Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: towrite on March 07, 2008, 10:54:26 AM
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Yesterday was my aunt's funeral - my father's only sister. It was a blessing in that she "left" a number of years ago. It was the funeral itself that made it a "bad" day. Can't think of an appropriate word, better then "bad".
It was the first time I'd seen my brother (who isn't speaking to me) since last fall sometime. I arrived at my mother's to drive her and her car to the next town where the funeral was. My brother was there and got in his car when he saw me arrive. I parked my car to walk over the Mother's and he pulled out of his parking place next to hers and moved down the road too far to speak. Mother had asked him to drive close by us 'cuz she was afraid her car would give us trouble. We went all of 4 blocks when he disappeared in front of us.
We got to the house where all the cousins were gathered to ride in the limousines. He walked with mother to the door with me next to her. Not a word. So, I said, "Hey, P." He answered in a very angry, cold voice. I never knew it was possible to pack so much anger and coldness into 2 words. We left for the funeral in the limos - he was forced to sit next to me. The only thing he said was, "Will you please move over?" He talked to everyone around me, including leaning over me to talk to M. At the service, I offered him the hymnal and the prayerbook to share. He never touched it and next thing I knew he had found a prayer book of his own. We went back to the house for the "wake" and he studiously ignored me, left after a few minutes, saying goodbye to M. I didn't expect him to say goodbye to me. I wandered around shell-shocked.
When I got home, I felt like I was recovering from a 3-car pile up. My chest felt like it was going to explode, I couldn't cry but I wanted to badly. Everything in me hurt. I felt hated. First my dead brother hated me and told people he thought I was a sociopath; now this brother. With everything else going on in my life, I feel like I'm going over the edge.
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Thanks, PR. I was never able to resolve the hatred of my dead brother towards me, never exactly understood why he hated me so much. I'm sure - intellectually at least - that it wasn't about me. Just as I'm sure this brother's hatred isn't about me. But tell my why "the heart is slow to learn/ what the swift mind beholds at every turn"???
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(((((((towrite)))))))))
I am so sorry you had to go through that. What a mean bunch of jerks.
It was kind of you to go to your Aunt's funeral. I am not sure I would have even gone, were I to expect to be treated as you were.
Love, Beth
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Towrite,
You are a sensitive,intelligent,insightful person whom your family does not deserve, NOT at all!
Whatever "reason" they don't like you is THEIR issue.
Please try to see your own value apart from them.*I* can see it.
I am the same way with my M, though. I see HER opinion of me,not the true one---bleh. Love to you, Kate Ami
(((((((((((Kate))))))))))
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Towrite,
I am so sorry you are going thru all this pain. It's just so painful. What can you do to sooth your pain?
Bad families stink. Why were we born into this family? There's no answer. I guess we just have to make the best of it, so I hope you are being good and kind to yourself.
with love,
annie
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Dear Kate,
I am so saddened to sense your bad day. Families such as ours, can be so cruel, this I have experienced, and so my empathy is based upon knowing the crushing weight on ones heart and the sadness.
Please know that you did nothing to deserve to be treated in such a way, and especially, at such an occasion of mourning and sadness.
The behavioral problem is owned by your brother, as displayed, and as evidenced by those present, such is the testimony.
With a good heart, you attended the occasion, with good intentions.
Warm thoughts of you, Kate.
Love, Leah
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((((((((((Kate))))))))))) I'm sorry that circumstances were so difficult. Just hoping that you will rest assured, knowing that you did your part in attending and that's the absolute only thing over which you have control... your own choices and actions.
You did well, I think... you showed up and that took alot of courage and fortitude. Those qualities are in you, Kate... and that's no small matter! Just think what you can accomplish as you continue stepping forward and showing up... for yourself.
Love to you,
Carolyn
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I think shunning is the most juvenile possible way to express anger...
what a jerk.
I'm sorry you had your hopes up, and sorry he is so immature.
I think they've earned a good solid distance from you for a good long time.
I'm really sorry (((((ToWrite)))))))).
You DO know this is no measure of you.
love,
Hops
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towrite,
was your mother (or father) by any chance NPD?
If so, is not this sibling distrust, and not getting along a result? I think I read something about that, but I am new to this. Anyway, none of my siblings tolerates me. I am the "scapegoat" and always will be. Hurts to feel it, hurts to experience it, hurts to know it, hurts to write it....
Love yourself the way you deserve to be loved, my friend.
(((((((towrite)))))))
violet
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towrite,
You have had a communication breakdown which reminds me of a Led Zeppelin song - dates me. But it's true. You don't really even know why he's mad at you, right? Just some vague description someone gave you.
This is the definition of a time when clear confrontation is in order.
Obviously, a funeral is not the time for it and I applaud you for not making that drama!
But, as soon as you possibly can - phone, email, face to face - just say the facts as you know them. Then you will have done your part. At this point you might feel you still have some part in the whole thing - as you haven't completed the circle. Until you do, I suspect you will feel similarly.
"Hi, bro. I notice lately the Big Chill coming from you. I wondered what in the world I had done to make you feel so strongly. Please let me know so we can discuss it thoroughly and to both our satisfaction. Love, towrite."
