Category: History

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My Sister’s Response

So, after I sent my second letter to my family, my sister responded.  (text posted below)

There are a lot of familiar things in her response.  There is the refusal to listen, the refusal to hear my side of things.  That is nothing new.  There is the continual defense of Mom, and the denigration of Dad, for EXACTLY the same behavior (#7).  Actually, reading that, it should come as no surprise at all that they can hold me accountable for what happened at both our parents’ deaths.  She, and they, have had a shitload of practice at that kind of cognitive dissonance.  It is just second nature.

In the course of a couple of years now of writing about this giant ball of shit — draft emails, real emails, and now blogging — I can’t help but notice that I often refer to the rest of my family as a sort of monolithic “THEY”.  I started thinking about whether this was fair to them, and whether I should try to separate out each person’s behavior instead.

I’ve decided that isn’t really appropriate, and here’s why.  I’ve noticed that all four of “them” have, on separate occasions, felt entirely free to speak for the others in this conflict.  My youngest brother, with his memorable lecture that included “No one holds it against you how you acted” when Dad died.  Joe insisting that “no one else has a problem” with Susan (when I know differently for a fact) — so of course the problem must be me.  My oldest brother emailing that The Triumvirate was brought up to be obedient, and they hold absolutely no resentment over what happened to the family around the circumstances of my birth – a sentiment echoed by my sister below, and one on which I call bullshit.  I don’t know a teenager in the world who would not be resentful about what happened.  Either they are lying, or they are saints.  And they are no saints, although they probably imagine themselves to be.

Information flows freely among the rest of the family:  I know for a fact that my sister has forwarded around emails that were written between me and her, as if to show everyone how hard she is trying, and how crazy and unreasonable I am.  This is classic character assassination and a common ploy of narcissists.

Last summer, after the email below, I received a package in the mail.  Apparently she “couldn’t help herself” to respond to my lack of response to her baiting in the email.  The package contained:

  • a slip of paper with three bible verse references on it – not the actual verses, mind you, just the references, presumably to make me look them up myself;
  • a bunch of pictures of me, my dad, and me and my dad — I am guessing this was some kind of purge, as she has always been fanatical about being The Keeper Of The Family Photos;
  • two printouts of emails that I sent OVER TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO, which mentioned (1) how much I had enjoyed some family get-together and (2) some indication of a belief in a hereafter — I imagine these were meant to show how wrong I am about not wanting to come to the reunions any more, and how wrong I am to be an atheist now;
  • Five notes that were written to me by my father, around the age of kindergarten, which refer to “cuddling” and so forth.

I admit these had me mystified — and angry.  Why did she have these?  And why had she kept them until now?  The answer to the first question is that she also made herself the Keeper Of All Mom’s Things.  These notes had to be in with Mom’s stuff.  So why these five notes?  I already have other, similar notes, that were in Dad’s stuff when he died.  The answer to that is, my mother tried to vilify the love between my father and me by suspecting there was something sexual about it.  These notes, the ones that mention physical affection, were her “proof” that there was something “dirty” going on.

and,

  • Not one fucking word written by my own fucking sister.

I wish I could remember just exactly what it was that one of her daughters said a couple of years ago that made me realize that her daughters are perfectly aware that their mother does not like me.

A couple of years ago, her husband offered to meet with us, to talk and try to get to grips with all this family bullshit — only it would have to be in another town, he said, which made me realize that he was not allowed to fly to where we live.  And a few months ago, I called him to ask some financial advice, only to find out that my sister has forbidden him to to call us.

And let’s not forget the part where she is systematically leaving us out of family events.  First it was my nephew’s graduation, which she then stupidly described in her Xmas newsletter — or was it deliberate?  Who knows?  I found out from that phone call to my BIL that I had a grand-nephew on the way, and two nephews getting married next year.  I’m not holding my breath about being invited to either of those, either.

Yes, my sister does in fact treat me like this.  She forwards my emails.  She forbids people to have contact with me.  She does shit to me that you would not do to, say, a neighbor or a member of a social group that you happen to belong to.

Yes, this is considered abusive behavior.

Some sister, huh?

And, there is my sister’s email response to my Declaration of Independence.

What I notice most about this email now is that there is a very strong “Us versus You” framework here.  And I now know it has always been there.

This is what I referred to when I said in my earliest writings that I felt like some kind of odd cousin at the reunions, rather than a sibling.  And when I later wrote that I had spent the early decades of my life trying to establish ties, to write more letters, to have relationships.  And when I wrote that I had hoped the reunions would finally be my chance to be a real part of this family.

This is what my husband referred to when he said that “They don’t know how to interact with you.”

This is what I referred to when I said that “[My sister] acts as though the family ends with [brother #4] and treats him as the baby of the family.”

And what my husband referred to when he wrote, “In 15 years that she & I have been married I have always been surprised by the awkwardness of interactions between her and her older siblings… what was startling to me was that I never saw her being treated as the baby of the family. I saw everyone acting and interacting like [brother #4] was the youngest child. It is like the group is [my sister, brother #1, brother #2, brother #4], oh and then her …. And the unspoken distance between [my sister] and her in particular seemed very large.”31 Tess Second Half

Yeah.  Tell me again, sis, that I’m imagining it.

And I’ll look at the family photo album you put together, where everyone else’s birth gets at least one full page, if not two, and mine gets second place on a page with as many pictures of [brother #4] playing in the snow as of me.  And where for every new addition to the family, there is a line of pictures with all 3, all 4, all 5 siblings in a row, on an equal footing — but not one with all 6.

Since she has no issues sharing what I write, I’ll return the favor.  This is her email in its entirety:

Some thoughts and observations, in no particular order:

(1) We know and understand that you had a different relationship with Dad than any of the rest of us.  We accept it and we’ve made our peace with it.  We don’t resent the fact (or you, personally), and we are not jealous. That’s just the way things were. (Although if anyone WERE to resent it, it would have to be [brother #4].)  We understand your deep feelings, although we don’t share them to the same degree.  I know you won’t believe this, but We ALL love Dad. However, you seem unable to come to grips with the fact that our relationships, however different from yours, were what they were — and our feelings are just as valid as yours.

(2) You really don’t know me, and you certainly don’t “get” me.  Therefore, I find it disturbing to have you ascribe motives, feelings, and reactions to me that are simply untrue. (And I find it even more disturbing when [your husband] does it, considering that he knows even less than you.)  We are poles apart, in years, lifestyle, and philosophy.  One huge difference, of course, is that you never had (or wanted) a family. We’ve always been in different “places” in life and thus have had different perspectives.  For example, in 1988, when you were starting your second year of college, I was 36, running a household and caring for a newborn and three other kids ages 2, 5 and 7.

(3) You have said at various times that you do not enjoy coming to the reunions, and that you have little or nothing in common with the rest of us.  Yet you seem to resent the fact that we enjoy each other’s company and are able to have a good time without you.  What’s up with that?

(4) When you “friended” me on FB the day before the reunion, I thought it odd, and my first instinct was to “unfriend” you immediately (considering the nasty things both you and [your husband] had to say about me after the last reunion; see #2.)  However, in the interest of keeping the lines of communication open, I did not.  Considering the comments you made on FB and #3, I have to wonder if it was morbid curiosity on your part?

[I have to point out that I did not “friend” her as she thinks — what I did was to accept HER friend request that had been hanging out there for a year or more.  She thinks I somehow “friended” her against her will.]

