Authenticity II
voices ca**y
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: St. Paul Minnesota
Posts: 4,360
mmmmmm taters. I hope the doctors make good on that one.
Rob you just simply baffle them. You are a contradiction to their world view that is why they are acting the way they are. I could explain the whole thing but it seems you have already figured this out along time ago. I COMPLETELY understand why you wouldn't want them there now. You will get no aww have a heart to heart with them from me. I get it.
Rob you just simply baffle them. You are a contradiction to their world view that is why they are acting the way they are. I could explain the whole thing but it seems you have already figured this out along time ago. I COMPLETELY understand why you wouldn't want them there now. You will get no aww have a heart to heart with them from me. I get it.
Do your best
Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 67,047
i wish i met you sooner Robby you got sober in 1981 i was born in 1982
Your wisdom i will definatly 5000% learn from
Thank you for who you are Robby it means the world to me
Your strenght is awe inspiring i love who you are and what you say & how you say it
I have a deep respect for you Robby and i always will
Mashed potatoes and gravy - yes pls lol honestly i do like that
Your wisdom i will definatly 5000% learn from
Thank you for who you are Robby it means the world to me
Your strenght is awe inspiring i love who you are and what you say & how you say it
I have a deep respect for you Robby and i always will
Mashed potatoes and gravy - yes pls lol honestly i do like that
Marchia in Aeternum
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Georgia
Posts: 11,094
Jello and chicken broth. I remember that menu from post surgery when I was in hospital at 17 years old. The next day my Mom brought me a denver omelet from IHOP.
First, mashed potatoes and gravy. Next, poutine.
First, mashed potatoes and gravy. Next, poutine.
Adventures In SpaceTime
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Posts: 5,827
Originally Posted by SoberCAH 
When it comes to family, you play the hand you are dealt.
p***enger
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: NYC
Posts: 19,051
Families are a very hard thing to think about or talk about. Most of us are raised in some kind of situation where there's stability of people. Sometimes blood-related people. But those people don't know much about our individualities -- they start acting ON us before we can even express ourselves. They may try to influence our environment but sometimes they either don't care to try, or they fail. Sometimes our innate characteristics just collide against theirs.
I felt -- still feel, although they're very dead -- involved in my parents' personalities and lives. I wish I understood their histories, their parents' histories, what made them the way they are. I look at them like characters in a novel that would be incredibly rich and complex but that I'm too much in the dark to write. But I wouldn't have sought advice, or emotional support, or kindness from either one -- I think I stopped doing that at about 9 years old.
When my mother was alive, I saw her a few times a year. I drank a lot. It was a distant relationship, and we never talked about anything more personal than I could have put on a Linked-In profile. She claimed she couldn't remember most of my life.
Now I maintain distant mostly superficial relationships with my siblings by email. One of them has a husband who has a serious cancer and I'm thinking about whether and how to try to get closer to them. I regret that I haven't been a kind or thoughtful sibling, but it might be too late for any of us to start behaving in ways (like being kind and thoughtful) that we weren't raised to behave in.
I was just stopping in with flowers, but your posts made me think, as they so often do. Thanks for listening!
Virginia bluebells -- bluebells are blooming now beside a playground in my neighborhood.
I felt -- still feel, although they're very dead -- involved in my parents' personalities and lives. I wish I understood their histories, their parents' histories, what made them the way they are. I look at them like characters in a novel that would be incredibly rich and complex but that I'm too much in the dark to write. But I wouldn't have sought advice, or emotional support, or kindness from either one -- I think I stopped doing that at about 9 years old.
When my mother was alive, I saw her a few times a year. I drank a lot. It was a distant relationship, and we never talked about anything more personal than I could have put on a Linked-In profile. She claimed she couldn't remember most of my life.
Now I maintain distant mostly superficial relationships with my siblings by email. One of them has a husband who has a serious cancer and I'm thinking about whether and how to try to get closer to them. I regret that I haven't been a kind or thoughtful sibling, but it might be too late for any of us to start behaving in ways (like being kind and thoughtful) that we weren't raised to behave in.
I was just stopping in with flowers, but your posts made me think, as they so often do. Thanks for listening!
Virginia bluebells -- bluebells are blooming now beside a playground in my neighborhood.
Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 211,495
Depends on your interpretation I think
Sometimes I played the cards I was dealt - like my physical stuff - and won with a pair of 2s
Other times like with family I played the cards I was dealt by getting up from the table and not playing cards again...
D
Sometimes I played the cards I was dealt - like my physical stuff - and won with a pair of 2s
Other times like with family I played the cards I was dealt by getting up from the table and not playing cards again...
D
Member
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Los Angeles, California
Posts: 8,326
My psychiatrist flat out told me to dump my family, That I was sane trying to fit in with insanity. He was right. But I keep getting sucked back in. Right now, it's just my sister and brother.
