Shattered illusions....What now?

[vunil]

Everyone here writes so eloquently about healing, so much more than I ever could.  I just wanted to add two things about the worry about being a burden or whining or whatever--

1.  When people rally around you, Spyralle, or anyone else, the rest of us get to read the posts and we really heal from them also.  So you provide a good touchpoint, without knowing it, for all of these wounded souls to get some healing.  There are folks who read here and never post, and folks who post but never about their own pain.  You provide them a chance to read some words of hope and wisdom. and..

2.  It is really nice sometimes to be the one who helps instead of the one who asks for help.  I like being able to share the (little bit!) I have learned-- it does something for me spiritually and psychologically.  It allows me to be the best self I want to be-- to strengthen that part of me that looks out for myself, so that maybe the next time I am tempted toward self-abuse of some kind (for me it would be dating some total jerk, most likely) maybe that healthy self will win.  Reading longtire's response in your other thread just brought tears to my eyes-- it was so beautiful and on the mark, and I was on this board when he was first starting this journey and was hashing through things like the rest of us.  I don't want to speak for him but I think he must really like being able to share what he has learned.  I know I love reading it.

So, besides the BIG reason we gather around you (you are reasonably upset about horrible events and we share your pain and want to help if we can), please know that there are other, also important, reasons why your presence here is part of a big fabric-- the tapestry needs all of the threads.  In other words, post away!  That silly crazy mom voice telling you that you are a burden is not worth listening to.  Your voice is valuable to us and if it isn't to her it's because... did I mention I think she's crazy?

(I know that isn't a politically correct word.  I hope I can be forgiven for using it in this context?  Somehow just saying she is N isn't enough)

[jordanspeeps]

The diaries: in the event of her death, burn each and every toxic page of them, mix the ashes with some rose petals (you) and place them in a container in her coffin.  Don't let the depraved b*tch abuse you from beyond the grave

brilliant!

tif

[spyralle]

It's a funny thing this thread.  I started it I guess because I was having trouble dealing with the fact that my ex has abused me (still hard to say).... and I wanted to explore a bit more about why I had closed my eyes to that and what to do now, but it has had a masive impact on me that I had not expected.  Things that I had kind of accepted as just stuff from my past have had such a strong reaction that has hit me right in the gut.....

i was talking about the veil I put over everything in therapy today and the intense level of fear it causes to start acknowledging stuff....  The therapist was talking about the way I use others for my own identification and said that I perhaps needed to try and let go of my mothers hand (ie stop looking for people like her to repeat more of the same).  it reminded me of when I was a child and my aunty took me away for the weekend.  i was sick for the whole time because I was separated from my mother. alo the time when she was away for the night and I stayed at a schoolfriends house.  the next night she was back but I asked to stay at my friends.  By the early hours of the morning I was so overwhelmed with guilt that I begged to be taken home i was inconsolable.  My mother created a dependency that was ridiculous and once she had me there she could do what she pleased I guess.  i was once talking to her about the closeness between me and my daughter (she hates that more than anything, especially as my daughter sees right through her)  She said intensley.  NOBODY will ever be as close as you and me.  I guess the diaries are written to keep me in my place even when she is not around.  To remind me of just how bad I was.

i have to change that i have to start to value myself.  I'm not really sure how I am going to do it but I'm going to keep trying...

Spyralle x

[irishrose]

I guess the diaries are written to keep me in my place even when she is not around.  To remind me of just how bad I was.


Spyralle, please take my earlier advice.  I had a four hour appraisal at work today and got upgraded by a grade (8 increments).  It was atrociously difficult for me to put myself forward and argue my good and excellent points.  One of the things I was proudest of saying was this:  "I am 42, and for the first time in my life, I can get up in the morning and like myself - I take this attitude to work......".

I, like you, was brought up to believe I was 'evil, twisted, a burden, ugly, stupid and hateful'.  I posted this poem ages ago and I hope it resonates with you, I have so much feeling of being intertwined with a malevolent parent and breaking free from it:  It's called The Wheel.

You hated me the night you conceived me.
You hated me as I lay inside you longing to be born,
To see your face, your smile,
to feel your touch, your love,
and you have hated me ever since.

I loved you, in innocence, while you hated me.
You taught me about your goodness
as you carved the bad on my soul.
My presence pained your being –
my smile, my love, my joy.

You hated me because you hated him.
Time has fed and spread its’ seep.
Oozing, toxic and contagious.
It is all.

