EveningRose

I was on the infidelity forum I frequent, and one of our members has a mother dying right now. It's made for a very rough Easter for him, between infidelity, divorce, single parenthood, and his mother dying.

I couldn't finish the post.

As much as it must hurt to lose a parent, it hurts in a different way to know that I'm probably going to feel no loss when my parents go. I feel cheated, in a sense. Yes, of course it hurts to lose someone you love, and yet, we're all supposed to have a relationship with our parents close enough that it actually does hurt when they die.

What's going to hurt when my parents die is I suspect I'll feel even more anger at them than I do now, that they could have wasted the time they had with me, with their grandchildren. My older kids did go on their own, today, to see my parents. My younger kids have rarely been invited over apart from holidays--despite the fact that we live a mile and a half away and my mother couldn't wait to have my sibling's children there for 40+ hours a week when that sibling had children. Since I quit going to holidays several years ago, it hasn't really been part of the younger kids' lives, and they made no effort to go see their grandparents. I doubt they will as they get older. And my parents brought it on themselves by placing such insanely impossible demands on me, demands no one could live up to, such that I felt I had no choice but to quit going.

I feel for this member who's losing his mother, but I couldn't even finish reading his post.

dollydo

I struggle with the exact same thing. My father died 2 years ago, he had stopped drinking 20 years before, yet, he was a dry drunk, he was cold and distant. I mourned his passing, as he was never abusive or mean.

My mother is 86, still drinking, still abusive, manipulative, angry and lies at the drop of an ice cube. Physically she is healthy (must be those tough german genes) however, her mind is going on vacation.

I know that I will not mourn her death, I will be relieved. Who knows she may outlive me,
she'd do it out of spite.

Seems like such a waste, to spend your entire life abusing and tormenting those, who at one time loved you. She has not a friend in the world, I am not speaking to her and my brother has minimal contact, he is an expert at avoiding her...sad commentary on a persons life.

You are not alone, I am in the boat with you.

frances2011

EveningRose, I can relate in my own way and wanted to tell you that I hear you.

Yesterday I spent Easter with friends who love me hiking in the woods and playing with their kids. I felt so happy to be doing this instead of a toxic, suffocating, traumatizing "family" event hosted by a sibling.

I have complicated feelings about my biological family and what I "owe" them versus what I want to do, versus celebrating with my chosen family.

Willybluedog

Rose, there are many of us who feel as you do, please do not think you are alone in the middle of the ocean and no one is there to help.

My mother has hurt me deeply, she is a liar and a manipulator, I will not miss her when she is gone, I am seeing a therapist about how to deal with it.

My therapist has been a huge help.

EveningRose

Thank you, all. Willie, you nailed how I'm feeling even before I recognized it. So alone. Since my divorce became final, I've been surprised to find a long time friend has long wanted to go out with me. And in a strange irony, as much as I like him, I think seeing his life more close-up has only highlighted how very alone I really am and it does feel like the middle of an ocean with no end in sight.

Kialua

I know how this feels. I had a friend who had a very full life that only made mine seem so much more empty. I became a bit of their life but in my case I couldn't make it last. It's been years since I've seen them and I think about it often. Enjoy the ocean?

EveningRose

LOL, the ocean CAN be a very beautiful place! The sea life is amazing!

December2011

I know what you mean, my dad died when I was 21 of complications from drugs and alcohol abuse, and I wasn't sad nor did I ever miss him. I was just revealed he was out of his misery. The only feelings I had left for him were pity. as far as my mother goes, I haven't talked to or seen her in years, so I won't miss her or care when she goes.

incitingsilence

I guess in time we will all find what are true feelings will be when... I am not sure we can really know until the moment and even then as we grown our feelings will change... yet within myself I have this feeling that my mothers death will bring some sense of relief as sick as that sounds...
My fathers I am sure will be very hard for me to cope with.

I had two such distinct sides of parenting, I know what feeling love feels like and feeling no love feels like.

I wonder if the family dynamics will change with her gone...
In some sick way I would love her to go first so my father can have some peace, although I do get that he could have left at any time, he choose not to.

I have so many questions I would love to ask him, but I was advised that peace will never be found in the answers, in anything but within me.

