I grew up with a mostly calm childhood. My parents were super involved at their church. No one ever got angry, or at least I never heard it or saw it. Then when I was about 10, I saw my mom completely flip out on my dad. They had just bought a house. She suspected him of liking a woman at church. I guess she felt like he was flirting with her. I'm sure he was. He was an overly friendly kind of person. One day I saw my dad holding her arms back in the living room, like she wanted to hit him.
Looking back at it, I'm guessing she was just pissed that she invested 15 years in him only to see him flirt with someone else. She should have seen that coming though. He admitted to getting with a prostitute when I was 3 years old.
The next time I saw extreme anger was my mom throwing a glass napkin holder at my brother. It missed. She also chased him around the house with a broom. Maybe she had found his pot hide out. He had learned to pick and dry pot that grew wild by that apartment.
I don't know why she thought anger outburts like that would work. My brother just got more heavily into pot, maybe just to annoy her even more.
Then everything calmed down for a while. My mom stopped getting so angry. I shoplifted cigarettes a few times and got caught, but my mom didn't get angry about that. Maybe she just thought, I would want to smoke too if I had her childhood.
When I was 14, my mom had my older brother move out. There was no flip out over it. She just knew she was done with all his crazy behavior. He used to steal her car at night. He was going through a gothic stage, so I'm sure that annoyed her. He didn't want to go to church very much, but she dragged him there anyway.
Then my mom and I moved back to CA to live with her mom. I wish we could have stayed living with my grandparents forever, but my mom, being a somewhat feminist, had us move to a nearby city in our own apartment. Maybe my grandma said something to her that made her mad. It was a great apartment complex. I played basketball there a lot with a bunch of guys and made lots of friends. We had a huge pool and ping pong table and hot tub. It was like living in paradise. My mom stayed calm for a while.
One day when I was around 17, I didn't want to get a CD copy of the sermon for her at the book store. She didn't want to go back in the church to get it herself. She completely flipped out on me and was screaming. That was the first of many flip outs in that time frame. It was quite scary. Maybe she got overly hungry. Maybe she just started hating me like she decided she hated my dad and my older brother.
I don't know why my mom would get like that. Maybe it was an evil spirit. Maybe she just didn't care what others thought about her. She didn't realize that would only make me hate her.
The only person besides my mom that flipped out on me was my uncle in Hawaii. I went to stay with him as a nanny for his kids one summer when I was 18. I was writing in my journal about my time there. I really had no one to talk to the whole time I was there, so I would write to get my frustration out. I wrote about how he yelled at his kids a lot. I said he should just go ahead and smack them around a bit. It would have been the same thing. I guess he really didn't like me writing that. He came home one day, furious, and drove me to a hotel. He said he booked an early flight out of there for me and he never wanted to see me again. I wrote him a 3 page apology letter that evening and gave it to him the next day. I never heard from him again.
My mom married my step-dad when I was 18 so she was happy for a while. One day when I was 21 she got mad at me for no reason. I locked myself in the bathroom for a while. She was at the door trying to apologize. Eventually when I came out I told her to just not flip out in the first place. Then she wouldn't have to apologize.
Recently I think my mom had some angry temper tantrums with my daughter. One day my oldest girl had a red mark on her cheek. My mom said she accidently bumped her with her elbow. I wasn't totally convinced it was an accident. A few months after that my ex-husband and I separated. I was at the park with my younger daughter on the swing after that. It seemed that she was remembering that day with my mom at the park. She said it was like she saw a fire breathing dragon.
I should have never moved by my mom when I had kids. I should have known she would have been a bad grandma.
I can only hope their lives are safe and calm now. They are living with their other grandma, who I think is more kind, and my ex. I pray for them a lot. I hope they are happy and doing well.
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