N damage: Itentional & Unintentional

[Hopalong]

I understand, GS...and I don't feel anybody has to use the same mental formula I do to cope. Glad you spoke about it. We all have different dialogues with our pasts. And yours makes sense to me too.

The biggest N in my life was my mother, not my father. She was, ultimately, easier to forgive. Probably because I had the habit of caring for her, and I saw her vulnerability. And, as a woman, I was very affected by what I learned late in my adulthood about her childhood. Saw how that undermined her ability to make choices that would have seemed morally better.

Neither of my parents ever emotionally abused me in the way your father did. I would have been profoundly harmed if they had. I don't know who or what damaged your father so terribly but something did. And the culture didn't help.

Though neither of my parents were abusive in the overt way your father was (the dinner table scene you painted gave me a sick feeling--that was horrendous abuse and in ways, is likely harder to recover from than physical blows)...

My brother was and IS that kind of abuser. There was violence in him. Extreme emotional violence and always the incipient threat of more. And the willingness to do great, forceful harm to me. (I was a tense and terrified person around him.) He literally would have happily destroyed me and would on some level rejoice at my death.

I think that's the closest parallel I have had in my experience. His bullying. But with your father to trapped-at-the-table dependent children, that was a worse kind.

As to "the best he could do"? It's not important. For me, it's just...a way of saying to myself (that works for me): This is what was real. How this person behaved was real, did happen, was what it was, is what it is, and no fantasy, no yearning, no hopefulness, no bouts of imaginative rewriting the past based on expectations that relationships with family SHOULD be different...will change it in any way. Ever.

I want to accept it. I just want to completely, profoundly and permanently accept it. Probably doesn't sound like it, but for me, "the best they could do" is more a decision of my own in my process of wanting to accept it, than anything to do in actuality with my mother (or even my brother, though I haven't forgiven him yet). It's just that for me, describing them that way to myself, gives me a shape for the exit door I want to walk through into my future. So I don't spend the rest of my life as a recovering victim.

I don't exactly want to "let them off the hook" -- it's more my way of seeing that I have no hook. There is no hook. I never had a hook and there never will be a hook. I am not looking for justice any more. (I did find some, through the court's support in stopping my brother...but that is just a relief. In its practical sense, that specific justice was only like -- winter did end. Spring did come. Wasn't truly personal validation --the judge didn't know me or personally value me, but was just responding to what he saw in front of him--and luckily, the legal stuff ended right.)

The rest of the retribution/balancing of the emotional or spiritual scales/right being wrest from wrong--has to be me learning to be whole, functional and as happy as I can in my real life. Not my "corrected" or "repaired" life, or a life in which others validate me. Ain't there yet by a long shot but it feels like the direction I want to go.

Whether it could be philosophically or morally argued successfully or not, for me, telling myself that my mother did "the best she could do" helps me out of my feeling of betrayal. That paralyses me so that's why I want to get past it.

Betrayal, for me personally, is attached to my expectations. I can't feel betrayed any more if I don't expect my history --or hers-- to be other than what it was. I -- the me that could be betrayed -- have to separate my well-being from all those roles and fantasies and myths and expectations about what my mother should have done (should have done better) to nurture and protect me.

Convoluted and doesn't really address anything very satisfactorily. But I do not think that this thought of mine, "best they could do", that happens to help me heal, is necessarily true or helpful for anyone else.

I do believe that forgiveness is not something anyone can prescribe for anyone else. Sometimes we most need support for our feeling UNforgiving, because sometimes that gives us the strength of anger in a positive and empowering way. It's hard to tell, exactly, when it crosses over from empowerment to repetition compulsion or toxicity.

On the other thing, I was wondering if there could be any way that you could sit with the feelings you had about the women who came to help you with your house, and reach a point where you decide that every clueless intrusive mistake they made in the process of cleaning your home, turned on its side, could be looked at as yet another manifestation of gift, of help, of support, or grace.

Help is what you needed. They came to help. And did it clumsily.

