What I Was Gaslighted Into Thinking I Was Bad At
So today’s big revelation into my soul is going shape up into yet another dark and dismal blog post. Hopefully you’re as used to it as I am by now. I didn’t even fight the epiphany like I might have done in the past. I just let it roll over me as I walked my more difficult dog, Forrest, the big sweet lug, up and over the hill down the way and let the tears roll. There weren’t that many, never as many tears as I fear they will be. Like anything we try to repress, repressing just makes the fallout worse. So go ahead, big revelation, have your way with me, I commanded.
It was this: You are afraid you are a bad caretaker. You think you don’t have any skill at taking care of others. This stems from, of course, my ex always telling me I was a bad mom. Even when I was pregnant, even when I was giving birth, he said, “I could do this so much better than you can.”
And the crazy thing was I believed him. I believed he could be pregnant and have a child better than I could even though (uh, obviously) this was not a possibility. As my best mentor and guide through my healing has said to me over and over, a narcissist always criticizes the very thing they are jealous of and the quality they deep down know they lack. Very often these are the very best natural qualities in you and the reason they were initially attracted to you. They thought that you could rub off on them, or at least make them look good by being associated with you.
But at some point down the line the jealousy takes over and then they have to tear you down. There is no rhyme or reason to it, it’s just how it works. Like rules in a playbook, it’s how it goes. So the key, this mentor coached me and others in our situation, is to immediately see that any time they criticize you they are actually paying you the highest compliment. And in fact, the more viciously they try to tear you down, you can rest assured that it runs in proportion to how good you are at whatever they are criticizing you for.
As I said, in my case it was always motherhood and being sensitive to others’ feelings, in particular, his feelings of course. If I had been able to read his mind like any other sensitive person could do, then I would have realized that what I said or did hurt his feelings. I wouldn’t try to read too much into his actions. I would know that not replacing the trash bag in the trash can the second I took it out would hurt his feelings and make him sad. Not make him angry, he screamed at me, but make him sad.
The things I did to make him “sad” were endless and new and unpredictable. Not putting the right ratio of sugar to soy sauce in the sauce. Not facing the chopsticks in the right direction. Not cutting the cabbage correctly, leaf by leaf. It could also be the way I washed the dishes or hung a shirt or left a paper on the table. I started to question my own judgement and sensibilities when it came to reading him and other people.
I also didn’t trust my motherly instincts. My instincts said to hold my oldest when she cried but he tried to forbid it. Listening to him and doubting myself in the beginning is and always will be my biggest regret in life. Fortunately I saw through that crap at least before my second child came along. I know I passed on my sense of self-doubt to my oldest and now she will have to spend her life finding a way to tap into her worth. She has done a lot of work and is well on her way and I believe and trust she can and will. But I hate that she has to have that as her starting point thanks to me.
Still, she is better off than I was at her age, emotionally speaking and in every other way for that matter now that I think about it. She is physically strong and also top in her class. She also is reliable, sincere and kind. My youngest daughter too, is also overall doing well. She is emotionally stable and has a light-hearted self assuredness about her that makes her easy to be around. She has always had a natural charm about her and knack for accepting people as they are and helping things run smoothly. Each and every one of her teachers has always said this about her for her entire life. Troubles roll off her back and she focuses on the good in things and doesn’t get discouraged easily. She also, she recently told me, makes her older sister’s lunchbox and cooks dinner for everyone most nights and is happy to do so. Her face lit up when she told me about it.
I always thought it was a fluke that my kids turned out so good. Or, more accurately, in spite of me, I thought. I felt sorry that they had me as a mom. I was ashamed that I was the gaijin mom. I was prone to make mistakes and embarrass them at school events. Aside from sticking out like a sore thumb everywhere I went, inevitably there would be some little detail I would miss. For my youngest, not such a big deal, but for my oldest, it was embarrassing beyond belief.
One incident in particular stands out to me and it’s something that upset my oldest for years and maybe even today she hasn’t been able to forgive me for it. It was dress-up day at her kindergarten. Every child, together with their parents, was to make a costume out of paper bags. How hard could it be, I thought. I came ready with several bags in various sizes along with beads and sequins and other craft supplies we had got from my family in the US just for this purpose.
What I didn’t realize though, was that every other mom in the class had actually made their kids costumes for them at home and now the kids were just putting on the finishing touches. A sticker, a ribbon, maybe writing their name. I was starting from scratch and there was no way we were going to make it in the allotted time to do so.
My husband stood at the back of the room watching it all go down. I pleaded for him to help but he just stood there with his arm folded and laughed condescendingly at me. I’m not getting involved in that, he said. This is all you.
I panicked. Everyone else was almost done and I was trying to cut a shirt and skirt from these bags the best I could. The teacher tried to help us a bit but she was nervous too. Because after the clothes were made, there was to be a fashion show in front of the class. And she had to go first.
As soon as we came home, she wadded up the bags and threw them in trash. This was the dumbest outfit in the class!, she screamed, and she wasn’t wrong. Several girls were brides in dresses where if there was a bag in there somewhere, you had no idea. One girl dressed as a model in a Burberry skirt from a real Burberry shopping bag. With Mom in matching real Burberry skirt of course. And then there was the boy who was dressed completely as a rainbow fish, with an elaborate head and tail and hundreds of tiny hand-taped scales. He hadn’t been interested in the costume at all. His mom and dad did it all and forced him into it but he was the star of the show, whether he liked it or not and got the biggest round of applause.
I felt truly awful. How had I misunderstood this activity so badly? I made sure all of my friends in the year after me knew what to expect and in fact, due to my debacle, the school gave much clearer, easy-to-follow instructions every year after that. By the time my second child participated in the event two years later, my oldest and I made sure she had a cute enough costume, complete with props.
I can see now though, through my newfound epiphany lens, that this mistake was not my fault. It was simply a mistake. It didn’t mean I didn’t care or that I was a bad mom. I tried. In fact, through my caring and effort, I made the event better for everyone involved in the future. No parent left behind, as it were, as no matter what my daughter may have thought, she was not the only one in the terrible costume boat. Now that I think about it I even brought a spare costume that second year I participated and extra craft supplies, just in case someone needed them. I didn’t want any child (or parent) to know that humiliation and as it turns out, another parent had accidentally left her kids’ costume at home. The mom was grateful, the school was grateful and they said they wished they had thought of that idea and would keep a spare from now on as well.
How had I forgotten all of that? Why was it only that all these years I had focused on my mistakes and not what I did to correct them and make things better for everyone? Sure, I messed up, but it doesn’t mean that I was a bad person or a bad mom. In fact, from this vantage point of many years down the road, I can actually be kind of proud of myself for putting so much effort into correcting my goof. It means I do know how to care for others and that I am a loving person. It’s evidence that I don’t need, but I will take note of it for sure.
It was because I thought I was bad at being a mom that I thought my kids would be better off without me and I left. Not that I would have stolen them or made them live like fugitives which would be the only alternative for a parent wanting to keep their kids and divorce in Japan. Whoever has the kids gets them, and the other parent gets nothing. It's cruel but it’s how it is in this society. For the kids’ good they say but it never is. Every child deserves access to both parents, no matter how imperfect the parents are. Because what parent is perfect?
I can see I am not perfect but I am good enough at loving my family and friends and dogs and everyone. I care and I try. I try really damn hard and I hope, I think, I am getting better at it every day. I won’t try to fight my instincts or distrust my heart anymore. The heart is why we don’t have to prove anything. The heart is enough. This too, I have learned is true. And I know now, for sure, that I do know how to love. It might seem like a pithy revelation but it’s one I needed.
