my uncle, uncle to me through my aunt-makes incredibly poisionous comments about family members with no consideration for their feelings-he’s only concerened about how cool or witty he comes off or if he has had enough catharsis for himself-i considered aspects of my relationship to be emotional i*****. I’m concered taht in side for me-ive cut out of mylife but i keep secrets for him. and Im letting them out.
He made a degrading comment about his daughters s** life for his benefit in a family conversation.
He was self-righteously convinced that he had the right to disclose that my cousin, not one of his kids, had bi-polar and attempted to commit suicide. I was concerned for her-but I became so enraged later on when he disclosed that she had expressly did not want her other cousins to know. It was an incredible violation of her confidence and privacy. I wanted to criticize him harshly for it but bit my tounge.
He made comments to me about my mother which were confusing. I had become his counselor as a young boy. I remember being able having incredibly poisionous (looking back on it now) conversations about family problems, but not being able to connect over little things-probably because i had become more and more resentful and more and more frusturated with him. He was an incredibly fragile person when you called him out on his stuff.
I remember when he tried to dredge up an old conversation where my grandfather threatened to cut off my allowance-something I felt incredibly ashamed about because it was after college-i was struggling and was uncomfortable being powerless over this type of stuff. I’ve come along way from it-but I was in the car on the highway with him when he tried to bring it up for him. I could see then gossiping about other people comforted him and when he did it-he was an incredulous immature adolescent who couldn’t control himself. It still cut me so raw and so deep. He’s an incredibly posionous man who I no longer want to keep in touch with. I remember he called me and I called him back-i was so uncomfortable with the situation-he said he missed me and he loved me and in usual fashion-i felt uncomfortable setting boundaries with him and even just giving him a piece of my mind. The only thing that is controlling me is my resentment of him now and the conditioned response i have to not speak up or set boundaries with people in primary relationships because I become afraid I’m going to be abandoned. This isn’t rational for an adult-but it was for a boy who couldn’t get on on his own without the help of adult caretakers, no matter how abusive, or how poisionous or toxic. By making this confession i release all of the old toxic feelings from my body, all of the resentments that have been controlling the focus of my mind, and comitting to becoming more peacefully detached. Most importantly-I’m standing up for myself not by standing against him, but by becoming a more loving parent to myself.