I have more to say about family dysfunction, dating, points of view, and other things related. In the last post, I was saying what was my deal-breaker in dating someone. It’s not race, religion, or gender (to a certain extent). It’s political affiliation, specifically being a Republican. That can expand more widely into cishet white dudes because there are so many layers of privilege going on that it tires me just to think of it.
I want to say up front. This is not saying that all cishet white dudes, some of my best friends are cishet white dudes, blah blah blah. But. I just don’t have the heart for it any longer. Trying to relate to them, I mean. I think everyone should be treated with decency and respect, yes. That doesn’t mean I need to give everyone a chance in the dating world.
Side note: This is something I firmly believe–you don’t have to date anyone you don’t want to date. I don’t think it’s cool if someone is prejudiced against, say, black people, I think it’s perfectly legit not to date them. More to the point, it’s a service to black people to not date them if you aren’t attracted to them because who wants someone dating them out of pity/guilt? I had white women who felt they should date me to show how progressive they were, and believe it or not, I was not turned on by that. At all.
Here’s my point. Everyone looks at things from their own point of view. The trick is to realize that other people don’t necessarily think the way you do. And, if you want to be advanced, you could try to imagine where the other person was coming from.
This is the problem in describing abuse. There is just no way to give the complete context other people need in order to understand what has happened. Each individual instance may not be a big deal in and of itself, but oftentimes, it’s the death of a thousand paper cuts.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I often give the example of my father telling me to put on a jacket because he’s cold when I was a kid. To me, it’s a snapshot of my father’s narcissism, but many people overlook the structure of the sentence and assume I had said/typed, “My father would tell me to put on a coat when it was cold.” It’s not the fact that he told me to put on a coat when it was cold outside–it’s the fact that he told me to put a coat on because he was cold. Not because I was cold, oh no. That did not matter one whit. It did not occur to him that maybe I did not feel the way he did.
Believe me, I know how that sounds. In isolation, one could shrug one’s shoulders and say that it wasn’t a big thing. Except he said it every time. And never remembered that I didn’t get cold. And just expected me to do as I was told.Some would probably say that he wsa doing his fatherly duty. And it would not be worth my time or energy to try to explain it further.
Here’s the thing. I’m always keenly aware that my family is fucked up and that a lot of other people don’t have that experience. There are people who, upon hearing my story, will immediately pick up what I’m putting down. The reason I mentioned it at Ask A Manager was because people were sharing stories about their narcissistic parents who would do the same thing or something similar.
Any time I dip into narcissistic parents on Reddit (which isn’t often), it’s depressing how similar the stories are. It’s also not something Iwant to bond over. When I was in college, I had an eating disorder (sometimes two). I had a junior counselor who had also struggled with an eating disorder. She was Indian so we had that in common, too, (being Asian women (in my case, female-presenting)). We talked often about what we did to not eat, to hide the fact that we were binging/puring, etc. On the one hand, it was comforting to have someone I could commiserate with. On the other, we kind of egged each other on. It become more like telling war stories than anything else.
It’s the same with any kind of trauma. It’s helpful to talk about it if you move through it. If you’re just rehashing what happened, though, at some point, it becomes worse for your brain. I’m not sure why this is, but that’s the way it goes.
Back to family dysfunction.
I really don’t know what to do now that my father’s dementia is getting worse. In Taiwan, it’s considered a moral failing to have dementia (at least according to my mother) rathen than a medical condition. My mother feels she needs to hide it from people, wihch means she’s isolated. The one time she tried to tell a friend from church, that friend ran and told my father. He, in turn, blew up at my mother.
I don’t know how much of tha story is true. I know my mother believes it happened the way she told me the story, but I also know that she sees things the way she wants to see them. She also can’t tell a lie–or so she claims. It’s more that she won’t. Or at least the distinction is immaterial.
I keep thinking about my tragedy (not the medical crisis. What happened to me in February of this year). I knew she would tell my father the minute I told her, and I could not handle his reaction on top of my own emotions. If I had told my mother even a month after it happened and had to deal with her reaction (and my father’s), I would have completed fallen apart.
I say this because I’m trying to emphasize that I know they won’t change. I know who they are and what will happen. Since I know they won’t change, I have to do what I need to do in order to protect myself. When K admitted that she thought I had overreacted in the first place, I couldn’t even be mad. I know how it sounds from the outside–even to a close friend.
I’ts why I keep this shit to myself or only share with people who also have similar experiences. I’ve learned that lesson the hardway.