Think I've just buggered it up.

[Sandstone]

My mother had asked me to sort out some practical care for her. I found a well respected agency, but she rejected it as too costly. I was cross and said I thought she was making a mistake. She went on at length about why won't I just be nice to her. Eventually I cracked and told her why. (because she didn't bother to notice I was abused).

I think I've made a mistake. I have been protecting the family from this for many years, and now I've gone back on that for no good reason, except to do what she always does and make someone else feel bad when confronted with a difficulty. As I'd always anticipated, the response was all about her. The most generous thing she said was "Why can't we just be friends?"

I'm not going to go and apologise for telling her, but I feel really bad, wholly selfish and utterly stupid.

 

[scout86]

I don't know if you made a mistake or not. I can TOTALLY relate to that feeling in that type of situation. It seems like, at some point, my T has suggested that protecting everyone from "reality" might not actually be my responsibility. But it seems like it is. Very confusing!

For the record, I don't see anything there that suggests you WEREN'T being nice to her, which makes me wonder about her question. (It vaguely reminds me of my mother's passive aggressive games.) AND, she asked a question. You merely answered it. The argument could be made that lying to your mother is bad too.

Good luck with this!

 

[Sandstone]

She did confirm one thing I've always thought. I've often said to T's that if I'd been better at being a child they might have been better parents. She said "How could I possibly know.You never gave me anything"

I was too self possessed and closed off.

 

[Kubash16]

She did confirm one thing I've always thought. I've often said to T's that if I'd been better at being a child they might have been better parents. She said "How could I possibly know.You never gave me anything"

I was too self possessed and closed off.

This should have been a sign to her to dig further. Her inaction is not your fault in any way whatsoever!

 

[Chris-duck]

This should have been a sign to her to dig further. Her inaction is not your fault in any way whatsoever!

This.

 

[digger]

I've often said to T's that if I'd been better at being a child they might have been better parents

What happens if you turn that around - if they'd been better parents....

In my opinion, it wasn't your job to be a better child in order for them to be better parents, although I can very much identify with the feeling (it's one I struggle with a lot myself) Was it the responsibility of your children to make you a better parent? Did you expect them to take responsibility for how well you parented them?

 

[Sandstone]

Did you expect them to take responsibility for how well you parented them?

Well I'm panicking about how bad I might have been, given what I grew up with, but my immediate response was "of course not, but they were easy to love, because they were lovely." Every child needs to know they are adored.

I think I've been stupid and reckless and put myself in danger. They very best that could happen is that she totally ignores it. But I kept saying "You are only talking about yourself". She wil have to retaliate, and make it my fault. I should have known better, and known it was pointless to tell her that.

 

[Kubash16]

Something my old T said- everyone, everyone including he and his wife, is going to screw up their kids somehow. It’s inevitable that you aren’t going to be absolutely perfect. But you do the best you can with the tools you have.

Sometimes it bites me in the ass, but I tend to err on the side of I would rather say too much then not enough. An elephant in the room has been exposed which is the first step to healing it. Neither of you can fix what you don’t acknowledge. Maybe the acknowledgment could have come at a better time or with a different delivery, but it was obviously festering and hurting you and needed to be out. Now she gets to buck up and work with you through this.

 

[Friday]

I don’t tell my family anything, either.

In the beginning it was to protect them; I saw what happened to people when they found out -I don’t even know how to categorize it at the moment, my mind is skittering away from useful words- about stuff. I didn’t want them hurt by my life. There’s enough pain in the world without my adding to it.

These days, it’s as much I simply don’t want to deal with how they’d react. I know them very well, and I can quite easily predict the entire series of chain reactions. Nope. I have too much to deal with already. I absolutely refuse to add more. But it’s come close a few times. Despite knowing what I know, and all determination to the contrary.

So you have my very sincere condolences. ((As the step beyond sympathy that encompasses : commiserations, solace, comfort, consolation, fellow feeling, understanding, empathy, compassion, solicitude, concern, & support.)) Which I know isnt very useful. The only thing useful I might have is when I’ve let information slip in different circumstances, the best of all the possible reactions I’ve had to that is “f*ck it. It’s out there. And no longer mine to worry about.” IE a little bit of disassociation put to good use. Divorcing myself from caring about what happened next, since I was powerless to affect what happened next. Sometimes I was surprised, and people rose to the occasion. Most of the time what I expected to happen, happened.

It’s infuriating, though. I’ve never let slip other people’s secrets, but I tend to throw my own to the wolves at the worst possible times.

 

[blackemerald1]

@Sandstone the way your mother responded sounds like she is quite fearful of her own situation. I think it's likely she's thinking about the accommodation problem and her own predicament and striking out at you emotionally because she's feeling vulnerable.

I've landed some huge life events, impulsively, mistakenly on my parents and been horrified at myself.. waiting for the axe to fall or some kind of recognition at least - and as usual my parents were too self-absorbed to attend to what I said. They were only worried about what they want. My life experience is so far outside their realm of possibility they cannot extend their imagination so far. And they just don't want to know.

The "why can't we just be friends" is straight out of my parents handbook. It's as far as they could reach. I've heard that phrase many times over the years.

It's such a difficult statement because on the surface it seems to be a make the peace phrase but really underneath it is a admonishment that somehow I have disappointed and upset them yet again, deliberately or clumsily raised their ire, as if it was only ever my responsibility for their emotional balance and finally it infers that I have some super duper power to make it all peaceful again if I would only agree or comply.

