Dismissive, Absent, Manipulative, and Hateful

Slowly some pieces are coming together. I talked to one of my sisters and my BFFs who knew me as a teen to see if I could get any memory prompts. I also searched through some old sister messages on my phone.

One thing that I learned was that, though I always thought of our family as the social host house – like my parents used to host dinners and parties/get togethers quite a bit when I was growing up. For a while, they would do elaborate Star Trek parties – full on make up, facial prosthetics, etc and themed foods and everything. There were big thanksgivings and Christmas parties… Just, yeah, big social events. Let alone ones they’d go to or the family would go to that we didn’t host.

I say all that to point out I have memories of my mom being very social and lively, laughing and just… being a welcoming hostess. My dad always did a lot of the prep work because he was the cook of the pair – the one that was good at it and was good at baking and all that – he’d make big delicious spreads. But my mom was definitely a hostess and on best behaviors in this capacity.

So, it was interesting to hear that my two BFFs didn’t feel welcome around my mom. Maja said she recalls one of the few times she came to my house, that my mom gave her the very real sense that she wasn’t welcome and that she had said something to us about not disturbing her. Ulice, who had lived around me/visited me on three different continents as a teen said that she has no real memories of interacting with my mom. She doesn’t remember even seeing my mom in Ethiopia or Sweden… and after we graduated and she came to visit in Virginia she remembers my mom being there, but recalls talking with my grandparents more than actually with her. Both of them agree, however, that my dad made them feel very welcome and always came out to greet/talk to them – so I assume that’s why I probably didn’t realize or brushed off how unwelcoming my mom was since my dad would balance it out….

I realize now that she only put forth the energy to put on the good show when it was her friends around, or when she knew she could be the center of attention. She wouldn’t be the center of attention among me and my friends, so she didn’t give a fuck.

I only talked to the one sister because one of the other sisters doesn’t want mom brought up to her anymore, and the youngest is 10 years younger than me, so I don’t know that she could help me with much from the earlier years that I’m looking for.

However, I had some startling realizations while talking to the one. Firstly, there weren’t too many specific memories she could come up with off the top of her head – but she said that overall she recalls mom as being dismissive, absent, manipulative, and hateful when we were growing up. My mom was/is a hateful person in general – but she was always especially hateful to that sister – she had the label of being the problem child while I was the golden child in my mom’s narcissistic sphere, so while I definitely have several of my own issues obviously – I was spared from some especially mean and hateful things my mom directed her way.

She did share with me a specific memory she recalled from when we were in Ethiopia… Where we were at the dinner table and my mom called her fat and apparently we all joined in teasing her about being fat (OMG I am so embarrassed and mortified that I was involved in such behavior). She ran to her room crying, and my mom went to her, laughed and tossed her a snickers bar to “make her feel better.” She would have been about 11 or 12 at this point

That’s horrible enough – but I’d like to point out that my mom has been morbidly obese most of my life, including at this point in time (she didn’t lose any weight significantly until I was an adult) and my sister was not actually fat….

My sister said that these family group teasing sessions about her weight was a frequent event and caused her to have eating issues as young as 9 years old. I did not know that… I also do not recall any of this myself, but I can’t say that it doesn’t track, to be honest.

Yes, I did apologize to her. She told me she understood that I was a kid myself and I was following mom’s lead. I’m still just so embarrassed knowing I was ever such a dick.

I have written in the past – including as a guest blogger elsewhere before – that I grew up as “the pretty one” and a huge emphasis was put on my figure and hair growing up., particularly by my mom. I grew up knowing it was important to be very skinny. Of course in the 90s and early 2000s the media was pushing that towards all of us young girls, but it definitely came from within my house. I had been blessed with a fast metabolism and I am tall and have thick hair… so I was very very skinny without trying very hard for most of my teen years. When I started to gain weight around 11th/12th grade – I was still at the low end of a normal BMI – I was leery of it, but Ulice told me I looked much better/healthier than I every had, so I accepted it for the most part.

