Kudzu People

This is one of those “reflective” posts.  This may bore you. 

As I’ve grown up I’ve realized a few things about myself.  I’ve realized that certain external factors really affect me in very negative ways.  For instance, I hate tight things around my neck.  Actually, I hate anything tight on me.  I don’t like being confined, trapped, cornered, or attacked.  Certain things make me feel as though I’m being smothered.   I don’t want things like that on me or around me.  Certain people fit those examples.  There are smothering, cloying, duplicitous people all around.  It seems more prevalent now, or perhaps I’m just realizing I’m worth more and so are my closest loved ones.

There are people who are like kudzu.  They take hold and start encroaching on all the native plant life until they’ve choked it out under some wall of kudzu that devoured all the shapes beneath.  They keep flopping their green annoying bossy tentacles around until the find purchase and start digging their ugly mean little claws right inside, pry apart the structure and destroy it.  Kudzu people have one mission….destroy everything that isn’t them.

There are times when people are just too confining.  When I find myself walking on egg shells verbally, when I find myself with no emotional support, when I find myself wondering exactly what a person meant when they said something or I’m left questioning their motives I feel trapped in a dead end relationship with that person.   I don’t like feeling like relationships are unsalvageable, but there are times when the effort just isn’t worth the possible payoff at all.  There are times when the kudzu has reached so deeply the person you once cared for is no longer there and has become some ugly kudzu covered blob dictating the path of life, what should be, how it should be and who should be what.  I’ve chosen to cut out some people who choke the life out of me, leave me feeling spent and useless and don’t add anything positive to my life. 

The decision has been a long time coming.  From Oct 2010 to May 2015 specifically, thoughts of just “being done” with one person in particular dominated my mind.   I kept writing off all the slights, forgiving scathing comments, judgments, the scars were left, and the damage was growing.  The slights, the cuts, the ignorant refusal to comprehend, the dismissal and double standards just broke me.  The final slight was treating my husband and me with zero respect then the unforgivable act of essentially tossing my son to the wolves.  No one, I mean no one at all, intimates that I’m a negligent mother unless it’s my son or my husband.  I could see those darn little ugly green tendrils rising around my family members, not just me this time. 

There comes a time when a person just has to ask himself or herself, “Would I spend one hour with this person if I weren’t somehow related to them?”  , or, “Does this person enrich my life?” maybe, “Does this person tear me down?” There are so many questions to ask yourself when you start to realize a relationship may not be healthy at all.  The questioning should take long enough for you to cool off, rethink things, regroup, and look at it from another perspective.  When all angles were looked at, my decision was made. 

   

I think everyone knows in their heart when a relationship isn’t working, isn’t worth it, is detrimental and needs to be ended.  Ending a relationship is a sad time but can also lift a huge weight from a person’s shoulders.  I’m at peace with my decision. 

If you find yourself in a similar dilemma, I can tell you that it takes a while to make the best decision for you.  A snap decision, then a reversal makes you feel weaker and look weaker, thus opening the door for that person to hold indecision over your head.  The people that generally need to be cut are narcissistic, they are emotionally abusive and rarely if ever lift you up.  I found this checklist to be very revealing

30 Signs of Emotional Abuse

Recall patterns in their behavior, identify how they make you feel, remember their words, identify your reactions.  Bounce some scenarios off a trusted friend, leave out names and get their take on it.  Find a friend who will be brutally honest with you, even if you might have to hear that some of the blame may be yours.  Take time to mull this over and make a final decision.  Don’t give ultimatums, I’ve tried it and they’ve been thrown in my face, I’ve been belittled for it, ultimatums left me looking and feeling weaker.  People like that don’t respond to, or respect any boundaries you might set, they truly don’t care what you say at all, or how you feel.   You can identify this and prove it to yourself based on past patterns of asking them to stop, or sharing your feelings, then having it all be ignored.  You deserve more!  If you would see the situation and tell your best friend to run, then follow your own advice, no matter how hard it seems. 

If you are one of the lucky ones who has a toxic family member, but they ARE willing to listen, understand and work on it.  Then hold on, ride it out, go to therapy with them.  A relationship like that shows promise and the willingness to grow.  There are a lot of resources online; a lot of reputable resources to help you in this process.   

I’m grieving a loss, but fairly I’ve been grieving the loss since the abuse started.   There is another person who’s being held at arm’s length, simply because I feel they might have outside factors influencing their abuse, if I didn’t think they were a bit “touched” I’d have gotten rid of them too.  It still may come to that.  Fractured families are not as rare as you think.  I thought everyone had a happy family, excluding me.  How wrong I was. 

I hope you are all well, If you made it this far….I do hope to write more regularly.  Life just has a way of getting in the way of having fun.   