(5) You have mentioned being ignored at the last reunion.  I know that I specifically asked you about your knitting classes, and whether you were doing anything with the house.  In contrast, you did not ask me about ANYTHING — how difficult would it have been for you to say, When does school start for you? or, What are you teaching this year? or, How do you feel about being a grandmother?  It was interesting that the universal post-reunion comment last year was that [you] did not ask anybody anything about what they were doing — with the possible exception of [my nephew].

(6) What is the purpose of your email? Is it meant to restore sibling relationships?  Do you WANT a cordial relationship with any of your siblings?  What DO you want from us, if anything?  What is your vision of the ideal response to your email?

(7) If you had a bad relationship with Mom, please think about the fact that Dad certainly colored your opinion — and as a 6-,7-, or 8- year old, you would not have even been aware of it.

(8) One of my favorite t-shirt quotes:  I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.

(9) In the email exchange this last summer (which began, if you recall, with your questioning my veracity — before I had even a chance to reply!), I told you that there was no psychotic episode, and you told me that there HAD to be one, even though you did not have a shred of evidence for it!  If there were, don’t you think it would have at least come out in the custody hearing?

You have obviously been going through a bad time the last few years, and I do hope that you can find some peace.

Regards,

 

PS — I did not read your last email.  I got the “highlights” from others.  Please do not respond to this, (although you probably won’t be able to help yourself)  because I won’t read it, either.  Your emails dealing with family issues are disturbing, not to mention, rife with “inaccuracies.”  My intention is to give you some food for thought, or fodder for the next session with your therapist.

 

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The History, Part 6 – The Start of the Healing

My second letter to my siblings was written after a year of therapy — the therapy that I was oh-so-condescendingly told I needed.

 

Dear siblings:

At least three of you told me last year that I needed to go see a therapist, so that I can “get over my problems”.

So, I did go see a therapist. With Tracy’s help, I figured out a few things and I have a much clearer understanding of how and why some events transpired as they did. On what is more-or-less the anniversary of the email that I sent last year after the family reunion, I think that after a year’s worth of work, it is time that I share what I’ve learned. I don’t know if it will be at all helpful to any of you, but I feel it is only fitting that I should share the fruits of your own suggestion with you.

The type of therapist I worked with focuses on exploring patterns of thinking, and the beliefs that direct these thoughts. Brothers and sisters often have shared childhood experiences and memories and beliefs. Some of you have those strong commonalities, especially the Triumvirate of [my sister, brother #1, and brother #2]. While we have the same parents, and we do share some history, we do not have those shared experiences. Birth order, circumstance, and decisions made by others — some of them decisions that were bad for the family — have meant that I am functionally an only child. Most of you grew up in a “strict father” family. (James Dobson is a proponent of this parenting style. Mom loved him.) I grew up in a “nurturing parent” family. My beliefs were formed at different times, under different conditions, and for the most part, my beliefs are not very similar to those of the rest of the family. However, this does not automatically mean that my beliefs are wrong. They are just different from yours.

 

Foremost in this family, as far as I can tell, is the belief that I call, “Mom was a saint and Dad was a bastard.” My corresponding belief is pretty much the opposite. For me, what is true is that Dad was a dependable, loving parent, and Mom was uncaring towards me and didn’t put much effort into being a mother.

I think this difference in our beliefs creates a tension that underlies almost everything else, and it is probably what sets me up to be treated as a second-class family member. My therapist says it is a common problem in families where siblings had different experiences of the parents, but in this family, it is magnified a thousand-fold, due to a couple of major things: Mom’s illness, and The Divorce.

My belief deserves as much respect as your belief. I have respected your collective belief, insofar as I can without compromising my own, but my belief has never gotten the same respect from you. I have never once insisted that “Mom was a lousy mother” in anyone’s experience but mine. By contrast, [Brother 4] felt perfectly entitled to insist to me last year that “You have to admit Dad was a lousy father”.

The facts that I know, the documentation I have collected, and what I experienced contradict that collective belief. I know what kind of a relationship Mom and I had, and it was far more like the relationships that she had with [my sister]’s kids — distant and unconcerned — rather than anything approaching a motherly one. After The Divorce, when I would go to her apartment, what I remember most is she had me do her dishes, clean her fridge, do her laundry and her vacuuming. I do not remember very many times we went anywhere or did anything fun. The activities I can remember with her were centered around church: things like CCD classes, where I was in a classroom and I didn’t actually spend time with her at all.

For years I used to say I didn’t have a mother, so much as a sort of aunt. I was cognizant of this even at the age of six, when we minor kids were asked by the lawyer to choose which parent we would live with. Reading what the lawyer wrote about the reasons I gave for choosing Dad, it is apparent that I was entirely aware that Mom did not do things for me that mothers normally do. The lawyer’s own observations about Mom, from his interview with her, back this up.

I don’t think the older siblings realize that this is how things were for me/us. They were out of the house by then and not looking back. The ideas expressed during the recorded conversation that Mom’s neglect wasn’t actually bad enough for her to lose custody, or that the legal system had to be compromised somehow for that to happen, indicate that pretty clearly.

But Dad took on the job of a single father when he didn’t have to. He could easily have found another job, moved away, remarried, started over with a new wife and family. Instead, he chose not to abandon the younger kids to Mom’s haphazard parenting, but he gets no credit for this choice.

Within the past few years, I have tried to find out as much as I can about the period of time when I was born, and the years afterwards, and I thank those of you who have contributed to that knowledge. Unfortunately, I will probably never know why Mom checked out, apparently on just me. Apparently she was able to have loving relationships with everyone else, including [brother #4] (whose childhood was in the same timeframe, i.e. both before and after her illness and The Divorce).

It is hard to imagine what a baby could do to “deserve” such indifference from her mother. Thus I assume that whatever the reason was, it had to do with Mom or the circumstances, not with me as such. Presumably it takes an awful lot to break such a naturally strong bond as that between mother and child. I do not believe divorce would change how a mother feels about only one of her children. I have wondered if it was because as an infant, my mother completely disappeared twice during my first year of life, we were separated for a month each time, and that is what damaged our relationship. I have wondered if it had anything to do with the electroshock treatments, which can apparently have that effect, in rare cases. There is some evidence that post-partum depression can cause mothers to ignore their babies, and Dad alluded to some evidence of physical neglect, to the point where I had diaper rash so badly I was bleeding. But, I will never know for sure, unless anyone has any more pertinent information that they have so far withheld.

 

A second, related belief, is the collective belief that “Mom is never to blame.” What is more truthful is that Mom was excellent at deflecting blame onto other people. This behavior is not uncommon. I have a diagram from my therapist that spells out this, as well as several other unhealthy effects of low self-esteem.

Dad was her main target, of course. Once she and he were no longer together, The Divorce became her favorite excuse. At the time of Joe and Susan’s wedding, when [my husband] had the talk with Mom, calling her on the carpet about the hurtful things she was saying to me, Mom managed to blame even THAT on “You don’t know what their father did to me.” She would not take responsibility for her own hurtful words, spoken to me in conversations between the two of us, twenty years after The Divorce. The things she said to me were Dad’s fault, somehow. How does that even make sense? When looked at factually, the behavior defies logic.

Another blaming example, from when I was in kindergarten: At Open House, we drew life-sized portraits of ourselves, and we had to dictate a few lines about our families to the principal’s secretary, who typed them up on cards. The descriptions were posted next to each of our portraits. Mine said something like, “My parents fight a lot and my mother prays a lot.”