Thank you for hating me.
Outcast, outside, empty, bad and dead.
“The wheel has come full circle…”
I dug in the grave of what you’d left
and found an atom of life.
I embraced, nurtured, loved and rejoiced in it
As it grew like a sunny child.

I found my voice in the wilderness of lies,
fought it, feared it yet listened to its’
wistful little whisper.
Then love broke through that small girl with freckles,
And grew with her.

[Plucky]

Wow Irishrose,

your poem spoke to me and touched me.  I was really with you up until "thanky uo for hating me".  I guess I'm not there yet.
Plucky

[spyralle]

Your poem touched me too Rose,

"You taught me about your goodness
As you carved the bad on my soul"

That is exactly how it was for me.  The perfect mother with the beautiful clothes and the expensive perfume.  I soiled her image, I was clumsy, I never brushed my hair, I cried all the time, I did not achieve and when I did it was in the wrong places.  I did not have lots of well connected friends....  i did not have any friends... I was always lying, I would not tell her my deepest secrets, I had the devil inside me.  I would put my mother in a mental hospital. I had killed off my family, I was boy mad... i could not cook, I could not sew, I could and would not mimic her the way she wanted me to.... but worst of all I could not be.....

I know where Plucky is coming from with the difficulty in saying thankyou...  I can say it a bit to my ex, who on one level has facilitated me having an opportunity to learn by having put me down in this pit of despair, but I haven't really got to that stage with my mother yet....  I am always careful becuase she has drummed into to me her fragility.  From being a child I guess my fear at being the cause of her destruction has always been there. 

Spyralle x

[amethyst]

((((Irish Rose)))) Your poem touched me deeply.

A little part of me says Thank You to my parents too, but it's not a thanks or gratitude for the childhood of abuse, lies and hatred. I will never thank them for the childhood abuse. That would be the biggest self-betrayal I can imagine.

My thanks to them are:  I am grateful that once I started to separate from my parents, to break the enmeshment, to deal with what my childhood had been, that my parents felt free to spew even more hatred and invective, to cast me out of their lives as "not part of them" anymore. Those were their exact words; if I was not willing to be all about them, as far as they were concerned, I was dead.

One of my cousins, who is on his own path of healing from the abuse that he took from my uncle, met me for dinner during this time. He told me how frightening and angry my mother, who he'd always seen as this jolly, benign and rather mild person, had become. He said that my mother was obsessed with me and practically foamed at the mouth telling everyone what a horrible, evil person I was. He told me it was all she could talk about except for her illnesses, her money and her things. He said,"She is exactly like her mother. It's terrifying." Interestingly, I had seen my cousin's father, who was extremely abusive, as a jolly, mild and benign person. The abuse in both our families stayed behind closed doors.

My parents disowned and disinherited me. When I started trying to become a whole person, by questioning, by setting any boundaries with them at all, by not playing their games any more, they decided that I didn't deserve to exist, which had really been the truth all along. That's why I had told myself as a child, day after day, "I wish I had never been born." I had introjected my parents' wishes at a very early age, probably by age three.

My parents also took their hatred and their lies out to the entire family and to anyone that didn't know me well. As painful as that was, I am grateful that my parents made it PERFECTLY CLEAR that the little part of me which had suspected the truth all along was correct. They were so clear and so toxic in their hatred of me that I had no choice but to heal.

You are so right about digging deep for the atom of life in the grave. What a wonderful way to put it, Irish Rose! I had to dig deep in the ashes and carrion to find and nurture that little spark of soul, that little girl inside. Once I found her, I couldn't betray her by going back.

[d'smom]

I soiled her image, I was clumsy, I never brushed my hair, I cried all the time, I did not achieve and when I did it was in the wrong places.  I did not have lots of well connected friends....  i did not have any friends... I was always lying, I would not tell her my deepest secrets, I had the devil inside me.  I would put my mother in a mental hospital. I had killed off my family, I was boy mad... i could not cook, I could not sew, I could and would not mimic her the way she wanted me to.... but worst of all I could not be.....


spyralle, i just want to pick up that little girl and hug her.   

your mother is an adult. if she becomes destroyed, it will be her own responsibility and doing. she is an adult. you are not responsible for her 'fragility', whiich personally to me she sounds pretty robust. 

i think shes faking, girl.  your light has been under a bucket. but its a very very very nice light.  any real mother would -love- to have you for a daughter.   !   

[spyralle]

D'smom, (Thanks for the hugx)

She is quite robust I guess.  She is in her seventies and was teaching aerobics in the Spanish village near where she lived until she moved......  She goes line dancing and just loves more than anything to be in the limelight.  She is always boasting that she can put her leg over her head....!!!!!

