Yes, it's about my daughter again.
Have you ever felt like you couldn't make sense out of a relationship or conversation with someone to the point where you were going to go bonkers?? DD1 tells me one thing, then swears she didn't, then tells me another and if I react disagreeably she says I'm "freaking out" and that I misunderstood her.
Here's a classic case of our conversations. DD1 told me a few weeks ago that she was behind 13 hours in weight training class. I'm positive she said 13 hours and I relayed the info to hubby when I got home. Last week I asked if she was catching up the 13 hours in the class and she goes "I never said 13 hours, I said I'm 25 hours behind" and I said "No, you said 13" to which she became aggravated and insisted she never said 13, that she said 25 and so to avoid a conflict I just agreed with her, knowing the entire time she had said 13. When I asked if she had a plan to catch up, she said she was gonna give a friend her card to swipe when she works out and the hours would go towards my daughter. I told her that if she gets caught that that is cheating and she said well she can't help it, that she can't do the work outs along with 16 hours of class work and 20 hours a week of part time work. I told her if she gets caught, it's her goose. Anyway, the whole thing is the amount of hours. I know it seems like a small thing, but all our conversations are like this. They have been for years and she used to tell me all the time I was going crazy (she meant it) that I was "losing it" and would really go ballistic if I insisted she had said X when she was insisting she had said Y. It got so bad that I finally just quite arguing with her, especially after she left for college. What's the point? I don't know if she tells so many lies that she can't keep them straight or if it just worked so well for her to bully me or if she has a more serious problem. I don't have problems remembering anything anyone else ever tells me. Not teachers, friends, husband, my other kids, things I read on the internet, phone numbers, etc.... why would it be that I always get things wrong with her????????? Common sense says that I don't get it wrong with her, but that she is lying/twisting/manipulating.
Last week she said she was coming home tonight (night before THanksgiving) which shocked me because she never comes home. EArlier today she sent me a text that said "I love you and I miss you" then later she called but didn't mention coming home today so I asked (so I'd know whether to finish her curtains today or not) and she said, "Well, I might spend the night with xxx because the roads might be icy" I said o.k. And she didn't mention one word about tomorrow (Thanksgiving) and I didn't ask. We aren't doing Thanksgiving stuff tomorrow, we're doing it Sunday when everyone can be here so I doubted she would come home tomorrow but I didn't know. The more I thought about it the madder I got because she must think I'm an idiot. First she sends an "I miss you" text and then says she isn't coming home because of the roads being icy which is BS because it's 50 degrees outside. So I tried to call her for almost 2 hours and she wouldn't answer her phone and so I sent her a text that said I was tired of her doing this way. Later she calls and wants to know what I'm "freaking out" over and I said that it was an excuse about icy roads because it's 50 degrees outside and I'd rather her say "I dont' want to come home" than feed me bs and then she switches immediately to "I'm afraid to drive in thunderstorms and how am I supposed to know if it's gonna be storming tonight" ???????? I lost my cool, told her I was tired of the BS and hung up the phone. Since when do you have icy roads in thunderstorms??? She can't even keep her lies/reasons in the same weather formats. Besides, she's known to go from hither to yon when it suits her. The truth is she doesn't want to come home but she expects me to buy a line of bs. Then she called and we got into it and she said she never said she WASN'T coming home tonight, but that she said that if the weather was bad she might not drive home but stay at xxx's. That isn't what she said at all, but when I pointed that out she starts saying I'm freaking out, and says I'm the reason she has issues.
This is how it always goes. She says she's gonna do A, then has a reason A won't work and she has to do B, then says she never said she was gonna do A and/or B depending on the situation, and then says I don't know what I'm talking about and that I'm crazy and that everything is my fault.
Another example. She never knows what her schedule is going to be at work. Whenever we have a family thing coming up (which isn't often) we either have to plan a date without her schedule info or we have to cajole and beg for days to find out her schedule. Her claim was always that the schedule wasn't posted (WHATEVER!) So a few weeks go she's telling about a trip she has planned and I asked how she knew she would be off work so far in advance and she casually says, "They make the schedule up a month in advance"
I filed away that tidbit as I wasn't up for a fight at the time. So when we were trying to pick a date for family Thanksgiving she couldn't tell us her work schedule. I turned it over to hubby to discuss with her and they got into it and he said "Well you said yourself that it's made out a month in advance" and she said that it is but that Thanksgiving isn't in this month
Hubby pointed out that Thanksgiving is in November and then asked her if by making the schedule out for a month at a time she means they do a block of 4 weeks but it isn't by calendar month, which she flatly said "No, that isn't how it's done, it's done by the month" so around and around they went and finally after yelling on hubby's part, he finds out that yes, it's done by a block schedule of so many weeks at a time and has nothing to do with the calendar months, just as he asked her to begin with. It's almost as though she's either brain dead (but she's not, she's quite bright) or she's high, or she's trying to keep us in the dark.
Another example. When she was driving from our town to private high school in the next town, she was always griping about her gas mileage and claiming she needed more money for gas. We felt sure she was fibbing but when I asked her about her trip to school and back, etc... she'd say "All I do is drive to school and back and it uses up xxx of a tank" All we heard all the time was that she got bad gas mileage and that she needed more money for gas so hubby gave her money to fill her tank to the brim, told her to write down the mileage then and then again when the tank was almost empty. She did the first two steps but not the last step but kept bitching about the gas but when one of us offered to drive her car for awhile to see the mileage problem for ourselves she would get mad and say never mind. This whole thing was a major, major battle at our house non-stop. Months later when she was in college she slipped and said in casual conversation with me, "Yeah, I didn't have anything to do at lunch during my senior year so I drove around the whole hour"
I said, "How come you never told us that before, city driving is the worst gas mileage and no wonder you never had any gas" and she just shrugged her shoulders. So all that bitching and hell raising about gas money was really because she was spending an hour riding around (and was probably spending some of her gas money on other things) but wouldn't admit that to us and I only know it now because it slipped.
WHat I see is a pattern of lies but she gets all hot if you say she's lying and emphatically/ballistically claims she isn't and that we're freaking out, we're blowing it out of proportion, we're confused, we're crazy, we're "losing it", we don't know what we're talking about, she can't handle anymore us suggesting or accusing her of lying,
And before someone on here suggests, as has been suggested before by one poster, that I'm hounding her. These are either issues that she has created (like the gas mileage thing) or either they are subjects she brings up in conversations. I don't hound her, grill her, I give her her space but even a small conversation reveals major inconsistencies to most of which I keep my mouth shut because it does no good to point them out. We pick our battles with her, such as planning for Thanksgiving, and try to let the rest slide. And if we hadn't consulted her about Thanksgiving schedule she'd have gone off on how we didn't care about her, but then when we asked we couldn't get the info. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. And maybe this one time the schedule wasn't up, but it can't possibly be that way every dang time, can it?????????
I don't know if she thinks we're so stupid that we're SUPPOSED to believe her lies or if she lies so much she can't keep them straight or if it's drug usage or if I'm crazy.
I AM going crazy from years of this. It's killing me.
