(Meeting nephews) /My N-mother and alcoholic brother and his kids

[Meh]

I'm reading over my experience now that it as been a few days past ....and I'm seeing connections between what I have written about my own childhood and what I have noticed as an adult as a witness with my brother and his kids.

When I was processing my own stuff from my childhood I had a hard time describing some intangible quality of how the adults were just not there emotionally, physically they were there but they were not really available or engaged or interested.

I saw this with my brother clearly...how he actually prefers to be sitting on the computer looking up...stuff related to his addictions or dating services while the kids are usually watching television or watching video games. I see what my brother is looking at on the computer and I know that it is not a priority task that he is involved in, he is escaping being engaged with his kids.

I know that adults need adult time and kids need to occupy themselves sometimes but this is really something different.....its a kind of indifference and inability to find joy in the family and make good relationships.  

My brother says in front of his kids about children "thats what happens when you have sex- you end up with these things and then they take all your money"..

I hear him saying this and I don't bother to respond--- and in my family among my relatives this sort of comment is passed off as
humorous...but it's really not.

My father and my mother were this way with me when I was a kid, totally uninvolved.

So even if the whole event seems bad, in some ways after my own processing, going back into the mess and seeing it confirms that the stuff that I process and many other people here struggle to work out and come to terms with are real issues that really did happen and it's not all in our imaginations. As bad as it is, there is something reassuring when I can see the behaviors and recognize the patterns rather then just being a part of the fray without understanding what is happening.

[Meh]

The other piece of this is that my alcoholic brother claims that my father is ill and in his oppinion going to die from the so-called undiagnosed illness. I have not spoken to my father in many years, I do feel a bit of nagging guilt, but at the same time I have spent so much energy trying to FIX myself because of my relatives that I don't feel like I own them anything and that seems mean on my part. According to my brother he took my father to the doctor and the doctor could not say anything specific but she "shook her head" communicating things were not good with my father.

And I think that my alcoholic brother would insinuate that about me: that I am a rotten person for not speaking to my father for so many years and especially now that my brother is claiming that he is sick. My father refused medical help from the doctor though, he only went to an initial appointment and would not let them do any diagnostic tests. My alcoholic brother seems to be insinuating that I should take care of my father.
My childhood was pretty much filled up with a lot of isolation, stress and worry.

The thing is my father has never taken very good care of himself to begin with. I stopped talking to him years ago because I would start crying after our conversations even though I didn't know why. My father has also never remarried or successfully gotten into a relationship himself after he divorced my mother so he also doesn't have much of a support system himself.

I just don't think it's healthy for me to play support system for my father when I myself don't have my own life together. As much as it seems like there is social pressure to get involved in the situation because it would be the "compasionate" thing to do. I think it would not be compasionate for myself to engage in that scenario. I don't have the financial resources to help him and I don't have the medical expertise and I simply don't like these people very much. I don't hate him, I don't wish anything bad for him.....but I am trying so hard just to be different then the rest of my relatives and not be tangled up in the spiderweb. I feel like the time I spend with my relatives including my father is joyless time wasted while the sands of my own life are pouring out of the hourglass.

My father is staying with my alcoholic brother. I just don't want to go there.

So I guess I just let my relatives say any kind of bad thing they want about me. Just like my mother said bad stuff about me for not getting involved in my nephews lives. I just let it go. Let them say the bad stuff. I'm allowed to have my own life. Not only am I allowed to have my own life but there is a lot of work I need to do in that area. I have written before how my father seemed to put me in the role of a pseudo-spouse when I was a kid--- and as an adult I'm over it. I'm not going back into that mess even if he is sick.

[sKePTiKal]

Wow, yeah... that's a tough choice and I can understand why there's pressure (and a little guilt) about doing the "normal" thing in a relationship that hasn't been (in your life) normal. I took the same choice with my Dad, whose health went downhill pretty quickly.

I was getting crazy phone calls practically demanding that I drop everything and move states away to take care of my dad. Even my brother was putting pressure on me with lovely statements like "if you ever want to see him again, you'd better get your ass up here". Job? Husband? Family & life of my own? That wasn't important, you see. I was able, over the last 10 or so years of his life, to find a "happy medium" type of relationship with my dad... so when I started getting all this pressure I just asked him: do you want me to come up? do you want to see me? or don't you care? I told him I'd do whatever he decided he wanted, because I did love him.

