One scene left me gasping with recognition...the speech delivered by the African-American father to his 37-year old doctor/son when he realizes his son won't listen to reason and insists on marrying the white girl.
I'm not calling the father a narcissist, but man, that speech is awfully familiar! Substitute the mailman references with, "and after I fed and clothed you" and "drove you to school!" and it was the same speech meant to control my behavior through guilt.
If you see the movie, you'll see the way the father's face twists with fury and his intimidating body language. My mother did a lot of angry finger pointing in my face and much stomping about.
Sidney Poitier's brilliant "comeback" is my fantasy...how I would have LOVED to have articulated that very same reply!
Seem familiar, anybody?
FATHER:
Yeah, I know what you are
and what you've made of yourseIf.
But I worked my ass off to get the money
to buy you aLL the chances you had!
You know how far
I carried that bag in years?
mlles.
And mowin' Iawns in the dark so you
wouIdn't have to be stokin' furnaces...
and couId bear down on the books.
There were things your mother should
have had that she insisted go for you.
And I don't mean fancy things.
I mean a decent coat.
A Iousy coat!
And you're gonna teLL me
that means nothin' to you....
and you couId
break your mother's heart?
THE SON RESPONDS:
You Llsten to me.
You say you don't want to teLL me
how to Llve my Llfe?
What do you think
you've been doing?
You teIl me what rights I've got
or haven't got...
and what I owe to you
for what you've done for me.
Let me teLL you something.
I owe you nothing.
If you carried that bag
a mllLlon miles...
you did what you
were supposed to do...
because you brought me
into this worId...
and from that day you owed me...
everything you couId ever do for me,
Llke I wlll owe my son...
if I ever have another.
But you don't own me.
You can't telI me when or where
I'm out of Llne
or try to get me to Llve my Llfe
according to your ruIes.
You don't even know
what l am, Dad.
You don't know who l am,
how I feeI, what I think.
And if I tried to explain it the rest of
your Llfe, you wouId never understand.
15 comments:
Nina,
The father's speech definitely sounds like something that could come from either of my parents. The son makes a good comeback, but I don't think that will deter my parents. I can already imagine them saying how selfish I am if I even spoke one word of that retort.
Parents that seem to think that their children owe them something for all the hard work they did while raising them seem to be hiding some sort of grudge against the child for just existing. Maybe they expect the kid to think and reason like an adult right away?
I'm suddenly reminded of how my parents treated pets. My sister and I had pets and initially, everything will go fine for the first month. However, my parents would start using our pets as a way to manipulate us by threatening to give them to the Humane Society if they took too much time.
My sister and I got guinea pigs at one point. (One for each of us.) They were adopted because they were rescued from a breeder who was not taking care of the guinea pigs very well. I suspect that this lack of care changed how the guinea pigs acted in a properly maintained environment.
Adopting the guinea pigs was not my idea. I don't know if it was my sister's. But my mom was okay with it until she saw the work, time, and money it took to take care of them. Then she urged us to return the two pigs!
I always wondered if my parents just thought of us as pets, just like those guinea pigs. Do tricks, and do everything right, and you won't be complained about as much. Do everything 'wrong', and you're automatically bad.
Pisces6,
Oh yeah...if I tried that on with my parents who knows what would have happened, but I suspect is would have involved a face slapping and shoulder shaking and the whole You Are Selfish lecture that would have lasted days!
I think that's a very interesting theory...that the parents are hiding some sort of grudge against the child.
Maybe...our parents THOUGHT having a kid was a good idea because everybody else had kids...but the REALITY of children was disappointing....just too much boring hard work.
In my case, I was adopted and I suspect my mother - with major unresolved infertility issues - held a grudge against me because I wasn't her natural child and I resisted pretending her bio child as she wanted me to do...
Nina,
Face slapping?! I count myself lucky that arguments with my parents never degraded to that! (Though my dad is prone to breaking things when he was very angry.) No wonder you couldn't make that retort; the threat of physical violence is enough to scare anyone away. I guess my parents never had to resort to that because I was scared of pissing them off and getting an angry lecture. Just them being angry scared me enough to ensure obedience.
For my parents, I'm guessing that they felt that they were required to produce a child very early. I know my mother was in her early twenties when she first had me. My sister is 6 years younger than me. Both of us were supposed to be boys because it is the boys that carry on the family name. My mother later claimed she loved girls because girls are more likely to take care of her/the family when she was older. I thought this was a good thing at the time, but now I realize it was her wanting me to use all my free time taking care of them when I became an adult since I did that to them when I was born.