I don’t remember Dad’s reaction, but I remember Mom was horrified and embarrassed, and she placed the blame on me for not knowing that I should not have said those things. That was when I got labeled as a “big mouth”.

I have been ashamed of that incident for most of my life. I believed what I was told: that it was my fault, and I should have known better than to say those things, when asked to talk about my family. Six years old, but it was my fault. I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong just by telling the truth — but from Mom I got the blame, I internalized it, and it caused me shame and guilt for years. However, looking back on it with adult eyes, I can see where the blame should have gone: to the secretary, and maybe the teacher, if she knew what that card said. Certainly there were adults involved who should have had better judgment than to post that for all to see.

Realizing, as an adult, just how screwed up this was and why, made the guilt and shame just vanish, instantly and completely. This example shows exactly how this kind of therapy is supposed to work: revisiting things that happened in the past, but with adult knowledge and empathy, in order to understand what really happened, and possibly what should have happened, and placing responsibility for the outcome where it truly belongs. (HINT: It’s generally not reasonable to shift blame onto a baby, nor a six-year-old.)

Part of the success of the blame-deflecting technique lies in choosing on whom it will be easiest to deflect the blame. If Mom had complained to the principal, or the teacher, she would have had a fight on her hands. But the defenseless little girl was a perfect target. Multiply that shame x 6 years x 365 days and watch a child crumble under that guilt, and I have an inkling as to maybe why Dad came to the decision to divorce Mom.

Another good example is Mom’s words upon seeing the picture of herself that [my sister] mentioned in the recorded conversation: “Look what your father did to me.” I could accept, “Look what happened to me” or even “Look what having that baby, after I was told by the doctors not to have any more children, did to me.”  But “Look what your father did to me”? How is that all Dad’s fault, exactly? Mom is the one who decided to not have the recommended hysterectomy. I could more easily accept, “I should never have had that baby,” because at least that would acknowledge that she made a choice that was ultimately destructive to herself and to the family.

The blame-deflection technique is an effective one, and it has worked in this family for decades. But it is very destructive to people and to relationships. Also, as a side effect of this continual blame deflection, there is a very strong habit in this family: when there is a problem, the very first thing everyone does is decide who is to blame, whose fault it is. No one says, “I’m sorry your feelings were hurt.” Instead it is, “It was YOUR fault!” or, “YOU MADE ME do it!”

And, conveniently, if one can blame someone else for the problem, one has no responsibility to try to fix it.

If these ideas make you angry, let me point out that we do not get angry when someone makes an obviously invalid challenge to our beliefs. We don’t get angry when someone says something absurd. We get angry when we are afraid the challenge might be valid.

“If someone pointed at your hair, claimed it was green, and then started to laugh out loud at how silly you looked would you feel hurt? Probably not. (I’m assuming that your hair is a more natural color than green.) When you know your hair is not green you would know this person is just being silly, on drugs, or having problems with their vision. You know the issue is with their perception… It only hurts if we believe… ”

I have always been a little puzzled as to why [my sister] was devastated (her word) to be told that “Your mother doesn’t love you.” Even at the same age, if someone had tried to tell me that “Your father doesn’t love you,” I would have laughed at the very idea. I might have been angry at them for trying to lie to me, but the statement itself wouldn’t have had the power to hurt me. In a similar vein, [brother #1] considered Mom’s psychologists to be quacks, and did not want to believe what they were saying. But he couldn’t just completely discredit them because Mom was manifestly sick and hospitalized. So his reaction was to be angry at them.

 

A third belief in this family seems to be, “We all have to agree on everything, or else there is a problem, and the problem lies with the one who disagrees.” At one point, Tracy asked me, “So, you aren’t allowed to have your own opinions?” What immediately came out of my mouth was, “Oh, I can HAVE them, I just can’t say them out loud.”

Case in point: my “discussion” with [brother #4] last year about sexual harassment in the workplace. Looking back, I realize now that the question he asked, “Why is something as innocuous as that in a book of things you can’t say at work?” was not really a serious question. What it was, was an invitation to agree with him. He was not open to viewpoints other than his own. So when I tried to explain my own, personal experiences to him — experiences that were painful and difficult for me — my story was not met with concern and empathy for my experiences, or a willingness to listen to or consider another point of view. Instead I was literally told by [brother #4] that I should not have said what I said, or done what I did — presumably because it did not conform to his own beliefs. Even later on, in emails, he suggested that the real problem was not that sexual harassment exists, and affects women negatively, but instead that I had “given up too easily”.

This mentality is actually a hallmark of the conservative worldview, in which the “other” is the enemy. Anything different is bad, suspicious, and met with criticism and ridicule. (As I suspect this letter will be.) But this crab-bucket mentality basically guarantees that things will never change (i.e. will remain “safe”, at least for some people). I’ve actually had people in this family tell me, “Well, I agree with you, but don’t tell (X) or (Y) I said that.” How screwed up is that? To be seen to agree with me openly is some sort of controversial stance? Apparently so.

 

All this leads me to a fourth family belief. With the first three beliefs operating, the only way to reconcile them with a person who has different beliefs is to conclude that the other person must be “wrong”. The word “wrong” here could mean stupid, untrustworthy, ignorant, or a host of other negative interpretations. I think the most accurate one in this case is “[She] is not one of us.”

The Susan Incident is the icing on top of that cake, but the cake was definitely already there. However, it takes one more belief to turn The Susan Incident into the issue it has become. The additional belief is that Susan is never wrong. It has been easily accepted and incorporated into this family because it has exactly the same form, and works on exactly the same blame-deflecting principles, as Mom is never to blame. And it means that I am not going to be allowed to be right about this, even though I am.

Once again, let’s look at the facts: I did exactly three things that night and day when Dad died.

  1. I politely asked Susan to take her cheerful conversation into another room, so I wouldn’t be hearing her laughter as I sat beside my dead father. She refused to do as I asked.
  2. I tried to talk to Joe about that refusal the next day, in the kitchen, just between us.
  3. When Susan burst into the kitchen and the two of them stood there yelling right in my face, I fled the house in shock and bewilderment.

No one can honestly say that any of my actions were wrong, or unreasonable, or overreacting. Except that they did. To take just one example, Joe has used loaded words like “emotional over-reaction” to describe my simple request of Susan to leave the room.

Everything else that happened, happened because of Joe and Susan’s actions, not mine. Once I was gone, those events, which were witnessed by no one else, were deliberately presented to the rest of the family in such a way as to put me wholly in the wrong, by people who have a vested interest in making sure it is seen that way. Joe and Susan’s explanation was accepted by everyone else, without anyone ever once talking to me about what happened, or even being willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Of course, if “[She] is not one of us”, no one will bother to defend an outsider against a person who shifts blame onto her.

Joe has written that “my problem” is that I think I am completely innocent of blame in this conflict. Of course, that happens to be exactly the position that he and Susan have taken for themselves. In their case it is not “their problem” but simply the way things manifestly are, as though Susan has a god-given monopoly on being right in any conflict — even the ones she manufactures, as this one. There was no criticism of Susan in my request that she converse in another room, but she decided to see it that way.

I would like someone to explain to me how it is logical or fair that if I think I am right, that is a problem — but if they think they are right, that is just because they are right. It is an intriguing set-up that makes it impossible for me to even make a start on telling my side of the story.