But does the kitchen feel better, now? You deserve an uncluttered, clean home.

love to you,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you Hops.
I do get that we must find what works for each of us.
I do understand that "did the best she could" can be a very positive way of coping.
for me it does the opposite. Isn't that odd?  A phrase that is therapeutic for one is heart piercing for another - same phrase - utterly different results.  Part of me gets it.  I teach my child that bullying is not based on words but onthe way those words are received.  IOW, if a person does not think a joke at their expence is funny then it is bullying even when that very same joke on someone else is received with humor.  It is how those words are received.

As a child, the joke was often at my expense and if I reacted with hurt or anger I was punished.
that's how my father was.
I was powerless to do anythign about it.
My brothers never really quit using that power they had over me - that power my father bestowed on them - that power which my mother turned a deaf ear to - then and now.

That woman my father married is much like my father.
I have been waiting for the "other shoe to drop" for some weeks now. 
Well - it dropped today.

I can't even write about it even though I came here to do so.
The pain is so raw and as always there is no one to turn to.

I called my sister-in-law immediately.
She didn't answer my call.
I texted her and asked if she could talk and wrote that I needed to talk.
I never heard back from her.

As usual I am left utterly alone in my pain.

It was a beautiful day today.
My child and I  met a friend and her children at an outdoor festival.
It was very pleasant but I was in such pain - truly aching because noone cares and there is no way to explain.
I was standing there thinking about what a 30 second sound bite world we are now and how what I am experiencing cannot be explained in that manner.  I felt smaller, and smaller and smaller.

I sat there thinking about how my oldest brother shut me out of his life just before our father died.  I have realized that his wife is probably responsible for that.  I have known for about 21 years that she doesn't really like me but she is falsely "kind" and pretends to be "family".  For instance she continues (at least up until my father's illness and death) to say, "I love you." even thoush she would only say that on the rare occassions that I would bump into her like a X-mas every now and then - becasue even though we live in the same town she doesn't call and doesn't "visit".  She has always been "polite" when I called or visited but I know there was no truth to it.  It is so frustrating to live related to people for whom livin a lie is more important that having real relationships.

What I know about my father and this person to whom he was married is that when you don't do what they want they punish you for a violation. 

here is the short of it.  This woman asked me to give something to her and I told her that I would do so in exchange for the key to my safety deposit box (that my father had held).  She raged at me and began screaming and said she wouldn't do that, couldn't do that because that key was part of the estate and that she didn't have it.  (A minute later she said she didn't have it but that it was at her house which is in sight of my house.) Nothing is in that safe deposit box that belonged to my father.  All the contents are mine and she knows that because she went with me to open it after my father died and she saw all the contents.  and yet she refuses to give me the key.

I knew that when she asked for somethign for me that it was the right moment to ask for this key.  I also had known some time ago that somethign was odd that she even kept that key.  I had taken everything out of the box having a very uneasy feeling about it already.

something is very, very dark about all of this and my sixth sense had honed in on it.

She raged at me today.
It was extremely unnerving and unsettling.
It was a trigger but it was more than a trigger.
It reminded me about living under my father how he would pretend to care and then would unleash at things that were utterly irrational and had only to do with control.  The funny thing about this woman is that she does not know that I have copies of documents in which my father and she exchanged writings about his yelling at her.  She had her pastor meet with them and demanded that he confess that raising his voice to her was a sin.  he refused to do it.  They exchanged a number of letters about it.

Wonder why in her fundamentalist mind it is a sin for him to rage at her but not for her to rage at people she is trying to controll.

I called her daughter to discuss it with her.
Her daughter said, "Welcome to our world."
Her daughter who is 10 yeaers older than I and a very competent person has a naivete about her however.
she does not see her mother's nefarious side.
She, for reasons I can understand, thinks her mother is just raging.
I think her mother is far more "intentional" than that.
I think her mother is being intentionally abusive in order to gain as much for herself without having to give anything to my brothers or me or our children.

It would be bad enough if I had not lived my life being treated like this but it is so much worse to get this from yet another human.
How many more are there in this world?