He said he didn't care. OUCH. But, on the other hand - I asked, didn't I? And I think I understand now. My dad knew I'd been in therapy remembering things he'd much rather forget and that it would be an elephant in the room. My brother had all the POA, etc... not me. And it was my brother that my dad was trying to work with and wanted close. But brother was hoping I'd bail him out, you know? Surprise - I wasn't that person anymore. And I am still explaining myself about this decision and how it wasn't my decision to make: it was my Dad's and he made it. What I don't have to explain to anyone is why our relationship was like that... not normal... I don't have to have to justify it anymore. It was what it was. And I was, sorta like you, protecting myself from getting entangled & enmeshed into a situation that wasn't healthy. I didn't always think this, but now I do:

adult children of dysfunctional families are allowed this choice, if they see they have it. And no one has a right to judge which of the choices they make. Not even the parents.

[Sela]

Hello again Muffin,

So I guess I just let my relatives say any kind of bad thing they want about me.

Do you have any control over this? (Ok, I'm not really asking.  Ofcourse you don't).

The thing to ask yourself might be:  why do you care what these people say or think?   Who's interests do they have at heart? (your's?  I bet not.)

Now that you are an adult, your job is to take care of yourself, imo.  They did not do the job properly when you were a child and now you must do it.

It is not your job, on the other hand, imo, to take care of any of them.  They are adults and will have to do it themselves, like you are doing or live with the results.

I have spent so much energy trying to FIX myself because of my relatives that I don't feel like I own them anything

Yep.  You hit the nail there.  Or maybe you owe them the same respect they gave and continue to give you?  No, that would be mean.

 

and that seems mean on my part.

Says who?  Mean to who?  Mean to not be superadultchildofchaos?  Mean to let them suffer the consequences of their own behaviour?

They've been mean to you, Muffin!  That's who has been mean and you have survived and seem to be doing your best to keep surviving.  Best to be kind to yourself.   Take care of you.

 

My father is staying with my alcoholic brother. I just don't want to go there.

And so you should not.  If it was not clear before this past "visit", it sure is now.  It would be like jumping into a vat of poison, I think.  Not good.  Not good at all.

Sela

[Meh]

Since I don't have friends and family that are some sort of social support network it looks like I'm going to be staying in a homeless shelter. I have simply just run out of resources. I had a job interview last week and the previous week but I wasn't selected. I've been doing random temp work but it's not enough to get by. I found out this morning via email that I was not selected for the last interview that I went through a lot of trouble for, so I'm rather disappointed and stunned and really worn out tired emotionally by everything that is going on. Life just seems to be getting weirder and weirder no matter how many self help books I have read.
I feel like my life's momentum is out of my control and I can't imagine that I'm really ever going to recuperate after all this.

I've been on pretty good terms with the owners of my apartment for the last seven years and I just don't want to stay there and go through getting evicted it would be really humiliating to me. I've never been evicted before and I have never been to a shelter before and I don't really want to go but I don't think I have any choice right now. It seems to reflect something pretty poor about my character as a person but it's just the way it is right now. I have spent a considerable amount of my life's energy just trying to stay afloat and now I'm not even afloat anymore.

[sKePTiKal]

OH M.B. -

as awful as this is for you - there's no 2 ways around it - it is what it is; please don't believe that finances or the ability to get a job have a blessed thing to do with character!! It is just as unfair to equate lack of money with a "poor character" as it is to equate lots of money with a "good character". The examples of the truth of this, are simply too many to even begin listing them....

If there is any positive energy that can sway the universe, god, the fates (and employers) in HOPE... I am hoping with all I've got, that this is a very short, temporary "darkest before the dawn" moment for you and that there will be a last minute miracle that spare you this exerience.

I also hope you can stay connected to the board and will let us provide some of the support you need.

(((((((((((((((Muffin Buster))))))))))))))))

[Hopalong]

MB,
I am terribly sorry for this crisis and all the horrible feelings that you're swamped with.

I am sending much white light to you and hope that some solution short of a shelter...
perhaps sharing space with someone who needs a room for a while?

