Your parents and their hurt feelings

 

I wish that I could reach all the people – clients and those who should be – who will not speak the truth of their lives because they fear, or claim to know, that this would hurt their parents’ feel­ings. When I was 27, my parents traveled from Florida to Virginia to visit me in my roach-infested hovel. There had never been any terror or abuse in my child­hood, just a ranch home mauso­leum of unfeel­ing. Every minute of all those years had been fake. At 27, I knew only a very little about my failure to be and to do, and I told them about it. My mother asked me if I loved her. I said “no.” (My father sat lost in space as always.) She said “hmm,” or maybe she just nodded quietly in unwise accep­tance – I don’t remember. Our talk ended as cor­dially as it had begun, no different from any of our other conversations.

I didn’t hurt her feelings, which were already hurt about herself.

I am sure the dynamic would be even more innocuous if one’s parents were abusive, neglectful, solip­sistic. You won’t harm their feelings, which might only be creased in their uncar­ing anger: “You ingrate.” Speaking your facts and feelings, you may only reveal their help­less child-self, which damaged you much more than you could ever hurt them. You are almost certainly still afraid of them. Your model is my client, the married woman with children who can’t even write a truth-saying letter – not to be mailed – to her mother. Even she, abso­lutely terri­fied, spouts the non­sense about hurting her mother’s feelings.

People who continued to hurt you cannot be hurt by you. Please see that. They have long been who they are. They are lost in themselves and probably don’t even see you.