Robby, so glad you're making progress. I did light some more of my special beeswax candles for you and Melissa in my special place. Offered up for your highest good and offered up my gratitude for meeting you here on SR.
Love from Lenina
Robby, so glad you're making progress. I did light some more of my special beeswax candles for you and Melissa in my special place. Offered up for your highest good and offered up my gratitude for meeting you here on SR.
Love from Lenina
Adventures In SpaceTime
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Posts: 5,827
Originally Posted by Dee74
Depends on your interpretation I think
Sometimes I played the cards I was dealt - like my physical stuff - and won with a pair of 2s
Other times like with family I played the cards I was dealt by getting up from the table and not playing cards again...
D
Sometimes I played the cards I was dealt - like my physical stuff - and won with a pair of 2s
Other times like with family I played the cards I was dealt by getting up from the table and not playing cards again...
D
We do have irrevocable right of choice time and time again even in the most dire of circumstances. And like with most things in life, responsible actions taken which steadily improve our lot are far better than wasted dreams which were not allowed to take flight.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull comes to mind.
Adventures In SpaceTime
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Posts: 5,827
Me too!!
I did score a little bowl of mashed potatoes with gravy. Man, did I enjoy that! They said it was a special treat, since I wasn't to get it until tomorrow. Tonight was to be pureed chicken soup. I left the soup, lol.
I did score a little bowl of mashed potatoes with gravy. Man, did I enjoy that! They said it was a special treat, since I wasn't to get it until tomorrow. Tonight was to be pureed chicken soup. I left the soup, lol.
Adventures In SpaceTime
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Posts: 5,827
Originally Posted by courage2
I was just stopping in with flowers, but your posts made me think, as they so often do. Thanks for listening!
...holds the key
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Texas
Posts: 7,065
Originally Posted by RobbyRobot
Me too!!
I did score a little bowl of mashed potatoes with gravy. Man, did I enjoy that! They said it was a special treat, since I wasn't to get it until tomorrow. Tonight was to be pureed chicken soup. I left the soup, lol.
I did score a little bowl of mashed potatoes with gravy. Man, did I enjoy that! They said it was a special treat, since I wasn't to get it until tomorrow. Tonight was to be pureed chicken soup. I left the soup, lol.
EndGame
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: New York, NY
Posts: 4,677
Nice to see that things seem to be looking up for you, Robby. ("Seem to be" = God forbid I should start feeling optimistic.)
You've inspired several different conversations here, sometimes challenging, sometimes touching, but never without your personal touch.
Yeah, well, families...If I start writing about that now, I might never leave home again. Didn't have an unusually terrible childhood in the main, but there were conflicts, ambiguities and withdrawal of love along the way that certainly made things, um, interesting. I suppose I can thank my folks for my career choices.
As haennie mentioned, I too believe that it's possible to turn things around in the way family members treat each other, in particular, the way that parents treat their children. But you first need to survive your upbringing, physically and emotionally, in order to even begin the tremendous amount of work required to rewrite history, or to at least approach a different, happier ending to the story. I also believe that you need to do a lot of work on yourself but, the reality is, it's often not worth the effort, as has been amply demonstrated in this thread.
(Without going into too much detail here -- I really don't want to be in a position to never leave home again, and no pun intended -- but I only came to know my father in the months before he died. I came to learn that he did the best he could, and what he had to offer wasn't a whole lot. He grew up in a somewhat loveless home, and his mother resented him because he was not the daughter she was hoping for. She and his father had planned to have only two children, and both were boys.)
Children's relationships with their parents are not at all easily malleable (just ask anyone who's worked with families in their professional lives, or someone who's had a family), no matter how many individual examples we may know of to the contrary. A lifetime is invested in the ways in which Mommy and Daddy treat their children, and these are about as easily changed as is individual temperament. Or height.
What's also heartbreaking, in addition to parents who are incapable of love, parents who stifle or use their children's feelings against them, or parents who otherwise neglect or abuse their children, is children who grow up and continue to chase after the love from one or both parents that was never available to them in the first place, and never will be. They often do this with a level of aggression and persistence that's rarely seen. I can't tell you how many times I've witnessed this in my work and among friends and colleagues. I've seen it here on SR too many times as well, and in many cases, the person isn't even aware that he or she is continuing their parent(s) work of banal or aggressive abuse by looking for the love that simply is not there. (I'm not just talking about SR here, but the other examples in my life that I've described.)
Some people sacrifice their lives to this failed expedition, with little to show for it besides the emotional scars.
On a lighter note, and in my experience, the notion of "happy families" is a more or less overblown bit of propaganda (except on menus in Chinese restaurants) that, among much else, works in the service of supporting both capitalism and democracy, two very different things. Life is hard, and it's both more difficult (competing demands and multiple conflicts, e.g.) and more simple (division of labor and the potential for multiple supports, e.g.) when there is more than one or two people involved.
