I am not Responsible for Anyone Else’s Reward

Yesterday I wrote about my experiences coping with my dad’s dementia. I stood up for myself, and I said I was putting myself first for practical reasons. I wondered how people would take it. It would certainly look better to say, “I don’t care what happens to me; I will sacrifice everything to make sure he has the best experience possible.” But I am not suicidal, nor am I obsessed with making other people think I’m a saint.

It’s perverse and unnatural for the young to sacrifice themselves for the old. The old are supposed to sacrifice themselves for the young. That’s one reason why abortion is an aberration. New generations are the future. The old are supposed to set the young up to survive. Parents don’t throw their kids in front of cars to protect themselves. They lay down their lives for their kids.

So far, I have only seen three responses, and they were all positive. I thank the two commenters who backed me up. The third response came as a text message.

I’ll tell you something about the way my family has always worked. My dad and my sister have always gotten their way by putting other people on the defensive. If you don’t like the way things are going, accuse someone else of selfishness or some other shortcoming, and keep the pressure on until they give in. Come to think of it, even my mother, who was a much nicer person, was not above this. I faced a constant stream of accusations when I was a kid, and after I grew up, the flow didn’t completely stop.

There is a word for this: “gaslighting.” If you have a problem, make someone else think he’s the one who is screwing things up. If you succeed, you skate away, and the person you gaslight is left with the burden and self-doubt, not to mention the burden of disproving the slander.

Leftists are great at this. If you believe in Jesus, it’s not humility or a desire to see God’s love spread. It’s hate. Somehow. Christians have to defend themselves against ridiculous hate charges all the time. Refusing to bake a cake is now considered hate. I wish refusing to bake me cakes were the worst thing my enemies could think up for me.

It’s good to have people who back you up against gaslighters. Even if you know you’re being libeled, it’s helpful to have someone else confirm it.

I’m pretty good about goaltending, when it comes to gaslighting. When my dad accuses me of things, instead of responding, I’ll say, “Don’t try to put me on the defensive. I know you like to do that, but I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m trying to fix a problem you caused.”

Try that with a gaslighter some day. It’s like a karate kick that sweeps their legs out from under them. They collapse. They usually have nothing left to hit you with. They don’t expect you to go on the offensive against their unfair tactics, so they don’t prepare.

This is a great tip. You won’t understand how great it is until you try it.

Putting innocent people on the defensive is a powerful tactic for narcissistic, selfish people. When you do it, you put the burden of proof on the other person. Instead of discussing the real issues, the victims feel like they have to put energy into defending themselves. Don’t fall for it. The fact that someone else goes off on a tangent doesn’t mean you have to go with them. Keep talking about the subject at hand, or bring up something the accuser is desperate to keep off the table.

Jesus was great at this. He was the king of the non sequitur counterpunch. People would make crazy accusations against him, and he wouldn’t respond to them. Instead, he would say whatever he thought people should hear. It made him a very unpleasant person to accuse.

If you have a jealous sibling, whom we’ll call Bob, and he accuses you of, say, using hints to get your parents to help you buy a car, there is no reason why you can’t say something like, “I don’t need a thing, mom and dad. Don’t worry about me. Maybe you could help Bob out, though. He needs a lawyer to get a DWI dismissed.”

Yesterday, my dad said something off the wall. He said I didn’t do anything for him. That’s serious, jaw-dropping gaslighting. He didn’t mean it. He knew it wasn’t true. He was just looking to knock me off balance and make me defend myself.

I decided to respond, since it was a softball. I said I drove him to restaurants, stores, and doctor appointments. I said I did his laundry and cleaned his house. I said I changed his bed for him. I said I took care of his business affairs. I said I maintained his property. I didn’t mention hauling bags of goods covered with reeking excretions to the dump.

It’s kind of hard to think of anything I don’t do for him. He makes himself meals, bathes, and dresses himself. That’s all he does. He can’t do anything else.

A gaslighter will say nearly anything, whether they can prove it or not, so sometimes they really step on a landmine.

Here’s a great moment in gaslighting. Maybe I’ve mentioned it before. My grandmother was around 90. I knew she loved country ham, but she was no longer able to cure her own. I ordered her a great ham from a website. One day I was at her breakfast table, and my sister, who was about 40 at the time, said, “Why don’t you fix some of that country ham Steve bought so you could cook it for him?”

That’s a beauty. She banked a gaslighting shot off my grandmother in order to hit me. No one saw it coming. Everything was cordial up to that point, and then BANG! There it was. JFK couldn’t have been more surprised when the first bullet hit him.

Of course, everyone in my family knew my sister was a fool and a liar, and I took care to respond and set things straight, so I came out unscathed. Still, you have to marvel. What kind of person even thinks of saying a thing like that?

I appreciate it when people tell me the gaslighting is nonsense. It helps.

I am not especially militant or selfish when it comes to looking out for myself when dealing with my dad. I could have said worse things. Here’s something longtime reader Ed Bonderenka said this in a comment, about someone he knows:

I pray he goes peacefully, and if God won’t heal him, soon.

I didn’t go that far. I didn’t say anything like that about my dad, but it’s perfectly moral and acceptable. It’s not selfishness. It’s love.

Sometimes I feel like I blew it by looking after my dad so well, because had I allowed him to keep drinking and sleeping without a CPAP, both of us might have been spared these years of destroyed dignity and disgusting sights, sounds, and smells. The only profit he can get out of life now is salvation, so that’s all I ask for. I used to pray for healing every day. I quit a long time ago. God cut my dad off because of his stubbornness, and I respect that. I just want him to make it to heaven.

My dad’s sister’s dementia went quickly, and she died after a couple of years. She suffered less than he will, and her kids and grandchildren suffered less than I will.

I don’t push things any more. I accept his mortality. I take him to doctors and give him his pills, but if he wants to eat ice cream and cookies every day, I let him. I couldn’t stop him without extreme measures and a lot of fighting. I don’t look for supplements for him. I’m not looking for experimental dementia treatments. If he exercises, great. If not, equally great. I’m not going to struggle to keep him alive in this state. I’m not required to try to make up for someone else’s decades of willful self-neglect.

He apparently agrees, because when I got him his own lawyer, he got himself a living will, rejecting extraordinary measures to support life. I was surprised. In the past, I could never get him to come down on one side or the other; he always told me to decide for him when the time came. I kept telling him it was not my place. Now I don’t have to worry.

I am trying to look after myself today. No restaurant trips. No long conversations about my crimes and failures as a son. No doctors. No business. I hope it pans out. If not, I’ll move it to Sunday. In any case, I will make sure I get what I need. I’m the only one here who has to go on living.