17 - Mindfully Myself and Parenting Choices

©Miriam A. Mason

I can say here that I am without words to describe the gratitude I feel towards my choices around parenting. I would never dream of asking my children to stop their joy, especially not to make them feel worse! The only reason would be other joy. 

Corrected Memes

My father would balk at the fact that the kids get the big TV in the front room (or that there is a TV at all in the front room, actually). It is astonishing how far I have moved from his variety of parenting. My children's joy is contagious, infectious and perfect. It's about me sacrificing without any issue for my children, it's about my *relationship* with my children which takes priority over any other factor. No, my kids don't run rampant over me, or own the place, in fact, they are incredibly polite, helpful, and thoughtful and loving. They have never been told "stop crying, or I'll really give you something to cry about." They have never been laughed at, or taunted, or teased, or tormented or ridiculed. That are not hit, or sent to their rooms (my younger son doesn't even have his own room, he chooses to remain with us because clearly he needs to still). 

They have never been sexually assaulted. 

They have never been beat up. 

They know they are safe.

And, they are extraordinarily good at being my best teachers in the entire universe.

My movement this far from my parents as even a remote possibility is something that never would have crossed their minds. They would interpret my parenting as "permissive" or "too easy" or "not enough hard work." No public schooling. But science bears out my position on this more and more each day. Working a child harder does not make a better person. And it turns off the person the child is supposed to be. And leaves the child second-guessing themselves their whole lives. Whether at school or at home. 

How I was schooled left me only a few happy years, and most of the subjects, I've completely forgotten because the abuse and fear was so intense.

I found school soul-crushing, much as John Taylor Gatto describes in his book (available online for free) "The Underground History of American Education." And the soul crushing at home served to reinforce that fear and self-doubt and paralysis. 

I have learned that for my children as well, play is far more productive in their ability to learn and function and flourish. School would have crushed their souls, too, and was beginning to until I took them out.

I know that I have already successfully moved away from my parents' paradigm of criticism and judgment into one of unconditional love and mutual respect. And it is deeply satisfying. I am not perfect, but I am mindful, and aware, and I make mistakes which I deeply regret and I tell my children so, and apologize for having screwed up. I am the parent I needed so badly. And that is amazing.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Survivors-of-Child-Abuse/279131948791470

Because I come from a narcissistic family and began my parenting journey on that note initially, I must remind myself all the time to remain mindful. To pay attention and when I really can't handle a thing to gently tell my children I need space for mom to chill out for a bit. I think of this often, check my behavior, center myself, ask why I am saying or doing a certain thing, and weigh it against what I experienced, in order to consciously change the way my brain works in relation to my children. In a very real coherent way, they have been hugely responsible for my healing. The fact that they have autism makes them even more sensitive than I am. People say children with autism don't feel empathy. I beg to differ, and in a very big way. They feel *too much* empathy and must shut it down or it becomes physically painful. The relation of their bodies to their minds is even more connected and important to pay close attention to, for the world can be an overwhelming place.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/GentleParentingUK

It is on ME, not them, to find out what their needs are in a given situation, so that we can balance all our needs and I can remain in a respectful place. I do screw up and yell sometimes, but it's the exception, and I always let my kids know I screwed up. They know I am human and make mistakes. They also know they can make mistakes.

Source: http://www.facebook.com

Being that narcissism runs in families, I will have to always remain mindful of myself, my intention, my needs, and separate them from what my children truly need themselves. This is something my parents could never do. They had all their shame tied up into all their children and we all suffered as a result.

I know I've changed, but I can always get better. I've noticed since writing this a shift in my own feelings when one of my kids comes in with a problem. Instead of wanting to "fix" it, think of solutions and problem solve with them, I wait and listen first. I listen a lot more. And Listen. And no longer open my mouth unless I am asked. How I wish my parents had done the same. 

Source: http://www.facebook.com

I am so grateful for my children, this healing, and the support of the people I love around me. It's made this change into a reality.  I am also grateful to myself for noticing and choosing to make the change and for working at it every day.

Source: http://www.facebook.com

In an odd way, I think my father quite literally verbally (and sometimes physically) smacked the possible narcissist out of me. Since I wasn't the Golden Child except for brief periods, I was more often subject to lecture and criticism. Which is why the Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents article resonated with me so deeply.

