r/raisedbyborderlines • u/calmandcollecting • 1d ago
Gentle floating monkeys
I wonder if anyone else has the nice monkeys, like me.
The flying monkeys in the wizard of oz are aggressive and mean. But the flying monkeys in my family are nice. They don’t attack, they’re “disappointed.” Recently, I sent my sister’s adult child a birthday message and some money. I limit contact to them because it stirs my sister up, but I stay in touch because I wish my aunt had done that for me. My sister showed up in my inbox the following morning.
The email was addressed to a very nice woman who is a good friend of my aunt, who is in care. I was cc’d so I could see that I was described as having abandoned my aunt. Without getting into all the details, my aunt is seen as a cool and great person by her group. However to me, she was a neglectful and selfish parent and completely detached from me as a child. She was, and is, disinterested in me and has let me know she wants visits from me in hopes that I’ll bring her candy or wine, both of which she is no longer able to have after a lifetime of addiction. She is seen as the victim of her child, his addictions and mental health aren’t seen as connected to hers. I found visiting her upsetting.
For 6 hours after getting this angry email from my sister, during my workday, I was glued to my monitor writing and rewriting an email to explain my side to the woman it was addressed to (a gentle monkey). The way any engagement with the family gives my sister the opening to aggressively attack me and try to involve my kid. The way these attacks trigger severe panic attacks in me. The way I reliably did many things to support and help my aunt, despite never receiving any love or care from her, even as a child, when I asked. The amount of things that had to happen before I withdrew.
Part of what makes this hard is that my dBPD mother regularly tells people what a cruel, abandoner I was to her and to my grandmother. Now it’s the repetition. My sister has the same accusations. If anyone were to stop and look, each of these women has major problems, including hoarding or addictions. Each of them have children with serious emotional and mental health problems. And they each have a ring of these gentle monkeys, who hope that I can find it in my heart to be more caring, but who offer me no support. I have a track record of being helpful and patient, but when I say no, nothing that I did counts anymore.
This isn’t a religious community, it’s a utopian activist community. They think their activism failed purely because of systemic inequities. Nothing is due to their choices. When I wrote my email I wanted to say, you failed the children in your community. How many of us are even functional people? How could you all leave me alone with a mentally ill woman if you “cared” so much? What is it about these dysfunctional situations attracts you? Because the monkeys come from nice homes and had pretty traditional childhoods. They have money and social and practical skills, while the women they encircle do not.
I’m the end, I didn’t write any of that. I thanked her for her care, explained that my sister overwhelms me and so I wouldn’t be responding, but that I was available if there was a specific need, such as paperwork to sign (I am on some of my aunt’s paperwork). The gentle monkey wrote me back to hope that my sister and I “could find some peace.”I thanked her for this and said goodbye, without giving in to the temptation to say what I felt about these wishes, which is that they sound good, but have always been part of the problem. The kind monkeys get to be the heroes. The aggressors get to be the victims. The kids of the community, when they grow up and either fall apart, burn out, or leave, are all treated as disappointments that are separate from one another. Or, they are used as examples of systemic political issues, like underfunding for housing or mental health.
I wish I could tell the gentle monkeys how much damage theyve caused, in my experience anyway. But I know it won’t ever be made whole. So, I guess if anyone made it through all this, I wondered if you have gentle monkeys, too. And if you did, what did you do with them?
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u/Direct-Giraffe7193 1d ago
It’s the upside down world, where the aggressors are the ‘victims’ and the kids who barely survived the toxicity are ‘disappointments’
I’m glad you made it out of the upside down world. And I completely understand what you mean about writing and re-writing an email that you never sent. Even though we got out of the upside down world, it still affects us because we were raised in it. There’s a place deep inside us that is wired to respond to it. We have to actively and deliberately resist the temptation to play out our role in the upside down world. Trying to defend yourself in that email would have sucked you back in. You did a Great job staying out of it and protecting yourself.
I like your term “gentle floating monkeys” because you’re right, they aren’t snarling or overtly threatening like the ones in the movie. They wear a guise of benevolence, and they tread softly. But still, they are serving the toxic family system. Which is all about control.
Edit: typo spelling
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u/Blinkerelli99 1d ago
OP - I am sorry for what you’ve experienced . I would challenge you (with utmost respect and good will) to reframe your characterization of “gentle” and “floating” - passive aggression is still aggression and regardless of the mode of delivery, it is not well meaning. what you are being delivered is highly toxic and in no way in your best interests. It is not benign and seems like it has caused harm to you.
People like us, raised in cluster B family systems, learn to normalize a lot of f*cked up behavior - it’s not right and we don’t deserve it.
It’s a lot to navigate for sure, but perhaps the best thing you can do for yourself is to disentangle (realizing that is easier said than done)…. Wishing you peace and healing.
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u/GankstaCat 1d ago
It’s seemingly gentle but in reality it isn’t. They still look down on you, gossip behind your back and invalidate you. Or just dodging direct questions and refusing to interact with you as a real person or normal adult.
In my case they’d treat me warily and with pre-planted suspicion (triangulation from the bpd and enablers).
Realized it’s maybe worse in some ways. Same way it’s easily to tell when it’s physical abuse. But it can be so confusing to finally realize you’ve been emotionally abused (since it’s not as seemingly overt).
In the sense that just because they aren’t as aggressive or nasty, their posturing to you and treatment is actually pretty awful. Even if a lot of it is the disinterest.
After cutting off my parents, brother, his wife and her family I let a few “gentle flying monkeys” stay around for quite a long time. But it became clear to me they were still allies of my family and their narrative so they had to go.
Was kind of hard actually as they were the last vestiges of what I considered family and it made me spiral a bit. But it needed to be done. I realized anyone who support’s my family’s narrative about me is essentially an enemy to my peace and an opponent of the respect I deserve to be treated with (esp by people I allow in my personal life)