Joe discredited the hospice nurse’s empathetic apology to me by saying “as for the hospice nurse, there are all kinds of reasons her apology might appear more “heartfelt” – for one, she could lose her job if you complained to her organization, and she doesn’t have any history of the family and personalities involved, either.”

Sooo… one has to have knowledge of the family history and personalities before one can come to the “right” conclusion? Interesting. No more evidence is needed to see that this whole issue has been entirely biased by beliefs, as opposed to being thoughtfully judged on what actually happened. This is unfair, because those beliefs amount to a set-up.

If I have a problem with The Susan Incident, it is that this family is perfectly fine with heaping all the blame on me without hearing my side of the story, no one wants to “get involved” with what is obviously “my problem”, and I am supposed to “just get over it”. I am certain this is why I was told to go to therapy, because everyone assumed the professional would be on their side and would also tell me to “just get over it”.

Well, the therapist didn’t tell me that. She told me that I am absolutely right. I did nothing unreasonable. Susan’s behavior at Dad’s deathbed was disrespectful to me. She and Joe treated me horribly, with no justification for it. And the rest of the family has let them do it. These are simply facts.

I am certain that the next move will be to try to discredit my therapist. I am equally certain that if I had reported that my therapist had told me to “just get over it”, there would be no such argument and she would be considered to be extremely creditable. So I think we can skip that obvious ploy, yes?

My behavior at Mom’s death has been brought up as an additional example of my supposed wrongdoing. A remark I made to [brother #4] at that time was taken to be extremely insensitive. Joe considers that it was “disparaging and disrespectful” and “completely disregarding the feelings of others that had a better relationship.”

Well, in terms of what Susan did when Dad died, I couldn’t have put it better myself. She ignored what I clearly and politely asked her to do. If that isn’t “complete disregard of the feelings of others that had a better relationship” with Dad, then I don’t know what is.

But when Susan did it, she “did nothing wrong”. And when I did it, it was completely wrong.

Susan had a conversation at Dad’s death, I found the content upsetting, and asked her to take it elsewhere. That is me overreacting, and I am the one at fault for that. When I say something at Mom’s death, and [brother #4] finds that upsetting, he is not overreacting. His angry, upset reaction is perfectly acceptable. I am at fault for that conflict, too.

The two events are equivalent, yet somehow people manage to believe I am at fault in BOTH of these situations. How does this happen? By letting beliefs take precedence over the actual facts. One side of the story is left out, the facts are manipulated to suit the other side’s views, the logical contradiction is simply ignored.

It is obvious to me that the outcome is predetermined. In some minds, I am going to be wrong, no matter what, no matter how the facts have to be distorted in order to make that happen. No matter if I have a professional therapist backing me up, even. Some excuse will be cooked up to explain why I STILL can’t possibly be right about this. If that is not true, then tell me what I would have to do — no, wait, that’s what I did. Forget it. I am done with jumping through the hoops. [I am] clearly in the wrong, because Susan can’t be.

Tracy pointed out, “You aren’t even allowed to defend yourself.” If I try, I get shouted down — literally, as by Joe and Susan — and I will not forget Susan actually bending down in order to shout more directly into my face that horrible day — or as by [brother #4] on the walk to the lake last year — or figuratively, as in the various hateful emails that were sent. All of these things were done to try to shut me up, to silence my attempts at self-defense.

Or, I am just ignored. I am supposed to sit here and “get over it”.

People have nit-picked to death what I said and did, in an effort to judge whether I actually had any right to be upset, and decided I didn’t. I could point out several logical fallacies in the emails that have gone around, but there isn’t any point because apparently, the facts are not what matter here. The message is loud and clear: Mom was worth grieving over. Mom was worth getting upset over. Dad wasn’t. Because, of course, Dad was a bastard.

Except that he was my father, and he loved me, and I loved him. I miss him and I have no one to share in my grief for him. I’m sorry that the rest of you didn’t have as good a relationship with him as I did, but that is not my fault. I didn’t have as good a relationship with Mom as you all did, but I don’t hold that against any of you. I put the responsibility for that on Mom, where it belongs.

Attachment_Theory_Attachment_Avoidance

So where does this leave us? On this diagram, replace the word “partner” with the word “family”. The triggering condition was of course Dad’s death. I was expecting support from my family at this horrible, stressful time and everywhere I turned, I got a very negative response. It was traumatic for me. Most of this was a direct result of Joe and Susan’s actions. I had no one willing and able to defend and protect me from those hurtful actions. Certainly over the years it has become clear to me that I can give up on getting a positive response of any kind from at least half of the family. So, we are at “Distancing.”

If you believe that my role ought to be to put up and shut up for the sake of the family, then I can only ask why on earth should I do that? I am not the one who created this conflict. It is obvious that what most of the family has been willing to do for me in all this is a big fat nothing.

Certainly that option would be MUCH more comfortable for a big chunk of the family, but it sucks for me. I’ve tried it.

I have had to come to terms with the fact that the family I wish I had, is not the family I have. [Brother #4] has commented to the effect that this is my fault for being distant — note, this is blaming me again. (It is AMAZING how well that crutch works!)

At rock bottom, I think it has been a mistake to pretend to include me as part of a family that I do not think I have ever really been considered a part of. [My husband] and I are simply not in the club, and I think I never have been, other than to be expected to attend certain family events to complete the set. This distance goes back decades, far beyond our parents’ deaths and The Susan Incident. I can remember in my twenties and thirties, every single year I made resolutions about making regular phone calls and writing more letters, to try to bridge the gap that has simply always been there. The ties we have are not of affection, just genealogy. It was obvious to [my husband] from the first reunions that I am treated oddly, especially by my sister. [My sister] acts as though the family ends with [brother #4] and treats him as the baby of the family. No one calls or emails us just to say “hi” and see how we are doing. I don’t expect anyone will ever get on a plane for one of my milestone birthdays, as I have done several times for others. In the thirteen years we have lived here, we have had three visits from my family. And two of those were from [brother #2 and his wife], who had additional reasons to make those trips besides seeing us.

It is not me who needs to reach out to try to get back in everyone’s good graces, as a penalty for something that I didn’t even do. I have seen the therapist that I was told I needed to see, and came away with my knowledge reinforced that none of this is my fault, or of my doing. I am writing this letter to communicate that knowledge to you, and as part of the process of making peace with the whole situation for myself. Any effort to repair any relationships worth saving will have to come from someone besides me. This is not just my opinion, but also that of other people who actually care about me and my well-being: my husband, my true friends, and a professional, to boot.

I hoped that the Chicago reunions were going to provide the opportunity for me to finally be an accepted part of this family. I should have known better at the very first one, when I reached out to Joe and Susan beforehand, sending more than one email, with the suggestion that we do the meal planning together, and was ignored. We showed up, only to find that Susan had planned the meals on her own, and deliberately excluded me from my own idea. That wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t nice. That’s not my idea of a family. Last year I accidentally found out, from [my sister]’s Xmas card letter, that we were deliberately not invited to another get-together, i.e. [my nephew]’s graduation. That is not my idea of a family either. I will echo [my sister]’s sentiment that it is too bad that things are the way they are. I wish they were different, but try as I have done, they are not. If no one else makes an effort, this is how things will stay. I think for the most part that you all are pretty happy with the status quo: so be it. I am happier not being ignored or yelled at or simply feeling like a second class citizen.

I will return the favor, and would highly recommend that several of you go to some therapy yourselves, although part of the problem with the blaming thing is that the people who do it don’t think they are the problem. (Of course not! they are never to blame!)