The truth is, I would never want to be like him. I would never want to be known for having a great sense of humor, writing a bunch of books, and also hurting my children for the rest of their lives. Because from inside, where I was, that is how it went.

Every single day, now, mindfulness remains a primary focus for me. My relationship to my children trumps all other considerations, and respect flows in both directions.

I do not wish to repeat his mistakes, nor my mother's. My children -- all children -- deserve so much better. 

• • •

16 - Pushing Forward Falling Backward, And Then There's Shakespeare

©Miriam A. Mason

[Note: this blog really is a stream of consciousness and does not follow any logical argument.  In fact, I'm leaving it, because it would drive my dad nuts.]

I want to get past this hard stuff and into reflecting fondly on some of the more joyous moments of my childhood, even those which included my parents. After having written this, I know that I thought there were good moments, too. Dancing on my father's feet to Duke Ellington (his choice of music -- jazz from the late 1930s only, or classical, that was it), listening to my father's voice characterizations from books (his choice there, too, although he could have me in stitches at times, too), the nights he carried my mom around the kitchen as she tried to clear the table and do dishes and laughed herself (and me) until we were crying, it was so funny. Of course all these were characterized by his likes, by his preferences. Even so, I know there was a part of my father that clearly wanted my approval, as well, but just didn't understand the dynamics of the roles he'd preset for us. We had many funny moments, but they were defined by him.
 

Source: http://www.facebook.com

Nonetheless, these are the memories I would prefer to have and hold. But when I do hold them, I remember them as conditional because they can never be separated out as pure moments of shared joy. Too much control, not enough shared equally between us. Such moments will always be tainted by varying levels of conditionality. And the moments of being unafraid were always in the shadow of the moments of being afraid. Because the moment to be afraid was always coming, ever present. As I have said, through no choice of my own, shame was (and sometimes still is) my closest associate. And that is tragic, for any child. For any human. And creates a lifetime of struggling to overcome. 

I will work on this, talk to professionals, read, read and read some more, write, think a lot, process and process. That's what all this is about. I see a therapist who I adore and who has been encouraging me to take baby steps toward making this blog public and available to everyone. But to start slow as I am. Each time I post one of these entries, I find myself shaking and wobbly. So, tiny steps. 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/lissarankin

At 16, I went on Outward Bound (a whole other story worthy of its own entry). One of the boys there was incredibly sweet and supportive. He told me "inch by inch and it's a cinch, but yard by yard is very hard." Yeah. That.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/deppresion?ref=br_rs

I find as I am writing I am getting my own Self back, devoid of the voices from my past (mostly, I hope). I know they formed me in part and I cannot escape from that as long as I live. There's no such thing as a brain-eraser... yet. But my parents and their entire process no longer rule my actions, my feelings, my opinion of myself. None of them have any power over me any longer, because I get to decide for myself who is and who isn't in my life.

My father's voice in my head has faded over time, and my voice has evolved from from it, and then rebelled against it. Back and forth and back and forth, like a pendulum. Life used to be a constant effort to not shame myself, to not feel shame and guilt and pain over and over again, to not take the "small stuff" and turn it into my personal failures and shortcomings. To not wait for the next moment I will "be in trouble" from whoever happens to be in my life. 

Again, my 21st birthday was like the first day of personal hell for me. Here I was supposed to be an adult with all the commensurate expectations and responsibilities placed upon me, and I felt nowhere near adulthood. I felt completely unprepared either emotionally or logistically to handle the big world by myself. I felt my birth was a time of mourning, that I had no worth or value in the world other than my parents' definition of it. At that age (and for many many years after that) I heard nothing but my father's voice in every interaction, everywhere I went, coloring each and every experience in my mind. My voice was gone. It was lost. It had never been.
 

