If you have personality disorders in your family, including difficult child...

[BusynMember]

RE, I haven't read that one. I did read Robert Hare's book on antisocial personality disorder, Stop Walking on Eggshells (good book for anyone with a PD in his/her life) and Boundaries, but I will download that one to my Kindle today.

Thank you lots for the suggestion.

 

[pasajes4]

Good information

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

This is a game to her, one she must win. She needs to get the last word in and if she feels I may not
answer the phone (thus making her feel humiliated) or not
respond to her texts, she will not risk the chance
that perhaps she won't "win."

I think I have felt something similar to what is happening for you now, MWM. It is so painful to believe it, when they don't even care enough about us to validate that we feel badly enough about something that, for once, it is US deciding something has to change.

What kind of baloney is that?!?

How could it be that these very same people we have been

1) understanding the stuffings out of so we could still love them, no matter how they treated us

2) berating ourselves for not being able to help

3) addressing our own shortcomings, our own jealousies and shames and hurts for, thinking that it was our fault they weren't better than they are...how could these people, this family of ours ~ how the heck can they just turn away, MWM, like it was no big deal?

WTF, to coin a phrase.

Ahem, that bad Cedar with that nasty language. NO WONDER MY FAMILY HATES ME, right?

So, in future, I will be writing out any profanity.

:O)

P.S. MWM, if your sister calls...you owe me a quarter.

************************

My only fear is that she didn't read my texts,

Part of the hurt of it for me, MWM, is realizing they never did hear us, never did see us, never even knew us, at all. Whatever the sickness is at the heart of our families of origin, it involves hating so thoroughly that we cannot see what is in front of our faces.

We cannot truly see one another.

We become the roles we play for one another.

When you (or when I) decide we want to be real, instead?

It's like we go invisible, to them.

It will take us a little while longer I think, MWM, to become familiar enough with being real to trust it, to really prefer and then, to relish the freedom and rightness in these new ways of seeing.

It is a little bit of a lonely place, for right now.

But I'm pretty sure that once we are through this part?

We will be certain it was worth it, and grateful, so grateful, that we have had an opportunity to be real in the world.

Like COM says, MWM...none of us knows what the future holds. To that, I would add that, having been real myself just lately (applause, applause in the background)...every one of us is trying to find "real".

Perhaps, MWM, you are beginning that process, that healing, for your family.

No one ever said "real" was easy or fun or even, especially rewarding.

But that is what we all want to be.

That is what Pinocchio is all about, if you think about it. He was perfectly content to be a little wooden boy...but once he realized there was something better?

It was the only dream; the blazing, aching desire to be real.

That's us, Pam.

I have had my heart broken by her too many times to trust her again

I think you will trust her again, Pam. I trust my sister. (If I ever hear from her again, I mean.)

I really do. I love her so much. I feel so protective of her, and of my brothers, and even of my mother.

But, as Recovering is always telling me here, I have to open my eyes. I have to stop pretending they are who they are not.

The only way to do that is to be healthy, myself.

The only way I know to do that is to sit with the pain of the disillusionment. I wonder what in the world is the matter with me, that I refused to see it sooner.

That is when I see why I accepted the role I did, in my family of origin.

I had to, to survive.

So did you, MWM.

And at the bottom of all that, there is only compassion for all of us. It really is true that we all do the best, the very, absolute, God's own truth best, that we know how to do. We fall into traps and lie to ourselves and each other to dig ourselves out of it...and then, I guess we just keep lying.

I did.

I think I did.

I don't actually know what I did, to tell you the truth.

But I know I did the best I could know at that time with all my heart.

That, I am sure of.

I am sure I am trying really hard to come through all this without hatred, without propping myself up with something false, without blaming anyone ~ not even me ~ if I can help it.

It is all taking time, but I am worth it. My family is worth it. Though I may never see them again, though they might (and probably, as part of the dysfunction, they are) hate me now with real passion, as a focal point for the bad so they can stand up in their own hearts and call it good...I don't know, Pam. It just is what it is.

I feel so fortunate Pam, so incredibly, unbelievably lucky, to have been able to see beyond where I was once, too.

It's a hard thing.

You are worth it.

