Okay, so the situation was this - a room full of people. 3 sisters (me included) with their partners plus one brother and two little kids: 2 and 4 years old. It felt a bit formal like all polite family events with food but pleasant nontheless. And then an absolutely absurd chain of events occurred. The 4-year old kid was asked what a yapper is and he obliviously said my name. My sister said, "Oh, that was soooo not nice of you to say that about your aunt Krista.". I gave my sister an inquiring look because my name was mentioned. I get along with the kid just fine, so there's no reason he'd say anything deliberately mean about me behind my back. It seemed the kid didn't even know what a yapper is. And it isn't even a proper word anyway or at least it's rarely used to insult people. He simply had no interest in their game and said the first random thing on his mind.
But my sister was sure the kid was saying mean things about me, so she wanted to "save" me and announced that the kid had called me a yapper and then proceeded to tell the boy that it wasn't nice of him and he shouldn't do it next time. I got angry and said that the kid didn't even mean it like that and I wouldn't have even noticed it if she hadn't announced it like this. I really tried to choose my words but I had an angry and threatened tone because I had just been called a yapper in a group of 7 adults.
Why would anyone call me a yapper? I'm not a yapper! Absurd!Everyone got quiet, the other sister wanted to make things good again and said I was just being hormonal (as if to justify my reaction). So I tried to explain myself a bit better, but apparently the situation was already too tense because the first sister stormed out of the room and her boyfriend followed him. Then the second sister again justified that it was my hormones and I shouldn't worry about exaggerated emotions. I said it wasn't that. But I didn't want to make things any worse, so I decided to sit quietly until my adrenaline level goes down.
Then the sister's boyfriend comes in and says, "Are you happy now?! You made her cry!" And then it all went over the edge and I started to cry as well and the second sister was talking about hormones again.
WTF?! My sister storms out of the room crying, I get blamed and now I am being hormonal?! My husband was really worried. He had not seen me that upset for years. I spent some time trying to calm down but even when we got home half an hour later I was still so upset that half my teeth hurt and I had a headache. The baby wasn't too happy either. I was avoiding any conversation with my sisters but I still needed to understand what had even happened so when I got home we talked about it with my husband. I'm feeling better now, but my eyes are red and my teeth hurt. The baby has finally calmed down. And nothing really even happened! The 4-year old kid didn't say anything bad about me and my sister didn't say anything bad and I wasn't deeply insulted and my sister's boyfriend just asked if I was happy. Why the hell did all that happen then? What happened there?! Is it really just the pregnancy making me too emotional? No! I still say that it's just a lousy stereotype! No matter how much I analyze it, I don't see how it was about pregnancy & hormones.
I have been angry twice during my entire pregnancy - once today and once when I was visiting my folks. I mentioned it in the blog: one brother called me a fatso and the other gave nicknames to my unborn child, all at the same time. I raised my voice at them and that was that. Both times I was angry when I was with my family. Coincidence?
I think not!My personality has come a long way since I moved out of my parents home. Then I was just unsure about everything, trying to get into the university, unsure how I would be able to live on my own. Sadly, the rest of the family shared these thoughts. They were surprised I got into the university, and when I moved out my dad gave me $20.
As if I was just asking for allowance to buy some candy. That was almost six years ago.Now in my everyday life the situation is significantly different. I am surrounded by intelligent and successful people. At work I am treated as an equal by molecular biology scientists who regularly publish articles in international journals. Among my friends I am sometimes the extroverted enthusiastic chatterbox and sometimes the friendly curious person asking silly questions. Among my husband's friends I'm more often the shy friendly wife. I don't talk much but when others initiate conversation I give a positive impression. I can be a bit too opinionated and way too honest, but that's just me and everyone has their weaknesses. Despite that, I'm quite used to being treated as an equal. Even people who don't know me well treat me with polite respect (as I treat them).
However, the moment I'm surrounded by my family, I am assumed to take the same role I had as a child. No one among my friends or colleagues would ever call me a fatso or a yapper. But for some reason, that's not the case when I'm with my family. I assume they treat me with some respect and I'm completely thrown off track when they suddenly don't. Or maybe if a friend had said "fatso", I would have found it funny. Mhh.
Yes, I would have thought it was hilarious because I would know they were joking and it would be a bold joke to make. It would be flattering that our friendship is so close that they know I wouldn't think they really meant that. But you see, when it's family, it's different. My brother calls me a fatso and suddenly 5 people are laughing as if it was the joke of the day. 
