Wiz

[susiestar]

After thank you's performance last Saturday, my mom took all 3 kids and I to thank you's favorite restaurant. I wound up sitting next to Wiz, something he usually works to avoid.

During the course of dinner, he made it clear that no matter what I said, I was wrong. He didn't have a fit or anything, would just go on and on about how whatever my comment was was 'misinformed'. I didn't challenge him because there would have been no gain to it. To say absolutely anything, including to give the waiter my order, I had to speak over him. The waiter actually started to walk away when we ordered drinks because of the way wiz told him we were done ordering them when he knew full well that I had not ordered a drink yet. How do I know? The look he gave me spoke volums.

Wiz made several comments about Jess that really bothered me. I have been going over them in my head trying to figure out exactly why they bothered me. Today it hit me.

Wiz seems to believe that we didn't show him any attention, give him any of our time, spend any of our funds on him from the moment Jess was born. It totally boggles my mind because it is so far from reality. reality is that when we only had 2 kids, he got 75% of the time we had to spend with the kids and she got the rest. The vast majority of her toys and books were either given to her by others, or were his castoffs. If we bought her a toy, new or used, he broke it within 24 hrs for years. We didn't have much $ to spend on toys and my mom sent a box of books and toys at least three times a month. 90% of those boxes were for Wiz only, but usually he only remembered the 10% that were not for him. When thank you was born Wiz still got more than half of our time and attention. This isn't a rough guesstimate. I went over journals and records and photos and he is the star of most of them, and the only one in the vast majority. He got more one on one time that the other 2 put together, got more gifts, books, stuff, etc... than they did.

Maybe once he has his own kids he will gain some understanding. I think I would be really freaking about this, rather than just feeling a bit sad for him, if I hadn't worked on this with my therapist for quite some time.

I hope he can work through this, and maybe someday realize that just because we didn't allow him to hurt Jess (when we knew about it) and because we gave her some of our time and attention and resources did NOT mean we did not love him. Otherwise his life will be very very strange. Esp if/when he has a second child.

I am truly proud of the way he has turned many things around, esp his behavior, but I really hope and pray that someday he can see how skewed his perceptions are, and figure out a way to deal with his problems regarding his siblings. They are not so much problems with Jess and/or thank you as problems iwth actually having siblings at all. Who knew that giving your child siblings would be something he was angry about for decades?

 

[Liahona]

I can see difficult child 1 doing this. His thinking is so off when it comes to his sibs, especially difficult child 2. Most times when he tried to kill them when he was much younger were because of an insane jealousy. And yes he has also come along way, but his thinking hasn't changed. He gets so paranoid thinking they are laughing at him or are going to get his stuff.

I have no idea how to change his thinking.

 

[susiestar]

The jealousy is just nuts, but it seems to drive some of our difficult children. I have never told Wiz this, but this attitude is EXACTLY the attitude that gfgbro has toward me. My bro claims to have zero memories of life before college, esp of life before age 10. Of course this is only said when someone other than my husband, my kids or I are present. To us, esp me, he 'remembers' only things I did wrong, things I supposedly did to get him into trouble, and times that I took all of our parents attention from him for months at a time. He once claimed that I was responsible for our father nailing his windows shut. They got nailed shut because he kept sneaking out of them, and he kept burning the curtains by setting lit cigarettes on the windowsill while he went to the bathroom or he passed out. With wooden windowsills, it was dangerous. My parents only learned about the sneaking out because the cops brought him home a few times.

But that was my fault too. Just ask him.

It is the EXACT thing that Wiz is doing to Jess, except that both my bro and my son blame ME.

Wiz is currently blaming ME for the fact that my niece is seriously overweight. He says that if I spoke with my bro and would allow him in our lives then somehow niece would not eat a quart or more of ice cream per night at her mother's house. And her mother would feed her more healthy food. Given that I loathe my exsil and she is very afraid of me, to the point of leaving full carts of groceries sitting there if she sees me at the store - and I have NEVER been even impolite to her in public.

Should I be flattered that Wiz believes I am so powerful? If I am responsible for all the things Wiz says I am, WOW! I never knew I had that kind of power. I must be some sort of gritchy superhero, lol.

