Category Archives: Conflict

Series of nightmares

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For my first three nights in San Francisco, I had one nightmare after another. In the first dream, an old friend from college is confessing to me that she committed a murder of someone she hated, but because she thought I was such a pure person, too pure, that she had to frame me for the crime, and that soon, the authorities would find out, and I’d be put in jail. I asked her why she would do something like this, and she responded that she felt that people that were too good needed to be punished for trying to outdo everyone else in the world who tried hard to be good, but couldn’t be.

In the two subsequent nights, I had bad dreams, but I couldn’t remember what happened. I just remembered that the theme that kept appearing was of betrayal, of people who I thought were supposed to be good who were turning against me or blaming me for things I never did.

I have a feeling I know why I had all these bad dreams in my trip back. It’s because I’m always questioning how loyal people really are to me, and what they’d really do for me when life got tough or if they were put in a real position to defend me or do something in honor of me to prove their dedication. It’s hugely an influence my mother has over me — to never fully trust anyone and to constantly be questioning their devotion. I think as the years have gone by, I’ve gotten better at putting a halt to the process of obsessing over it, but it always has its way of creeping into the back of my mind, especially in light of the fact that the bridal shower/bachelorette weekend is one of those main moments in life when your friends or whoever is organizing on your behalf is somewhat intentionally put on the spot to show their love and dedication to you.

We can never escape the influence of our parents, even when we try our best to. It’s like that quite from the book The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. Ever since I read that book shortly after Ed passed away, this quote has stayed with me and popped itself into my thoughts more times than I can count: “All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.” Ed was shattered beyond repair. I am damaged but trying to repair myself every day. This is my painful reality.

Borderline personality disorder

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It’s really hard when mental illness runs in your family, but your family is not cognizant enough to get it treated or addressed in any way, even if it means simply talking about it. Even after the untimely death of my brother, still my parents refuse to acknowledge that he ended his life truly because of a mental illness as opposed to just being “too innocent and trusting” and “immature.” It really hurts to hear the references they make to this and not say anything. Because we all know if I say anything, it would pretty much be the beginning of the end of my relationship with both of them.

Mental illness runs on both sides of my family. My dad’s mother had a mental breakdown that ended up also becoming physical when my dad was just a little boy. He and his siblings had to stay with their aunt and uncle for an entire year while my grandma was hospitalized. My dad grew up in a house where he never truly learned to become an adult and was intensely criticized quite constantly, so to this day, I still look at him like he’s just a little child in an adult’s body. Sure, he was able to work, become financially stable, raise a family in terms of money and material goods, but emotionally and mentally, he’s just not quite there as an “adult.” My brother and I used to look at him as though he were like another sibling as opposed to our father. The only real difference was that when he told us to shut up or criticized us, we couldn’t criticize him back.. because when we did, we’d get screamed at by our mother. He talks to himself pretty much all day long, even in public and at the dinner table with relatives there. It’s caused me a lot of anxiety and embarrassment that I can do absolutely nothing about. And that terrible quality somehow got acquired by Ed despite all his desires to not be anything like our dad. At least Ed didn’t do it in public or at family dinners.

My mom’s family history will always remain a mystery, but the devastating effects of the Vietnam War and her poor life in Vietnam are evident in her as a person today. Over the years, while she has never been trusting, she has gotten even more distrusting of the world and especially of relatives, and is constantly paranoid that people will wrong her or rob her or take advantage of her. She’s had episodes of intense anger where she’s thrown objects all over the house and also gone into a cleaning frenzy in cleaning something that didn’t need to be cleaned. She’s threatened suicide more times than I can count and is constantly saying that pretty much everyone she knows has wronged her and does not care about her at all.. and that they wouldn’t care about me at all if it weren’t for her giving me a ‘reputation’ — whatever that means. “They” even applies to my childhood friends, Chris, and his family.

