I’ve been talking about family dysfunction and abuse in general. It’s difficult to talk about because in order to have a conversation about something, you need a common starting point. You have to have agreed upon boundaries as to what the conversation will entail. In discussing families and abuse, the person listening has to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of such things happening.
It makes such a difference. If you are someone from a happy and well-adjusted family who does not have any friends who have dysfunctional families, then that person, let’s call them Alex, may not be able to understand where I’m coming from. In the last post, I talked about how my mother has no boundaries, and what’s more, she feels that it’s her right as a mother to meddle with my brother and my relationship. I’ll get back to her later. For now, though, I want to talk about my father.
I have a story I tell about my father to indicate his narcissim. It’s the one about when I was a kid, I never got cold. We found out when I was a teenager that I had hyperthyroidism (Graves’ disease). That was why I never got cold. My father would say, “Put on a coat because I’m cold.” People either didn’t get what I was trying to emphasize (“Why are you mad at your parent for caring if you’re cold?”) or said I should do it to placate my father.
The first is vastly more common, and they don’t read/hear what I’m actually saying. My father doesn’t say, “Put on a coat because it’s cold.” He said, “Put on a a coat because I’m cold.” Meaning, beacuse he’s cold. Not beacuse I’m cold. It never occurred to him that I would feel differently than he would.
In addition, he came up with a different narartive of his own as to what happened. He said that he would tell me to put on a coat, and I would refuse because he didn’t ask nicely. That I wanted him to say ‘please’. That’s certainly possible that I threw that out there because knowing him, he probably ordered me to put on a coat rather than ask. However, that was never the main reason. The main reason was because I wasn’t fucking cold!
My sweet spot for temperature has changed in the past decade or so and especially since my medical crisis. I blame some of it on menopause. I actually get chills along with hot flashes (not at the same time). When I was younger, I used to play the game of seeing how far into winter while driving with the windows down. I used to make it to about -10F before giving in. Now, it’s around 0. So, yes, I’ve gotten less tolerant of cold, but my threshold is still much lower than most people’s. I love the cold. I thrive in the cold. I don’t truly come alive until it’s freezing. Anything over 60F, and I startt to get a bit cross. Going past 70F makes me irritated. If we hit 80F, I’m mad. Anything over 90F is a bih FUCK NO from me.
Telling people the story about my father in the truncated fashion makes people think I’m just a bitch. Or rather, that I’m exaggerating or that I’m being ungenerous. The latter might be true, but the former is not.But I can’t explain it in full in less that five minutes. Plus, we’re back to the point that if the other person I’m talking to doesn’t have any knowledge of how corrosive family dysfunction can be, they’re just going to discount what I’ve said.
I’m not saying that with rancor. This is just the way humans work. We simply cannot understand/feel/comprehend anybody else’s life no matter how hard we try. Some people can get close, but there will always be a gap because we are all different people. The thing that frustrates me is when people think that because they haven’t experienced something, it can’t be real.
Side note: I’m not dating cishet white men if I do date again. This is related to the last point; I promise. Over a decade ago, John Scalzi wrote a post about how being a white man was like playing a video game on easy mode. He got a lot of shit for it (and he’s a cishet white dude himself), but he’s right.
In addition, if Trump wins, it’ll be in a large part because of cishet white dudes. They have the least to lose if he gets elected, and they clearly don’t care about minorities in any way, shape or form.
Side note to the side note: K and I agree on almost everything. One of the rare arguments we’ve had was almost thirty years ago about me not wanting to date white dudes/being wary of them. She said it was discriminatory to assume that they would be the same (view me as submissive and expect me to serve them). I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t that all white dudes were liike that, but all the white dudes who would ask out an Asian woman (at that time, it was before Asian women were hot) were. As I said, it was before Asian women were considered exotic and hot so any white guy who would date outside his race did so because he was specifically drawn to Asian women. And, at that time, the ‘Asian women are submissive’ bullshit was so prevalent.
Side note to the side note to the side note: I don’t know why that stereotype has stubbornly lingered. Asian women are some of the strongest women I have ever met. Back in the day, we used to joke that when two Asian women ran into each other, they were either going to hate each other or be best friends.
I was frustrated because I was the one living my life as an Asian (then) woman. I knew why white dudes dated me, and it was the same to a T. I got dumped so many times for not being submissive enough.
Anyway. Now, I feel the gulf is just too wide. I need to make more queer friends in general, and I would prefer to date queer people. Queer people of color who are not on the binary. I need to date people who don’t make me feel like a complete weirdo, which is an ever-decreasing amount of people. Religion is fine as long as they don’t proselytize to me. Rather, some branches of religion are fine. I will not date a Republican, though. That’s nonnegotiable. In this day and age? No. There’s no good reason to be a Republican. Other than that, though, I’m open to most everything else. Except, oh right, the other thing I cited above.
More tomorrow.