I am open to thoughtful, honest, polite responses and discussion. Arguments, angry diatribes, attempts at invalidation, or further attempts to turn the facts on their heads will be disregarded.

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The History, Part 3 – The Reunions

So, a few years after the deaths of our parents, my sister’s oldest daughter gets married. We attended the wedding, at which the idea of a yearly reunion was floated.  Of course, the hostess would be my sister.  ALWAYS.  I tried bringing up the suggestion that we could rotate the hosting duties so everyone would have a chance to host, but — like almost any other suggestion I have ever made to this group of people — that idea was completely ignored.

We started going to these reunions in August every year.  And year after year, I came home feeling left out.  Wrong-footed.  Like a second-class citizen or a weird, ill-defined relative.  Maybe a cousin or something.  But definitely not a part of the group.  (Everyone else gravitates to the phrase, “like a red-headed stepchild” to describe this.  I won’t even comment.)

I now know I was there just to “complete the set”, to prove my sister’s control over the whole family.  (And, I suspect that my absence from the reunions now is probably pleasing to her and to Susan.  Especially since it is “all my fault” that I’ve decided not to show up every year just to be treated like garbage.  But I’m getting ahead of my story.)

At first I put that not-belonging feeling down to the simple fact that everyone else had a different opinion of my dad than I did.  That was an open secret:  everyone knew that Dad and I had been close, closer than anyone else.  And I knew that I had better keep my mouth shut about it.  It was my role to just sit and listen when the others started talking about how awful Dad had been.  (Looking back, I have wondered if this was supposed to punish me in some way, or if I was a stand-in for my dad as they expressed the hurt they had been unable to express when he was alive.  Who the hell knows?  It’s not like anyone will actually discuss it rationally, so there’s no hope of finding out.)

After a couple of years, I was able to add “religion” and “politics” and “race” to the list of things that my siblings had very different ideas about than I did.  I will never forget the moment during 2012 when the Olympics were on TV and my youngest brother casually referred to an Olympic athlete with the n-word.

It was becoming apparent, too, that to voice any dissenting opinions on these or any other topics would result not in a debate, not in an exchange of ideas, nor even in an agreement to disagree — it would start a fight.  And you can just guess who would be blamed for starting that fight and, probably, ruining the whole reunion for everybody.

My therapist asked, “So you can’t have your own opinions?”  Immediately what came out of my mouth was, “Oh, I can HAVE them, I just can’t say them out loud.”

After a few years of this, listening to other siblings reminisce about events that happened before I was even born, I started wondering more and more about just what DID happen when I was born.  I realized that this was a period of the family history that NO ONE ever talked about.  At all.

You know how most people have stories that get told about silly things that they did when they were 2, or whatever?  I realized that for me that period was just a big blank.  About all I knew was that Dad had gotten a new job and the family had moved to a new city just before I was born, and then about 6 years later, our parents got divorced.  Oh, and it was all Dad’s fault, of course.

So, I started asking questions and requesting official records.  I have the county documents from the divorce, as well as my father’s military records.  I have a recording of an hour’s conversation among my siblings, that they made at the 2011 reunion, at my request.  (I had to deliberately phrase the request so that it sounded like it came from a therapist or other outside authority, though, or they never would have done it.)

I was a few years too late to get my mother’s hospital records, dammit, because the state of Iowa only requires them to be kept for 40 years, and I called at some point in my early 40’s.

And finally, I worked with not one but two therapists, professionals who have confirmed the work I did on my own, and guided the painful conclusions I came to.

That history is detailed in the next post, but what it all adds up to is a broken family.  Broken because of a mother who didn’t want to do the job she signed up for, but who also convinced most of her children that she was completely innocent of any blame or responsibility for what happened at least partly as a result.  A mother who didn’t actually say she wanted custody of the children in the divorce.  A mother who would say hurtful things to her own daughter because she wasn’t being nice enough to her.  Who liked to be taken care of, waited on, and wouldn’t get her own fucking glass of orange juice if there was someone around she could convince to do it for her.

But wait!  Mom can’t be part of the problem!  The possibility can’t even be raised.  It’s a lot like the Catholic Church, where you just believe and do what you are told, and questioning anything only gets you disapproval and eternal punishment.  Such a convenient tactic, used by dictators the world over.  They dress it up and call it “faith” and make out like it’s some noble thing to not question things that obviously don’t make sense.  And if you do ask questions, you get yelled at, shut down, ignored.

On to part 4 – the back story.

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You’re right, they’re wrong, but they won

Once again, Seth Godin gets inside my head.

Why is that? Is the world so unfair?

As Seth points out, it’s because they have a story, a narrative that they have learned since birth, a set of explanations that starts with “Mom was a saint, Dad was a bastard” and then looks for evidence to support that theory.

They do have a tribe:  the Triumvirate plus One, the one minor kid who didn’t choose Dad to go live with after The Divorce.  (The family legend says that he chose Mom, but according to the actual filings, he refused to make a choice.)

But mostly, it’s because they were prepared to spend a decade (or two or three) to change the culture of their part of the world in the direction that mattered to them.
Or, they had it done for them, by one selfish woman who laid the groundwork, and another who took advantage of a made-to-order setup.
It has taken me a while to accept that I’ve really lost my family.  That in fact, I had them taken away from me by that bitch of a SIL.  (And, that in some ways I never had them to begin with.  But it turns out that the loss of something you thought you had is just as painful.)
I have tried to figure out what her motivation for this could be.  I mean, why did she need to ruin everything for me?  Wasn’t there room enough in this family for everyone?
Well, no, there isn’t — not from the narcissist’s point of view.  To allow everyone to share, to allow everyone to have a place at the table, you need to care about someone other than yourself.
And especially in my case, Susan can’t afford to have someone around who sees through her bullshit, who will speak up and call her on her inappropriateness.
To a narcissist, other people are like parts in a machine that only get noticed when something goes wrong and they stop “working.” Once someone suggests they’re not perfect or experiences some other narcissist injury (something that reminds him he’s just another faulty human being) he will turn from Dr. Jeckyl to Mr. Hyde, raging, criticizing, blaming, giving others the silent treatment, and projecting his own deficiences onto others.
She can’t be comfortable around me, because to her I am a ticking time bomb.
Narcissists need attention (and sometimes pity) and want complete agreement with their wishes. They ignore or oppose people who refuse to supply them with these things, and they turn their attention instead to those who can offer these three things in unlimited supply. This is what’s at the heart of narcissistic supply.
I can’t be counted on to act the way I am “supposed” to act — because I wasn’t trained to it over a lifetime by our mother.  I am not a very good flying monkey.
Add to that, Susan comes from a family of two sisters.  I have no idea if her sister has her figured out or not.  But it is obvious that in terms of narcissistic supply, more people are better — and here is this big ol’ family of well-trained suppliers, that she can manipulate oh-so-easily into acting just how she likes it.  It must be like heaven for her.  There is no way she would ever give that up.
And, she won’t have to.  She’s got them all solidly on her side, or at least too cowed to speak up and do anything.  Because, you know, it might make trouble in the family.  For them, it’s only a little bit broken right now, and she’s got them scared to break it any further.  In fact, they managed to get brother #3 and his daughter to attend last year’s reunion for the first time ever — I suspect they see that as kind of “patching up” what’s missing, and, probably, further evidence that I am in the wrong.
For me, though, it’s completely shot.  I know too much about what is really going on now, and I don’t see any way that everyone else will work together to fix what is really wrong.
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Tribal Narcissism

 

How do narcissists do what they do?