[Gaining Strength]

I am in a kind of pain that defies description.
I know I am here because it is an opportunity to work out some portion of understanding and healing.
I want to get in the bed with a lot of sugary stuff and stay for a few days.
It is a profound depression that hearkens back.

I recall not that is not the right word, but it is something like recall, that my father would call me.  I would know that if I talked to him he would be demanding something from me that was impossible to do and that he would be raging at me for not doing what he was demanding.  But if I did NOT answer that it was just a matter of putting off the raging that would be coming my way anyway.  It was a damned if I do and damned if I don't and there was not a single solitary soul on this earth would would be there for me - then or now.  I would shut down and slip into a worthlessness in which I would know that all humans with authority would use it against me and that he would summon as mony as possible against. me.

This is why I so related to kafkaesque situations.  They are what I know.
This is why I so relate to and have compassion for people who are found guilty and imprisoned even though innocent.
Though I have not spent a day in a physical jail mine has been a psychological and in truth I am not certain that I have spent a day not in a psychological prison.  It is up to me but it is not that easy.  I would open the door and walk out if I could see the key.  I do know that it is available to me but I do not have the ability to get my hands on it yet.  Still not certain what stands in my way.

I accept the beatings.  I accept the torment.  As though there is some reward for it.  As though it is done for some altruistic greater good.  That is because that is what he held up to me.  It is still such crazy making that I am still locked in the craziness of it even though I am an adult with good reasoning power and he is dead. 

I do know from the many bits and pieces of this legacy that this process and the struggle and pain of it all is part of the healing process for yet another tiny piece.  And yet - it does not feel that way.  It feels excruciating and the agony is horrific and I am powerless and impotent and despised in its midst.  And the worst of it is that noone cares.  Suffering all alone is the greatest pain of it all.  It is at this moment that I long for "mother".  Oh don't mistake me - I don't mean that huma who gave birth to me and mean a real mother - one who loves and adores and nurtures and cares until her dieing day about the beings she brought into this life.  The kind of mother who would sacrifice without thinking because her children are greater than she.  the one who would never let her children suffer alone.  And I long for brother.  I do so long for that person who is my brother who shut me out for God only knows what reason two months ago.  It has ripped my heart open.

I am so broken.

But I am broken open and I am looking and I believe that I will find even a small bit of mroe healing.
Will this amount be enough?
will this bit bring some functionality into my life?
Will this time lift me out of profound isolation and aloneness - abject poverty of love and friendship?
I don't know and in one sense it does not matter but I do not have a choice. 
I must continue to work towards healing no matter how long it takes or even if it EVER takes.

[Hopalong]

I am so sorry (((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))), for the pain you are in.

For me, isolation doubles pain. You have not only grief and all the complex hurts, but the sense of not being comforted in it. Doubly hard.

I am truly sorry you feel so alone and unvalued.

I had a thought flash through my mind when I read this:

the joke was often at my expense and if I reacted with hurt or anger I was punished. that's how my father was. I was powerless to do anythign

Well, two thoughts. I'm no analyst so they may be not insightful -- but in case:

First thought was -- perhaps in continuing to feel so much hurt (this terrible pain) and anger (not this moment, but often) you are feeling what you damn well feel and you are not powerless. Perhaps the continuing anguish IS your power (or feels like it). IOW, in a way, continuing to be swamped in those two feelings most of the time as an adult ... you are defying him. (You will not allow me to feel my natural hurt and pain? I'll feel those things endlessly and YOU, father, will be powerless to prevent me.)

Second thought was (nearly the opposite, or parallel) -- perhaps in suffering so much, you are trying to continue your father's "work" of punishing you. Like being eternally in a state of suffering (abandonment, agony when family members are detached or indifferent, hurts with other people in the community, your father's widow--anger there too with inheritance issues, and anger and hurt with the women who came to help...in every direction, you suffer) is "helping" your father by being certain that the "job" of putting yourself down is faithfully continued...

Either way, it is all in reaction to him. Defiance or internalization ... it affects you the same way.

