Are you proud of me yet, mama?

[UpwardForward]

Oh man, 38 is soooo young, I am so sorry UF:( Aren't drugs such a wonderful thing and experience, especially for those around them:sick::sick::sick:

 

All I remember is my aunt telling me his breathing aparatus closed off at throat? And he didn't wake up in the morning. It was so long ago, I forgot the details. At the time they thought it was his heavy smoking? Then as I said, my grandmother later disclosed the 'drug' story.

[dreamingoftigers]

Wow, I feel so bad for your mom, it almost sounds like different, or blind eye standards were set. It's funny, with all of the flack she most likely took, whether verbal or non verbal, your mom never told on her siblings or dad/stepdad and I'm sure she knew. I'm assuming your mom never said anything based on your grandmother asking you.[/Quote]

 

I don't think so. I know she tattled on my Aunt smoking.

 

But my Aunt and other uncle are quite a bit older than my mother.

And my "crazy" uncle (really the whole family is nuts but he sticks right out) is younger than my mother and I am 100% positive that someone somewhere would have told my grandmother long before this. But she always seems to righteously defend him.

 

My mother says she was in the worst position in the family. My grandfather is very narcissistic. She wasn't a boy and she wasn't the first girl, so she was kind of redundant in their eyes. There was a LOT of favoritism told the boys.

 

She hasn't been very close with her family for a looonnnngggg time. Although my father had a hand in that. Did he ever.....

 

Anyhow, as for my grandfather (Mom's father) he started the coke haul after leaving my country and getting Panamanian citzenship (from Noriega no less LOL). I didn't even know much more than the name until I got curious and looked it up. When I visited in 1986 (I was four) he had just been shot in the throat and survived. He had also previously had his throat slashed. He's 88 now and swims in the ocean everyday.

 

By the 80s he had already moved stateside and was living with his mistress (they are still together. When she drinks she has the MOST piercing voice I have ever heard in my life. Instant headache. )

 

My grandmother lives in my country and volunteers full-time. She is in amazing health and is still completely sharp and up to date. It seems that reality has struck her about her youngest in the last five years. Denial is not correlated with low intelligence in her case whatsoever. She'll be 90 in the fall. Her mother lived to be 103.

 

I think what that generation didn't get was the fact that IME no one uses drugs, epecially street drugs without cause, meaning for some it's not about "experimentation", it's about escape. I mean seriously DOT, acid at 14...me getting drunk off my butt- there's something wrong. Instead the fingers got pointed and labeled screw ups- no hope.

 

My mother, despite her faults was actually very instrumental in solidifying an anti-drug attitude in me. She told me about how she believes her memory is not very good now because of her youthful drug and alcohol abuse. I, however, wouldn't be surprised to find it linked to excessive stress in dealing with my father and raising two destructive autistic children pretty much by herself.

 

I am not interested in taking in things that harm my brain. If your brain isn't working as well as it could, it can make life very much more difficult than whatever it is that you are trying to "escape."

 

I did however, not realize (as most people didn't and still don't) the addictive and harmful qualities of refined sugar, which are now said to be more addictive than heroin. Yay......

 

LOL, so that's where KSC (Kennedy Space Center) was getting all of the coke! Just kidding. Dude, I was supposed to go there back then on business. It would last for months at a time, my co-workers would come back with big time bucks. Ohhhh it was soooo tempting, although at that time, 80's, I knew I'd get hooked on coke. Everybody was doing it. The stories were insane. Then recently watched a documentary about it- yuk.

 

I've seen a few documentaries over the last couple of years. I'm glad I refused him paying for my education when I was younger. I know it sounds really weird. But I grew up with my mother telling me frankly (she didn't want to "scare" me but instead more educate me) about drugs. It really left an impression that schoolkids that were really young, like 10&11 in some places were getting hooked on drugs.

 

I knew too that my grandfather had participated in a pretty violent world and as an extension hearing more and more about places that had been flooded with drugs on the news and movies (LA and the Bronx for example) even gang wars in Chicago left a really really strong bearing on me. My parents were avid news junkies and A & E fans. Almost every person named in their "criminal shows" involved drugs. Lots of murders involved them.

