I can't remember my parents ever taking responsibility for what went on in my head or my brother's. Today I see the need to completely break away from them like you Rosencrantz, because I simply cannot take anymore. My soul needs to break away.
I love the way you express your experiences, I admire your focus.
My parents could not have children and they decided to adopt. I sometimes fantasize/hope/think/wonder how it would have been if I had been adopted by other people. I'm not saying they didn't love me, I acknowledge they loved me the only way they could. Unfortunately that did not include putting my needs, real or perceived and or anticipated, before their own. Things were more or less "fine" until my brother and I developed a personality of our own. I sometimes think how wonderful it was for my mother and father to "play" parents. They attended to our basic needs of food and shelter, you know the primary requirements fine. But early on I remember the fighting at night, the crying spells of my mother, the uncontrolable rage she would go into every once in a while. And, as you are well aware, children are very good at deciphering the "subtext" the "unspoken" very early on and particularly as it is happening.
I was shocked to read in the preceding posts how your(plural) parents blamed you for all kinds of things, the statement that one of you was told very early how you pit your mom against your dad and how "you came between your parents" reminded me painfully of the same accusations.
Something happened in my family when I was 7 years old..my mother convinced my father that my brother was coming between them and was lying all the time. My father was a 'soft' man according to her, he couldn't discipline us properly. She made it clear to us that "she did not want to do the dirty work all the time" and she did do alot of dirty work. She hit us often, slaps and paddles and lots of verbal abuse. In french she used to call us " enfants de chiennes" which translated means sons of bitches..or female dogs. To my young adopted ears that meant that my brother and I belonged to a female dog each , and that we came out of one of those. I used to imagine the ugliest, scarriest, dirtiest female dog with snarling teeth..and wonder how I could have come out of that. But she drilled it into us mother did.
So out of the blue, my brother and I found ourselves in an exclusive boarding school " where real men will deal with you" as I recall my mother saying. We were caned, and beaten for eight years, we could not complain, if we did it was worse. And yet when we got a letter from home, (my mother wrote to me and my father wrote my brother), we read them and exchanged the letters hoping we had been forgiven. My brother and I were sentenced to life in prison , that's how we felt. I was more resilient than him I thought..but later it dawned on me that my cheerfullness and willingness to see the good side of things was nothing but a defense mechanism. How sad. I've had to reconstruct myself, at great cost, it's still going on.
It was clear that they no longer ( my parents) had to take any responsibility for us or anything really. They were now paying other people to abuse us in their name and for them. Meanwhile, my mother was on drugs, lots of them and drinking, and my father was working all the time. I allow myself to think that while his wife was sedated and myself and brother were away at school, he was free to live his life as he pleased. The focus was not on how we were doing, but how we were performing and how we were concentrating on not shaming him. I enjoyed alot of accademic success without encouragement from my parents ( it was expected), my dad hated the sissyness of it all, he praised my brother's aggressive athletic ability but not without warning him that sports were for dumb people and he should concentrate on a career. Double messages all the time, like many of you ALL my christmases were awful, terrible. My parents hadn't seen us in weeks and yet christmas eve everyone was braced for my mother's annual mega blowup. You could feel it in the air. She was waiting for "someone" to say or do that "one thing" that would allow her to split open at the seams and let 'er rip. And inevitably it would happen. Year after year, to the present actually.
" All you want is our money" "You ungrateful children, all you want are the presents" blah blah blah!
Even when she went to rehab the first time, that christmas was the worst of all of them. And on and on it goes.
My father plays her game and like the poster who said that his father coached him to let it slide off his back, my papa did the same thing. She doesn't mean it , you're exaggerating he would say. He would even say to us when we complained to him: " At least you don't have to live with her all the time.." * dumbfounded at the thought as I'm writing* I just can't win, I feel your exasperation Rosencrantz. Sometimes I say to myself and get angry with myself at spending so much time trying to figure my parents out. Especially knowing that they spend no time trying to figure me out..which brings me to the next logical step of divorcing them altogether. And then regret creeps in, and grief over how it could have been. I need to move on and I need help to feel ok about my decision.
Very refreshing to hear that your parents made you feel like players in their relationships..that is so wrong and so hurtful. It's not them I hate it's how they were and are, it gnaws at me often, too often, it's a dead end. And yes, I do wish they were dead now, I've had enough.
