Posted by leeran on May 2, 2003, at 14:30:05
In reply to Re: I wonder.... » mair, posted by Dinah on May 2, 2003, at 8:41:54
"vicious things, when she was angry"
Dinah,
I've always said my mother's tongue was one of the most vicious on earth.
When she is enraged - for whatever reason, everyone else has to take the blame, pay the price, atone for the sin of not seeing things her way.
She'll lash out with a barrage of words until the right combination of them will finally hit the mark and her target is felled.
I was privy to one of her "episodes" as an adult and the words she said to my father were appalling. If I repeated them here people would be shocked. Two of those sentences are now ingrained in my memory, like so many other word combinations that were really proclamations of what she had deemed to be "so" or "not so" over the years.
She has this uncanny ability to take a negative quality in someone and recreate that person in an image based on her vitriolic words. The result is this persistent static that makes it difficult to see the numerous POSITIVE aspects of that same person ever again.
Of course, she can come off as one of warmest people you've ever met. I don't know how many people (in my adult years) have said "your mother is one of the nicest people I've ever met."
"Just don't cross her" is what I'm thinking - but my mouth forms the words "yes, she is, isn't she."
Her defense to this would be "when I'm 'down' like that I don't even know what I'm saying." Okay, whatever. Who is going to argue with her?
I'm so sorry to hear your mother also used words as weapons. My mother was never physically abusive, but I've always wondered what I would have remembered most - being hit or those perfectly chosen words. It's hard for me to imagine enduring both.
"If I feel differently about her now, it's because I had to to function."
Dinah, you always have a way of describing in one sentence what it's taken me years to try to figure out.
As I've said (and thought) so many times in these last five or six weeks, thank you so much for your incredibly honest posts.
Lee
poster:leeran
thread:221574
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030426/msgs/223861.html