Needing Proof

[gratitude28]

Guys, I am trying so hard not to annoy the heck out of you all here...

I need some PROOF. I think this is the only reason I still talk to NM. I really want her to do something so I can say, "See...that's what I'm talking about."

I didn't talk to her when I could have today. It is so laughable... if we are in a chat room and others can see... she will talk about how grand our house was in Italy, or her jewelry or some such thing, apparently hoping people will ooh and aaah. It truly naseates me.

I don't feel the need to talk to them anymore... but sometimes I do against my better thoughts. I think I just get lonely here sometimes. I am not looking for anything positive from them.I don't need it to be OK. So I really don't know why I bother. And I have pretty much absorbed the fact that they don't much care one way or another whether I do contact them.

So why have I not gone NC (or as NC as is possible)?

What have you done? Did it take you a bit to cut yourself off?
Love, Beth

[isittoolate]

Hi Beth,

I am not sure how to answer you, as my parents were 'out of this world'--they just couldn't talk about feelings and such things.

I believe I mentioned here once that when I was there, doing their Tax Return, there was a silence, and I asked, "Did you two ever love me?" ---dumb!-----but Dad got up and left the room and mom embarrassedly stayed silent until he returned and we went back to the taxes.

I felt like 'crap'--but I was trying to get 'something' out of them.

Then Dad had prostate cancer, operation, was 6 months in the hospital, and again it was Tax Return time. I went to see him just to get his signature and then left. However, I had the feeling he wanted to talk, or have me stay a bit and didn't know how to say it.--- and I ignored it. Next I saw him he couldn't talk and was being nursed by mom at home.  A skeleton with skin.

Mom was on her own for 2 years then fell in the bathroom and broke her leg--She was about to come home when something set in " a dangerous blood clot??" and spent the next 6 years in hospital on the floor where you leave only feet first. When she was dying she whispered "I love you" to me and I didn't believe her!

Beth. What would be her reaction if you just asked if the two of you could talk, like adults, about 'things'? and told her it was important to you in your "search for self"?

I don't know how I would handle it if I had another chance!!

Loce
Izzy

Edit: My not going to see Dad at the hospital was talked about behind my back, within the family. One sister, the eldest, a nurse, came to see me to talk about him and his palliative care and other medical crap then mentioned my not visiting. She would know that only if Mom  had said so. So that was my NC, and he was dying, but I just didn't know what to say.

I also noticed on the day I did go see him at their home, Mom stayed guard outside his door. I cannot remember a damned thing I said and he died the next morning!

Proof or Closure-- hard to get sometimes!

[Gaining Strength]

I haven't been able to do it.  My longing to have family and my woundings about rejection and abandonment are simply too great.  My father is no longer able to "wound" me but he can send me into a quick dip of depression.  My mother on the other hand can really get me - I so long for "family". - GS

[Hopalong]

Oh this is a sad topic.
I don't blame you, Beth...it's almost a primitive reflex, wanting our parent's love, I think...probably one of the last things to wink out, no matter what smart decisions our brains make.

I'm wondering if you spend time in chat rooms where your mother appears because you're isolated? Maybe you and Henry need to get out and make some new friends? You sound lonely.

I just had a moment that reminds me of all this, though not directly. I just read a letter from my mother's only surviving sibling (of 7) that she'd left out on the kitchen counter. He, in his late 80s, spent 3 pages writing his 96 y/0 sister reams of religious parsing all of which suggested that she might not get to heaven because she hadn't toed the "party" (scriptural) line. Mentioned that once she'd observed about me that I was UU and "that's okay" and that she'd once said the same of my ex's religion (Catholic). And he made plain that we all were taking the Down elevator.

So SAD, that his farewell to her comes from that judgmental place. Anyway, I left her a note:
Did you leave this for me to see? I am positive you are going to God (the loving one, not the terror one). love, H

Izzy, I think maybe your parents were literally incapable of emotional speech. They literallly didn't know what to do with it. Some generations were raised with SUCH repression around feelings that they'd feel the same about what you blurted out as others would feel walking in on a couple having sex. You know? My thought is that they may indeed have been very very limited in their capacity to do emotional expression...and when offered the chance, froze like deer in the headlights. Your mother probably figured out more in those last hours than she'd been able to in a lifetime.

And your dad may actually have been trying to speak it too.

You can let it reach you now, their blunted scraps of love, if you want to believe in them. If it wouldn't hurt you... Do you think you could hold the thought for a moment that maybe in their last days or hours, something opened in their spirits that never, ever would have been opened if you had never asked them that brave question. And if it didn't quite reach you then, maybe it could now?

The universe is a mystery. Things don't work in time as we expect. But maybe love is present in a parallel way to these limited frustrating lives. I wonder if you could sit with it, not expecting or requiring it, but just holding yourself open to whatever love is present. Not even worrying about what the source might be. If you did that quiet practice, I think it might move you.

Just a thought to sit with...see what happens.

love,
Hops

[oc]

What is nc?

[Gaining Strength]

No contact, OC.  Just dream on that tonight - how would that feel for you?