Source: http://www.facebook.com

The child inside me was screaming for justice, to tell the truth. It seemed to be brought on by a change I made. It began to affect all other aspects of my life and my ability to function, as though inside, my small girl was throwing (as my son calls it) a "rage fit." It started when I recently began meditating, using a simple mantra. The mantra reminds me that I love myself exactly as I am and that I am worthy of everything I want. I've been doing 2 minutes every single day.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/MeditationMasters

The more I did this meditation, the closer I seemed to come to a break, as if the never-healed child inside me heard that mantra and woke up and started crying hysterically. At first, I really didn't understand what was happening, or why I as suddenly having so much trouble just functioning among my friends, online, in real life. I was afraid to go anywhere or be with those I trusted most (outside my family). My family is like my little sanctuary and for some blessed reason, I can function with them even in the worst circumstances. As realization began to kick in, I decided to get help. Unlike my parents, who would panic under such circumstances, I choose to hold the little Miriam and comfort her without judgment, with unconditional love and acceptance. Knowing that just being she (and I) is enough. And that is where this writing comes from.
 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442

The goal is being able to look back without feeling caught. It doesn't always feel attainable. It's incredibly easy to fall back into detesting myself, thinking, wow, Miriam is a weird name, an adult's name, how could she deserve to be held like a child? It can be hard to keep holding her!
 
It's a weird place to be in. Caught between two such opposing worlds. 

Source: http://www.facebook.com Artist: unknown

Eventually, maybe I can also share even more of the moments of joy, but I can't forget that they were always tendered by what defined my father's or my mother's joy. For if I do, I lose track of what I am and the boundaries again blur between myself and my parents. 

Source: http://www.facebook.com

There was one instance in which my mother totally gave of herself to me. It was when my dad was out of town, because I honestly don't think he'd have permitted it. One summer morning, I woke up and my mom had made pancakes. While at breakfast, she asked me if I'd like to find a friend and she would drive us down to the beach and boardwalk to play in Santa Cruz. I was literally stunned into silence at first. And then she asked again, and I was so elated and thrilled. This was the exception, though, not the rule, and it was because dad didn't know about it. Perhaps she was just as scared as I was in that regard. That day and that day alone, was the first and last time she ever rode on a ride at a park with me, and shared it with me openly. She laughed like a young girl and ate ice cream and cotton candy with us. It was an amazing day and it stands out. 

Source: http://www.facebook.com

There should have been and could have been so many more. But it's just one memory. It should be thousands of memories of shared joy. But most of the time my mother was tripping over herself to please my father, the king of his own personal ivory tower, with us as his subjects.
 
To my father, sharing joy was reading (among other heavies) Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Jane Austin, Homer, Chaucer, Pope, Milton, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, and mostly, Shakespeare. 
 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamShakespeareAuthor

I was really able to enjoy Shakespeare with him, once I understood the language. I have an uncanny knack for speaking Shakespearean pros and the poetry. To my father, it was complex language with brilliant hidden meanings. To me, Shakespeare was like music. I knew how to sing his music. Which is part of what motivated my short theatrical career. But Shakespeare was an interesting dichotomy for me. And it's impressive now, how like my father his favorite Shakespearean tragedy was.  

Source:  Royal Shakespeare Company
Lear in all his majesty with his three daughters

My father's favorite Shakespearean quote to repeat over and over to me was from King Lear: "Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." And like King Lear, another narcissist, it mattered not the unconditional love Cordelia carried for her father, even if in only one part of her heart, as she tells him, what mattered is the ego and image of the father. My father's tragedy was in telling me I needed to lie to him to make him happy and approve of me. The irony here is a little hard to articulate.  

Source: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/

The other line he used on me quite often from that play was "her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman." Lear says this while Cordelia lies dead in his arms.  How insecure that one made me! I worked hard to make sure my voice was as low as I could get it, for apparently, according to the only person in the world who mattered, it was an excellent in a woman. These were some of the standards by which my father seemed to judge so much. 

Source: http://www.mckellen.com/

For those unfamiliar with King Lear, there is so much sorrow and pain within it.  It is probably the saddest of the tragedies.  The play is set up when an aging King Lear decides he will divide his kingdom up into three equal parts, one for each of his three daughters. The two older daughters, Goneril and Regan, lie to their father, and tell him exactly what he wants to hear, that they love him beyond anything else. When it's the youngest daughter, Cordelia's, turn, she tells him that she loves him as a daughter loves a father and no more. And that surely if she loved him with all of her heart, she would have no room for loving a husband in the future. Lear falls into a rage and divides the kingdom up between his two older daughters and banishes Cordelia. This proves disastrous, as the two older sisters mount a war against Lear himself, and both Cordelia and Lear (and his two other daughters, in fact just about everybody) are finally killed. Nice model, there, to hold up for your kid. 

