Jason! Mother is talking to you!
One thing that happened Sunday I didn't yet comment on is something that pretty much has happened my entire lifetime as far as my family is concerned. I've written and spoken of it endless times. And even as a grown man it still bugs the hell out of me and affects me on some mental level.
When I talk, they just don't listen. And I know it isn't in my head, because I have the Sparrow as a witness now when it happens. So after the fact, I can ask him if he witnessed it and he confirms to me that yes, it happened and was blatant.
My mother will ask me a question. Any question. Something about my day, about work, about something we did. The second I start to speak, she turns her attention to the dog, she asks the Sparrow if he needs coffee or she'll just drift off into la-la land. If my sister is present, she will interrupt or start her own conversation over my talking. It has happened for decades and it is incredibly frustrating and frankly, insulting.
I have gotten better at times with it. Sometimes, if I start talking and one of them interrupts me, I will raise my voice over theirs and tell them to shut up, in a nice or mean way depending on the day, and tell them to listen to me. They, of course, think I am being rude. They have no awareness of their own behavior. They never have.
Comically, because of the Sparrow's upbringing and the fact his family are all a bunch of talkers he's had a tendency before to start talking over me. I am quick to point it out when it happens, after letting it frustrate me for a while. I think having changed my tactics with how he and I communicate to prevent him talking over me has helped me to start doing the same with my family. It has become somewhat of a joke, something to laugh at when it happens between he and I now.
But, it is hurtful with my family because I've grown up being given the impression that what I have to say has no value to them. I would often see this as a reflection on me, but I know now that it really is all them. My mother specifically refuses to ever learn or expand her knowledge on anything.
A prime example of this came up when we were there Sunday. For years upon years she's had this corner of the yard that she's tried planting innumerable trees and shrubs and they have all died because of the often wet conditions of the area. And I have, for years and years, tried to tell her the kinds of shrubs that can survive in those conditions. But, she refuses to listen. She refuses to read plant tags. She's spent hundreds of dollars on single trees in this spot... and they all die.
And every time we have a conversation about it she exclaims, "I don't understand why this is happening!!"... even though I have repeatedly and clearly explained WHY it is happening.
She's like this with everything. Even worse with computer issues. She refuses to learn. She just wants to be helpless like so many users I've dealt with before. We had her replace her crap cellphone with an iPhone a year or so ago. She REFUSES to learn how to use the thing. She is still almost completely unable to send a text, because she "doesn't know how". I have never seen someone so adamantly refuse to learn. And, of course, it's not HER fault that she doesn't understand or TRY to. It is the phone's fault. It is progress's fault.
Back to the bushes though, I made a suggestion that she try some elderberry species in that spot. They are tolerant of moisture as well as shade. The spot in question is in the back east corner of the yard. It has a huge pine tree and a 6' tall fence behind it. So the plant would only get sun from about mid to late afternoon before the sun sets. Elderberry would literally be the PERFECT plant for this spot.
I send her an email with three different kinds. She replies back "That would burn up in the spot!"
Now, we are talking about a person who knows nothing, who can't read a plant tag and clearly can't read the info on the site where it says any of the three I sent can tolerate FULL sun to part shade. But, as is often the case, she always has to say SOMETHING and whatever it is has to be dismissive and negative. She followed up that email almost immediately with a second about the plant being toxic to animals or something. Mind you, she's had plants in her yard for years that are toxic to dogs. But, of course, this is just all about her having to poo-poo my idea.
And it is fine. She can go buy yet another $200 tree and plant it in the mud back there and let it die. And I'll love saying 'I told you so' when it does.
The mind fuck though of these kind of situations with my mother is that she'll turn around and act SO surprised when I know certain things about plants or birds or nature in the backyard. So she is clearly able to identify that I know what I am talking about at times, yet at others she looks at me like I am lying to her face.
And it doesn't matter. I am a grown man. I know I am not the crazy one here. But, inside... within some place from my past that still thrives deep down I feel this sensation. It is like an emotion, but more. An anxiety really. A sense that I am some little kid screaming my fucking head off trying to get her to listen to me while she stands there waving me off, completely dismissive. And it makes me mad as fuck.
It is similar to the behavior my father always demonstrated that pushed me to the edge a few months before he died, when I decided I was done with his shit and would never seek help or advice from him again. The moment when I finally grew up. With my mother, I already passed this place as well I think, but I feel less apt to tell her to her face how she is acting because emotionally she's basically 8-years-old and it'd hurt her too deeply for me to call out her idiocy. So I just let it go on.
