Boundaries with parents
My AoG parents trigger me just by existing. My mom is the “Jesus is the answer to any question’ poster child and makes sure to sprinkle Jesus into literally every conversation.
My daughter just celebrated her birthday and we had my parents come by to join us for dinner. They brought gifts, of course all religious themed (charm bracelet with Christian symbols, the case for Christ kids book series, science according to the Bible workbook etc). I kept my mouth shut, smiled politely and let it go.
We have an upcoming trip to London planned and my daughter shared that she’s excited to see the Harry Potter experience. 10 guesses on my mom’s opinion of Harry Potter. We made it through the topic unscathed, and I moved the conversation to the next topic to avoid conflict.
On the drive home from dinner conversation turned to math (we are a fun bunch I promise). Something about the infinite number of possibilities of shuffling cards in a deck and how big the number is. I then decided to bring up a book I just read that also explored the concept of infinite and vastness …except the book is called… a short stay in hell.
I explained briefly the character arrives in hell to find that the beliefs he held in life were wrong and he is sent to a version of hell specific to his interests (because what kind of religion teaches that you will be tortured by fire for eternity). He was sent to a library with infinite books with the task of finding the book that is the story of his life. The math on actually finding it and the visual imagery of the book communicates this vastness in a unique and memorable way. Nice story, or so I thought.
My mom was muttering prayers under her breath while I was talking about the book. Because reading books like that is evil apparently. I again didn’t say anything and the next day brought up how I’m frustrated about this to my husband. He seems to think I brought it on myself by introducing the topic and should know better than to talk about something like that.
I’m angry because why should I have to hide everything about myself including what books I read ? Of course that triggered me because my upbringing was all about conforming to their beliefs and denying my own thoughts, opinions and emotions because they were deemed evil or wrong. And now I’m grown and I can’t talk about a book I enjoyed because it’s inviting my mom’s judgement? And my husband thinks it’s a me problem and I should practice accommodations for them and that makes it worse because that means it’s something in me that needs fixing. I think it’s a them problem and want to tell them off or set boundaries that they aren’t welcome if they can’t keep their judgement to themselves.
Really don’t know what to do about them anymore. I hate having them over I feel like a mess afterwards for days.