Adventures With Mom

[lighter]

tayana....


first I want to say I look forward to sharing recipes with you.  I'll enjoy picturing you and M in the kitchen together, cooking and chatting about the new school and what your making for dinner. 

Secondly, I gotta tell ya..... that father of yours.  ::tapping foot::   

I'm guessing he's experiencing terrible anxiety over the havoc NM will be raining down on his head after you're no longer there to accept the blows. 

Pity he's such a gutless enabler.  He could defend himself.  He could have defended himself had that been the case.  It's not.  Dismiss his silly predictions, he's trying to help your mother keep control over you. 

How dare he?  BC he can't do any better, or he would. 

You'll be so much happier and healthier if you withdraw with love...... find better things for M and yourself.  I know you will. 

YOU know you will. 

Lastly, this whole thing really IS like a divorce.  Complete with the jilted party demanding their gifts back and so the hell what?  Give them back and good riddance!  More room for M & M's!

chin up.  Almost there: )

[debkor]

Aw Tay,

She is really being a mean little girl.  She is acting the age of a 5 year old right now.  Picture her in big grown up clothes that is down around her ankles, shirt sleeves hitting the floor and this little tiny voice, Oh yeah, well now I'm mad that you said No and I'm not getting my way!!!  I want my presents  back!!  I am even going to tell the dog on you!  (dog) you better eat now cause your mom don't cook.
   
I'm sure this would of had a great impact on your decision, what the dog thinks? Yuh'huh

She is having a tantrum. 

Almost Home Tay!!!  with your 10 year old son not your five year old mother. 

Deb

[reallyME]

aren't most N's that way?  children in adult bodies who use "poor me" and "dang you" alternately?

In my case, X would go from "nobody would ever tell me what was wrong with me, but they all called me snobbish...and then, after I'd tell her what was wrong with her, she'd launch into the "I am NOT that way"  to "I can't BELIEVE you see me that way!"  to "HOW DO YOU WANT ME TO BE?"  to "OK, WELL, SINCE YOU SEE ME THAT WAY THERE IS NO REASON FOR YOU TO BE WITH ME, RIGHT?"  to "I AM GOING TO MOVE ON NOW AND YOU CAN'T COME WITH ME!  HUMPH!"

[tayana]

Deb, I was thinking she was acting more like a two year old really, complete with a total lack of remorse for her actions.  I'm going to give the two books about geneaology back, but I'm keeping all of my notes and things I'd found.  I'd planned on putting it all together last Christmas for my dad, but I never got to it.  It always seemed like something got in the way.  Now, maybe I'll have time for that.  I don't really need the other two books.  I've been able to do a lot of my research through libraries and the internet.

Lighter, I'd be glad to share recipies with you!  I try not to be angry with my dad, but I am.  He does the best he can, and I think he feels sorry for my mom.  I don't think she could survive on her own.  It is like a divorce, even though I've never been through a divorce.  I'm divorcing my mother.  Eeek! That sounds nasty.

CB, she can have her stuff back.  I don't want it.  She disinherited me too, wrote me out of her will.  The things I was supposed to inherit she told my dad to sell.  I don't want her diamonds.  If I want diamonds I'll get them myself.  The less of her stuff I have she can hold over me, the better.

Laura, that's exactly what they do.  She wants me to feel sorry for her, and I don't.  When I was at school my mom used to say I thought I was better than everyone else because I had an education now.  The truth was, I didn't think that at all.  It was just incredibly stressful for my parents to be in my apartment at school.  I thought it was awkward, and we didn't have things to talk about.

The dog comment was priceless.  The dog doesn't care what he eats.

I've decided M and I are going on a little vacation, something inexpensive, later this year.  I'll save the money for it.  Even if we have to board our dog for two days.   My mother would never approve, and I'm going to do it anyway.

She told me this morning that she doesn't want M going to school looking like a ragamuffin.  She said she's always made sure to keep his clothes clean and pressed and creased.  As if I'm going to send my kid to school looking awful.  Honestly.  Her opinion of me is so low, that I can barely stand to be in the room with her.

[lighter]

fayana:
Glad you're going on a little vacation.  Sounds like just what the doctor ordered for you and M.


As for your father.  You have a right to be angry.  He's concerned about your mother AND what his life will be like if you leave..... and she's really really ticked off. 

He wants to protect her/NM?  WHAT ABOUT YOU?!?!? 

I know he's broken too... and unable to do better, for himself and for you and M.

It ticks me off that he still has energy to promote your mother's selfish interests, that's all.

Glad your giving up the stuff she wants back.  It would only make you feel bad when you looked at it.

Keep moving forward.  YOU ROCK!

[tayana]

Lighter, the attitude in my house has long been what my mom is the most important thing.  No one can do anything against her wishes or she makes their life miserable.  My dad has been the butt of many jokes because he puts up with that.

I don't want her stuff.  It'd just make me sick to look at it.

[Ami]

Dear Tayana,
   I thought that the most wonderful person in the world was my F. Next to my M, he was pretty damn good. However, I have come to face that protecting her ( and her sickness) comes first. If I die in the process--- so be it.
   I sometimes am more angry at him. He seems pretty normal. It seems that if he could have been strong ,that she could not have hurt people.
   I can't really figure out what the deal is with him. Is he really sick,too or just doesn't care enough ? Anyway, it is a betrayal from our fathers--- that is the story. They betrayed us ,too.                                                Love    Ami

[Stormchild]

Yes, oh yes.

Ami, Tayana, I felt for so many years that my father's betrayal was in so many ways worse. He could reason, he could see, and he closed his eyes, his ears, his mind.

I loved him but could not understand why I could never reach him, why he just refused to hear me, when everything he taught me proved that he could see perfectly well how a decent person behaved.