You have to be able to appeal to people’s biases and appeal to their sense of grievance and on a positive level appeal to their sense of hope and aspirations, even if you’re going to betray those promises. You have to be able to sell who you are to people, and people have to come along and lend you the power that you need. Or lend you the support that you need initially to attain power.

…tribalism in this case really is just narcissism, the grandiosity of the group… There’s narcissism of the individual and there’s narcissism of the group, and in both cases it’s essentially the same thing. We are better, we are more entitled, we are different or at least less interested in the people around us, or the tribes or nations around us, because we’re worthier than they are.

I think I just found a new phrase to describe The Triumvirate.  I’ve said before that “some pigs are more equal than others.”  Some of my siblings can be just fine on their own, but when the three eldest encounter the prospect of going against one of the other three — or in my case, going against one of their spouses — oh hell no, that’s just too difficult.  Not even for an actual, flesh-and-blood sister.

There is a phrase I have heard all my life:  “Well, the divorce was really hard on [brother #3].”

And, “The divorce was really hard on [brother #4].”

Never once in my entire life have I heard anyone say, “Well, the divorce was really hard on [me].”  And I have confirmed this observation both with my husband and with brother #3.

So why exactly do you suppose that is?

Is it because the divorce really wasn’t hard on me?  Anyone who intends to claim with a straight face that the divorce of a 6YO’s parents wasn’t hard on her can just kiss my ass.

The only other option is that we are willing to make excuses and cook up defenses for the behavior of brothers #3 and #4 — but little sister doesn’t get, doesn’t deserve that same defending from her siblings.  No, what she gets, what she deserves, is all the fucking blame.

 

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What’s There To Be Afraid Of?

Once again, a paraphrase of Seth Godin:

The pedant (that’s what we call someone who is pedantic, a picker of nits, eager to find the little thing that’s wrong or out of place) is afraid.

He’s afraid and he’s projecting his fear on you, the person who did something, who shipped something, who stood up and said, “here, I made this.”

My version:

The narcissist, who finds criticism in every little remark, who is eager to find you to be wrong or out of place, is afraid.  (And her flying monkeys, too.)

They are afraid and they are projecting their fear on you, the person who stood up and said, “hey, you are treating me badly, and I don’t like it.”

What are they afraid of?  What is there about doing the right thing, about establishing healthy boundaries and respecting them, about treating me as an equal instead of making me the scapegoat, that is so scary?

In my family’s case, I think the fear is that if Susan is held accountable for her actions, and Joe as well, that they will throw a fit of some kind, and refuse to participate in family activities.

This will upset my sister, with whom Susan has cultivated a strong friendship.  I think they probably understand each other very well.  Susan has a habit of sucking up to the person perceived to be “in charge” in any situation, perhaps with the idea that they will then protect her in the event of any conflict.

In the case of our family, that person is my sister.  She and she alone has the power to decree where and when the family will get together.  In the past, I have suggested that we take turns hosting the annual reunion, and I have suggested other activities — including a conversation about us all doing something for my 40th birthday — all of which have simply been ignored.  I have attended, sometimes by plane, at least 5 different milestone birthday celebrations for The Triumvirate — but don’t even think about anyone gathering to celebrate one of my birthdays.  I’m not supposed to ask for things like that.

Some pigs are more equal than others.

It’s easy to see this.  My sister will be terribly upset if Joe and Susan decide to leave the family or to boycott family events.  But if my husband and I decide to leave, that’s kind of OK.  At least, it’s better than if The Triumvirate gets broken up.

Accepting the unhealthy behavior of an in-law, at the expense of a sister, is perfectly fine — IF that in-law is married to a member of the Triumvirate.

At the end of 2012, the last year I went to the reunion, my sister wrote in her Xmas card newsletter about how the Triumvirate gathered in May of that year at my youngest brother’s home for the high school graduation of his oldest son — so 4 of the 6 siblings were present, with the exception of (1) the one brother who hasn’t attended a family function since long before or since the deaths of our parents and (2) us.

Strangely, this was the first my husband and I had heard of this “family event”.  We had gotten a formal invitation to the graduation, just prior to the event itself — but there was no indication in that envelope that it was going to be a family get-together.  No one mentioned it in our presence at the August reunion.  My husband and I were very deliberately left out of that gathering.  If my sister hadn’t screwed up and put it in her Xmas letter, we’d never have known about it.

Here’s my guess as to why:  I am guessing it was Susan’s idea initially, which she presented to my sister, who of course got on board with it.  Susan has a way of asking questions and manipulating conversations in order to get the answers and results that she wants.  I would not be surprised if the get-together was conceived by Susan as a way to show the rest of the family how much fun it would be to have a gathering without us.  Susan’s aim, at least from the time of The Susan Incident, seems to have been to cut me out of my own family, for reasons that are best known to her, but which probably stem from me daring to “criticize” her, and refusing to buy into her bullshit, her sucking up, and her narcissistic, unhealthy ways.  She simply can’t afford to have someone in the family who visibly doesn’t play along with her game, who refuses to take the responsibility and the blame for her shit that she flings.

From there, the graduation event guest list would have been cut short because, well, since this is Susan’s idea, it would be kind of awkward to invite the family member who is all unreasonably mad at her.  So we were not invited.  We got no emails, no phone calls beforehand to say, “Hey, we are all going to be there, would you guys like to come?”

Our mailed “invitation” came with a note scribbled on the outside of it saying something about it having gotten lost in a pile on a desk, or some such.

(ETA:  it got mailed to our old house, the one we had moved out of two years previously, and the new owners returned it to my brother after some unspecified period of time.)

But again, no mention inside of any get-together.  At the time, I didn’t pay that much attention to it, to be honest, as high school graduations have never been a big deal in our family before.  It was not a “given” that this meant everyone would attend in person.  In fact, I think this is probably the first graduation anyone in this family has ever done this for — of course, I may just not know about others, I suppose.

My youngest brother claims that this constitutes us being invited to his son’s graduation.  Well, yes, perhaps formally it does.  It is also an obvious, after-the-fact, bullshit, defensive justification for him sitting there and letting it happen, because that is pretty much what they wanted — “they” being my sister, at the behest of Susan, and the rest of The Triumvirate right behind them.

I won’t lie.  That sucks.  That hurts.  It hurts to know that my own family has been twisted so far against me that they PREFER not to have me around, that they prefer that to doing what is normal and healthy for a loving family to do.  It sucks to know that a normal, loving, healthy family is not what I have.

I suppose, on some level, maybe having a healthy person in your midst — someone who doesn’t play by the narcissist’s rules, so well-learned at mother’s knee — is a disturbing reminder of how fucked-up everyone else is.

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The Four Horsemen

These are the four things that indicate a marriage apocalypse is on its way:

  • Criticism

    Complaints are fine. Criticism is more global — it attacks the person, not their behavior. They didn’t take out the garbage because they forgot, but because they’re a bad person.

Both my parents had, um, “high standards”.  The difference was that Dad could help you learn how to meet them, whereas Mom simply criticized, for the most part.  I can remember her complaining about how I dressed –  but it was not so much an indictment of my clothing, but of me personally — “You’re SO DRAMATIC!” was her favorite.  In particular, I remember that she criticized the dress I sewed for Homecoming my senior year — not the workmanship, which of course she might have been able to teach me how to do better — but she complained that, “You can have a dramatic color, cut or style — but not all three at once!”  Of course, this was after the dress was well under way, if not finished.  (Besides, it was the 80’s.  And frankly, I loved it and I looked awesome in it.)

