Hard Realizations

Yesterday I told a friend about the big fight with my mom. This is a friend that I've known for several years but who doesn't know a whole lot about my family. We are sort of friends within a group of people and don't always spend that much time one on one.

So when I told her about the big fight and the things my mom did, she was shocked.

I was sort of embarrassed about how shocked she was. I guess I'm just so used to my family being screwed up that I didn't think about what it might look like to an outsider.

At one point I was telling her about the stuff my mom says to and about my dad and my friend said "Did she ever say those things in front of you?" My reply: "Of course. All the time. In fact, when I was growing up, and I suppose even now, it was just accepted that my dad was the bozo of the family and my mom was the hero and that was just that."

My friend was stunned, not just that my mother acted that way, but that she did so in front of her children.

Getting some fresh eyes on your life can be good but it's also very painful. Having someone look at you with shock, horror and pity when you describe what you think of as normal, is not a good feeling.

Frankly, it sort of rocked my world. I know she's correct and I'm glad to have someone reassure me that what I've lived with is far from normal or even nice, but still it shook me up.

The family that I had told myself for years and years was so wonderful and supportive was really pretty messed up. And as a result, so was/am I.

Let's just look at the whole experience of years and years of my mother calling my father stupid, to his face and to his children. What that did was make me see my father that way too. And I also treated him like he was second class, certainly not like a parent who I ought to respect and revere.

On the other hand, my father, who was/is the adult and my parent didn't protect me from my mother's wrath either. He bought into it. Still does.

I remember when I was 10 years old (several decades ago) and the mother of one of my classmates died. My father said to me, "Be sure you're nice to Tommy because his mom died."

Even at the time I thought "am I so horrible that he thinks he has to remind me to be nice to someone whose mother died?" "Is this what my father thinks of me?"

Apparently yes, he does. Otherwise, why would he have said anything at all.

What's even more upsetting is that my father's notion of my "meanness" wasn't based on any real events, but on the lies (yes, lies) my mother told about me. I don't mean that she made up stories, but she twisted my actions and called them mean when in reality I was probably either just trying to be funny or mimicking her behavior.

And my father believed it. Still believes it.

I was a child. A ten year old little girl. And he felt obliged to remind me not to be mean.

Honestly, how cruel is that?

I didn't tell my friend that story. It would have been too humiliating to have her know that my father thought I was a mean 10 year old. And not only that, but he believed it because my mother told him so, not because he'd come to that conclusion on his own. What kind of man treats his daughter that way?

No wonder I can't let a man take care of me. I never had the experience of it. I've had to fend for myself my whole damned life, even in the midst of a financially well-off upbringing where I had no worries and lots of friends.

Which, by the way, I have always had lots of friends and been well liked by teachers, co-workers etc. Is that the sort of thing that a mean person can say about themselves?