And you are doing great.

You really are.

Give it time, Pam. You are doing everything just right.

I am finding, as I work through it (poor husband is happier than me about this) that I am able to think about them less and less.

And when I do think about them, all that rage, all that "this isn't fair!"...all that stuff is just gone.

I know what to say, if I do see them:

"I told you what I expect."

Really, what else is there to say?

Cedar

P.S. Thanks for saying those nice things about me, MWM. That felt really good.

I feel that same way, about you.

And about all of us here, now that I think about it.

We are an amazing group of people. I think we function on compassion. It's like we get it when something is not right. We typically take responsibility for that, I think. Then, we blame ourselves, maybe, even hate ourselves, for not having been able to help anyone ~ not our kids, not even ourselves.

So, we learn that vitally important lesson: that the only person we can help, the only person we can change, is us.

So, that's a pretty big lesson.

And we are doing it, MWM.

It's hard, and it really hurts, sometimes.

I am sorry for that, MWM.

For the pain of it, for the rejection in it.

It is a hard thing.

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks again, Cedar.

I don't miss my sister. She isn't the person who I thought my sister was. Or I should say deluded myself into thinking she was.

I don't miss my family. They were a lie and fortunately, although they caused me grief, I did not spend much time with them.

If anyone knows of a place besides wordpress to free blog, let me know I already have a blog for wordpress and it won't let me start a new one.

Thank you again, Cedar. You always understand. I have a feelihng that most here do. Most of us have lived a lie in one way or another, even if it was about our adult children and who they were.

Fortunately, I did not live a lie with 36 as he was who he is at a very young age. And, frankly, as awful as he can be when under stress, I know he loves me and he has defended me to many people. One thing about 36...although he inherited many horrible traits of my loonybin family of origin, he never knew them as my father was totally disinterested in all of us and even less so his grandchildren (he has never seen his great grandchild). So he was never there. My mother hated me by the time Julie was eight and never saw the boys much before then. My sister is a nobody to my kids...they don't like how s he treats me and refer to her as "your sister" or "the dork."

I guess I'm lucky that my kids were spared their nasty games. My grandmother tried them, as I told you, but I wouldn't play. Now I'm done playing with Sis. Funny thing is...

I hated her boyfriend because he treats her like garbage. Yet she is so nutty about him she can't let him go. I believe in karma. Although I don't wish bad relationships on anybody, I feel he is her karma. The way she cries and carries on when he meanly acts like she is less important to him than gum on his shoe is how I feel when she cuts ME out.

The karma is probably lost on her.

Maybe it's not karma at all. Maybe it's her dysfunction to love a man who is so abusive.

It is her problem now.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

don't miss my sister. She isn't the person who I thought my sister was. Or I should say deluded myself into thinking she was.

As we are both the older sisters of some pretty dysfunctional mothers, we probably overlooked the same kinds of things with our younger sibs that we did with our own children.

Look how long it took me to get it that it was wrong for my own son to call me a jerk.

And he said that very word: jerk.

I actually respect him more, now that we're not talking. Which sounds crazy, but I respect myself more now than to just take all the wrongnesses in stride and excuse them in some wierded out belief that no one meant any of the bad things that were going on. That was pretty sick of me. To want everything to be alright so much that I convinced myself it was okay when it wasn't.

Good for difficult child son for standing up for whatever he thinks the situation is.

That's at least honest.

don't miss my family. They were a lie and fortunately, although they caused me grief, I did not spend much time with them.

I miss mine. They are like, happily crazy; bright and funny but so terminally messed up. My family isn't so much a lie as they are really mean. They are so mean you can never believe that what just happened, happened. Because everyone is laughing.

And that's the way it's always been.

I am going to miss them a little bit, anyway.

Now that I am stronger, and am seeing through and confronting issues? No one is laughing, anymore. And no one seems to care enough about me to address the things that need changing, so there you go.

They say there is a fine line between what we find humorous and the things that horrify us.

It's kind of like that, in my family of origin.

Most of us have lived a lie in one way or another, even if it was about our adult children and who they were.

True! I wanted to raise a healthy family so much. I am done asking what happened to all of us because I think I never will figure it out.

