Weird and Cruel

[Qilin~]

I've been having a hard time posting for quite a while. I'm doing ok I guess for now.

Just realizing more and more how strange and unnecessarily cruel a lot of my n parents' actions really are / were.

It's hard to have just even a low key interaction even when they aren't being overtly mean. Like, "let's go have tea with malicious people who try to ruin your life." Why is this a thing. 

Anyone else have this emotional whiplash confronting reality? I guess a lot of it is self protection growing up and then boom. Idk.

[Hepatica]

Yes. I had that emotional whiplash this morning. Sometimes a memory just stands out and comes through and I'm like, wow! What more do I need to know that my parents are nearly monsters?

The one this AM was about my uNPD mother. She used to be best friends with a lady who lived across the street from us for years, but the lady had an accident in her 30's and ended up paralyzed from the neck down. This lady has been in hospital care for years, in a long term facility and my mother did not ever visit her, ever, as far as i am aware of. A few years ago my mother went into the same long-term care facility as she recovered from a very serious illness. The old friend was also in the facility and one day when I was visiting, the old friend was brought into my mother's room to visit. My mother barely addressed this old friend and then said loudly, "If I had to live here permanently I'd kill myself,"  RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER OLD BEST FRIEND WHO LIVED THERE PERMANENTLY!!

I think I actually hated my mother in that moment. I could not believe she said it. It was the most vile thing I've ever heard someone say. That woman, who had been her best friend, had actually saved my life as a toddler when I nearly died from drowning. And my mother had nothing warm to say to the woman.

Ugh. I think I had to get that out and so sorry to hijack the thread. I just want to say that yes, that even in low key interactions there we find the disorder of our parents and it is horrifying.

I'm so sorry you're having a hard time. Everyone here understands how you feel. You are not alone and keep sharing if it helps you feel better.

[Lisa]

weird and cruel!  that's really such a great synopsis of a lot of it!  I think the weirdness is part of what keeps us in the fog, some of it is just so bizarre it can feel confusing.

[Fortuna]

Yes. I had that emotional whiplash this morning. Sometimes a memory just stands out and comes through and I'm like, wow! What more do I need to know that my parents are nearly monsters?

The one this AM was about my uNPD mother. She used to be best friends with a lady who lived across the street from us for years, but the lady had an accident in her 30's and ended up paralyzed from the neck down. This lady has been in hospital care for years, in a long term facility and my mother did not ever visit her, ever, as far as i am aware of. A few years ago my mother went into the same long-term care facility as she recovered from a very serious illness. The old friend was also in the facility and one day when I was visiting, the old friend was brought into my mother's room to visit. My mother barely addressed this old friend and then said loudly, "If I had to live here permanently I'd kill myself,"  RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER OLD BEST FRIEND WHO LIVED THERE PERMANENTLY!!

I think I actually hated my mother in that moment. I could not believe she said it. It was the most vile thing I've ever heard someone say. That woman, who had been her best friend, had actually saved my life as a toddler when I nearly died from drowning. And my mother had nothing warm to say to the woman.

Ugh. I think I had to get that out and so sorry to hijack the thread. I just want to say that yes, that even in low key interactions there we find the disorder of our parents and it is horrifying.

I'm so sorry you're having a hard time. Everyone here understands how you feel. You are not alone and keep sharing if it helps you feel better.

A neighbor of my mother's often got her vacation house ready in the summer for a nominal fee. My mother proceeded to complain that he didn't do it that year, right after she told me he broke his back falling from a deer blind.  She bypassed the neural network containing any sympathy and went straight to how it negatively affected her. Even on days when she was perfectly pleasant to me, something like this would fall out of her mouth. 

[Sneezy]

She bypassed the neural network containing any sympathy and went straight to how it negatively affected her.

Same here.  A relative of ours recently had a premature baby.  I was talking to mom and mentioned that the reason the baby was early was due to a medical condition.  My mom never expressed any sympathy for the mother and preemie.  She jumped right to how offended she was that no one had told her about the medical condition, and why is she always the last to know, and why doesn't anyone ever tell her anything.  I mean, who cares who knew first???  The proper response is to say something sympathetic and wish the new mom and her baby well.  It doesn't have anything to do with who knew what first, especially when you are a distant relative and not part of the immediate family.

I have done quite a bit of rethinking about things that happened and things my mother said when I was a child.  I truly don't know how much of what my mother said was truthful, and it's hard to go back and figure it out now.  But I am definitely reevaluating incidents.  When I was a child, I would believe what my mother said, but now I'm going back and realizing that some of the people she was mean to or said nasty things about were probably completely fine people, and didn't deserve her scorn.

[Boat Babe]

My exH's perfectly decent parents invited my mother to stay with them one Christmas. The ILs were hospitable and gracious throughout. My mother tried really hard to find fault with them and was obviously struggling because the family was so lovely, as was the food and the house. In the end she found something. The bathtub had a bit of a stain (from the hard water in the area) and she latched on to that. "Oh, Xxxxxx doesn't clean her bathroom very well, does she." Luckily she only said that to me, but then again, she saves all her negativity for me!