My parents made it very clear to me at a young age that my existence was a major hindrance. I was a very difficult child and according to my father, my "terrible twos" finally ended when I was seven, but were replaced by my either being a "smart mouth" or "philosopher" (as my mother had told me often). My parents had fought often from the beginning about issues that stemmed from their relationship originally being an extramarital affair but I will acknowledge that my behavior and numerous health problems didn't make things easier.
I remember during my tantrums, around age 4, I walked to my dad and tried to hug him. I said "I love you," but he told me, "Shut up. You only love yourself." It was something he'd repeat often when I was younger. I had difficulty learning how to write. He wasn't home a lot because of his job, but when he was, he tried to teach me to write and read (I didn't learn to do either until kindergarten). I was very uncoordinated and couldn't hold pencils or chalk "correctly" and when he wrote a letter for me to copy, I would just draw a ball of scribbles. He would get in my face and ask me, "Are you ret*d?" This repeated itself when he tried to teach me advanced math when I was in second grade. My parents argued frequently, my father supposedly cheated on my mother a lot, and sometimes my mother would run off and not come home for days. My father would blame me for that. When I was six, he gave me a speech about abortions, what they are, and why my mother should have had an abortion when she got pregnant with me.
When I was younger, my dad seemed invested in teaching me "smart" things that would help me do good in school. When he retired and we moved, my parents stopped caring about things that concerned education and were disgusted when I did well in school. Due to my father's job and position, we lived in a rather competitive environment and it was important that we looked "the best," even superficially. When my dad retired and we moved, there was no reason to look good to others anymore. Or, it was too expensive, if you consider going to college. So in high school, I did well, ranking at the top of my class the first 3 years (I had a breakdown and ended up losing that spot my senior year), but when I told my parents of my progress, my father ripped my transcript apart in my face and told me it didn't change the fact that I am a "sh*thead and that your grades do nothing but show that you're only good at sitting on your a** and rattling facts that don't matter." When I went to college, my dad asked me at a party my parents held at their house as to why I didn't have a 4.0 GPA. I thought this was an odd question because my parents never cared about how I did in school after 4th grade. I told him my GPA, which at the time was a 3.85. He laughed and told me my degree "doesn't mean sh*t because your school makes it easy for all the Hispanics who attend." My university does have its problems (I think it dumbs down the curriculum, is dishonest about many things, and has low admission standards. There are also issues I experienced with reverse discrimination), but I won't discuss that in detail here.
My mother was worse in that she'd mimic what my father would say and add her own twist to it. "The reason why you're mentally ill is because you don't believe in God" (at the time I was exploring other Christian denominations. I was questioning Catholicism and didn't like it), or "One day, when you get your head fixed, you can write a book about how your mother helped you recover and how you learned the best from her." I think she may have NPD. I was only allowed to apply to 3 colleges, and if I went elsewhere, my father would have removed me from his insurance policy. I needed the insurance to get a necessary surgery to fix a potentially serious defect and didn't think better to explore other options like Medicaid. However, my mother lied about that and told her friends that I had "gotten into Harvard but chose to stay here to support us." ...not exactly true. Throughout high school she would say things to destabilize me. She claimed she was cheating on my dad with my high school English teacher. Then it was the football coach. I ignored it but it was very immature of her. Note that she worked in a convenience store with kids who went to high school with me at the same time. I was a Hermione Granger type who annoyed pretty much everyone, but I don't think that warranted my mother to tell me that I "should be gang raped" or "the scholarship you got to college was only given to you because they felt sorry for you. Give it to someone who needs it." She was only mimicking what the other kids may have been saying, and I know that because her English is not very good and the language she used was like the language kids my age spoke with.
I am on "no contact" terms with my immediate family. My extended family sometimes talks to me. They've been weirded out by my family for years, but I guess it wasn't really their business.
These things have affected me and still affect me to where I'm not really sensitive to when someone tells me about something mean another person said. Things that they've told me repeatedly seemed normal to me at a time, to where I myself would say some things to people I was annoyed by and not realize that socially, what I said was unacceptable. In retrospect, the person I was in my first serious relationship with was a lot like my father and things of a similar meanness was said to me repeatedly. I guess because of that romantic element of the relationship I felt a bit more hurt when my first boyfriend said similar things.
28 Mar 2012, 11:42 pm
