Backstabber

There was a relative who my parent always allowed to come and visit semi regularly, this relative would always manage to cause trouble and yet was always allowed to return. My parent dealt with this by taking it out on me, somehow it was my fault the relative acted up, I was supposed to be making sure the relative was behaving and giving appropriate lectures to the relative when the relative misbehaved.

Not my place, I am the youngest but somehow it fell upon me to give the lectures, I’m not the one who said yes to the relatives visits, I had told my parent that we should stop allowing the relative to visit, especially as I was the one who ended up having it all taken out on me. The parent said we would team up against the relative, stick together and not allow the relative to undermine us. The parent did not lay out a strategy for this and when I asked how would we do it the parent stated we would stick together. How? HOW??? No further comment from the parent.

Since I had just become a teenager I was supposed to just know these things.

Sticking together to the parent meant yelling at me at the drop of a hat and in front of the relative and yet I was supposed to be responsible for the relatives’ behaviour. Being yelled at all the time and being the youngest sort of meant I lacked the credibility with the relative.

One day there was a strange cat in the yard, I casually mentioned it to the parent who told me to ‘find out about it’.

My response was “Find out about it? What do you mean?” The parent again said, “Find out about it.” also saying we should catch the cat and give it to relevant animal care group. I pointed out to the parent we did not have exclusive rights to having cats in the neighbourhood.

I caught the cat and at this point the relative came out, I said to the relative go and tell the parent I caught the cat. The relative said, “Oh yeah, [the parent] says bring the cat in.”

When I walked in the parent went off their head and screamed at full volume, which caused the cat to urinated everywhere before running back outside. The parent then screamed the question why did I bring the cat in and I responded with “[the relative] told me that you wanted me to” to which the relative said, “no I didn’t.”

As the parent started howling incoherently the relative and I ran out of the house and around the corner where the relative called a friend to drive over and pick the relative up leaving me to face an irrational parent.

The parent had locked the house so I could not get in. In my confusion and frustration with the situation I came up with a lame strategy, I knocked on the door and told the parent that the relative had left and that the parent can let me in or I will kill myself. A silly comment I regret making to this day.

The parent said “Go and do it then. Before slamming the door.

A short time later I came up with some lame comments where I took all the blame and made all appropriate lamentations and had to endure the self-serving comments from the parent.

Next day my parent is on the phone to someone relaying the story and finishing up with my silly comments and a stupid laugh. It was all my fault according to the parent.

It was definitely the fault of my parent, first of all my parent failed to be a parent! Leaving it all to a teenager to take care of the situation with no real say in anything to begin with? I would not have been in that position to say stupid things if it wasn’t for sheer laziness and lack of any behaviour of substance from the parent.

The parent should have not worried about the cat and the parent should not have screamed at me when I cam in with the cat. There was no reason to scream and a golden opportunity to catch the relative out as a liar was missed.

The parent told me later that once again I had been lead astray by the relative and had done exactly what the relative wanted by bringing the cat inside and causing trouble.

When I asked my parent about the screaming the parent told me how they were at wits end because of the relative and my bringing the cat in was the last straw and that was the end of the subject.

The reality is it was the parent who was led astray by the relative and did exactly what the relative wanted. The parent was the adult in this situation and was the one who said the relative could come over even though the relative always caused trouble and the parent is the one who yelled and screamed even though the parent was not the one taking the brunt of the relatives bad behaviour, it was me and if I yelled like that I would have had strips torn off me for losing my temper and freaking the cat out.

The parent didn’t need to yell, the only thing required was my parent telling me to take the cat back outside and there would have been no further problem with a freaked out cat but my parent preferred to yell and scream at the drop of the hat had thousands of ready excuses for why they were exempt for the consequences of their actions.

The parent stabbed me in the back, instead of sticking with me the parent turned on me and here’s the consequence of that attitude, I have no sympathy for all the woes my parent supposedly suffered through life because if these bad things really happened they were probably all self inflicted.