Hate...what is it?

[Scent of Cedar *]

The only way I can understand it is that they have an idealized picture, a lost golden mother, who produced the golden child, themselves, which they sustain no matter what.

I think they were hurt too, Copa. That's what I meant when I posted that ours was not a pretty story. I don't think any of us set out intentionally to behave as we do in our families of origin. It has to do with that article on flexibility verses role rigidity Serenity posted for us. We are frozen into roles in our interactions, and none of us gets to be vulnerable, or real. I do it, too. I was just like, numb nice guy, getting through the family whatever it was and crying about it when I got home. I think it is less golden child for our sisters than how they were able to create a self who could survive. We might have done the same, had that option been available to us.

Someone had to carry the nasty of it. That was us; that was our role. Beneath it all, if Nietzsche was correct in his belief that love is the default emotion, each member of our families would come into that ability to love, if they could break through the roles. That is the sadness in it, for all of us.

Shunned already, we had nothing to lose by breaking through the roles. It still took a determined effort to do it. Our families still have family. They will operate through their roles and maybe, they will be fine...but I think, not to us.

The value in this for me, is having a glimpse, just a look back at something long over, of what it felt like to be that little girl that I was.

Or that my sister was, or my brothers.

Who knows how many generations back it even started.

We all are doing the best we know. The pseudo mom role makes sense to me. It fits with the sisters' behaviors, and with the brothers' willingness to go along with them if pushed to choose which way to go.

Hurtful, but better to know.

If there was any reason to get up from bed, lose my weight and go out, it would be for this...that my sister not bag any more trophy's off of my carcass. I know I should get up and be in the world for myself. But right now, I would like to no longer be a set of horns and head on her wall. Or a fur at her feet. I would rather not be an easy kill. Especially in my own mind.

I think our sisters know, and don't know, Copa. Like us, they are trapped in their roles, too. If they are proud of us, they feel less. If they feel proud of themselves and easy in their skins, we are relegated, one more time, to the dungeon at the center of town.

No one wins, really. Either way, both sisters lose a sister. Either way, the brother just wants to be left alone. Either way, the mother's relationship to whichever child is pseudo mom (or scapegoat, in Serenity's terms) is twisted into something comprised of numbness and role playing.

If there is a win, it is reclamation of self, and of autonomy.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Who knows how many generations back it even started.

I suspect in the cases of most dysfunctional mothers, they had dysfunctional mothers and so on and so on and so on.

I loved my grandmother and my memory of her is warm and sweet. And she was like that to me. But I don't think she was like that to my mother, at least not all the time. And she had a huge golden child and then she made me her golden grandchild, also big time. But that family dynamics there were pretty strange between the spouses and favortism ran rampant. It's where my mother learned her game.

 

[Copabanana]

The same thing in my mother's family. There were two daughters. Somehow my grandfather came to hate his oldest child and adore my mother. I do not know why. It was already in place when I was born and had been for many years.

I am not aware that my grandmother favored one or the other of her daughters. But she was a constant presence in our home until we moved when my mother got married the second time.

How and why would a father hate his child? I adored my grandfather and my mother adored her father who adored her. I knew him only as loving and beloved. What could it have been? I will never know.

 

[BusynMember]

How and why would a father hate his child?

Same reason mothers do.

I remember asking my mother if my grandfather, who was extremely quiet (I almost have no memories of him even though he came over a lot) favored her or my uncle. I knew that my mother said all the time that grandmother favored uncle (her brother) and that was obvious.

My mother answered something like, "Oh, yeah. Vain was his favorite. It was obvious."

That surprised me because Grandpa did not speak unless Grandma gave him permission...lolol. I didn't know if he spoke enough in his own nuclear family for my mother to know .

Must have been painful for my mother to know both parents so obviously favored Uncle Vain, who I think was more vile than my mother in many ways. If my mother had not carried on the grand family tradition of divide and conquer and favorites, lost children and scapegoats (being me), I would have probably felt very bad for her, knowing that she was obviously second place to her parents. At least my dad shows no favoritism and is just as likely to say something ugly about Sis and Bro to me as he probably says about me to them. He truly has no favorites, but, in spite of being a bit rough, he does love us all and it must drive Sis nuts that she can't change that or "make him see." She really does think that way.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

The thing that is so strange about it is that until you see it, you don't see it. And once you do see it, that is all you see. And then, ten thousand other wrongnesses you saw but did not see cascade in, one on top of the other.

And then, we know where we are.

Cedar