Victimhood / Martyrdom vs Boundaries

[DammitJanet]

Cedar....I read about a fourth of this and I just had to reply to you. We go way back dont we? I remember when you first came here and I think it was right around the time Jamie was heading off to boot camp. I know it was your son who brought you here because the docs had convinced you that all that was wrong with your dtr was PCOS or something like that. One thing I remember so clearly that you said was you put a picture out of the newspaper on your fridge of the young men and women serving in the military to help you realize that if they could do it, so could your son.

How F'n dare your son!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would almost understand him trying to convince you to give him your house if he was 18 or 19 because kids that age are just dumb sometimes. I remember thinking that I wished my parents would have just given me our family home when they divorced instead of selling it. Not so much because I thought they owed it to me but it was MY house! However for your son to be mean is just too much.

You are much too nice a lady for that. Were you a perfect parent? Probably not but I dont think anyone is. I know you did your best. If your son only got his GED well that is on him. I was an idiot and dropped out of HS too...long story. I got my GED and then in my mid-twenties I went back to college (with 3 very young kids!). Cory is a 9th grade drop out. I doubt he ever gets his GED unless he spends some time in prison. Oh well...I tried until I realized I was trying harder than he was.

Personally Im a bit ticked at these adult kids right now. Why they think we owe them a darned thing is beyond me.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Personally Im a bit ticked at these adult kids right now. Why
they think we owe them a darned thing is beyond me.

Janet, we have been there for one another for a really long time, haven't we?

I appreciate your honesty and smarts and all the funny things and sad things. I feel like I know your kids, and Tony and Monkey and oh, my Lord, do I remember Buck! I remember when Jamie became a Marine, and when he left the Service.

We were all so proud of him.

**********

You are right about being ticked off over these kids. But I think we have to be healthy enough ourselves to feel ticked instead of broken. I think it has to do with being able to interact with them at all without pretending things are better than they are.

I like to pretend/believe everything will be okay, that there is some purpose to any of this.

I get all intellectually fastened and then, something simple, like "dumbass" -- it gets me, everytime.

For Heaven's sake, I'm 62 years old.

Ew.

I was watching MWM's YouTube about Adult Kids. It was great. What she said is that how we respond to the kids is up to us.
I think the problem lately has been that I have been doing some deep work on myself regarding family of origin, and it left me vulnerable.

That term he used is stupid and vulgar and I just couldn't get my head around it.

His wanting that house....

We aren't there in the winter. I could believe in him enough to say he could move in there with his family.

But I don't believe in him enough to do that.

I think that is where the split was, actually. I cannot face what I have to face and blah, blah, blah.

So I really liked your "Personally Im a bit ticked at these adult kids right now."

Yep.

:O)

Thanks, Janet.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So, as I worked my way through this (thanks, everyone), this is what I learned, and these are the things that helped me.

Maya Angelou's story about crossing the threshold.

Maya writes about having been told, by her own mother, that once she crossed that threshold, she needed to remember that she had already been raised.

She knew right from wrong, in other words.

Since she already knew right from wrong, she would know better than to do wrong. And if she did wrong, that was on her.

And that meant that, whatever Maya chose to do, the mother's job was done once the child crossed the threshold.

Once the child crosses the threshold, whether that be literally or figuratively, once the child knows right from wrong...then his or her life is his own. We may condemn their choices, as I so vehemently do and then, beat myself to smithereens for.

But I did teach them right from wrong.

My job was done before they ever hit puberty.

So...why am I beating myself to smithereens over the hurtfulness of loving my children, who are such poops?

Self image. I keep trying to fix it because I wanted something more? (Steaming mad, here.) Poor me, ashamed because I am the one without a professor, a medical director, a research scientist? Though I did have a math teacher, for awhile there. Hoo boy! That was sweeet.

:0)

Is it true, as one of my children told me, once, that I am masquerading as a martyr, as the poor, victimized, cookie making mother who doesn't deserve this when in fact, I caused it?

(Which sent me on this whole other downward spiral about what was the matter with me that I would present as someone bothered into a psychotic state by the actions of her poorly raised children to displace blame for what happened onto them. That certainly did suck. And I spent years dancing around that one.)

Then, Recovering taught me the term gaslighting.

And MWM had us all reading about various diagnoses and watching videos which might as well have been filmed by our own children, for Heaven's sake.

