Ok. It’s Thursday. For some reason, I thought it was Friday (which it’ll be when this is posted), but it’s not. Time is weird and time is strange. I got more than eight hours of sleep last nigt, which is good because my sleep has been spotty for the past few days. We’re coming up on the last few days of the year, which is putting me in a pensive mood. Not pensive because pensive has a tinge of negativity to it. The dictionary definition is:
Engaged in, involving, or reflecting deep or serious thought.
It does not sound negative at all so I don’t know why I assumed that. So, yes, I’m pensive. Again, not in a negative way, but in a “It’s the end of the year and time to think about the next year” way.
In the last post, I wrote about the desultory things that I might want to do next year. Actually, it’s more ramblings, which is so me. There are a few actual goals that I have, so I want to talk about those in this post.
Let’s start with therapy. I wanted to find a group in which I could talk about what happened to me. I have written about the fact that such a group does not exist. I mean, I’m sure there are therapy groups for people who have had medical crises, but I cannot find one for someone who is in my position. I have found plenty for people who are caregivers or who have lost someone to a serious illness/disease/situation. I’m saying cardiac arrest or stroke. As I mentioned, most people who have had a cardiac arrest are dead. Most people who have had a stroke are impaired to some degree. They are not going to be up for group therapy for the most part. Me and John Fetterman to the contrary.
Now, I will say it out loud. The therapy I need is to deal with my family. I have no remaining issues from my medical crisis. I have completely recovered from that and the few little negative ramifications ain’t no big thing.
I am grateful and I am lucky. I acknowledge this every day that I am alive. I am thankful for each bonus day. I marvel at life because I should be dead. That said, now that I’ve had a year to adjust to my re-livening, it’s time to set some goals.
Back to therapy. I need to come to grips with the fact that my parents don’t love me as a person. That’s the one huge negative that arose from my medical crisis. It underscored to me how much I as a person did not matter to them. Or rather, how narcissistic my father was and how much my mother enabled that (while also being a narcissist in her own right).
My father telling me that I didn’t understand how hard it had been (my medical crisis) for him and my mother was the icing on the shitshow cake. That plus my mother insisting on the second day I was home that I had to show my father a Taiji stretch for his bad back because he was is such pain.
Let that sink in. The person who died twice, was stuffed to the gills with drugs, and was recovering from non-COVID-related walking pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and an ischemic stroke had to give a shit about the guy with a bad back. When I demurred, she pushed me until I gave in because that’s how she do. That’s how I do as well, execpt in the case of really serious issues like having children.
She has attempted to guilt me into continuing to be her confidante by dragging culture into it. Meaning, she likes to say it’s Taiwanese culture for children to support their parents in this matter. Which, even if it’s true, I’m American. Also, I don’t want to do it. Both these things should be just as valid as her namechecking Taiwanese culture. Also, there should be something in it for me since relationships ideally have mutual benefits. I get nothing from having her dump her bullshit on me. Nothing at all.
In addition, she has the audacity to say she hopes she’s not dumping on me while moaning ad nauseam about my father. That’s what pushed me over the edge, by the way. It wasn’t enough that she dumped her shit on me and refused to stop doing so. She had to try to make it seem like that wasn’t what she was doing and she was giving lip service to not wanting to burden me.
It’s adding fucking insult to injury. Do not piss in my face and tell me it’s rain. Her saying she hoped she wasn’t dumping on me was more for her bruised ego than for me. I finally exploded at her and told her she WAS dumping on me and that she needed to stop saying that. She was unhappy with me pointing that out, but I could not take it any longer.
I have a darkness inside of me that once pushed too far, I burned down all the bridges. Burned them down? Hell, I packed them with C4 and lit the multiple fuses. In the case of my mother, I could not tolerate being made to agree to her gaslighting of me. It was bad enough that she dumped her shit on me and made noises about not wanting to do it. Saying she hoped she wasn’t dumping on me was her way of trying to get me to say she wasn’t and to make her feel better about herself.
I told her, “You ARE dumping on me. I’ve told you that you are. Several times. Why are you now saying you hope you’re not?” She tried to object, but I kept raising my voice until I was simply talking over her. I can project when I want to, and I would not let her shut me down. I put as much heat and anger in my voice as I could, and if it were a physical force, she would have literally been incinerated.
She paused and said, “But I need you. I need you to listen. I have no one else.” She didn’t even try to deny that she was dumping on me; she just tried to justify it. That was when I knew for sure that she knew what she was doing; she just didn’t care. Her need to dump on me was more important than my need not to be dumped on. She didn’t care that it hurt me or that I should not be privy to the inner workings of her marriage to my father. That is not normal, no matter how much she wants to pretend it is. Granted, there is some form of–you know what? No. I’m not going to make excuses for her. Yes, he has dementia, but there is nothing I can do about it from thousands of miles away.
It’s hard. If we had a healthy relationship, I would want to support my mother. I assume that’s what you do in a healthy relationship. But beacuse she just takes and takes and dumps and dumps, I don’t know what a healthy amount of listening is.
What I currently do is listen to her moan for twenty minutes to a half hour. I try to limit myself to saynig, “Uh huh” and “That sucks” at the appropriate intervals without really paying attention. In other words, I try to brush her off without her realizing I’m brushing her off. I don’t care what she’s actually saying–I just want to get through it as quickly as possible.
She’s 80. She’s not going to change. It’s up to me to just, well, tolerate it. It’s not feasible to think she’s going to change. I mean, it’s not impossible even at her age, but you have to want to change before you can actually change. My mother is invested in not changing a damn thing, so it’s up to me just to grit my teeth and let her do her thing.
This is getting long once again. More tomorrow.