So, a combination of not being a boy and probably giving them 'extra' work to take care of us probably developed into some sort of grudge. The irony is that my parents tried to convince me to have a child ASAP now that I am married. (I am recently married; it's not even 6 months yet.) They were nagging me before the wedding. Never mind I don't feel ready to have a child yet. (I'm not sure if I even want one!) According to them, after I hit 30 years of age, it's no longer a good idea to have a child. I understand that biology-wise, it's better to have a child when you're younger, but that is no reason to force a woman to have a child when she's not mentally prepared. I fear I may never be ready for it.
In my case, I was adopted and I suspect my mother - with major unresolved infertility issues - held a grudge against me because I wasn't her natural child and I resisted pretending her bio child as she wanted me to do...
Did your parents always emphasize to you that you were adopted? Sounds like your mother shot herself in the foot. If she wanted you to act as her natural child, shouldn't she treat you as if you were her natural child? As in, you (personality, feelings, thoughts) actually mattered to her?
Man, that's terrible... Your mother being upset with you just for something you had no control over; your own blood.
At least I don't have to wonder whether they wanted me or not! By my mid-teens I'd been told I was an accident. After a night at the pub celebrating the end of WWII my parents went home drunk and forgot to use a condom. To add insult to injury, I was born a girl. My name was supposed to be Barry and I went nameless for several days while the shock wore off. Doesn't every teenager want to hear details like that? Talk about TMI!
In the past few years they've begun to tell me they're glad I'm a girl because it's a daughter's duty to care for her elderly parents. Funny, I thought it was my parents' duty to care for their children, but these things never seem to work both ways do they?
As far as beatings go...my mother slapped my face and/or cracked me across the back of the head with a hair brush, while my dad took care of beating my brothers, one until he was unconscious.
They continually threatened to take my beloved dog to the pound and when she was hit and killed by a car right before my eyes they blamed me then made fun of my tears.
Do these common experiences creep anybody else out, or is it just me? Are these monsters using some sort of handbook we don't know about? Yikes!
Nina, I still angers me that the social worker fell asleep at the wheel and gave you to such incompetent “parents”, it’s even more infuriating that the social worker knew there was something off kilter about them. I recently spoke to a colleague who was going through the Lutheran church to adopt two children (two is the minimum the church would allow to adopt). She and her husband have gone through at least 3 psychological tests and host of other requirements. It sounded like the church has a good screening process and the children have better chance of ending up with parents who want to be parents and not be parentified.
They continually threatened to take my beloved dog to the pound and when she was hit and killed by a car right before my eyes they blamed me then made fun of my tears.
Mulderfan, I'm so sorry about your fuzzy lovebug. She's running and playing in the eternal garden, waiting to see you again; this I believe.
I’ve noticed in other ACON support boards and here that N-parents must not be trusted with house pets. Best case scenario is they “only” theaten to kill the pet and if they kill the pet it is through sabotage. The worse case scenario is when they actually kill the pet in front of the children. My mom was the former, always threatening to send my dog to the pound; my guinea pig and parakeet died of dehydration and I cried for weeks believing I was negligent and a bad pet-guardian. Later I found out Mom was emptying the water dish My dog survived dehydration because he would bring his water dish to me. The thing was I don’t think it was my mom’s intention to make me feel bad over the pig’s and bird’s death, after all I was nonexistent in her eyes. No, she was getting back at my dad who had the habit of impulsively buying pets and then neglecting them, leaving it up to me to take care of the animals.
In a normal household it’s the children that impulsively bring home animals and it’s the parents that wind up taking care of the animals. I used to scold my dad for bringing home pets he wouldn’t care for, which he just laughs off.
On a different note, I have an opposite story to Mulderfan's parent’s reaction to baby's audacity to not control their own gender on their parent's whim. Sis and BIL came from a family of sisters, so they just assumed their first child was going to be a girl and had a name all picked out. You guess it, a boy arrived and once the shock wore off that their “scientific” prediction didn’t pan out, they rushed for a name from the first letter in the alphabet.
Pisces6,
"the irony is that my parents tried to convince me to have a child ASAP now that I am married. (I am recently married; it's not even 6 months yet.) They were nagging me before the wedding"
I know that non-narcissistic parents can plead for grandkids, too...but in their case, I suspect they're actually dying to spend quality time with their grandkids. In the case of (your) n-parents, that boundary is LEAPED over. Because it's our reproductive abilities that is under discussion...when my mother said stuff...it felt like another violation of sorts...kinda yucky and unseemly if you know what I mean.
It IS absolutely ironic...as you note. I saw how my father behaved with my daughters. He did better with them when they were teeny tiny and seemed to enjoy holding them as infants...but as soon as they began to walk and talk, sadly, they became competition. As they got older, he'd get them little treats like candy for Halloween and Easter and $20 for their birthdays...but never once went with us to the park, to the zoo (boring) or suggested outings or projects they could do together...zip.
It was VERY sad to see.