So, I am standing up, again.

The reason the "dumbass" comment stung was that I had to say "no" to moving into the house. (Even under the guise of supposedly buying it with money from the job he didn't have yet and would never be able to take now because I said difficult child and his family could not buy our house and so, had nowhere to live until the money started rolling in and would have to stay where they are, many states away, halleluiah.)

But I felt guilty about saying no.

I felt smug about having said no. Felt I had protected myself, and that I had been straight up honest with difficult child, instead of going through the usual, "You know why you cannot live at home again." and blah, blah, blah.

And here was the kicker:

I hoped for difficult child to have the job, and to make it, and I was pleased for him ~ and that is when, somehow, living in, buying into, whatever you want to call it, got to be the reason difficult child was never going to make it.

And THAT is why "dumbass" hit the way it did.

I was broken, already.

That is probably when I came out of shock enough to listen to what he was saying again.

Because it isn't just about moving home. It is about how everyone else's family helps them or they would not have made it, either. It is about how you need money to make money.

It is about how, believe it or not, I should stand up and make money if I think it's so easy in the world he has to live in.

Our difficult children are clever and can be slyly malicious.

So, writing this, I realize I am still not through it.

But I'm better.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Oh, Cedar, you just gave me some more of the wisdom you've learned. I'm so glad I found this forum. What Maya said about how our grown children were already taught how to behave and the rest is on them really hit me in the heart. I know this already, but somehow hearing somebody else say it is validating to the max. And don't all of us need validation when our own children have called us such horrible names?

Cedar, I have a few advantages over you in certain ways. I learned early that giving money to our children does not make them successful or unsuccessful. It certainly helps to get money, if your adult child is ambitious and will do helpful things for himself with it, but what if you don't have it to give? Many success stories came from average families that did not have a lot of money to hand out to them. Children who want to achieve will achieve anyway. My son-who-left Scott owns his own company. He didn't want the college scholarships he was offered and spurned them. His attitude was, "I'm smart. I can do this without college...waste of time. I'll start out four years ahead of my peers." He did. And he did it all. He was very ambitious from the time he was very young and had tremendous drive and intelligence. He owns his own business. Sure, he had to start out working for somebody else, but so what? He climbed the ladder fast and believed in himself and never gave up. He was going to prove to the world that he was more than somebody's orphan from another country, and he did. In fact, I think he felt we were lacking because we did not have the money he was able to achieve. Is being rich, but looking down at others, even those who loved and nurtured you, being a success? I suppose the definition is in the eyes of the beholder.

All of my adult children are hard workers, even Sonic. None of them got monetary help as we had none to pass along. But I feel we were very good parents and that Sonic and Jumper, in particular, lived in a very stable, loving, involved environment. I know both of those two adult kids value their parents, even though Dad isn't a moneymaker. He is always there. Jumper recently put on her Facebook under her dad's picture "The only man I'll ever need." She just got a tatoo that says "Family About Everything." The amazing part of this is that she is adopted and many adopted children have identity problems and are eager to find their roots. Maybe because Jumper knows her birthparents are around and she can find them, she seems very bonded to us. Sonic too. I truly think what we give our children OF OURSELVES is far more important than giving them money to help them get a leg up.

So I felt, very early on, that having money for our adult children is not the answer or the reason for failure and I was also not convinced that a college education was mandatory for success, especially the way things are today in the United States. Times have changed and the prestige of college degrees, except in very advanced fields, have lost some of the glitter they once had. difficult children just don't normally like to work. Period. So they blame us when they aren't successful because they are lazy. Or drugged up. We are convenient scapegoats and we love them and they know it. They do the oppostie of chld abuse, where parents who feel inadequate and have no self-esteem or take drugs beat up their innocent children. These adult children take us, those who loved them the most, and beat us up, sometimes physically, but certainly verbally, over and over again. Until we finally stop caring. The lucky ones stop caring and see that it is more about them than about us and that we can't control them. The unlucky ones cry to their graves. I feel very sad for those who never find happiness because their adult children abuse them forever and they can't detach.