Source: http://www.usatoday.com
"her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman."

What makes the irony of this even clearer is that my father referred to the error as being that of Cordelia's for speaking the truth, not of Lear's, or his older daughters. In other words, the daughter should always placate the ego of the father. When I (and many others) look at that scene, we do not see the mistake of a daughter. We see the rampant and grossly overblown ego of an old man, who manages to destroy his entire family over said ego. This rings a lot of bells, and points at the truth of my father's enormously overblown sense of self-importance.

Lear, dad, really? This is the model you most admire? A tragedy in which everyone ends up dying because of an old man's ego?
 

Source: http://www.mckellen.com/

Another of his favorite quotes was also from Lear, and apropos here, here as well:

"O reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is as cheap as beast's." 

~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

Meaning, in other words, life is cheap, there are important people, and all the other people are unimportant and disposable (aka, worthless, beasts, base). That sounds about right. Turns out, though, dear father, that I am an extra person as you would choose to define a life. You have no right to attempt to define my life, or the lives of others, and you never did. You are in no position to judge any of those people you summarily dismiss. None of those lives belonged to you and they never have. Not even mine. 

Source: http://www.facebook.com

For he lacked entirely the ability to feel or experience empathy towards anyone else. Even with animals in our family. He treated them with amazing disrespect, and absolutely lacked any understanding of how to relate to them.  Our animals hated my father and, for the most part, he hated them.  They were ownerships.  I don't think it ever occurred to my father to look into the eyes of another animal and see them as a living breathing being.  They were sometimes funny and mostly inconvenient property which could be used as amusing toys at times.

Oh look, more stories.  One more shorty:

My father's response to "I have a headache" was "Here, I'll punch you in the stomach so you feel better." I would ask, annoyed, "How will that make me feel better?" My father would respond as though he was finding himself very very funny indeed, "You'll forget about your headache because your stomach will hurt." Perhaps it might have been funny, but also it was dismissive, minimizing and violent. And repetitive. That was his automated response if I mentioned pain anywhere. The man didn't have an microgram of empathy in his pinky finger nail. 

Just like his beloved King Lear.  He asks you to feel profound empathy on his behalf.  But has none for you in return.
 

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/King_Lear_allotting_his_Kingdom_to_his_three_daughters,_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron.jpg

* * *

15 - All Grown Up, or So They Told Me

©Miriam A. Mason

By the time I was 21, I knew I didn't feel at all like an adult. I wept and felt depressed for my birthday, and every birthday thereafter. There was no reason to celebrate my life, my birth. Nobody else had, why should I? I was a complete failure, saw things and felt things that didn't align with my father's position and was therefore doomed to live in mediocrity according to him.

That 21st birthday was not a joyous time. It should have been a huge celebration, and big excitement for what was to come. But it wasn't. It was horrible. Never having received the nurturing unconditional love and support that provides a child with enough self-love to be successful and happy, no matter what they choose to be, I felt groundless, and frightened to try my hand at anything in which I could potentially fail. It literally paralyzed me by the time I was supposed to be a young adult.
 
My parents approved of theater to a point, and would have gladly worn the golden feather of my making it in their caps, if I had, but also told me on numerous occasions that I had chosen a flimsy emotionally motivated career, that wasn't serious or really real, especially if I had flopped. I couldn't win in either case.
 
While I enjoyed being on stage, and my parents approved of it as long as I was doing the right kind of plays, I also struggled to connect with the people who had chosen theater themselves. In my father's own voice inside my head, they seemed overly self centered, vindictive, gossipy and in my heart, they felt incredibly unkind. I felt that in my soul, I was (and am) essentially a kind person. I didn't want to be with other theater people, I really didn't want to do it, didn't want it badly enough, because I hadn't really wanted it to begin with.  It was an attempt at making a career of which my father would be proud. Because if I tried it, really gone the course, I'd lose either way, my parents taking credit for me if I succeeded and criticizing me unendingly if I failed. I was going to lose in either scenario, and, in fact, felt I already had. 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/lissarankin

With ballet, I was quite good by 14, but the same, absolutely no emotional support from parents to allow me to remain grounded and healthy while I tried it. And my experience with ballet also ended on a terrible emotional note during which I received no support at all from my mother. The silliness of a teenage crush and another adult who didn't understand set me off on a common teenage experience of emotional trauma and unrequited love.  But it became a massive mountain to my mother that was enough for her to pull me from ballet forever and discourage me from ever going back. 

