Well, not really. :)
I'll spare some details, because I've already given this rant over the phone and I'm really not in the mood to do it again or type that much. (It will be somewhat ranty, but this won't be the long version of it.)
Yesterday, my mother decided to call me just before 8:30 am and woke me in a situation that could have been dealt with later in the day. In fact, there was no good reason to call me then and my mother knows from over ten years of my saying it over and over that I do not want to be called in the morning for anything that is not an emergency---and especially that early in the morning! (The thing that needed to be done was to arrange what time I would be picked up at a Hollywood metro station today to be taken to UCLA for my talk.)
To say that I was extremely pissed off about this would be an understatement. Upon receiving the call, I groggily indicated we should discuss this later, and then I was unsuccessful in getting back to bed and I was absolutely exhausted for the entire day.
The plan today was for my brother to pick me up at the metro and then both my mother and my brother would pick me up at UCLA to go to dinner.
I wasn't about to let yesterday's actions go without comment and I indicated that I did not want such a phone call again. My mother essentially asserted her supposed right (which she does not have!) to call me whenever she wants for any reason she wants. (ONLY I can grant such a right, which is really a privelege rather than a right anyway.) I repeated myself and also said (almost direct quote) "The next time you call me at 8:30 am, somebody better be dead." That was awesome comment #1. Of course the real situation is that it has to be something that is urgent and can't wait until later, which practically everything can. It seems to me that my mother all but admitted that she made the phone call out of malice. (She knew there was a good chance she'd wake me up, that I didn't like being called that early anyway, and knew that the entire contents of the call could wait.)
My mother decided to take lots of pot shots against me---remind me that she holds the way I view the world in disdain, etc etc. (At this point, I was just listening and responding at appropriate points rather than taking an active part in the conversation.) She also mentioned that apparently she is always excusing my actions to other people (what actions were never stated; the identity of these people were also ever stated) and basically implying that I was incapable of interacting with people. (She also intimated that I should see a psychiatrist.) She had her voice raised the whole time, whereas I was always talking calmly, but after a few minutes, I had heard (more than) enough. I was still talking very calmly, but I did utter awesome comment #2 (which was one of my most tactful comments ever): "Adam, please drop me off at the metro station. I don't want to have dinner with this woman." Oh, and I definitely meant this (and I stated this in a very cold manner). Certainly, I could have been (a lot) more tactful, but I was speaking from the heart. (I feel bad about the comment, but I also feel that it was provoked because of the string of insults to which I was reacting. It was certainly unpremeditated.) Sigh... I have a great deal of envy for people who can actually trust their families.
I might have to change my phone number or get a restraining order or something. This is abusive.
(The helping me get to UCLA to give my talk was definitely very much appreciated but the rest of it wasn't.)
Well, if I get a chance to stay in town and elect to take it, it will be because of my friends and in spite of my family (not because of them).
Ah well... plenty of other people have it much worse off than I do.
(As usual, I ranted more than I intended. I was trying to give a shorter version of this. Of course, there are also other sides to this story... it's just that mine is the right one. :) )
What happened with you reminds me of an experience I had.... A long time ago, but when I was only a little older than you are now, I needed to go to a counselor while I was visiting my mom. It's a long story how that came about, but anyway she took me to a counselor she had seen for awhile, a really good guy. After the counselor and I had worked through the problem I had come in to see him about, I explained to him what kind of stuff she was doing that was driving me nuts. Basically it was a lot of criticism and just generally not accepting me for who I was; regardless of what was actually happeneing, this was how her actions were coming across to me. After we had talked for awhile, he called her in, and told her my concerns. Despite her objections he insisted that she cease these behaviors, and after some discussion she promised that she would. After that things got better between us, and have never really gotten as bad again as they were before that episode.
ReplyDeleteIt is really awful not to feel accepted and respected by one's parent(s). On the other hand, it is so hard, as a parent, to always do the right thing, or at least not to get on your children's nerves! (Though I think not calling early in the morning is pretty much a no-brainer -- I've got that one down cold, but I am sure there are lots of other ways I probably annoy my kids!)
Before I mention something actually related to this comment, my conversation with Lemming at lunch today reminded me that I actually made a third "awesome" comment. This one, actually, was only funny and not tactless (IMO).
ReplyDeleteAfter I explained my dissatisfaction regarding the phone call, my mother asked me (in a mean fashion) if my day was so bad that I felt that I should let it out on her. My answer was something along the lines of: "Actually, my day was very good. I'm specifically mad at you for what you did yesterday."