EveningRose

You've hit on a separate issue that has bothered me lately. In part, I wonder if I've ever felt much 'love' for my parents. I can recall brief flashes of it, moreso for my AF ironically, but...not much, not often. They were just...there. Kind of like the parents in Charlie Brown, except with more intrusions to grumble, complain, yell, and swear. Ugh, what a horrible image of a childhood that was still much better than what we think of alcoholic homes being. And funny thing is, I think my parents would both be beyond shocked that that's how I remember things.

ETA: I didn't follow the thought to its conclusion! It worries me lately, as to whether I am even capable of feeling much love for other people.

You mentioned earlier that we'll only know when we reach that day. I do know that when my grandmother died, I felt absolutely nothing but relief. It's been almost 25 years, and I've still never felt anything but relief. Long before she died, my thoughts on her death were that maybe we'd have some peace. That was based, of course, on my mother constantly demonizing her, so it may not have been entirely fair.

And what I learned was that the family dynamics were solidly in place, in our case, my father's character and treatment of other people firmly fixed, and my mother's decision to stay with it and vent her misery on everyone else absolutely unchanged.

Sadly, I don't see any chage in my family dynamics when my parents die. My siblings will continue to be exactly who they are, blaming me for having the audacity to say no to abusive behavior.

There's probably truth in that. In some situations, definitely, answers help. But I think it's true we ultimately find it within ourselves.

Kialua

This is my reality. In my case it was the audacity to tell the truth and that is labelled unforgiving. Which is so far from the truth. I forgave and had far more to do with my folks than any of my siblings and they knew it. But whenever I spoke a truth about the situation it was attributed to me being unforgiving. Apparently never speaking about the truth is their version of forgiving. But I am happy with myself and don't need their validation.

EveningRose

When I spoke the truth, I was told I imagined it all. Literally. "None of that ever happened, Rose, you're imagining it all." And my mother going around TELLING people I imagine things.

Kialua

Yup, my sister whom I shielded with my body to keep her from being beat for years, says it never happened. She ran out of the treatment meeting when the other siblings were recounting their horror stories, saying "this is MY dad you are talking about how can you say that!"

So what can we do. Nothing. We live our life, and they live their fantasy and never the twain will meet I guess.

tromboneliness

We never had any physical abuse in my FoO, but we sure did have a lot of yelling/belittling/intimidation. My Dad used to berate my sister constantly, over everything and nothing -- as you might imagine, when she started dating was the worst part, but he'd be on her case about everything under the sun -- if she put the newspaper in the wrong spot or whatever... nothing! would set him off.

She moved out as soon as she possibly could -- when she was still in high school (vocational), in fact. She rented a room, then as my Dad was dropping her off at work one day, she said, "Um, Dad, I'm not coming home tonight -- I rented a room," and slipped out the door. That's what she had to do, because otherwise he'd have gone into a tirade (well, he probably did anyway -- I wasn't there, obviously).

Now that my parents are dead and gone, she never mentions this -- to listen to her, you'd think our childhood was something out of Norman Rockwell. And she wonders why I don't hurry to return her calls.... go figure!

T

EveningRose

I wonder if others, like me, have a bizarre sense deep down of wondering if we really DID imagine it. I know I didn't, and yet reading this is reassuring to me, it's so much like my own family. There were occasional outbursts of violence form my dad, but it was much more the yelling and swearing, from both parents, over every stinking little thing. I remember a time my sibling, at the age of 3, was in tears, begging and pleading with me not to tell our mother that she had spilled a glass of water. Uh...seriously? What child should be that scared of the mother finding out water got spilled? I think a part of me is still angry thinking about that, and it was probably 30 years ago.

Like your sister, tromboneliness, this sibling, I'd guess, would say we had a Norman Rockwell childhood, being the favored golden child and as close as can be with both parents.

Like your sister, I finally just moved out one day when I was 18. My AF threatened repeatedly to kick me out (for what...because I was working 30 hours a week that summer instead of the 60 he decided I should be working--no skin off his nose as I was paying for all my own college, anyway). I got tired of fearing that I might come home after work one night to find my things on the curb and nowhere to go, so I took the bull by the horns, and when they went away one weekend, packed up and left without a word. I figured as much as he threatened to kick me out, he'd blow a fuse and several gaskets if I took him at his word and left.

Part of my growing awareness over many years has been that no matter what I did, he would have been angry, that he was in a bad mood and would find a reason to take it out on whoever he could. I also have growing amazement that people can act like that and wonder how aware they even are that the person they're aiming their anger at didn't ACTUALLY do anything.