Mom is constantly making up stories of things that people have said and done to “wrong” her. She’s decided that because Chris told her he thinks I am “generous” that I must be paying everything for him and his family every time they are visiting or I am in Australia. When it came to the wedding, when I told her that Chris said he wasn’t comfortable accepting his parents’ monetary contribution, she quickly concluded it meant that he was expecting my parents to pay for the entire affair, instead of thinking it meant that he wanted the two of us to pay for it ourselves. When my friends were visiting for my bridal shower weekend, she was intensely paranoid the two days before they arrived and insisted they would steal all our valuables unless we hid them in her room. When she announced her bathroom tweezer supposedly went “missing” two days later, I held my breath until she finally told me that she found it in another spot she had placed it. And you are probably wondering, who would steal a pair of tweezers? My mom thinks people will take whatever they can get. She accuses me at least once every visit that I don’t like her, that I prefer other people (primarily Chris and his parents) over her and my dad. She’s accused Chris just yesterday of treating her and my dad “like dirt” simply because she claims he has never offered to pay for a meal for them despite having paid hotels and car rentals and other travel related expenses for them. “I will not let some punk take advantage of me!” she screamed. “I’m disabled! Who takes advantage of a disabled person and makes her pay for him all the time?!”

So I thought about all this and started reading all these psychology related websites. Borderline personality disorder seems to suit her the most based on the descriptions, combined with probably a handful of different anxiety disorders that will sadly never be known because she refuses to acknowledge she needs help. “How can I be mental?” she screamed at Ed and me years ago when one of us said she had a mental illness and needed professional help. “I raised a family with no real education and sent you to Wellesley! How can I be mental?!”

How sad that there are still so many people, including her, who believe that if you can get through these different life phases that nothing could possibly be wrong with you. It is another fight I have already lost.

Mommy fights

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It’s inevitable that when I go back home, especially if it’s for more than a week, I will probably get into a fight or two with my mom. It’s almost as though I wait for it to happen every time. With my dad, it’s more just getting annoyed with comments he makes, but with my mom, it’s actually getting instigated, and usually, unfairly.

Today, it started with her complaining about cousins and wives not having any “common sense,” and when I told her I didn’t want to hear her complaining, she got really angry and said she should be able to speak freely around me because I’m her daughter. Somehow, the conversation escalated and she accused me of not liking her and always being aware of this, and she said that I favored Chris’s parents. “His mom told me that you wake up early every morning and make them breakfast,” she said angrily. “But you can’t even wake up early to make your own parents breakfast!”

Well, that’s not really true. I did wake up early on Saturday to make pancakes for my two visiting friends and my parents. It’s just that it wasn’t early enough for my mother. I woke up at 7:15. She got angry and said I should have waken up an hour earlier because dad was already preparing his oatmeal. “You never do anything nice for your parents, but you do nice things for outside people!” Dad was never going to eat my pancakes and was always going to eat his oatmeal; he is hell bent on eating oatmeal with oat bran, flaxseed, chia seed, sunflower seed, and maybe ten other seed types every morning to prolong his life. He’s even gotten more fanatical about it post heart surgery. The other inaccuracy about this is that I really only woke up 15 minutes earlier than usual to “make” Chris’s parents breakfast when they came. It really encompassed turning on the coffee maker, which I would already have prepared the night before, and throwing a bunch of fruit and spinach and almond milk into a blender and blending for 60 seconds. I explained that to my mom, but that was useless because she of course embellished the story and insisted that Chris’s mom said that I had an elaborate spread of things for them to eat every morning. That is definitely not true.

Arguments with the parents are always extremely annoying, but they are even worse when they are making up “facts” that don’t even exist and just say delusional things that they believe to be true. Because how do you convince a delusional person that she is delusional?

Breaking in

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I flew home to San Francisco today, and my parents picked me up from the airport as they usually do. When I got into the car, my mom said to me, “Don’t get mad about this, but we locked ourselves out of the house, so we need to get the ladder from the garage and climb up to the bedroom to get in.” Great. The dysfunction begins already. Today, I had to break into my own house.

The reason this is “dysfunctional” is that we typically keep a spare key with my aunt, who lives upstairs (they live in a duplex in the Richmond district of the city). Because my aunt used to house a black woman who my parents couldn’t stand (my parents are racist. It’s just a fact. They claimed she was loud and disruptive; she was not), my mom took back the spare key from her, saying she feared that “the black people upstairs” (meaning, that black woman and any of her black relatives and friends) would break into their space downstairs and steal everything. Even after this woman died from terminal cancer in July, my mom still refused to give my aunt back the key because “the blacks are still up there” visiting. That’s just lovely.