I know in the past my sister has told her point blank that she is too negative and ALWAYS has to say something negative about EVERYTHING. And that is the absolute truth, though with my sister I get it because she makes so many stupid choices in life, how could my mom not say something that crapped on whatever her latest schemes and debt-inducing choices were. My mother confided in me on that day how hurt she was by the comment, which is part of the reason why I bite my tongue so often.
Where does that leave me? Sitting here, writing about it and bitching.
I also have these often disturbing questions pop into my head about how I will be able to move on once my mom passes. I feel guilty even thinking about it, but at the same time I feel so burdened by having to deal with her and her need to view me perpetually as a child. When I think about life after she passes I am thinking about being free of this feeling that I was never allowed to grow up. I often wonder what things would have been like had I been straight and married a woman. Would my mother be more able to let me grow up? Or less?
My parents never motivated me to be an adult. They never encouraged me to go out and seize life. They never taught me to have courage or stand up for myself. The prevailing emotions I recall most were ones of being afraid, being ashamed and being inadequate. And I know it'd break both their hearts to hear me say such things, but it is my experience. As parents, I feel they failed on many levels.
I am not saying I could be a better parent than them. I am not saying anyone else's parents were better at the task than them. Certainly, they worked their asses off their entire lives to keep the family above water. To feed us and try to do what they thought was best as far as getting a school education through high school.
It was always comical to hear my dad say in my adult life that it wasn't them who raised us to be afraid or have self-esteem issues. Maybe he knew better and was just bloviating. But, I am sorry to say it absolutely was their fault on some level. They never encouraged us to be better.
I have many good qualities of character and I cannot claim they had nothing to do with that. Certainly, my sense of empathy, my love of nature, even my intellectual curiosity and capacity must have something to do with them and the environment I was raised in. I am not saying it was all negative.
It's a roll of the dice. Some things happened, some things didn't. I knew enough to be a certain kind of person, and knew enough to question things about the world and myself. Perhaps earlier than some in certain situations and later than some in others. I do not gripe about this to say I regret anything or blame my parents for anything.
I am simply observing what I see and coming to a conclusion about it. The past cannot be changed. I can change going forward for sure. That is on me now.
Yet, I think I am allowed to be frustrated when dealing with situations that are... well, frustrating. When someone doesn't listen, it is frustrating. When someone doesn't want to learn, it is frustrating. When people don't even have the courtesy to listen to you when you speak, it is something beyond frustrating. In fact, anyone I wasn't related to I likely would simply stop speaking to if they treated me that way. I have been there in the past and cut off friendships for this.
I have a sense within me that I am trying to move on from having a positive OR negative affect in my life from the "approval" of a parent. I feel like I am intellectually trying to level up, but these situations with my family are pulling me back down. Maybe this is something every person deals with all their lives. Even old folks whose parents have long since passed.
And when my mother is gone I have concerns about how my relationship with my sister will affect my life. Because, we don't have much of one now, and I pretty much disagree with every single way she lives her life. I do not trust her. I think she's an entitled money-grubber who is just waiting to literally steal all my parents money the minute my mom passes away. I think she'd do it behind my back and then justify it because she truly believes she deserves ALL of it. I don't say this in contemplation. She has pretty much come out and said all this for years and years.
Before my dad was even in the ground my sister was talking about how she was going to take their house, because she "deserves" it. Even as our parents sat there and told her everything is to be divided per the will, she retorted by saying that *I* wouldn't have an issue with her just taking the house.
How can I continue to have a relationship with a person like this? Certainly, she would expect me at that point to be on call for her, to fix her issues at her house and give her money after she blows the thousands we will likely get from the estate.
My sister moved into her house (that she *HAD* to get because we were moving and proclaimed as much) in December 2021. She has had some home bar thing, a piece of furniture, in a box since pretty much day one. And she has not put it together herself in a year and a half because she expects ME to come over there and "help" her do it. She, the strong, smart, independent woman that not only can do everything a man can do and better, but also can do MORE than any man can do and talks endlessly about how much better she is... this amazing woman can't put together a piece of furniture that comes with instructions.
When I lived 10 minutes from my parents, I never once asked them to come over and help with anything other than installing a chandelier. Which, I did myself as my dad just stood there and instructed me on how to do the electrical. I climbed the ladder, I lifted it, I wired it and taped it. My sister on the other hand would have had my dad, feeble as he was with his fucking oxygen tank on, up the ladder doing it all for her as she stood there.