I can also remember that while she was staying with me for Joe & Susan’s wedding, at one point my own mother told me to my face that she liked Susan better than me, because Susan was “nicer to her.”  (Susan is a suck-up to whoever she thinks has power in any given situation.  I’m not the only family member who has noticed this.  One guess as to why my sister likes her so much.)

Mom actually said several hurtful things to me during this visit — she also voiced the actual statement that she would not bother to attend my wedding — but the one where she said she liked Susan better than me was the worst.  At one point my husband-to-be said, “Every time you go somewhere with your mother you come back crying.”  Finally he had had enough, and he picked her up from church and had a talk with her about her behavior.  Mom tried all her usual tricks to deflect accountability:  “You don’t know what their father did to me” was the trump card, of course.

So let’s think about that for a minute:  first of all, the assumption is that everything was 100% Dad’s fault — which at this point has been accepted for so long, it practically goes without saying.

Second, this is a MOTHER saying straight out to her DAUGHTER that she likes a woman who is practically a stranger BETTER THAN SHE LIKES HER OWN FLESH AND BLOOD.  WTF?  This is unbelievably nasty.  A mother telling her daughter that she doesn’t like her as much as she likes someone else.  Because that someone else sucks up to her, and feeds her sense of superiority — that is the hallmark of the narcissist.

ETA:  I recently recounted this incident to a longtime friend, whose mother was a kind, loving, generous woman — despite having some serious marriage issues of her own.  I can remember one year she and my other best friend’s mother each sewed their daughters a popular three-tiered skirt, and this woman made one for me too, so I wouldn’t be left out, because she knew my own mother wouldn’t do it.

When I repeated to this friend the words that my mother said to me, my friend actually physically flinched.

Third, my mother then attempts to blame her current nastiness ON MY FATHER.  What he did to her all those years ago apparently forces her to make these nasty remarks 20 years later.

It would be pathetic, if it were not pathological.

The sort-of-but-not-really amusing part about this is that she also habitually criticized my father for being critical.  “The criticism game is the easiest game to play,” she would sneer.  Projection much?

In contrast, I can remember having a phone conversation with my dad when I was in college, where I told him I got a 98 on an exam and he immediately asked, “Why didn’t you get 100?”  I called him out on that one, saying that 98% was frankly pretty damned good,  and a few days later I got a note from him that I still have.  It is very faded and torn, taped back together, and full of holes from having it pinned up on bulletin boards for probably 10 years or more, but the words are precious to me.

Congratulations on the superIMG_20140917_0003 test grades!  I guess I most times just expect you to do well, as you have always had exceptional grades.  You have to know how proud I am of you and your accomplishments.  You should do well in life if you continually strive to be the best at what you do.  Everyone can improve if they want to, the main thing is to want to.  Am proud of you!… Keep up the good work!  Until later — Love you!  Miss you!  Love, Dad

  • Contempt

    “…name-calling, eye-rolling, sneering, mockery, and hostile humor. In whatever form, contempt – the worst of the four horsemen – is poisonous to a relationship because it conveys disgust. It’s virtually impossible to resolve a problem when your partner is getting the message that you’re disgusted with him or her.”

My mother referred to my father as a “bumpkin” because he came from a dinky little town in Iowa and she came from Chicago.  Another of her favorite nasty things to say about me was, “You’re so PRAGMATIC — just like your father!”  The tone of voice she used left no doubt that in her view, being either of these things was contemptible.

  • Defensiveness

    “…defensiveness is really a way of blaming your partner. You’re saying, in effect, ‘The problem isn’t me, it’s you.’ Defensiveness just escalates the conflict, which is why it’s so deadly.”

Narcissism writ large.  Blame-shifting is an art my mother was a master of.

  • Stonewalling

    Tuning out. Disengaging. This doesn’t just remove the person from the conflict, it ends up removing them, emotionally, from the relationship.

I have very little to go on to get an idea of how my parents might have tried to resolve their difficulties, although with a narcissist it usually just isn’t possible.

Two things I can remember:  one is, I can remember running to the back door to greet my father when he arrived home (side note:  I believe I was the only kid who did this) and he picked me up, hugged me and carried me into the kitchen — whereupon he and my mother started fighting about something.  I can remember tugging on Dad’s ear and whispering to him to please stop, but it didn’t work.

The second example is from when I was in kindergarten, and includes both of the last two items:  blame-shifting and stonewalling.

To make decorations in preparation for Open House, we lay on pieces of brown paper and someone drew an outline to create life-sized portraits of ourselves.  I can remember working very VERY hard to re-create the pattern of interlocking circles printed on my blue corduroy pants, and I can remember being disappointed that I didn’t have time to finish drawing it over the whole area.  (I think someone noticed and was impressed by those efforts, but because of the rest of the story, I don’t think it was anyone in my family — it was probably the teacher.)

We also had to dictate a few lines about our families to the principal’s secretary, who typed them up on cards. The descriptions were posted next to each of our portraits, for everyone to see.

Mine said something like, “My parents fight a lot and my mother prays a lot.”

I don’t remember Dad’s reaction, but I remember Mom was horrified and embarrassed, and she placed the blame on me for not knowing that I should not have said those things.  (Pretty fucked up, yes?  but business as usual for the narcissist.)

But the other big clue was the second half of my statement:  “my mother prays a lot.”

10261759_701864376564285_892702048_nI have long felt that my mom was not very good at solving her own problems, which may have engendered her desire to be coddled and taken care of.  If you suck at running your own life, your options are threefold:  to figure out better ways to do things, to live with the way things are, or to get someone else to do the work for you.  She was apparently incapable of doing the first (or, as in my father’s note, she simply didn’t want to); the second was not acceptable; the third was her way of coping with just about everything.  I believe praying falls into that third category:  trying to get god himself to do your work for you.  Talk about narcissistic!  The almighty has nothing better to do?  JFC.

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How Did I Get So Lucky?

Having established that I am probably the mentally healthiest of the family, I started to wonder why that was.  What was so different about my childhood that allowed me to be a dramatically healthier, more functional person?

Well, the short and obvious answer is, I was raised by and identified with the healthy parent.

My parents were married for almost 30 years.  For more than 20, my father’s job was one where he was traveling most of the work week.  This is not automatically a recipe for disaster — plenty of military families make it work, for example.  But it does require a mother who is competent and capable of running the family and the household by herself — not one who wants to be taken care of and doesn’t like to work too hard.  It requires a mother who is a part of a team, who is the glue that holds the family together.  Our mother was not that mother.

When my dad was 18 or so, he enlisted in the Coast Guard in WWII so that he could send money home to his mother and the younger kids.  His own father had died before he was 40, and after that they struggled for money.  Dad became the hero who went off to work and sent money home to provide for his family.  I have gotten his old military records, and there is a letter in there written by his mother, explaining that he was indeed the main provider for a family, so that he could qualify for extra pay.  And he came back to a home run by a mother who did her own job properly while he was away, and appreciated what he did.

I have wondered if my father stuck with the marriage as long as he did in part because he convinced himself that he was doing what he was supposed to be doing  — providing for his family — and if it was easier for him to be gone all the time, well, at least the kids were not at risk.  Maybe he thought that by him being the scapegoat-in-chief, that protected the children from the unholy, unhealthy ways of my mother.