She told me later that my ballet master had called and told her that he'd had such great dreams for me. I was already busy trying to live my parents' dreams of me. I seemed to be living everybody's dreams but my own.  I didn't even recognize my own anymore.  I knew I wanted to live alone on an abandoned tropical island with animal friends, hunting fish, running through the forest, climbing trees, surviving the wildenerness... and being away from most everybody people-ish.

 Leaving ballet was just as well. My parents wanted me to be graceful like a ballerina and I was growing quite large breasts by that time. George Ballenchine's mentally unwell notion of a stick woman equals beauty was (and still is) all powerful and anorexia was just beginning, although I didn't partake. Even though I'd been removed from ballet, I still dreamed of dancing.  But I realized that my dream of being a ballerina would die as my breasts grew far beyond the acceptable limit.  It was a private death, for my mother minimized it; whereas dance culture did not. I still miss dance. Only the dance part. Nothing else. And I'm not even sure if my loving it was because my parents wanted me to love it, or because I really did. So tangled a web they wove. 

Sad Clown, my first solo before moving to a professional studio.

Writing? Well, how could I possibly follow the act that was my father? The poet, rhetoric professor of a department at UC Berkeley that he helped to found. Published many books of poetry, translation and other writing. Emeritus, Guggenheim winner, etc. etc. etc. Isn't he the ultimate? In order to write, I had to write as he did, or very similarly, and to have followed his path into academia which I did not really want at all, even though I convinced myself I did, because deep down I wanted to be the Golden Child. But it was all so fake. I could not bring myself to do it. How could I write inauthentically in order to please my father? There was nothing to say. I felt empty.  Nothing came out.

Source: http://www.facebook.com

I ended up having all sorts of varying careers, from word processor, to desktop store manager, to executive assistant, to technical writer, to graphic artist, to online forum coordinator/manager. In the last area is where I had the most fun and where I met my beloved and truly supportive husband. I actually don't have a particular "thing" I do. It's nebulous and varied. And I'm pretty good when I put my mind to a thing. But I didn't get a PhD, which is what he had wanted. And I never will, because I do not want to do it and even less now that I understand the psychological dynamic that was playing out in our family.  I don't want to give him the satisfaction.  I want to write without having had to follow him, if I write.
 
It would have to be mine, not his. And until I figured out how I was given a false voice, as demonstrated in these writings, I really couldn't find the reason, inspiration or passion to write at all.  Because I was supposed to write under his terms, conditions, definitions and rules.  Set up for failure.

Writing this blog seems to have unplugged something in me and I find I am writing overall a lot more.  Empty gone, overfull now.  I guess I've been sitting on my tongue for a long long time.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442

If there is one other thing I am proud of being, it's being a better parent to my children than my parents were ever to me, by a wide margin.  Not at first, certainly.  At first I went along assuming what my parents had done was right and I hurt my children.  Especially my older son.  I haven't words to explain the level of gratitude I have that I didn't continue on that path.   I am not perfect, but I am mindfully and consciously working every day to become more aware, better, more conscious, more connected with my children.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/GentleParentingUK

Being a mother has been by far the most satisfying and life-changing of all my experiences. I consider that the most important job in the world, especially given my children have special needs and perceptions. They would have been destroyed in a family such as the one I was raised in. And my children have taught me more than my parents ever did about unconditional love. With such brilliant teachers, I haven't far to go to be reminded of the importance of conscious respectful parenting.

