I hate heat. I hate it so much. I live in Minnesota, which is known for its cold and snow, but our dirty little secret is that we have one or two really hot weeks every summer. Like over 100 degrees hot. Like, I am sitting in front of my fan with my AC going and I’m never leaving kind of hot. That was yesterday when it ‘felt like’ 107 degrees. It’s hard to comprehend that number, really.
I am not a hot person at all. More to the point, I’m not a moderate person, either. Heh. That could apply to many things about me, not just temperature. But for now, let’s stick to temp.
I’ve always hated heat since I was a little kid. My parents would tell me to put on a coat and I would always demure. My father thinks it’s amusing now to remind me how disobedient I was about not wearing a coat back then. He claimed I said it was because he didn’t ask me politely to do it, but just ordered me to do it.
That wasn’t it. I mean, that was probably part of it, but it wasn’t the main reason. The main reason I pushed back was because I wasn’t cold. Also, the way he would put it was, “Put on a coat because I feel cold.” Not because he thought I was cold, but because he was cold. He’s a raging narcissist so if he’s cold, of course, I am, too.
This was actually a stressor for me when my parents were home during my medical trauma. We went for a walk every morning, which I didn’t really want to do. Why? Because they had to criticize what I wore when we went. I don’t get cold. I have been dressing myself for decades.
I know how to layer and I know that I’ll get hot when I walk.
My mom started asking me every day if I was cold, or I must be cold, or wasn’t I cold? I calmly asked her not to do that one time when we were not on the walk. A reasonable request, I thought. She responded by saying she didn’t know how to talk to me at all. Which, what? I mean, I have told her since I was a kid that I don’t get cold. I. Do. Not. Get. Cold. This is a constant for me. I only get cold when I’m sick and even then, it’s very rare.
I don’t wear a coat except maybe twice a winter. I have all the accoutrements I need , including a sctarf/hood, gloves, and thremals. I’m not going to let myself freeze. I’ve lived in Minnesota all my life; I know how to deal with the winters. I do not need anyone telling me to put on gloves, a scarf, etc.
So when my mom refuses to accept my statement for what it is and instead makes it all about her hurt feelings, well that’s manipulative and a way to try to get around a reasonable boundary. Just like when I finally had to tell her in blunt terms that she could not mention my weight in any shape or form. No, not even under the guise of concern for my health (which it most emphatically is not). She did not take that well, just as she balked against me asking her not to ask me about being cold.
There are no reasonably boundaries to my parents, see. Anything about me is fair game to them. Nothing that happens to me is mine alone. Nothing made that clearer than my medical trauma. In a heated discussion about me having a roommate (NO), my father said, “You don’t know how hard it was for Mom and me”. Meaning when i was unconscious in the hospital.
Now. I want to say that I don’t doubt it was difficult for them. It has to be hard to watch your child be unconscious in the hospital. I’m not disputing this at all. However, it wasn’t as hard as what I went through, I can guarantee you that. 100%. There is something called the Ring Theory in psychology, and the basic premise is this: comfort in; dump out. To elaborate a bit, the person in crisis is in the center of the ring/circle. In this case, me. The next ring is for the people closest to me, which, reluctantly includes my parents. (I would not put them there myself, but I accept that they are there.).
Because the crisis happened to me, I can talk about it with anyone I want however I want (in a non-abusive way, of course. I just mean I can vent about it and pour out my emotions to whomever I choose). For the people in the next ring, they can talk about it to anyone in the outer rings to them, but not to me. Not saying they can’t talk about it with me, but they need to clear it with me first. That’s the basic premise. So in the case of my parents, they can get all the support they need from anyone who is not me. But venting about it to me is a no-go unless agree to it. Which I do not. Even if I did, I can guaran-goddamn-tee it that what they went through was not worse than what I went through.
I have said that I felt bad for them because emotionally, it was harder for them, but overall, it was not. I was the one who literally died twice and was unconscious for a week. I was not willing to hear it from my father, talking about how hard it was for him. Yes, he threw my mother in there, but that was just a veneer to make him look slightly better.
How the hell did I get here from ‘I hate heat’? Oh, right. Because of my parents’ life-long inability to recognize that I am different than they are and that I am not a child. Oh, and that I can dress and feed myself because I’ve been doing it for decades. Also, that I’m supremely happy not to be married and being childfree. Let’s add to that me being nontheistic and uninterested in anything remotely religious-related.
It still blows my mind that me being a cold person is still an issue with my parents. They act like they’d never heard it before even though I’ve been like this for my entire life. There has never been a time when I’ve liked the heat. I don’t know why this has to be such a big goddamn thing every goddamn time we meet. My mom doesn’t know how to talk to me? Well, the answer is not to repeatedly question the one thing you know about me. It took me weeks to realize that she was asking because she knew my father was upset about it, which just makes it more pathetic. That’s them not taking it seriously that I am an adult; I doubt that will ever change.