When my grandmother died in September of 2009, a large part of me was relieved. I, like most people, have dealt with my fair share of bullies and master manipulators, but she was by far the most pernicious. Only in recent years have I grasped the full scope of the abuse committed against me and the rest of my household.
I had a very strained relationship with her for the last year or so of her life. This was largely due to the fact that I was getting older, smarter, and more independent while she continued to waste away, smoking several packs of cigarettes a day in the middle of the house in front of a loud TV that was only off from about 2 a.m. until 8 a.m. (while she slept). There were several occasions where the TV was so loud that I could not sleep. I would sometimes have to get out of bed and ask her to turn it down. This resulted in my being accused of giving her a hard time and made to feel guilty for asserting my right to a decent night’s sleep. She would then lower the volume a couple of bars at most.
Every day my room smelled like smoke as a result of her indulgence. She would also pop packing bubbles mindlessly and grind her teeth. It was impossible to be around her without being annoyed or stressed in some form. Even when I tried to talk to her, and she obliged (during commercials only, for the most part), she would show almost no concern for my feelings or what I was going through in my post-adolescent life. She would only talk about how what I said related to her as if she were the center of the universe. She would pretend to know more than me about things she knew nothing about and did not respect my knowledge, education, or achievements. She only seemed to care about them when she was bragging about me to her hairdresser in order to make her look good.
Most notably she had the audacity once, several years ago, to call me an “asshole” for not jumping up to help her play a DVD. Apparently neither she nor my uncle were sharp enough to figure out how to work a DVD player (years after it hit the market) and that it was my responsibility to help them, even though I had already demonstrated the basics multiple times, telling them they couldn’t rely on me because as a college student I wouldn’t be around enough anyway. She didn’t care that I had just gone through a break-up of sorts and was depressed and enmeshed in my own problems. It was all about her, her, her.
Her attention-seeking was legendary. She would complain about phone whenever it rang and get mad at me or my mother for not answering it when she had some random excuse for not answering it herself. This is the main reason why my mother disconnected our landline. She even once threw the phone at me because I didn’t answer it as she demanded. I guess it didn’t matter to her that I never got any personal calls on that phone after getting a cell phone and that most of the calls were salespeople, whom I was certainly not interested in talking to.
If I didn’t do what she wanted—when she wanted it—I was the enemy. She would also yell if we didn’t come to eat dinner within two minutes of her calling us. It didn’t matter that I had become a vegetarian and was unwilling to eat her meat-heavy dinners. She was in control. Dinner was her domain. If you didn’t respect that, you were her enemy. And you had to say it was delicious (even if it wasn’t).
She would call me clumsy, even though I am not and have never been. She would say there were certain things I couldn’t do—like cooking—because I’m a man. She would object to the way I wash dishes and treat me like an imbecile, even though I had been washing dishes at my own apartment on campus and no one complained. She would tune me out in favor of whatever show she was watching at the time—even if it was a rerun she had seen six times. It didn’t matter if I had just come home after months of staying on campus or a trip abroad. The only time I remember our really talking at length, without interruption, was during power outages. And even then, she would mostly stare at the static on the screen waiting for the cable to to come back. I shit you not. I think if I had just been elected president and wanted to tell her about my epic inaugural party, she would still say, “Tell me all about it during a commercial.”
She was abusive, cruel, mean, domineering, manipulative, and a lot of other things most would call toxic. She is at least part of the reason why my uncle died as a child living in the body of a man. She is why my mother had to struggle to see herself as the beautiful, amazing, intelligent person that she is. She is what divided my household. She is what forced me to leave even when I did not have the money to pay rent to live elsewhere. I blame her partly for why I have trouble standing up to women now because of the fear she sowed in me.
The point is that we often associate toxic, authoritarian behavior with masculinity and men. This is not the whole story. Toxic behavior is ultimately about power, and women can wield it just as effectively—and ruthlessly—as men.
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It is a good point! I agree! People also blame patriarchy and the same thing can happen with matriarchy. Toxic is toxic regardless of what gender is the authority or leading role. We need to deal with the unhealed wounds that create toxic behavior rather than blaming it on “role” or “gender”.