I share this pain with you, and I wish I had a cure. The only cure I know is time. My father, ultimately, gave his life to protect me. When I went to college and grad school, and then again at the last, during the final years of his life, he did interpose himself between me and my mother to shield me from the worst of her greed and scheming. It wore him out, it killed him.

I don't know. I wish he'd taken a stand decades before, I think his life, and my life and my Nsib's life might all have been so different. Heaven knows what your lives would be like now, if your own fathers had ever taken a stand.

But it's dangerous to stand up to an N. They are punitive and vindictive, and none of our fathers was really very brave.

[tayana]

Ami, Stormy . . . I used to think my father was amazing, back before I realized what really went on in this house.  I used to think I could trust him. 

This experience though has changed my mind.  I've seen him in a new light, and I realize that he hasn't helped me at all.

His advice with my mom has always been to take what she says with a grain of salt.  How do you take some of the stuff she says with a grain of salt?  You can't.  I've never been able to.

I was thinking on the way home, that she doesn't really care about me.  Since I've started this whole moving thing, she's not said one truly sincere word to me.  The only thing she says are hateful, hurtful things about my ability to be a parent or my ability to be on my own.  Nothing has reflected true concern or affection for me.   My father has said nothing to stop her hateful comments.

My brother and I were talking yesterday, and he said that my mom thinks M is hers.  That's so true.  she thinks he's her child, not mine, and she will not drop this thing of him staying out here for three days after we move.  She hasn't asked.  She's decided that's what's going to happen.  I wasn't given any sort of decision or choice in the matter.  I'm not going to think about that until after Saturday though.  I've already vetoed taking a piece of furniture on the grounds I'm not sure it will fit in M's new room.

She keeps saying M will be upset if he can't take his knick knack type things, but he's more concerned that he's not going to have enough space to play.

[Ami]

[
His advice with my mom has always been to take what she says with a grain of salt.  How do you take some of the stuff she says with a grain of salt?  


 Excuse me but this ( above ) cracks me up. My Father has told me to take the MOST outrageous things    with a 'grain of salt"
   I never knew that there were other people out there living  this type of  life.too.
 Storm ,my father made it clear to me that he would never go against her or  stand up.
                                                                                                             Love   Ami

[tayana]

Is this the standard advice for dealing with N's?  Take them with a grain of salt? 

I have a hard time taking someone stealing my credit and ruining it with a grain of salt.

My father will never stand up to my mom.  He just takes it like a beaten old dog, even though he agrees with everything I've said about her.

[Hopalong]

When does the assertiveness training start, T?
And what about a counselor?

I think you're absolutely right that your mother feels entitled to treat M as her child.

That's an enormous threat and good for you for seeing it.

I know you will be able to find help to build the power inside yourself to shove her aside.

She won't back off so you have to TELL her (like a tiger) to back off, imo.
Be very watchful about saying things to yourself like "I had no part in the decision"...

You're taking a very important and empowering step in moving out!!

hugs
Hops

[lighter]

But it's dangerous to stand up to an N. They are punitive and vindictive, and none of our fathers was really very brave.

::shiver:::  No turningbacknow

[Stormchild]

oh, that grain of salt thing.

you know what that is? That's what's called a 'sop'. It's a useless gesture that enablers make to appease someone they have no intention of helping.

there's a whole spectrum of these responses, ranging from 'oh just ignore them' to 'you know they don't really mean that' to 'take it with a grain of salt' to 'consider the source' to 'well, you're the one taking things so negatively' to 'if you didn't talk back this wouldn't happen' ....

all of it intended to absolve the N abuser of their responsibility, and put all the responsibility on us.

it's a brush-off.

for seeing clearly.

for understanding.

for expecting some support from the people who in theory are supposed to protect us.

One thing about Ns. They always. Force. Everyone. To. Take. Sides.

there's no such thing as parallel existence with them, because they regard your merely breathing in the same place as an intolerable intrusion on their supremacy, unless you are breathing while grovelling to them.

Anyone who picks an N as a partner and stays with them will find that - they're expected to assist the N in abusing anyone else that they might otherwise care about. Because Ns cannot share, and they demand absolute devotion. Caring about anyone else, even one's own child, even if that child was conceived with the N, is intolerable disloyalty, where the N is concerned.

So the Ns enlisted our fathers to betray us. And our fathers went along with it, because they were forced to choose, and they picked the abuser. [This is not limited to fathers, of course. Enabler mothers favor their N husbands over their own children just as often with equally disastrous results, often alienating one or more of the kids for life.]

Of course, Ns being Ns and enablers being enablers, when you see this, and point it out, it is YOU who will be accused of polarizing things and trying to make people take sides.

That's typical defensive projection. See it for what it is, and persist in seeing clearly.

Lighter: ((((((((((lighter)))))))))) I wish that typed parentheses on a screen offered some actual spiritual and physical protection....

[Ami]

WOW Storm
    I always talk about age 14 as the time when  I "lost" myself. What happened wa that I trusted my F to tell me the truth. I believed his lies about reality. I went in to a nightmare  existence for the sole reason that he lied to me about  what my own eyes and ears were percieving. I believed him over myself. I turned on myself from that point on. I am just coming out of it, now.That is why I am so focused on getting my trust in myself, back.
   His weakness destroyed my life more than my N mother. If he could have told me the truth, I could have continued trusting,loving and owning myself.
   My F is the "Mr Nice Guy", the "Mister Wonderful.One thing is for SURE. he is reaping what he sowed. He is getting ALL the N abuse b/c he is the only one there.
  Whenever, she has any problem ,it all rains  on him.My aunt said that it is disgusting to see. My Aunt is in total denial about my mother(her sister). However, the abuse of my F is awful( she admits).
 Well, he would not protect us,now he is the abused child                      Love  Ami