I'm
just noticing now, as my personal life has been swept to emptiness,
that when I visit Dad, I can feel the weight of his parental authority.
Even tho he's deteriorated into his most basic mental components,
doesn't know exactly who I am, or he himself is, I feel the
overshadowing of this authority.
I am & have been acting in full self-agency for decades now, I make my own moral decisions & plan my own actions. I didn't realize, until now, that the constant, gentle undertow of possible parental disapproval had a slight influence upon me, & now it's dissipated. Except when I visit Dad, who even in his disrupted, broken state retains some gravitas in this. I feel a pressure of diminishment of this self-agency in his presence, which is a too fancy way of saying I revert to mentally/morally being 14 years old around him. I'm beginning to find this irksome, oddly, since he is a mental wreck & has absolutely no agency of his own now.
It's sometimes said that nobody really grows up until their parents are dead. Maybe this is the beginning of that.
#parental_authority #dementia
I am & have been acting in full self-agency for decades now, I make my own moral decisions & plan my own actions. I didn't realize, until now, that the constant, gentle undertow of possible parental disapproval had a slight influence upon me, & now it's dissipated. Except when I visit Dad, who even in his disrupted, broken state retains some gravitas in this. I feel a pressure of diminishment of this self-agency in his presence, which is a too fancy way of saying I revert to mentally/morally being 14 years old around him. I'm beginning to find this irksome, oddly, since he is a mental wreck & has absolutely no agency of his own now.
It's sometimes said that nobody really grows up until their parents are dead. Maybe this is the beginning of that.
#parental_authority #dementia
+1'd by: Fractal Woman
Fractal Woman - 2014-06-07 14:20:18-0400
Best of luck, Chris! I lost one of mine years ago. It does change you forever.