I don't know if that's apt at all but it surfaced because I feel I did this in relation to my mother, in many ways. Doesn't mean that's what is happening with you, but it resonated with that part of my history.

I do think you're healing, GS...this period is a crucible but there is no way you will be feeling the same way in a few years. Maybe even sooner, you will no longer be iron filings to the magnet of your father.

He has no more power.

I know you're going to reclaim your own when you tire of him.

love,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

yes, I say to you Hops, yes to what you have written.
It is such a process.
It is not about being stuck but it is a description of a point along a journey.
Pain and grief are not solid never moving but steps, amorphous and ephemeral.

putting words to such somehow solidifies it momentarily - just long enough to get a brief glimpse into its "matter" or essence or something -  Je ne sais quoi.

[Gaining Strength]

The intentionality of my father's destruction of my soul is heavy and often on my thoughts.

I see how he "trained" me to know that I could not complete things nor get them right.
Seemingly off topic but actually right on - I was noticing today while in a Starbucks that there was a person standing in the middle of a narrow passage.  I had a flash into memory and knew that had that person been my father that no matter which direction I moved, in front or behind, it would be wrong and I would get a stinging rebuke but then in a flash I also knew that I would have received that for moving or not moving as well.  Simply being was a no win situation every day and every moment.

It helps me understand so much about the situation I am in but it does not yet help me find the path out.

The other day my brother asked me to fax a paper to him because he is talking to some attorneys in my town about a situation in my father's estate.  I thought the paper was in a specific box in the office to which I have keys.  I went there to get it.  It was not where I thought it was.  I have basically shut down.  It was not difficult for me to know why.  In many ways my brother is an extention of my father.  I do not know if the paper is not there because someone came into the office and took it (highly unlikely) or that it IS in the box but I overlooked it or that I brought it home in some of the dozens of file boxes of my father's papers.  But more than the issue of locating the paper, my brother will definitely treat me the way my father did concerning the location of it.

He has already done that in this process.  He does not discuss nor inform me of which attorneys he is talking to, nor about the subject matter.  he does not listen to me about what I have to offer nor what facts or insights I have.  I was thinking about this yesterday - when what I have to say is utterly dismissed it is yet another experience of voicelessness. What's new?  But being so utterly alone in all of this is a kind of crazy making.  It is taking yet another toll.

It goes to the experience in childhood of having noone care when I hurt - physically or emotionally. 
That pain, of not being cared about or for, still exists for me and it is huge - just hanging there like a hideous, gaping soar.

[river]

I think this is one of the issues, things dont change, until they change.  I get so annoyed that in the psychology field, you hear over and over, about people who go for help are repeating patterns from the past, but the 'patterns' are still alive and well today. 
Still, I do think recovery is possible, but you do need to be not alone.  How can you., where can you, CAN you find the connection you need to recover? 

Personally this was a huge difficulty for me to find that person/ people I needed to both understand, and themselves to be dedicated to recovery and health.   But I seem to have put together some sort of, just about enough of a support of some sort to scrape together some semblance of recovery.   How does this stand with you GS? 

I know its not easy, I think that its only really people who have had a close encounter that can know how being close to an N can effect you, like how you described your thoughts about  the man in the corridore.   

[sKePTiKal]

It goes to the experience in childhood of having noone care when I hurt - physically or emotionally. 
That pain, of not being cared about or for, still exists for me and it is huge - just hanging there like a hideous, gaping soar.

Hi sweetie...

Yep; you're right. That pain exists BECAUSE of how your family - the individual people in it - are... how they see and treat you... even, dismiss you, or scapegoat you. For me, that pain still exists too.

Here's what I've come to: these aren't the only people that exist in the world... and other people are different than they are (many are different, that is - you will find some clones, too). Other people - like me - do care about you, even if I can't be there to see and hear what you do, to share a cup of tea (or something stronger)... and I'll tell you a secret: one of the main reasons I'm still hanging out here and checking to see if you've posted "today", is simply because I do like you and I'm still hoping to see you finally get past this point and break out of the "box" without doors that you're in. I would be so happy for you! And I would celebrate another victory over the damage that Ns think they can get away with...

