First, important things. I liked dolls. And I think Serenity did too. But you can play with us, too, Cedar.
Then I will be the cowboy hero who saves the day. (I had a John Wayne doll, too. And I loved watching Paladin.)
:O)
I will leap from my steed with balletic strength and grace. So I will not be a cowboy hero then.
I will be Cedar.
White tights; long hair.
Red.
But I do like paperdolls. My grandmother had them for me. I loved them.
So when I thunder in on the white mare "
with reigns of braided satin black as Hell, and with white satin for a bit", I will bring those paperdolls from my grandmother.
And my safety scissors.
:O)
My Mother did a mean thing.
It is as Serenity posted to me on another thread: our moms, our sisters, did
too many mean things. It had to have been intentional; and that makes it abuse. Surely the way to hear that one of us has been routinely discounted and abused by an overbearing, grandiosity addicted mother (or sibling) is how often we say: "Oh, that's mom/sister."
That is denial; that is how we will know that is us, in denial about having been routinely destroyed by those we hoped loved us.
I am not going to say "believed loved us".
We knew they did not. We kept trying to fit the pieces together into something we could understand.
Into something we could accept without hating ourselves because we had nothing.
They do not love us. They love themselves. In everything they do they see only themselves. They will hurt us, they will use us, they will do everything in their power to shame and bring us to relationship on their terms.
That is why I was thinking about that woman yesterday, eating her abuser's food with her bruised face. Roar. I hate that she ate his food. I hate that because I have eaten abuser's food. I have taken what there was and been grateful to have been nourished.
Phew.
Spewing all of it out now. (Not in the area where we are playing dolls and paperdolls. Just out of earshot, but not out of sight. I am not alone with it. You both are there...but I am so angry and ashamed!
And ugly.
***
I liked Serenity's response on the sisters post.
We should be able to see these people for who they are, and not for who we wish they were. For us to be free of the convoluted thinking of the victim, we will need to see without blinking. We have to stop covering for these people. They are nasty people. They have chosen against us with malice in their hearts every time.
What in the world is the matter with me that I cannot admit that? Why is there any smallest vulnerability, any hope at all in the heart of me, regarding my bat out of hell family of origin? Finally, I am angry. How is it I believed that whole spiel about them doing better.
Why would I want to have dinner with them.
Now there is a question worth asking.
Maybe, the thing that is real is that I hate them and
that is what I refuse to allow on one level
and feel for myself. On another, deeper level,
the hatred I feel, and was taught to feel, for myself.
In the language of the heart, hating them means that I harbor hatred for myself for the ugliness in what is and always was. For the cowardice I see in my every interaction with them.
Because I did not stand up.
I allowed them to define me every time I forgave their disrespect instead of condemning them. I ate what breakfast there was with them and hoped for freaking dinner.
A dinner I was so desperate to have that I envision it as an empty table, beautifully set but with no food.
And no people.
This must be why I was thinking yesterday about the abused woman, and the man buying her breakfast. That woman is me, in relation to anything to do with my family of origin. With my mother. With my sister. There was no way I could justify or rationalize or excuse their last outrageous acts
but why have I not seen this sooner.
Why have I not been angry sooner.
I am forever trying to pull decency out of the obscenity of what is.
These people who are my people are snakes; vipers. A pit of them.
That is where I grew up.
***
She must look up, that woman with her bruised face. And she must say to the waitress: "Call the police. I have nothing and no one. I am alone. Protect me. Call the police. I will not take another mouthful of this deceitful *)%$@!$ ****'s ***%^$#."
Breakfast.
I meant breakfast.
:O)
So. I am changing in my thinking, you two.
Like a miracle.
It was maybe 6 years after I had not seen her or spoke to her. I do not know how she knew my address.
She sent me a note that my father had been dead for 6 years or so. And that he had died of Malignant Melanoma. That was it. That was the first time I ever got real depressed.
WTF, Copa.
I hate that she did that.
You had not seen him for six years. She sends a letter saying that is about when he died. Six years. What are the sucker covered tentacles connecting what is happening to you today to what happened when Witch Mother wrote that letter
presenting your own father as some person not worth mentioning except for the Widow's Benefit accruing to her. Is that the piece we are missing regarding what is happening to you, now?
That depression.
This depression; this extended period of self-excoriation over what was left undone
for the mother.
I see myself here, Copa.
I see myself and my mother and my sister and I hate them and myself because I see now that it was all so awful.
So ugly; obscenely so.
Yay, that I see it. So here is the thing about our abusive moms
and our sisters, who are equally abusive and in the exact same ways our initial abusers were abusive. Know why they do it that way? Because we would see through it were they not duplicating the initial patterns of abuse. First, that or mothers chased our fathers away or into some place where men who refuse to strike back are required to live from. Emasculated and ridiculed, they do not fight for themselves
and they do not fight for us. (Re: emasculation. As my mother did to my father in roaring on
to his business partners and employees about an affair she had
years ago.)
If these people were not so obscenely damaging to the rest of us, their transparency would be laughable.
Hard to laugh though, when the blow struck has been mortal.
Or as your mother did, Copa, in having another man come to her rooms
in such a way that you would know. As you commented to me Copa about my mother's intention in dragging my little brother out of the bathroom, crying in that hopeless, lost way that I can never stay present to, with excrement on his face. Done to damage not only the child she is hurting, but to damage the child who sees what the mother has the power to do. You knew it was wrong
and she knew you would know.
An obscenity.
Some malicious thing.
