Cue The Inevitable Toxic Backwash

I am coming to grips with burying my already dead father (see previous post).  Working through the issues of why both my parents seem to hate me when I can't be manipulated.  I'm over 50 now but there are times I still feel like I'm a youngster.

My last post dealt with the death and my feelings and circumstances around contacting family, dealing with the reality of his dislike for me and that there won't be further chances to talk to him.

I think my father was similar to Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde.  

What he did was flush his first life - blue collar worker, bread-winner with a fat wife and daughter, what would have been a severely disabled daughter had she survived and a son... and dig out a better existence for himself.  

Cue the second life - a ballroom dance teacher with a studio, thin 'wife' with money, thin and smart daughter and extended family with a nice house, ability to travel wherever he wanted and in the spotlight at the dance studio.  Going on the notices written in the online guest book for the funeral he was a sweet, kind, gentle man who made people laugh.  What I read is that he was happy being the centre of it all. 

Fuck the first family when you can be the centre of it all.  

Now the fat wife/daughter comment.  I've had my mother and other family confirm that my dad made the comment (I may be paraphrasing as I didn't here it from his mouth) that 'I don't mind having a fat wife, but I don't want a fat daughter' at one of the family gatherings.  Since it wasn't just my mother that told me that story I put more belief in it.  

My father and I were never close.  He was emotionally distant and on too many occasions he grossed me out or weirded me out - but I'm not going to go into it all here.  I've dived deep with therapists and have worked some of it out, some of it I've had to let go not knowing. 

On hearing of dad's death, my mother tried to contact me but she is blocked on all phones and just by good luck and happenstance, we moved after the final blow-out I had with her, so she has no idea where I live.  BUT she does know where I work and managed to call while I was off to leave me two voicemail messages that fairly dripped with smiles.  I won't type them out verbatim - because you guessed - I kept them, but the gist was that she was 'so shocked and saddened by his death, so sorry for my loss', and that I could 'contact her as I am here for you but you probably don't want to talk to me' and worse yet 'I know what it is like to lose a parent'.  

Khalid Albaih

Just jam that old knife in a little harder and turn it in the other direction - that was my first thought.  She wants to get a rise out of me.  She knows what my relationship has been like with my father.  She knows that every time for most of my life when she told me "your just like your father" how that would kill me inside.  She also knows the phrase "I know what it is like to lose a parent" is also a comment on me cutting her out and that now I'm without parents. 

Both my parents were/are master manipulators.  I don't know whether it is the low emotional intelligence, the attitude of 'it should all be about me' or whether they truly don't know what they are doing.  I really don't believe it is the latter.  I think that has something to do with why I prefer being in the background of everything and I go out of my way to not be noticed. To do a good job, to be competent but to fly under the radar. To be nice and polite and to do the right things.

This week it is back to normal at work.  Until the mail person dropped a card on my desk.  I didn't recognize the handwriting and it had no return address, but that happens when you're out in the community.  When you take time to speak to groups they often send you thank you cards.  It wasn't a thank you card.  It was a sympathy card from my mother with a handwritten note included.  

So she took the time to buy a card and have the cashier or the person at the post office write the address, my name and department on it since she knew I would recognize her handwriting.  The note inside is her usual neat, printing with her high impact words highlighted and underlined.  This wasn't for sympathy.  This was to dig a little deeper.  In her one voicemail she did tell me she was going to send my brother and I sympathy cards with a note but I didn't think she would send it to my work.  Smart job in getting someone elses handwriting on the envelope.  Had I recognized it I would have shredded it immediately. 

I will be having a conversation with HR about her contacting me.  I have spoken to my friends she has tried contacting when we first had this fight.  She did it in order to spread lies and try to cause problems.  Next stop if she tries this again is the police via my workplace. She is dead to me - it is safer to cut her out than try to work things out.

Sadly I'm like both of my parents in that I show as unemotional (like my father) and can be very reactive and overly sensitive about things (like my mother).  I've spent years with therapists, mental counselors, social workers, and psychologists to NOT be like them. I just didn't realize how much I have done to distance myself from being their child. 

I think it also explains why I keep everyone at a distance - except a handful - and even then I don't share everything.  Being alone, being a loner, is being protected.  Protected from the acid, from the hurt, from the broken trust, and from people who will let you down when you most need them. I can move faster on my own; faster and lighter instead of being tied down. Although I am tied down with a husband and animals.  But that was a choice and I made it with my eyes open. I may regret it sometimes, but I stand by it.

My father was an attention-seeking lay-about who wanted to be the centre of everyone's world and my mother an over-reactive martyr with a hate for everyone who has something she doesn't. As my Clinical Psychologist has recently pointed out, I have had some great role models in my life.  My Grandpa and Grandma, my Uncle Les (family by choice since he was a neighbour), awesome teachers - Mr. Bishop, Ms. Poppelwell, Mrs.Akey and Mr. Symsyck.  I tried hard to be everything my parents weren't.  I'm still trying.  

I am very independent and self-sufficient (I had to be), I have great friends, I like my work, love my dogs and I'm working on me.  I'm pretty lucky in the grand scheme.  

But in the back of my head it still still niggles... what is it about me that both my parents hate so much? Mother told me she married my dad to prove to her mother that she was an adult but why did she have children? I asked her that question once and her answer was to imitate and mock me.

I have no idea why dad picked my mother, but again, why have children?  If they both wanted to be the centre of the universe, why spread the gene pool out just to harm what you caused to be born?   

I'll never know now.  But I still want to.  Sad. And sadder still, I want to hurt them like they hurt me.  Guess that does prove I am like them.  Because they excelled at the hurt.  Another part of myself I need to work on.  Revenge is my parents dinner... not mine, yet I hunger for that satisfaction like I'm starving.  What does that make me?  A sad excuse.