![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredienIf you're reading this journal and don't know the book and author, I'd be suprised.
--
So, I had a fun weekend. It rained, and I spent Saturday evening scrubbing the tub with bleach while my mother came home and sat on the sofa watching the Olympics, after people accused me of being a biased reporter. I was snippy with my mother at one point, and later thought better of it--no matter how crappy my week was, I shouldn't have taken it out on her--and apologized, saying "I've just had a rough week."
My mother's response: "Well, on the other side of the fence."
Later: "What have I done, that my children treat me like shit?"
I was tempted to reply, "well, not an awful lot in the way of actual nurturing past the age of six or so," which would have been true, but at that point it was almost midnight, I was covered with bleach, and I had a stinging cut on my leg from where I'd fallen into the bucket. So I didn't press it. I refuse to be petty.
I don't want my mother to think I treat her like shit. I don't want to treat my mother like shit. How is it that one of the people in this world with whom I would most like a lasting and caring relationship seems to be one of the people who most refuses my attempts to connect with her, when I still bother--less and less often, now--to try? It feels pathetic to even try to reach out and I feel like I've personally failed somewhere. Maybe she does, too--that statement makes me wonder if the root cause of all that wasn't anger, but a sense of personal failure on her part--but it still hurt me.
My dad is a little better; he's like the one roommate everyone has in college with whom you get along great with because you never see them. Because of that distance he generally has a better perspective on things. Sometimes that perspective leads him, though, to say things that are true but better left unsaid. I was loading the dishwasher last week, for example, and my mother was correcting me--it was very annoying until my father spoke up and said, "she's an adult, treat her like one." Mom: "I do." Dad: "No, you don't."
I loved him a little for that; it was true, after all. I hugged him for it. And it seemed very reasonable to me.
Until I realized they'd had that argument in the same way two four-year-olds sitting in the car will accuse each other of poking and cooties--and that it was an argument they'd had many times before. Condensed down to a sentence: "won't you step in when I argue like this and confirm that I am the more reasonable parent, who occasionally respects you and your wishes, and therefore loves you more?" I never took sides in that one because I felt it was impossibly evil to even think of asking their children to take sides in that.
Later, I realized that I'd taken sides unintentionally by--of all things on God's green earth--hugging my father to thank him for standing up for me. I still feel sickened by that.
It took me this entire journal entry to realize that coming to terms with the fact that the many emotions of self-disgust and hatred I've felt--especially over this past week and weekend--were and are mine to deal with, but were not necessarily caused by me. Which I had been thinking was the case and blaming myself for, for years. I think I should lay the blame squarely where it belongs:
- I am not meant to live with a father who does not make promises anymore because he has never kept a single one to me.
- I am not meant to live with a mother who speaks out of fourteen sides of her mouth.
- I am not meant to live with a family that believes hitting children until they are near-mad with fear will make up for five years' worth of effectively not being there.
- I am not meant to live with a family that shows, through actions, that they believe their children are able to live on their own once they reach a certain age, while saying through words that their children are capable of doing nothing correctly.
- I am not willing or meant to live with people who show such a lack of kindness because their ears do not take time to hear, their speech is harmful to others, their actions are slothful, and who, through these things, have trod down their own souls.
I refuse to be petty. I refuse to knowingly speak harmful things. I will teach myself how to love.
That's better.
--
So, I had a fun weekend. It rained, and I spent Saturday evening scrubbing the tub with bleach while my mother came home and sat on the sofa watching the Olympics, after people accused me of being a biased reporter. I was snippy with my mother at one point, and later thought better of it--no matter how crappy my week was, I shouldn't have taken it out on her--and apologized, saying "I've just had a rough week."
My mother's response: "Well, on the other side of the fence."
Later: "What have I done, that my children treat me like shit?"
I was tempted to reply, "well, not an awful lot in the way of actual nurturing past the age of six or so," which would have been true, but at that point it was almost midnight, I was covered with bleach, and I had a stinging cut on my leg from where I'd fallen into the bucket. So I didn't press it. I refuse to be petty.
I don't want my mother to think I treat her like shit. I don't want to treat my mother like shit. How is it that one of the people in this world with whom I would most like a lasting and caring relationship seems to be one of the people who most refuses my attempts to connect with her, when I still bother--less and less often, now--to try? It feels pathetic to even try to reach out and I feel like I've personally failed somewhere. Maybe she does, too--that statement makes me wonder if the root cause of all that wasn't anger, but a sense of personal failure on her part--but it still hurt me.
My dad is a little better; he's like the one roommate everyone has in college with whom you get along great with because you never see them. Because of that distance he generally has a better perspective on things. Sometimes that perspective leads him, though, to say things that are true but better left unsaid. I was loading the dishwasher last week, for example, and my mother was correcting me--it was very annoying until my father spoke up and said, "she's an adult, treat her like one." Mom: "I do." Dad: "No, you don't."
I loved him a little for that; it was true, after all. I hugged him for it. And it seemed very reasonable to me.
Until I realized they'd had that argument in the same way two four-year-olds sitting in the car will accuse each other of poking and cooties--and that it was an argument they'd had many times before. Condensed down to a sentence: "won't you step in when I argue like this and confirm that I am the more reasonable parent, who occasionally respects you and your wishes, and therefore loves you more?" I never took sides in that one because I felt it was impossibly evil to even think of asking their children to take sides in that.
Later, I realized that I'd taken sides unintentionally by--of all things on God's green earth--hugging my father to thank him for standing up for me. I still feel sickened by that.
It took me this entire journal entry to realize that coming to terms with the fact that the many emotions of self-disgust and hatred I've felt--especially over this past week and weekend--were and are mine to deal with, but were not necessarily caused by me. Which I had been thinking was the case and blaming myself for, for years. I think I should lay the blame squarely where it belongs:
- I am not meant to live with a father who does not make promises anymore because he has never kept a single one to me.
- I am not meant to live with a mother who speaks out of fourteen sides of her mouth.
- I am not meant to live with a family that believes hitting children until they are near-mad with fear will make up for five years' worth of effectively not being there.
- I am not meant to live with a family that shows, through actions, that they believe their children are able to live on their own once they reach a certain age, while saying through words that their children are capable of doing nothing correctly.
- I am not willing or meant to live with people who show such a lack of kindness because their ears do not take time to hear, their speech is harmful to others, their actions are slothful, and who, through these things, have trod down their own souls.
I refuse to be petty. I refuse to knowingly speak harmful things. I will teach myself how to love.
That's better.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
30/8/04 12:26 (UTC)Always good to analyse your feelings every once in a while. Though, for all that, I am sorry that you have to deal with some of that. Both in the past and on an ongoing basis.
Hey... maybe we can perhaps get together in the Philly area when I'm down there sometime?
Zhai'helleva!