 

It seemed like a really clear-cut issue to me when I was younger because I was pretty well inundated with it. I am actually surprised to find people that I knew when I was older doing it. I shouldn't have been I guess. But I was. I just figured we all had the same information. But truth be told, I grew up right on the border of a poorer community, many of the parents had at least an alcohol problem. Usually more than that. And not much to counterbalance that aside from the "just say no" that they did in schools. Which up here, wasn't much.

[Shepp]

I have no idea why mother's react this way to their offspring. Is it jealousy, or inferiority complex, or failure to move on and release child from their childhood, or is it just plain: offspring's decisions/goals didn't line up with the mother's/parents'.

 

Not just mothers thought is it!

Like the girl im crazy about lost her mum when she was 13, and that would leave a mark on anybody but its her disaster of a dad and the way he reacted to that and treated her after that that hurt her. That's what screwed with her head enough to make her not even want to try have a relationship cause she doesn't believe she could hold one down!

 

She doesn't talk about her family much but it breaks my heart a little bit when she does, cause I cant wait to be a dad but wont be the perfect father, i'll screw up sometimes, but my kids wont doubt for a one second that I love them, not ever!!

[UpwardForward]

Not just mothers thought is it!

Like the girl im crazy about lost her mum when she was 13, and that would leave a mark on anybody but its her disaster of a dad and the way he reacted to that and treated her after that that hurt her. That's what screwed with her head enough to make her not even want to try have a relationship cause she doesn't believe she could hold one down!

 

She doesn't talk about her family much but it breaks my heart a little bit when she does, cause I cant wait to be a dad but wont be the perfect father, i'll screw up sometimes, but my kids wont doubt for a one second that I love them, not ever!!

 

Yes. From the time of being a baby, we look for the approval in our parents' eyes - and then verbally. That's just the way it is.

[UpwardForward]

 

I am not interested in taking in things that harm my brain. If your brain isn't working as well as it could, it can make life very much more difficult than whatever it is that you are trying to "escape."

 

This is so true.

[dreamingoftigers]

Not just mothers thought is it!

Like the girl im crazy about lost her mum when she was 13, and that would leave a mark on anybody but its her disaster of a dad and the way he reacted to that and treated her after that that hurt her. That's what screwed with her head enough to make her not even want to try have a relationship cause she doesn't believe she could hold one down!

 

She doesn't talk about her family much but it breaks my heart a little bit when she does, cause I cant wait to be a dad but wont be the perfect father, i'll screw up sometimes, but my kids wont doubt for a one second that I love them, not ever!!

 

Interesting. My parents always blamed their "stressful circumstance" in having two other disabled children as a reason for my unhappy childhood. My mother blah blah blahs about how rough it must have been to have a brother and sister that were handicapped. Watching my brother must have been stressful because he had psychosis and rage problems.

 

I found that it didn't bother me at all to have two disabled siblings. Especially not as a kid. They were just "my brother" and later "my sister." I didn't even know much different. But I DID SEE how other parents treated their kids. It was much nicer.

 

My brother's "psychosis" (I BELIEVE) was largely manufactured by my parent's always fighting, yelling, smacking him and largely being total asshats. He broke every glass thing in the house. I still feel a tinge of reluctance buying glass items.

 

My parents would start fighting, he was hearing hyper-sensitive, and would cover his ears and wail sometimes. Other times he'd just sit there and bang his head against the wall. If he got yelled at, he would often bite himself or bang his head. He was known for putting his head through windows. To be completely honest, I blame them full-on. They were completely, moronically loud and dysfunctional day in and out. They fought everyday and freaked on us kids, but more often me because I wasn't a disabled target. My brother was just part of the dynamic. He expressed non-verbally what my parents fired off verbally and non-verbally about. He had sleep issues too. But everyone in that house did. They RARELY RARELY considered anyone's sleep and my brother's hearing sensitivity.