Saying it again.  Because it feels right to say it.  It has taken me until 51 to finally realize that I am a survivor of a psychological form of abuse. That I witnessed the abuse of both myself and my sister. We were girls, and were not taken nearly as seriously for our own loves than my brother had been. My brother was the Golden Child. My father spoke proudly of him even when he was a big time drug dealer making hundreds of thousands of dollars and living a wealthy life of addiction and money and dealing. My sister and I were always less than him, even then. And so big brother has, by default, become the next narcissist-in-chief. As far as I am concerned, he is welcome to that particular crown. 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/BattlingChronicPainandMentalHealthTogether

I truly wish him well in that regard. All the while knowing that in my speaking my truth, and telling my stories, he doesn't wish me well at all. 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/DomesticViolenceKills

* * *

14 - Creepmouse and Other Stories of My Father

©Miriam A. Mason

My father used to call me "Mim," "Mim-gee," "Littlest Daughter," and sometimes "Schmerecasa 2" (my brother and sister were Schmerecase and Schmerecasa 1, respectively, note the feminine endings).  My father had a wit.  None of these sweet nicknames of affection gave any clue to the kinds of abuses my father was capable of.  But he did have a wit, for what it's worth.  Perhaps after I've cleared out the stories that first must be told, I will have more inclination to write about how that could be fun, at times, as long as you were within his parameters.  Following are a few stories of the many many in our lives.  These (and others) have stuck out.  I imagine the stories will continue to come out even after a lot of the processing has been done.  Processing comes first.

Creepmouse and Other "Play"

It's relevant to go further into the type of play my father engaged us in. My father was very rough in his physical play with my sister and myself. I was also very much smaller than both my brother and sister, who were 12 and 7 years older than myself respectively. My father used his hand, with his long nails intact, to attack us and tickle, wrestle, pounce on, as a character he called "Creepmouse." Especially with my sister and myself. If he did it with my brother, I never witnessed it.
 
It was supposed to be fun. At least that was what he (and my sister, eager for his strokes at that age) kept saying.
 
If my father had been gentle and his hand had been soft and aware of my being, creepmouse might have been a very good memory for me. But I remember creepmouse as mostly bringing pain. And pain that made me cry and made my father laugh at me as I cried.
 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/chronicpaininfo

I would get so angry I would try to attack him and he'd laugh loudly right in my face (my sister would join in because at our house it was apparently very funny to see the smallest most defenseless child in pain) and hold me away from him with his hand on my head as I tried in vain to hit him back and screamed in rage and pain. Creepmouse almost never ended well. And somehow, it was always my fault for being too sensitive.

This is gaslighting taken to the extreme, and against a child.  There really is no excuse for this other than his own emotional immaturity and inability to empathize at all with his children.  This was a huge downfall of his. 

It was one way, however, to get my father to play with me. I used to beg him to play creepmouse with me. When I was very little, I was more of an oddity, really, and he really never played with me in any other way. He read to me when he felt like it, his choice of books, not mine. That even waited until I was older, so he could read the more advanced and academic books. But my father didn't play unless it was harsh, hard, and painful, and almost always, with creepmouse. After he'd hurt me, my mother would excuse him by saying he didn't realize his own strength, so he never was to blame, never apologized, never owned it as an emotionally mature adult could. Too boot, I was told I was too sensitive, and overreacting and yes... it was all my fault because I had asked him to play with me in the first place. This is what I mean by cowardice, actually from both parents. 

Who was the adult here? There wasn't one present during any of those interactions.
 
It was a great relief to me when I learned how to play cribbage, because I could play that with my father without being assaulted in the process, and he liked it, so he'd play.
 
However his play manifested, it always was deeply competitive, an "I got you, but you can't get me back, hahaha" game. He competed regularly with his kids and wanted us to compete against neighborhood kids and relatives' kids for who knows how much about a particular topic of parental choice. 

Source: http://www.facebook.com

Latin & Catastrophizing

In an act that was for him play and for me a directive, my dad tried to force me to learn latin at 10 years old to show off to another couple of families how smart we were (not "you," but "we"). Developmentally, I was not at all ready for such a thing. Funny thing here, he also tried to get T____ M______, a neighbor boy (11), to learn it with me and T____ never showed up again to our house. I wish I had been T____! And kudos to him for getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible. More about the M______ later.
 