Pardon me if I don't join in.I didn't pay too much attention to it a year ago, but I just intuitively avoided spending too much time with my family because I felt somewhat tense with them. So why do I react to it now? Because I'm no longer just a student living on my own - now I'm a grown-up and I can not agree with being treated as the high-school me. I have my own family, I have a job, I live in an apartment I helped decorate... I have my own life and I'm about to become a parent. This means I get assertive when I'm not being treated as an adult. So it DOES have something to do with pregnancy, but not with hormones. My self perception has changed so much that I am no longer able to accept being treated as the child who left home 6 years ago. This means there will probably be a few more fights with my family in the near future - they will force me into the old role and I will fight my way out of it. They won't expect it and there will be tension but it can not be avoided. Things will finally settle and in 10-20 years all of us will have pleasant adult relationships with assumed mutual respect. Our children will play together and all will be well.
Can't wait.
Oh... There is so much to think about for me... So many things I recognize from my life. And somehow I feel guilty in what happened.
ReplyDeleteThis is said to be the parent's duty to avoid all difficulties in child's life, but as I couldn't imagine it from my mother, I feel so incapable of helping my own child myself now. How many generations it takes to get free of some bad or not desirable lines in your characteristic? It takes a lifetime to understand some important things!
A good point to agree with: I also don't want to get back into a role of my earlier life, because I have got out of this with big difficulties and nobody could help me in this. Still, sometimes there are some ways to turn and I am not always sure I have made the right choises. But nobody can say, what difficulties would come with another choises. Thinking this way - the end of life will give the answers, until that - it is learning to swim better and better.
A really intriguing post. Specifically as I don't believe anyone could have a completely trouble-free relationship with one's family. But reading your post makes me think of two things - one is related to hormones and I do think they have a thing or two to do with one's reaction. And I am not saying that in this particular case of disagreements, but in general. Hurting or getting hurt with or by words is at least in my case definitely exaggerated now that I am expecting.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is not being insulted and not reacting and getting into fights like this is a very adult thing to do. If you are unable to treat your brothers as your friends and laugh with them when being called "fatso", then it is as much your immaturity as theirs. I don't want to come insulting you in your blog and I do think that there is enough of misunderstandings and stupid behavior on behalf of your family in this case. BUT I do think that in order to be accepted as a grown up, you should look at your own actions as well as blaming everyone else not noticing you for the adult you are.
Your analysis is correct - the problem does lie with the different perception of "you" that your parents and siblings have, compared to the rest of the humanity you're in contact with. But don't hold them at a fault for this (if you can) - remember, they all have years of experience of you growing up as a child in the family. It literally takes years of experience to overturn this deep-rooted perception.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't plan on waiting that long (while still visiting them often enough to let the new perceptions "sink in"), in my own experience, the "re-training" can be helped along by your own reactions in such situations. If you see them talk to the "teenager Krista" within yourself, you can reflect for a fraction of a second on what would that young you do or say ... and choose a reasonable, adult response that differs as much as possible from all the probable actions she would've taken. The result will be bewilderment on their side (as they didn't expect that reaction) and thus another step towards them understanding that you really have changed.
Hilja, this is probably something inevitable for nearly everyone. At some point personality simply changes. Thus relationships and attitudes must also change. About 4-5 years after I moved out, I felt that our relationship had changed a lot. When it's just the two of us talking, I actually feel like an adult. Thank you for this. :) The relationshio has also changed with a few other individuals in the family, but there is still a long way to go.
ReplyDeletePille, no, it's not the hormones. More likely bottled up feelings being released too abruptly. And since people assume my reactions are "exaggerated" due to pregnancy, they don't take my opinionated moments seriously. Normal reaction was ignored so I over-reacted to be heard at all.
And it's incorrect to say that I did not behave like an adult in those situations. Such situations do not exist in the adult world, therefore they have no learned adult raction options. Just theoretically, if a group of adults suddenly puts someone in a very awkward situation - the options are to either ignore or to say something like, "I don't see how such a comment was necessary" or "seriously. that. was. not. funny.". Some adults laugh it off. When it's funny, I laugh too. When it's not funny, I won't fake a reaction because it's so unhelpful to lie. Actually, my reactions were not childish at all. I voiced my opinion that I didn't apprechiate the situation, I didn't resort to name-calling and simply being mean. Some people would think that the "adult" thing to do is to smile like I didn't notice just to keep relationships; that's dishonest behavior and highly passive aggressive because I actually did notice and I did take offence. That would be the worst choice in my case.