We would never have gotten locked out if it hadn’t been for my mother’s paranoia and my parents’ shared racism. The ladder in the garage ended up not being tall enough to get to the second floor bedroom, so I went up the back porch staircase, propped open the kitchen window, climbed over the outdoor staircase banister, and plopped myself onto the kitchen counter and jumped onto the kitchen floor. The entire time, my mom tried to put a death grip on me, but I had to shoo her off, scolding her and telling her she’d be more of a distraction than a savior if I fell.

After we got in, I told them both it was stupid and that they needed to get over it and just give the damn spare key back to my aunt. “What if I weren’t here?” I admonished them. “Neither of you could have done what I just did! It’s not safe for you!” Dad said next time, they’d have the taller ladder there because they left it at the apartment, but I told them that there will not be a next time because they will be logical for once and give the spare key to my aunt. It’s family dysfunction and paranoia like this that drove Ed away, and they still just don’t get it.

 

David and Goliath surprise

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I came back to the office today to move seats, as our office space has expanded, and with a bunch of desk and screen cleaners, I also found a hardcover copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants sitting on my desk. Well, that’s kind of funny because this book was actually on my reading list. No one’s name was in the book, and since no one claimed it after I went around asking, I decided that I’m taking it with me to read while I am in San Francisco. Gladwell’s books are always easy reads for me while at the same time still being thought-provoking.

The reason I wanted to read this book is that my friend recommended it to me when I told him Ed’s life story and how he thought he was doomed for failure. “He should have red David and Goliath,” he said to me. “Maybe it would have given him some strength.” Maybe. But now that he isn’t here, I guess I will read it for him. The book’s basic gist is that sometimes, people who are the “underdogs” whether through status, what they have, or what they don’t have, can sometimes use that to their advantage and prevail with more creative problem solving skills and other crafty responses to life’s questions and scenarios.

To be honest, just from reading the book’s description, I’m not 100 percent sure it really would have helped Ed. It would be great to have books to read like this, but it’s a completely different thing to have people around you who actually will encourage you and not just put all their energy towards crushing your soul, calling you worthless, and criticizing you as much as they possibly can. That’s what causes people to jump off bridges — literally.

Stranded

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The last time I had to stay overnight at an airport, I was in college, trying to get a connecting flight from Atlanta back to San Francisco on the way home for Christmas. I was flying stand-by on Delta with my uncle’s buddy pass, and because I was a non-revenue flier, they would not pay for me to stay at a hotel overnight. And because I was not only cheap but also on a student budget, I just laid my clothes on some seats at the airport and slept on the uncomfortable chairs overnight. I asked the security guy to watch over me. And he nicely did.

This time, our connecting flight to Chicago from Minneapolis was four hours delayed, resulting in us not making it to Chicago in time to board any New York-bound flight. So they put us in the nearby Crowne Plaza for the night and gave us each a $12 dinner voucher and a $7 breakfast voucher for our inconveniences.

You’d think I would be grateful, but I was more annoyed than anything. All of these delays were just because they were trying to fly us in an old plane where it took four hours to fix the air conditioning. When I was in college, I would have been really grateful to get a free hotel stay at a Crowne Plaza. I guess this just shows how priorities change and maybe even how much more impatient I have become.

Aggression

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Last night, I dreamt I was at my parents’ house, sitting on the couch with Ed next to me. My parents are sitting on the opposite couch, and one of my best friends is also in the room. Suddenly, my former (verbally abusive) boyfriend from my college years walks in, and he plops himself on the couch next to me. I’m wondering, who the hell invited him here?

And as I’m thinking this, my mom starts discussing the will that she and my dad have finalized. She says that they’ve decided to evenly split everything between Ed and me, but with Ed’s portion, I have control over how he chooses to use the money and inheritance left to him. The reason for this is because of Ed’s mental illness. He’s not fit to make decisions on his own and needs my assistance. Ed gets really angry and starts yelling at them, saying that he’s an adult; he should be allowed to make his own decisions, and that he will be responsible enough to decide for himself. My dad interjects and starts calling him stupid and all kinds of other criticisms. I yell at them to stop criticizing Ed, and that this topic is really inappropriate in front of people outside of our family. My friend and the ex are oblivious. It’s as though they don’t even realize that there is an argument happening right in front of them. No one is listening to me. Our parents continue to attack and put down Ed and ignore my pleas to stop. I get so heated that I stand up and kick both of my parents in the head one by one, and they both stop yelling and fall to the floor and hit their heads.