 

[ksm]

our difficult child is just like yours... in spite of everything we do for her, if easy child gets something, she feels left out and demands something to make it equal. Like the beginning of this school year. easy child had one pair of blue jeans... as she had worn uniform khaki pants all to hru grade school. When she got ready for 7th grade we bought one new pair of jeans, and two from goodwill, giving her a total of 4 pair of jeans. difficult child had about 10 pair of jeans, as she had been out of grade school for 2 years - but the fact that easy child got THREE pair of jeans and she didn't get any was unfair! Of course, she wasn't willing to try on jeans at goodwill, and when we went to Kohl's for easy child's new pair, she wanted a new pair too, but everyone she picked out to try was over $30 and had holes and slashes cut in them.

Even small things, like pop tarts... difficult child would have had the entire box over the week, but if there is only one pkg left, and easy child wants it (not having any earlier ones) difficult child thinks easy child has to give her one of the two poptarts...

It is like we can never reassure them that we love them... they keep a tally and they always come up short for some reason. KSM

 

[buddy]

He was really mean to you! I wouldn't be going out with him very often, I've had to take breaks from going out with Q several times.
Q compares and says I'm not fair and he has no sibs! Not even another adult to live with. Uggg

 

[TerryJ2]

I'm so sorry! I hope it wasn't too miserable at dinner; you seemed to be able to detach while you were posting here, but that was two days later.
Definitely, don't sit next to him again!
I'm so sorry for his skewed perception. He must be pretty miserable. And of course, he can't see how miserable he makes others. Sigh.

 

[TeDo]

LOL Buddy. difficult child 1 has that skewed sense of fairness in a BIG way too. He chooses to spend most of his free time away from home at his friends' homes. If I do anything "special" with difficult child 2 while he's gone, it isn't fair. If I buy something for difficult child 2, it isn't fair even though I spend money on Boy Scout activities for difficult child 1 and some of those are a lot. I remind him constantly about how I don't spend a penny on difficult child 2's activities because he doesn't have any. All that accomplishes is how that's difficult child 2's own fault and how lazy difficult child 2 is and how he doesn't have any friends and on and on and on. Yea, difficult child 1 got most of my time for several years (only been less for a couple years now) and paid activities for the past couple. He doesn't see it and difficult child 2 is my favorite and it's my fault we're "poor". I finally broke down and told him he's comparing my income as a single parent working part-time with friends that have 2 parents working full-time. I would love it if their "father" (and I used that term ONLY in the legal sense) would pay the $62,000 he owes in child support so we wouldn't have to be "poor". difficult child 1 looked at me and said, "that's a lot of money! If he'd pay that, I could have my car that I want."

Susie, I am sorry you have to deal with those kinds of attitudes from the two of them. I know what it's like to be blamed for everyone else's problems in the eyes of a difficult child. It is so skewed and unfair but I gave up wasting my breath, time, and energy even thinking about how unfair it is. It is what it is and I refuse to allow someone else's unreality affect me. I hope you are able to do that as well. ((((HUGS)))) to you!!

 

[JJJ]

Kanga and Eeyore both had this same self-induced persecution complex. By challenging Eeyore every time , he was eventually able to see that it was not true. Kanga still believes that her siblings are the reason for all that is wrong in the world.

 

[tiredmommy]

What a sad existence for Wiz.

 

[susiestar]

I am glad he is doing well in college. I intend to offer zero advice or comment on my mother's worry that he will never move out of her home. She did that all by herself. He has not made much of an attempt (if any attempt) to fit into life on the college campus and his friends now are the ones he made in high school, which also worries her greatly. She also worries because he has clung to his job at the locally owned grocery store in town, and hasn't shown much interest in what type of job he will be able to get with his degree in creative writing.

NO comment I make will be appropriate, no suggestion I make will be helpful. So I am not making any to either Wiz or my mother. Given that I seem to be directly responsible for whatever is Wiz' problem at whatever moment he realizes he has one, I will probably not be doing much with him for the foreseeable future. He has not stopped manipulating people for the sheer joy and pleasure of seeing what he can make them do and how he can hurt them, and I find that to be truly, deeply ugly. There is more than enough ugliness in the world, I don't need to seek it out.

 

[tiredmommy]

I don't blame you one bit. It's not easy being someone else's whipping boy. Does Wiz have a diagnosis? I know he was cruel to the other children, but I don't remember after all these years if he ever got a diagnosis....

 

[TerryJ2]

I was wondering, too, about Wiz's diagnosis.
How sad.

 

[HaoZi]

There are times I wish I'd had another kid when I was younger and so was Storm... and times I'm glad I didn't and can't now.

