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I have had exactly one SC manage to make my cry. Not while she was there, mind, but after she left I went into the office, put my head down on a desk, and just sobbed. Here is her story:
She came in during the summer, when there wasn't much going on. She had her mother with her, and it all started out pretty innocently -- her mother used to knit, and she wanted to help her get involved in a new/old hobby, so here she was at a yarn store, with mom in tow.
Only one problem. Mom didn't want to be in tow. Mom quite clearly had problems of a magnitude that not even yarn could solve them. (And this is a pretty big statement, coming from me.) Mom was, and you could tell this at less than a glance, very, VERY clinically depressed. Mom needed a good psychiatrist, not some sock yarn. Mom detected a sympathetic ear in me pretty quickly, as I'm very fond of my grandmother and thus I tend to look kindly on grandmotherly ladies, and poured out her litany of troubles to me, and believe me, all of the yarn in the freaking country wouldn't have been enough. She was sick, her eyesight was going, her husband had recently died, she'd just moved across the country, away from her old friends and her old life and the house she'd lived in and loved all of her life at the behest of her daughter...
Oh, and her daughter was controlling and verbally abusive.
She didn't have to point this out to me, though, because her daughter was one of those out of control abusers of the same breed as the unspeakably bad parents who beat their children in the middle of grocery stores. She kept up a nonstop barrage of abuse on her mother, calling her names, insulting her intelligence, trivializing her illness, on and on. This clearly wasn't someone having a shockingly bad day, because her mother behaved towards her with every possible hallmark of someone who's been utterly cowed by abuse. Every self-depricating, apologetic, walking-on-eggshells sign was there. I had only just started working there a few months prior and I hadn't had any of the future showdowns with SCs that gave me confedance, so I had NO idea how to handle it. Instead of doing the proper thing, which would have been to confess to how appalled I was at the way she was talking about and to her mother, I played dumb. But the less I reacted, the more out of control this woman became, to the point where she was insulting her mother TO ME, WHILE HER MOTHER WAS THERE, putting me in the horrible position of either agreeing with her and thus aiding in the abuse, or else telling her to shut up and get the hell out of my store, which, as I said, I didn't have the courage to do. I just kept not reacting, and she kept getting more out of control. Finally, they bought something and left.
I'd been abused by SCs at that point already, but when someone's mean to you, you shut down, you know? You don't give a crap what mood they go away in -- in fact, if they go away really upset, it can give you a happy little thrill. But this SC's mother hadn't been mean to me. She'd been extremely polite and kind, and I had no way of shutting off my compassion. I wanted to help her, and the knowledge that I'd been utterly powerless to do so, that she was just going to be sad for the rest of her life, under the thumb of her abusive daughter who'd dragged her across the country away from everything she'd ever known so that she could have this horrible, disrespectful power trip on the person who'd changed her poopy diapers... It makes me upset just thinking about it again. The whole experience broke me -- the next day, I had a panic attack when I was supposed to go into work and had to call in sick while I recovered.
Looking back, there are probably some pretty serious emotional problems in both members of that family, but I will hate the SC daughter for all of time for what I saw her do. I know that caring for an aging parent, especially while coping with the death of another parent, can be emotionally taxing, but if I EVER catch myself treating anyone I care about the way that woman treated her mother, I would like to think that I'd realize that my continued presence in their life was doing way more harm than good. Also, I'd like to think that I'd go find a good therapist to help me work out exactly how I'd devolved into such a despicable, rotten human being.
She came in during the summer, when there wasn't much going on. She had her mother with her, and it all started out pretty innocently -- her mother used to knit, and she wanted to help her get involved in a new/old hobby, so here she was at a yarn store, with mom in tow.
Only one problem. Mom didn't want to be in tow. Mom quite clearly had problems of a magnitude that not even yarn could solve them. (And this is a pretty big statement, coming from me.) Mom was, and you could tell this at less than a glance, very, VERY clinically depressed. Mom needed a good psychiatrist, not some sock yarn. Mom detected a sympathetic ear in me pretty quickly, as I'm very fond of my grandmother and thus I tend to look kindly on grandmotherly ladies, and poured out her litany of troubles to me, and believe me, all of the yarn in the freaking country wouldn't have been enough. She was sick, her eyesight was going, her husband had recently died, she'd just moved across the country, away from her old friends and her old life and the house she'd lived in and loved all of her life at the behest of her daughter...
Oh, and her daughter was controlling and verbally abusive.
She didn't have to point this out to me, though, because her daughter was one of those out of control abusers of the same breed as the unspeakably bad parents who beat their children in the middle of grocery stores. She kept up a nonstop barrage of abuse on her mother, calling her names, insulting her intelligence, trivializing her illness, on and on. This clearly wasn't someone having a shockingly bad day, because her mother behaved towards her with every possible hallmark of someone who's been utterly cowed by abuse. Every self-depricating, apologetic, walking-on-eggshells sign was there. I had only just started working there a few months prior and I hadn't had any of the future showdowns with SCs that gave me confedance, so I had NO idea how to handle it. Instead of doing the proper thing, which would have been to confess to how appalled I was at the way she was talking about and to her mother, I played dumb. But the less I reacted, the more out of control this woman became, to the point where she was insulting her mother TO ME, WHILE HER MOTHER WAS THERE, putting me in the horrible position of either agreeing with her and thus aiding in the abuse, or else telling her to shut up and get the hell out of my store, which, as I said, I didn't have the courage to do. I just kept not reacting, and she kept getting more out of control. Finally, they bought something and left.
I'd been abused by SCs at that point already, but when someone's mean to you, you shut down, you know? You don't give a crap what mood they go away in -- in fact, if they go away really upset, it can give you a happy little thrill. But this SC's mother hadn't been mean to me. She'd been extremely polite and kind, and I had no way of shutting off my compassion. I wanted to help her, and the knowledge that I'd been utterly powerless to do so, that she was just going to be sad for the rest of her life, under the thumb of her abusive daughter who'd dragged her across the country away from everything she'd ever known so that she could have this horrible, disrespectful power trip on the person who'd changed her poopy diapers... It makes me upset just thinking about it again. The whole experience broke me -- the next day, I had a panic attack when I was supposed to go into work and had to call in sick while I recovered.
Looking back, there are probably some pretty serious emotional problems in both members of that family, but I will hate the SC daughter for all of time for what I saw her do. I know that caring for an aging parent, especially while coping with the death of another parent, can be emotionally taxing, but if I EVER catch myself treating anyone I care about the way that woman treated her mother, I would like to think that I'd realize that my continued presence in their life was doing way more harm than good. Also, I'd like to think that I'd go find a good therapist to help me work out exactly how I'd devolved into such a despicable, rotten human being.
Actually, I wish you were making it up. People like that don't deserve the air they breathe.
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