 

My father would get loaded and sound off until 2-3 in the morning regularly. My mother would sit there and try to therapize and calm him down and find a way to "blame it on his mother and her mother" and everyone but themselves and taking responsibility for it. My brother would sit in his room and sing and my father would go in and yell at him to get to sleep. It had traditionally worked well for me when he used that tactic as well. And I mean YELL!

 

To be honest, they went to doctor after doctor talking about this son who just "went off with no notice." And that was true, but only SOMETIMES, as in RARELY. Most of the time, you had to be freaking out at or near him. When my parents had the "time out" chair recommended to them, my father would hold him down into the timeout chair. Basically a dysfunctional strength competition. My father routinely twisted our arms, pulled us, he would smack me and slam me into things. My brother was not "psychotic." My father was. And my brother paid the price for it eventually.

 

They started sedating him at night. Apparently the stuff tasted just awful. I remember the smell. He used to fight it and they would hold his mouth open while he gagged on it and choked it down. Sometimes he'd puke. They had him on so many meds that he looked like a drug addict: thin, gaunt, sunken in eyes. Eventually the sedation caught up with him because he was on a very strong dose for about 10 years. At 15, the sedative caused heart failure. He was without oxygen for over 20 minutes. He was in ICU for about a month. Then he was in the hospital for 8 months more. He is severely brain-damaged now. He lives on a hospital bed in their living room.

 

My brother and sister being disabled were not the cause of my stresses. In fact, it taught me some empathy and not to underestimate anyone with a disability. My sister is 12 years younger than me and she is autistic just like my brother was. She is higher functioning.

 

When my sister was 3 and my brother was 8, they found a way to break into my bedroom. They did this a lot until we figured out how they were doing it. I watched them one day. He climbed up the closet shelves beside my door and got the key off of the door ledge. He gave it to her and she opened it! She couldn't reach the key because she was too small, and he didn't have the fine motor to open the door. Together these two at a very young age and being NON-VERBAL found a way to work together to get in my room! LOL

 

My parents were the cause. My parents were the nightmare. My parents did the damage. They accept close to 0 responsibility. I hate that my brother paid so much so my father could throw temper-tantrums and my mother could play "therapist." Plus they were awarded a settlement for my brother's medication overdose, as he was under the supervision of a physician. They pissed through that, and it was meant for his long-term care.

 

I'm sorry if I've kind of mucked up this thread.

It's helped me a lot though. I haven't thought about some of these things in a long time and it's really crystallized some things for me about my family and my own dynamic. It seems so whacked looking at it in black and white that I can see why things have taken me so long to find my footing. That and the $12K (on my credit) my father borrowed from me at 18 and didn't pay back.

 

Thank-you folks and UF especially.

[UpwardForward]

Dot, You haven't mucked anything up. Your story needed to be read. It goes to show how bad things can be - short of people killing their children.

 

Your parents abusefully/loudly fighting, disrupting the household and then playing doctors w forced drugs, is a disgrace and something people normally don't hear of.

 

Have you ever had the opportunity to confront and tell your parents your witness of their life and abuse toward their children?

[Woggle]

I give up caring what my mother thinks of me. I have no relationship at all with her and as messed up as this sounds it is better this way. She might have given birth to me but she is no mother.

[UpwardForward]

I give up caring what my mother thinks of me. I have no relationship at all with her and as messed up as this sounds it is better this way. She might have given birth to me but she is no mother.

 

I know where you're coming from.

 

In my situation, I know I must care for her. She is my mother and alone. I guess that's another reason for the reminders. In some ways - things don't change.

 

(Also, I think God is still teaching me tolerance.)

[Woggle]

I know where you're coming from.

 

In my situation, I know I must care for her. She is my mother and alone. I guess that's another reason for the reminders. In some ways - things don't change.

 

(Also, I think God is still teaching me tolerance.)

 

I understand but in my case I am not talking just harsh judgement. She is just a cruel and nasty person who gets off on abusing her son and other people.

[Nyla]

This thread gives me a lot to think when it comes to raising my own 14 year old daughter.

