No, it wasn't too long and I appreciate! I'm glad to hear your parents are better but that doesn't undo what happened. I could write a long list of recent things my mother or my father got up to and that would be boring and just show they can't live up to my expectations - or that they are just not very pleasant people.@Ariadne : I've been mulling over your post for a few days and forgive me for taking so long to contribute. You know that I know your pain, and I know what you're going through. My parents are better now and it's my ex-husband who is the toxic one, the one I have to interact with every day and who shows up in my house in a 9 year old body all the time.
I hate when people trying to give support just talk about themselves because I'm not trying to talk about myself - I'm trying to let you know that you're not alone with this pain. The thing I wanted to share was this: there's a guy where I work (I work for Harvard) who is a student, and he has two artificial legs. Both legs go above the knee and he wears shorts a lot, so you can see them. He carries a backpack around and he walks stiffly, because he is walking on his knees, and honestly you have to actually look at him to notice it. I have so much admiration for him. I suspect he's a soldier who got his legs blown off by an IED because we have a lot of military types around here studying, but I don't know for sure and it doesn't really matter. I got on the elevator with him once and I blurted out "I have so much admiration for you," and he seemed a bit taken aback and said "Yeah, I've been through some stuff ..."
My point is that his pain is on the outside where everyone can see it, whereas your pain (and mine) is on the inside where no one can see it unless we share it. In some ways I'm jealous of him for that. But also, his pain (and ours) is never going to go away. He is never going to have legs again. He is never going to put his toes in the sand or try out new shoes or get a foot rub. We are the same. There are parts of us that are so badly damaged that they will never heal. But that's OK. We can live with it, just as he lives with his artificial legs. We aren't ever going to have the kind of carefree existence that people with working family relationships (or working legs) have, but we are still going to live our lives to the fullest. It's OK to carry this pain because it has to be, and somehow accepting that helps.
hope this wasn't too long ...
It's just so sad. My father sounded dissappointed that I am again not coming over for christmas. The last time I was there for christmas it was just so horrible I wanted to get away and the thing is with the village they're in and me not owning a car, I couldn't so I was stuck and it felt like the past again, the way they behaved and me unable to escape. So I'm not having that again, and I have told them why that is. They insist they were most pleasant (with my father telling me I always damage their stuff - he thought I broken their tv - and my mother claiming I know nothing about children's books despite having worked with children's books for over 10 years) and they really can't see how they were not, so my father played his "but I'm in poor health" card. Which is true and because I'm not made of stone that does get to me, but that really doesn't make them nicer.
If someone can't help hurting you, it doesn't mean you have to stand in the firing line.