Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
couldn't do the right thing
Wildflower:
As I was posting to JacMac’s thread about myths, I started hearing my mom’s voice and how, well, she wasn’t just not there. She was kind of mean. I just need to say this ‘out loud’.
After my father stopped paying for college, I was home on winter break getting a job as a waitress to try to earn money for college. My mother asked me to do the dishes one day while on break. She was sitting on the couch as I washed the dishes and I could feel her staring at me. I was tense. Then all of a sudden, she blew. “You don’t contribute a @#*%& thing to this household!” She was right, in a way, because my paycheck wasn’t going far, it took me a while to find a job, and there was only so much time off for vacation.
I was caught off-guard, though, because when I was in high school, she used to get furious with me if I tried to ‘tidy’ the kitchen (it was impossible to find anything in the pantry…dust…expiration dates…piles…and whenever you opened the cabinets, things would fall out on you). I was interfering, though. She knew where everything was (but whenever I asked her where something was, she’d say, “oh, it’s around” and smirk). She had a system. She didn’t want me to organize things. They were fine the way they were. But she didn’t cook. She made a point of not cooking and defending her right to never spend time in the kitchen. And one time she tried to humiliate me in front of her boyfriend because I was cleaning the counters and washing the dishes. She made fun of me for trying to be so good, like I was up to something (the truth now and then is that I love clean surfaces and they give me great comfort – something I’ve learned in interior design classes).
Her mother abused her terribly. But she wasn’t too nice to me either.
Wildflower
Sally:
Wildflower: I've been meaning to write to you to say that first of all I liked you immediately because of your quote from Harold and Maude. That is my most favorite movie of all time. I have practically memorized the whole movie, and the Cat Stevens music in it moves me to my toes. I think it was a "taste of freedom" for me. It gave me the message that I was okay and that life would be okay, and could even be fun! So, I felt as if I "knew you" immediately when I saw your quote at the end of your posts.
After reading your post today, I felt so sad for that girl trying to make things clean in the kitchen, make order out such a mess, and having to be so frightened of the "lurking" monster in the background who might "pounce" at any moment.
My mother was the same in her meanness although she was the opposite...a "clean freak". There was nothing anyone could ever do to please her, or make her happy. Nothing was ever done right.
But, I thought about you and how your life must still be affected by those moments of trying to do something helpful, knowing all the while that it probably wouldn't be right, and that you would be abused for doing it in the end. How simply awful. I'm so sad you had to go through that. Sally
Wildflower:
Hi Sally,
--- Quote ---Sally: That is my most favorite movie of all time. I have practically memorized the whole movie, and the Cat Stevens music in it moves me to my toes. I think it was a "taste of freedom" for me. It gave me the message that I was okay and that life would be okay, and could even be fun!
--- End quote ---
Me, too, me too!!! :D :D :D I’ve been pondering listing this movie on the “Things that help” board, but I can imagine how it could upset some people so I haven’t. But this movie is like my bible in so many ways. My screen name actually comes partly from the scene where Harold tells Maude he wants to be like one of the daisies because they’re all alike, but she helps him see how they’re all beautifully different. :D (The other part is the song I posted - admittedly in a randomly emotional moment :oops: - by Tom Petty, which is about how people deserve to be free and safe from harm.)
--- Quote ---Sally: But, I thought about you and how your life must still be affected by those moments of trying to do something helpful, knowing all the while that it probably wouldn't be right, and that you would be abused for doing it in the end.
--- End quote ---
Wow. I never thought about it that way. Is it possible that this is what’s adding to why I feel so ripped apart when I reach out to my mother when she needs help? Is the same dynamic happening and I just can’t see it? Need to think about that. :?
Thanks so much for your kind words, Sally. :D
Wildflower
Wildflower:
--- Quote ---Jacmac: I'm excited that it had the same effect on you. Not excited, Wildflower, because it made you remember something unpleasant, but excited, because I believe in putting these things to the back of our mind (denying them) we instinctively recreate them in the present and try to deal with them now, since we're older and smarter.
--- End quote ---
Thanks again for creating the Famous Last Words thread. I also hope lots of posters add to that thread because I’m so curious to hear what other false truths have kept people paralyzed in their lives.
And it couldn’t be better timing, for me at any rate. :D This is exactly what I want to be able to do more of right now – identifying and stripping away the lies and false filters to get at the truth of what it meant to grow up in a household like this. I’d planned to do most of the work in private or with my therapist, though, and I debated pressing submit on this posting because I’ve thought about this incident before. I’ve even told certain close friends about it. Why did I need to bother you guys with this? Am I just being needy? Trying to get attention? It’s just a random yucky bit of facts about my relationship with my mother, and facts that may never make sense to anyone else.
But I think I needed to say, once again, take 7, for the record: my mom was mean to me. The first time I ever said anything was when I was 8 and told my best friend that my mother didn’t love me. I see now that I couldn’t expect another kid that age to understand that – just as I couldn’t expect myself to understand that. Too big. But that’s how the rest of my life has been until discovering this board – as much as my friends and others may have cared about me, no one could validate what I was going through, and they all assured me that my mother loved me as all mothers do. Just after college, I made a promise to myself to stop upsetting people with talk of my family problems.
What’s weird is that, in making that promise, I was able to move forward in my life in some ways by having a life without dragging my family into it. But now I wonder if I didn’t also manage to brainwash myself a little into thinking that I had things under control. :?
For the past year, though, two people have been coming to me to complain about my mother, and I’ve been fighting back this urge to scream back: “She’s always been like this. Where were you when I needed you to understand? I grew up in this mess. Didn’t you see that?” :evil: But they didn’t. They do now, though, which must be why all this is coming back up to the front of my mind as if there’s hope for finally laying it all to rest.
By the way, I’ve been meaning to say I’m sorry I failed to respond to your comment about the fact that we must be seeing each other all the time. I got caught up in another thought at that time, but when I go out for lunch these days, I think about you and wonder if you’re in the crowd. It has made me think about how many people wander around looking normal (well, normal for NYC at any rate :wink: ) but are struggling inside with such tough issues.
Wildflower
RedRose:
Wildflower,
Emotionally unavailable, not there, mean.
They can look right through you, right at you and say the most vile trash.
I realized this is coming from anger they never face, from issues they bury. From this, I try to learn so I can break that cycle with my children and husband.
When I err with the people I love, I work in earnest to repair it, as I would hope they would do with me.
The narcissist just can't do that. They never learn to say, "I was wrong." They never learn to think about how their actions or words affect another, or at least they can't bring themselves to say so.
I am thankful for the resource of the internet and support forums such as these which add to my tools for bettering my life and the lives of people for whom I care.
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