11am Writing Practice 42° Boise
What a hell of a weekend! I got my feelings hurt by a former classmate Friday night and spent hours Saturday morning writing out eight pages of emotions and memories and piecing together our family's emotional sensitivities. Oh, and crying my guts out. I haven't had a weep-session like that in months, since before the anger attacks in October! Wow. So now I'm tracking down information about Emma Pennington's siblings and also the siblings of her mother, Abigale and her husband's mother, Rachel Riley McDaniel.
I was going to use this time today to write scenes for the books, start getting scenes typed out, just let them flow and get them down on documents. But first, the theory I'm dithering with ... it happened in my family of origin and I think it happened in my mother's family of origin. In each case, the mother had a least-liked child, one who was totally unwanted from the moment of conception. In my family, that was Gerald, in my mother's family, it was her. In both families, the rest of the family knew of this dislike but not overtly; it was an energetic dynamic at play, an undercurrent, and all family members reacted to it in the way that least-liked member was treated. Since I wasn't that member, I can see it from a different perspective now. I'm sure there is a psychological term for this dynamic and I wish I knew it.
I discovered it in a TV show called Lie To Me and I recognized it because I was the ill-favored person at Eddie's Diner for years and couldn't understand what was going on or why I was treated as I was my my co-workers. The owner, Phil Bird, didn't like me, had disliked me on sight when I was first hired by Kathy. I was 51 yrs old and still pretty cute, but he was in his late twenties and liked being surrounded by young, pretty girls. He likes the attention. He had no use for me and, in fact, found me repulsive, the very idea of hearing anything personal about me made him shiver. I disgusted him and I saw that on his face more than once, a flicker but no disguising it.
I knew this and I was uncomfortable around him, disliked working with him on Kathy's days off. What I didn't know was how his dislike of me affected everyone else who worked there. They all could feel the energy of his disdain for me and in order to get into and stay in his good graces, they also developed a disdain for me. They often spoke to me with disrespect, they ignored me, I was an outsider even after years of service. I was completely ineffectual there with no chance of advancement and yet I stayed on and even went in when they called, always did my best, remained cheerful in the face of it all and was confused and uncertain about what was going on. It was all too subtle for me, I'm as subtle as a sledge hammer ... no easy tapping was going to bring this situation into clarity.
And then I got fired. Phil made up a story about me, one that he totally believed, everyone rallied around him and wrote stories about me that did happen but cast me in the worst possible light. They sent them to the employment dept by way of making a case for my not qualifying to get unemployment. Phil wanted to be right in decision to fire me, that he had cause. But it was all petty crap with no solid truths and no written warnings to back any of it up. I got my unemployment and then I got hired at St Luke's. But that enraged Phil and he filed an appeal stating that I shouldn't qualify and a phone hearing was scheduled. During the phone hearing, he made his case that I had been rude to a customer and I could tell he believed what he was saying, he wasn't lying. When it was my turn, I told it from my point of view, I read a prepared statement and I gave him an out by saying that he must have been mistaken, he was at the register and I was talking to Jeana back by table #3, there's no way he could have heard the simple question I asked her and then the question I asked the customer that I had been accused of abusing. At the end of the call, I asked a question just to clarify what this appeal was all about, that Phil knew that I already had another job and was the appeal about my right to keep the three weeks of unemployment that I had already received, totaling less than $200? He paused, I'm sure hearing the way I was pointing out his pettiness, and then he said yes. Needless to say, I won the appeal, didn't have to give the money back and Phil banished me from ever going into his diner again. His instant and age-related dislike of me grew into a whole dysfunctional scenario that no one really understood. Until now.
In the Lie To Me episode, a young girl in a PE or gymnastics group at school was being bullied by her classmates and she attempted suicide. Turns out, the bullying dynamic was set up by the teacher, who disliked the girl and often chided her about her weight. To please the teacher, the other girls began bullying her as well, causing a breakdown and suicide attempt. When I first saw this, the light bulb went on in my head and I knew exactly what had happened to me at the Diner, that Phil had been the bully and the rest of them had joined in. This type of thing only happens in dysfunctional group dynamics, where the leader is warped, injured or immature in some way and doesn't know it.
How does this relate to my family and my ancestors? Ah, now it's going to get interesting!
"[To define a] genuine bully, look for a pattern of demeaning behavior by someone
who deliberately and repeatedly puts their target in a position of
weakness."
The next part of this discussion will focus on parent as bully, especially mothers. Because that's where I'm going with this. But this is Tuesday, a new day, and I want to write a scene. So I'm going to the next page and I'll write one. But first I'll copy this page onto a document and title it so that I can get back to it easily at a later date.
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