I've been dreaming of my parents a lot. Almost nightly. Most of the dreams are conflict - with them or with extended family. I think I've always associated them with conflict. I think I've always associated the word "family" with "conflict."
I read online that if you dream about someone a lot, it's because there is unresolved shit there. Clearly there is, and I know that. I'm not sure why it's all coming up now - I think the move and changes have been triggering. I think texting my brother about them and getting no response has been triggering.Taking the actual step to block my mom has been triggering. I wish she would have just left me alone.
The hard part is I know that she's hurting over this, but I don't particularly care. I was forced to care about her feelings so much that I don't have any of it left. When I think of my childhood, so many moments flood my mind about the things she did. Events like when she caught me watching Maury, the ipecac syrup, the walking trail, when I asked if she was jealous of me, when she barged in my room when I was talking to my boyfriend, when she made me tell my new friends I had never been on a date, when she got up in my face and screamed at me... I can hear the sounds of her wailing sobs. I can hear the disdain when she would be critical of me. I can remember the thousands of rules that I had to follow and how little freedom I got. I would fantasize about the smallest of abilities to have a normal life. I was so devastated when I didn't get to go to prom, and I'm sure they would not have really let me anyway. All I wanted was a couple friends. I wanted a little freedom. I wanted to feel normal. Maybe I wouldn't have actually felt that way, but I wanted the chance.
My mom acted crazy. Literally crazy. And because she wasn't wailing on us every moment, it was considered "better," but she must have known, right? When I'm a bad mom, I know. I feel it. I know it's happening. She must have felt that. She just always cut off everything that made her feel uncomfortable. She would push it away and reject it - a thought, an experience, her own child. I still feel panic about crowded public spaces because of how she reacted - not even because of my own discomfort.
Do I have guilt about her? I don't really know... I think you always feel guilt about not living up to what someone else wants or expects. I think you always have guilt when you don't fulfill a role you're told is important to fulfill. But I know my mom should have created her own life. She could have. She was on the precipice of it for years, and then holed up in the house as soon as she had the chance in life. She chose to be lazy. She should not have been selfish and had kids. She knew she was a mess. She knew she had issues - she had to have known. She struggled to have kids, and she forced it. She stayed home to be a mom and then did a shitty job. She fed us crap, she didn't raise us to be active physically, she was sedentary and depressed, and justified every terrible decision and action. She made me do everything all the time.
Sometimes in restaurants there will be someone who is just like BAD at it. They're a server for like a million years, and somehow they never get any better. They're not good with people, they don't make a lot of money, they call out a lot or give up a lot of shifts, they have a bad work ethic, they aren't a part of the team, but they're ok enough that they don't get fired. I think of my mom and motherhood like this. She did a passable job in that child protective would never be involved, but she wasn't good at it, and she should not have been doing it alone like she was. Once I heard a server say something to the effect of, "I have a basic crappy job, and I'm not even good at doing it." That's my mom. Being a mom is basic. It's not rocket science. It's how humanity continues. It's not the hardest job, and maybe she wasn't the worst at it, because she wouldn't get fired, but she wasn't good at it. She wasn't good at a pretty easy thing, but she made it her whole life. She made herself our whole lives. How incredibly selfish.
I feel badly about telling my dad the things I did. I think I only feel badly because I know I was supposed to take the secrets to my grave. I have seen my own behavior in the past where I would say or act like I was a better mom in some moment to my husband, knowing my child couldn't tell on me. Yeah, we went to the park, but we didn't. I would rush to clean or change his clothes at the last minute before my husband got home. I would say I'm doing things I'm not. But with her, it was constant. Daily. She pretended that we were taken care of every single day. We weren't. I wanted my dad to see the reality, but he didn't. I just made myself look like a bad person. I just outed her, and now she gets to play the victim more. I'm ungrateful and rebellious eternally. I cemented that narrative. Do I regret that? I don't think so. It happened. I think things happen as they are supposed to, genuinely. I think there were a couple moments in the conversation when he grasped things at least a little. I know there were a lot of moments he rejected. I think he doesn't grasp how hard it was to say those things. He thinks I said them to be selfish. I didn't. I didn't want to expose the secrets, but he wouldn't leave me alone. If he hadn't asked why, I would not have had to answer. If he would have kept his head in the sand where he buried it, I would not have had to force him to choose. I pushed the narrative and set a standard I know neither of them can reach. Don't even apply for this job - you don't meet the qualifications. It feels cruel, but I don't see another path out. If someone keeps coming to the office and applying, but you know you'll never hire them, don't you just tell them at some point to stop wasting their energy? At least now he stopped calling. He realizes it's dangerous to the narrative to talk to me. His house of cards will blow away in the breeze of my words.
I know my dad must be sad. He worked his whole life to build a family. And it didn't work. He thought it was working. He thought he was doing a good job. I think in my own experiences, I have learned from this. Yes, I am giving everything I can to my family in life, but I'm not going to force anything that isn't working. If my kids don't want anything to do with me, or if my marriage starts to go south, or if things blow up financially, I will just let it be. If I end up alone, so be it. If I can't do any of the things I want to do, I will find other things to do. My parents forced things. They should have gotten divorced so many times. They should not have had kids. They should not have taken on so much of the responsibility of raising us alone without any qualifications to do so. You listened to my first grade teacher? The one who was morbidly obese to the point she could only wear mumus who lived in a trailer with a shit marriage and an anxious daughter who worked at a shit-ass little private school? The woman with a bachelor's degree that for some reason had such bad boundaries that I remember going to her house? You listened to her because she said what you wanted to hear. She gave you an option for a life where you got to function less instead of pushing yourself to function more. You were involved at my school. You drove a car daily. You went places and let me go places. 4 years later, that had been completely erased. You stopped pushing yourself and let yourself sit in a pile of your own shit. You were miserable and kept telling yourself the experts didn't know anything. My dad scoffing at what I said about my mom shows their attitude. There are no experts if the expert says something you don't agree with. Bury your head if you hear something you don't like the sound of. Say no and walk away.