My father even told me outright he wanted to show me off once I learned it. Show that his kid was smarter and better than his brother's kids, or other academic's kids. And again, nothing more than extension of his desires and wishes. My interest in this particular project of his was never addressed, not for a single moment. To ask me whether I wanted to or not... well, that was simply unacceptable to do for my father. If he had asked me and I'd said no (which I'd have been terrified to say, in truth), he'd then have played the guilt card and I would have been given his full disgust and disapproval once again. (When you poke her this way, if she doesn't jump just right, she's no fun to play with. This was my continued personal experience with my father.)

 
And when he gave me an adult completely dry translation assignment and I copied it instead of translating it, and he told me I had plagiarized and that it was a crime and how bad I was for doing it. He shamed me very deeply that day, I remember it well.  The best thing he could have done that never would have occurred to him was to tell me how impressed he was I'd tracked down the English translation of the Latin book he'd given me from his library.  Nope.  No points for ingenuity there, I had broken his rules.  He also turned off any inclination I might have had to really learn another language. If he had given me the Latin and the translation and asked me to see if I could find the similarities, my brain probably could have wrapped around that one at the time, even if I hadn't enjoyed it. But that was not my father. He wanted it perfect and he assumed I would be adult in my intellectual thinking far before I was ready to do so. And he trounced on (ironically with great drama and disdain) any emotional part of me that disagreed with his ideas. 

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Toilet Paper, Dental Floss & Dangerous Bathrooms

This section may bother some people who are sensitive to bathroom issues. Please be aware before you proceed.
 
When I was young, I had physiological problems with my digestion. I still do, but they have improved once I realized what they were and worked on ways to address them. I still do struggle even now. But when I was a child, it was very hard.  I had no parenting or medical support for the physical pain I endured as a child. I either had the runs or I was uncomfortably constipated and unable to completely evacuate (this is a very common symptom of chronic mercury poisoning, for those who do not know). I spent long periods of time pushing in the bathroom to try to make myself feel better. I even gave myself a permanent fissure pushing so hard because I always needed to hurry up. I also used a lot of toilet paper because it felt necessary to clean up, or I wouldn't get clean.
 
Without fail, if my father was home, within 15 minutes of my sitting on the toilet, my father's harsh knocking and voice would be at the door, "Miriam, c'mon, you've been in there too long, get out." "Okay, Dad, I'm trying!" A few minutes go by with me trying to clean off while my bowls were half in and half out, and again the knocking, only this time, seriously angry and harsh, "C'MON MIRIAM! GET OUT. RIGHT NOW!"
 
So... dirty or clean, finished or not, I had to come out and just deal with the physical pain of not being allowed to finish. I learned to live with the feeling of continuous incomplete evacuation.
 
Blog entry #12 at school, once I was bussed to the schools in from the 4th through the 6th grades in West Berkeley, the bathrooms and toilet seats were smeared with fecal matter, and girls sat on top of the swinging doors taunting anybody who came in to use the toilets and threatening to put their heads in the toilets. I learned to hold it. It was painful every day.

There weren't any safe bathrooms for a large swath of my childhood. Not at home, and certainly not at school. I became afraid to ask friends to use their bathrooms at their house for fear I would take too long there, too. There was no place in which I could truly relax and just go.  To this day, I have my own bathroom and I hide in it, knowing nobody can kick me out of it because we have another bigger bathroom.
 
Somehow, in some fashion, my parents figured out a way to blame my bowel problems on me, as well. Something was wrong with me, it was all in my head. Doctors (who are very poor bunch overall, to be frank) concurred, never bothered to look, xray, do any motility tests, anything.  It was in my head only.  I was broken and would just have to cope in the big bad world. It never occurred to them that I might have some sort of actual physiological problem and that some mineral oil or some magnesium might help me feel a whole lot better and make things flow more easily.
 
At this stage of life, I have actual structural damage for which I will require surgery, the most of it because of being unable to relax and go to the bathroom when I was a child. How things were in the bathroom for me directly resulted in this damage. I won't go so far as to name them, but they are significant and affect my life every day. 

One day soon, it will require a highly invasive surgery that I am none too eager to have done.
 
I really do covet my own little bathroom in our house. I am very uncomfortable in institutional types of bathrooms, and in homes where people aren't respectful. I stay away from those. It's still frightening to go into a bathroom that I have no control over.
 