Parents are just people, people with their own problems and their own ways of engaging with them or ignoring them. Some of them don't like children, even their own, and some of them don't like people in general. This is why we find each other. The best thing you can do with someone you love and who loves you is hold onto them as though your life depended on it. With, of course, a very loose grip.
You've inspired several different conversations here, sometimes challenging, sometimes touching, but never without your personal touch.
Yeah, well, families...If I start writing about that now, I might never leave home again. Didn't have an unusually terrible childhood in the main, but there were conflicts, ambiguities and withdrawal of love along the way that certainly made things, um, interesting. I suppose I can thank my folks for my career choices.
As haennie mentioned, I too believe that it's possible to turn things around in the way family members treat each other, in particular, the way that parents treat their children. But you first need to survive your upbringing, physically and emotionally, in order to even begin the tremendous amount of work required to rewrite history, or to at least approach a different, happier ending to the story. I also believe that you need to do a lot of work on yourself but, the reality is, it's often not worth the effort, as has been amply demonstrated in this thread.
(Without going into too much detail here -- I really don't want to be in a position to never leave home again, and no pun intended -- but I only came to know my father in the months before he died. I came to learn that he did the best he could, and what he had to offer wasn't a whole lot. He grew up in a somewhat loveless home, and his mother resented him because he was not the daughter she was hoping for. She and his father had planned to have only two children, and both were boys.)
Children's relationships with their parents are not at all easily malleable (just ask anyone who's worked with families in their professional lives, or someone who's had a family), no matter how many individual examples we may know of to the contrary. A lifetime is invested in the ways in which Mommy and Daddy treat their children, and these are about as easily changed as is individual temperament. Or height.
What's also heartbreaking, in addition to parents who are incapable of love, parents who stifle or use their children's feelings against them, or parents who otherwise neglect or abuse their children, is children who grow up and continue to chase after the love from one or both parents that was never available to them in the first place, and never will be. They often do this with a level of aggression and persistence that's rarely seen. I can't tell you how many times I've witnessed this in my work and among friends and colleagues. I've seen it here on SR too many times as well, and in many cases, the person isn't even aware that he or she is continuing their parent(s) work of banal or aggressive abuse by looking for the love that simply is not there. (I'm not just talking about SR here, but the other examples in my life that I've described.)
Some people sacrifice their lives to this failed expedition, with little to show for it besides the emotional scars.
On a lighter note, and in my experience, the notion of "happy families" is a more or less overblown bit of propaganda (except on menus in Chinese restaurants) that, among much else, works in the service of supporting both capitalism and democracy, two very different things. Life is hard, and it's both more difficult (competing demands and multiple conflicts, e.g.) and more simple (division of labor and the potential for multiple supports, e.g.) when there is more than one or two people involved.
Parents are just people, people with their own problems and their own ways of engaging with them or ignoring them. Some of them don't like children, even their own, and some of them don't like people in general. This is why we find each other. The best thing you can do with someone you love and who loves you is hold onto them as though your life depended on it. With, of course, a very loose grip.
Its a cold and its a broken hallelujah.
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 2,887
If I had played the hand I was dealt, I honestly wouldn't have made it past 30.
Not to upstage any of y'all,lolol, but so long as we are playing "True Confessions" MY parental updragging included a mother who, - drank hard and smoked throughout her entire pregnancy with me and gave birth to me while hungover from gin martinis, would stand over an ironing board for the majority of the day and then blame us for "having" to do so (?). Which would culminate in a humdinger of an evening drinking until passing out with a smoke in her hand, all whilst talking to some sort a "dark demon" into the air. This "demon" she just confessed to me a few weeks ago, has followed her since her parents died and orphaned her at 12.
And, it's been popping up again while in the nursing home. Black cloak and hood and all.
No wonder I couldn't ever sleep when I was a child.
I just re read this and scared myself. Good god.
Truth. Stranger than fiction any damn day.
Not to upstage any of y'all,lolol, but so long as we are playing "True Confessions" MY parental updragging included a mother who, - drank hard and smoked throughout her entire pregnancy with me and gave birth to me while hungover from gin martinis, would stand over an ironing board for the majority of the day and then blame us for "having" to do so (?). Which would culminate in a humdinger of an evening drinking until passing out with a smoke in her hand, all whilst talking to some sort a "dark demon" into the air. This "demon" she just confessed to me a few weeks ago, has followed her since her parents died and orphaned her at 12.
And, it's been popping up again while in the nursing home. Black cloak and hood and all.
No wonder I couldn't ever sleep when I was a child.
I just re read this and scared myself. Good god.
Truth. Stranger than fiction any damn day.
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