Exceptional Lizzy plays out some of her adult child learned behaviors A Particular Friendship : Adult child challenges by Liz O'Neill

Background We are seeing how sweater dilemmas bring out adult child learned behaviors and habits My heart sank, when Mother came into the room holding the shrunken sweater, which would fit a 1st grader rather than a sophomore in high school. In retrospect I can only imagine how much Mother must have sacrificed to get that sweater, however, as was her pattern, she was driven to match a new one with the original.  In her caring heart, hearing my desperation she must have felt terrible. I see how unaware I was to her own desperation. All I thought about was me. I just had to have another identical sweater.  No one must know what really happened.  In my fantasy mind, I had been wearing the same sweater all along. There was no such thing as another new sweater. I shriveled inside, unable to picture myself without one. Using my child of an alcoholic skills, I initiated conversations to fabricate my story. I wanted to get ahead of them before they asked me and then I would not have to lie to some of the kids. I was unaware that fabricating was a form of lying. I will deviate a little here to give some background so you can more fully understand how lying impacted my life from a very young age.  As mandated by my father, I had to fabricate often. It never occurred to me I was lying. Until I was in my 60’s I carried on an extremely distorted pattern. This was as a result of an unhealthy belief system. Since I was old enough to answer the phone, I had to fabricate often about my father’s whereabouts. He was a lawyer which created uncomfortable situations on the phone. His secretary would call and announce my father was 15 minutes late and his client was still waiting. I had to say he was on his way.  Do you want to speculate where he was? He was still… in… bed. He also played golf therefore we had two people calling him on his day off on the weekend a client and his golf buddy. I was instructed to get him when his golf buddy called and to deny he was there if a client called.  The manner in which the client asked about him was confusing. Sometimes they would ask for him by name as if they were his golf partner. I would take the message to my father who would jovially take the phone call. The result had consequences. He would rant. “You know I told you I do not want to talk to any clients on my days off.” Next came the caller who asked, “Is your dad there?” Now that sounded like it could be a client. I was wary, took the message and hung up. I reported to my father someone had called, and how I dutifully took a message and hung up. You guessed it again. It was his golf partner. He went on with the diatribe, “You know I've been waiting all day long for my golf partner to call me and now you’ve hung up on him.”  I'm sure after the drama, he's sorted it out some way. It was a trigger every time the phone rang.  Amused, I witnessed the other family members reacting whenever the phone rang. Everyone wanted to hide, nobody wanted to answer the phone which kept ringing and ringing and ringing.  We grown adults looked at each other and giggled.  My father growled, Isn't anyone going to answer that phone? We just sat hoping to appear invisible. My mother shrugged her shoulders and picked up the receiver.   We return to the sweater saga. To tell the kids in my high school I wasn't wearing my sweater because my mother was washing didn't seem like a lie and seemed basically harmless, until it wasn't. I fabricate a similar story for other people. You surely know this could never have ended happily. It became a cautionary tale when my partner inquired if I had mailed the envelope she gave me the previous day when I was on my way to work. I told her they’d probably be getting it on Monday. It was still in my pocket. Just like my father was still in bed. This next fabrication stunned me and broke my partner's heart.  We had a little tensor light out on the steps outside. Plugging it in lighted the area our pets used to relieve themselves. One dark and stormy night there was thunder and lightning.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the lightning had struck and traveled right up the cord of the little lamp. I am terrified of lightning and this was 3 ft from the screen of the sliding glass door. We both saw it. My partner was very aware I was coming a little unglued and suggested we go out on the screened-in porch to get away from the electricity.  She did not know enough about lightning because you don't go on a screened in porch when there’s lightning because lightning will come through the screens. I was very touched by her desire to take care of me and made no lightning can kill comments.  Now this was the most important line. She said “We can take care of that lamp tomorrow.”  Jumping ahead to the next day. She was at work and called me.  We were laughing, having a light, playful conversation, until it wasn’t. I have thought this over for many years, and haven't come up with a real good answer as to why I would want to sabotage everything with that learned adult child fabrication.  I told her I unplugged the tensor lamp. Have you guessed yet what she said?  With a note of defeat in her voice and a broken heart she said, “I unplugged it.” My senseless act of fabricated bravado destroyed a loving relationship.  You will see that nothing really changed until I learned way too late, from that bitter life lesson. Throughout the day, I planned how mother and I could go to purchase another sweater. It wouldn't be the same, there would be no excitement. But we would get the sweater.   Author Notes I hope this disclosure of my chronic lying related to adult children behavior helps at least one other reader here.

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