 

[susiestar]

Wiz is diagnosis'd Aspie, unipolar depression, adhd and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Many docs tried to say he was bipolar, but it simply isn't the right diagnosis. I would not be surprised to find a personality disorder there also, but I will probably never know. For all my mother's attempts to get me to go to a therapist to get over whatever my flaw of the month is, neither she nor my dad ever bothered to takeWiz to see at therapist.

Oh,wait, why would they take HIM? The problems are all because of ME, so clearly if I get therapized in whatever way my mother wanted, then Wiz would have no problems.

Sorry. Feeling very snarky and sarcastic today.

 

[tiredmommy]

(((Hugs))) Susie.

 

[DammitJanet]

Susie, Billy had, and still has to some degree, some of those types of faulty thinking skills. Maybe it is either an aspie thing or an oldest kid thing.

If you believed Billy, the minute Jamie was born he was forgotten but then something changed and then they became best buddies in their campaign against Cory...lol. In actuality Billy was spoiled rotten by my mother and she even got my father to buy into some of that by telling him lies about me and what the other two boys did to Billy so he got tons more than either of they did. Jamie and Cory were both closer to each other even if that meant they both like cats and dogs.

Even now Billy will tell some of the most unreal stories that never happened but he is convinced they did.

 

[Hound dog]

This is somewhat normal......most likely intensified by gfgdom, not you.

Believe it or not, I went through this with easy child for years, even after she had her own kids. It wasn't until about 2 yrs ago that she "got it".......I think, I'm not sure that I'll ever really be sure. LOL I think it's a quirk of being the eldest. PCs wasn't over the top, but then she's not a difficult child either. Still, it grated on my nerves and drove me crazy. easy child did NOT get less of anything compared to her sibs, even after they came along. Yes, Travis was a demanding child and sitting still was not something I got to do much of for many years. I incorporated having to always have my eye on him with doing things with the other two, so they actually benefited from it. Nichole wasn't demanding as a difficult child until her teens when the bottom fell out. But we had more in common as far as interests go than I did with the other two. So easy child would say that Travis got all the attention and Nichole is my favorite. Uh, no. I have trouble not laughing when she says that. I don't have favorites. I love each of my kids for the people they are, not one more than the other.

But more than once I've had to sit down and explain to her that her younger sibs were getting the same things from me she did at the same ages. Usually because she was older and more responsible, she didn't need that level of mothering anymore. At 12 did she really want to be mothered like a 7 yr old? Know what I mean?? Took her a long time before she could see it that way........I think Brandon was 2. omg

It's something that comes with maturity and with having your own children. It's a jealousy that is part of sibling rivalry. Usually worked through by the person themselves as they age. Although some never do.

 

[susiestar]

Thank you, all of you. Most of the time I am so proud of him, and then he will blindside me this way. I will say that in some ways he is his uncle's nephew. They both have a gift for sitting there seemingly happy about everything and then they say something very quietly that is designed to hurt/upset you. Of course is you respond to it, they don't know what you are talking about or why you 'want' to ruin everyone's good time.

This does reinforce my determination to NEVER live under the same roof that he does.

Some of the stories he has come to actually believe never fail to amuse me. The idiot actually talked himself into believing that when we had him baptised he screamed and thrashed because the holy water sizzled and burned when it was put on his forehead.

Reality? He smiled and cooed and was totally awake and thrilled to be there and to have the water on his head. I have witnesses too!

husband and I often will say "and the holy water burned when he was baptised, didn't it?" as our shorthand for "can you believe this ridiculous story he is claiming to have survived?".

I hope he can someday realize how far fetched many of his beliefs about husband and I are. Recently he told me that the only reason we medicated him was because I was mad at my mom because she kept saying that he didn't have a problem but I did, that I was making up the things he supposedly did, and that I lied about all of it to all of his doctors. Gee, we spent thousands of dollars on your docs and medications and therapies all because I was mad at my mom? Good to know. I guess all the testing and all those doctors only showed problems because they were also angry at my mother over something.

Now I know where I get my superpowers (the ones that make me the cause of all the bad in the world). My mom passed them down just like the short gene. She must be some kind of powerful, because we lived in a different state and she didn't even meet or know the names of most of them.

I am going to move on from this now. I will stay on guard around him, but won't let myself dwell on it any more. He will go about his life, and maybe someday he will have kids and realize that the best you can do has to be enough because it is all you have. I sure won't go out of my way to hurt him, but I won't push myself into his life. When he is ready to come to me, I will be here. Otherwse? I have other kids and a life and a husband. More than enough to keep me busy. And lots of cross stitch to make me happy!