Of course this is not the case.  The narcissistic mother poisoned all her kids to think the same way she did, to shift blame whenever possible, as she did, onto Dad for everything.  Dad was always the bad guy.  My siblings were systematically alienated from their father by a mother who had to have someone to blame.

I believe that when the family moved, and my father’s job became one where he was home every night instead of only on the weekends, he began to see how things really were.  What he learned from my mother’s psychologist after I was born probably added the weight of professional advice to his decision.  My sister said that our father once told her, “Your mother is crazy, and you’re going to end up as crazy as she is.”  To me that indicates that he understood the depths of our mother’s mental health problems, and he also understood that she had probably passed them on to their children.

And I believe that once my father really understood what was going on, he chose to do whatever he could still do to not allow the caustic pattern to continue.  He figured out (correctly) that the only way out was, well, out.  So, he divorced her, and instead of just walking away, which he could oh-so-easily have done, he fought for custody of the minor children that were left.

Thus I was protected by him, more than any of the others — because I was the youngest, and had experienced the least of my mother’s unhealthy influence and parental alienation.  It was much harder for her to alienate me from a father who was home every night, and who loved me, and took care of me in the ways she didn’t or couldn’t.

I believe I am the only one of his children who really, wholeheartedly, loved him.  That doesn’t exactly make me special — it just means my mom didn’t get to work on me the way she did the others.

But to Dad, I was special.

A few days before Dad died, we had a conversation — one of the few where I ever saw my dad cry.  He knew he was dying.  He told me, “I’m going to miss you.”

I said something about how I would miss him too, and that for those of us left behind, it would be years and years, a long, long, time — but for him maybe it would only be a blink of an eye until we saw each other again.

He said, in a muffled voice — because his head was on the kitchen table, on his arms, because he didn’t want me to see him crying — “Yes, but you’re special.”

I still have that kitchen table, and the chair he sat in when he said it.

I believe that in me, he found his redemption, his proof that he really could be a good father, away from the sick influence of a woman who hated and blamed him.

 

One of my biggest regrets is that I never figured any of this out when he was alive — of course, it took his death for the truth to bubble up, so as long as he was alive, I could not have done so.  I suspect that is just proof of what he sacrificed:  not telling anyone about all of this, just doing what was right, and enduring years and years of blame and infamy from almost all his children.

Almost all.

There was one who was different.  And I am so grateful to have been that one.

I wish like hell that I could talk to him, even just for a few seconds — it just has to be long enough to tell him, “Hey, Dad, I figured it out.  I get it.  I understand. And I love you.”

 

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The History, Part 2 – Mom’s Death

So, after all this shit happened — believe it or not, 3 months later, my mother dies.

So we travel back to my home town, and are staying at my dad’s house, which hasn’t been sold yet.

I spent most of the the time clearing out my mom’s assisted living quarters by myself, and I avoided everyone else as much as I could.

But two important things happened during that time.

One was that right after Mom died, as we were walking along the hospital halls, I apparently said something about our mom that my youngest brother considered insensitive, and all hell broke loose.  While no one can remember what it actually was that I said, Joe later wrote that it was “disparaging and disrespectful” and “completely disregarding the feelings of others that had a better relationship.”

I have apologized to my youngest brother for whatever it was I said multiple times, and specifically for hurting his feelings with this mystery comment.

As far as I know, he still insists on believing that my motivation for making that remark was to “get back at everyone” for what happened at Dad’s death.

(Which is interesting, because it shows that on some level he recognizes that the two situations are in fact parallels.  But it simply isn’t true that I made my remark with intention for revenge — although ascribing such a nasty motive to me without any evidence is a completely normal thing to do to a scapegoat.  Scapegoats are guilty, even if they are proven innocent.  I also think that even if I had done it out of revenge, I’d think I might have some justification, after that horrible experience.)

Anyway, just to recap:

  • Susan had a jolly, laughing conversation with a hospice nurse shortly after Dad’s death (laughing while standing in the room with his body!).  I found that upsetting, and politely asked them to take it elsewhere. That is me overreacting, and I am the one at fault for that.
  • I said something shortly after Mom’s death, while walking down the hallway away from the hospital room.  My brother finds it upsetting.  But he is not overreacting. His angry, upset reaction is perfectly acceptable. I am at fault for that conflict, too.

The two events are basically equivalent.  But I am at fault in BOTH of these situations. Susan “did nothing wrong”.  I, on the other hand, was completely wrong.

This set of events is what led me down the road of wondering how this is possible.  From there I learned about narcissism and scapegoating.  Voilà.  It explains many things that are otherwise inexplicable.

The other thing that happened was bullying.  While my husband and I were staying in my Dad’s room, at one point my youngest brother decided he needed to shout at me for something (I am not sure if it was the above-mentioned remark, or what).

He came into our room to yell at me, he stood in my way so I couldn’t escape, and he refused to get out after I clearly and repeatedly told him to. Once again, no one came to my aid, other than my husband. No one told my brother that he was out of line to physically corner me in that room, and shout at me, and refuse to get out or let me leave.

No one found it unacceptable to let him bully me like that.

When I told my therapist about all this, she said, mystified, “You aren’t even allowed to defend yourself.”

This led me to the concept of healthy personal boundaries, as well as figuring out that I probably don’t have very good ones.

Boundaries are learned. If yours weren’t valued as a child, you didn’t learn you had them. Any kind of abuse violates personal boundaries… You may not believe you have any rights if yours weren’t respected growing up.

And guess who else doesn’t have healthy boundaries?  Probably just about everyone in this family, because the immediate reaction to conflict in this group is not to empathize, communicate, and resolve — but to shirk responsibility (my sister and my eldest brother) and to blame (Joe and Susan and my youngest brother).

… since you’re accountable for your feelings and actions, you don’t blame others.

Another article on boundaries has this to say:

…an enmeshed relationship between a parent and child may look like this… Mom is a narcissist, while the [child] is codependent, “the person who lives to give.” Mom knows that her [child] is the only one who will listen to her and help her. The [child] is afraid of standing up to Mom, and she exploits his caregiving.

I am instantly reminded of my sister’s words about testifying for our mother in the divorce hearing:  “… She had no one else.  NO ONE.”

Odd, that my sister could find it in her heart to stick up for my mother in those difficult circumstances, yet refuses to get involved with the current conflict.

Well, not so odd.  My sister was parentified by our mother worse than anyone else in the family, probably because she was a girl.

…parentification, where the parent leads the child to believe that they have to take care of their parents at all costs, be it financial, physical or emotional care. The child may have to be the parent’s therapist, or take one parent’s side against the other, lots of housework, paying the bills and so on.

And of course, if boundaries are learned, and our mother had lousy ones, then how would anyone else have learned anything healthy from her?

(click here for Part 3)

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I Miss My Dad

Attachment panic is the same thing that a baby feels when his mother looks at him with no expression, aka the Still Face Procedure. When the baby gets no emotional and visual feedback that his mother loves him and is attuned to him, he feels that the relationship is not secure, and this causes panic. Why? Because he is a mammal, and mammals need relationships to survive.

At Dad’s memorial service, I met one of his brothers, my uncle, for one of the very few times in my life.  He looked so much like my dad, it was startling.

But when I looked at his face, that familiar, loved face — there was no sign of recognition, no love, nothing.  I saw my father’s eyes, but with no love in them.

I still remember that as one of the very worst moments.  And I still miss my dad.