My Entire Life was Choreographed…

 

My Entire Life was Choreographed…

(and that just sucks that I was never free...)

Truism: People will reenact -- from a position of power -- whatever drama, or trauma, they suffered as a child…

My mother's childhood:

Fact: 

My grandfather (my mother’s father) isolated my mother (and her four siblings) from people who might have helped her.  Then, he beat and terrorized her (and her siblings).   He wasn’t a good provider.

Her mother (my grandmother), stood by and didn’t protect her, or her siblings.  Instead, my grandmother disappeared into the Bible, and the supernatural. 

So, this was my mother’s childhood, in a nutshell.

She was a young adult in the 1950s.  She had a decision to make; the choice to  take one  -- of two -- routes, in life. 

Door number one: She could go to a psychiatrist who could help her process her abusive childhood by repeating, “I…was…innocent!  I didn’t deserve that treatment, and I will not visit it upon my children!”

(Instead, she took...) door number two:   In order to relieve her unresolved anxiety over her abusive childhood, she spent years (decades) planning how to reenact it, on us.

My mother was attractive, and college educated (at a time when women only went to college to get their MRS degree.) She could have married anybody.She had her pick of the litter.

Instead, she married a man (my father) who abused her before marriage, got her pregnant (yes, she had consensual sex; I know), and  helped her get a back-alley abortion. She became infected, and very, very ill.

When she recovered, she married my father…and had five children by him.

Here’s the reenactment: 

• He beat and choked her, 
• He beat and terrorized us, 
• She didn’t protect us,
• He wasn’t  a good provider.

This served three purposes:

#1.  He beat and terrorized us, which relieved her unresolved anxiety over her own childhood.  She knew we were innocent, so this was proof that she must have been innocent.

#2.  It gave her a kind of cheap nobility.  By the mere act of standing next to him, she looked innocent (she wasn't: she was the puppet-master).  But she could appear pure as the driven snow, when in fact, it was...

#3. ...abuse-by-proxy.  He did her dirty work.

Now here's the proof that she wasn't so pure:  If she was the innocent party in all of this, then -- if by chance -- one of her children escaped the abuse and rose above it, achieving a good, decent life, she would be overjoyed, wishing this child the greatest of success and happiness.

Um, that's not what happened.

I (out of my four siblings) am the only one of her five children who escaped her event horizon, and married a good man and live a good life.

She hates my guts, and is constantly -- unceasingly -- scheming to suck me back into the evil that is her life.  To set my feet onto the desolation that was to be my chosen path (chosen by her).

Golden Child vs. Scapegoat: Illustrated.

I used to be an illustrator, and I love charts, so I decided to chart this.

"I will fight no more, forever." -- Chief Joseph.

Contract Negotiations, or, The Evil Parent Knows Exactly Why Their Adult Child Cut Them Off...

      If you go to a site called, "When the Ties That Bind Unravel," (here)(NYTimes.com) you will see hundreds of letters from the cut-off parent crying, "Foul! My child won't tell me what I did wrong. This isn't fair."

     You'll see hundreds more from adult children who made several attempts to tell their Evil/Narcissistic(?) parent, "This is what you did wrong. You are still doing it. This is unacceptable.  Change, or I will leave forever."

      Then it all follows the same script:
    The parent refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing, thereby instantly cutting off any chance of...

A) An apology, and,

B) A promise to alter the unacceptable behavior in the future.

      The Adult Child  leaves, to save their sanity...and their soul.

     The parent then runs around sowing chaos and discord among the relatives, cutting off any friendships the Adult Child might dare to have with relatives-in-common, and simultaneously gaining a ready-made audience for all the teeth-gnashing and wailing that follows.

     If the Adult Child felt any tender, tattered bits of love for the estranged parent, all of that is burned to ashes by the parents' final betrayal.

      Here is how the script played out in my house.

     Having reached a breaking point, at the age of thirty-eight, I went to my mother with an offer.

     My mother is an attorney.  She specialized in contract law. She understood exactly what was on the table. These were not the exact words, but -- much like negotiations in subtler countries such as Japan -- everyone present understood exactly what was being said.

     I said, "You will recognize me as a sovereign entity. You will recognize my husband as my new family. You will follow the rules of basic, human behavior in all interactions with me, and my family."

      "If you choose not to do this, then I will walk away...forever."

      My mother thought about that for less than a second (which is really all it takes) and said, "No. I reject your offer, and here is my counter-offer."

     "I will control-freak you until the day one of us dies. I will control your body, and your mind. I will dictate where your body is on what holiday, and I will dictate your thoughts as to your siblings, and me."

     "I refuse to recognize your husband as family.  I refuse to acknowledge your sovereignity. Your one right and true family is me, and your siblings."

       "You are allowed no other family, ever."

      I thought about that for less than a second (which is really all it takes) and I said, "No. I reject your offer," and I walked away from the table.

Forever.

      Contract negotiations are -- quite literally -- as old as mankind. Point, counterpoint, parry and riposte. Nothing was left off the table. Everything, including all small print and addendums, was completely understood by both parties.