I completely bought into my mother's stories, that became family lore, of how wonderfully protective my older brother was of me.
Sheldon was the first to burst my bubble. For years, whenever I would tell some tale of supposed protectiveness, he would say, "You'd get angry if I did that." His words baffled and annoyed me. I thought it was a lame excuse on his part for not being protective -- by blaming it on me.
Finally, after I'd been in therapy for awhile, Sheldon spelled it out for me: "Damien was not being protective; he was being controlling." He re-interpreted some of my favorite stories in that light. It made sense.
Randy agreed. He even went further. "He didn't protect you from himself. In addition, when he should have been protecting you as an older brother, he insisted on getting you involved in porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs." He told me a story of an older sibling protecting him when they were in their teens as a way of offering contrast.
It was painful to give up that nice fantasy.
Recently, I had to face the same truth about my mother. She prides herself in her "over-protectiveness" of us. It finally dawned on me that each example of that involved her not allowing us to go places or do things, often because she would worry. It seemed more about protecting herself from worry. But it's not just that...every instance involved her controlling us, especially me.
She didn't protect me from my older brother's bullying, even the times she observed it directly. She didn't protect me from being controlled by him. When I was bullied and teased at school, no motherly protective instinct kicked in; instead, she found it either amusing or too trivial to bother with.
Worst of all, she had no qualms about sending me back to live in the same apartment building as the men who raped me when I was 23. It didn't trouble her at all that every time I looked out my window or walked to and from my apartment, the apartment where I'd been raped stared me in the face. She didn't care that my rapists lived so close to me, that we couldn't help seeing each other, running into each other at the mailbox or in the laundry room. In her defense, maybe she thought they had lost interest in me after raping me and thus no longer posed a threat...or maybe she naively thought they only raped women they lured into their apartment. But she saw no need to protect me from the anguish of seeing them again.
Years later, when I asked her whether she worried about me living there, she waved her hand dismissively. She claimed she thought the older one had left immediately, rather than a few weeks later. She wasn't at all worried about the younger one. Why was I making such a big deal about it? After all, they left me pretty much alone after the rape.
Protective? No. Controlling? Yes.
Not that long ago, she was telling some stories from my childhood. "I was so protective!" she said. "People always said I was over-protective!" Then she told me about all the things she didn't let us do...normal kid stuff that, as a parent, I delighted in letting my kids do. I wanted them to experience exuberant play, even if it meant getting dirty, some messes, a few skinned knees, and a few rips in their jeans. My face must have betrayed my feelings because my mother said defensively, "I did let you talk in your rooms!"
Oh, wow, I guess she wasn't a complete tyrant then!