 

She's my youngest and so much different than her two brothers. Her self-esteem isn't the greatest and I try very hard to let her know how special she is to me but right now the battle is getting her to see that she is special too and finding ways to be proud of herself.

 

If we can get there I know for sure I'll be proud of her.

 

You are a good mother.

 

It is very lonely to not have any sisters. I have three brothers and I always resented the way they would go off and do "men stuff", leaving me out.

 

It led to me becoming independent and learning how to entertain myself.

 

I no longer concern myself with whether or not my mother is proud of me. I

 

used to tie myself in knots trying to please that woman and now I only try to please myself, my husband and my other loved ones.

[tbf]

This thread gives me a lot to think when it comes to raising my own 14 year old daughter.

 

She's my youngest and so much different than her two brothers. Her self-esteem isn't the greatest and I try very hard to let her know how special she is to me but right now the battle is getting her to see that she is special too and finding ways to be proud of herself.

 

If we can get there I know for sure I'll be proud of her.

As a thought, not living up to expectations of special can be just as difficult as someone with low self-esteem. If self-pride doesn't work, consider self-acceptance. This way if she's not objectively special but is a wonderful person in general, there won't be any dissonance.

[dreamingoftigers]

Dot, You haven't mucked anything up. Your story needed to be read. It goes to show how bad things can be - short of people killing their children.

 

Your parents abusefully/loudly fighting, disrupting the household and then playing doctors w forced drugs, is a disgrace and something people normally don't hear of.

Have you ever had the opportunity to confront and tell your parents your witness of their life and abuse toward their children[/b]?

 

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

 

It is a dominant family trait. I got the recessive gene.

[Emilia]

 

I'm sorry if I've kind of mucked up this thread.

It's helped me a lot though. I haven't thought about some of these things in a long time and it's really crystallized some things for me about my family and my own dynamic. It seems so whacked looking at it in black and white that I can see why things have taken me so long to find my footing. That and the $12K (on my credit) my father borrowed from me at 18 and didn't pay back.

 

Thank-you folks and UF especially.

No you haven't mucked it up at all. I always learn a lot from your posts DoT. You are very good at articulating what you went through.

[dreamingoftigers]

No you haven't mucked it up at all. I always learn a lot from your posts DoT. You are very good at articulating what you went through.

 

A lot of the time I think it wasn't "that bad" and then I come here and start writing about it. It isn't the worst on here (by far) but I do look at it after and go "oh yeah, that sh*t's fu*cked-up. No wonder I have 7500+ posts on here."

[Emilia]

A lot of the time I think it wasn't "that bad" and then I come here and start writing about it. It isn't the worst on here (by far) but I do look at it after and go "oh yeah, that sh*t's fu*cked-up. No wonder I have 7500+ posts on here."

I didn't realise how f*cked up I was until I started visiting LS on a regular basis and especially until I started posting here so much :laugh::laugh: :bunny:

[serial muse]

Interesting. My parents always blamed their "stressful circumstance" in having two other disabled children as a reason for my unhappy childhood. My mother blah blah blahs about how rough it must have been to have a brother and sister that were handicapped. Watching my brother must have been stressful because he had psychosis and rage problems.

 

I found that it didn't bother me at all to have two disabled siblings. Especially not as a kid. They were just "my brother" and later "my sister." I didn't even know much different. But I DID SEE how other parents treated their kids. It was much nicer.

 

My brother's "psychosis" (I BELIEVE) was largely manufactured by my parent's always fighting, yelling, smacking him and largely being total asshats. He broke every glass thing in the house. I still feel a tinge of reluctance buying glass items.

 

My parents would start fighting, he was hearing hyper-sensitive, and would cover his ears and wail sometimes. Other times he'd just sit there and bang his head against the wall. If he got yelled at, he would often bite himself or bang his head. He was known for putting his head through windows. To be completely honest, I blame them full-on. They were completely, moronically loud and dysfunctional day in and out. They fought everyday and freaked on us kids, but more often me because I wasn't a disabled target. My brother was just part of the dynamic. He expressed non-verbally what my parents fired off verbally and non-verbally about. He had sleep issues too. But everyone in that house did. They RARELY RARELY considered anyone's sleep and my brother's hearing sensitivity.

