What started out as a nice if ordinary Christmas has turned out to be anything but ordinary or nice. I don't have any great hopes for the problems being resolved in a way that leaves relationships intact. Furthermore, I don't care.
Yesterday afternoon while my family was at my aunt's house, my dad approached me and told me my Aunt Victoria wanted my help in setting the table. She didn't need the help of my brother or cousins or any male minors because boys don't help with such things. That doesn't really matter here anyway. My aunt asked for my help, and as she was the one providing the meal and I wasn't paying for anything, I was therefore obligated to help out in any way requested. Her sons don't help in the kitchen or dining room because they work on the family dairy. My brother doens't work on anyone's dairy, so I'm not sure why he was automatically exempted from setting the table, but that's neither here nor there.
I can tell that this story has the potential of being incredibly long, so I will try to slightly cut to the chase. I may skip a few important details, nut it's in the name of finishing this post before my mom wakes up and kicks me off her computer, which I'm no longer allowed to use.
Anyway, I told my dad I needed to shut my computer down first, but he was rather insistent that my aunt needed me NOW, not 30 seconds from now, so I very foolishly left it running. Someone, presumably my brother and my cousin, found my computer still running. The person or persons went to my Ywitter account and typed messages about someone named DMX. A few of the messages apparently contained the F-word. My dad saw them on my computer just as we were preparing to leave. If he has said something before we left, the matter of who left the messages might have been cleared up. Instead, my brother and cousin are at my cousin's house 3 hours away, I am at home, and my parents think I left the dirty word messages.
I will not lie and say that I have NEVER lied to my parents. I have done so on a couple of on very rare occasions, although I've never been caught actually lying to them, and they have no direct evidence that I've lied to them other than my admission right here. My brother, on the other hand, lies to our parents on almost a daily basis. If they use one of his lies, which are probably about as numerous as his true statements to them, as a baseline statement, they probably think his true statements are actually lies.
The entire drive from my aunt's home to our home was a three-hour-long episode of verbal abuse from my father to me, during which he interrogated me without allowing me to actually answer hardly a question. The one time I did manage to insert an answer into my dad's monologue, my mother jumped in to say that I was wasting my time by trying to blame my indescretions on my brother. That is very typical of my mother. She doesn't actually care what I do as long as I don't do anything to get her favorite child into trouble in the process.
When we got home, my dad took away my laptop and phone. Then he removed the cord from the TV in my room so that it can't be powered. While I don't agree with any of my dad's actions because I am totally innocent of the act of which I have been accused, I understand why he took my computer and phone. If I actually had authored and sent the tweets, it would follow that I should not have the right to send any more offensive communications for at least some undetermined interval. I'll even go along with the disabling of the TV, since a TV in my room is exclusively for entertainment, and perhaps a person who sent offensive communications should be at least temporarily deprived of entertainment.But then he took away my new violin that was my Christmas present. Even if I did what he said, which I didn't, what does a violin have to do with using the F word in tweets? He's just trying to take away anything that he thinks makes me remotely happy. If that's the way my parents are going to be, I don't think I will accept the violin back when my parents find out that the boys were responsible for the tweets containing the F word. Perhaps that is the equivalent of cutting off my nose to spite my face, but I don't really care right now. I am willing to do almost anything I can possibly do to make my parents feel as unhappy as I feel right now. Furthermore, sooner or later my mother will need a violinist for some performance, and that violinist will not be I. I don't play the violin anymore.
Before my dad took my violin away, I was determined to clear myself of involvement in this situation. I don't care anymore. My parents are free to think I made obscene tweets for the rest of their lives. If it inadevertently happens that I am exonerated, whatever. I don't care. I'm certainly not going to lift a finger to prove my innnocence.
I'm not bothered as much by my parents' punishments as by the idea that they actually hate me for this. Every kid I know has done worse things than put swear words in tweets, even if I did it, which I didn't. If they can hate me over a few swear words that I didn't even type or send, they probably did not love me very much in the first place. My parents will find out that if they want to hate me, I can hate them right back with an intensity that is at least equal to the intensity of their hatred for me.
I cried about this all night, but I'm through crying about it because I don't care anymore.
I don't normally go on the internet on Sundays but I felt prompted to read your blog today. It isn't as bad as you think. Talk to your parents. They probably don't hate you. Their just angry but I don't think they hate you. Raising children is difficult and we all lose our patience.
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ReplyDeleteAlexis, I am going to say something now that might case some adults to have an apoplectic fit. Parents do NOT know everything. ;o))
ReplyDeleteI have seen parents doing things to their kids and I say to myself: "If only you knew the harm you are causing to the relationship with your children, you really, really wouldn't do that."
And later they might say: "I really don't know why my son/daughter HATES me so much! What have *I* ever done to deserve that?"
I once witnessed such an event when someone actually told such a parent what they had done. Yow. Sparks did fly!
I know someone close to me who had a bad childhood, by-and-large. Their mother acted as if she hated her.
It transpired, years later, that her mother could not cope with her because she was a genius, and so clever that her mother was frightened of her. She still hates her mother. And not without good cause, it has to be said.
Alexis, we learn from our parents. We learn by watching what they say but, more importantly, by what they do. Sometimes we learn from their mistakes.
Personally, I think your father has over reacted big time. I mean, you are a young woman of 17 and you might have used the F-Word.
And... so what? I mean, really? What is the deal?
Your father's reactions have been childish in the extreme. I used this line to someone, once, several years ago. "Look, there's only room enough for one child in a parent-child relationship. If YOU act like a child, where is the room for your child to behave like a child?"
This is how your father reacts when he thinks you might have sworn. If something major was to happen, what would he propose to do? Put you on bread and water. Use capital punishment?
Alexis, try not to let this situation escalate. You have the moral high ground as you have done no wrong, but are being punished. Though how your father can extricate himself from this situation is debatable.
Is there something else that is bothering him, something else that is making him act in a less-than-rational way, I wonder?
My dad has agreed that I couldn't have done it. It seems that the lines used were totally pervrse and far beyond just the F word to the extent that he's bothered that even my brother or cousins came up with it. Eventually he realized I didn't know enough to write that stuff. He says I can be as angry with him as I want but he'd appreciate it if I would go easy on my mom because she has major health problems no one has shared with me and she has work-related problems on top of that. He said that still didn't give her any right to go off on me the way they both did but he would be greatly indebted to me it if I could place the blame on him this time. He promised to take two days off work this week and take me anywhere in California that I want to go. I don't like the Sacramento area where we live anymore so that is nice.
ReplyDeleteI still don't know exactly who did it, but at least i'm not getting the blame anymore.