Wascally Wabbit

I called mom as I usually do in the evening. When she answered, she sounded so "happy" and "good". After she answered, I said, "Wow, you sound a whole lot better!" Wouldn't you know she immediately put on her pitiful voice. It just proves that I am who she chooses to be her dumping ground. Unfortunately the dump is closed today.

She proceeded to tell me that today she has gas.
I know people have gas, but what I don't get is her morbid need to explain it in detail.

So. I wonder WHY she has this need to tell me things like this. She has always complained about bodily functions to me and it is stuff I really don't care to hear. Is it because she knows I know she's feeling better today, and has nothing else to complain about, so picks "gas" and tries to make it sound like she might die from it!? OR, is it because she feels like telling me these details will make me feel sorry for her?
It amazes me how sick alcoholics really are.

I have been using my recovery tools and find myself a lot calmer. It's just that I shake my head in wonder at her death grip on manipulation! It's like, well, I can't think of anything I am sick of today, so I am sick with gas.
For crying out loud.

On~Fire

Lol alrighty then. Im sorry but your right that is just ridiculous. But i understand completely. Some moms are just very very very needy. My ma does that but i dont play game. I go on to the next subject or get off the phone. So she knows if she wants to talk to me she needs to try her best to make it as normal as can be.

DesertEyes

Wow, Wabbit, your recovery is just shining. You didn't fall for her manipulations at all, and you saw right thru her baloney. Me thinks you're doing just awesome

Mike

Midnightfrost

ah dude. . . I thought gas was a pretty everyday thing. . . . maybe I should make a doctor's appointment. . . . j/k. . . sounds like you did great with it though. . .what used to be my normal conversation with mum seems ever more bizarre the more detached I become. let me know how that deadly gas goes. . . I might only have a few hours to live. . . bean soup for lunch lol . . . .

GingerM

You're doing really well Wascal! And yes, the further along we come in our recoveries, the more strange, abnormal, bizarre and whacked out their behavior seems. What used to seem "normal" to us starts looking unbelievable.

One of the things I've found in my recovery is that this applies to people outside of my family as well. I only have a few friends left from before I started my recovery - and the only reason I have them was because they also chose to get out of their own toxicity. The others started seeming so odd to me that I allowed the relationships to simply fail.

One of those was a friend who needs to be a victim. She is and ACoA also, and the only way she can function in life is to be a victim. So when she started blaming me for the horrible things I'd done to her (like buying a house for her to live in so she could get out of an abusive relationship....the horrors!) I would just shrug and say "sorry you feel that way". That didn't help her be a victim, so she eventually gave me a really lame excuse and told me she couldn't talk to me anymore. I told her that was okay, if she felt that way, she needed to be true to herself. Then she didn't know what to do, after all, I didn't put up any kind of resistance or beg her to remain my friend. I have enough of that in my life, if some of it chooses to leave on it's own, that was peachy by me.

Granted, the number of friends I have now is smaller than it used to be, but it's also a healthier bunch, and I'm quite happy with quality over quantity. I'm amazed when I look back at my life at the people I allowed to come into my life and allowed to take over my life and allowed to step on me and squash me. I'm more amazed that I thought it was "normal". I guess perspective will do that to you

GiveLove

Life is littered with victims who have to have some miserable story to tell in order to feel alive. It's sad. Mostly for them. Would YOU like to be living like that? I'd rather be comatose, myself.

I'm glad you can see through that now, and not take it so personally. It's just her. She isn't going to change. But that has nothing to do with you.

I had a very lovely phone conversation with my stepmother yesterday who told me all about her recent Pap smear, which was horrible.

Tell me something I don't know, why dontcha. I know that MY female examinations are always just like being at Disneyland.....LOL

Nothing to do with me. Just glad I'm not her!

GingerM

Wow, I never once had to stand in line for *my* annual exam Is that an E ticket ride?

(sorry, silliness attack)

Wascally Wabbit

I can't believe I am laughing! This MUST be recovery in action. Bean soup!! LOL!!
GingerM, how true it is now for me, to see how absolutely ridiculous a "victims" behavior really is. How true that the further away we are from it, the more bizarre they seem to us.
I am glad my mom is 77 and doesn't have pap smears any more. I don't think I could bear the details. I would have to start whistling a disney tune! Bwahahaha!

Midnightfrost

Me too. I don't have as many friends but the one's I do have respect and support me and only expect the same in return. I was so proud of myself today because a flatmate was totally sending out rescue me cues all day and I only said a few encouraging words and went on with my day. A few months ago I would have sat out in the cold with him and tried to talk sense into him while he drank himself stupid. Its so nice to not feel guilty about it too. :bbb

GingerM

Oh yes! Yes yes yes yes yes! It is such a liberating feeling to be able to say "it's not my problem, if you want to fix it, you'll have to do it yourself" and not feel guilty. Sometimes, when I feel myself slip back into that old mode, I remind myself "You can't save them all, you'd be lucky if you could save one." And then reality sinks in, and I pull my head out of that old space and realize the truth of the statement. No guilt, just "what is, is".

One therapist once asked me if I really thought I was helping the people I was trying to help, or if I was hurting them worse by not allowing them to make their own decisions and realize the natural consequences of those decisions.

Another asked me if I thought I was powerful enough to change another person's core being.

Both of those comments have stuck with me for a very long time. By trying to "help" people, I am actually being condescending in assuming I know what's better for them. By trying to change them, I am assuming I am powerful enough to do so (just a *tad* egotistical? much?).

I still help people, but I help people who are in genuine need. By genuine need, I mean that they are stuck in a position that life pushed upon them, by no will of their own, and they have done or are doing everything they can to get out of it, but need that little extra leg up. I no longer "pick up strays" or as one friend of mine put it "take on projects" (how he referred to his first wife). And, the vast majority of the time, I no longer feel guilt for them. Pity, yes. Sorrow, yes. But not guilt.