Being who we are, even if FOO is different and doesn't like it

Feeling Sad

Well-Known Member
I am hanging in there.

It sounds like your set visit with tickets purchased in advance sounds like the way that you want to go...just as long as YOU want it and do not feel pressured.

You do not need to entertain him the whole time. Set up some pre made plans. You do not have to explain. Go off someplace alone, to walk, breathe, and relax. Then after an hour or two, return refreshed.

Plan outings with him...the movies, shopping, etc., away from home and out on public. There will be less time for conflicts.

It will be good for him to see the new confident you.

Have M spend some time out with him.

Plan breaks for yourself in the visit.

Maybe this will be an opportunity for your son to show that he has changed...a bit. Or, you will show him that he needs to rebuild your relationship and earn your trust.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Maybe this will be an opportunity for your son to show that he has changed...a bit. Or, you will show him that he needs to rebuild your relationship and earn your trust.
Yes. This is a very good point.

It can be seen as an opportunity not as a burden. For example, we can go on Thanksgiving to an early matinee movie before we go to M's family. Or go fishing or something like that. Or for a long walk. It could actually be fun.

Feeling what do you think about my "no conflict" rule?

COPA
 

Feeling Sad

Well-Known Member
Your house...your rules. You have a right to be respected in your house. End of story!

Do not leave the 'plans' open. Make them in advance. Movies, a new eaterie, a walk in the park, etc.

Your son, M, and you seeing 'the movement on the streets'.

He will be proud of you. He has an opportunity to make you proud. Perhaps you have both grown. You are stronger now. Each day you become stronger. Maybe some of that strength will 'rub off' on him.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Your son, M, and you seeing 'the movement on the streets'.
Where I live it is very suburban. But people will be out walking and there is a really nice wooded path next to a creek. We can take the dogs. Maybe Starbucks will be open. If so, we can sit outside with the dogs.

Here is a schedule if he arrives Wed afternoon:

5 Drive to dinner and return at 8
8 to 10 Watch a movie

Thurs

10 Go for walk.
12 Movie at home or theater.
3 Go to M's sister's house. Home at 8
8 to 10 Another movie at home, optional. (He will think I own stock in Sony Pictures.)

Fri

10 Go for walk.
11:30 Eat Lunch.
1 pm He goes home.

What if he refuses to go for a walk? Oh, I know. I go and leave him here. So, he can refuse any of these things, but I do them. He can join me, or not. I hope it does not rain. If it does, I will walk anyway. I love to walk in the rain.

What do you think?

COPA
 

Feeling Sad

Well-Known Member
I think that it sounds wonderful. Tell him your schedule after he arrives. Rules...before. Plans...after, so that he cannot balk.

You might want to buy crafting supplies or flowers to make a centerpiece to bring for M's sister. Or shop for a special hostess gift.

Movies at home are okay, but might leave time and privacy for a fight or disagreement.

Maybe, you could buy plants out together to plant when he is gone. Plan how to landscape an area. Have him help you pick out paint chips for a room. Go to the public library or a bookstore. I do not know your area. Look in your paper for local plays or events. Go to thrift shops to find fun items. Who can find the best thing for $5 or less? Shop with him to pick out his gifts in advance for the holidays. Or, have M take him out to buy YOU gifts for the holidays...even better. Tunics??? Have fun!

I am proud of my warrior sister.
 

Feeling Sad

Well-Known Member
The thing that I am proudest of is your ATTITUDE, girlfriend!

'What if he refuses to walk? Oh, I know. I GO and leave him here."

"So he can refuse any of these things, but I DO them."

"He can join me, or NOT."

"I hope it does not rain. If it does, I WILL WALK anyway."

"I LOVE to WALK in the rain."

You go, girl!!!

Warrior Copa. Watch out world!
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
The difficult part was digesting that my son could be capable of killing me.

My heart wanted to wholly believe and cling onto the notion that it was a 'joke' like my ill son had said.

When their words or behavior are so foreign, our minds refuse to believe that our child, our past wonderful child, are capable of that abhorrent behavior.

In the actions you took Feeling, you were responsible to and for Son when he could no longer be responsible for himself. That was a horrific choice to have had to make. It took bravery to face and act on what you knew. I have learned that bravery in my choices or thinking or knowing I am right as rain does not touch the pain of it.

Or the horror.