 

My father would get loaded and sound off until 2-3 in the morning regularly. My mother would sit there and try to therapize and calm him down and find a way to "blame it on his mother and her mother" and everyone but themselves and taking responsibility for it. My brother would sit in his room and sing and my father would go in and yell at him to get to sleep. It had traditionally worked well for me when he used that tactic as well. And I mean YELL!

 

To be honest, they went to doctor after doctor talking about this son who just "went off with no notice." And that was true, but only SOMETIMES, as in RARELY. Most of the time, you had to be freaking out at or near him. When my parents had the "time out" chair recommended to them, my father would hold him down into the timeout chair. Basically a dysfunctional strength competition. My father routinely twisted our arms, pulled us, he would smack me and slam me into things. My brother was not "psychotic." My father was. And my brother paid the price for it eventually.

 

They started sedating him at night. Apparently the stuff tasted just awful. I remember the smell. He used to fight it and they would hold his mouth open while he gagged on it and choked it down. Sometimes he'd puke. They had him on so many meds that he looked like a drug addict: thin, gaunt, sunken in eyes. Eventually the sedation caught up with him because he was on a very strong dose for about 10 years. At 15, the sedative caused heart failure. He was without oxygen for over 20 minutes. He was in ICU for about a month. Then he was in the hospital for 8 months more. He is severely brain-damaged now. He lives on a hospital bed in their living room.

 

My brother and sister being disabled were not the cause of my stresses. In fact, it taught me some empathy and not to underestimate anyone with a disability. My sister is 12 years younger than me and she is autistic just like my brother was. She is higher functioning.

 

When my sister was 3 and my brother was 8, they found a way to break into my bedroom. They did this a lot until we figured out how they were doing it. I watched them one day. He climbed up the closet shelves beside my door and got the key off of the door ledge. He gave it to her and she opened it! She couldn't reach the key because she was too small, and he didn't have the fine motor to open the door. Together these two at a very young age and being NON-VERBAL found a way to work together to get in my room! LOL

 

My parents were the cause. My parents were the nightmare. My parents did the damage. They accept close to 0 responsibility. I hate that my brother paid so much so my father could throw temper-tantrums and my mother could play "therapist." Plus they were awarded a settlement for my brother's medication overdose, as he was under the supervision of a physician. They pissed through that, and it was meant for his long-term care.

 

I'm sorry if I've kind of mucked up this thread.

It's helped me a lot though. I haven't thought about some of these things in a long time and it's really crystallized some things for me about my family and my own dynamic. It seems so whacked looking at it in black and white that I can see why things have taken me so long to find my footing. That and the $12K (on my credit) my father borrowed from me at 18 and didn't pay back.

 

Thank-you folks and UF especially.

 

DoT I want to give you a hug.

 

This thread has been really interesting to read. I actually have a good relationship with my mom, but my H and his mom are another story. Wish he would post here, he'd feel understood.

[dreamingoftigers]

DoT I want to give you a hug.

 

This thread has been really interesting to read. I actually have a good relationship with my mom, but my H and his mom are another story. Wish he would post here, he'd feel understood.

 

My MIL is a nutjob.

 

Ugh. She makes my parent's house seem like the Holiday Inn.

[GorillaTheater]

Man, I feel so badly for some of you, and the crap that you've had to endure.

 

Definitely hugging all the kids when I get home.

[dreamingoftigers]

Man, I feel so badly for some of you, and the crap that you've had to endure.

 

Definitely hugging all the kids when I get home.

 

Doesn't that take and hour and a half?

[GorillaTheater]

Doesn't that take and hour and a half?

 

Yeah, just about.

 

My parents weren't abusive, just sort of distant. One of the joys of my life is that my 19 year old son still likes dad hugs.

[pureinheart]

I don't think so. I know she tattled on my Aunt smoking.

 

But my Aunt and other uncle are quite a bit older than my mother.

And my "crazy" uncle (really the whole family is nuts but he sticks right out) is younger than my mother and I am 100% positive that someone somewhere would have told my grandmother long before this. But she always seems to righteously defend him.