Of course, you know this...in one ear and out the other...have kids if and when YOU are ready! I'm very happy my husband and I had several years alone before we had our daughters. When they came, our lives revolved around them...but in our situations considering our backgrounds...it's nice to enjoy some one-on-one time in a reciprocal relationship...very healing!
MULDERFAN & ENILINA...
Totally creepy pet stories! I didn't have that experience...just my mother picking out a dog I did NOT want and then was angry with me that I didn't like it...
but I have noticed...over the span of this blog...that quite a few people share some really awful/sad experiences regarding pets.
I have spent my adult life rescuing dogs(11) and cats(15). My parents have always considered this as proof that I am nuts...the put-downs were never ending, although most people admire what I've done. Am I seeking the unconditional love I never received from my parents or do I just plain love having furry critters in my life?
You'd think the undying adoration that only a dog can give would feed the narcissist's ego, but perhaps the bit of care you have to give in return in just too much of a stretch for people who are so self-centered!
Mulderfan,
What you're doing is great! If it makes you happy, keep doing it! We need to keep doing things that make US happy. Don't listen to them.
You know what I've noticed is that N's eat up the unconditional love of an animal but are completely unable to care for the animal when it comes down to it. My parents are cruel to their pets. They're fine when the animal is well, but as soon as the animal needs medical attention, they abandon it. They seemed completely unable to "tune in" to the animal's needs or read their health cues. I had to physically and verbally coerce them to take their cat to the 24/hour vet when it was suffering from kidney failure. They kept putting off the vet visit, saying that it would be too expensive. Because they waited so long, their pet has kidneys that are 90% ineffective, requiring lifelong specialized medication and diet.
-Susie
The closest I got to that speech was, every year all my N-C of a mother wanted for her b-day was respect. They couldn't care less what I did or how I wound up. When I moved out they told me they didn't own me anything, they were done. Once you're out, you're out. Now I take care of N-C with no help from anyone. So I guess only they were done helping me, not me them.
Pisces6
I got the "we want a grandchild" thing too. In my 20's and early 30's I didn't want kids. Then later on I found out that I'm not able to have kids. Even knowing that, my mother still does the dramatic feeling sorry for herself because she doesn't have a bunch of grandchildren like her sister does. It's like, thanks for making me feel even more inadequate.
Sunny skies,
I remember when I made the fatal mistake of telling my mother we were "trying' to start a family. This was in response to some repetitive grilling over "when' were we going to have children.
To be honest, I thought she was going to start asking us what/when/and how we were doing "it"!!! So rather than go through that I plunged in and told her the truth - knowing there would be a payoff sometime down the line.
She couldn't hold back. Every second of every visit it was:
"So-and-so is pregnant" smirky smile.
"I only had to look at a bed at the same time as your father and I was pregnant!" gloating glance.
"People who don't fall pregnant in the 1st month usually don't fall pregnant at all" frustrated fury.
"Whatever's wrong?" (you can't be...normal) angry attitude.
Of course, I was just doing this to spite her! She wanted g.children and I was stopping her on purpose!
Possibly the worst part, was the vicious use of the situation to stab away at my confidence and reduce me to a quivering wreck.
All events gratefully received and put into service by the manipulative narc.
The complete annihilation of your very being by someone supposed to be supportive cannot be underestimated.
Don't feel inadequate (yeah fat chance!), feel human.
Mommy dearest is clearly nuts.
If you want revenge repeat all the pleasant things her nieces and nephews do for their mother, and leave her to stew!
Probably NOT the best advice in the world, but hey...!
One silver lining: she can't hurt yr children if they're not around. A blessing(?).
Sincerely hope yur well.
i was adopted and every time mom would introduce her daughter then say this is my other daughter i adopted her but i love her like my own if that was so why say i was adopted maybe she wanted credit for raising a child that wasnt hers
My mother killed my beloved pet rabbit one night when I was at a Brownie scouts meeting. At Brownies that night I had made her a Christmas wreath out of tissue paper and couldn’t wait to give it to her.
I am 26 years old now, finally secured a one year teaching position. The night that I sat down at the dinner table, notified my parents my success at the interview, I received an immediate response: " it's all thanks to me, you have become a teacher!" That statement brought out my darkest fear and hatred crawling inside me for years. All my life, they have been taking credit for any inch of good inside and every effort I've made, never one second to forget " I owe them!"
When it comes to any traumatic experience I have dealt with, it's because " you're stupid, you're useless" and having had cancer it's because " your deserved". They blame me for everything that's kit going well in their life, stating I'm evil and I am a shame to them and a bad influence to my younger sister. They made me do all the house chores and I have to dealt with any trouble they are incompetent to solve regards I'm at work or at school. And it's all because I owe them!
There are times, me and my sister tried to suicide, but failed. I don't know what to do but to wish them die soon. Thus it will be an end to my suffering!
Post a Comment