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 �what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux "i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes note random entry image credit design by : ilazarn ikmal powered by : diaryland |
when we were young.
2019-03-19 @ 10:05 p.m.
it was an absolutely beautiful, gorgeous, chilly amazing day today. when i got in to work i just stood there and looked up into the sky. perfect fluffy clouds, perfect blue sky. i thought that i'm so thankful to be alive right now, free of that poison in my life, completely free, having everything i need, knowing that everything i want is just a little hard work away. then i walked across the parking lot into our office and thought of my brother and all that's going on with him and SIL, and i hope he takes the help and runs with it. i've been watching a lot of intervention lately too, and you know, i'm sure you can argue that sometimes it's a case of clever editing, but you can't deny it when you hear it from the horse's mouth: some of these parents are the fucking worst, sometimes unashamedly so, and most of the time they're 100% oblivious to the effect that they've had or are currently having on their children. those episodes really hit home, and this one in particular with a woman who could have been a carbon copy of my mother. down to the theatrical, dramatic way she was playing the camera. it was so familiar and gross to see. it was exactly the same as the way my mother acted in front of "people," this completely different "great mom" version of herself that she put on that we had to play along with or holy hell would be waiting for us when we were alone. her daughter was the addict, and the mother kept saying in this disgustingly patronizing voice, "i'm just trying to understand you." and her daughter was saying, "that's the problem, mom. i don't want you to understand. i just want you to listen." and the mother just could not comprehend what the girl was saying. you could see in her face that it just did not compute. man, it was like ... i understood that scene on a spiritual level. the worst offenders of this group of intervention parents also always seem to say, "you know, i don't know what happened to my kid in their life that was so bad to make them start doing this." so now we come back to me and my family. that's something my mother would say. i'm sure she and my stepdad have said it amongst themselves. i mean, sure, you could just have two bad eggs, two loser kids who, from young ages, struggled with mental health and addiction and suicide. through no fault of their own, they were just perfect parents who were randomly dealt dysfunctional kids. but is that really the most likely scenario? especially when, as we learned when we visited relative last fall, that the rest of the family was looking at them like ... wtf are they doing? when my brother called to confess that he was a shitty guy the other night, he said that he needed help around "some of the things that happened when we were young." and i was so happy to hear that, because even though he was there in the trenches with me, he's always tried to play the tough guy and act like nothing really ever happened to us. it was SO HARD for me because we were so close in so many ways, i mean we are truly best of best friends and have been for the past 20 years. but it was like the fucking elephant in the room! our parents were neglectful, emotionally distant, and abusive. my mother has serious psychological issues. it was so difficult to talk to him for so many years when that was just a thing we didn't talk about. and you know there are a lot of those. that's what we do (or don't do) in my family, after all. so i hope that my brother's story ends well. i get depressed and i isolate, i become a hermit. i think of killing myself. (or let me say, i USED to. i'm consciously working to break these habits but luckily i haven't felt depressed in a long time!) he's the one you'd see on this show - he self-destructs, he goes all in, he tries to burn it all down. he's so fucking cool, like such a guy that everyone likes. but these things about him that he's getting help for are things that also kind of make him unbearable when you know him well. i want him to be happy and i actually love SIL and i know she's been getting help too, so there could totally be a happily ever after to this. i hope there is, because i love everybody and my life this past year and a half has just been so much more than i thought it could be. in one week i am going to get my passport renewed because in 6 months i will be on a tropical island. i never would have been able to do this if i were still with boy. my home is clean, my rent is paid, my shit is together. my spring wardrobe is fucking fresh. i love my job. i feel calm and optimistic. i haven't yet worked out what proportion of addicts on this show with terrible parents have gotten and stayed sober without addressing the terrible parenting. the girl whose mother was like mine disengaged from her, started a new life far away, learned independence and self-love and was doing great. another person on a different episode got clean, returned home to their terrible parents, relapsed, ODed and died. i hope my brother has the strength to do this. to love them but keep them at arm's length. therapy hasn't made me perfect, not by a LONG stretch. but i have so much more insight into my motivations, what makes me tick. i understand better how to stop setting myself up for failure by putting myself first, no matter what, and to manage my expectations around my parents - or more specifically, of what our relationship can be. i didn't mean to get into this huge thing but once i started writing, i realized how much this thought had developed throughout the day. the other night boss and i were talking about something to do with parents, i think he was telling me that MS had asked him for monetary help because his parents don't want to have anything to do with him. and boss was like, what kind of people are like that? but he said it like that lady on intervention - as a person who couldn't comprehend the idea of it. and i said, you have been fortunate that you have always had a close, loving relationship with your family. to you, you can't even imagine anything different. you've never had anything remotely like that experience. but that's how it is for a lot of people - there's no one to go to. and that's really scary. anyway, wow, gotta go to bed. my brain wants to go in so many more directions on this but i must sleep. i'll come back to it another time as i'm sure it's going to continue to develop. the situation as well as the thought. ok enough. sleepytime! |