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Dysfunctional family pondering: mostly about my father
(possible trigger warnings for somewhat-yucky family stuff)
Every year, I read the Dysfunctional Families Day blog post at Making Light, which leads me to think about my own situation. By pretty much any standard, my family was mostly functional. My father had anger issues, and we went through family counseling when I was in grade school. I don't actually know how much it helped, but I don't remember family stuff as being the main misery at that point. I was the weird one at school, and was subjected to a lot of bullying, mostly verbal rather than physical. At home, I got the "just ignore them and they'll go away" advice for dealing with it, which wasn't true, and didn't help.
High school was actually a relief in some ways, because mostly people ignored me instead of belittling me. But my memories of teen years are mostly a miserable black hole. I don't know how much of it was that (in retrospect) I'm pretty sure I was clinically depressed in a way that modern medical tech could have helped -- but that didn't exist in the early 1970s.
And yet.
I've been reading Captain Awkward, which is an advice column started by a neophyte film maker who was tired of mentally arguing with Dear Prudence, and decided she could do better, or at least differently. (description of CA subculture deleted as irrelevant)
And in a post about funerals and toxic relatives, someone posted this:
And I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, just reading that. This was exactly my father's mode when I was a teen. I remember him asking me just those questions. How could you respond to something like that? If I had a bad report card, it was "Don't you ever want to get a decent job?"
It led to an awful lot of my hiding out in my room and reading, which in turn led to "Why do you want to spend all your time lying on your ass?" I would like to think that he actually thought he was being helpful, or at least that he didn't know any better communication mode, but mostly what it did was reduce me to an incoherent state of rage and misery.
Thankfully, I survived it. I graduated from college (albeit thinking of myself as somewhat of a failure, because my father persuaded me that not having straight A's meant I would never get into medical school -- my lifelong plan), got a job, and moved to Minneapolis.
And eventually my father learned to deal with me as an adult. I doubt he realizes how much it meant to me, that first time he called me for help with some computer problem. A couple of times, he's said that he's proud of me. I'm quite sure that the daughter he got isn't really the daughter he would have requested on the ideal-daughter questionnaire, but we've learned to cope.
He'll be 81 this spring, and he's had serious medical issues for the last 10 years or so; but now, in addition to the physical, he's having memory issues. His mother had Alzheimer's, and his father Parkinson's, so I really hope I inherited the much better genes on my mother's side of the family. I don't know how much longer I'll have him around. I've been sort of wondering if there's any kind of closure or relationship mending I need to do. Because if I'm going to, I think now is the time.
If anyone else has thoughts about family relationships that they're willing to talk about, I'd be interested in reading what you have to say. I've enabled anonymous posting without screening for this post.
Every year, I read the Dysfunctional Families Day blog post at Making Light, which leads me to think about my own situation. By pretty much any standard, my family was mostly functional. My father had anger issues, and we went through family counseling when I was in grade school. I don't actually know how much it helped, but I don't remember family stuff as being the main misery at that point. I was the weird one at school, and was subjected to a lot of bullying, mostly verbal rather than physical. At home, I got the "just ignore them and they'll go away" advice for dealing with it, which wasn't true, and didn't help.
High school was actually a relief in some ways, because mostly people ignored me instead of belittling me. But my memories of teen years are mostly a miserable black hole. I don't know how much of it was that (in retrospect) I'm pretty sure I was clinically depressed in a way that modern medical tech could have helped -- but that didn't exist in the early 1970s.
And yet.
I've been reading Captain Awkward, which is an advice column started by a neophyte film maker who was tired of mentally arguing with Dear Prudence, and decided she could do better, or at least differently. (description of CA subculture deleted as irrelevant)
And in a post about funerals and toxic relatives, someone posted this:
My main memories of my grandmother are laced with snide comments about my appearance while I was an awkward teenager ("Are you trying to make yourself ugly?" "Don’t you ever want to have a boyfriend?" "What on earth are you wearing now?")
And I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, just reading that. This was exactly my father's mode when I was a teen. I remember him asking me just those questions. How could you respond to something like that? If I had a bad report card, it was "Don't you ever want to get a decent job?"
It led to an awful lot of my hiding out in my room and reading, which in turn led to "Why do you want to spend all your time lying on your ass?" I would like to think that he actually thought he was being helpful, or at least that he didn't know any better communication mode, but mostly what it did was reduce me to an incoherent state of rage and misery.
Thankfully, I survived it. I graduated from college (albeit thinking of myself as somewhat of a failure, because my father persuaded me that not having straight A's meant I would never get into medical school -- my lifelong plan), got a job, and moved to Minneapolis.
And eventually my father learned to deal with me as an adult. I doubt he realizes how much it meant to me, that first time he called me for help with some computer problem. A couple of times, he's said that he's proud of me. I'm quite sure that the daughter he got isn't really the daughter he would have requested on the ideal-daughter questionnaire, but we've learned to cope.
He'll be 81 this spring, and he's had serious medical issues for the last 10 years or so; but now, in addition to the physical, he's having memory issues. His mother had Alzheimer's, and his father Parkinson's, so I really hope I inherited the much better genes on my mother's side of the family. I don't know how much longer I'll have him around. I've been sort of wondering if there's any kind of closure or relationship mending I need to do. Because if I'm going to, I think now is the time.
If anyone else has thoughts about family relationships that they're willing to talk about, I'd be interested in reading what you have to say. I've enabled anonymous posting without screening for this post.
no subject
You have gotten the gift of being able to get on with things. That's incredibly valuable. My dad and I never got that. We could never get beyond the baggage. That was partly my fault, maybe, but you know, I don't regret it. The potential cost was always too high.
On the gripping hand, I did risk it with my mother. I asked her why she stayed with my dad after he threw her suitcase down the stairs and almost threw her down the stairs. There was a world of hurt in that question. Why didn't you protect me? Why did you let him do those things to us? Where were you? You were the adult, why didn't you---? And she said, "Lydia, it was 1965." And many things became much clearer. And bunches of forgiveness came from that. The other big piece, of course, was my asking her, when she asked me a particularly stupid question, "Do you really want to know the answer to that?" and she said, "No." It was the beginning of us building decent boundaries. Also invaluable.
You know, you got damaged. And I think your dad owes you an apology. But I don't know your family system well enough to evaluate whether this is a worthwhile risk, or if it would be better to rest on your laurels. It's a hard one.
Many hugs anyway.
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