That box canyon with 40 ft walls only LOOKS like it has no doors. The secret, hidden door that I found is here:

I finally accepted that my FOO is just so messed up and flat out nuts, that it was silly for me to think that a.) I was going to be able to "fix" or "change" them - make them see sense and act like normal people.... and b.) since they don't live in my world - where people do care about each other, help each other, and can be trusted... it is also silly for me to think that these things exist in their world. Different universe, different rules.  And yeah - OK - I admit, the pain still exists that something went so wrong, so far off the tracks with these people... that it can't ever be put right again. I still struggle with what is my own emotion of pain about this set of life circumstances. But "me" I can do something about...

The pain isn't a daily main feature in my life nor is it as overwhelming anymore. I forget about it more often, these days... unless reminded. And since I've decided A & B above... I've also decided that it's not helpful to me to let the pain engulf me. It's always the same box canyon with no apparent way out - except to focus my whole attention and being on something else. To practice and train myself to walk away emotionally - and allow myself the opportunity to feel something else; be something other than a total ball of pain; and to see what else life has to offer me. I haven't mastered this yet, by any means - and it's just my personal solution; I have no idea if this would work for you... but I'm finding that this is where I'm gaining insights now, into the "old story"; this is where the "rest of the" answers are for me.

One answer I found, is that almost everyone has some pain or other that follows them around or that they carry with them, in life. For my hubs & MIL... it was losing their Dad & husband when he was in the prime of life. For one of my Ds - it was the disaster of her first marriage which she is still struggling to walk away from emotionally, 6 years later. Look at all the stories here - and elsewhere - people are able to live with the pain only because they accept that it's there - and then they focus on something else, feeling something else. Putting the pain down long enough - to get back to active living.

And maybe that's another answer... I limit the amount of time I spend with the old pain, now - but I still "honor" that daily; give it it's due and it's validation... and then go about my day doing something ELSE. And even with all this practice, I still get triggered back into the full cosmic force of that pain... but once I gather my scattered wits and dust myself off... I simply go back and try, practice, and train again. That's all a person CAN do, maybe...

but that kind of "answer" won't sell books, or create a following, or make anyone a celebrity. It's not sexy enough to sell - but it does work. Somehow, I think there are a lot of people doing just this kind of thing - unsung heroes. I didn't see the necessity, nor the utility, of continuing to play my part in the N-drama by the being the one in pain, anymore. The N-drama is an illusion for the benefit only of the N... so I just decided that it was possible to simply walk away - and right through the walls of that box of pain.

Victory over the damage that Ns cause... can take many forms, but will come down to a decision and committment to one's self... to simply walk away from that impossible to change "cause" - and go out & see what else there is in life. Because there's absolutely nothing wrong with YOU, sweetie.... and no one can fix "them".... or make it different than what it is.

I'm sorry that's the way it is. I wish there was some sheriff who could ride into town and enforce that supposed "natural law" of parents loving children. I've wished it many, many times. I've spent my whole life trying to figure out some fancy, sneaky, brilliantly convoluted solution to finally get my FOO to see me for who I really am... and I've failed. I think now, that they're aliens from planet N... pods... inhabited by creatures from another universe... and all I can do is simply go live my life in my own world, and when I do have to interact with them - I must remember that they're really aliens. Take the necessary precautions to protect myself.

I wish I had a magic wand to wave over you, to make the pain go away... bring a smile to your face and fulfill all those longings you have to simply be held and cared for - cared about.

[Gaining Strength]

Ok - so here is an entry under the rubric of "unintentional N".

I have soften a little on mymother.  Not much, but a little.  Simply because, for the first time in my life, this differential is, without effort on my part, simply changing me.  I do find myself driven to peaks of madness when dealing with her or in her presence but at the same time I am also able to see that most of what she does that is so offensive is oblivious to her.