 

My mother says she was in the worst position in the family. My grandfather is very narcissistic. She wasn't a boy and she wasn't the first girl, so she was kind of redundant in their eyes. There was a LOT of favoritism told the boys.

 

She hasn't been very close with her family for a looonnnngggg time. Although my father had a hand in that. Did he ever.....

 

Anyhow, as for my grandfather (Mom's father) he started the coke haul after leaving my country and getting Panamanian citzenship (from Noriega no less LOL). I didn't even know much more than the name until I got curious and looked it up. When I visited in 1986 (I was four) he had just been shot in the throat and survived. He had also previously had his throat slashed. He's 88 now and swims in the ocean everyday.

 

By the 80s he had already moved stateside and was living with his mistress (they are still together. When she drinks she has the MOST piercing voice I have ever heard in my life. Instant headache. )

 

My grandmother lives in my country and volunteers full-time. She is in amazing health and is still completely sharp and up to date. It seems that reality has struck her about her youngest in the last five years. Denial is not correlated with low intelligence in her case whatsoever. She'll be 90 in the fall. Her mother lived to be 103.

 

 

 

My mother, despite her faults was actually very instrumental in solidifying an anti-drug attitude in me. She told me about how she believes her memory is not very good now because of her youthful drug and alcohol abuse. I, however, wouldn't be surprised to find it linked to excessive stress in dealing with my father and raising two destructive autistic children pretty much by herself.

 

I am not interested in taking in things that harm my brain. If your brain isn't working as well as it could, it can make life very much more difficult than whatever it is that you are trying to "escape."

 

I did however, not realize (as most people didn't and still don't) the addictive and harmful qualities of refined sugar, which are now said to be more addictive than heroin. Yay......

 

 

I've seen a few documentaries over the last couple of years. I'm glad I refused him paying for my education when I was younger. I know it sounds really weird. But I grew up with my mother telling me frankly (she didn't want to "scare" me but instead more educate me) about drugs. It really left an impression that schoolkids that were really young, like 10&11 in some places were getting hooked on drugs.

 

I knew too that my grandfather had participated in a pretty violent world and as an extension hearing more and more about places that had been flooded with drugs on the news and movies (LA and the Bronx for example) even gang wars in Chicago left a really really strong bearing on me. My parents were avid news junkies and A & E fans. Almost every person named in their "criminal shows" involved drugs. Lots of murders involved them.

 

It seemed like a really clear-cut issue to me when I was younger because I was pretty well inundated with it. I am actually surprised to find people that I knew when I was older doing it. I shouldn't have been I guess. But I was. I just figured we all had the same information. But truth be told, I grew up right on the border of a poorer community, many of the parents had at least an alcohol problem. Usually more than that. And not much to counterbalance that aside from the "just say no" that they did in schools. Which up here, wasn't much.

 

LOL, your family sounds simular to mine...very simular:D and like yours most of them are now down on those types of drugs. I am sorry to hear of your community close to you. People just don't get that some of those drugs have weird stuff in them, meaning the ones off the street- tell me that the local neighborhood drug dealer "cares" about your health:rolleyes:

 

I'm so glad your parents drilled it into you- my kids got into that crap for time, but now will not take pills even- they are deathly afraid and hate that stuff...none of their friends partake either:D ...most people in my area hate street drugs, it's not real popular.

 

LOL, thinking I was one of the only ones with an "interesting" family:laugh:

 

Just saw what you said about sugar, yep...grandkids and daughter are major addicts...they make a heroin addict look mild...

Edited May 31, 2013 by pureinheart

[dreamingoftigers]

LOL, your family sounds simular to mine...very simular:D and like yours most of them are now down on those types of drugs. I am sorry to hear of your community close to you. People just don't get that some of those drugs have weird stuff in them, meaning the ones off the street- tell me that the local neighborhood drug dealer "cares" about your health:rolleyes:

 

I'm so glad your parents drilled it into you- my kids got into that crap for time, but now will not take pills even- they are deathly afraid and hate that stuff...none of their friends partake either:D ...most people in my area hate street drugs, it's not real popular.