Another advantage I have over some is that my children's behavior did embarass me when it was bad, but I never cared THAT MUCH what others thought. I have had to manage a dysfunctional family so their input was not accepted. I didn't care about it or even allow it because they had been so awful to their own children...who were they to talk? As for the other people around me, I had two rock solid friends who gave great advice and help and we could vent to one another, but we did not judge. The great masses out there, who really had nothing to do with us...I didn't care what they thought. I still don't. Never tried to win favor with the masses by image. Being a cynic, I'd see a perfect looking family and think to myself, "Wonder what their problems are...the ones they try so hard to cover up."

Many of those "perfect" families split up. But it looked good at the time, right? Not if you're a practicing cynic and people watcher I was always very introspective and did a lot of deep thinking. I was a little harder to fool than some people are.

Ok, so I rambled on and on again and probably jumped topics.

Cedar, just wanted to squeeze your hand and say, "Thank you and I understand." Let's both, heck, all of us, try to have a great day and do something silly but very nice for ourselves

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Is being rich,
but looking down at others, even those who loved and nurtured
you, being a success?

A condition to which I aspire.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Echolette]

I love that your grammar was perfect here

 

[Echolette]

Cedar,

it is very very yucky when people are gratuitously mean to us. Once I was waiting in a car at a curb to get my boys when they got off the subway...it was a wide street, maybe even 5 lanes, and plenty of traffic flow. A cab pulled up beside me and rolled down his window....I rolled my passenger window down in response and leaned forward, smiling and questioning, to see how I could help him...and he said f- you and gave me the finger.

I felt the shock of that to my bones.

For weeks.

I can still feel it (it was a couple of years ago).

Really vicious, uncalled for, unexpected meanness is shocking. It is painful. It gets into us. The more so, the most so, when it comes from some one who knows us. I guess the most of all when it comes from some one we nurtured.

Once in a bad time my SO told his ex wife (she was ex even then) that I was a bad mother...that, as she told me a later, I had "a thief, an alcoholic, and one who would be with me forever...how could I even call myself a mother."

I've never gotten over that.

And I didn't even know her (ex). It still makes me sort of sick to think about.

I guess.... these anecdotes are just to say that for some of us, especially we vulnerable, or gullible, or sweet if you want to call us that (or dumb!) just aren't protected in anyway from that ugly, and it feels like we have been burned by acid, marked forever.

And if it comes from our kid? Burned forever.

And for you it opened all the door to grief and guilt on top of it...(that didn't happen with the cab driver), so hard to dig yourself back up out of the hole.

But you are doing it. I can see it in your posts. I can hear you parsing things, turning the prism, looking from different angles, seeing light here, scrathces and damage there....doing what you do.

And it wil make you whole again. You will be whole again.

I would cleverly insert quotes from your posts here but my post inserter technique is failing.

Holding you in my heart today. We will give you strength, and, as you said to me on more than one winter night last year..we are circling the wagons. You can feel us.

Echo

 

[2much2recover]

I have tried really hard to not answer this post because I didn't want to seem like I was "flaming" you, however from the first time I read your post I felt that it was written with some sort of glee as in gee wiz, (ha-ha) look what difficult child has done know, especially since you gave him permission to drive the car illegally and then you "seem" stumped as to why he felt it was OK to take it on his own. To me this says that you are getting some kind of pay off in your part in this situation - which I am not "blaming" you but just giving you food for thought to what is it really that you are "getting" from this dysfunctional situation (what is the pay off), how are you contributing to it's ongoing cycle, and what your position in this "allowing the difficult child's" from learning and advancing on to stop abusing you. It is as if for some reason you enjoy the dance. Probably, you are not even aware of this - maybe the pain is the payoff, again only you know why???? Yes, there is pain here, but are you dancing so fast so you NEVER have to really do anything about the situation. If it is all just "too much", when is it ENOUGH??? The older difficult child should have been out of your house a long time ago - seems he is only there to train the younger, giving you more time to prolong the pain. Again, not trying to blame the victim, just asking you to look inside yourself and see what is preventing you from moving forward. If younger difficult child had killed someone on the highway when you gave permission to drive illegally, you might have gotten a ton of mileage out of it, but not so much the innocent the victims of the accident.

 

[Echolette]

2much, I think you posted in the wrong place....Cedar didn't let her son drive her car!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Thanks, Echo.

