Hello friends, lots going on around here, as I source the toxic shame and CPTSD from bio parents and two stepparents and their new families. Yesterday was Mother's Day and it was hellish for me. Not because of my husband or children. They're the joy of my life. The pain came from the fact that I didn't have a mother or father. Only demanding, parentifying, exploiting, abusing, shaming, neglectful, manipulative, gaslighting authority figures. It brought up very unpleasant memories and realizations that their combined narcissistic abuse was particularly bad around holidays and birthdays and celebrations.
The disparity between how I was celebrated (not at all, really) and how I was expected to celebrate others, particularly their golden kids, is appalling. I don't remember my birthdays being made much of a deal except by grandparents. There is one picture of me at two with my cake. My mom has weirdly inserted herself in front of the camera, posing while my dad is holding my arms behind my back in a death grip.
Then I recall for my 11th birthday, a party at the beach (no dad or his other family). It was fun but I don't remember any friends except my mom's friends. And again, she's trying to steal the show, bouncing around in her bikini. At 11, I was, like most kids, pretty uncomfortable in my body. It was extra uncomfortable that my mom would choose that moment to flaunt her developed adult body.
If you think from this that we just didn't do much with birthdays, you'd be wrong. I was planning and hosting parties for my parents by age 10. I recall my dad saying he wasn't going to make a deal over me because he wanted me to stay humble. Yet he and his wife had lavish birthday parties every year for their boys.
My mother has actually told me that she spends tons more on my sister than me. She wants me to know, I guess, how little I'm valued. For Christmas a few years ago, she gave me a shirt from a free table from one of her food pantry visits. Yes, they live off food pantries. It was too big, wrinkled and still smelled like a thrift store. I was informed that sis got a new laptop. I'd given her flowers, expensive chocolates, and a new phone. Which she promptly lost.
For one of her birthdays, I'd taken her to the doc and she was asked what she was doing for her birthday. In front of me, she said "my family is taking me out to dinner." I was not invited and as that's apparently a ritual of theirs, I never have been. I was told that I could take her out to lunch in a day or two, for her birthday, as she knew I had to get to work. For my birthday that year, I got a text with smiley emojis.
To my dad's sons' parties, I was not invited, as in a guest. I was expected to attend and bring big, pricy gifts which I could not afford. I don't recall my "brothers" ever getting me anything. I recall them getting annoyed when I brought a homemade gift. And another time I was unable to be present due to time constraints of work and college, and my dad was pissed. So in guilt I rearranged and made it work. Both he and his wife were very chilly with me. My grandma, (God love her) said snarkily to me, "you'd think it was a holy day of obligation." It was.
Christmas was really rough. I recall my dad screaming at me one year, in front of everyone, because I went to try on my new sweater from gram and gramp after dutifully asking his wife. Mind you the other kids were off playing their toys. Grama chimed in and told him to chill but I was already in tears. No apology ever from him.
I thought maybe I was misremembering but my husband whom I was dating recalls them making enormous deals over their other kids birthdays and nothing over mine. They even did it to my eldest daughter who had the temerity to be born a day after their kids St. "Mike". We celebrated their birthdays together ( he was 10 and she was 2) and his nibs pouted and sulked the whole day because Molly got some attention that he felt he was due.
My father scolded me for having a group party because Mikey was left out. He wasn't. And the party wasn't just my idea. I guess I was supposed to feel guilty because people wanted to celebrate my sweet little girl. My husband was so angry that he vowed to boycott all future parties involving their kids. I was so proud. Wish I'd had the courage to do that.
The weirdest time was one I just remembered and had never considered. When I was 14, my dad and stepmom gave me a slot car set. I hadn't asked for it. It was okay but certainly not what I wanted and not an appropriate gift for my age or gender. Of course their boys were always pestering me to play with it. And I had to set it up for them and play with them. I just realized that they got me that because they had spent all the money they had for their boys gifts but still wanted to get them this race car set. So they just gave to me, expecting me to "share" it. And they got bonus added free babysitting too. I gave it to them after a year or so. Which is probably what their parents expected anyway.
I was gaslit about that for years and gaslit myself. My dad was pretty misogynistic and not one to get boys gifts for girls. In fact, he had an awesome Lionel train from when he was a kid that I would have loved to play with. I've always loved trains. He never let me play with or even encouraged me to take part. It was just him and grampa, in my grandparents basement. Grampa was the one who let me use it when dad wasn't around.
But I got the last word. Brother Mikey, who had been entitled and catered to so much, grew up to be an adult baby who doesn't take care of his kids, lives off welfare, doesn't work and spends all his time and money on his hobbies. I say his money but actually it is his SSI, wife's earnings and Dad's money. Dad sold off most of his stuff to fund Mike's hobbies and gave him $13 every day for cigars. (He didn't even know my grandchildren's names).
When Dad passed I asked for the train set. Mike had taken pretty much everything (family silver, coins, guns) but didn't want me to have even the train. There was only the engine, coal car and a few pieces of track. Dad had sold off the rest so Mike could buy his axe heads. Yes he had an axe head collection. Don't ask my why. Kind of like Bert from Sesame Street and his paper clip collection. Only more expensive.
Well, I got the train and it was with great delight that I passed it on to my grandson, who adores steam trains more than life itself. And I enjoy playing trains with him. Is it enough to make up for being left out all those years. Yes and no. The past will never be any different than it was. But I can change the now. I do things differently than was done to me. Not perfectly, but to the best of my ability.
And my real family, my husband, children and grandchildren, make up for it every moment of every day, as Mister Rodgers says, "by just their being themselves."
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