This is not hyperbolic. She already had had him, oxygen tank and all, crawling under her house in literal gravel and dirt fixing water pipes only a few years before.
I digress.
When I talk, they just don't listen. And I know it isn't in my head, because I have the Sparrow as a witness now when it happens. So after the fact, I can ask him if he witnessed it and he confirms to me that yes, it happened and was blatant.
My mother will ask me a question. Any question. Something about my day, about work, about something we did. The second I start to speak, she turns her attention to the dog, she asks the Sparrow if he needs coffee or she'll just drift off into la-la land. If my sister is present, she will interrupt or start her own conversation over my talking. It has happened for decades and it is incredibly frustrating and frankly, insulting.
I have gotten better at times with it. Sometimes, if I start talking and one of them interrupts me, I will raise my voice over theirs and tell them to shut up, in a nice or mean way depending on the day, and tell them to listen to me. They, of course, think I am being rude. They have no awareness of their own behavior. They never have.
Comically, because of the Sparrow's upbringing and the fact his family are all a bunch of talkers he's had a tendency before to start talking over me. I am quick to point it out when it happens, after letting it frustrate me for a while. I think having changed my tactics with how he and I communicate to prevent him talking over me has helped me to start doing the same with my family. It has become somewhat of a joke, something to laugh at when it happens between he and I now.
But, it is hurtful with my family because I've grown up being given the impression that what I have to say has no value to them. I would often see this as a reflection on me, but I know now that it really is all them. My mother specifically refuses to ever learn or expand her knowledge on anything.
A prime example of this came up when we were there Sunday. For years upon years she's had this corner of the yard that she's tried planting innumerable trees and shrubs and they have all died because of the often wet conditions of the area. And I have, for years and years, tried to tell her the kinds of shrubs that can survive in those conditions. But, she refuses to listen. She refuses to read plant tags. She's spent hundreds of dollars on single trees in this spot... and they all die.
And every time we have a conversation about it she exclaims, "I don't understand why this is happening!!"... even though I have repeatedly and clearly explained WHY it is happening.
She's like this with everything. Even worse with computer issues. She refuses to learn. She just wants to be helpless like so many users I've dealt with before. We had her replace her crap cellphone with an iPhone a year or so ago. She REFUSES to learn how to use the thing. She is still almost completely unable to send a text, because she "doesn't know how". I have never seen someone so adamantly refuse to learn. And, of course, it's not HER fault that she doesn't understand or TRY to. It is the phone's fault. It is progress's fault.
Back to the bushes though, I made a suggestion that she try some elderberry species in that spot. They are tolerant of moisture as well as shade. The spot in question is in the back east corner of the yard. It has a huge pine tree and a 6' tall fence behind it. So the plant would only get sun from about mid to late afternoon before the sun sets. Elderberry would literally be the PERFECT plant for this spot.
I send her an email with three different kinds. She replies back "That would burn up in the spot!"
Now, we are talking about a person who knows nothing, who can't read a plant tag and clearly can't read the info on the site where it says any of the three I sent can tolerate FULL sun to part shade. But, as is often the case, she always has to say SOMETHING and whatever it is has to be dismissive and negative. She followed up that email almost immediately with a second about the plant being toxic to animals or something. Mind you, she's had plants in her yard for years that are toxic to dogs. But, of course, this is just all about her having to poo-poo my idea.
And it is fine. She can go buy yet another $200 tree and plant it in the mud back there and let it die. And I'll love saying 'I told you so' when it does.
The mind fuck though of these kind of situations with my mother is that she'll turn around and act SO surprised when I know certain things about plants or birds or nature in the backyard. So she is clearly able to identify that I know what I am talking about at times, yet at others she looks at me like I am lying to her face.
And it doesn't matter. I am a grown man. I know I am not the crazy one here. But, inside... within some place from my past that still thrives deep down I feel this sensation. It is like an emotion, but more. An anxiety really. A sense that I am some little kid screaming my fucking head off trying to get her to listen to me while she stands there waving me off, completely dismissive. And it makes me mad as fuck.
It is similar to the behavior my father always demonstrated that pushed me to the edge a few months before he died, when I decided I was done with his shit and would never seek help or advice from him again. The moment when I finally grew up. With my mother, I already passed this place as well I think, but I feel less apt to tell her to her face how she is acting because emotionally she's basically 8-years-old and it'd hurt her too deeply for me to call out her idiocy. So I just let it go on.
