I’m back with even more musing about lying. Here’s yesterday’s post on the subject, and about a sprinkling about other things, too.
I talked to my mother earlier tonight, and I was hyper-aware of how she was lying to herself. My father has dementia. My mother knows this and tries to get my father to accept it. That’s good! On the other hand, though, she still holds out hope that my father will get better. Many things she does to/for my father (like massaging his head) are with the intent of making him better.
I’m not guessing this, by the way. She’s flat out stated it. She told me about recent meds that seem promising for reversing dementia. The problem is that they only seem to work with people in the early stages of dementia, and they are very recent. we can’t really know how effective they will turn out to be in the end.
I tried to keep my mouth shut, but I am constitutionally unable to not give my opinion if pressed hard enough, apparently. Not that my mother was asking for my opinion, but she would not stop talking about this miracle drug.
Here’s the thing. I learned, from her, ironically, that giving up false hope can bring you great peace. In my case, it was truly laying down the rope (the hope?) between us. I spend so many decades hoping against hope that there was some way to have a relationship with her. Not even a good one, but one at all.
At some point after my medical crisis, I realized this was never going to happen. Not that it was impossible to happen (in theory), but taht my mother was not ever going to be capable of it.
Side note: She thanked me several times tonight for listening to her. She’s called me her therapist, which I do not like at all. And she’s talked about all these friends of hers who suddenly stopped talking to her. She has no idea why! Which is her lying to herself, but it’s not something I can point out to her.
I also didn’t feel like I could snap back that I really had no choice but to listen to her. Well, I did, but it was a drastic choice. It would mean not talking to her at all. One thing about my mother is that she will push her way until she gets it, and I am not made of strong stuff.
I feel compassion for her as an older person who is on the last leg of her journey here on earth. I feel sorry for her because she has a really rough road ahead of her. I would not wish it on anyone to be the caretaker of someone with dementia. I wish she had gotten into therapy much earlier because maybe these later years would have been easier for her. Not easy because of the dementia thing, but easier.
But I can only feel that for her when I don’t think of her as my mother. If I allow that familial lens to slip over my eyes, then I feel angry. My mother has never supported me in any way other than monetarily. She always shot down everything I wanted to do or things that were important to me, and she tried her damnedest to mold me into what she deemed the perfect woman.
That was her lying to herself, and it made me very confused for decades. Not about who I was, but about why she wouldn’t shut up about it. No lie, she nagged me for fifteen years to have children. She believed it was the most important thing for a woman to do, and she said it didn’t matter that I did not want them.
That fucked me up for far too long. I knew I did not want children by the time I was twenty. I knew it with a certainty in my heart that I have not felt about anything else. I was so elated when I realized I did not have to have children. My mom hounding me about it made me angry, upset, and repulsed. And hurt. She would not let it go no matter how many times I shut it down, and it changed me fundamentally.
That was the first time I truly realized that my mother did not have my best interests at heart. She may have thought she did, but I doubt even that. She’s too steeped in tradition and trying to be the best woman that she can be as defined by first-half 1900s Taiwanese culture.
It took me even longer to realize that despite all her vocalization of what a real woman should be/do, she did not fit most of it herself. That was another way in which she lied to herself. She wore her hair short (mostly because my brother pulled it a lot when he was a kid); didn’t wear much makeup; and liked to play sports. Mainly ping-pong and tennis. But also softball.
She hates cooking and cleaning and sewing, even though she did all of those things dutifully. Her cooking was uninspired at best, and I just thought it was because she had to cook Taiwanese food for my father and American food for my brother and me.
I don’t like any of that, either. Not cooking, nor cleaning, nor sewing. Not because they are feminine arts, but because they just don’t interest me. My mother has lied all her life about herself and about me.
Now that she is on her last journey, I can’t help but have emotions about what a different life she colud have had if she had dealt with her shit earlier in her life. I can’t blame her exactly for her twenties as we’re all fucked up then. But the fact that she stubbornly refused to get help after that, and she was a psychologist herself, that really spins me around.
I can’t say I’ve done much better myself. A little better because I at least realize my shit is fucked up and how it’s fucked up. And, since I started Taiji, I’ve become better able at dealing with it. Back when I was in my twenties, I was mired in it, and I was frustrated as hell because I couldn’t think my way out of my problems. As my then-therapist told me, “Thinking is what got you into this; it’s not going to get you out.”
It’s one of the dangers of being super-smart–relying on it too much and thinking it’s the answer to everything.
That’s all for now. Maybe more tomorrow.