:0)

2much2recover, noting unpleasant things as we respond can be very helpful. Though Echo is right, and this post had to do with a 39 year old difficult child who has a history of moving in and not moving out again until, out of desperation, we pay for deposits and cosigns and cars...you are correct, too. (And because I am feeling a little defensive, let me note that difficult child now has a girlfriend and two beautiful sons. We will not be living in that house again for six months...we would come home to our son and his family well and truly settled. It may be that the job would have materialized, but he doesn't have it yet and in fact, lives quite far away.

And the house was never for sale. We had no intention of selling it. Did not offer to let difficult child buy it. This is a sort of plausible way for difficult child to get in. If he did come up with the money to buy it?

We would be without a house that we cherish and, though we seem very old to difficult child I am sure, are not yet so old and doddering that we cannot take care of it or make it up the stairs.

difficult child son is looking for living quarters again because of a car accident while under the influence.

Drugs and booze.

Court date: November

Having said that though (said the martyr)...I too wonder whether there is some martyr-complex thing happening with me. I don't understand the dynamic beneath "vulnerable" in the way that I seem to leave myself open for.

It feels like being kicked in the head.

And I can't seem to make the response stop.

Hence, the title of the post.

Really vicious, uncalled for, unexpected meanness is shocking. It is painful. It gets into us. The more so, the most so, when it comes from some one who knows us. I guess the most of all when it comes from some one we nurtured.

It still makes me sort of sick to think about.

And for you it opened all the door to grief and guilt on top of it...(that didn't happen with the cab driver), so hard to dig yourself back up out of the hole.

Thank you for your honesty, Echo. That cannot have been easy...but I got it, and it helped me.

Thank you so much.

***

But Echo is exactly right in describing both the suddenness and the unexpectedness of the attack, and in noting that she (and I do, too) respond with a lesser version of these same feelings to any unexpected, out of left field, no defense possible attack.
What Echo left out for sure for me and probably for her, too...is that we monitor our own behaviors, our own performances, setting and meeting a standard which sometimes leaves others looking for a vulnerability to take us down a notch or two.

And we don't forget it, and we try to be aware of the possible truth in it, because we don't understand people who are intentionally mean. We believe there must be some truth in the criticism, or the person would not have said that.

But that isn't always true.

Interestingly, Pema Chodron was on Super Soul Sunday today. Her take on this lesson is: "The need to be confirmed by something from outside."

The question had to do with the roles we take on as most important to our identities, and the sure challenge of everything we know and are through those choices of role.

Mother.

Wife.

Caretaker, perfectionist, employee, bad guy ~ whatever the role we most cherish, this is where we will learn.

***

Echo, I am so sorry about the ex's comments. They were nasty, destructive, and pointless. This is the vulnerability we live with as parents of difficult children. This will invariably be the vulnerability exploited by those looking for an exploitable vulnerability.

We have no defense, because we don't know how this happened, either. I did not parent by accident. I doubt that any of us here did, or we would not still be here, trying to figure out what went wrong so we could fix it.

Whether from an ex husband, an ex wife, or every member of our families of origin (Who, when even their wonderful selves could not turn the difficult child around, turn double vehemence on the hapless difficult child. And then, their own egos now on the line, whisper behind their hands about what really goes on behind closed doors in our seemingly perfect homes, where they spent so many holidays and had so many dinners and ad nauseum.)

I heard that one from my own mother so much it stopped bothering me.

So...she stopped saying it.

Interesting, no?

Lost my train of thought, there.

***

Anyway, this is the vulnerability we are working through here, those of us learning how to let what is be without judging or grieving or trying to change it.

Letting it be.

Simply a fact, that our lives came crashing down; simply a fact that we live with every day and every minute of the long night: our children are in danger. Or worse yet...our children are the dangerous ones. Simply a fact that these things have happened to us, these public guttings and public losses and public shames....

We are learning here to just let that be what it is.

Personal as it is to us, awesomely fearsome as it is to us to love the way we love our self and other-destructive children...we are learning, a little piece of flesh at a time, to let that be.

****

Having lost her chain of thought altogether by this time, Cedar signs off.

:0)

Cedar

 

[DammitJanet]

Whose son drove the car? Besides mine when he could steal the keys!

Anyway Cedar...I want your house. I will make my case and I dont do drugs or drink! LOL. I have no idea where this house is located but it has always sounded beautiful to me. I actually picked out a scent for my soap called "Cedar Scent"!