I know in the past my sister has told her point blank that she is too negative and ALWAYS has to say something negative about EVERYTHING. And that is the absolute truth, though with my sister I get it because she makes so many stupid choices in life, how could my mom not say something that crapped on whatever her latest schemes and debt-inducing choices were. My mother confided in me on that day how hurt she was by the comment, which is part of the reason why I bite my tongue so often.
Where does that leave me? Sitting here, writing about it and bitching.
I also have these often disturbing questions pop into my head about how I will be able to move on once my mom passes. I feel guilty even thinking about it, but at the same time I feel so burdened by having to deal with her and her need to view me perpetually as a child. When I think about life after she passes I am thinking about being free of this feeling that I was never allowed to grow up. I often wonder what things would have been like had I been straight and married a woman. Would my mother be more able to let me grow up? Or less?
My parents never motivated me to be an adult. They never encouraged me to go out and seize life. They never taught me to have courage or stand up for myself. The prevailing emotions I recall most were ones of being afraid, being ashamed and being inadequate. And I know it'd break both their hearts to hear me say such things, but it is my experience. As parents, I feel they failed on many levels.
I am not saying I could be a better parent than them. I am not saying anyone else's parents were better at the task than them. Certainly, they worked their asses off their entire lives to keep the family above water. To feed us and try to do what they thought was best as far as getting a school education through high school.
It was always comical to hear my dad say in my adult life that it wasn't them who raised us to be afraid or have self-esteem issues. Maybe he knew better and was just bloviating. But, I am sorry to say it absolutely was their fault on some level. They never encouraged us to be better.
I have many good qualities of character and I cannot claim they had nothing to do with that. Certainly, my sense of empathy, my love of nature, even my intellectual curiosity and capacity must have something to do with them and the environment I was raised in. I am not saying it was all negative.
It's a roll of the dice. Some things happened, some things didn't. I knew enough to be a certain kind of person, and knew enough to question things about the world and myself. Perhaps earlier than some in certain situations and later than some in others. I do not gripe about this to say I regret anything or blame my parents for anything.
I am simply observing what I see and coming to a conclusion about it. The past cannot be changed. I can change going forward for sure. That is on me now.
Yet, I think I am allowed to be frustrated when dealing with situations that are... well, frustrating. When someone doesn't listen, it is frustrating. When someone doesn't want to learn, it is frustrating. When people don't even have the courtesy to listen to you when you speak, it is something beyond frustrating. In fact, anyone I wasn't related to I likely would simply stop speaking to if they treated me that way. I have been there in the past and cut off friendships for this.
I have a sense within me that I am trying to move on from having a positive OR negative affect in my life from the "approval" of a parent. I feel like I am intellectually trying to level up, but these situations with my family are pulling me back down. Maybe this is something every person deals with all their lives. Even old folks whose parents have long since passed.
And when my mother is gone I have concerns about how my relationship with my sister will affect my life. Because, we don't have much of one now, and I pretty much disagree with every single way she lives her life. I do not trust her. I think she's an entitled money-grubber who is just waiting to literally steal all my parents money the minute my mom passes away. I think she'd do it behind my back and then justify it because she truly believes she deserves ALL of it. I don't say this in contemplation. She has pretty much come out and said all this for years and years.
Before my dad was even in the ground my sister was talking about how she was going to take their house, because she "deserves" it. Even as our parents sat there and told her everything is to be divided per the will, she retorted by saying that *I* wouldn't have an issue with her just taking the house.
How can I continue to have a relationship with a person like this? Certainly, she would expect me at that point to be on call for her, to fix her issues at her house and give her money after she blows the thousands we will likely get from the estate.
My sister moved into her house (that she *HAD* to get because we were moving and proclaimed as much) in December 2021. She has had some home bar thing, a piece of furniture, in a box since pretty much day one. And she has not put it together herself in a year and a half because she expects ME to come over there and "help" her do it. She, the strong, smart, independent woman that not only can do everything a man can do and better, but also can do MORE than any man can do and talks endlessly about how much better she is... this amazing woman can't put together a piece of furniture that comes with instructions.
When I lived 10 minutes from my parents, I never once asked them to come over and help with anything other than installing a chandelier. Which, I did myself as my dad just stood there and instructed me on how to do the electrical. I climbed the ladder, I lifted it, I wired it and taped it. My sister on the other hand would have had my dad, feeble as he was with his fucking oxygen tank on, up the ladder doing it all for her as she stood there.
This is not hyperbolic. She already had had him, oxygen tank and all, crawling under her house in literal gravel and dirt fixing water pipes only a few years before.
I digress.