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I really wish my mother and father had been empathetic and worked to find out what caused my gut pain and the terrible back and forth of my bowels when I was younger. And simple kindness would have gone such a very long way for me. 

It wasn't to be, not from my father.
 
Later, when we moved into a house with two bathrooms, my father laid claim to the big one and my mother and I were relegated to the little half bathroom, but at least I could go without being yelled at any longer. Oddly enough, even though I had been trained to not use a lot of toilet paper, our house drainage plugged up, worse than it ever had with my toilet paper of the past.
 
My father came down on me like a pile of rocks, "Miriam, you're still using too much toilet paper, we're going to have to call a plumber this time, you can't do that, the whole house is blocked, now nobody can use the bathrooms. You just can't do this any more, you can't! This is horrible and expensive and it's your fault," as he stomped away towards his study leaving my mother to contact the plumber.
 
What does the plumber find when he opens the pipes up? Dental floss. My father's dental floss. Which he had been flushing down the toilet every single day since the day we had moved in. When I found this out I looked at dad, and he looked embarrassed for himself, he expressed exactly zero regret at having blamed the entire thing on me.   In fact, he made light of it and teased me as though it was still my fault.  I was supposed to laugh at this.  Yes, I really was.  (His wit failed him profoundly at times.)

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After years of abuse in this regard, I wanted him to apologize to me for once, to own that he had made an assumption about me and immediately blamed me for something that wasn't even my fault. That was never to be. It was fine he made a mistake and pulled the shame card on me full force, but he could not own it or acknowledge it. If I'd asked him to apologize, he'd have probably told me I was overreacting, taking it too seriously. And he would remind me of the past and how anything like this had always been my fault before (even though a plumber had not ever been called previously, so we don't know for a fact it wasn't his dental floss at the other house, too). Nothing like a good gaslight to attempt to throw attention and blame back on to me. My father excelled at that. And that is what I personally define as shitty parenting. 

Being unable to own one's mistakes and blaming them on another, especially someone a great deal smaller and less powerful that you are is sublime narcissism.  I am saying here and now, he can stick all that dental floss up his ass and twirl on it.

"...but what if the narcissist happens to be your mother, father, or primary care giver? A parent who manipulates a child into meeting their own emotional needs is no longer 'charismatic, charming, exasperating or downright ludicrous', but cruel and abusive; the effects of which are rarely diagnosed or treated in the children or adult children of narcissists. The symptoms of a narcissistic family system are exactly what make a diagnosis so difficult − everything seems so perfect. '
"The emotional damage done by a narcissistic parent can, in many ways, be even more devastating to the healthy ego-development of a child than overt abuse, because it is so insidious. Although many of the same symptoms occur in the client's life that stem from the incest family, the alcohol troubled family, the physically abusive family, and so forth, none of those issues were present in the narcissistic family. In fact, the family of origin seems to have functioned quite well —at least on the surface. Like 'a shiny red apple with a worm inside', the narcissistic system hides its dysfunction, even from the people who grow up inside of it. This masking is what makes treatment so difficult; you cannot heal what you do not understand." ~ http://www.academia.edu/924834/Adult_Children_of_Narcissistic_Parents_The_Echoes

I think my father held on to his dysfunction because he believed his suffering (and the consequent suffering of those around him) would make him a better poet. And because it was for this cause of becoming a better poet, it was all selfless and justified, not dealing with any past pain and working through it to become healthier. I believe in my dad's mind, that would have removed his talent for poetry, and he was terrified of losing that special gift. I, for one, do not want to be a sacrificial lamb on the altar of poetry. Thank you, but no. 

I have my own quote about this: "Don't call suffering upon yourself.  Life will bring you plenty all on its own." ~Miriam Mason

I could cry during a Shakespearean tragedy, that was fine, even expected. He loved it when I got stuff he wanted me to get. But I could not cry because of anything he did or decided, or because I needed to be held and not judged, or because I needed to be loved for just being me. Because then he'd "really give you something to cry about." Or turn you over as the "bad child" to mom to take care of.  Some more on Shakespeare later, also.

“Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.” ~ Elizabeth Bowen

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