Random People Trying To Push You To 'forgive'

[freakofnurture]

Thank you, olaja. It's so unfair how we have to fight after all we've been through, how wellmeaningness can hurt us, and how PTSD can turn some of us over to the 'dark side'. It's twisted.

 

[angel2write]

((((freakofnurture))))

Sometimes there are no good answers. Maybe all I can say is, you've influenced my life in a good way. I've enjoyed your threads, your comments. I've appreciated your support. Thank you for not giving up. For not giving in. For being here when I arrived and choosing to fight for your life. It means something.

A

 

[Abrasky]

F*** you, that was my first thought at a response too. Great minds think alike.:giggle:

 

[Meadowsweet]

(((freakofnature)))

Sometimes I wonder how we are on the same planet as other people. When we say something, and it's like they are reading something completely different.

It's so disgusting how what we do simply to survive or exert at least a bit of control is later used against us, to minimise what happened, to call us 'guilty too'.

This is the most terrible truth, and you're not alone in experiencing it.

It can be hard to walk away from people like that, when you just want to somehow make them understand. But I think the reality is like you say, you can't make a blind person see. And they are blind and deaf to others.

I have a fridge magnet that says "I know I'm in my own world. It's OK they know me here". It makes me smile when I feel isolated because people don't hear me.

 

[Srain]

I got a Christmas card from my brother's wife yesterday, funny how it's so much smaller, no pictures this year...just a quick "hopeful" emotional blackmail reach out .I knew when saw it what it was and this time did not buy into it. He never hear a word I said in the past 10-20yrs??? Especially this past year!! I set my foot down this time. I can't do it anymore.

Pick and choose, FreakofNature, who is going to help you to LIVE and who will help you thrive into the person you are meant to be. It is YOUR choice. Be clear, be concise as to what your needs are and where your boundaries are.

What I was met with when I did this clearly was a set of deer in headlights and they acted like I was not speaking their native tongue. I refused to play the game of over-explaining it (something that is a game within itself that can easily sidetrack me into thinking there is something wrong with me!) and left it at that. I refused to return phone calls that requested my "help" - a real hook for me, I need to be needed, because my terms still had not been met with recognition, no apologies no discussion on their part, so no call back on mine. Simple clean and the end.

I hope you begin to find relief, it is there for you. It is not an overnight process. It is a process.

Peace and healing,
Rain

 

[simplekindofgirl]

who is going to help you to LIVE and who will help you thrive into the person you are meant to be.

These are the people (as described perfectly by SRain) that are worthy of forgiveness when they mess up. But not your abuser. Sometimes, there simply is no forgiving.

 

[ClairBear226]

I work as a hospice nurse, and have come across many a terminally ill elderly patient in a facility with no family that visits. Nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living facilities... the setting changes, but the scenario is frquently the same. Invariably, some facility staffperson will condemn the missing family. "How could they just leave him here?" or "The children never call, they never check in, they never visit". Sometimes these are sweet enough patients as far as the staff can see. Other times they might be grouchy. Reguardless, the message is the same. The kids are condemned as bad because they don't attend to the parents.

My answer to this has been the same for many years now. "You have no idea what kind of parent he/ she might have been." Could their kids be the kind who had a candy apple childhood, and are simply ungrateful? Sure. But I also think that sometimes those adult kids need to put distance between themselves and the parent for their own well being, and unless you really want to hear the whole unvarnished truth in finite detail about exactly what kind of person you're really dealing with, then there should be an understanding there that people react the way they do for a reason.

I suppose that would be my answer to someone pressuring me to "forgive and forget". "You simply have no idea what occured, and the issue really is none of your business. You have no place imparting an opinion about a situation you do not fully understand. "

I've had that same kind of pressure to forgive my father from my mother. Ain't ever gonna happen, and it is not her place to push that boundary.

 

[maddog]

Couldn't agree more Clairbear, you are spot on. It takes all of my self control not to explode at the vile simplistic sentiment, freely expressed at this time of year more than any other, that "family is the most important thing in life..." or that "your family will love you unconditionally..."

Right, ok then, so show me where to sign up to your Pollyanna universe and I'll start packing.

You know, in spite of that little flare up, I truly don't begrudge those who know that reality. In fact I envy and crave it... more than I'm prepared to admit probably.

But nobody has the right to generalise their own experiences onto the rest of society, or to apply a carefully crafted, socially comfortable perception to the world around them, just because it helps to ease their sense of social guilt and to make them feel more secure and normal in their experience.

It's the old cliche about not judging another until you've walked a mile in their shoes... because there are many different shoes out there in the world, and they're all tramping very very different paths.

Maddog

 

[lil_fighter]

Now this , I can relate to and I often find that anyone who involves themselves in your situation and tries to make you feel guilty with the 'you should speak to your father, he has a big heart and you only have one father' chat (all stuff my aunt recently said to me) can often be abusive themselves...why is it that women always involve themselves. The woman described in the original post sounds twisted...all that talk about being touched and hugged by your father is a bit creepy and I'd be suspicious of her motives..

My father is a narcissistic nutter, but a crafty one of course. He has a doting sister who ignores his faults and goes on about him all the time. Their culture is alien to me as I was brought up by my mother for 16 yrs without him around (she left him and took me with her) or the influence of his culture..then I got in touch with him aged 17 and well the idea of family being important no matter what seemed to be very much a part of it...they use their culture as an excuse and basically they are just ignorant and uneducated..I mean his family, not him..he's a doctor.

