Sunday, July 24, 2005

The doomsday mentality

I've had a whole week to cool off from last week's blowout with my mum, and even though the things she said are not anything I'm going to forget easily anytime soon, I think I have pretty much gotten past it and decided not to hold it against her. As I realised from something my cell group leader shared with us recently, Chinese parents have a tendancy to say the most stupidest things when they're angry...and he's had it a lot worst than I did with my mum. Plus, my mum had a pretty tough childhood , what with being the oldest child with four other siblings she's had to take care off and being made to do the housework all the time.... so I can blame her wacked out behaviour on that. But even with a tough childhood, I don't think it gives her all the excuse in the world to behave the way she does, coz' I know plenty of other people who've grown up in similarly tough situations and turned out to be quite reasonable and mature. *Sigh*
We didn't mention the incident at all after that night... and though I've thought about it talking it over with her in a calm manner, I have a pretty good idea of how the conversation will go and I doubt it will be positive. I hate to say it, but a 'civilized' conversation with my mum means she does all the talking and I do all the listening, and if I so much as has a hint of sourness on my face, she'll blow up at me again and accuse me of being all sorts of unreasonable things. I think I still have to hold to what I said last week, about not talking to her unless I have to.... not because I wouldn't like to be able to talk to her about stuff and my opinions and all... but because she has a fine ability to pick out something from things I or someone else in my family says, assume its a negative remark against her and proceed to get all uptight about it while the rest of us just sits around and shakes our heads.
Not only that, but just a few minutes ago, my brother was telling my parents about how he was planning to invest in some property in Canada through the internet, which costs like $40,000 and that's just the deposit. My dad was all for it, but my mum immediately went into worst-case scenario mode. "Anything on the internet is a scam! You can't trust it! I don't even want to look at the website! It's gotta be a scam!". It took forever for my brother to just convince her to look at the website where he's planning to invest through, explain the reasons why it's legitimate and the investing company of that website is legitate as well. He also explained that he has a few friends working at that company who introduced him to it. But mum is still not convinced. "What if the website is a fake? If it's not the Canadian government running this website, how can it be trusted? What if the company is made up to look legitimate, but in a few years they close up and disappear with your money? Who will you contact if anything goes wrong and your money disappears?". And she goes on and on with her "what-if-this's" and "what-if-that's" to the exasperation of my brother, and to myself as well... just listening to it. She even uses the example of Enron of how a big well-known company can dupe its customers of their money. It was frustrating and funny at the same time... simply because her worries are just so ridiculous. My brother had the evidence that the company was legitimate, he has friends working there, he didn't find any complaints about the company anywhere on the net, it's a well-established company with branches worldwide and the company is registered under the dunno-what board of investing companies in Canada, or whatever it is. And here's my doomsday mum, who doesn't even use the internet.... before even finding out more about it she straight away says it's gotta be a scam and implies my brother is a fool for wanting to invest through the internet coz' he can't see the property and all. If she wants to be skeptical then that's fine, but she could at least find out more information before pouring cold water all over my brother's fire. It just makes me think all the more that something is quite wrong in my mum's head. She always has this thinking that everyone out there is bad bad bad.... everybody is out to get you and they just want your money. She doesn't seem to trust a soul.... and according to what my dad just told me, she doesn't even trust him. Like wow. She's married to the guy, who's supported her for so many years and she doesn't even trust him? It's quite sad. I mean, I know my dad has done some thing's wrong to her in the past, and one thing in particular which even I thought was so bad it took me a long time to get over it. But even before that incident, my mum has never seemed to trust my dad. For so many years, I've had to listen to her complain about my dad doing all these things that drives her up the wall, and for a long time I was 'on her side'. But now I'm actually feeling sorry for my dad instead. The way she's behaved to him ever since they got married....it's more than most normal people would take and I think my dad's been very patient to put up with her constant nitpicking on every small thing he does wrong. I mean, even when he tries to do something to make her happy, or lighten her workload, or buys something he thinks she'll like, she finds some fault in it somehow and complains about it. If I were my dad I probably would've gone nuts by now.
I really don't have much doubt that my mum has some kind of psychological issue, and I guess it's no use getting angry at her about it. I am worried about her in a way. I don't know how she can spend her whole life trying to control everyone around her and thinking the whole world's out to get her or make use of her. Granted, some idiotic people have made use of her before.... but that was years ago and not everyone is such a low life. I just don't know what to do with her. I don't know how to talk to her about it.... and I don't think the rest of my family knows either. Oh well, I guess a heap of prayer is in order. Haha, I know that prayer is more useful than the non-Christian might think in this sort of situation, but I still feel a bit peeved to think that that's the 'best' I can do for my mum. I just really don't want her to have this doomsday mentality for the rest of her life....

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