If this is supportive, I'd hate to see them working against me...

I really didn't start this with the intention of it being a place for me to post angry rants or complaints about people or my situation.  However, the last week or so a lot of this stuff has risen to the surface and I have needed to get it out.  Luckily I am probably really only writing this to myself and the couple of people I have told about this blog.

So, the second day of the parental visit came to an end yesterday.  They went home this morning, but I had to work, so I didn't see them.  I made a pretty big mistake yesterday, I took them at their word that they were supportive of my contact with my mom and family. 

My mom made me a photo album with pictures that go back to her great grandparents and up through the present day.  It is a great album, I've spent a lot of time looking at it.  With my parents being so "supportive" I thought they might like to see it, so I offered to show it to them.  Well, that was a mistake.

My father flat out refused to look at it.  After the years I spent being subjected to his slide shows it would be nice to think he could spare ten minutes to look at a photo album with his son.  Especially since the photo album is a record of one of the most important events in his son's life.  Nope, apparently not.  That would be expecting too much.  I would do it for one of my kids, even if it made me uncomfortable, because it is clearly important.  My father would rather demonstrate to me again that my feelings are not important to him.

My mother looked at it with me, but she showed very little interest.  Every once in a while she asked a question, but not nearly as many as I expected.  Near the end of the album there is a picture of my mom, one of my brothers when he was a toddler, and a dog.  She got really interested in that picture and started asking me all about the dog.  Never mind that my brother was a toddler in the picture making the picture at least 22 years old.  She expected me to have all sorts of details about a dog that couldn't possibly still be alive.  OK mom, message received.  You always cared more about the dogs than me when I was growing up, and now you care more about a dog in a picture than you do about my story about the people in the pictures that have made a huge impact on my life.  I get it, dogs, even dogs you don't know, are more important than I am.

So, all that was bad enough.  Then, when I was just about done showing my mother the photo album my father asks to see a picture of my siblings.  My mother tells him she showed him a picture of my siblings (I emailed her one with me in it along with the four of them when I got home).  He says he "doesn't remember that".  Really, it was less than three weeks ago.  How do you not remember?  So, I show him a different picture that is in the album.  He looks for a few seconds then says "I don't see much resemblance to you".  Seriously?  Now he is just making things up to suit the narrative he has going in his head.  I can almost hear it, it goes something like "lalalalalalalalalalala I'm not listening".  He actually had the nerve to ask me if I planned to see my mom and siblings again.  I was just about speechless.  In what sort of world is that is reasonable question.  He knows we met.  He knows we got along.  He knows I had a good time and I liked everyone.  Why wouldn't I see them again?  The fact that he even asked me that tells me he doesn't know anything about me at all.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised no matter how supportive they claimed to be.  They are not supportive and never have been.  I won't claim that they have never supported me in anything, but what sticks in my mind are all the times I was told I couldn't do something or I wasn't good enough or I could do better or I could work harder.  If someone told me I did a good job in there every once in a while I don't remember it now.  I have always been, in their minds, a reflection on them.  Apparently, as much as I was told I wasn't good enough, I was a pretty poor reflection.  It has always been about them and how they feel.  I never should have expected them to be supportive of me in something that made me feel good and at the same time might make someone out there question their ability as parents.  After all, what adopted child, even as an adult, would care about his natural family unless his "real parents" were failures? 

The fact that none of this has anything to do with them has never crossed their minds.  I'm involved, so I am a reflection on them.  I'm doing something they don't understand, so they won't support me no matter what they say.  Instead they will do their best to make me feel bad about it while claiming to be excited for me.  Another reminder that it has always been about them and never about me.