My parents readily and enthusiastically volunteered from the beginning of high school that they would pay for my college education, particularly if I got into the University of California system. Eventually, at 24, I applied to Berkeley and got in, I was again assured to just study and give it my all and do the best I could. I took 15-18 units a semester in addition to being in at least 2, often more, plays per term. The plays were 2 or 3 credits themselves, and I racked up a lot of credits doing theater.
Shortly after the house I was staying in was burglarized, I was about to begin my final year of undergraduate the next semester. I was very depressed at that time and was in some very difficult emotionally taxing plays on top of that. I felt so very close to burn-out and had decided to focus on my academics the next year only, just to get through it. And then my mother called me up and told me they would not be paying for my last year at Berkeley.
This was typical, broken promises such as these. Especially around money, over which they always seemed to panic.
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I was never taught how to deal with money, never let into the family finances, huge amounts were spent upon themselves, and I wore synthetic bargain clothes until my mother finally realized they were giving me a rash. Money was secretive and guilt-inducing, and certainly *not* transparent or clear. Undefined boundaries were set up surreptitiously around money long after agreements had been established, and without any warning or communication. Crises would appear all of a sudden, but when I had a crisis and when expectations had to be changed by life events, guilt was bestowed upon me. They could pull the carpet, but if we dared to have change of heart about something, we were to bear it for the rest of our lives and be reminded again and again about it. Seriously, something was clearly wrong with me. (I marvel that they never deduced once that it might have been their parenting, or if they did, they were so terrified to look at it that they shut it down.)
There was an utter and complete vacuum around supporting money issues. It was a tool for compliance and manipulation. Disowning was easy for my folks, it was another version of punishment. Having it lorded over me at every turn made it difficult to even want to do anything with any money, it became dark and hidden and I became even more undeserving. Eventually, I hated money and everything that went with it.
Over time and with effort, this state of mind has changed, but I had to find my own way back, in which money is no longer a tool to use on other people, especially those who are weaker and controllable. it is one of those things over which I need to remain vigilant in my mindfulness toward my children. They know about how our money is doing, what it is doing, we don't hide it.
When University went kaput, I was half relieved and half disappointed, and numb underneath. I was surprised, but not that surprised. I knew somewhere deep down that this might happen at any time, with no warning, no accompanying mental support, no explanation, no specifics, no effort at helping me understand, only panic. Again, because I still wanted to believe we were the perfect family and they would never treat me like this, I was still surprised. How could such a great family do this kind of stuff?
By that time, I was so entirely burnt out from performing in up to three plays per semester while trying to manage 15-18 academic units at the same time, that I was ready to let go of it, given I knew there would be no support behind me. I mean, really, the degree was for them anyway, and so were all the plays and my stretching myself to ridiculous limits, all to make them proud and retain their approval, which was readily and easily and often removed.
If they weren't going to help me anymore, I was too tired to do the work and school thing and finish my theater degree, and continue to do plays.
I told my mother okay and dropped out of UC Berkeley and began working at a local technology company shortly thereafter. Those were dark years of my life, overall. The feeling of personal failure was tangible every day, but on the other hand, I also felt very good bringing home a decent paycheck and being good at my job.
I know they knew they screwed up. But they could never admit it to me. They were so racked with their own guilt and shame, they turned it into my fault, yet another disappointment I was to them. And as a topper, they even began treating me as though I'd been taking advantage of them all this time, even though they'd offered to pay years before I ever attended. Later they seemed to want to remedy that, but made no verbal interactions on that note. They did, however, help me pay for my life when the company I was working for folded. This was guilt-pay, I'm sure.
By the time I was nearing the end of high school, my brother was seriously joining in my parents' chorus. Yeah, the dude who spent my entire childhood sticking needles in his veins, ignoring me, being that strange weird-smelling guy I had desperately wanted to connect with when I was so little, who came into the house and left without saying a word for days and months on end. Suddenly he had all sorts of illicit money and was utterly full of himself, drugged out or not. He was with his second wife at that time. I remember going to their wedding and reception, and, being much shorter than they are, I could see the thick white rings of cocaine around their nostrils growing throughout the entire event. Yeah, I had really great "role models" for solving problems and dealing with anxiety and the wounds from having narcissistic parents.
[It is interesting to note that I went through a drug phase as well, as did my sister. It wasn't just part of the 60s culture we were growing up in, it was also an effort to self-medicate, I'm certain of it. Drugs could turn off that pain that we all keenly felt deep inside. Some of us still have that pain turned off, and just act out in ways that illustrate the depth of The Family's dysfunction. Alcohol has replaced drugs now, and is little better.]
After I'd completed high school, my brother contributed $5K to me going to New York to go to a drama school there. I will be very clear here: he said nothing about pay back. In fact, my understanding was that it was a gift. When I caught a 12 week case of bronchitis and had to leave the school, which I did not enjoy at all by the way, I came home to more shame. And suddenly, I was supposed to pay him back. Out of the blue. Because I hadn't finished, I was now owing him the money, I was 18 and $5k in the hole already to my brother. He could have gone to Wall Street.