Man, I wish it could have been different, though.

Jeanne from California posted this morning on another thread that she and her husband decided to refuse to concentrate on "why" these things happen. They decided instead to face everything head on, and they decided to refuse to allow what happened to destroy them.

What a cool focus. I invariably try to figure out where things went wrong so I can fix it.

And then I can't let go because it is never fixed. And that is generally because it wasn't mine to fix.

So now? I am fixing myself.

That's actually going really well.

*******************

My mother is still alive. I may regret taking this stand....

But just for today, everything is fine as it is.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I get the crazy, happy family, Cedar. It's so crazy it's like a loonybin...everyone is laughing and they aren't sure why or it's at somebody's expense.

Me, I miss Beaver Cleaver's family. I wanted his family, not mine. Or the Brady Bunch. I mean, nobody ever yelled or called names and Alice was always there when everything else failed. Plus...the girls were beautiful, weren't they? And, wow, they didn't have The Sunday Morning Fight like we did. That was the horrible fighting that happened in my family every single Sunday morning, probably because it was the only time Mom and Dad were together as Dad was rarely home. The fight had all three of us kids shivering on the stairs and, as the oldest, I felt a need to shield the other two, but I couldn't and of course we are all working on our stuff. I'm sure it is never 100% resolved.

And, yes, in our family we wanted it to be better. My family is actually good with Tom, me, Julie, Sonic and Jumper, but we had so many glitches to overcome. Scott left us...we survived that pretty well because he was so mean when he left us, at least none of the kids were sorry to see him go. We had the adopted sexual predator and due to the saintly help of CPS, we survived that and got even closer. (This would not have happened in my original family. The predator would have somehow been MY fault, don't ask me how). 36 is basically on the sidelines and nobody is interested in contact with him except me. They don't miss him either. I didn't want to raise sibls that didn't care like in my original family, but there you go. And I don't blame them.

My family with Tom and Sonic and Jumper was near perfect. So I did have my moment to gloat inside (hearing my mother say how nobody would ever put up with me and how I'd never raise a normal kid).

Cedar, lol, I'd have been almost humbled if the worst thing 36 had ever called me was "jerk." Try c*** or b****h. And, although he stopped doing that because it cost him weeks of no contact, he still refers to other woman as c****s and it makes me cringe. I'm not really a raving femnist, but to me that is the height of disrespect toward women. I can't think of an uglier word to call a female.

I was going to go to Al-Anon this morning, but it's my day off and it's sucky outside so I took the dogs for a ride and shopped and hit some garage sale. Don't feel like fixing myself today. Have a picnic with Community Theater Group later. Don't really want to go (I wonder if it's my family of origin once again that has made me such a hermit), but I'll go because I'm expected to go and I do like the group and one of the poor woman in the group just lost her husband to cancer. He was pretty young too. I want to make sure I sign the card and also remember to count my blessings, of which I fortunately do have many.

We all do, don't we? We just need to know where they are or who they are.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I read this today on Richard Rohr's site.

"Forgiveness is to let go of our hope for a different or better past."

I like that.

Enjoy your time with your Theater Group, MWM. That sounds like a lot of fun.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So this morning, sort of poking through that sense of expectation surrounding family of origin, I realized this, MWM: When we aren't seeing our families, and so, they haven't done something crazy or wrong recently enough that it balances out the missing them feelings?

That's when we miss them.

Wonder how they look at that?

The last time we didn't speak (five years, that time), my mother got defensive, gathered all family to herself, said things like, "If she doesn't want to be part of this family, then...."

So, they have each other (maybe not the best thing in the long run, but....) and all of that good, strengthening, hateful emotion to run on. So, I am wondering how to think about this missing family stuff. I think I might be pretending they were nicer or more enjoyable than they were.

I remember a really nice sense of expectation or duty or responsibility...but not much joy in the doing.

Funny, funny things happened, though!

Ha!

Maybe that is what I miss, most.

I miss the drama. I miss the edge.

Like any abused person, once I am safe, I miss the aliveness of abusive relationship, the total attention it requires, the keeping on my toes mentally and emotionally part.

Interesting, isn't it.

Do you feel that, too?

I had best take up running or something.

Cedar