So here is a story from life with mother yesterday:
One of my father's first cousins died Sunday evening.  Though he left here as a young man over 60 years ago he chose to be buried by his parents here in his ancestral home.  I made arrangements, on very short notice,  for everyone to come by my mother's house after the service at the cemetery. Her home is easily accessible for those who are elderly and very easy to get to from the cemetery AND she is always amenable to having family over.

My cousin's wife calls me sunday evening and asks me to let everyone in our town know.  At that time she expected the service to be Thursday.  By Tuesday morning it had changed to Tues afternoon.  I was a busy bee planning a small menu of pickup foods and drink and ordering and picking it all up.  I had a few hours to get it all done.  My father's cousins are all in their 80s.  His sister is in her 70s.  There is dissention in and among the different branches but this particular person and his wife simply ignored it all and were kind to everyone.  

so I notified one cousin GiGi who is not doing well at all.  She was very glad to come and send flowers for the widow to my mother's house.  When I arrived at my mother's house to set up the food and bar and make one flower arrangement about an hour before the funeral my mother said, "look at the beautiful flowers Gigi sent me!"  

"Mother - she sent them to Vonny!"
"Well they had my name on them."
"They had your name on the envelope because it is your house.  Why would she send YOU flowers when HER cousin died?"
She shut her eyes and turned her mouth down and lifted her left hand from the arm chair in a dismissive way with nothin short of an audible snarl.

It was yet another window into her soul for me.
Not surprisingly, the card was written to Vonny but my mother never bothers with such trivia as reading cards (or notes or opening gifts - the plates I gave her for Christmas still sit in their box at the foot of her chair where she opened them on Christmas Day.)

I suppose she dismissed me because I dared ... what?
She really thought GiGi would send HER flowers!
I cannot even get there - I CAN_N_O_T.

 when GiGi stood to leave and I made a show of acknowledging in front of GiGi that the beautiful flowers were for Vonny from Gigi so that Vonny would have a chance to thank her and receive them. I could feel a deep resentment fume from my mother's presence AND I had a sense of guilt and shame flash over me even as Iknew what I was doing was the very thing to do and would have done it just so had my mother been absent and the whole thing been at my own home.  But I was cognizant of my mothers control over me and how it had controlled me in profound ways earlier.  

It is different though I still don't understand how, in that she is not scheming, plotting and planning but simply, chlidishly, acting out.  She is quite simply a little child. And yet she was able to inflict so very much pain and scarring across my ages.  So very much and yet, I now think, only a thimble to the ocean of pain and suffering from my father.

[Gaining Strength]

PR - I've been thinking about the post your wrote about the FOO. I have long known that I can not change those folks but what I am really writing about is more about the effect that does not reside in the rational mind nor the adult being, it is the damage that was done within the child that colored the perspectives that went forward and are carried into adulthood.  These are like permanent lenses that one looks through unaware that there is a medium coloring ones perspective.  It is the expectation and approach of life looking for the exclusion, wating for the insult or rejection, knowing it is coming, just not when.

And it IS coming. And it s NOT limited to those people who were in my family of origin.  Although they will always treat me that way.

Part of what I am working out here is how those lenses do in fact mediate the world for me and how they work differently, each gnerating its own fibers that twisted together create a thread that has been powerfully binding in my life.  Those fibers are so intertwined that I have not been able to identify them individually and cut through them.  Just recognizing that they fall into different catagories (intntional and unintentional) shines the light on them as though each group were colored differently like a bundle of tiny electical wires in their bright sheaths.  Differentiating them in to smaller subcatagories will follow and slowly I wil be able to cut throgh the binds.

[Gaining Strength]

parts of my wounding that are most difficult to write about are the most painful
I suspect that is common to many
but for me there is a special twist on it all
If I complained or "shared" my hurt with my family I was severly punished or humiliated and belittled for it.
So it is difficult to put it down - expecting to be belittled.

But I am in the midst of recognizing some aspect of this wounding that plagues me and yet stays submerged, not quite available to my rational mind.
While there is an expectation of being rejected or left out there is simultaneously a resentment bubbling, broiling up.