But sometimes, miraculous things do occur. Like in really bad movies, where the sun breaks through rolling clouds and eyes meet and a smile is exchanged in a moment that is a timeless, separate thing.

I have had those moments with both my children and even, with my mother. I dream still of my father in the strangest ways. Not often, but when I do, I am very sure it was my father. Not mushy stuff, but enigmatic events that make no sense until the years have passed and the thing has unfolded.

So, given that none of us can know, we have to believe in Nietzsche and Dr Seuss and Halleluiah and let go and do our best.

I'm glad we are here, together.

When we are alone in our pain, we forget there is a way out.

***

I overheard daughter threaten to kill me once.

She was on the phone with someone else.

I made her sleep in my room that night. We had a waterbed. If she got up to get the gun, I would know.

D H was out of town.

But I remember that being popped out of time feeling.

I have never told D H that.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
That we only got the memo until many years we spent suffering, is a sadness. But now we know.

:O)

Copa, you are so funny.

:hugs:

Yes, now we know.

For a while my Mother had her trust set up like this, that the grandchildren inherit and not her daughters. I remember my sister was all bothered about it, and I, thought about it not at all.

Your mother may have been heavily influenced by the sister, whose probable intent (if she is like my sister) was to work her nefarious magic behind the scenes and exclude you and yours altogether. Given that you needed nothing from the mother anyway, that Sister was excluded was a genius move on the part of the Mother.

You had told us once Copa, that your mother understood who your sister really was.

How clever of her to have solved the problem of the sister's influence in that way! My sister is and has always been, about the inheritance, about the Will, about the money and the stuff. Nosey about it, and about everyone's finances, almost to the point almost of embarrassment.

Another one of those things that we chalk up to "That is just how Attila is."

Attila with two "T"s, for the tetons, as Leafy suggested.

:O)

The drugs (meth is the worst) change the physiology of the brain and that is what makes it so hard to stop. Not just the cravings but a kind of psychosis which remains for a long time. And there are psychiatric diagnoses which are notable for an absence of empathy...bipolar is one.

Reading this puts me in that battered Rocky Balboa before he began training place, Copa.

I am still pretty firmly in denial on so much of this.

Really. To the point that it makes my head spin.

Sometimes, I just cannot believe this is what's happened to all of us. But I do think I am coming to a place where it is only what happened, and not a killing field.

Sometimes, I believe that with a defiance so clear and perfect it burns.

I think we have to take seriously their words, not that our hearts break from it, but so that they learn that words count. That words hurt and they will be taken seriously. That everything they say or do to us will be taken seriously and responded too, seriously. (I am listening to myself here, too.)

Yes.

I am thinking about this. I am wondering anymore if I agree. Of course, they are our children and will always be. But if a relationship is destroyed, can we honestly act as if it is not? Does maintaining a parental stance make sense within a relationship of contempt?

I see D H and Mama, Copa. I know what she means to him, and what she has meant to him in his life, and how it frustrates him when she is weak and whining, and how it strengthens him when she is herself, again. And he tells her, to this day, when she is in her right mind, that the weather was too hot for him today, or the traffic was rotten.

And she wants to know.

And that is what a mother does that no one else in all the world does: She wants to know.

So, the answer where my son is concerned would be to see through my own eyes, and never through those of the abuser, again.

That is my son. (Or, my daughter.) I am his mother. (Or, her mother.) However he justifies it, and whatever satisfaction he takes from it, my son is being honest.

I need to commit to the same.

Then, we will see.

Everywhere I look, I am being encouraged and supported to stand up.

In my real life, too.

And it ties into the work question, and to the integrity question, in the most extraordinary ways.

So, here is another observation I will make, which I might be all wet on but maybe not: On purpose; if this is so, then it would be best for us to do our part in these new directions.

Or is it just that I see it that way, do you think? A matter of where we put our attention becoming what we see.

Then it is one adult to another. I think to continue to parent an adult child leads to contempt. Perhaps it might be founded upon contempt.

I am thinking of my mother, here. Wondering where I am following her nasty lead. Founded upon contempt. Same energies, funneled differently.

I will think about this, Copa.

I agree that it is a contemptuous thing, not to have held my son responsible for the words, and the concepts behind them, that he spoke.

My reward would have been martyr role; his would have been destroying son.

A circle, a perfect circle, zipping along on its own energy.

True, then.

Ouch.

