driving me crazy

[Peaches]

There is a person who is driving me completely insane, and I don't know how to stop it or at least stop myself being affected by it. Sorry if this is long, I am so upset.

This person is my aunt. For 30 years we used to be really close, she was the only half normal one of my family, she played guitar, she could be social, she brought me everywhere with here, she was my hero.
Then 10 years ago I became ill with something that didn't get better and that would stay with me until this day. She always showed denial against disease, probably because her mother was always sickly and made everyone around feel guilty because of that. Once her best friend was dying of cancer and called her to his deathbed to say goodbye, and she managed to shut him up and say "don't talk about this, you will get better!" (he died two days afterwards). She herself had a small non-malignant cancer and she didn't tell anyone, she went by herself to the hospital to have it removed and cried for all the days she was there, and then complained (to me and others) because we were not there (!).
Anyway, I was unbelievably ill for two years, and she hardly called, not to talk about coming to help me, actually she didn't believe that i was ill. After two years I got a tiny bit better and moved to the countryside, and still she never came visit or offer help. After 5 years they found out partially what my problem was and I felt better, and when I told her that I was better she decided to come for three weeks to my place (!) to have her holidays. (note that we haven't met for 5 years, except one christmas when she asked me to get up from the wheelchair and get her a glass of water because she was tired). Since I became ill she stopped wanting to know about my life or my opinions, we used to be really close and already in 2006 I wrote so many letters to ask her why she was becoming so distant, and that's when she started saying that I was playing movies in my mind (hasn't moved from that position still). In 2009 she came for 3 weeks for the holidays, grumpy all the time, and when I tried to talk you know about personal things she managed to say: "I am a superficial person, I don\t like deep conversations" (she didn't mind 3 years before). That was the last time I heard something kind of personal from her.
We have become very different because I have been trying to heal from my hurts and overcome my family's bitterness and she has become more and more close, workaholic, suspicious of all kinds of relationships and closed to feelings. We met in 2011, she came for 3 days and made me walk so much that i was in bed for two weeks, always grumpy again, then I went for Christmas in 2012 (and I got the worst flu ever because the stress), lots of tension, and then last christmas was the complete horror, I asked her to come for christmas days (2) and again she booked without telling me for a week. She was angry from the second I opened the door to the moment she left, she didn't accept my presents (books about insomnia because she doesn't sleep since 10 years and doesn't want to do anything about it and a painting saying "be happy") and presented me instead with a witty refrigerator magnet wishing me to stay alone for the rest of my life (!!!). Whenever I tried to talk she interrupted me, and for 6 days we talked about the weather (!) or about friends of hers that I have never seen.To bring her out to do stuff in spite of the flu I got pneumonia; after she left she felt that she behaved badly and instead of apologizing she called every day, but when she heard that I had pneumonia she stopped calling.

The turning point came two months ago when I made the huge mistake to ask her for suggestions on my new job, and that I did mainly to bring her somehow into my life as she shuts me out all the time but wants to call to talk about the weather; for she answered with the most vicious letter that I have ever seen, comparing me negatively to blind and crippled people who unlike me manage to have a family and a job (!), actually it wasn't just vicious but it attributed me thoughts and behaviors that I stopped having around 10 years ago. I wrote 5, 6 emails that could have been dictated by a therapist so wise and mature they were, but she denied any necessity to talk or "renew' our acquaintance, she dismissed that as me being fussy and oversensitive and angry and resentful and a lot of things for which I spent 5 years in therapy and left behind me.

Now honestly I just had enough talking about the weather and doing small talk, I have a depression, I fight daily with a chronic illness, life in a foreign city, practical problems etc, there is also some beauty in my life and smiles but she doesn't want to hear neither. I don't want to talk to her anymore. The problem is that because I am sick I can't work full time and she has been giving some money (not much but some) for the last 3 years and without that right now it would be really impossible to live.
Because of some other events in some months it will be possible to be financially independent, but at the moment it's not an option, and this is how she keeps me by the balls (which I don't have), so to speak.
She wants to keep me at her own terms, when she feels like it she calls and I have to answer, and when she wants she disappears, I have no negotiating power, if something that she says hurts me "it's me".
The shocking thing is that last christmas she said that she "lives just for me" (!!! some few euros per month when she earn thousands, one or two phone calls every month where she interrupts me if I try to talk). All her friends always say how much she loves me, so I can't find a negotiator to help with our relationship.
Because of all this "love" I feel very bad not answering and setting boundaries, but if you love someone shouldn't you be open to listen what they have to say too, and if they say that you keep hurting them shouldn't you want to know?

