to clarify
I don't believe Tina is in any physical danger. What I do believe is that her emotional needs aren't being met. I also believe I identify too much with being raised by emotional vacuums who live, not for their children, but for their insular and self involved world. It bugs me that, while all the dramatics are simple hot air, no one's stopped to think how this real life soap opera might be affecting Tina. She's twelve, which means a) she's on the brink of her own dramatic and hormone fuelled identify crisis, and b) that it's possible that she's taking what she sees and hears and feels at face value and believes that her mum is suicidal, and that her uncle is plotting how best to kill them.
Her parents prefer to wallow in the drama of their own making though, and to dismiss that Tina might be feeling something other than the "Okay" that automatically pops out of her mouth when they ask how she is.
Think back to when you were a kid. You wanted to please your parents, yes? So if your parents' wish was that you were okay, you were okay.
When I was eight, I broke my leg in several places. I smashed that fucker up so much that it still troubles me to this day. We were vacationing at the time though, so my father, not wanting to go through the headfuck of finding a hospital and, you know, attending to his child's medical needs, kept insisting I was fine. So I was. Oh, I calmly and rationally told him "but dad, I heard it snap" (it went off like a gunshot, actually), and he was all "no you didn't", so while I knew he was wrong, I did what I was told and I was fine. Terrified that I'd die, sure, but fine. My mother, while she was all up in the drama (hence my fear of dying from a broken bone), needed me to be fine too because she fights a dirty fight to always be the one having her needs attended to, so I was fine for her too. I guess the drama of a child in mortal danger was her bag, as was facing the adversity of a neglectful husband ON HER OWN, poor thing. Her version of the story is that it was so awful her because she knew my leg was broken and there was nothing she could do. My version is that she could have packed me in the car herself, flipped my father the bird and driven to the next town's hospital. My father, rather than thinking of his child's welfare thought about his wants, while my mother neglected her child's welfare in favor of the drama. She often rattles on about how if it wasn't for her, they would have divorced, when what she means is that if she didn't dismiss her children in favor of her husband, she'd have been left without a man.
Which sounds a lot like Tina's upbringing.
Which is why I worry about her.
Her parents prefer to wallow in the drama of their own making though, and to dismiss that Tina might be feeling something other than the "Okay" that automatically pops out of her mouth when they ask how she is.
Think back to when you were a kid. You wanted to please your parents, yes? So if your parents' wish was that you were okay, you were okay.
When I was eight, I broke my leg in several places. I smashed that fucker up so much that it still troubles me to this day. We were vacationing at the time though, so my father, not wanting to go through the headfuck of finding a hospital and, you know, attending to his child's medical needs, kept insisting I was fine. So I was. Oh, I calmly and rationally told him "but dad, I heard it snap" (it went off like a gunshot, actually), and he was all "no you didn't", so while I knew he was wrong, I did what I was told and I was fine. Terrified that I'd die, sure, but fine. My mother, while she was all up in the drama (hence my fear of dying from a broken bone), needed me to be fine too because she fights a dirty fight to always be the one having her needs attended to, so I was fine for her too. I guess the drama of a child in mortal danger was her bag, as was facing the adversity of a neglectful husband ON HER OWN, poor thing. Her version of the story is that it was so awful her because she knew my leg was broken and there was nothing she could do. My version is that she could have packed me in the car herself, flipped my father the bird and driven to the next town's hospital. My father, rather than thinking of his child's welfare thought about his wants, while my mother neglected her child's welfare in favor of the drama. She often rattles on about how if it wasn't for her, they would have divorced, when what she means is that if she didn't dismiss her children in favor of her husband, she'd have been left without a man.
Which sounds a lot like Tina's upbringing.
Which is why I worry about her.
posted by aibee at 12:21
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