The years after that though – every extra pound gained made me lose an equal amount of the feeling of self worth. My self worth, I realized 8 or so years ago had always been associated with my weight/figure and my attractiveness/sex appeal to men. I’ve already realized I got this concept of my worth from my mom, but I hear events like what my sister described and I realize that it tracks that I would think that she was fat probably at the time – because I was abnormally skinny, especially when we lived in Ethiopia, and she was not – and that this happening in general in my home would further reinforce the need to remain so thin. I also have clear memories of being so so fearful I would turn out so obese like my mother – I was afraid it was genetic because my grandma packed on weight later in life too and they had a similar body shape.

I got to the heaviest I’d ever been about 2 years ago. I’m almost embarrassed to say how heavy that was… It was still less than about 100 lbs of what my mom was when I was living with her – and she is a good foot shorter than me, so it helps *a little* that I didn’t completely turn into her as I feared. The weight gain was primarily from medications that packed weight on me and emotional eating, among other factors – the meds made it especially hard though because even when I did really well with diet and exercise I was still steadily gaining pounds on the meds.

I’m please to say I have finally really started losing weight – a few med changes done and I have dropped about 40 lbs since then and recently went down a size in my scrubs… 2 sizes down in jeans since my heaviest. I still have like 80-90 lbs to get back down to the weight I was in 11th/12th when Ulice said I looked healthy… But I think around 70 would get me to my actual goal weight and more of a median range for what I should be for my height. Anyway, I digress.

Another thing we discussed was my mom doing the loud sobbing as I mentioned in my Christmas memory regarding my feelings meaning nothing. I asked her if she recalled that occurring often and she did – she used a better descriptor for it I think “wailing.” My mom would straight up wail to manipulate everyone. We discussed how so very fake it sounded – like I don’t know how she every thought we actually believed she was crying.

This is where a big realization came to me, though. I’ve had issues with crying for decades. I always hated crying in front of people, but especially guys. I also really hate crying in front of kids, especially my kids.

I literally used to run away from arguments or whatever if I felt like I was going to cry in front of a partner. When I first started my writing and processing memories back in 2015, I decided that I didn’t cry in front of guys specifically because of the abusive relationship I was in with Wyatt and I needed to be seen as stoic/strong in front of men after that. Later, when I remembered the Christmas memory; I recalled that the wailing was so frequent, and made me so uncomfortable every time, so I connected that as a root cause to not crying in front of my kids specifically.

Well – my sister has very similar aversions to crying, including feeling trggered by other people crying, and we realized that in my case I was coding my root causes incorrectly – they weren’t two different things. I was uncomfortable with crying/showing too many emotions well before Wyatt. Sure, I recognized the specific implications of crying in front of my kids as not wanting them to be uncomfortable, or feel manipulated into believing my tears/emotions must be catered to due to their guilt in something, specifically as mom had pointedly done to us… It is all an aversion in general to crying because of how we were made to feel when my mom would “cry.” (Maybe even an unconscious aversion making sure people know we’re crying, or just letting them see lest they think we’re manipulating them?)

Wyatt was a root cause for sure for more than enough negative subconscious reactions/anxieties/behaviors in me, for sure. But I can forgive him this one thing I’ve blamed on him these last 8 years, I think.

I have even more I could say, I think but again it’s been a long one and it’s late… so. I’m just going to list a couple of things here so I don’t forget they were mentioned when I get back to thinking on things…

Ulice said that she found it so strange that my family fended for themselves for dinner/didn’t really sit and eat together when I was a teen. Religious life in general. Evangelical teen bullshit I spewed at my sister. Being lied to about what was occurring with my sister during the abusive relationship mentioned previously and shit I said to her based on mom’s lies. I’ve apologized for so much nonsense I’ve said to her in the past… smh. I am mortified at myself. Sisters – panic attacks, anxiety, depression etc – we all have it. “Airing dirty laundry” and mom gossiping, no tact/grace, very judgmental. Her rolling her eyes… My first period. My 16th birthday. Cruel jokes in general and dismissive of hurt feelings. Emotional regulation and being a mom myself.

Aside from mom stuff – Maja wondered how different I’d be if I had just stayed in Sweden. Got into some heavy stuff, I’ll write on that later.