I have given more thought to why it bothers me that my parents can show affection for their Precious Pet (although mother doesn't like Precious Pet 2) and realized that part of the disbelief is because they(Precious Pets) are so demanding. (Yes, they're cats.) I was so careful to not have needs or wants in an effort to be loved, yet the one Precious Pet makes ridiculous and loud demands--even in the middle of the night-- and they don't mind. That is unbelievable.
My mother has this thing about sleep. She complains all the time about how she doesn't sleep much, and has all kinds of outside influences she blames. (Your father won't let me sleep, my aches & pains kept me up, I just couldn't sleep, etc. Yet she won't do anything about it, like exercise or take something to help her sleep. Or go have a sleep study done and find out what's wrong--but no. She'd rather complain, it guarantees her years of something to complain about, I mean talk about.) When I was a kid and would get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, she claimed she would hear the floors creaking and would get up to hiss at me to go back to bed, that I'd woken her up. Um, what about going to the bathroom? I wasn't supposed to go, according to her theory of the world and how it worked. I often wondered what she would say if I started keeping a bucket in my bedroom for those midnight calls of nature.
And it tends to make me wonder if she was ever really asleep when I supposedly woke her up trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Yet the damn cat can start demanding his treats in the middle of the night and she thinks it's funny that he's so spoiled and she indulges him??
I have called her at 6:30 p.m. in the evening--yes, before 7 p.m.--and been scolded, "Some people are sleeping!" (This was when I was an adult, and you'd better believe that I didn't call again for months after that.) Yet her already-fat cat can wake her up meowing at any hour of the night for more food which he doesn't even need and it's okay? Something is wrong with that picture.
I resent that I was forced to ignore my needs as a child, while the Precious Pet can be as demanding as possible and it's okay.
It feels good to be able to state that clearly, instead of wondering why I am so resentful of a darned cat. It isn't the cat.
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4 comments:
I want to be funny here, but although you've written it like that, all i feel is sad for the neglected little girl just wanting to be accepted never mind loved.
hugs hon, and lots of them.
pxx
My mother has a precious pet too. If I didn't have such a soft spot for animals, I'd like to make her pet "disappear" like she did to all of my childhood animals.
It is very bizarre what our parents did and said and felt and that they saw nothing wrong with it! Sounds as if your mother felt helpless and scared and unlovable. And since you were female, by extension you must be unlovable and unimportant, too. I'm guessing your mother's childhood was awful and she had no clue what love was. I remember my mother once very seriously telling me that her mother loved her and she knew it because when her father started to hit her, her mother would tell him to hit her where it wouldn't show! And my mother was genuinely convinced this proved her mother loved her. I was only ten but I've got to tell you I was stunned that she could actually believe such a thing! Explained a lot about how she saw and treated me....
It is crazy.
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