To acknowledge that I am NOT the bad guy, my dad would have to acknowledge that he made bad choices. But isn't that his MO? Isn't that the narrative of his life? He makes bad choices "except mom," but that's not even true. He just makes bad choices. Do I make good ones, I wonder? I wonder if my dad is happy. I wonder if he ever has been. I know things don't make you happy. But I can't imagine ever just living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere with no friends or hobbies or family or anything except your wife who criticizes you makes him happy. He's had so many chances to pick something other than her and never did. It's a little crazy, to be honest. He couldn't see that she was fucking up? He had to have. In the ipecac moment, he knew. In several moments I can remember, he would know the situation was fucked up, but he would allow it. He wouldn't take his power. He would never say no. He might gently push back, but he would even sound powerless in those moments. To communicate disagreement was a sin punishable by tantrum. It's weird, because from my outside perspective, I could see that when he pushed back, it did sink in. She might act crazy in the moment, but he would have gotten his way in the end. We weren't forced to drink the syrup... But he wasn't aware of this power. He would choose every single time to allow it. To ignore. To avoid the blow-up. If you're sitting in the passenger seat, and the car starts to veer off the road, isn't it your instinct to grab the wheel?
The memory I have of my dad putting my mom in a choke-hold until she coughed up blood makes more sense as an adult. He wanted to show her in that moment that she didn't have all the power. He could fuck her up if he really wanted to. But he didn't express it properly. It should not have been a choke hold. It should have been a fucking boundary about something - money, time, decision-making. If he had chosen a better way of communicating things, it would have put her in the position of the bad guy she really was. The choke hold made her the victim. He again made a bad choice. Then he has to grovel and beg and she gets to threaten to leave. Also, why the fuck were we around for all that? We were almost forced to be involved. I remember the next day all of us sitting on the couch together processing the DV. Like, what the fuck... Why did it happen with me in the room at the age of 11 in the first place, and why was I forced to be involved in the aftermath conversation? What was I supposed to learn or gain? Didn't they realize this kind of trauma is what hurt them in their own families? Why didn't they want to protect me from it? Instead there was a "we don't hide things from our kids" mantra. WHY NOT? They hid us from the real world - the thing we actually needed to be able to handle - instead? It makes no sense.
I don't think I'm resentful of the big things. But I have some small resentments still - nothing major, but there are moments. I want my toys. I want my dolls and happy meal toys and things that she made me leave at home. I want my wedding dress. When she said she was going to drop things off, I was so excited, and it was all just garbage. It was so disappointing. I wanted my things. MY things. Now no one knows my address, and no one will be able to give them to me anyway. I contemplate all the time buying new toys online - bitsy bears and polly pockets and the like. I feel like it's frivolous and unnecessary. I tell myself I'll get the things back in the end anyway. They can't live forever.
But my grandmother seems to be living forever. She's another one I have guilt about. I wonder what it will be like when she does die. I don't think I can go to her funeral. I think I'm the bad guy if I do and the bad guy if I don't, so why bother putting myself through it? Plus my emotional reaction is going to be, "good riddance," so I wouldn't want someone like that at my funeral. I don't think I could go to my brother's wedding if he had one at this point either. I don't think I can be a part of that family in any way. I really don't want to.
I wish I had the money to just send to my grandmother. I know when she showed up at my house, it came from a selfish place. I know her letter came from a selfish place. I keep thinking about her, "I think you can send me at least $100 a month." Ironically, I don't have that much. I could if I scraped and saved, but I don't want to do that. I want to spend $80 on my husband and not worry. I know it's bad not to have paid her. I honestly thought I would be in a different financial position by now. I thought maybe she would have died by now. I know it's something I want to do, but I can't bring myself to make it a priority - it seems like it would be a luxury to be able to send her the money. It's always on my long-term list, but life has made me poor since birth. Who knows if that list will ever happen. I wish I could say she never did anything for me. I wish I had known then what I know now about money and credit and the strings. I wish I would have known that her "gifts" in undergrad were not that. I would not have chosen this. And the most annoying part is I think I was talked into it by my parents more than anything. It was never that my grandmother discussed these things with me - it was always that I got a call from my dad. In trying to do what they wanted me to do in life, I got some shit deals. The financial stuff with grandma, the Pontiac, the major in undergrad, the entire Ag experience, student newspaper... The things they told me would be good for me that should have been my choice but weren't and actually made me miserable is a pretty long list. When I listened to myself in life, I was always happier, but I had to fight for that to be the case every time.
Do I have guilt about Clara? No. I really don't. I think she's a dumb bitch. All she cares about is herself and feeding her own ego. She's the same as my grandmother, only she never did literally anything for me in life. Her or her husband. Even when directly asked. I asked Charles for two things in life - to play the piano for me and to compliment my hair as a kid. He didn't do either. He's a fucking asshole. They think ego and alcoholism are personalities.
Ok I think that's good for now.