Oh heck, I don't know what would be right for you...but I do hope it will appear.

I'm so sorry.

And ditto everything wise and caring that PR said.

Hops

[teartracks]

Dear MB,

When I was processing my own stuff from my childhood I had a hard time describing some intangible quality of how the adults were just not there emotionally, physically they were there but they were not really available or engaged or interested.

I can't pretend to know how hard your current circumstances must be, but I wanted to say I'm so sorry things are so difficult.  The other thing I wanted to say is that I relate to what you said in your first post this thread and especially the above quote.  Over the last year, I learned that there are genuinely kind, non hostile people in the world.  I'm well past middle age and just learned that truth.   As you face the immediate future and the rest of your life, try to remember there are people who can help you carry your burdens AND share in your joys.  It is my prayer that kind and insightful people will reach out and help you at every turn until you get on your feet again.

tt

[Meh]

Thanks,
I just take it moment by moment, day by day otherwise I would get overwhelmed.

[Meh]

"What is the source of our first suffering?" wrote philosopher Gaston Bachelard. "It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us." Luckily for you, Taurus, the cosmic rhythms are aligned in such a way as to free you from at least some of that old suffering in the coming weeks. I expect that you will have more power than usual to say what you've never been able to say and express a part of you that has been buried too long.

Above from Rob Brezsney's horoscopes http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/taurus.html

[Meh]

Well, I found a shelter to stay at temporarily, I'm going to sleep on their couch there at the shelter because it's full. I don't know yet if they really have room for me I have to have an appointment with someone about it on Monday. It doesn't look like the hell hole I was expecting.
P.S. I made it through the night without any problems there at the shelter on the sofa- my worse nightmares of getting stabbed in my sleep or something haven't happened but then again I managed to find a decent place that is probably better then a lot of others. I think that my time traveling around backpacking in the past makes it easier for me to prepare and handle this sort of thing because I've already had the experience of living with only a few items available to me. Someone there has an adorable baby girl that I was playing with this morning, and now I am on my computer trying to orient myself and make some new plans.

   All I can do is cross my fingers and hope that things go as smoothly as possible and I don't attract anymore complications in my life. 

[sKePTiKal]

MB:

I'm very glad to hear you're safe and sound and even, enjoying yourself a bit. It sounds like you really have a way with kids and that you appreciate being around them. You mentioned before that you were able to help defuse a problem with your brother's kids...

Any thoughts on perhaps working with kids in those plans of yours? I'm just wondering, as it seems you get as much (healing) as you give in the situations you described with your bro's kids.

[Meh]

MB:....Any thoughts on perhaps working with kids in those plans of yours?

No, I hadn't considered working with children.

[Meh]

Last night, One of the women at the homeless shelter told me out of the blue that she thought I would be a good educator.

I'm sort of tired this morning, just need to stretch and breathe some fresh air or something. It's a very churchy place, the people who volunteer at the soup kitchen are church women but they are not very warm in personality from what I can tell- it's like they just know in the back of their minds that I have sinned somehow or I'm going to sin or they think I have aborted babies or they think I have been fornicating or....who knows...maybe I'm just making that up.--They just seem dissaproving somehow- and it feels like a dissapproval of my whole being. Maybe it's to keep themselves disassociated from the people on the other side of the fence. I just don't know. Maybe they think "accepting jesus" would have prevented the women from being homeless somehow. Ehh...I'm not going to belabor the religious women..or the "convert them when they are down and out thing"...

There are two sections of the homeless shelter where I am staying. I'm in the female section. The men's section is getting fumigated today because somebody found bedbugs there. All I can think is eeeekkk!!! How gross. I try to wash my hands a lot in the shelter. I try not to touch things too much and I hope that I don't get headlice or something like that although it's totally curable and in reality some little bugs are the least of my worries.

The common denominator from what I can pick up is that all the women in the homeless shelter have poor support networks as well as issues with being "self reliant". Often the women have the situation where they have children or they are housewives or something. A lot of them have been through rehab. Some of them just got out of jail. A lot of the women at the house don't look very good physically, they are over weight, most of them smoke---even the woman who runs the place is overweight and smokes... etc.

Ironically it doesn't feel like I have fallen into the bowels of humanity. They just seem like regular people with regular people problems. Only I guess their problems are pretty visible.