 

LOL, thinking I was one of the only ones with an "interesting" family:laugh:

 

Just saw what you said about sugar, yep...grandkids and daughter are major addicts...they make a heroin addict look mild...

 

The community close just had a murder this weekend. The 11th this year for my city

 

Technically we are part of the same community, but they are on the NE side where there's more transitional housing.

 

It's actually not that bad of a place, just a lower middle class community. median income is $56000 per household, so lower than the Canadian (and specifically Calgary avg of $65000.

 

http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/CNS/Documents/community_social_statistics/huntington_hills.pdf

 

It's an odd mix. We are slightly less better off (median than the community next door, but when you drive up it, you can see the difference. The families seem more "together" as well.

 

http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/CNS/Documents/community_social_statistics/beddington_heights.pdf

 

I have read more recently that the neighbourhood that you grew up in has a huge impact on everything from social status to life expectancy.

 

How many people shift class structures? 1 in 10000.

 

I know two personally that have: my father and my maternal grandfather. It's in my genes.

 

My parents live on the NE side too, not far from the murder scene. It's weird, my father makes such a big deal about how much money he has (blah blah blah blah blah). Yet he chose to build a home here. It's interesting. In knowing more of his character, it almost seems like he needed to be here to "show off." My parent's house is one of only two houses I have seen with a second storey here. Most people when I was younger thought that it was a duplex because they have double doors in the front. ().

 

It's just so out of place and sticks up over by a trailer park. Just so weird.....why here? Why bother moving by a trailer-park to build a two-storey house with double doors on a 1/4 acre plot of land? Why not in the South end or more toward the NW where there are more homes like that? Why not a better neighbourhood and maybe a slightly smaller house. Even central access was horrible until the Express exit in the early 90s.

 

This thread really has me thinking about my family the last week and what I want my daughter to see and choose from.

[Emilia]

My parents weren't abusive, just sort of distant. One of the joys of my life is that my 19 year old son still likes dad hugs.

Poor kid

[pureinheart]

Interesting. My parents always blamed their "stressful circumstance" in having two other disabled children as a reason for my unhappy childhood. My mother blah blah blahs about how rough it must have been to have a brother and sister that were handicapped. Watching my brother must have been stressful because he had psychosis and rage problems.

 

I found that it didn't bother me at all to have two disabled siblings. Especially not as a kid. They were just "my brother" and later "my sister." I didn't even know much different. But I DID SEE how other parents treated their kids. It was much nicer.

 

My brother's "psychosis" (I BELIEVE) was largely manufactured by my parent's always fighting, yelling, smacking him and largely being total asshats. He broke every glass thing in the house. I still feel a tinge of reluctance buying glass items.

 

My parents would start fighting, he was hearing hyper-sensitive, and would cover his ears and wail sometimes. Other times he'd just sit there and bang his head against the wall. If he got yelled at, he would often bite himself or bang his head. He was known for putting his head through windows. To be completely honest, I blame them full-on. They were completely, moronically loud and dysfunctional day in and out. They fought everyday and freaked on us kids, but more often me because I wasn't a disabled target. My brother was just part of the dynamic. He expressed non-verbally what my parents fired off verbally and non-verbally about. He had sleep issues too. But everyone in that house did. They RARELY RARELY considered anyone's sleep and my brother's hearing sensitivity.

 

My father would get loaded and sound off until 2-3 in the morning regularly. My mother would sit there and try to therapize and calm him down and find a way to "blame it on his mother and her mother" and everyone but themselves and taking responsibility for it. My brother would sit in his room and sing and my father would go in and yell at him to get to sleep. It had traditionally worked well for me when he used that tactic as well. And I mean YELL!

 

To be honest, they went to doctor after doctor talking about this son who just "went off with no notice." And that was true, but only SOMETIMES, as in RARELY. Most of the time, you had to be freaking out at or near him. When my parents had the "time out" chair recommended to them, my father would hold him down into the timeout chair. Basically a dysfunctional strength competition. My father routinely twisted our arms, pulled us, he would smack me and slam me into things. My brother was not "psychotic." My father was. And my brother paid the price for it eventually.

