GALing and Boundaries with XH

[AntoniaB]

This is definitely helpful, Kaffe, and I actually talked to my sister tonight and read her your post because we've been trying to figure out a subtle way we can start to shift things a little. Interesting thing tonight as far as the whole parental codependency issue...

She and I were on the phone and the call dropped. I called her back and I misdialed and called my parents. It rang twice and I realized I misdialed, hung up, and called her. My phone was charging in another room.

Immediately my home line rang but it went to voicemail and I said to my sister, must be mom. Well I'm sure she knows I misdialed as I hung up right away. Then my cell which is charging goes. Then 5 min. pass. My home phone. Then my cell phone. She's left 4 voicemails at this point. Half hour passes. Same thing again.

(You're going why didn't you pick up--I was too far from the cell to reach that as it was in the back of my house, and I don't know how to use the call waiting feature on my phone.)

By the time I got off the phone with my sister, mom had left me 7 messages between email and 2 phone lines that got progressively more and more frantic. ANTONIA!!!! CALL IMMEDIATELY!!! WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON????

I called and she was distraught. Completely distraught. My dad TOLD her look, she misdialed. It's easy to do with these phones (cause he GAVE me my phone).

Honestly? I think that my mom thought that because I was severely depressed last year and talking of suicide, which was CAUSED by the depression and 2 weeks straight of NO SLEEP and a reaction to meds, that I am now branded forever as a "high risk." It doesn't matter that I've held a very public job where I stand in front of people every day and never missed despite the depression, it doesn't matter that I am highly accomplished and have lived alone now for over a year in a state where I have no family locally, nothing I've done to rebuild myself matters. I misdial a phone, and she JUMPS to assuming that because I made the MISTAKE of falling apart when my husband left me that I am now suicidal forever.

When I reached her, she said that she had assumed she was going to have to drive to my home tonight to "take care of me" or "help me" because she thought "something awful happened to me".

Honestly, I feel like my issues with XH are so much less now than the issues with my helicopter parents.