Stupid stubborn

My sister is stupid stubborn. She got it from my mother who is also stupid stubborn. My brother and I were talking, me trying to get notes from him from when he was in full prick mode with the family. Asking for money, blowing up my phone and writing me every three hours then becoming a ghost once he got the money, not even calling to acknowledge receipt, that kind of bullshit. I was trying to figure out why it wouldn't occur to Ashley to try to remedy or even apologize for again spilling crap on my rug and nearly ruining my vacuum cleaner by vacuuming up wet salt. Instead she hasn't spoken to me at all in the last week. Who does that? Just refuses to talk or acknowledge their wrong. Just gets up and moves about their business, using my shit, living in my home, with 'fuck you' rolling off their body in waves. No, fuck YOU. That's fucking insane and I suggest you investigate if they make a pill for that because you need to take it.

What bothers me about both of them is this victimhood they carry around as it concerns my father. You really can not help what baggage you arrive into adulthood with. You don't have the coping skills or perspective to deal with your rearing until you are out of it and can survey the damage. And everyone has something. Everyone. Since I have some authority on the subject of growing up in our house, I feel I have a valid opinion on the matter. I recall bitterly talking about some of the things my father had done and how it had fucked me up to my best friend while we were in college. While talking I had an epiphany. I could hear myself talking for the nth time about how I was fucked up because of someone else and it sounded really bad to me. It sounded like an excuse. It sounded like an explanation for why I was never going to move from that spot in my life. I didn't like it. I don't recall if I said it or thought it but I do know I made a decision that I wasn't going to give him that kind of power over me, he wasn't going to be my excuse for everything I couldn't achieve or any happiness that eluded me in life. I spent so much time growing up wishing he was someone else, would act differently, be less abrasive or unconcerned about my delicate feelings and self esteem. But you can't make people over to be what you want or need and insisting on that as a condition for your happiness or well being is a recipe for an unhappy life.

Nowadays I don't have a greater champion than my father. He thinks I hang the moon. He trusts my opinion. He consults me. That man is my friend and I love him so so much. He is flawed. I am flawed. That is our lot, us mortals, to be flawed. Time has burnished his standing with me and tarnished my mothers--that is another consequence of age and perspective. I see in my mother the personality traits that are the millstones around the necks of my siblings. I understand why my father felt alone and complained he had no help. I understand why I did the family finances when he was away. My brother, sounding conflicted and slightly choked up observed the other night that everything good about us, drive, ambition, intellect, it all came from our father. The part of us that digs in or gets overwhellmed when the flood waters are rising, that's our mother. She's the person who forces you to rescue her, fighting you every step of the way and then cries with resentment because she never asked you to rescue her. I guess that's the yin and yang of our family dynamic. People who can't watch a person drown and people who will stare you dead in your face as the water rises resenting the higher ground you climbed for and thinking somehow climbing is easier for you. I guess I could turn away and not watch the water rise around them but I love them so I watch and let them refuse help until I feel I have to dive in. It's not unique, our codependency and the results aren't unique either.