There are some things that feel humiliating. I have always been self supporting, don't have children and am not married and I don't like being a "homeless" person. I'm not stinky, I don't have leaves in my hair but I do have a garbage bag covering my few personal belongings.

The social system for people who have somehow "fallen through the cracks"...is that a baby is a meal ticket...as one of my "friends" puts it.
It's true there are many resources available for women who have babies but not for single women who don't have babies.

There is an older woman there who is almost like a female version of my father, the way she converses, her body language- it's rather odd and I wonder if it is a coincidence or if there is actually a rhyme and reason to the similar mannerisms. She says that she has a daughter who was a meth-heroin addict.

I don't know if things are getting worse or if I have my head slightly above water. I'm very very off the track I had envisioned. If I could simply take it all in as another life experience it wouldn't be so bad, it would be ok...but...I don't really know what else to say right now--I'm not really building a good life for myself right now. Interestingly enough none of my relatives have contacted me to see how I'm doing, my aunt who previously was willing to help my N-mother in her efforts by threatening a "mental health check" at my door- has not even asked me how I am doing. Because she doesn't care and I know that...but I'm suppose to pretend like they care to appease them.

I'm just darn tired, wish I could go to a yoga class, go for a hike and then sleep.

There are women who just mill about the homeless shelter and I don't particularly enjoy that. I want to be working on getting something done or I want to eat, shower, read and relax...which is hard to do in shelter.....There is a river near by and a sandy beach.. so after I go get my stuff taken care of I guess I will go down there and read this evening just to be away.

There is a sort of temporary community that exists in a homeless shelter, and I have to admit that even amongst these people with so many "issues" I feel at moments like I have found a sort of community that I'm a part of-moments of feeling like I am accepted by somebody somewhere....

I was telling a woman at the shelter how I felt ashamed to seek resources that are available to homeless people and she said to me "you are homeless, you are in a shelter". But I don't think of myself as being homeless. I never really ever felt at home. Being homeless doesn't feel any different then when I have lived in "homes".....I have less leverage though and less ability to choose certain things like when and what I'm going to eat.

I'm trying to stay out of other people's business...and hoping that some of them don't get too friendly with me I guess.

I've been told that the reason why all the women are there is because they are irresponsible. That would include me. But then again they don't really know me. Are they irresponsible or are they victims of circumstance? The question begs of... who is to blame?

In a homeless shelter no one can hoard food or clothing- it is a sort of commune with regulated communal access but no ownership....

I'm managing all of my emotions and not feeling particularly emotional about anything. I'm sort of calm and mild and trying to stay organized and focused but I have some version of contempt and anger and I just don't have the right word for it. I feel like I am a ball of intensifying something...it's like a contracting serious feeling...maybe quiet and cold and veiled anxiety. Every day I have to regather my thoughts and plans. Looks like a shifting pathway from Indiana Jones or something.

The spell checker on this thing wants to correct my hyphenated "meth-heroin" word into the word "mothering"......

I didn't want to be some place with a bunch of drug addicts but so far some of the recovering drug addicts in this place are friendlier then my relatives are.

So, I tear up a little bit..here where I'm sitting in this cafe..so I guess I have some emotions going on even though I seem to be on a muted-mode emotionally. I have to go to this place today for homeless people and see what resources are available to me. I don't really want to go, I want the information but I don't want the people to see that I am homeless. ME. I just want the brochures. I don't want to be in a room full of homeless people, I don't want to be mutually recognizing these people on the street- a nod of the head "oh hey, I know you, weren't you at the "party" for the homeless"?.................I'm going to go there and get out of there as fast as possible and then go sit on a piece of drift wood in privacy and by that time I probably won't feel like crying anymore. I just want a break I want to get away from this label called homeless but it is useful...there are some resources and I need something? Ok, enough writing. I'm just rambling aimlessly now.
 

[Hopalong]

((((((MB))))))

I wish you would paste this entire post, just as is, onto an OpenSalon blog.

There is a lot of posting there and that community is very caring and smart.

You deserve more readers, you write wonderfully well.

At www.salon.com, look for the Open Salon tab--upper right somewhere.

Hope you have a good supper and peaceful sleep.

Hops