I had to disappear for awhile. Not in my “real life”, but away from my blog and from the hard things I fight in my head. I’m still not 100% over whatever it is that has been bothering me, but today I decided I was ready to come back. I am not sure if it’s depression, some kind of seasonal retreat from everyone and everything, or something I can’t even comprehend. But what seems to be at the very bottom of it is that I didn’t feel like myself for awhile. I hate how that feels.
I have figured out so much in therapy and it seems like I realize so much on my own between the actual therapy sessions. I have learned about my own attachment style -disorganized- and how that has impacted every single relationship I have ever had. I can now take a step back when I feel weird about something and want to either push someone away or be anxious about how that relationship is doing. It’s been so eye-opening. And at the same time, it’s the very root of my pain.
It all starts long before I can remember, with parents that did not want to take care of me the way a new baby needs to be cared for. Sure, you feed the baby. You change the baby. But after a few months of screaming at night, you grow tired and you resent the baby. So you take your baby to the doctor and nothing is actually wrong. The doctor advises you that you can give the baby Benadryl to sleep. But instead of giving the medicine to your baby, you both take it instead. You get a wonderful, refreshing night of sleep. You have no idea what your baby went through. And then you learn that the baby doesn’t cry for you anymore. The baby learned to sooth itself. But most importantly, the baby learned that you cannot be trusted. You won’t come when the baby cries. And the baby grows into a fiercely independent child who doesn’t want anything from you, into an adult that seems to not care about you. And that’s when you get mad.
We visited my parents last week for the kids’ Spring Break. And it sucked more than I could ever imagine. They were cordial to our faces but lacking sincerity. They asked what we wanted to do and scheduled none of that. My wife and I went to visit a friend of hers from high school. I think this is the “offensive” event, but I could be wrong. There’s obviously been some transgression against them, but they aren’t communicating what that is. Maybe they feel rejected? I am not sure. But at this point, I am going to consider myself the adult who decides to take Benadryl and they are the screaming baby whose needs I can no longer emotionally meet. I will take the Benadryl and they can scream themselves to sleep alone.
I am finally able to say the words out loud “I was abused and neglected by my parents”. I can use the real words for what they did to me. I can move past this now. And most importantly, I won’t feel guilty any longer. They are the ones choosing to behave poorly, by not communicating what exactly is going on. All I can do is react to that and protect myself however I can. It’s easier now that they’ve hurt my wife and children, though. We’ve all been processing the damage that was done. My father priroritized weird things over spending time with the kids. Things like figuring out how many hot dogs and hamburgers everyone wants the following evening are more important than talking to his grandchildren.
So many times I thought I had worked on things with my father. So many times I thought we had this all figured out. But last week both he and my mother reverted to some former version of themselves that I cannot tolerate in my life. There’s a game they play and you absolutely cannot win because you don’t even know the rules. It would be like playing a sport you’ve played for years, but all the moves you are supposed to make are penalties and you don’t know any other way to get the ball down the field except the old rules. But you can’t even maintain possession of the ball because everything you do is wrong. That’s life with my parents.
So I am now forced to go low-contact with them for awhile. It’s nothing I am telling them because that will be viewed as the aggressive play and suddenly I am the bad guy who struck out first. That’s part of the never being able to win. They play this weird passive aggressive move and if you dare to mention it, you lose. If you ask what that was all about…you lose. It’s taken my entire life for me to realize that this is the trap they’ve always set for me. And until I went through three years of therapy, I had no idea there was no way I could respond to their move without being labeled as mean, cruel, spiteful, insulting, and obnoxious. So my moves must all be silent. My moves must be passive and completely not aggressive. Any mention of my hurt feelings are viewed as barbs and I will get a response that is a list of every offense I’ve committed since the last round of the game. Any attempt to work this out will be viewed as me being hostile.
I’ve spent my entire life thinking I was horrible, evil, volatile, and hostile. And it was all because I dared to not play their game. It was because I called it how I saw it. It was because I couldn’t shut up and go along with whatever passive aggressive power move they made. And so now it will appear that I am doing just what they want. That is until they reach out to me, expecting everything to be smoothed over magically. They will reach out and there will be no response. There will be no action. The baby (them) will cry and the parent (me) is doped up on Benadryl and unable to respond.
I have learned how I have power over my own life, how to not let them contol me from day to day, even as an adult who lives several states away. I have learned that I can simply walk away from their game. And their greatest fear of losing me forever will be realized because I am no longer caught under their spell. I know who I am and they have no control over me any longer. They don’t even know me, just some version they’ve baked up in their heads. So they don’t even know what they had with me in their life. And they will never know what they lost.
Goodbye Parents. Zander is out, for good.
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