I've gone about my chores all morning thinking about her kids.
My kids followed very similar patterns, it once broke my heart with increasing regularity...until I quit crying, and noticed, with no little relief, how much I did not miss the palpating tension and hovering, threateing violence that also accompanied them.
Too often they'd pick a fight, it took me a long, long time to comprehend this pattern, as it all started innocuously enough with a statement from me such as, "Please take your bookbag to your room," a long standing rule that prevents a bookbag pile-up mountain at the door.
They'd ignore me, or snarl rudely, or pick it up and hit someone, a complete no no in our home, knowing full well that I'd quietly have to correct that behavior.
That'd be it.
They'd storm out, telling themselves that I was a shrew, a witch, a bitch, mean, ugly, hateful, whatever.
Yes, it hurt my feelings. Duh. As I knew the opposite was true, that I'd lovingly tended to them in spite of all odds. Imagine financially sacrificing yourself for years only to be physically, emotionally attacked?
To take folks on vacation only to have them scream at you that they hated it all.
Opposite day all the time. All. The. Time.
Oppositionally defiant constantly. It's emotionally wearing.
It's the constant ugliness that's been hurled at me, me being the convenient, all forgiving target for their rage that primarily was intended for their original caretakers who'd abandoned them. They lash out at the ones who don't leave.
I end up cowering both physically and emotionally, afraid to reach out and thus provoke another barrage of insults, ugliness, threats, and danger.
It's just the way it is, but it is what's driven me into seclusion, to be reclusive, a hermit.
Those who've treated me well, and there's been a bunch of them, well I'm deeply, deeply appreciative of their love.
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