Thank you, Copa.

I needed to have stopped this in the beginning. In that way, we too are responsible for the qualities of our relationships.

It's a balancing act.

I agree a lot with D H--who I think said, give them what they want so that they leave us and our space alone. I think he is saying here, we are no longer responsible, nor are we obligated to sacrifice one iota that they learn.

And not only that, but to claim the right to joy in our lives fits in here. D H loves our children but he is not fixated on them the way I am. He wants to hear from them but his eyes glaze over and he hands me the phone when they begin talking about things that, literally I swear this is true, bore D H.

They are adults, he says.

I don't want to hear about their problems.

And remember, when D H talks to his own mom, he does not want to listen when she is not herself. He does not encourage self pity, even for his mother. D H encourages and receives from his mother clear eyed response whenever she is capable of that. There are games and layers of games going on with the other sibs and grave concerns about stomach acid and just how much jello the mother did or did not consume.

This does not happen between D H and his mother. D H sibs often unite against his position but he doesn't care about that, either. He does the right thing for his mother. He insists on full disclosure to him and allows whatever confidential understandings are happening between the other sibs below the surface to continue unremarked.

That is what honest looks like.

That is what respect looks like.

Nothing flowery in sight.

Micheal Corleone: "My circle is small. Loyalty matters. Don't f*** me over."

I told M's sister how I felt about my son coming home. She was appalled. Not in a blaming way, but it was not within her to understand a mother who felt as I did. Who did not want to have her child at home or even to go and see him.

She has not been where you have been, Copa. She has no way to comprehend the complexities. Be happy for her that she does not understand.

We are here for support for you in these matters, Copa.

That is why this site exists. There is no possible way for those who have not lived this to comprehend it, or to feel the desperate, keening pain in it.

That's okay, Copa.

Here we all are, and here is the site and whatever comes next, we will learn from it what we can.

The best thing would be for the son to question you regarding your changed feelings and for you (or for me, with my own son) to respond honestly.

The problem isn't a lack of honesty, it is that we cannot see because we cannot force ourselves to look. Like me, not believing because to believe my son meant what he said. (Which he did. He has told me this more than once and that feeling of "pounce" is in it, thick in his voice.)

Yay me that I can see it, now.

We never were cowards, Copa.

We were blind by choice. Until we were healed enough to address it correctly, we chose not to address it.

That was wise of us.

We must be very wise then.

:O)

So, we can trust ourselves about these matters, too.

I told her: I understand the limit is in me. That I get sick at even the idea of my son here with me. And she agreed. Yes, it is something in you.

Maybe Copa, for you and for me too, the something is knowing the right thing but not knowing, yet, how to act appropriately given our situations.

Time will tell.

M's sister will understand, or she will not.

You are correct in your gut feelings Copa, and that is all that I know.

We don't have to know everything maybe, Copa. We are not prescient. We are learning presence. So, we have to listen and respond to whatever it is in the best ways we know and sometimes, that is going to be wrong. When we do make wrong choices, the person who needs forgiveness, and the person who needs to forgive, is us. We don't have to be perfect, Copa. Only as sincere as we know, and to try to keep open, so we can see.

I do not know what it is in me. A Mexican mother, and Italian mother, a Jewish mother (which I am) is not supposed to feel this way. But I do. I am depleted.

Their children would never dare do what ours have done, Copa. In Jewish families, there is shiva for the outcast. In Italian families, there is scorn from the mother and I have seen D H mother do it a million times. Scorn for all of her children when she felt they were not making her the center of their lives as she aged, as was done, in Italy. Mexican mothers I don't know. But Spanish people are not known for their kindness, but for their integrity and pride.

But I don't know about Mexican mothers.

Greek mothers are very much demanding and scornful.

That scorn which the child has felt whenever he or she behaved poorly from the time he or she was little is what gave the the strength to choose correctly as adolescents. For each of us, issues come of abusive childhood's where we were made to serve an abusive parent's dysfunction, colored our intentions toward our own children. They would never feel scorn. They would never question our love or acceptance.

In that way, we were remiss.

It was a rock and a hard place, for us, always.

We did not do what was done to us, but were afraid we must have, somehow. So, we took on the guilt of our children's inappropriate behaviors. When that happens in a family, where then is the strong center.

It is not too late for us, or for our children. Scorn is an appropriate response to scornful behaviors on the parts of our children.