I went to a meeting yesterday with a group of "country club" ladies from my mother's age on down to 30s. 
I found myself so irritated - irrationally so.
The meeting was outdoors in a new city park and the speaker was someone I have known my entire life who is head of the local community foundation.
she was talking up her foundation and the park and the roll of the foundation in raising the money.
She told a "funny" story about asking her husband (who heads the CocaCola plant here (he got his job from her father as her family is the largest shareholder )) for a contribution.  She laughed and said that he joked and said, "You know we don't contribute to green causes."  But she went on to say he got caught up in the concept and he and several other business leaders ended up "dishing out big bucks."  Everyone laughed.

It was all so smarmy to me - all inside joking, back slapping, patting each other on the back for what a great job "we" have done.

When the talk was over, box lunches were served.  I sat on a low wall near the tables and was talking to one of the park workers.  Mid conversation, one of my mother's contemporaries walked up, interrupted and, ignoring me, said to the park worker, "are ya'll going to name the plants over there?" The park worker cleverly said, "Yes ma'am.  We'll name one after you if you want."  "Mrs. B, still not acknowledging me just moved on."  There was so much made so clear to me in that small interchange.  One was that because I do not have money she no longer needs to speak to me or even acknowledge me and more over she views herself as important enough to interrupt whomever, whenever because their conversation cannot be of value.

It is the latter that I lived with as a child.
What ever I had to say was of little to no importance.
Waht ever I wanted, whatever food was being served whatever anything - I would get what was left and better not complain.
That bottom of the barrel treatment has left a residual of resentment - expectation and resentment.

[sKePTiKal]

I hear you sweetie - I'm away from home dealing with my FOOs insanity - but I have an explanation - maybe it's a tool - for the unintentional wounding.

All I have time for right now, is that you're absolutely "bullseye" on the connection between expectation and resentment.

And the country club ladies? Personally, that kind of insular, self-congratulation, and non-empathetic non-acknowledgement always makes me ask: Do I really care what those people think? Are they such wonderful human beings, that I should care that they don't even see me - much less speak? And - ARE they real people? What skeletons, pain, insecurities, etc are they hiding under that mask of LA-DEE-DA?

I'm sure I'm going to have a lot to process from this trip on the thread Hops started for me... and I want to come back and deal with your example of your mom... and what I see in it... and where you "hidden way out" is in that. But I just can't - hang in there... I do think you're on the path to another HUGE weight off your shoulders.

[Gaining Strength]

I'm thinking about some of the passive aggressive stuff my mother does and wondering if that fits into intentional or unintentional or more likely somewhere in between.

Here is a for instance:  My little boy spends the night with her every now and then.  She has a very nice, formerly middle class, couple from South America who clean her house.  She does not have them clean the bedroom and bath upstairs or change the bed linens.  She expects me to do that.  She has the money and she likes to help these folks out.  They go to her church.  But she not only does not want to help me out, she actually intends to cause me more burden than I already have.  That is my perspective.

So I guess I put, at least some of her passive aggressive behavior in the intentional pile.

[Gaining Strength]

And the country club ladies? Personally, that kind of insular, self-congratulation, and non-empathetic non-acknowledgement always makes me ask: Do I really care what those people think? Are they such wonderful human beings, that I should care that they don't even see me - much less speak? And - ARE they real people? What skeletons, pain, insecurities, etc are they hiding under that mask of LA-DEE-DA?

You are right about this PR.
But more than that - something in the way you put it shifts my perspective - every so slightly - that I am about to see it in a whole new light - in a way that will work for me - one that has eluded me all these years - that need to belong was so great.

[sKePTiKal]

Yer welcome, m'lady!   

I continually re-evaluate who and what I want to belong to... I change; groups change. It really does matter who matters to me, you know, in that concept of belonging? Time, seasons, etc biblical verse. Right now, who I want to belong to doesn't necessarily include my FOO. Sometimes I do care... right now, no. And what I think of my self - who I am and what my value is - doesn't depend on belonging to them.

I can't wait to see what germinates from this seed!