Family dysfunction is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m 50 and still have to deal with the ramifications. The pandemic has really brought up the issues in part because Taiwan is going through a strict lockdown.
Side Note: It’s killing me how seriously Taiwan took one spreader. Granted, they are a landlocked country with many people and little space, but, my god. Back in the beginning, Taiwan took it very seriously. They have a culture of mask-wearing, anyway, so that wasn’t a hard sell. But, they heavily enforced it by fining the offenders and telling people to report their neighbors for not wearing their masks.
Now. This would not work in America for many reasons. One, it’s problematic to have people policing their neighbors–I should hope that is evident without me saying anything. In addition, Taiwan is tiny in comparison to the United States. Anyway, the result was that Taiwan did not have a case for several months. I want to say nine or ten, Then, they had a careless pilot who had Covid and went all over town in one night. That’s how they got their current breakout case. They went into immediately lockdown and were sternly warned about the consequences of breaking the regulations. They reached a high of 800 cases a day and now have had 0 cases for a few days this last week.
Here’s the problem. My father is an extreme extrovert who doesn’t exist without the attention of others. He can’t entertain himself and he’s used to others doing things for him. He was the president of a research company and had an EA who did everything for him, including printing out his emails so he could read them.
In addition, my mother has treated him like the most important person in the world ever since they got together, which was over fifty years ago. When I was a kid, there were things my brother and I weren’t supposed to tell our father because he couldn’t handle it. We were not supposed to upset him and he was the only one allowed to express any emotions.
My mother was not allowed to call him when he was not at home and he would not say when he was coming home. He got off work around 6 p.m. and would not come home until 10 p.m. or later. If my mother asked him about it, he would get mad and scream at her. They would argue with each other until my father would go completely silent. Then, he would remain silent for hours until he got over his pique.
I’m giving you this background before setting up the current problem. Treating my father this way for his whole life has really stunted his growth. He hasn’t had to self-soothe and now, he can’t. It doesn’t help that he has dementia that only makes his flaws worse. For example, he will only listen to something he wants to hear. If he’s not interested in what you’re saying, there is nothing you can do to prick his interest.
In addition, he thinks his beliefs are facts–and they’re all antiquated. He believes men should be men and women should be women–forget about nonbinary and genderqueer folks. They don’t exist in his world. Now, with the pandemic raging on and on in America, every fucking conversation, he has to say how he thought Americans were rational and logical. He also has to add how the rest of the world views America as the shining beacons of something or the other. Mind you, he’s been saying this forever even though he left because of racism–which he has conventionally forgotten–thirty years ago.
Most of the time, I just patiently explain that no, Americans are not logical and rational while fighting back the urge to scream about how we wouldn’t be 18 months deep into the pandemic if a sizeable minority of my fellow Americans weren’t such fucking idiots. But sometimes, I just cannot deal with it, not after dealing with said stupidity. It’s not just that he’s wrong about the facts, but that he so confidently states his opinion as if they are facts.
After the election, he was spouting some bullshit about how he was sure that Americans were going to accept the results because they were rational and reasonable. I said, no, they would not be reasonable and I was worried about a riot at the inauguration. He pooh-poohed him and I lost my temper at him because he has not lived here for thirty years. He said maybe an outsider’s perception was valuable and I said I had lived it and he hadn’t. Months later when the riot actually happened, he admitted to my mother that I had been right. She told me that and I was floored. Never in my life had he said that I was right or apologizing for being wrong.
That’s him all over, though. In our last conversation, he started off by saying he thought Americans were so logical and smart. I cannot tell you how much I HATE hearing him say that. This time, he got huffy and said he had lived in America and I reminded him that was thirty years ago. Also, his opinion was not right back then, either, and he was allowing time to make him forget how frustrated he was with the lack of progress in his career while he was here.
My mom, on the other hand, cannot stop complaining about him. She seems to think prefacing it by saying she’s not complaining absolves her from my edict not to complain about him. Listen. I would be fine with being a sympathetic ear (well, no, I wouldn’t, but I could bear it better) if it was part of her laying out a plan in which she actually did something about the situation. Complaining about it is not doing something productive, by the way. It was just a way of offloading the emotional heft to me. She’s not going to leave him and she’s not going to hire someone to help her care for him and more to the point, I’m tired of hearing about it. She chose this path fifty-plus years ago and has refused to deter herself from it. That’s the martyr side of her that is one of her least-attractive traits. She needs to feel needed and as much as my father disparages her, he also needs her. He can’t do anything for himself and if my mother left him, well, he’d probably just con another woman into doing everything for him–probably his mistress.
I can’t do anything about any of that. Intellectually, I know it, but it’s hard not to get sucked in. A band around my head starts crushing my temples any time my mom starts talking to me about him. And, he will come up in every conversation, for many many minutes. Intellectually, I know I’m not responsible for her feelings and emotions. Emotionally, she’s groomed me for it since I was eleven. That’s nearly forty years of indoctrination that is really hard to break free from.
It makes me angry. It makes me snappish. Again, I know that I should just gray rock her and make sympathetic noises when she describes for the millionth time how he took offense at something miniscule and blew up at her about it. How surprised she was at how angry he got. How she was just trying to help. It’s a cycle that will never get broken and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. Yes, I see how my behavior with her mimics her behavior with him. Yes, I know I am enabling her by listening to her endlessly complain about him. Yes, I know that I can’t make her do what I think is best for her. And yet….
I get stuck on the shoulds. She should not be bringing this shit to me. She should not be making me responsible for her emotions. I should not have to listen to her rawest pains about her marriage with my father. He should not be a massive asshole, but that one is especially moot.
By the way, I don’t think this is my mother’s intention, but she has widened the gap between me and my father. I want to make clear that we were never close for a variety of reasons, but hearing how he’s mistreated my mother certainly didn’t help. I’ve said before, but I’ll say it again. My father is my father and I don’t expect him to change. My mother is the more difficult one because I expect more from her.
I know I have to do better because the only person I can change is myself. That is easier said than done.