We need (I need) to stand up.

D H mom would never have allowed these behaviors from any of her children. The difference is that she would never have allowed them from the time the children were little. We did. (I did.) I managed and cleaned up and set straight and smoothed over in the interests of that stupid family dinner.

Roar.

Cedar spits in the dust between her bare feet.

Gunfight at the Okay Corral. I will save my son, yet.

I have made a beginning already. I did it on faith, and now, I see the rest of the story. Well, whatever you guys. I am in the Corral.

Who would ever have believed the weapon was scorn. Just as it is with real guns, it depends on why you employ it.

They say you should never draw unless you intend to kill, lest your own weapon be used against you.

Boy, I sound like a bigshot this morning.

Bright, and brittle, with anger.

Occupational Therapist (Occupational Therapist (OT)) know how this conversation would happen and be successful. There have been so many times when I have had rules. For a long time, he mocked them. Then came the time he would agree, but his understanding was completely different than my own. His perception is that "trying" is enough. What is trying?

Yes.

This is true of my son, too.

Because I was waffling. Because I refused to believe.

***

Tell him in advance, Copa, and tell him why.

If there is going to be a blowup, let it be now.

Or he may respond well to this new strength in you.

But he will test it.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Feeling what do you think about my "no conflict" rule?

I think it will be tested and that you should expect it.

If you are adequately prepared, son will not push. I think this is so. If he senses weakness, your son will blow through with all barrels firing. He is helping you stand up, Copa. Isn't it an amazing thing, how the disparate pieces fit.

When the tiles of that mosaic, first composed in blood on stone
fall seamlessly together
Revealing no face
but her own....


Cedar

If you are not strong enough Copa, then Son cannot come. Not yet. A test of strength would be an honest conversation about why or why not he can come. With clear cut "I will call the police" rules laid out ahead of time for the first whiff of things "not going well".

I am in a strange place this morning. We owe it to our sons to center and stand and say what is so. That we could not see it before is just a fact.

We see it, now.

Nothing nasty need be said. The facts are the facts.

Center, and stand. If we are wrong, then we will try something else. Literally, we have nothing to lose.

So, we are free.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I will always be a beggar to my sister. I could only converse with her from the margins. My life for almost 60 years I have felt marginal. I am only seeing now that it was my sister who named me such. It was not my mother. It was my sister.

I think just the opposite, Copa. Why else would they be so freaking focused on us? Why else destroy a beautiful comforter in so sneaky and underhanded a fashion.

To hurt, to destroy in secret, because there is too much fear to confront the higher, finer, stronger pseudo mom.

We were marginalized because we were forever believing in that stupid family dinner, Copa. It has nothing to do with the sisters or their shortcomings. We are the ones who chose to believe in them, Copa. Not the other way around. That we backed up and backed up the harder they pushed until they backed us into the shame and contempt of our childhoods has been, in a most astonishing way, a gift.

The sisters were never as we believed them to be. Here is a true thing, Copa: Neither were we as we were taught to believe ourselves to be, either.

Huh.

Cedar

I am happy for the Thanksgiving with M family.

D H mom believed baked beans to be an American traditional food.

That is why we have them at every holiday but Christmas Eve, which is the Italian Feast of the Fishes. For every other holiday, including Thanksgiving, baked beans make their appearance.

And at Christmas, along with Messiah and opera, there was Elvis "Parsley", singing about a blue Christmas.

And the American, Brenda Lee, bopping around the Christmas tree.

To this day, we play Elvis and Brenda Lee at the holidays. For Italian D H, that is Christmas music.

:O)

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
So, my son called.

And I was afraid to pick up the phone.

So, first I felt very cowardly. But then, I realized I am too newly in this new emotional and intellectual place to be certain of what it is I want him to know, and of how I want to present it. It is one thing to be angry here, sort of shooting off in a thousand directions, but I want to know what I am doing when I begin this new phase with my son.

So, I was right not to blast off without knowing where and how.

As I have been thinking about all of it this morning, I realized that it comes down to the same thing it did with my sister: I love you too much to love you this way.

I wanted to post about it, though not picking up when he called seems a failure, because we need to remember that it is best for all of us to be mindful, to take time, to be sure, and to stay focused. This morning, I was none of those things. When we burst through a denial place, there is a time of angry disbalance.

I am certain this is the right thing to do, and will post about it after I have spoken to my son.