Then the circle is complete. If he takes up his end and answers, great - you have more info. If not, you've done all you can do - and deserve a pat on the back for effort!
I'm so sorry you've had this happen. I can't imagine sitting through that with all that emotion and charged atmosphere and not breaking down.
dandylife
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(((((((((((((Kate))))))))))
Thinking of you, Kate! Love, Ami
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ToWrite - I have just read your initial post. My memory is bad these days. Have you written about his treatment that began last fall? Several posters seem to know that you don't know what set off his profound unkindness, is that correct?
I suspect that your assesment that it is not about you is correct. I have long felt that it is a mother's role to mediate between siblings - no matter what the age. From what I have read about your mother I gather that she has not done that. Did she remain silent in the face of his obvious treatment at the funeral?
Until this past summer, for 25 years both of my brothers and their wives treated me similarly. I can remember family dinners when I would attmpt to join a conversation and I would simply be talked over. I became so resentlful that I simply refused to go anymore. But the feeling of being so dismissed was devastating.
Of course my mother NEVER did anything about it. My N father was the one who kept the family togeher until he left my motr and quit speaking to my brothers.
It is devastating to the heart because humans were meant to be in communion and need each other. We need those who we know the best to love us and care about us and treat us as human beings.
I am going out on a limb and gues that he feels some resentment towards you. It might have to do with something that he perceives you have been given that he did not get.
I vaguely understand my brother's belittlemen of me. It was part of the family tradition fostered by my parents and continued by my brothres and their littl boys. It is very, very painful.
I hope you will write more about it and continue to try to take it apart and analyze it. My heart is with you - Gaining Strength
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tm-You were the one who took the high road. You can feel good about that and that you were ties to pay your last respects.
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Dear towrite,
If I put myself in your shoes I know I'd feel the same hurt and frustration that you fee. Then I think of that saying that we must give others room to make an ass of themselves if they want to. Your brother made an ass of himself, but you didn't allow him to make an ass of you and that is the most important part of your story. I'm so sorry for your having had this experience.
tt
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Thanks for all the kind words. GS, my NM told me he felt I had been telling him what to do, that's why he has cut off contact. Uncharacteristically, she also said (to me - I don't know if she said this to him) that that's what most older sisters do. Anyway, I have written him twice in the last six months to ask him to explain what I did to make him so mad. He either deletes any emails from my address or simply doesn't respond. I had thought about driving the 100 mi. to his house and confronting him, but after the funeral I realized I just have to wipe him off my landscape. It's too painful to be around him and with everything else going on in my life, the last thing I need is a brother carrying a sharpened sword.
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my NM told me he felt I had been telling him what to do, that's why he has cut off contact.
That's hard to understand isn't it. What a bizarre way to respond to someone who is tell him what to do. I can think of a million other responces.
It points to the fact that there is clearly so much more going on and it could easily have much more to do with your mother than with you. It is also very possible that he has NO idea why he is acting that way. I know that I was filled with resentment over so many things about how I was treated by my family and I finally got to the point that I did things that seemed irrational to them and sometimes I took out my frustration and rage against a substitute person because the consequences would not be as bad.
I suspect his behavior towards you has little to do with you and yet you are receiving the real pain from it.
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No more! I decided I didn't need to hurt myself any longer by continuing to try with him. That decision has brought me some peace. I have too much else on my plate to worry about his juvenile behavior and all the things I can imagine I might have done wrong. This is his choice. Let it be.
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Dear Kate,
I've been thinking alot about my brother lately - my only sibling - and almost sent him a card this past Christmas... almost. Got so far as addressing the envelope, and then let it lie.
Just feels like he and I have nothing in common except for our parents - and that's no basis for a relationship.
So I felt that sending a card now, after several years of silence, would be silly... like going through motions.
The fact is, he's so N'ish that I can't imagine ever trying to sit down and have a discussion with him.
A couple years ago, I heard through one of my grown daughters who lives in his state that "Uncle __ would like to hear from you."
My reaction was, "Oh, really?!? He knows where I am."
Maybe that was his way of relieving his own conscience about the lack of communication?
Then, last year, we traveled to his state to visit my oldest daughter in hospital. I didn't inform him of our visit, but I'm sure someone in the family let him know. I had no desire to make a connection then... and so it didn't happen. No doubt in my mind that he thinks it was up to me to contact him and that I am responsible for not doing so. Maybe he's right.
But either way - just seems that at some point, we need to become very very choosy about letting people into our space.
Almost 50 years of his past patterns have proven to me that he's someone I want to, at very least, keep at great distance.
I guess he contacts my oldest girls, when he feels like it... so he has his own ideas about what sorts of relationships are desireable and acceptable to him. But he never sent them any greeting while they still lived at home. It's so weird... almost like he's taken a sort of "ex-husband" role with me, if you know what I mean... and why in the world that would be, is beyond me!
Anyhow, this is just some rambling talk, but I feel like... do I really want to spend any more time wondering about what might be going through the mind of these self-obsessed people? I cannot imagine a more fruitless and frustrating exercise. After dealing with so many people with whom it is totally dangerous to give them the benefit of the doubt, it sure doesn't seem wise. So I can relate... and I'm sorry your brother's nonsense has hurt you... and I hope that we both can come to some peace about these people.
With love,
Carolyn