At one point I went to a counselor.
She was a really nice gal who charged me on a sliding fee scale as I was broke
and paying for the sessions out of pocket. Someone gave money for me to mother
to pay for three sessions of counseling. She started to hand the money to me
outright, then took it back, put it in three envelopes, sealed them, then wrote
the name of the counselor on the outside before handing them to me. I remember
being shocked and annoyed. Shocked because she’d once told me that I handled
money better than she did; annoyed because she was behaving as if I couldn’t be
trusted to use the money for the purpose it was intended. Looking back on that,
if I’d really been intent on doing something else with the money, all I had to
do was rip the envelopes open and dispose of them out of her sight.
I realize now that we’re both lucky I
moved out of the house when I did. I honestly think had I continued to live
there, I would have gotten fatter and smoked more. In addition to that, I
probably would have struck out at her physically at some point. Just like I
wanted to as a teenager because she seems to think it’s okay to try and control
me, even though I’m an adult. At this point, if I’d snapped and hit her, I
wouldn’t have stopped till she was seriously wounded or dead. My anger at her
would have been beyond my control because I wasn’t allowed any real control
over my own life with mother around all the time. In fact, the only thing she
seemed to expect me to control was my temper. And that kind of control only
lasts so long before something snaps.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to look
back and see how much control she’s had in my life. Even more difficult have
been my efforts to break free and be my own person. Even now she would control
me if I allowed her to. Every time I get near her, she tries to control me,
sometimes in small subtle ways. For instance, she once owed me money. I left a
message on her machine asking her to leave it in an envelope in my church
mailbox. Instead she chased me down at church and gave it to me in person
without an envelope.
When her third husband, Bill died,
she called me up and the first thing she said to me was, “I want to come over
and talk to Caleb and I don’t want you telling him anything before I get
there.”
I tried
to ask her what was going on but she wouldn’t tell me before I gave
my word that I wouldn’t tell Caleb. I realize now that she took control in that
situation by demanding to tell my son herself, without even telling me what had
happened. She never asked me how I thought it would be best to tell him. I
checked with my brother about how she handled it with his children, and he told
me that she’d had him tell them.
Not only that, but when she came to
my house that afternoon, she brought a good friend, which I didn’t mind, but
she also brought along my brother and his wife, without any kind of warning. It
was as if for a time she and my brother and his wife walked into my
house and took over.
When I chewed her out later, she tried
to excuse herself on the basis of the shock of learning about Bill’s death. I
told her that she hadn’t been in such a “state of shock” as to make the same
demands with my brother and his wife in regards to their children. Shocked or
not, it was just a very subtle way to take my place with my son by telling him
and comforting him, instead of me. I told her then that if she ever tried to
override my parental authority like that again, I’d cut off all contact with
Caleb for at least six months.
A few years later at the start of
Caleb’s soccer season, the coach decided to limit practice to one day a week as
the boys were getting old enough to have other things going on and they’d
worked together enough, that they’d be fine with one day week. He chose Wednesday
as that’s right in between the weekends when games were played. He let the
parents know that if that was a problem, we should contact him to see what
could be worked out. None of the parents objected, but mother did. I learned
from the coach that she’d e-mailed him a request to change the night of
practice as it was on a church night and games were on Sundays, so Caleb
couldn’t go to church at all if practice was held on Wednesday. When I learned
what she’d done, I was so angry I wanted to run home and send her an e-mail
message right away. Instead, I called David on my cell phone and told him what
had happened.
The end result when I did e-mail her
was the usual. She apologized for the trouble she caused, but not for what she
did. It didn’t matter that I pointed out to her that she was not responsible
for taking Caleb to and from practices and games. That she was not responsible
for anything to do with soccer. That as his parent, those decisions were up to
me, not her. By the end of our correspondence on this issue, I had called her a
“Bitch” more than once and told her that she was not allowed to have contact
with him for at least six months. The only reason I didn’t make it longer was
that I felt like I was punishing him for her misdeeds, even though it wasn’t
his fault. I hated that, but I honestly felt like that might be the only way
I’d get her to back off and respect my parental authority. This also resulted
in her name being taken off the coach’s e-mail list for soccer and not being
allowed to attend any of the games for that season.
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