Gifts in wartime

Part of the difficulty of writing this blog is being aware that healthy people will read it, and completely misunderstand it. As Chantal reminded me: “you can only have empathy for something that you yourself have experienced.” This May not be completely true: I felt for my wife as she gave birth. But I will never really understand what she went trough. 

Take the giving of gifts. 

My mom used to lavish my kids with very costly gifts. Easily spending upwards of $100 per birthday. Then giving on Easter, Valentine’s Day, and every other holiday. Enough that I worked (legitimately) that they were squandering all of their retirement wealth on needless gifts. 

Now, in wartime, the gifts continue, but are different. Cheap things from the dollar store. Toys too old, to young. Disproportionate gifts. All of the things that we asked them not to do. And then there is junk. 

One day, years ago when things were good, but I let slip that we travelled far to visit a friend she doesn’t approve of, she sent me a box of garbage. Literally, it looked like she pulled out a drawer of her desk, dumped it in a box, and paid to ship it to me. No explanation, no nothing. There were even candy wrappers and pencil shavings in amongst the broken pencils and paper clips. Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? According to peacetime treaties, gifts should be received with thanks and praise, even when not really wanted. Parents aren’t perfect. They don’t get it right all the time. 

But in te Cold War of emotional abuse, these very treaties are used against the victim. How exactly does one use a box of junk? How does one say, “thank you”? How does one reciprocate? 

And behind it bc all, how does one deal with the nagging feeling that their mother just did something very crass, very cruel to them, and somewhere inside, a boy is crying, or mad, or both. But...yet...it was a gift. What can you say?

What can I ever say?

Now, four packages of junk, plus an envelope and email of family photos have arrived. Is it weird? Is it a tactic? Shiiukd I be grateful?

She is not accustomed to doing this. She has never sent me reems of paper, crafts, cards from my childhood before. Why now? Why now, when the only thing I have requested is space and silence?

I standby what I said. These are hurtful gifts, bombs filled with confetti and guilt, meant to confuse and wound me. 

I will not play along. I will not even open them or cone near them. 

They are evil gifts, sent in a time of war to cripple me, by pulling me back two times when I was younger, weaker, more easily played, and showed them what they perceived as love. Basically, to trigger me. 

Yes. Now that I know what a trigger is, this is EXACTLY what she is intending to do. And they would take great swaths from my energy banks were I to look at them. I would be exhausted for days. Weeks, even, as I relived some of the most powerful moments of my formative years. My years in abuse. Enmeshed in relationships that felt normal from the inside, but I now see as dysfunctional from the outside. 

Could she really be do cunning? Is the really what she intended? Or is she not just a grandma, putteringvabout, sending odds and ends off to her kids as she downsized? 

Does a spider know what she will do to the fly? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Perhaps she is babbling like a fool, perhaps she is muttering like a witch. But she has a deadly for ensnaring the unsuspecting in her webs. 

Should healthy parents fear that they are triggering their kids? Well, what are your intentions for one thing? Are you sending things at peace time? After sending an amicable text, you see something, send it with the kind note, hoping to bring back good memories? Or are you sending it at war time? After months of silence, you get ruminating about the good all days, find some card that they gave you, and stuff it in an envelope just to remind them of how things are to be? What is the nature of the memory that you would bring up? What is the nature of your relationship now?

I think that healthy parents have very little to fear. Yes, their children may go through difficult times. Yes, there may even be accusations, maybe periods of silence. But that is on a whole different level from what I am experiencing here.

This is narcissistic abuse and it really has nothing in common with a normal relationship.