This is the kind of manipulation my family is stupendous at. Inexplicable changes of mind, blaming, fault, disappointment, broken promises and fear of shaming. My brother had succeeded at becoming quite the narcissist himself. And like my father, he has never allowed himself his emotions, either. Other than anger and being nasty to people behind their backs.
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The real irony about that New York drama school is that my father's voice spoke to me constantly during my brief tenure there, telling me that the teachers were lousy and many of them were bitter and angry; and that the students were self-indulgent and astonishingly self-centered unthinking foolish people. I have absolutely no idea what *I* actually thought of them, because my father's voice inside me was so mortified at the nature of the school and the students. My ever-present in-brain dad and me just couldn't fathom the tall skinny girl going on a 7-day tea diet, and then fainting on day 4 at school, and having all the other students fawning around her, telling her how brave and great she was for starving her already starved body to the point of passing out. It was lip-curling, especially with my dad's voice unendingly offering up its opinions in great swaths of disgust and judgment. I couldn't get his voice out of my head. I couldn't stand the school. The voice and the school did not get along and I kept thinking how disapproving *he* would be of all this. I was living an internal battle and having no idea how to win it either way. (It's taken decades to remove my dad's voice.)
Regardless, my father's voice in my head as one of the reasons for my wanting to leave was not be something I could share, because they would have probably been offended enough to have slapped me at my "arrogance," and then they'd have told me to simply "stop it" (as if I could turn it off at will, how I wish I could have).
The money stuff really put a foul taste in my mouth around any higher education. There was a burgeoning online world of information beginning to sprout up everywhere, and I felt I could do a better job learning what I needed to know.
And as far as school goes, I have one year left, if I want to get my bachelors. Do *I* care about a bachelors myself truthfully? No, I do not. BAs have little meaning today, real world experience is what I prefer. Also, self-directed learning. I've learned far more out of school than I learned in school.
I've studied a Ph.D.'s worth on the science of autism, and quite a lot on parenting and emotional development, and I don't need someone else to validate it for me. It's good enough that I know what I know. At this stage of the game, I think that jumping through hoops for the approval of another person is just something I can no longer do. And isn't that the very definition of school? I would like to reinvest in myself because I have much to offer, but at the moment, writing this all out seems the kind of investment that's best for me.
Also, kind of sadly, I now hold a distrust for academics in the humanities. I'm not sure I can ever look at people who choose to teach quite the same way. I will always ask myself, why is it they are really doing this? It is for the ones they are teaching, or purely for the material at the expense of their humanity? Could it be for themselves and to be in control of others? Universities certainly have no shortage of narcissists walking around.
Were I to even attempt academia for any reason, it would be in the sciences. I have great difficulty pondering a humanities field of any sort, even though that may have been a more natural fit, given my father hadn't worked so hard to force it down my throat. Alas, my father kind of marked all over that territory and it is highly unappealing to me. I certainly don't want to be compared to him, as many people seem to like to do with parents and their kids who've chosen similar professions. Because if I am compared to him, then it's a competition again, and he will be given credit for the good things I do, and I will be given credit for only the "bad" things I do. And that sucks and is so far from reality, I don't know why our society likes to credit parents for their children's accomplishments. I have no wish to be anything like him on so many levels.
He was a good poet. There is no doubt there, an artist who suffered for the sake of his art, and made everybody else suffer, too, especially his children. We were weak, easily controlled through fear of violence, and according to him, blank slates upon which he could write whatever he wished. Is poetry really worth harming the life of another individual?
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The cost was very high and we paid a big price for him to feel successful and in control. As well, for my mother to hold up the academic's wife role image so prominently, she sacrificed her relationship with both her daughters. Money was just another tool to do that with. They talked about the evils of money, something of which they were not immune to themselves, although they'd never admit it.
And, also sadly, the money thing is all wrapped up in the meaning of school for me. All their blustering about how enlightened people were educated and intelligent and how important that was, and how much better they were (not in so many words, but that was the clear implication). But in the end, the education they demanded of me wasn't as important as their basic human money troubles, after all.
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I would be much more grateful for what they had done for me financially, had they been open and clear, and communicated at all (which they never did, they lied, they hid truths, and when they died, several repeat purchases of the same items were found in their possession, probably amounting to thousands of dollars in wasted money, and that's only the tip of the iceberg). Communication at all would have been nice, and without the shame connected to it would have been the right thing to do. Money with shame makes money feel pretty horrible overall. The Beatles said "Money don't buy me love." No, it don't. And it don't buy respect, or approval, and it doesn't replace real support, or fix broken promises or lacking communication or poor parenting.
"A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use." ~ Rip van Winkle by Washington Irving
"In the narcissist's surrealistic world, even language is pathologized. It mutates into a weapon of self-defense, a verbal fortification... Narcissists (and, often, by contagion, their unfortunate victims) don't talk, or communicate. They fend off. They hide and evade and avoid and disguise. They lecture and hector and preach." ~ The Weapon of Language, by Dr. Sam Vaknin (an author I do not always agree with for full disclosure's sake, but this has a ring of truth to it)* * *
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