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Parent Filter: What can I do about this parent/child role reversal that is poisoning my mind and my life and how can I let this parent know that even though I love them dearly I will not continue to let them manipulate me and dump all of their responsibilities on to my plate???

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:36:49 -0800

Parent Filter: What can I do about this parent/child role reversal that is poisoning my mind and my life and how can I let this parent know that even though I love them dearly I will not continue to let them manipulate me and dump all of their responsibilities on to my plate??? Long story short, my widowed mother (who is young by definition - late sixties) let her life go to hell in a hand basket. My DH and I moved her in with us so that we could give her care and keep her from living the horrible existence that she was (dirty house, unable to take care of the pets she had, not eating right - living off of crap - and not managing her severe diabetes). When we moved her in with us, my DH and I were both 27 years old and had only been married for 5 months. That was over 3 years ago.

She doesn't give a damn about her health and always has a convenient excuse to justify what she feels like doing or not doing. She almost put herself in a diabetic coma once because she didn't manage her diabetes even though the doctor had clearly ordered her to do so. Obviously it is perfectly fine to eat a huge tin of peppermint bark that you had hidden in your room and then try to balance it out with insulin injections.... Right! And she has so many health conditions (osteoarthritis, obesity, fibromyalgia, SEVERE diabetes and the many complications that are resulting from the diabetes) not to mention her appalling lack of self-maintenance and personal hygiene... Two months ago, she fell and broke her leg. She wound up in the hospital and had to have surgery to repair the break. This has left her as non-weight bearing for 3 months. She is obese and cannot walk without a walker when she has two legs to walk on. So she has had to go to a nursing home until she can rehabilitate but has been very unhappy about that reality and has tried to get out of the rehab requirement on more than one occasion. She actually told my husband and I that she would be fine if she would just sit at home in her recliner while we went to work and if we made her some PBJ sandwiches and a glass of water so she could make it through the day until we got home. This is crazy... We told her no and I don't think she gets it.....

She has alienated my other siblings through her master manipulator bullshit and as a result I have lost one of my siblings (no longer speaks to my mother or myself) and the other is only helping out/sticking around because they love me and want to support me/not leave me hanging. My mother has nothing to do all day long but sit around and read trashy novels, but somehow she can't seem to manage making her own doctor appointments (even though I set up a HIGHLY convenient calender which has everyone's schedule on it - hence eliminating the excuse of 'I can't make appointments since I don't know what your schedules are and someone has to take me to the doctor). Did I forget to mention that she quit driving for no particular reason?

My husband and I have REPEATEDLY sat down with her and told her that her current situation and methodology in handling it has been unacceptable. Take a shower, change your clothes, wash your hair, eat right, exercise wherever and however you can, and for the love of god, start acting like a member of the living human race!!! Now last time I checked, she was not declared mentally incompetent and I was not appointed as her guardian. In my mind, this means that my family and I do what we need to do in order to make her life at home comfortable within reason. This does not mean that I am supposed to be her personal assistant/secretary and that she can just sit back and be the Queen of Sheba with no responsibilities what so ever. It also does not mean that she can just sit there and let herself be filthy and stink just because it takes so much effort to take a shower. And god forbid she does take that shower and clean herself up! Then she can't do anything for the rest of the day because it "took so much out of" her...

Yes, I am at fault for allowing this behavior to go on for as long as I have. But I have had my awakening and I also have a infant son who needs his mother since he is in fact a baby and cannot take care of himself. Therefore here are the questions that I have at hand:

# 1 - How can I convey that I am done catering to her, that she is an adult and needs to be responsible for herself and that I am invoking the protective shield of self-preservation immediately?

#2 - Once I have established the bare minimum requirements for her, how do enforce them? I know that one thing I can use is "if you don't/can't meet these expectations then we aren't equipped to take care of you anymore". The only problem with that is that it will become an empty threat if used too much. What other repercussions can I use?

# 3 - How can I break free of her manipulation of me through guilt? I need to rid myself of those shackles in order to be strong and not allow further mind games by the master manipulator.

Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions that you might have or any suggestions you can offer. I've set up a throw-away email address at: preserving.my.sanity@gmail.com

"Embrace your code with the elegant grip of Python...-" Wait, what?

curagea — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:45:34 -0800

An overly romantic person in a non-romantic world... help! Let's start with some background:

I am SERIOUSLY romantic. I think in romantic terms and sometimes want to do something purely through intuition and emotion. It's not like "Oh, thine eyes shine with the stars", nothing overly cheesy, but I'm one of those people who stares at the night sky and dream of the beyond, the city lights, the freeways, and how everything comes together, who's watching from that building across the street. Then I stare down at a stray cat on the sidewalk and think "Where are you going, kitty in the streetlight? Were you searching for the meal that never came?" Or I could go on a journey and never come home, finding enlightenment along the way. Stuff like that. It doesn't help that this romanticism seeps into my daily life so that I view even the most casual banal things in a romantic light ("the car blinkers throb in impatience...").

