I was musing in the last post about my rebirthday and how it’s coming up. Well, that’s what I meant the post to be about, but I meandered into family dysfunction once again. Which isn’t as far a stretch as you might think, actually. I have spent decades unlearning the toxic things I’ve been taught by my mother.
I’ve talked about this before, but I gave up on my father very early on. I knew from the time I was eight or nine that he did not like being a father. At all. He never interacted with my brother and me willingly other than to tell us to do something. I can’t remember him ever smiling or being happy about anything. He only ate Taiwanese food and was very radical pro-independent Taiwan. I have no issue with the latter, but I had a hunch that he only felt that way beacuse it personally benefited him. Again, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing because no one wants to be oppressed. I’m just saying that he did nothing that didn’t have a personal benefit.
When I went to college, I became a psychology major. I learned about narcissism as a disorder (which no longer exists), and it clicked in my brain. I knew that was my father to a T even if I didn’t have the word for it. With him, it really is as simple as he never thought about anyone other than himself.
Because of this, it was actually easy to understand him. He was consistently self-centered and as long as I kept that in mind, I knew what to expect from him. Oh, and he was a raging misogynist as well. Plus racist/nationalistic, and every other kind of ist. I knew better than to tell him anything of importance. Also, my mother would often tell me not to tell him something or the other because he could not handle it–according to her.
This is classic triangulation, and she was queen of it. Did she honestly think he could not handle the fact that I was bi or that I got a tattoo? Probably. Was she right? Probably. However, in a functional family, it would be up to him to decide how he would react to that information. And to be honest, my mother did not react well to either. At all. So it was ironic that she displaced her discomfort on my father.
How uncomfortable was she? When I got my tat, she mostly pulled a long face and let it stay that way for the whole talk. She commanded me not to tell my father, but I can’t remember if she said anything else. It was clear that she was very displeased, though. I was twenty-two, and I still hadn’t grasped yet just how dysfunctional my family was. In a functional family, she would have voiced her displeasure, but then realize that it was my body and shrugged it off. She never had to actually accept it, but she could have at least been neutral.
That’s my biggest gripe. I didn’t expect her to be happy about any of the decisions I made (at least, by the time I was thirty, I theoretically knew better), but it would have been nice if she could have just kept her opinion to herself. State it once, yes. She has the right to her opinion–even about my life, I guess. But I also have the right to live my life the way I want to.
I am not exaggerating when I say that she badgered me to have kids from my 26th birthday until I turned 40. 15 years of unrelenting pressure to proreate because she had it set in her mind that a Real Woman had children. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want them–it was my duty to have children as a woman. She actually said that to me, and a part of me died inside.
That’s what my relationship with my mother has done to me. Before I knew how to protect myself–which, yes, I’ll give credit to Taiji. And therapy, too, but mostly Taiji, every time she chastized me for something or the other, a part of my soul would die. Not the small shit, but the bigger stuff. The first tattoo, me telling her I was bi (that was an unmitigated disaster. She asked me, “What’s next, animals?” I have no idea why queerphobic people go so quickly to animals, but it stung. She dealt with it the way she deals with everything she doesn’t like–pretending it doesn’t exist. When I mentioned something a few years later about being bi, she replied, “Oh, you still think you’re that?” Needless to say, she has not met anyone I’ve dated in the past few decade), me telling her I didn’t want children, me saying I had left the church (was never really a believer, but I was raised in an extremely rightwing Taiwanese American Evangelical church that hated girls/women), and me mentioning I didn’t want to get married.
I’m a slow learner. It took me until I was thirty-five or so before I stopped telling her important things. Or maybe forty. That’s when I finally realized that I should not tell her anything if I did not want my heart to continue to berak slowly and continuously. That’s when I finally accepted that he she would never ever get me. Or accept me. Or even acknowledge that I was my own person. I was supposed to be her clone–no, more to the point, I as supposed to be the perfect girl/woman that she herself could never achieve.
As a result, she does not know that I consider myself agender now. Or that I’m polyamorous (in theory. I haven’t dated in quite a while). Or that I feel tha I have two queertonic relationships as defined by me. Or that I don’t trust her to have my back–which is why I don’t tell her anything important. At least not until I can handle it emotionally. Because I know that no matter what, she will make what I tell her about her and/or my father. When I am in a fragile state, I can’t deal with it. I have to wait until I’m in a calmer state of mind (and my emotions are more under control) before I tell her so she can’t knock me on my ass once again.
I know that I have to finally let go of the maladaptive defense mechanisms I developed as a child. When you’re in a deeply dysfunctional family, you have to find ways to deal with the dysfunction. Those ways are rarely going to be healthy, and they are not going to serve you well once you get out of the family situation. Howeever, shedding those coping mechanisms once you’re out (or dealing with healthy people) isn’t easy. First of all, you have to realize they are maladaptive. That took me several decades. Then you have to have the wherewithal to actually deal with it.
It’s easy to say, “Oh, this is a maladaptive behavior. I should not do it.” It’s much harder to actually change said behavior.