Even though I was scared in my dream that I could have killed both of them by kicking them in the heads, it actually felt like such a relief to take out some aggression on them. There have been too many times to count where I have yelled and defended my brother to no avail, but none that would have made such an impact as physical violence like this.

Two years later

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Two years later after the death of my brother, I am finally coming to terms with the dysfunctional relationship between my cousins, who are all brothers, and the relationship they have with me. For one of them, the relationship is pretty much non-existent unless someone dies. With the second, it’s superficial and we only talk about surface things, and with the third, well, it revolves around his young son. I’ve finally learned to accept that I will never have the relationship I wished we could all have as adult cousins, and I’ve stopped taking the things they do personally. It only took about 29.5 years to get to this point.

In two weeks, one of these cousins, who lives in Brooklyn, will be going out to visit San Francisco for the first time since Ed’s funeral, which is over two years ago now. This time, he’s bringing his wife and son. He texted me yesterday and today to let me know that despite the very much in advance notice he gave his two brothers, his brother who lives in Redwood City and has a wife and two kids has let him know he has no time to see him. He’s just too busy, he said. There was a lot of needless and fruitless back and forth. Finally, it took a ‘secret’ conversation when he called my Brooklyn cousin to squeeze in a quick lunch together. His wife was not with him when this conversation took place.

Two years ago, I probably would have thought about this for days and thought about how stupid my Redwood City cousin is, how he lacks balls and how stupid it is that his selfish wife controls his life and doesn’t even want him to see his own brother, who he sees about once every two years at this point. Today, I laughed it off and decided it wasn’t worth a single thought, other than that I am so happy that my own life doesn’t have even a tiny bit of that type of dysfunction.

Lonely night

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I’m having a bad day today. Nothing “bad” actually happened, per se, but I felt this overwhelming sense of loneliness when I woke up, and throughout the day, even when I had people around me, I felt so lonely. Even though I can be quite outgoing and from the outset seem to be an extravert, I actually think I’m more of an introverted person naturally. I’m usually very comfortable being alone, thinking about my surroundings and life in general. I like doing things that people do when they are alone: reading, organizing, perusing recipes and researching ingredients for a next dish, scrapbooking. These are one-person activities generally. But today, all of this annoys me. I don’t really want to do any of this, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like going out of my way to speak to someone or anyone. Today is just a dissatisfying day because of my mood. The 90-plus degree weather, for whatever reason, did not help it. I just want to sleep today.

Question from God

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Last night, I dreamt that Ed and I were in line to go into a small room one by one, and he went into the room first. He stayed in there for about ten minutes and came out. What’s going on in there? Well, I found out that we’re all in line to meet with God. God is sitting in that room waiting for each of us to come inside, and he asks each of us the exact same question. The question is: What day do you think you will die?

Ed explains this all to me when he exited the room. “So what did you respond with when he asked that?” I ask him. He looks at me plainly. “July 22, 2013,” he replies. I felt sick immediately, and I ask him why he said that date. Why that date in particular? “Take it back,” I say to him sternly. “Tell him it won’t be that date!” He continues to look at me without much expression on his face, and he doesn’t respond. I get frustrated. “I don’t want to go in there,” I said, beginning to feel angry. “I don’t want to hear that question, and I don’t want to answer it.” He still says nothing.

Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about what day I would die. I was fixated on the fact that Ed decided that he would die on July 22, 2013. I didn’t want it to be true, even if that date is already over two years ago. Even in my dreams, I don’t want to believe it.

Sometimes, I really hate reality. I hate the fact that he is gone. I’m not saying life would be perfect for him or for me if he were still here. In fact, his life probably would still be miserable if he were still with us. But I hate thinking about the fact that my brother is dead. Today is just one of those difficult days.