My dad, a dishrag?

I have to admit, I have a very hard time when some folks in recovery from childhoods tarnished by BPD, call the non-BPD parent a dishrag.

But it works at one level.

Like many surviving children, I have been mad at my dad. With mine it was because he never stood up for me, at least not in my presence. He was not a dishrag. He was conflict-avoidant. My dad was an engineer, a man good with numbers, a good provider. A man of few words, he was shy. He was also an innocent in the world of words, someone who I strongly suspect had his own abusive childhood. He thought that silence was the best answer to crazy behavior. I firmly believe he thought he had changed his family legacy. My dad did his best. As did my mom, "nada" or not.

My dad, to his credit, did have my mom committed to a mental hospital when I was four. I think that is one reason I came through my childhood as resilient as I did.

But in the 1950's, patients were beginning to have rights. And fathers did not have rights yet. I am pretty sure that my father faced this fact, he had married such a smart and wily woman, WHATEVER her problem was (and they didn't know about BPD then).... that he would likely never have custody. He was in a catch-22. If he wanted his kids to have a snowball's chance in hell, he needed to stay and be a good provider. Because my dad's myth was that MONEY prevented abuse. Of course, to be able to live at peace with the unsolved problem of my mom, and keep the faith in his myth, he tended to discount her damage.

I forgive my dad for this. What in God's name would I have done in his situation?

I am grateful, as I say, for my resilience and the native intelligence of both my parents. And I am grateful for all the books I read in childhood that distracted me from the elephant in the living room that could have taken over our lives if we chose to fight it.

crazy daughter refuses to fight back

My mom often implies that I am crazy.

Or tells me that I haven't grown up.

Today, I know that in our phone conversations I am the adult. The only person home, who has a compassionate perspective for myself.

And so, when I am told belittling things about myself I am less reactive. A person with BPD is a dry drunk, really. In Al-anon, they tell you how fruitless it is to take a drunk seriously when they have negative things to sling your direction. Especially when those negative things are about YOU, and you are a person in their intimate circle.

Hurt people hurt people.

I have stopped allowing myself to be hurt by her so much, and so I have less reason to hurt her "back."

So she needs to project her unhealed story onto me. Do I really need to take that seriously any more?

The ideal would be for me to say, "When you speak to me like that mom, there is an emotional response I feel that tells me it is time to go. I am going to go, now, because what you are saying is not only untrue, but it is hurtful."

But I can only say that if I am relaxed and not reactive. I can only say that whole two sentences if she is listening.

These days, all I can do is put her on speakerphone so her voice is not inside my head. When I leave the phone upright on the cutting board in the kitchen where I am working, she can speak her peace to the air and I can go about cutting and preparing food, which is more creative and peaceful.

I can pray, say my serenity prayer, sing a song... and she can realize suddenly that her words are not the only thing that have my attention. And this is good. This creates the tiniest room for a change in behavior.

what is crazy?

For at least a year, I would see him entering or leaving our neighborhood and it just drove me nuts. I didn't even want to talk to the man, I was so judgmental. The old man, his son and the donkey, indeed.

I thought the older bald man pushing the baby carriage was crazy. Especially when I saw that there were two dogs sitting in it, side by side. Didn't they need exercise too?

But then there was the day in early May when I was on my bike, turning into the driveway of my therapist's office. I was struggling to hold onto my own sanity. That day, I was close enough to see that the one black dog had gray jowls. So I asked the owner about what had long had me in thrall.

Turned out that to take the young dog for a walk would leave the older one, a close buddy, home alone without companionship. This buggy ride was a compromise the three had come to, for the waning years of his older dog.

Talking to him about what I had thought was crazy from a distance, brought me back to reality that day. The man's compassion for his dogs, and my own ability to understand, helped me to accept us both and to feel more sane as a result