Kialua

That's exactly right, it didn't matter what you and I did or didn't do. We got the abuse just because we were there. No big mystery, they were alcoholics and they needed to vent on someone. Kick the dog syndrome.

EveningRose

Such simple words, such a straight-forward concept, and yet it bears repeating and it's a profound realization and turning point, I suspect, for most or all of us children of alcoholics, because we spent our entire lives hearing that we'd screwed up again, that it was our fault someone was angry, that if we'd done things differently, this anger at us wouldn't be happening.

I think, too, we became people who wouldn't vent our anger on someone else and tell them it was really their fault, so it was hard for any of us to see that someone else would do that.

incitingsilence

Since I rambled must thank everyone who shared here

My mother demonized her mother as well, but I loved my grandmother and we had a close relationship. She also demonizes my father.
From what I can trace it started with them, their relationship and my mother brought it into our lives, and I work hard to end it here, this is one legacy I will not be a part of passing on.
And true to form for the dysfunction she is trying to mimic the same relationship she had with her mother with us children … It is all so familiar, watching her try to replicate all the chaos she lived with until my grandmother died and yet while I thought it would be over for her then, it wasn’t, she got worse.
I spent so much time analyzing her and I have come to this conclusion, if her relationship with her mother was good our home was nuttier and more abusive, when it wasn’t good our home was calmer but she was always volatile and still is. She also has this nice side draw you in and then once in eat you alive type thing going on…
Once my grandmother died and my grandfather went soon after it has been mostly bad unless she is pissed at one of us, repeating that cycle, then the others around are in a reprieve from the insanity.


The memories, validation that the past did happen, that you aren’t crazy, that is was real, even though you know it happened, YOU DO KNOW, it is still hard to believe it did.
The shame, was worse than the beatings or the words… and omg what if someone found out, what if they knew my mother did these things to me, how could a mother hurt her child like this, what would ever be a good enough reason.
Wrestling with did I just deserve, was I just evil, and nothing and not worth her love...
Maybe I couldn’t ever do anything right, maybe I would have had a chance to if the damn rules didn’t always change as soon as I thought I got it.

I now face more problems living in life with my family since I started working on me then I ever did sick. I said this somewhere else recently it is harder to live than it is to stay sick…

Only recently have I spoke of how I felt, to speak generically was easy, to truly let out all the emotions involved, how I felt in each moment that is crystal clear, was much more difficult. To say it happened as compared to how it felt as it was happening.

But then what do you feel when you were never allowed to have your own feelings?
And what do you say when you aren’t allowed to express your own thoughts?
And how do you mourn when that wasn’t allowed either.
And how do you process getting beat for not doing the dishes right, or dusting right, or being one second late from school, or not putting everything in its place or talking to loudly or being happy, or being sad…yes it is true they had no reason, they wanted to because it did something for them.
And how do you cry when it is seen as a weakness and that is what she wants…oh to see how sick I became in it, edging it on, telling her to try again, what was the matter she wasn’t causing any pain.
Now tell me, and this is rhetorical, how the hell do you make sense of that when there is no sense to be found.

What a lesson that there is no way to make sense of it…and how could we it wasn't our insanity, we were just easy game.

kudzujean

I can relate to so much that's in this thread.

My father died when I was a kid. I never knew him as anything but an abusive, unpredictable alcoholic. (He died from alcoholism, by the way.)

My mother raised me and my sibs, as a single mother when all our classmates had both parents. I can understand now some of the difficulties she faced. She didn't have very good coping skills and was very emotionally shut down and in big time denial. We had a poor relationship when I was a child and young adult.

I guess I am fortunate we did have a better relationship when I was in my 30's and older, and she had remarried my stepfather who taught her to be a real human being. Since she died some years ago I have really missed her.

I never missed my father. I never loved him. For years and years, I wasn't allowed to talk about him or how he'd been an alcoholic. In my family the no-talk rule was REAL strong. One of my sibs idolized him and is still in big-time denial about him. I would never discuss him with her.

My family--like some others' families mentioned here--would tell me, when I was talking about some unpleasant truths, either that I was lying and it never happened, or I was full of ---baloney, and make out that I was the terrible, horrible person for TALKING about the abuse, not that my father or whoever was the bad person for being abusive.

Thank goodness I got into my 12 step groups, and experiential group therapy, which really changed my life.

Have a good day, everyone,
Kudzujean