As far as addressing the actual comment goes, I don't want to have any relationship with these people. As much as they don't like who I am, I dislike who they are and have so very fundamentally for a long time. My ideal situation would be to not have any relationship with them.
I never liked my family. (I am, and have always been, extremely different from the rest of them.) When I was still living at home, my opinion of them gradually got lower and lower, and I'm sure a lot of that had to do with living in close quarters. I left for Caltech but I was still relatively nearby, so it wasn't a total escape from them even though it was a partial one. (One of the amazing things I found at Caltech was that there were actually like-minded people around. It was a revelation for me!) As I went through college, I spoke back to my parents more and more because I was an adult (in some sense of the word) and wasn't going to take their crap any more. My mother's response to this was, on several occasions, threatening to take my college money out of my bank account (so that I would have to transfer from Caltech or something, though presumably I could have worked things out by taking lots of loans) if I didn't stop talking back. (Anybody who knows me at all can guess how well I respond to manipulative threats.) This got me thinking---what kind of person would do something like this? Certainly not the kind of person with whom I wanted to interact... it was just so fundamentally against what I felt was the right way to deal with people.
So I kepy my mouth relatively shut until after college. Then I got to graduate school and was suddenly on the east coast and very far away from my family. I wondered if being away from them would cause me to miss them. Well, it didn't. Instead, I felt liberated. (Not one time when I was in grad school did I ever feel that I missed my family. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I think it just means that I am happier spending time with other people.) I was ecstatic to be very far away from them and really enjoyed having extra freedom---and no way in Hell would I ever give it back! Of course, whenever given the choice of the high road versus low road, my mother seemed to always take the low one. She graduated to attempting to manipulate me by taking me out of her will and also by taking her out of her mother's will. (The thing that spurred the latter comment was one night when I went to dinner with my cousins on my father's side---who I had not seen in 8 years---instead of visiting my grandmother that night, even though the plan was to visit my grandmother in the next couple days [before I flew back to Cornell].) I'm picking extreme incidents, but there were other distasteful ones as well.
Between all of this stuff, my mother has lost me for good. I have come to believe that she is a fundamentally bad, selfish person. I don't want any relationship with her, and I am bloody sick of her attempting to force herself upon me. My supposed crime, in her mind, seems to be that I want her to leave me alone. This is all I have really been asking for many years, and it is one of my fundamental rights to not be harassed by someone if I think their attentions constitute harrassment.
These days, I get a combination of whining to spend time with her and then unprovoked verbal abuse when I do spend time with her. She has promised to stop certain behaviors numerous times. She has lied to me about this repeatedly. I've seen enough.
I should say that there are circumstances in which I would hold my nose and suck it up. They involving getting married, having a child, and not denying the child the presence of a grandmother. I won't let my gripes interfere with anyone else, but nothing short of that will lead to any sort of reconcilation.
As one of my friends once said, you can't kick someone in the balls and then apologize later.
My response to similar threats in my early college years (i.e., withdrawing funding if I didn't do what they wanted me to) was to declare my independence from my parents and subsequently put myself through school by working, getting loans, and so on. I understand that in more recent years that option has not been available to college students, which is too bad. It really helped me to make my position clear to my parents early on. Later on I had to move back in with my parents for awhile, but when my mother started to try to control me again I moved out and stayed out. (Now, more than 30 years later, she's been making noises about wanting me to move in with her, but that is not something I consider as a viable option.)
ReplyDeleteBut I also understand now that your situation is quite different from what mine was. I hope you succeed in putting some distance (figuratively speaking if not geographically) between you and your mom -- you don't deserve such abusive treatment and ought not to leave yourself open to it. Imho, your mom has really brought this upon herself. Too bad for her -- she apparently has no inkling of the wonderful person that you are. I'd be happy to call you my son. Hey, could I adopt you? Z's always wanted a brother :-)
I did just get one brother, but two can't hurt. Feel free to. :) I don't have much to add to the conversation at hand, my situation was obviously a bit different.
ReplyDelete-Z
Heh, Zifnab is starting to collect brothers. :)
ReplyDeleteI never moved back home. I knew that I couldn't. It's not even clear if LA is big enough for all of us. :) As I mentioned (I think that was in this post), if I stay in LA, I will enjoy having friends around and just have to put up with the fact that my family lives here too. Or I could just flee to England...
As a kid, I actually asked my parents to put me up for adoption on numerous occasions. I'm sure they appreciated those comments. :)
Oops, I forgot that I can cross "produce a male sibling for [Z]" off my mental to-do list -- it takes awhile for these things to sink in on all levels :) But my offer still stands. The more the merrier!
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