Cedar
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
Oh Cedar is it the holidays that is drawing them to us?
Or is it the universe responding because we have been so intent on our discoveries?
My daughter has left her yoga pants on my clothesline. I wrote of it earlier.
Your son called.
It is a test Cedar and we shall rise to it.
leafy
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
The yoga pants are gone meaning daughter has come again to collect them. While we were not home. Hmmmm. Imagine such a thing as yoga pants causing such a commotion.
Good thing no work tomorrow, so I have time to think on this.
Cedar did you talk with your son?
Hope all is well.
Here we go again, but this time I am a little better bolstered and prepared to battle old patterns.
Deep breaths and heavy sighs.
And fervent prayers, for all of us.
Leafy
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
And he tells her, to this day, when she is in her right mind, that the weather was too hot for him today, or the traffic was rotten.

And she wants to know.

And that is what a mother does that no one else in all the world does: She wants to know.
Except me. I do not want to know. I want him to keep it to himself. Because he tells me to share the pain and the fear, or to impart guilt. He listens not at all to any remedy. And does what he wants.

I agree that it is a contemptuous thing, not to have held my son responsible for the words, and the concepts behind them, that he spoke.

My reward would have been martyr role; his would have been destroying son.
There is a big mess in M's family of origin, more than a year in the making. I have written of it. Involving the concealed maneuvering of a sister to obtain the house of the parents, cutting out the others.

Nothing like this has ever happened in the family. M and his sister are wounded to the core. It is not the house that matters to them, it is the lack of concern to how it would affect the mother, and secondarily their disabled brother.

Yesterday or the day before M's sister and I spoke of it, as it concerned Thanksgiving. I had offered to host the meal, and invite the troublesome sister and the second troublesome sister, but less so, as well.

M had said he could care less to invite or not the family.

But M's sister decided with these words: No. She has to solve this. She made the problem. She needs to clean it up. Until she does, I do not want to pretend the problem does not exist.

This heavy a problem has never happened before in the family. There is no precedent. Her sisters are her only friends. She wanted it this way. But she does not want anything but truth and order and responsibility.

Speaking of M's sister. Today we arranged a den for M in the room until today where we have slept. For the whole time you have known me and 3 years before that this room has been my refuge. Here, with my computer and radio, in the bed, I have felt safe. Yesterday we made the master bed in the master bedroom which was my mother's where she died. I am now in that bedroom because my refuge no longer exists.

It is a big step for me, no?

So we arranged the den for M. It is not done but the furniture is arranged to my liking and the art on the walls (a lot of it, my mother's and mine, too). So I said, in the way I talk. I want it, now. (It was so pretty and comfortable.)

Anybody who knew me would have heard me with these word--how wonderful this is. I am so happy. But she had heard me say ten minutes before, after we had tried the arm chair and ottoman (of my mother's) where M wanted--I do not like it here. It is too heavy for this corner. And then move it and move it and move it, along with the oval table--until I found exactly where it went. Because to me the things tell me where they belong and I need to listen.

So she closed to door so that M could not hear and said this: As long as M lives here with you you have to decide with him, not yourself. M needs to be included in all of the decisions that affect him. And she opened the door and closed it again to tell me again. To correct me. Again. To make sure that I understood.

OK, I said. I was so hurt. I think this is what M must have meant that he did not want that I should be hurt.

A bit later, I am embarrassed to tell you I said this (with a whiny voice): In my family the women decide where the furniture goes.

So M was shown the room we created: he said, it's fine. I want the chair here, but I understand why you but it here. Put it where you want. I'll move it where I want.

I am worried because this is part of what went with wrong with the other sister, that she started bossing me around.

D H sibs often unite against his position but he doesn't care about that, either. He does the right thing for his mother. He insists on full disclosure to him and allows whatever confidential understandings are happening between the other sibs below the surface to continue unremarked.

That is what honest looks like.
I love this. The part I like the best is that he could care less the gossipy, uniting like children games. He does not dignify it with a response. Nor does it touch him. Like it would me.

I would be so offended and hurt. Because I do not wear my power well.

They are adults, he says.

I don't want to hear about their problems.
He does not feel like he should be servile, or needs to be in order to prove his love. To endure their idiocy. His love exists above and below and all around. Not in one single thing. This is how is should be. I think.

