minor epiphany

[tanaise]

I've got a lot of coping skills. I blame my father. Writing to Cara, I realised that I do what 'crow does, to an extent--everything is *my fault*. I'm better at it then she is (as in I don't do it as much as I used to), but it's still there. Heather was saying it was what amounts to an abuse artifact.
I see it as more evidence that my father was borderline abusive. Like, he didn't abuse us, we just picked up the same traits that others get trying to avoid annoying him. He's a very good example of how kids grow up like their parents. His dad was very distant, and his mom is a little weird. And so it's not like he was consciously abusive, I think, it was more like he didn't really know what to do. he was the youngest of a family of mostly boys, the only girl was his next oldest sibling. And it was noticable because my mom does know what to do, as she's the oldest in her family, and her parents were more affectionate with each other and with the kids, so the two poles were so obvious. I started thinking about it when everyone told 'song James was abusive, because everything he does is stuff my dad does. He was not very distant, but often sort of...detached from the rest of us. And I think we picked the skills up for sort of the opposite reason as abused kids do. We'd try unconsciously to please him by being good. (not all the time, by all means, but often in our interactions with him) And because he was never very demonstrative, we took it as failure. I took it as failure, I should say. I don't know that the boys picked up on the same habits as I did.

I think it was just bad enough that all of us recognized it as 'not how we want to be' so we all work hard at not being like that. I do find myself slipping into his behavior patterns more than I'd like to--when I'm with strangers, for example, I quite often block myself away, so I can pretend no one's talking to me because I don't want them to talk to me, instead of trying and failing--so I sometimes over balance it, and act uncharacteristically outgoing, which is very draining. I know it's a situation where eventually I'll find the middle ground that works both ways, but I've had a lot more practice with being closed down than being public, so it's a hard balance to find. Eli works at being a jock, instead of a brain, and nate is a master at avoiding any kind of conflict with Ben. Primo wheedling skills.

Comments

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

My father is a good bloke, but I didn't think I'd picked up much from him. Until a couple of yars ago when inannajones pointed out that I talk like him, sit like him, walk like him, and have generally picked up almost every small habit from him. When I'm cooking, I throw a teatowel over my left shoulder, for purposes of wiping my hands on when I need to - his habit. And then there was the wedding last year, and the point where I saw my father and my two brothers, all sitting in different parts of the room in the same pose - and looked at myself and I was doing it too. And it's not like it's an easy pose, or one you see often - sitting, knees wide apart, feet flat on the floor, leaning forward slightly, right elbow on arm of chair, table, or right knee if nothing else is available, and left hand placed with the heel on the left thigh, fingers pointing at the right knee.

We pick up far more from our families than we ever know, I think...