Self worth

My son recently had what I can only describe as a codependent toxic girlfriend.  I'd like to say I have no idea where the toxicity came from, but based on events I have a really good idea.  They were codependent which was bad enough, but add her toxicity to the mix and it was explosive. 

I know my son's propensity for finding people like this comes from his innate need to help others. He needs to be needed, wanted, soothe others, and be a helper in times of need.  In addition to his natural draw toward class clown to mask his perceived inadequacies.  He is not inadequate, he feels asking questions shows weakness or that he doesn't know something.  He understands that all of us require help, we have made him aware that the only stupid question is the one not asked.  This is the stubborn child who would never practice reading.  He held off on even trying until he was 4, we bought him a Dr. Seuss book, on the way home from the book store he picked it up and read it aloud flawlessly cover to cover, never having heard it before.  I was a house mom I know what books he knew.

So back to the girl friend.  When they first started being friends it seemed like a good thing, then he wanted to date her so I encouraged him to ask. She indicated she just wanted to remain friends. Then.....one day she decided they should date.  He leapt at the chance.  Within a week he was fully embroiled in her drama.  He showed up one night in my room disturbed because she had sent pictures of her arms to him, apparently she's a cutter or was.  Somehow he miraculously reformed her.  Then she started texting him at all hours of the day and night complaining about her parents.  Then we found out she was coming off medication for bipolar disorder.  The noose grew even tighter when she started offering her body up on a sliver platter to him.  These are 13 &14 year olds!!  His grades, never as good as they should be ebbed ever lower, his outbursts of rage at home became more frequent and unpredictable.

He injured two fingers in the weight room one day at school, I had to take him to urgent care.  It was the same night she had a solo at a school concert.  He sent her a photo of his fingers from the urgent care trauma room..she pretended to care.  Then I brought him home and he fell asleep.  Being that he'd just been injured both of us (his parents) decided he should sleep and skip her concert.  He woke up 10 minutes before she was to go on (of course the selfish little dear sent him a text) he came up stairs screaming at us both, demanding that we take him immediately, (no idea where it was held) He and his father got in a fight over his phone, he cussed both of us out and had some screaming crying keening fit.  She hit below the belt with some comment about "I was only singing for you, you know how important this was to me, so thanks for not being here".  

She kept turning the pressure screws on the whole sex thing. She's 13 and apparently her Mom gave her some sort of reverse psychology permission to have sex with my son.  My 14 year old son!!  We discussed this and decided it was not in his best interests, though it would probably feel pretty good at the time.  For various reasons he came to the conclusion that he wasn't ready.  The fights between them are almost daily, the fights at home are at least once daily and one serious fight ending in rocking screaming, keening, and sobbing as we took the phone away.

When the phone was away, the next day was like a cloud lifting and he was almost normal.  He could think critically, read some information on bipolar disorder, codependency, and toxic friendships to see elements off all of those things at work in his life.  I didn't point out similarities.  I had him read them then give me his impression.  He would promise himself that he would be strong and hold the line, yet he caved at every turn.  We were becoming seriously worried for our son's mental health with this kind of relationship, yet we knew if we forced it to end, that he would never learn to make hard decisions, good decisions, and he might even do something incredibly stupid just to prove to us that we had no say over certain areas of his life.  We held on and hoped that gentle and sometimes not so gentle guidance would steer him back around.

Then one glorious day the girl's mother read through the texts.  She sent a break up text to our son on her daughter's behalf.  Our son was supposed to call, he did and the girl broke up with him amid dramatic tears.  My husband and I were elated, our son wasn't even that sad.  Things eased up again at home with the arguments returning to undone chores and shoddily done chores.  Then one day......he got a text.  They had been broken up less than 2 weeks.  In this text he was supposed to call because her mother couldn't know.  She asked him to go back out with her but they couldn't talk for 2 weeks.  This was on speaker phone and our son could hear the mother in the background so he knew that the entire thing was kind of a lie, that the mother was aware.  Texts ensued, he told her he didn't want to go back out with her that he would prefer to take a step back and just resume their friendship.  She suddenly became vile, the mother sent a text calling our son "a little punk who never deserved to spend time with our beautiful daughter"

I hope they do take time with their "beautiful daughter" to teach her that she is worth something.  That she is worth more than cut up arms and offered up sex in the woods.

We took this opportunity to teach our son that it's good to be helpful and kind but not to lose yourself in the process, that he is worth more.  That he is worth more than cheap sex from someone who cares nothing for her body or her worth.  We want him to be a young man of substance and worth, we want him to never lose his loving, caring edge.  We want him to stand up for himself and be the best person he can be.

I think all of us could benefit from a little bit of self worth from time to time.