He is treating them as the adults that they are. He would not fake it with any other adult past a few minutes of civility. And then he would bid them goodbye, I think.

COPA
 
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Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I overheard daughter threaten to kill me once.

She was on the phone with someone else.
I have never told D H that.
You hold so much in your heart, by yourself. I wish you could share it with him.
I made her sleep in my room that night. We had a waterbed. If she got up to get the gun, I would know.
Very intelligent. Did you tell her you had heard her?
She has not been where you have been, Copa. She has no way to comprehend the complexities. Be happy for her that she does not understand.
But she has, Cedar. One daughter used heavy drugs and ran with a gang and M slipped just this week and told me by accident that she called herself a lesbian and had a relationship with a woman.

She is now in a conventional relationship and she just had a baby (the little boy that was born blind but is fine now.)

And another daughter was with a big time drug dealer who beat her senseless, who when she finally left him, only weighed 80 pounds because he starved her.

And what did her parents say? Do not prosecute because he is your children's father.

And then he tried to set it up to take the kids with him to Mexico and that was when the parents wanted to borrow 3k from me for an attorney and I said no. What bothered me most of all is this: They called and asked to speak to me, cutting M out of the loop. I was offended.

This sister has issues with M.

M says that the difference is that the couple conceals all of the problems of their kids *and their own from others and I talk about it. I know I should be selective but when I am worried or I hurt, I seem to be unable to keep it in.

I used to (a long time ago) talk to the prisoners too (not patients, lest you think I am unethical. I used to work along side prisoners). I would get good advice.
Greek mothers are very much demanding and scornful.
My mother was very demanding and scornful but her geiger counter was off. She wanted everything for her, and nothing for anybody else.

As long as she was alive her scorn was a white hot poker in me. That as much as any other thing was the thing that kept me away from her. That is what she did to me when she was at the board and care. I cannot say more because it hurts too much to remember.
For each of us, issues come of abusive childhood's where we were made to serve an abusive parent's dysfunction
Yes.
So, we took on the guilt of our children's inappropriate behaviors. When that happens in a family, where then is the strong center.
Yes. I crumbled.

In a sense, I think I felt that my son had become scornful of me. Which is what you said about your son, I believe. And I became absolutely impotent in the face of it. Enraged.
Scorn is an appropriate response to scornful behaviors on the parts of our children.
Yes. Turn it back around.

My son began to act like a scornful father to me. It enraged me. And enrages me to even think of it and write it. Where in the world did he divine this very behavior to use against his mother? I am mildly hating him right now.
D H mom would never have allowed these behaviors from any of her children.
Yes.
That we backed up and backed up the harder they pushed until they backed us into the shame and contempt of our childhoods has been, in a most astonishing way, a gift.
Well, I think you are stretching it a bit. An opportunity, yes. A gift? I don't know.
To this day, we play Elvis and Brenda Lee at the holidays. For Italian D H, that is Christmas music.
So, so sweet. Elvis Parsley. I wish I can remember the sweet things my grandmother would say. She has been dead almost 40 years. I wish I had written them down as to remember.
And I was afraid to pick up the phone.

So, first I felt very cowardly.
This is courage and strength, not cowardice Cedar. You are picking your time. You are taking control. This is a good thing. Nobody does High Noon at the spur of the moment. They wait for the music.

COPA
 
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Copabanana

Well-Known Member
The yoga pants are gone meaning daughter has come again to collect them. While we were not home.
New Leaf. I have been thinking about the yoga pants. Very, very peculiar. And very, very intentional, I think.

I am thinking she is either marking her territory. Or she is communicating. I do not like the way she enters the home *or yard surepticiously, however you spell it. Like she is saying, it is mine. I can do what I please. It feels to be a transgression. At least to me.

First, it is your home, with your husband and son. Not hers, anymore. Second, if she wants to be part of a family, she needs to conduct herself as such. Not steal in and away.

So if I look at it like this the communication she may be sending is: I am here. Like it or not. I can come when I want. F U.

What can you do? Put up an electric fence? Of course not. She has fired the initial salvo. Be prepared, I think.

But perhaps there is a more benign interpretation.