I spent a week with his sister..I barely know her, she seemed to be taking her anger out on me about all of the years that her precious brother didn't see me..about how I cut contact with him three years ago..why did I cut contact? because he was an emotionally abusive nutter but of course I nodded and told her what she wanted to hear..to 'disrepect' your father is the worst possible sin, how very dare I. She told me off for being 'nasty' to him by losing touch..(Im 23, not a child). She shoved the phone in my hands while I stood there at the sink pretending to busy myself with the washing up so I didn't have to talk to him, held the phone to my ear and heard his voice 'Hello?...hello?' (seriously he has a robotic tone like hannibal lecter lol) my heart was pounding and I shook but acted normal for her sake, a week later I met him for coffee as she suggested and he spins me a line that I need to get to know him for the next 6 months because he's moving to the other side of the world..he also questioned me about why I lost touch...'Hmm? hmm? you dont know why do you?'

I stared at him blankly...thinking are you for real?...do you really not get it...but of course he does and so does she, they know full well and they use guilt and 'family' to manipulate.

Some people just enjoy making other people feel bad and those who get involved all to readily are often abusive too, in their own way. It's creepy how no matter how old you or the abuser gets...their behaviour is always the same.

 

[freakofnurture]

Now, let me tell you about the last three exchanges between myself and the pusher, because she found a way to one-up herself.

To her mail explaining how she likes to be embraced by my father I replied with the question what she was thinking to mock me like that. I also wished her a lot of fun living in her personal hell.

Her reply to that was "Why in the world wold you think that I'm living in hell?!?". She also told me that I totally misunderstood her mail - or maybe I just have a few loose screws. So, add a conscious insult to her (maybe accidental) mockery. I answered by counting up all the things she had told me made her feel miserable and unhappy, adding her refusal to rid her life of abusers - she had asked for it explicitly, and I only added this one thing that she hadn't told me herself; so I merely repeated how she herself had described her own life to me.

She replied by calling me a fanatic who's throwing words instead of bombs. Then she told me how I could never have survived how her father had treated her, when I already describe the tiny little not-nice things my father did to me in such over-the-top words. Yeah... I told her that on the one hand, I was annoyed because she accused me for words that she had 1. used herself and 2. asked for explicitly, while on the other hand, I was amused - and I was - about her attempt to shoot back. I told her that she's toxic and that she'll perpetuate her parent's abuse as long as her definition of 'love' also includes crawling back to your abusers to make them feel better.

I haven't heard back and all in all I feel okay about how things went. I bitched a bit but I think after the long comprehensive explanation I gave in my first reply, that was only repaid with insults and ridicule, I am entitled to some bitching ô.o

Maybe all I can say is, you've influenced my life in a good way.

Thank you, angel2write! I'm happy I could do something helpful for you :) It's a good feeling.

Pick and choose, FreakofNature, who is going to help you to LIVE and who will help you thrive into the person you are meant to be.

Yes. I know I have to do that, and I generally have an easy time 'discarding' 'friends' with whom I can't establish a relationship of mutual benefit. I told the pusher to stop writing to me and to never call me.

What I was met with when I did this clearly was a set of deer in headlights and they acted like I was not speaking their native tongue. I refused to play the game of over-explaining it (...) and left it at that.

Deer in headlights, different language, that hits the nail on the head! 'Family' is such a central, sanctified concept to most people, they cannot deal with it being put in a bad light.

I'm still learning to abstain from that game. Somehow I can't give up hope that someone will hear it and just go "Wow, that sucks. No wonder you don't want to talk to your parents anymore." My sister reacted like that, although she's in a pretty bad position, knowing my parents only as cool, loving people.

These are the people (...) that are worthy of forgiveness when they mess up. But not your abuser. Sometimes, there simply is no forgiving.

Yes! It's so... I don't know, I feel like people have this idea that they're entitled to be forgiven. Maybe it's Christianity's influence where you just have to get on your knees and say 'Sorry' and all sin is nil and heaven so near. It's a nice idea for situations where you have done something wrong, but what about the victims? We are supposed to turn the other cheek? If there ever was a system biased towards abusers. I refuse to be victimised any further! I say 'F*ck you' and then I walk away.

(...) people react the way they do for a reason.

They do. And symptoms don't lie. There was a time when I needed my symptoms to cling to because everything else inside me tried to tell me that I was just being a bad, ungrateful daughter. I think I'm over that now *just realise* How cool is that :)

The woman described in the original post sounds twisted...all that talk about being touched and hugged by your father is a bit creepy and I'd be suspicious of her motives...

She's pretty effed up, I think so, too.

Some people just enjoy making other people feel bad and those who get involved all to readily are often abusive too, in their own way.

I feel like this particular pusher needed me to justify her decision to stay in contact with her own parents and her infatuation with my f*ther. When I wasn't willing to do that for her, she started to insult and ridicule me, and finally, to portray herself as superior to me. I think she's feeling pretty bad and desperate, and she hoped that I would make her feel better by returning to my family, or at least honoring her oh so loving ability to 'forgive' her own parents (I don't think she forgave them, and she hates herself for it or something like that).

Thanks you all, your input is very helpful for me :)

 

[Srain]

They do. And symptoms don't lie. There was a time when I needed my symptoms to cling to because everything else inside me tried to tell me that I was just being a bad, ungrateful daughter. I think I'm over that now *just realise* How cool is that :)

THIS is VERY cool!!! I am just realizing that I might be able to live this way myself!
(((((((hugs)))))))))
Rain