She hurts me with her indifference, with her coming close when she feels that she is losing me and taking distance if I say that I need her (in the last year the safest way to make her stop calling was to say how happy I was to hear from her because I was so sick and could she call more often - that would make her disappear for weeks). But on the other hand for many years she was always there for me, she helped with a huge amount of things, and it's only in relation to the illness that she becomes a monster. And yes, that little detail that I am now a completely different person from who she thinks I am (I was).

Now I have taken the decision to stop telling her anything personal, so if I move, change job, get sick, get healthy, get married, graduate, etc she will not know, until she starts talking again about herself.

But now, because she feels that she is losing me, she never apologized for the blind and crippled comment and never acknowledge that my complaints were founded ("it was a very normal thing to say"!!!!!), but now she is calling and sending emails every day, I don't want to answer, I want to be left alone, after so many years of her behavior I feel disgust and contempt for her, and my love is disappearing forever. I wish she could understand that and stop her behavior.

I wonder if there is anything to be done to avoid become estranged. If I were happier in my life I could stand to talk every two weeks briefly about the weather, but right now I am so depressed and hearing from her kills me (last week I asked her in a heartfelt way"how are you" and she got angry "FFFiine!" and went back to her friends' wedding, what can I do?)

And she doesn't see any fault in herself and her ways. I just can't stand her anymore, and it breaks my heart.

 

[jaguarundi]

I have taken a while to think over your post and first peaches **hugs** because this is a cruel situation for you, obviously. In some respects I understand some of what has gone on from my own experience, but not quite in the same way, particularly on the health issues.

I think that your aunt probably does think the world of you. Unfortunately she has a view of you still as a teenager - even a little girl, perhaps. And she is not able to come to terms with you in any other way. My father is the same, he think of me as a moody hormonal 15 year old, never trusts me with anything. I got myself a degree equivalent in infomation systems, I have been a manager and a mentor, was elected a fellow of the RSA for gods sake, but he has in the past told me to ask a hospital receptionist how to look something up on the internet... It infuriates me.

But I cannot change him, I can only change my attitude to him.

On the health issues, it sounds like she is mostly healthy and like some healthy people simply doesn't understand illness. Indeed as you say, is afraid of it. She probably does think that you could somehow pull yourself together if you wanted. Of course if she is Ill, well she really is ill obviously! Again, I doubt anything you can do will ever change her.

I had a female relative - more distant than an aunt- who I admired a lot when I was younger. But in a way, I felt I grew up, and grew past her, kind of, to be more self aware, among other things. But I think she still wanted the admiration, again still saw me as a child and not the woman I became. And I found as an adult, with adult conversations, that she is a racist and a homophobe and a few other things that I cannot stand. So we did become distant, and I was fine with it. After my mum died and I looked to reconnect and find some emotional support from her, (stupid of me I now realise, what was I thinking?) I got some but then a truly horrible email full of nasty accusations and just.. Well, horrible.

Basically the balance of the relationship was changed forever as I grew up and she still wants to be in charge and worshipped by me, and telling me what do do. She doesn't seem able or willing to change her view of me and what our relationship is about. So I don't have much to do with her anymore. I just remember the good times we had when I was a kid.

But for you, money is involved and if you need it then you need it and sadly it will mean to some extent having to, as it were, bite your lip about what she says. And who she is.

Maybe you can just focus on the fact that no matter how selfish her love for you is, and in a way it is, she does care and the money is her only way of showing it. Which is actuay very sad for her. Maybe you need to feel sorry for her, in her emotionally impoverished life. Maybe you are all she really does have apart from work, and at bottom she is absolutley terrified of losing you....?

 

[ardour]

Your Aunt has some issues of her own. She lacks the ability to express empathy or a general interest in others, yet she still yearns for the connection. That doesn't mean she doesn't care, it means she's only comfortable with a superficial level of conversation. Some people are just like this. There's probably a term for it as a personality disorder. When you start seeing it as *her* problem, her condition, it no longer has as much power to hurt you.

Keeping her at arms length would seem like a good idea, as it's affecting your health and mental state, but on the other hand she may get nasty should you cut her off completely. Give a polite cordial response to some of her messages, about the weather, her garden or whatever. If she wants to talk about something more meaningful, she can, but it might not happen.