 

They started sedating him at night. Apparently the stuff tasted just awful. I remember the smell. He used to fight it and they would hold his mouth open while he gagged on it and choked it down. Sometimes he'd puke. They had him on so many meds that he looked like a drug addict: thin, gaunt, sunken in eyes. Eventually the sedation caught up with him because he was on a very strong dose for about 10 years. At 15, the sedative caused heart failure. He was without oxygen for over 20 minutes. He was in ICU for about a month. Then he was in the hospital for 8 months more. He is severely brain-damaged now. He lives on a hospital bed in their living room.

 

My brother and sister being disabled were not the cause of my stresses. In fact, it taught me some empathy and not to underestimate anyone with a disability. My sister is 12 years younger than me and she is autistic just like my brother was. She is higher functioning.

 

When my sister was 3 and my brother was 8, they found a way to break into my bedroom. They did this a lot until we figured out how they were doing it. I watched them one day. He climbed up the closet shelves beside my door and got the key off of the door ledge. He gave it to her and she opened it! She couldn't reach the key because she was too small, and he didn't have the fine motor to open the door. Together these two at a very young age and being NON-VERBAL found a way to work together to get in my room! LOL

 

My parents were the cause. My parents were the nightmare. My parents did the damage. They accept close to 0 responsibility. I hate that my brother paid so much so my father could throw temper-tantrums and my mother could play "therapist." Plus they were awarded a settlement for my brother's medication overdose, as he was under the supervision of a physician. They pissed through that, and it was meant for his long-term care.

 

I'm sorry if I've kind of mucked up this thread.

It's helped me a lot though. I haven't thought about some of these things in a long time and it's really crystallized some things for me about my family and my own dynamic. It seems so whacked looking at it in black and white that I can see why things have taken me so long to find my footing. That and the $12K (on my credit) my father borrowed from me at 18 and didn't pay back.

 

Thank-you folks and UF especially.

 

Wow, just wow...

 

Just out of curiousity, do you find when telling others of your experiences, them looking at you funny, and you know they are thinking 'is she really telling the truth'?

 

Do you find yourself able to identify, and not only identify, but have an experience (or know of one close to you) so simular to theirs that it's scary?

 

You my dear friend have been through quite a lot. Also you are an amazing person:love: to be able to such a grasp of the truth and reality.

 

I rarely ever cut down parents as I'm too busy cutting myself down due to my parental mistakes (and have a ton of them) ...but gf, your parents need help- bad. Borrowing money from you and putting you in debt like that:sick: ...blaming your childhood on sibblings disabilities....are you kidding me????? ....and I thought I was in denial....wow

 

I'm sure you realise that it is nothing less than a miracle that you aren't strung out on drugs???? Hey, I got the "drug" talks too...it didn't do jack because my mother was so far into denial it wasn't even funny....and she couldn't figure why she had a dope feind for a kid- how embarrassing, you know? How that must have looked...

 

Oh girl, hearing your story and just starting a thread in Spirituality because I'm all kinds of happy that after almost 30 plus years of detachment and denial that I'm FINALLY free from it....pissed doesn't even begin to communicate the feelings right now ...THIRTY PLUS YEARS...I want to cuss really bad right now. Online.

 

It's not that I blame it on my mother- but this can be generational and it was. It wasn't till '93 that some nice people got me into a church were there was some hardcore counseling....but the patterns were already established. As I learned, I tried to teach my kids and thank God most of it was broken- BUT a lot of damage was done...I need to go throw something real fast.

 

Your post really helped me DOT...supposing it's better late than never, meaning the denial thing...but I'm pissed as hell right now.

 

You know, having always felt angry about being the generation to break this crap...and know I should be grateful, although it's been damn hard...

 

Why didn't she at least freaking try???? Was it too hard???? Was denial better???? It's been 20 damn years of working hard to break free...

Edited May 31, 2013 by pureinheart