Which leads to me feeling alienated. Growing up with a huge imagination and no one to share it with, I always felt like the odd one out. I rather stare at the city lights and compose the next poem in my head, but this may happen at a CompSci get-together, the most recent case being a rooftop party for Microsoft recruiting candiates. Since I'm a CompSci major, I encounter a lot of techies, but true to stereotypes, they are mostly "hurhur, GTA!" or discussing tech-related jobs and code. And I honestly can't relate to them, I can't think like them, leading to me drifting off to the side and sitting alone.

Don't get me wrong: I like technology. I can code well and learn programming languages; currently I'm fairly fluent in Java, C/++, Python, and hopefully Ruby on Rails soon. I like following the latest tech trends. But I'm also a very artsy person, in fact more creative than technical, and love to talk about philosophy and other similar subjects like how the human mind works, even if I barely know enough about these things. I want to talk in my "natural" language - full of imagery and description, rather than "That was AWESOME" (which I feel is terribly overused). And I have a head full of ideas that aren't remotely CompSci-related.

Sad thing is, even the more "artistic" people - poets, artists, and writers - that I've met so far don't have that romantic edge that I have. Their world is full of postmodernism (highly unromantic IMO) and increasingly, digital media (by the way, I'm talking about Berkeley). It's like human romance/true love is a dying art or something. So I'm left feeling like I don't belong to ANY group at all, and no one can love as I can. There's a few people that I find solace in, but I'm emphasizing "few".

Am I overthinking? Am I just old-fashioned, a modern Thoreau or Robert Frost or Shakespeare? Am I putting a romantic or philosophical spin in the wrong places? I've long accepted that it's not necessary to fit in a group, that I could even form my own niche and be the sole member, but sometimes.... it gets lonely.

Did Kafka experience something like this before writing The Metamorphosis?

eighth_excerpt — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:30:32 -0800

What was I experiencing this morning? If I was awake, then I would be sort of concerned about my mental health. If I was asleep, then I would just regard it as regular bizarre dream stuff. However, I think I was somewhere in between the two. I scampered back to my bed this morning at 5 am after peeing.
I was still half-encapsulated in a dream in which I had communicated with someone or something by making a terradactyl scream / wild boar squeal.
In the dream, I knew what the squeal meant -- something to the effect of "You can seek shelter with me" -- and it was scary because had erupted out of me involuntarily.
I thought that I may have actually done it because my throat and lungs hurt.
I felt at the time that I had fully escaped the dream, but my identity hadn't appeared yet.
There was no language and no memory.
I felt very creaturely.
I perceived myself as a long hairless ape.
I pictured an ape opening its eyes.
I delayed opening mine, not knowing what environment I would find myself in, wanting to draw out the suspense.
For a few seconds, I was able to see the contents of my room and outside of my window without it being warped by my identity.
I suppose you could say I was alienated from my self and my environment
A voice in my head said, "The present is not meant to be seen in context," but I felt like I had the option of doing so if I chose to.
I was scared that if I chose to see it in context, and go further than I had gone, that it would drive me crazy, make me unable to function in society.
I considered what other people might do in this situation: a lot of adventurers (Keanu Reeves) would take the risk of being able to see reality even if it meant they'd be isolated from society from then on; I was on the fence but because of fear I leaned toward the comfort of identity and illusion.
I was sort of terrified.
But simultaneously I felt amazing.
I went back to sleep and I've had a normal day since then.

Marx for dummies.

lovejones — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:07:48 -0800

MarxFilter: Trouble understanding the concept of "alienation of labor" in the Manuscripts of 1844. Can anyone explain to me exactly what he means? Looking for a concise plain-language breakdown of Marx's concept of the alienation of labor. I've been trying to wrap my head around it all day and secondary sources on the internet haven't been very illuminating. I grasp that if labor is occupied in producing an object, that time spent in production comes at the expense of the laborer's own time to pursue what it wishes (be a human). However, with regards to an individuals relationship to the actual object that is produced, in what sense is there alienation? From the objects' uses? Is what Marx implies that in a way a laborer doesn't "understand" the outcome of their work?

As an addendum, if anyone could recommend great secondary texts, please mention as well, as I'm sure this won't be the last question I have on the topic...