COPA
 
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New Leaf

Well-Known Member
That is exactly it Copa. She has slipped in like this, many times before. We are in a semi-remote area, tucked in a valley. Our backyard is sheltered by the mountain side, very private. One can take a shower under the hose, stroll around, relax. My husband has tools and equipment. Machines for clearing the land, chainsaws, weed-eaters. There is much to be harvested from our yard for someone who is desperate. I shall have to take steps to secure our belongings.
Before she disappeared completely, without a word, four months ago, she would come by and drop her dirty clothes off. My hubs would wash them, hang and fold them. Like some kind of Chinese laundry service. I could not stop him, it was his way of loving his daughter. He couldn't see the insult of it. A hard working father coming home after a long day at work, tending to his adult daughters washing.
She was not working. Smoking meth, denying it, her eyes sunken in and body deteriorating. Her friends, toothless and street hard.
She diminished her dad to her servant, and he did it because he loves her and grieved for her situation.
She is not the person I remember, it is her body, whats left of her, but not truly her.

Yes Copa, the yoga pants, hanging on the line, the scent of her perfume. It is a giant FU.
And today, they were gone.

leafy
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
New Leaf, it is very, very sad.

That she chooses to live like this, for sure.

But that she need or want to debase her parents, invade their privacy, and by this reduce herself, is so, so sad.

I would almost prefer you be mad than sad. She exists still, somewhere inside. When prisoners stopped, they became themselves, after a time. Their mothers, so happy, yet so sad it took prison to return to them their children.

I am sorry, Leafy, for this. You deserve better. Much more.

COPA
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
very private. One can take a shower under the hose, stroll around, relax.
So this is the benign explanation, New Leaf.

She came to shower and to relax. She knew she could rest here and bathe. There may not have been any mal-intent. She sought a few minutes of refuge and thought not at all about how you would feel. I like this explanation much better.

She did not mean to intrude. Imagine how her life must be. With no place to be truly safe. She is remembering home. And how it feels to be loved and protected by parents.

My son does this, too. This is why he wants to be home. He wants the safety of home. He wants the love. The food. The comfort.

But he does not realize or does not want to face that I feel he transgresses. He dominates. He disregards. He controls. He takes over.

He wants to be a man in my house while seeking what he had as a child.

It does not work that way.

It is no longer the time to want protection and care from your parents...while you insist upon ruling them, or worse, abusing them.

This my son is learning. But still, not enough.

COPA
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
So this is the benign explanation, New Leaf.

She came to shower and to relax. She knew she could rest here and bathe. There may not have been any mal-intent. She sought a few minutes of refuge and thought not at all about how you would feel. I like this explanation much better.

She did not mean to intrude. Imagine how her life must be. With no place to be truly safe. She is remembering home. And how it feels to be loved and protected by parents.
This is how it starts Copa. I know the benign explanation well.
It has turned on us many times.
If daughter was different, the approach would have been different.
I know she wants this, the comfort of home. But she does not want to exact the price, follow the rules. Be honest.Treat others the way you want to be treated.

If I see her, I shall tell her I love her, but that she needs to get help.

Whether or not it happens, is between her and God.

Maybe it is not an F.U., maybe it is a yoga pant white flag. Except the yoga pants were black.

I shall pray for the best, and prepare. I have no control over the outcome, just my responses.

My son does this, too. This is why he wants to be home. He wants the safety of home. He wants the love. The food. The comfort.
To want these things is normal, to be able to appreciate, an entirely different thing.

But he does not realize or does not want to face that I feel he transgresses. He dominates. He disregards. He controls. He takes over.

He wants to be a man in my house while seeking what he had as a child.

It does not work that way.
You are right Copa, it does not work this way.

It is no longer the time to want protection and care from your parents...while you insist upon ruling them, or worse, abusing them.

This my son is learning. But still, not enough.

How to lovingly detach from this, I do not know.
I once saw a documentary on drugs, where a psychologist would go and treat homeless drug addicts. Most of them had used and abused their families to the point where they could no longer take them in. The psychologist was very loving and kind.
I do not know how to be this to my daughter in her state of mind, Copa. It is not that I haven't tried.
I have tried, but nothing I say to her works.
It does not matter what, or how I say it, everything is twisted and turned around.
She is angry and confused.
I am waiting for rock bottom.
How far does rock bottom have to be?
I thought rock bottom was hit many months ago.

We shall see, Copa. I will pray for my strength, and a miracle for her.I must remeber I have given her back to him. I must have faith in my convictions.

We shall see, what happens, until then, I must carry on.

Thank you for your kind words and comfort sister.

leafy
 
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