(Cedar types those so polite and appropriate words instead of: Blasting through denial because I see the crime in what your mother did and recognize the criminal intent in my own mother's behavior, to my father, and to me. Crawling; on my knees, my beggar's cup held high.
"Please," the whispered plea. "Please, don't do this."
Refusing forever to see the despicable crime my own mother commits against me with every deceitful breath she takes, with every lie she tells; blasting through rejection and the shame of not having fought for what was mine.
Did she know my father was my hero. Of course she did.
So, you did not know whether your father lived or had died. She wrote you out of the blue that he was gone, and included the ugly name of the thing that took him
and sealed it in the shame of the Widow's Benefit to her, as though that were his only value.
Have you mourned your father, Copa?
Here is a secret I keep from myself: My mother has done the same. She has cheapened my father's memory and my sister has gone along with every bit of it.
Ridicule first; then victimization.
They had no right.
That is my father.
And I have never admitted what they are doing to his memory until this minute. Instead, I have said: "Oh, that's just...." What. What is that just.
That is my father. Hurting him, denigrating his memory, cheapening him, the two of them. For heaven's sake, Copa. I am the one who needs to mourn her father.
roar
Yay
That's my father and me.
That is Witch Mother.
Always, even in his dying.
Between my mother and my stupid sister, I never really thought about it being
my father who had died.
My father they attempt, to this day, as my sister did on that last phone call, to glorify themselves through, and to taunt me, with what they did and with what I did not do, for him.
What a couple of poop-derivatives, the two of them.
"Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time."
roar
Yay, you two. This is major.
I should have been there.
But never with them.
I had no idea I was this angry about the way they have managed everything to do with my relationship to my own father. I stepped away. The emphasis was forever on my mother.
Or my sister.
I did not fight for him, for my relationship to him.
But he did say, "Is there anyone else here you want to talk to." before the last time we did not see them for five years. I am disgusted with myself.
Why did I not fight for my relationship to my own father?
Stupid, ugly fool. Those are the words that flashed into my mind about
them. But I meant those words for me.
Coward.
For me.
"But what could I do?" I whisper-whine. Oh, but what could I do but accept his words; what could I do but accept the situation. Have I posted the words my mother said before she called my father to the phone.
"I told you I was going to do this."
And D H and I never could figure out what she meant.
And when my mother called, some two years into it. (Just as your sister, Serenity, will never accept that you are done with her, and with all of it.) And blamed the situation on something never clarified or addressed,
between D H and my father. And suggested that the two of us have coffee. And let the separation be between D H and my father.
And I said I did not think that would be a good idea
but why did I not fight for my father.
Because he had rejected, had not fought for, me.
It was shame that prevented either of us fighting for the other.
I could have fought for him and taken the knocks; risked the rejection. I did not, out of fear of my mother.
Is this true.
This is what I believe, but is this true.
Something bleeding in me and I never even looked at it before.
I will, now. This is all bound together with hope. I had nothing but hope, so I hoped; after a time, I believed in what I hoped. What I should have done was fight for that relationship to him aside from either of them. Instead, I bowed out.
Just as he did.
It is impossible to fight for a relationship to a father who will not fight for his relationship to you.
And the Witch Mother has won again.
Ugly; all of it so freaking ugly.
***
And we will be finished with our families of origin too, without guilt or regret or wishing for some stupid dinner that is never going to happen so much that we put up with their nastiness as though we are still trapped in some childhood nightmare where we deserve nothing.
I was going to say nothing more but the truth of it is we were raised to believe we deserved nothing; that we were pale imitations of persons. That our mothers mattered more than we did.
More than we mattered to our own fathers.
And more than they mattered, to us.
Could it be that is the role the sisters are trying to take.
The power position.
What your mom did wasn't just mean Copa it was destructive in that it devalued both your father's memory, and you. A father is a hero to his daughter. Whether he deserves it or not is played out over a lifetime, but in the beginning, for every little girl, her father is her hero.
But my hero did not fight for me.
And I was not a hero, either.
This is why.
We didn't know. We could not know what we had no way of knowing. That we are courageous. That we had a right to fight them.
Here is the question: What do I do with these feelings. This is what I know: These feelings, this understanding of the situation, is something I have created a scaffolding of denial around. These are the feelings at the heart of the hope of the dinner. Which represents family.
So I knew, then.
As I uncovered this layer, which began with our discussions of Christmas and my unacknowledged acknowledgement that I was only safe enough to love my own brother and sister at my grandmother's house...or myself, then. I was able to love myself there at her house because she loved me. That is where I was loved; that is where I knew what that felt like. Contrast it with Christmas. The magic of the tree, and of the gifts seemingly chosen for me.
Nothing about my parents. When I asked that question now the answer is: Mother is happy. Here is a secret: My mother told me her parents sent money for Christmas. In Witch Mother code: And I told them what I'd gotten each child
and that is the only reason you had anything at all.
Well, I am still thinking about that one. As is always the case with Witch Mother, nothing is as it seems and everything hurts.
All of which brought up remembrance of the abused woman eating her crappy abuser's cheap breakfast at a tiny table with no white linen. (Remember the family dinner theme for me.) And that was enough, for her.
And the abuser will do it again. That is why it bothered me so that he would dare look at me, sneak filthy, defensive glances she would not see
because she knows he is doing it but will not look up; will not admit that she knows what she knows about him but is eating the eggs he bought her with him, her bruised face looking anywhere but into his eyes.
Cedar
It is all so freaking ugly.
