way to deal with it.

The longer you’ve been in an abusive situation, the harder it is to recalibrate your thinking. I am low-contact with my parents, but it’s still enough contact to keep me off balance. I have a shield up around them that I can’t afford to let done. Explaining that to other people is futile.

I’ve said it before, but it’s a matter of context. For people who have loving parents, it’s nearly impossible to imagine parents who don’t love their children. Or rather, it might be imaginable, but it’s not something that can be understood if you haven’t been in the situation. Like anything else that is the outlier, really.


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The family dysfunction don’t stop

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I have mourned my entire life for the loss of a sense of family. Or rather, since I realized that my family was so fucked up. It started when I was in my twenties, but I was more intent on fighting against it back then. I was angry as fuck, and I didn’t know how to properly express it. Everything up to that point was a lie or told with such spin, it migcht as well be a lie. I was extremely angry at God (with a G) in my twenties, in part because of those lies. And by extension, at my parents, though that was not safe to voice.

Yesterday, I talked about the consequences of a lifetime of family dysfunction, and I want to explore it further today.

I feel like we all have definitive moments in which we can decide to change the way we are–or not. I hasten to add that most people don’t grab those moments by the horn–me included. It’s a fact of life that it takes a lot to consciously make a change. And, more importantly, to keep it up. I made the choice to try out Taiji over twenty years ago. My first teacher was a horror show, and I gave up after close to a year. I didn’t try again for several years. When I did, I hated it at first (as I did during my first try at it0. Why did I stick it out? Because I’m stubborn and because I needed something to back up my swagger.

Another time was when I moved to the East Bay to attend grad school for a year. That was a bad decision in retrospect, but at least I got something out of it. Would I have done it if I had the chance to make the choice over again? No. Life doesn’t work that way, though.

Side note: My brother has said more than once that he had no regrets–meaning he would not change anything about his life. I get the reason why (it’s made him who he is and he’s where he is today because of it), but I could not disagree more. I have so many regrets about my life, and I would have changed them in a heartbeat.

My parents, though, have not changed hardly at all in all the time I’ve known them. Well, not in a positive way, anyway. If anything, they are more conservative now than ever, and they are acting as if they were in the 1970s. It does not surprise me, but it makes me cringe. Fortunately, I do not have to be around them in public because I would just not deal with it well.


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How deep is the dysfunction

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One of the hardest things about knowing people who are deeply flawed is that it’s difficult to convey the flaws without sounding unhinged. Because other people don’t have the proper context to absorb what you are telling them. For example, I had a horrible personal tragedy in February of last year. I told my friends and selected members of my family, but I most emphatically did not tell my parents. Why? Because I knew they would make it all about them and not about me. How did I know this? Because this is what they’ve done all my life.

I finally told them in July or August. That was enough time for me to gather the inner resources needed to deal with my parents. The next time my mother brought it up, I was able to tell her the news. I told her it had been several months, but she still reacted as if I had punched her in the face. She asked why I hadn’t told her earlier and sounded so hurt. That’s normal. I don’t blame her for that reaction. But, then, I told her she did not need to tell my father and probably shouldn’t because it would just upset him. And, selfishly, if he was upset, it would mean that he would pass the upset to me. We hung up and not five minutes later, she called back. She had told my father and he was extremely upset.

He dumped his upset all over me and then said that we should pray together. I can’t tell him I don’t pray because he would not understand it so I said that he could pray. He gave the phone to my mother and insisted that she pray right then and there on the phone. My brain disconnected as my mother prayed and I went to my safe place in my mind so I wouldn’t either explode at my mother or slam the phone down in rage.

Back story: I don’t pray. I am not a Christian and have not been one for decades. I don’t believe in prayer and I still have some bitterness over the whole thing. In general, if people don’t shove it in my face then I’m fine with it. This was shoving it in my face and it was for them, not me. My mother knows I don’t pray and yet, she did it anyway because my father wanted it.

Speculation: My mother told my father in part so she could pray at me. She knows I don’t pray, but she doesn’t like it. She has claimed that she could not lie to my father, but this wasn’t even lying. She simply had to keep her damn mouth shut–which she can’t/won’t do. As I was listening to my mother pray, I was completely numb. It’s not an ideal way of dealing with the situation, but it was the least-harmful.

I told K about it, and she could not believe it. She admitted that when I told her I had put off telling my mother about my tragedy, she (K) thought I was being…not hyperbolic, but exaggerating or overreacting. Not in a negative way, but more that she wanted to think my mother would be a reasonable human being about it. K added, “But you were right.”

