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TEEN ANGST, 20 YEARS Too Late
Oct. 5th, 2023 08:45 pmWell, god dammit. I just told Dad I took out a loan for a breast reduction surgery and got a veritable fire hose of his anxiety, which projects as rage and verbal abuse.
Dad gets fucking mean at these times. It was a lot of infantilization, telling me I'm autistic so I don't understand things and can't make good decisions and I'm immature (fuck off, Dad, I'm 38) and a lot of intimations that I am a wastrel who lives with her parents like a failure. Apparently I'm not meeting a lot of his expectations, which he has failed to mention to me. One of the weirdest accusations was that I "wasn't engaged" with my own post-stroke rehabilitation. Like. WHAT. Apparently being asleep when it was time to go to physical therapy appointments was a lack of engagement.*
Also, in that stream of vitriol I realized that my stroke really freaked him out, and he was incensed that I failed to internalize (or, at least, appeared not to internalize, because Dad has some really, uh, creative ways of reading other people) the gravity of the situation. I guess he's pissed that I failed to appreciate how upset he was? It's hard to say. But he said that it drove home that I was autistic, so, glad you finally caught up with the rest of us, Dad.
But Dad always has unrealistic expectations. You find out too late that he had some image in his head of how it's supposed to go, and when it didn't he was disappointed and then angry. It's exhausting.
It's gotten so I've accepted that I'm always going to be a failure in his eyes because everything is. It's kinda freeing, because I don't have to try to live up to his ridiculous half-formed expectations. I do feel bad for him that he grew up in an environment that made him internalize them,** but I'll be damned if I let them make my choices for me. I'm not gonna let Dad's anxiety disorder dictate my life.
Which is to say, I'm 38 years old and still dealing with parental ANGST. It still hurts.
MOM: I think we've all missed the point that you took the initiative to get a loan and figure out how to pay it back. That's sort of relevant to your competence, you know.
ETA: We have Talked It Out, much more wisely than in the heat of the moment, and Dad explained his understandable fears of surgery to me much more calmly and less infantilizingly, with hardly any proprietariness toward my boobs. Apparently one of his former colleagues was doing a routine surgery except he didn't properly reattach the blood-drainer, so the patient exsanguinated. I can see how that would be alarming.
ME: See, now, this is the kind of conversation you should have waited to have, instead of blowing up at me.
*This guy is a neurosurgeon.
**The internalized autmisia is especially rough. Dad is 100% autistic and is angry with me for pointing it out. I think it would make him feel better to know, though. Poor dude's been masking for 68 years and he is BURNT THE FUCK OUT.
Dad gets fucking mean at these times. It was a lot of infantilization, telling me I'm autistic so I don't understand things and can't make good decisions and I'm immature (fuck off, Dad, I'm 38) and a lot of intimations that I am a wastrel who lives with her parents like a failure. Apparently I'm not meeting a lot of his expectations, which he has failed to mention to me. One of the weirdest accusations was that I "wasn't engaged" with my own post-stroke rehabilitation. Like. WHAT. Apparently being asleep when it was time to go to physical therapy appointments was a lack of engagement.*
Also, in that stream of vitriol I realized that my stroke really freaked him out, and he was incensed that I failed to internalize (or, at least, appeared not to internalize, because Dad has some really, uh, creative ways of reading other people) the gravity of the situation. I guess he's pissed that I failed to appreciate how upset he was? It's hard to say. But he said that it drove home that I was autistic, so, glad you finally caught up with the rest of us, Dad.
But Dad always has unrealistic expectations. You find out too late that he had some image in his head of how it's supposed to go, and when it didn't he was disappointed and then angry. It's exhausting.
It's gotten so I've accepted that I'm always going to be a failure in his eyes because everything is. It's kinda freeing, because I don't have to try to live up to his ridiculous half-formed expectations. I do feel bad for him that he grew up in an environment that made him internalize them,** but I'll be damned if I let them make my choices for me. I'm not gonna let Dad's anxiety disorder dictate my life.
Which is to say, I'm 38 years old and still dealing with parental ANGST. It still hurts.
MOM: I think we've all missed the point that you took the initiative to get a loan and figure out how to pay it back. That's sort of relevant to your competence, you know.
ETA: We have Talked It Out, much more wisely than in the heat of the moment, and Dad explained his understandable fears of surgery to me much more calmly and less infantilizingly, with hardly any proprietariness toward my boobs. Apparently one of his former colleagues was doing a routine surgery except he didn't properly reattach the blood-drainer, so the patient exsanguinated. I can see how that would be alarming.
ME: See, now, this is the kind of conversation you should have waited to have, instead of blowing up at me.
*This guy is a neurosurgeon.
**The internalized autmisia is especially rough. Dad is 100% autistic and is angry with me for pointing it out. I think it would make him feel better to know, though. Poor dude's been masking for 68 years and he is BURNT THE FUCK OUT.