I want to say, 'no we cannot be friends because friends would never take what you constantly deal out to me, friends would never take the criticism or be so dismissive and ungrateful and friends might acknowledge the work I've done, friends might even care about me'.

As only parents who are self-absorbed to such levels can do, she may ignore what you've told her. What will you feel then?

 

[scout86]

I think I've been stupid and reckless and put myself in danger.

Dealing with my mother used to leave me feeling like that fairly often. My T says I tend not to be very connected with my feelings, so it took awhile to recognize the "feeling" I had before making the mandatory phone call as "dread". Something that helped was deliberately tracking down what I was actually afraid of. Turns out, the version of my mother I was actually dealing with was just a little old lady who lived 5 hours away. She could be annoying, true. But she couldn't actually, really HURT me in any way that counted. She could have at one time, and probably did, but not any more. In the end, I asked myself "What's the worst that could happen?" An answer like "Never speak to me again" was actually kind of a relief, so how bad could it be? I think what you're feeling is probably based more on ancient history than on current reality, isn't it?

And, I think a parent has to be pretty self involved not to wonder what's going on with their kid. Maybe she just doesn't have the capacity to do a good job. Not everyone does. (YOU, on the other hand, sound like a nice parent.)

 

[Sideways]

Take this with a grain of salt, because a lot of this is probably straight up projection.

3 days ago, I finally got my nan moved into residential care. Since January, taking care of business for my grandparents has been a full time gig, and these are the first 2 days to myself I’ve had. Early March my grandad died, and the whole moving her into care got a whole lot more urgent and stressful and it’s been an absolute nightmare.

Add my mum to the mix - she’s absolutely fallen apart during the whole process. Instead of taking care of this stuff herself, it was literally like me trying to juggle taking care of her (like, daily), while taking care of her parents for her.

One thing that came up for me during that process in a huge, completely unexpected wave was this whole boatload of resentment towards my mum. Here was I, going to the ends of the earth to take care of everyone - her and her parents - and it was such a cruel irony. Because it felt like she didn’t deserve any of it.

That was really unexpected for me. I didn’t realise I had all this anger and resentment hiding away inside me. I completely blew my top about it to my T last week, and I felt like such a horrible person. I really did. The words coming out of my mouth about how my mum didn’t deserve a second of my help, that she’s been completely unapproachable, disengaged, and scary aggressive all my life when she should have been, well, being my mum.

She fked up in the motherhood stakes. Big time. In a huuuuuge way. She didn’t see the writing on the wall. Decades of concern about my sister, but nothing but aggression and accusations for me, for years, when what I really needed was for her to notice: something really terrible has happened to my daughter. Where the hell was she when I needed her??? Why the hell am I running myself ragged trying to look after her now? She hasn’t earned that.

(Breathe, Sideways)

I sat there in horror listening to myself spew out all this anger and resentment towards my mum. All of a sudden. Wtf!?! Sooo incredibly unhelpful. And I sound like a monster with what I’m saying.

I’m still settling into the concept that all those feelings are completely valid. I needed a mum. And she failed me. And even today, she’s a complete desert when it comes to support. I’ve told her some of the detail of my abuse, and I assured her at the time that “You didn’t do anything wrong, you don’t need to feel guilty, you couldn’t possibly have known,” (and on and on). But actually, I know now, I had a tonne of anger about it, and I did want to see her feel guilty, because in some kind of way it would at least show she gave a fk - not just about me and what I was living with, but at her own failings as a parent.

Here’s the thing: we’ve got to give ourselves some compassion for feeling that way. It’s entirely valid. It’s appropriate to feel like that. Because we were children, she was our mother, and when we needed her most, she wasn’t there. Those feelings you’re having? Make perfect sense.

What’s shit about feelings that intense? Especially ones that we’ve been sweeping under the carpet for decades, telling ourselves that we don’t or shouldn’t feel like that? Is when they come out, they explode out. Boom. Here’s the anger and resentment we didn’t want to deal with, making a big fat mess of everything in a reeeeally undiplomatic and unhelpful way.

It makes sense it happened like that. Anger that big, that suppressed - it never comes out in a pretty, well-spoken, diplomatic sort of way.

In my mind? It’s come out for me at this really inconvenient time precisely because of how vulnerable my mum is right now. Because I’m noticing, where it feels like she failed to. Because instead of burying my head in the sand and leaving her to it, I’m there, knee-deep in her emotional turmoil, helping her through it.

Idk if any of that helps. But to me, there’s space for compassion because it all makes so much sense. These big ugly-seeming feelings make perfect sense, they’re entirely valid, and watching our respective mums be vulnerable and lean on us, watching ourselves step up despite their failings...how could it not come out right now?

So, cut yourself a break for being human. Give yourself a high five for confronting something reeeally tough (the inadequacy of our parents). Even if it wasn’t pretty? It was probably necessary.

And then when you can, when you’ve moved through it (whoch could take some time and space), decide how you’re going to define your relationship with your mum moving forward. If you help her find the care she needs? Do it because you decided that’s what you want to do for you - “I’m going to help her anyway, because that’s how I’m going to define myself in this relationship .”

Think about your boundaries and where they need to be. You don’t need to apologise for feeling the way you do, or being completely human in the way you’ve (finally!!!) expressed yourself. Acknowledge it, give it the space it deserves, then decide how you want to move forward.