Yeah, I was. Because I know my mother. In fact, her resoponse was actually more muted than I had expected. But, a few weeks later, my brother told me that my mother had called him and told him to check in on me because of the tragedy. My mother said I said it happened a month ago. Which, I did not. I didn’t tell her it was in February, but I did say several months. My mother hears what she wants to hear.


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Not fit for polite society

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I’m back to talk about being a weirdo. Here was my last post on it. I was listening to MPR on the way to and home from Cubs (I’ve gotten into Lactaid cottage cheese and lentil chips lately), and the topic was on having kids in the current US climate. The hypothesis was that people in their twenties and thirties were much more hesitant to have kids for reasons outside of themselves than in the past. I was interested in this because as someone who does not have children and never wanted them, I feel like society is still very child-heavy in general.

There were a few comments from people on the reasons why they chose not to have kids (or were waffling on them). The two who were played on the show said they were concerned about bringing children into this world. The first, a man, said that he wondered about bringing a daughter into a society that was increasingly limiting choice and the second, a woman, said she could not bring a child into a world that sanctioned genocide.

The section on the way howe was talking with a woman about the shift in society about having children in general. She was in her early thirties (I think) and was seven months pregnant. She said that it felt like society had shifted much more to ‘don’t have children unless you’re absolutely sure you want them/can raise them right’. She said in the past, if you were on the fence, it was more, ‘have them and deal with whatever comes up. It’ll be fine.’

My immediate thought was that the former was the correct way to think and why the hell would you want the latter to be the norm? I have always believed that it’s better to really think about why you want to have children than just to have them because you think you should.

The woman went on to say that in her circle, no one was having children so it was isolating. I’m not discounting any of that because I don’t have any reason to think that’s not true in her circle. However, her broader assertions about society in general made me skeptical. To my eye, it looked like the pressure to have children, especially on young women, was the same as before. Then again, she wasn’t exactly contradicting that–just that people were also expecting that you be in the ideal position to have children.

That I can believe. People are irrational at their core. I could see the mentality being, “Yes, you have to have children, but not until you ________________” (fill in the blank with ‘have been is a loving relationship for five years; enough money to use a day care center/nanny/au pair; have your career in a stable place, etc.”


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More about gaslighting in my family

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In my last post, I was talking about my mother and how she lies/deep-sixes uncomfortable/bad memories. The biggest example I have is from the last time she was here, and it has stuck in my mind as to how it brightly highlighted how my mother’s mind worked.

I was in the living room on my laptop when my mather came racing in the room, crying. My father was hot on her heels and screaming at her. He was accusing her of stealing his money, which was one of his recurring themes in his dementia. He lived in poverty when he was a kid, and my parents didn’t have much money when they f irst married. Like, really scrimping and saving, in addition to them sending money back home to my father’s family (but not my mother’s for sexist reasons).

Side note: my father has been weird about his money all his life. For the most part, he was stingy as he pinched a penny hard. It’s understandable, but he took it to extremes. And in very disaparate, disconnected ways. I have mused about it before, but he was very penny wise, pound foolish. He would gripe about two kiwis costing a dollar when he came to visit (apparently, it’s cheaper in Taiwan), but then he will spend a hundred dollars on a water pick for his teeth (this was decades ago).

Which, I get. We all have the things we will splurge on. For me, it was my last desktop (the computer I’m writing on right now). But at least I’m aware of my weak points. My father isn’t and never has.

Now that he’s in his dementia, I have to pretty much let it go. Let what go? The resentment, the expectations (as minimal as they were to begin with), and  any hope for an authentic relationship. I mean, to be honest, I did not have the last at all with my father–ever. At least since I was in my twenties. Instead, I have to practice taking my father as he is, which is where Taiji really helps out. It teaches me to be in the moment and just be.

Anyway. The fight. My father was shouting at my mother, and I unwisely put myself between them. Literally and metamophorically. Sometime in my thirties or forties, I looked at my father and realized that he could not hurt me physically. Emotionally, yes, but not physically. That helped psychologically in a way I can’t completely explain.

I stood between my father and my mother, and outshouted my father. I’m not proud of it, but it is, as the kids say, what it is. Sometimes you have to outbully a bully, and in that moment, he was bullying my mom. Again, it was about money and how she was stealing from him. Or maybe it was about his driver’s license and how we refused to give it to him. That latter was true, by the way. There was no way he should be driving, but he was very stubborn about it. My mother allowed him to beat her down (metaphorically) until she let him drive to Cubs for instance. She argued that it was so close, but it really doesn’t matter. That’s a spurious argument, but she could not say no to him.


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