My parents raised me to believe that I am supposed to always set myself on fire to keep everybody else around me warm. And they are showing heavy resistance now that I am slowly moving away from that line of thinking.
I know my mother takes a lot of pride in the fact that she created a parenting environment where she could sit by and watch while anybody could do whatever they wanted to me, and she would always jump in to make sure that I always knew that their wants were always far more important than my need to have any kind of personal boundary. She even tells me all of this to this very day. She claims that she is "very proud" of the fact that she always "played Devil's advocate" whenever somebody violated my boundaries because she thinks I am always too stupid to see the whole picture.
So, I endured a couple of stalkers during my adult years because my parents always guilted me into keeping these stalkers in my life, by angrily telling me that their happiness was my sole responsibility. When my cousin blatantly stole from my apartment (seriously, the last time I saw the very items that went missing was when I saw him handling them), my mother proudly stepped in and told my uncle that he would never steal from me - she later told me that she felt that my cousin did not deserve to be grounded for the summer over stealing and pawning several hundred dollars worth of video games from me when he was in high school because "he is very unhappy, more unhappy than I would ever know", or something like that. When my sister was stealing from me when we both were in high school, my mother angrily told me I was immature for locking up my valuables instead of continuing to let her take whatever she wanted to her friends' houses so she could trade them for drugs. When I was being brutally beaten by bullies at school, my mother told me I should consider how unhappy the bullies are and that I should try to be their good friend. When I was sexually abused as a young child, she told me I did not understand how hard my abusers' lives were.
So, basically, I spent most of my adult life being taken advantage of by a couple of creepy stalkers who were using me as their withdrawal-only ATM, always demanding a cut of my SSDI check, always being sexually invasive on top of it all even though I made it clear I did not want that at all, actively trying to drive everybody else in my life away from me to thr point of getting insanely and ridiculously jealous whenever I struck up small talk with a cashier at a store (they would always later tell me that they were the only people who wanted to hear anything I had to say, and they would often tell people that they were sorry about me after angrily making any excuse they could to end the small talk between myself and anybody who was not them because according to them, I was retarded), randomly stopping by my apartment to spy on me through my window, calling me twenty times in half an hour when they knew I was at my PT job, etc. My mother knows about these people. She likes these people, and she always tells me that I never should have cut them out of my life because look at how unhappy and unhealthy they are, and I have no right to be upset about anything they did to me because having personal boundaries in the face of that is a sign of emotional immaturity.
Yeah, I am feeling incredibly bitter and incredibly angry. I did not have any chance to be well-adjusted when I was growing up. I have the chance now, but my family wants me to keep setting fire to myself to keep the predators warm.
I know my mother takes a lot of pride in the fact that she created a parenting environment where she could sit by and watch while anybody could do whatever they wanted to me, and she would always jump in to make sure that I always knew that their wants were always far more important than my need to have any kind of personal boundary. She even tells me all of this to this very day. She claims that she is "very proud" of the fact that she always "played Devil's advocate" whenever somebody violated my boundaries because she thinks I am always too stupid to see the whole picture.
So, I endured a couple of stalkers during my adult years because my parents always guilted me into keeping these stalkers in my life, by angrily telling me that their happiness was my sole responsibility. When my cousin blatantly stole from my apartment (seriously, the last time I saw the very items that went missing was when I saw him handling them), my mother proudly stepped in and told my uncle that he would never steal from me - she later told me that she felt that my cousin did not deserve to be grounded for the summer over stealing and pawning several hundred dollars worth of video games from me when he was in high school because "he is very unhappy, more unhappy than I would ever know", or something like that. When my sister was stealing from me when we both were in high school, my mother angrily told me I was immature for locking up my valuables instead of continuing to let her take whatever she wanted to her friends' houses so she could trade them for drugs. When I was being brutally beaten by bullies at school, my mother told me I should consider how unhappy the bullies are and that I should try to be their good friend. When I was sexually abused as a young child, she told me I did not understand how hard my abusers' lives were.
So, basically, I spent most of my adult life being taken advantage of by a couple of creepy stalkers who were using me as their withdrawal-only ATM, always demanding a cut of my SSDI check, always being sexually invasive on top of it all even though I made it clear I did not want that at all, actively trying to drive everybody else in my life away from me to thr point of getting insanely and ridiculously jealous whenever I struck up small talk with a cashier at a store (they would always later tell me that they were the only people who wanted to hear anything I had to say, and they would often tell people that they were sorry about me after angrily making any excuse they could to end the small talk between myself and anybody who was not them because according to them, I was retarded), randomly stopping by my apartment to spy on me through my window, calling me twenty times in half an hour when they knew I was at my PT job, etc. My mother knows about these people. She likes these people, and she always tells me that I never should have cut them out of my life because look at how unhappy and unhealthy they are, and I have no right to be upset about anything they did to me because having personal boundaries in the face of that is a sign of emotional immaturity.
Yeah, I am feeling incredibly bitter and incredibly angry. I did not have any chance to be well-adjusted when I was growing up. I have the chance now, but my family wants me to keep setting fire to myself to keep the predators warm.
