After many years of experience, I learned that what my father said about the women around him and what they felt was really just all about him and how he was feeling at the time.
If he said to me, as he once did, “Jenny, you are terrified of everything,” what that really meant is that he was feeling terrified of everything at that time. If he said, “Your mother is deeply anxious about the whole situation with this family and whether we will hold together,” it really meant that he was deeply pondering that issue, and unsure of what to do about it.
He made women express his feelings and concerns. Sometimes this was just by stating, “Your mother feels this,” or “You feel that.” Other times, he had to literally stand over us to try to make us feel it. “You are afraid of everything!” You are not coping! You cannot face reality!” he once boomed, standing over me, whilst I was quietly working away at the computer. “You disgust your me and your mother!” By that he meant that he was disgusted by the part of his own mind that he felt wasn’t operating properly, which is to say “not facing life.”
At first, I didn’t realise the gravity of the situation. My father was just having temper tantrums like he always did. These would surely blow over, like they normally did. Only now, he was truly trying to make us feel his terror, which seemed to carry with it the vulnerability of a two year old’s anguish had it needed to confront the world alone. I spoke cautiously to friends and neighbours: “My father said this to me: You are afraid of everything. You are not coping. Only, I think I am coping. What do you make of it?”
I was playing a game of Russian roulette, divulging this weapon to my acquaintances – and the pistol was firmly pointed at my own head.
“He said that about you?” they would go, humming and hawing, as they mulled over the depths of morality depravity of the young female colonial type. “Hmmm,” they went. “Hmmmmmmmm …..”
So it was very difficult to get help in relation to my father. It seemed to me women had little status in this culture – not like where I had come from, where I suspect I would have found people who would have listened.
If he said to me, as he once did, “Jenny, you are terrified of everything,” what that really meant is that he was feeling terrified of everything at that time. If he said, “Your mother is deeply anxious about the whole situation with this family and whether we will hold together,” it really meant that he was deeply pondering that issue, and unsure of what to do about it.
He made women express his feelings and concerns. Sometimes this was just by stating, “Your mother feels this,” or “You feel that.” Other times, he had to literally stand over us to try to make us feel it. “You are afraid of everything!” You are not coping! You cannot face reality!” he once boomed, standing over me, whilst I was quietly working away at the computer. “You disgust your me and your mother!” By that he meant that he was disgusted by the part of his own mind that he felt wasn’t operating properly, which is to say “not facing life.”
At first, I didn’t realise the gravity of the situation. My father was just having temper tantrums like he always did. These would surely blow over, like they normally did. Only now, he was truly trying to make us feel his terror, which seemed to carry with it the vulnerability of a two year old’s anguish had it needed to confront the world alone. I spoke cautiously to friends and neighbours: “My father said this to me: You are afraid of everything. You are not coping. Only, I think I am coping. What do you make of it?”
I was playing a game of Russian roulette, divulging this weapon to my acquaintances – and the pistol was firmly pointed at my own head.
“He said that about you?” they would go, humming and hawing, as they mulled over the depths of morality depravity of the young female colonial type. “Hmmm,” they went. “Hmmmmmmmm …..”
So it was very difficult to get help in relation to my father. It seemed to me women had little status in this culture – not like where I had come from, where I suspect I would have found people who would have listened.
1 comment:
Its very confusing when someone in your trusted circle--parents or friends, indicate that you are not acting as you feel, or feeling as you act.
It makes you wonder. Am I sending off some signal I am unaware of? Did I black out and another consciousness take over and go on a shopping spree with the family credit card just before crashing the car into a lake?
No?
Then WTF?
When you mention to this to people you believe are your friends, you give them a wedge to drive between you, and your feelings of personal power. This is their in, to one up you in status in some miniscule way, a peck here and there and before you know, there arent even enough crumbs of your soul left to feed the birds.
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