[gratitude28]

Wow, as always, you all REALLY came through. I read all these replies before bed last night and I was able to sort out a lot of what was jumbled for me.

Iz, thank you so much for sharing your story with us about your parents.I can't imagine how painful that must have been. I do agree with Hops that there might have been a general problem with your parents as far as emotions go. Maybe they had no idea how to express what they felt...It doesn't excuse any of their treatment of you... But it does sound like your father just had no ability (or perhaps desire) to talk about anything of any depth. It sounds like he was a singularly focused man (get the chores done... kids are created to do chores). Did I get that right or simplify too much?

As for having a conversation with my mother... I just can't even conceive of it. Not sure I would even want to. As it is, if I try to talk to her about anything remotely about me (i.e. anything that is not about her or her animals or my sister) she just fades off and changes the subject. She would adore a screaming fight, but that is just not my thing. She tries to pick fights with me for fun (to get a rise out of me) but I just won't play. I am dead emotionally while around her. I feel like a dead fish, really. I am blank and emotionless, or else she will start in with her games. It is my only defense. So I can't imagine how I could ever talk to her.

Hops, how kind of you to comfort your aunt. I never understand why people are so worried about "saving" others when they have that meanness in thier hearts.

As for being lonely... well, I didn't quite get that right. I am actually surrounded by great people (And I just met some girls I could be dear friends with, but we will only get a while since I am leaving soon). I adore being with my kids and I am out more than I am in!!!

CB, I think you hit the nail on the head... it is a habit. I am very hard-headed when it comes to habits. I had to drink until I couldn't bear it anymore to prove that it really was bad for me. I think I am doing the same with this. I am knocking myself over the head with it trying to find my "bottom" so that I can pick up and go on. How funny that I couldn't see that until you pointed it out.

I am still trying to figure out why, but N behavior in someone else feels like a failure in ME. 

This is a very profound statement and I think you are right on. I think I do somehow have some kind of wish to make this all different. I have to realize that they are not going to change, there house will just get worse and worse, they will become more bitter and there is NOTHING I can do about it. It is not my responsibility.

GS, as the N, my mother can irritate me, but my father is the one who really hurt my feelings by acting like her the other day. I think for a long time I did want a family. I need to remember that I am fortunate to have my mother in law. She has been like a real mother for years now.

Again, thank you all very much. It is so comforting to know I can bring a problem here and get a new perspective. I have learned so much from all of you here and I have learned to cope so much better.


((((((((((((((((((((((((((all))))))))))))))))))))))))

Love, Beth

[Stormchild]

Guys, I am trying so hard not to annoy the heck out of you all here...

I need some PROOF. I think this is the only reason I still talk to NM. I really want her to do something so I can say, "See...that's what I'm talking about."

I didn't talk to her when I could have today. It is so laughable... if we are in a chat room and others can see... she will talk about how grand our house was in Italy, or her jewelry or some such thing, apparently hoping people will ooh and aaah. It truly naseates me.

I don't feel the need to talk to them anymore... but sometimes I do against my better thoughts. I think I just get lonely here sometimes. I am not looking for anything positive from them.I don't need it to be OK. So I really don't know why I bother. And I have pretty much absorbed the fact that they don't much care one way or another whether I do contact them.

So why have I not gone NC (or as NC as is possible)?

What have you done? Did it take you a bit to cut yourself off?
Love, Beth

Hi Beth

Late chiming in - work has been a monster this week and will be for a few weeks more.

I think part of this is the How-Much-Is-Too-Much problem we all have; we're a bunch of boiled frogs, more than willing to tolerate things that would have other people running for the hills. Because we were taught to tolerate such things when we were young, since it was the only environment we knew.

What works for me - but has to be carefully watched - is to take an inventory. Not so much of the person but of the events. This happened; this happened; this is what happened when I sprained my ankle and asked for help; this is what happened when we had to move and I asked for help; and so on.

You have to do this on paper! It HAS to be written down! Otherwise, it'll slip away... you'll start making excuses for this incident or that one, you'll 'forget' various things... it's not you, there's no blame, it's the conditioning.

This is the only way to get the patterns right out where you can see them, and pin them down, sometimes.

"A searching and fearless..." ... you know how the rest of it goes.

And if you start feeling anger or resentment or sadness building up, you have to be prepared to call your sponsor or a T or come here... whichever works for you.

But if we're talking proof, it won't ultimately come from them. It will come from you seeing them in a different light, and that is best accomplished by getting things out into the light, outside yourself, onto paper, and seeing how they stack up.

Again, this is a precarious exercise and you have to be ready to get emotional support immediately if it takes you into intense feelings. But it works. It really works. I have been doing it with regard to some 'impressions' I've had about my workplace, and it's been like dynamiting a rockslide.

And it's not something I advocate returning to again and again. This isn't about wallowing, it's about clarification. Get it all out where you can see it, let it tell you what it tells you when it's complete and open to your sight, and you are in better shape to put it cleanly behind you. Let it linger, let it sit unresolved, and it will continue to fester and reek...