Back in the 80s, I was hugely into science fiction and became part of the fan scene. I went to meetings the first Saturday every month at St Luke’s Hall in South Melbourne where Star Trek fans met up, and then joined mot of them later in the evening at the National Mutual Theaterette in the city for a Star Trek Marathon, where we’d sit and watch 5 episodes of the classic series (19666 – 1969) back to back. I always enjoyed it immensely and made some great friends.
It would have been a lot more enjoyable if I hadn’t had heavy baggage dragging me down. By this, I mean, my mother.
I was a grown adult and should have been able to head out for an afternoon with friends on my own. As usual, my mother couldn’t help herself and she absolutely HAD to interlope and fuck it up as best she could.
She claimed to ‘enjoy Star Trek’ and insisted on coming to the monthly meetings with me. She never really interacted with anyone there. She just kind of lurked around like an idiot.
The problem was, she had no friends. She was so brilliant at alienating people that she had no friendship group of her own to go places with. Thus, she latched onto me and poached MY friends as her own. It might have been amusing if it hadn’t been so suffocating, insulting and offensive.
It was bad enough to be grilled every time I wanted to step a foot out of doors, but physically interloping on MY life to such a degree was majorly offensive. Any time I wanted to go anywhere, I copped it. Where was I going? How was I going to get there? How was I going to get home? Who was I going to be seeing? What was I going to be doing? Who were these people? Blah blah blah. I had to answer ALL her questions before I would be granted PERMISSION to go. That would have been understandable if I’d been 14 or so. However, I was over 1888 and the time and being treated like a mentally defective child.
So, here I was, a grown adult, not allowed to have a friendship group of my own because this miserable old biddy had no life of her own so she decided to appropriate mine. No apology, and certainly no thought that at 18+ I might have deserved a bit of freedom without my mother tagging along.
And the thing is, she didn’t really like the show. She wasn’t any version of a fan. She just had nobody to go places with and decided to live vicariously through me.
If she wanted to go to a concert or a screening of a movie (or anything really), she would demand I accompany her because in her mind, it was unthinkable that she actually take herself to these things. No. In her twisted universe, if she didn’t have a companion to go with, then she couldn’t go – period. And I was the patsy who got dragged along to these things to keep her happy.
Personally, I’ve never heard such a complete and utter load of crap in my life. However, she made pretty much every second I lived at home a complete and utter misery. Had I dared to refuse, he simply stepped up her mind-fuck tactics by about a 100 times and I stood no change.
I didn’t admit myself to a psych unit in 1990 for no reason at all, you know. When I say I was suicidal and about to lose it entirely, take me at my word.
Of course, she couldn’t even let me have that situation to myself either. When she got the phone call to say I’d admitted myself, she cam tearing up to the hospital ad demanded to see me. She was ropeable. Beyond ropeable even.
She sat me down in the common room and stared daggers at me while she snarled, in a low enough voice so the nurses couldn’t hear, that “SHE would permit me to continue with this silly, dramatic nonsense providing none of HER family ever found out about it because she was NOT going to be humiliated by me AGAIN.”
Thanks for the loving support, Mum. May I go and blow my brains out now?
Of course, the problem was that I’d gone off script and she wansn’t in control anymore. The only way she had of getting corol back was to convince me that everything was happening under HER permission. I didn’t have the power to make any choices at all. I could only stay on the ward as long as SHE approved.
The actual truth was that she had no say at all. I was an adult and didn’t need her permission to admit myself. She also lived in fear of the nurses finding out what really went on in that house and being judged negatively for it.
The same thing applied to her interloping on my social life. She tried to palm it off as though she were doing me some kind of favour by coming along. In fact, she was a smothering presence and it was embarrassing to have to tell people that she had come along. I didn’t see any other grown adults being followed around by their parent and I didn’t feel it was fair to make me the first.
She came to the afternoon meetings sin the hall, then she came to the Star Trek marathons (which is what we called the screening of 5 episodes) Having her playing tag alone was just humiliating and embarrassing. Trying to palm off her presence as justified because “I’m a fan too” was so far over the line it was just pathetic.
However, taking her to toss on it was impossible. I had to live in the house and she had a million ways to make my life even more of a misery than it already was. So, I had to suck it up.
Mind you, when I moved out at the start of March 1990, all of a sudden, she wasn’t such a die hard fan and stopped coming to those gatherings. It was blessed relief from my point of view.
The sad fact is that the one thing she does (and has always done) brilliantly is alienate people. If we had the neighbours over for drinks at Xmas, she pick an argument over some political thing or the other just so she could argue the other person into submission. She didn’t engage to hear their opinion. She had no interest in them at all. What she wanted was to WIN – and naturally, people got fed up with it.
I saw this pattern year after year. Neighbours would turn up for a pleasant, social evening, and they got bollocked until they capitulated into silence and then have to watch as she sat there with a smug look on her face having beaten them into submission and ‘won’ the argument. What she never seemed to understand is that nobody came there for a fight and certainly not to be beaten into pulp so she could congratulate herself and feel superior.
Is it any wonder she had no friends of her own to hang out with? I wouldn’t be signing up for that either.
Even today, she tries to pry into my life in order to pass judgment and ‘win’. It’s precisely why I tell her nothing – ever.
Am I okay? Yes.
Do I still work at the same place? Yes (even if I don’t).
Have I been anywhere lately? No, just life as usual.
Do I get together with friends? Occasionally.
What do we do? Just stuff.
You get the drift. If she has no details, she can’t pounce on me with her carping bitching and tear my life to shreds for her own satisfaction. While it’d be nice to be able to have an open conversation with her, it’s not possible. Rather than beat myself up over that and be hurt about it, I accepted the situation decades ago and just withhold all ammunition from her. It’s not about being mean. It’s about survival. The last thing I want is to badly vivisected by her that my only option is to put myself back on a psych ward – again.
I finally have space where I can get together with MY friends and they’re not appropriated by her because he’s incapable of making any of her own. I can go out without being interrogated about where, how, who, what and anything else she can think of to make the whole intended even a misery of truly biblical proportions. I don’t like it but I can’t change her and I refuse to sacrifice my sanity on her cruel altar. I deserve better.
I’ve done my time trying to have a life which is only as broad as SHE will allow it to be. Sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself, claim your grown and never concede a single millimeter, because the alternative is unthinkable.
PepSpill 