Veljo, your comment has given me a lot to think about. You have a very good point and it's something I hadn't thought of yet. :) It's a good strategy to take a more acknowledged approach for a while. Besides, right now it's just frustrating when they treat me like the "teenager Krista" but with this approach, it could become somewhat like a challenge and a game. Eventually there won't be a need for it but the transition period would be easier to tolerate and possibly much shorter. Thanks.
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ReplyDeleteI did try to make it as vague as possible while still describing my perception and conclusions of it.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking hard trying to decide if I'm gonna write about it or if I'll make an empty blog post about nothing (except perhaps weather and puppies). But the thing is - I'm not thinking about the weather and puppies. And this is a huge shift in my self-perception and has a huge impact on my thoughts and everyday life.
Every few days my mind is taken over by different thoughts and short-term obsessions. When I get a new thoughts stuck in my head, I write about it to clear my head a bit. I don't write about random things that jump in my head.
And your comment is way too not-vague. I'm considering deleting it because you're drawing some bold false conclusions from things you heard in a conversation I never meant to post here.
Everyone has their own way of dealing with things. My way is to analyze analyze and analyze. I'm still doing that, but you missed out on the main point of the blog post - the entire problem is in some ways in my head. MY thinking has changed and it's causing problems. I didn't mean to blame other people or to "bring dirty linen into the public". Everyone has occasional disagreements with people, so I didn't really classify it as a secret. I classified it as "something that's affecting my thoughts disproportionally much". I hope no one is angry at me for posting about it.
And actually I informed you that I posted it 1 minute after posting. If you really thought I really shouldn't have, then you should have told me there and then to either archive it into a personal diary or to make it way more vague. You said nothing like that. I think it's not nice of you to wait a few days and start criticising it now.
And I thought I had tried to make the same point as Veljo, when talking about the adult reactions.
ReplyDeleteOne thing - the hormones thing was about me. About me saying that in similar occasions, I have felt that hormones are justifiably at fault. But enough about that.
I think this is highly naive to say that these things don't exist in the adult world. Adults are as cruel (and often more meaningfully and deliberately cruel) than teenagers. The later just lash out mostly out of inconsideration for others. It is about, me, Me, ME, MEEE!!! The whole notion of teen-ages is about changes in world-self perceptions. However, adults say things like that, quite often, to deliberately hurt people. Can you honestly say that your brother or sister wanted you to get hurt or insulted by their comments? Was their purpose to make you upset? Or was it out of misconceived sense of humor? Or honor? Maybe your sis tried to "protect you", because she likes you a lot and your brother tried to feel camaraderie and made what he thought was a joke?
I have a brother who has called me among other things "fatso" in different periods of my life. When I was late teenager, I was very upset about it and also explicitly said so. Now, I consider by brother among my very best friends. Actually, among the very few in the whole wide world who is allowed to make this kind of comment as a joke.
You probably have a long way ahead when it comes to your family recognizing you for the adult you think you are and you want them to know. But as Veljo said, it is your role to take the lead. To do something totally different, to put them in situations where they have never seen you. Like - if you are the one usually going "home" to visit, then maybe, you would feel stronger on your own territory. Invite them over as a group or a few at a time to your home or to a favorite restaurant that identifies you and give them a chance to see a whole new side of you.
My own long way is still in establishing a meaningful relationship with my mom. It has its ups and downs - a while I can practice what I preach and then I am just another hurt 3 year old or teenager, who has to fight to establish herself trough tears or nasty remarks or just runs and hides. You obviously don't want to run and hide and I think that will help you to establish yourself quicker, also getting to be seen as a parent (good, responsible, considerate), will help your cause. But believe you me, there will be dozens and dozens of minor and major incidents like that and I do think that choosing your battles and picking your fights through these situations doesn't make you passive-aggressive, but might win you over in some occasions.
"And your comment is way too not-vague. I'm considering deleting it because you're drawing some bold false conclusions from things you heard in a conversation I never meant to post here."
ReplyDeleteWell, to save your time, I took it down myself. (Other numerous readers, don't blame Kris.) I really didn't mean it to be offensive, which you regrettably took it to be, so it clearly served the wrong purpose. I would actually have deleted just the last two paragraphs, but it was not possible.
But I still think that it was, from the very beginning, such a ludicrous reason to have such high emotions about (NB: I am not saying that your emotions are ludicrous!!!!). But I basically understand it was just a trigger. And I am just sad that it all happened the way it has been happening.