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Aug. 20th, 2004 01:11 am
(no subject)
So, now I can't sleep. I want to go over to Elli's and curl up with her, but after her bout with insomnia and her bad evening, I don't want to wake her.
It's been over a year since I broke up with Mike, and since I found my happiness with Elli. I'd thought myself over all the nasty emotional crap I felt due to my family's reactions to my relationship with Mike. But that note from Karla brought it all back.
Don't get me wrong, she was never openly hostile. She was nice to Mike -- still is, in fact -- and never forbad me bringing him over. But the absolute rule not to tell the kids why this guy was around, or why I lived with him, and the openly stated belief that telling them would cause them emotional/mental harm ... it grated on me. It made me feel like I wasn't good enough, like my life wasn't good enough. And since Karla had been the one to teach me that there was nothing wrong with being gay or bi, her turnaround when she became a Born-Again Protestant Christian (as opposed to the slightly-lax Catholic Christian she'd always been) hurt. It hurt a lot, far more than I ever let her know.
And now, even though I'm still with Elli and still happy, and contemplating the future with her, and liking it ... it still gets me. It still twists me up inside, because at the core of it, it isn't about Mike or even about my relationship with him, or my status as a bisexual man. No, it's about something else. It's about how I'm not good enough.
Karla rarely tells me what I do right. She almost never tells me about the things that make her proud. It's always denigrating, always what I do wrong. Even her 'motherly advice' has a negative tone to it -- I've lost count of the number of times she's pointed out that I need to be clean and well-dressed when I go to interviews, despite the fact I'm an adult and know this. Even her concern about my health is put in ways that make me feel bad.
Our discussions about the outside world -- politics, religion, etc. -- are angled to make me into the little boy who is too young to know anything. It's like they forget I'm 33 years old and long since earned the right to make my own decisions. Karla has an older brother who holds a Ph.D. and is still a "liberal". She doesn't tell him he doesn't understand the issues. But me? No, I don't agree with her because I'm too young to know better.
This is part of why I tend to just roll my eyes at her politics and her social attitudes and not bother to discuss them with her. The other reason is that if I dare to disagree with her in front of my sisters, I'm suddenly "undermining her parenting."
Please. The only person undermining her parenting is her. Her daughters see how inconcistent and hypocritical she is; they come to me all the time complaining about it.
I don't deny that Karla has done a LOT for me. A HELL of a lot. But if she ever truly realizes the ways in which she's hurt me, and actually acknowledges them as more than my incorrect perceptions (which is how she's treated them in the past when I tried to bring it up), well ... hell, I haven't got a clue what would happen.
It's been over a year since I broke up with Mike, and since I found my happiness with Elli. I'd thought myself over all the nasty emotional crap I felt due to my family's reactions to my relationship with Mike. But that note from Karla brought it all back.
Don't get me wrong, she was never openly hostile. She was nice to Mike -- still is, in fact -- and never forbad me bringing him over. But the absolute rule not to tell the kids why this guy was around, or why I lived with him, and the openly stated belief that telling them would cause them emotional/mental harm ... it grated on me. It made me feel like I wasn't good enough, like my life wasn't good enough. And since Karla had been the one to teach me that there was nothing wrong with being gay or bi, her turnaround when she became a Born-Again Protestant Christian (as opposed to the slightly-lax Catholic Christian she'd always been) hurt. It hurt a lot, far more than I ever let her know.
And now, even though I'm still with Elli and still happy, and contemplating the future with her, and liking it ... it still gets me. It still twists me up inside, because at the core of it, it isn't about Mike or even about my relationship with him, or my status as a bisexual man. No, it's about something else. It's about how I'm not good enough.
Karla rarely tells me what I do right. She almost never tells me about the things that make her proud. It's always denigrating, always what I do wrong. Even her 'motherly advice' has a negative tone to it -- I've lost count of the number of times she's pointed out that I need to be clean and well-dressed when I go to interviews, despite the fact I'm an adult and know this. Even her concern about my health is put in ways that make me feel bad.
Our discussions about the outside world -- politics, religion, etc. -- are angled to make me into the little boy who is too young to know anything. It's like they forget I'm 33 years old and long since earned the right to make my own decisions. Karla has an older brother who holds a Ph.D. and is still a "liberal". She doesn't tell him he doesn't understand the issues. But me? No, I don't agree with her because I'm too young to know better.
This is part of why I tend to just roll my eyes at her politics and her social attitudes and not bother to discuss them with her. The other reason is that if I dare to disagree with her in front of my sisters, I'm suddenly "undermining her parenting."
Please. The only person undermining her parenting is her. Her daughters see how inconcistent and hypocritical she is; they come to me all the time complaining about it.
I don't deny that Karla has done a LOT for me. A HELL of a lot. But if she ever truly realizes the ways in which she's hurt me, and actually acknowledges them as more than my incorrect perceptions (which is how she's treated them in the past when I tried to bring it up), well ... hell, I haven't got a clue what would happen.