Her Miserable Childhood
My older daughter is now 37 years old. She was 13 years old when my marriage to her father broke up. When she was in her mid-twenties she wrote some poetry outlining an incident where she was hiding in the foyer closet with the christmas decorations while her father and I had an argument. I didn't know until then that she had not gone upstairs, like she was told, but stayed to easedrop on the conversation.
The only complaint that she has ever voiced clearly to me about her childhood was that argument that she stayed to overhear. While I'm sure that there were other things, this is all that she's told me about.
December 18, 2012 her father died from lung cancer. For most of her adult life, she avoided him. He wasn't included in holidays or events, and she rarely visited him. Over the past few years, she has started doing the same to me, even though for many years she would call me quite a few times a week, she now rarely calls me more than once per month. Even though she often invited me to her house for events or holidays, Now I am lucky to get an invitation for a holiday, and that invitation usually comes with conditions.
I've been sick for a few years now. My back surgeries have left me weak, stiff, and in pain. Even though I am under treatment for this, and have been officially judged by a judge to be disabled, she does not believe that I am sick. I don't know if it is a refusal to believe or a refusal to accept, she told me on the day that she was on the way to her father's memorial that I owe her an apology for her miserable childhood and for not taking over the care of her new baby when I came to visit her on Christmas Eve.
She told her sister that I was "playing invalid". Her basis for this assessment was not that I required her to wait on me while I visited her, but that I did not wait on her while I visited her.
I don't understand her anger. She's been in and out of therapy for years now, yet has apparently not dealt with her issues with either me or her father. I have to accept that I cannot help her, but I cannot deal with her explosions towards me because I can not do the things she expects of me.
The only complaint that she has ever voiced clearly to me about her childhood was that argument that she stayed to overhear. While I'm sure that there were other things, this is all that she's told me about.
December 18, 2012 her father died from lung cancer. For most of her adult life, she avoided him. He wasn't included in holidays or events, and she rarely visited him. Over the past few years, she has started doing the same to me, even though for many years she would call me quite a few times a week, she now rarely calls me more than once per month. Even though she often invited me to her house for events or holidays, Now I am lucky to get an invitation for a holiday, and that invitation usually comes with conditions.
I've been sick for a few years now. My back surgeries have left me weak, stiff, and in pain. Even though I am under treatment for this, and have been officially judged by a judge to be disabled, she does not believe that I am sick. I don't know if it is a refusal to believe or a refusal to accept, she told me on the day that she was on the way to her father's memorial that I owe her an apology for her miserable childhood and for not taking over the care of her new baby when I came to visit her on Christmas Eve.
She told her sister that I was "playing invalid". Her basis for this assessment was not that I required her to wait on me while I visited her, but that I did not wait on her while I visited her.
I don't understand her anger. She's been in and out of therapy for years now, yet has apparently not dealt with her issues with either me or her father. I have to accept that I cannot help her, but I cannot deal with her explosions towards me because I can not do the things she expects of me.
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