She is a very bitter woman and makes friendships whic evaporate quite quickly when the person does something to upset her.  She demands perfection in everybody.  I remember when she went to watch 'The full Monty' at the cinema.  Everyone enjoyed the film and thought it was very funny but she thought it was a disgrace because Robert carlyle, who playeed the lead had very wonky bottom teeth.  Talking of teeth, ten years ago she paid for me to have all my teeth capped.  She had kept on giving me antibiotics as a child and they had stained my teeth grey.  When they were done she hated them and wrote a letter to the dentist to inform him of this.  They were not exactly how she had wanted.  She even found a picture and sent it too him.  How I felt about them was not really of any concern...

Amethyst you really touched me when you said "Once I found her I couldn't betray her by going back"  That is what I am struggling with.  Do I speak to her or not...  She sent me a birthday card, do I write back.  I admire your clear sightedness and your determination.  My daughter is the same.  She sees right through my mother and will have nothing to do with her, and my mother responds in the same way as your parents have.  She tries to turn me against my own child....

Spyralle

[A Guest]

My mum and my brother both have a very fragile quality about them that I cannot really put my finger on.

This is the greatest lie they have taught you.  They are not only full of evil energy and strength but they have planned, like wicked chess players, on how to check mate you.  Just in case you might decide to actually see their evil behaviour and feel what you feel, rather than swallow it up and pretend it doesn't exist, they have this check mate plan to keep you:

"She will never cut us off because she believes we are weak and fragile and might die if she did".

They may not be consciously saying this but this IS the plan.

Don't accept it or believe the big lie ((((((Spyralle)))))).

Open your eyes and pitch their evil ways to the wind.  

They will continue to live, to thrive, to spread their evil energy by their evil behaviour to whomever they are next able to check mate and contaminate with lies.

Don't let that next person be your daughter.
Don't let their poison be injected into her.

Suffer whatever separation anxiety you must to protect her from these evil, evil, evil abusive liars.

Would you say or do any of the things these people have said or done to you to your child?
Why would you allow even the tiniest of chances that they might have opportunity to do the same to your child some time?

Don't respond to the birthday card.
Don't respond to them again.

Begin a new life free of their evil influence and destruction.

[miss piggy]

Very well said, Guest.  The check mate strategy...

I just wanted to add to Spyralle that I loved Robert Carlyle in the Full Monty.  What a scream. 

Years ago I went to see a play featuring many characters and themes about disenfranchised underdogs getting their day in the sun.  But, dahling, I was sitting near a group of regular theatre goers, and well, lovey, let me tell you they were just so puzzled by why this play would be so popular.  Perhaps, just perhaps they saw themselves in the greedy, look-at-me villainess who was a stage mother living her life through her daughter and also trying to look younger than she was.  She was quite a send up of country club matrons.  The play was great fun with great music and lyrics.  If you were like me, one of the unwashed, you stood up and cheered.  It was just so funny to me that this group was unmoved and not enthusiastic.  Like the play had spilled out over the stage into the audience and continued on. Hah!

MP

[Plucky]

Hi there Spyralle,
I hope you are feeling some support and validation from the unanimous condemnation towards your sick oppressors that your story has provoked.

If a part of you still feels that somehow you might be to blame for something, think about this.  You did not tell anyone up here how to think or intepret your story.  All you told us is the facts.  Unless you made up those facts (and you did not) then our reaction is true and genuine.  We have no reason to support you if we didn't feel it.  You would have heard a deafening silence, but instead you hear the "I am healing, hear me roar" of the combined outrage of this worthy group.

If you were to take your family to court for the abuse they have infliicted on you, any judgement would award you a huge sum of money.  More than you ever got from your thieving family.  I call them thieving because they robbed you of years of happiness you were entitled to as a child (and adult).  They stole your self-esteem and with that your ability to look after yourself.   THEY OWE YOU.    What they took from you can never be repaid, even if you got every sorry penny they have.

A still shocked
Plucky

[amethyst]

D'smom, (Thanks for the hugx)

She is quite robust I guess.  She is in her seventies and was teaching aerobics in the Spanish village near where she lived until she moved......  She goes line dancing and just loves more than anything to be in the limelight.  She is always boasting that she can put her leg over her head....!!!!!

She is a very bitter woman and makes friendships whic evaporate quite quickly when the person does something to upset her.  She demands perfection in everybody.  I remember when she went to watch 'The full Monty' at the cinema.  Everyone enjoyed the film and thought it was very funny but she thought it was a disgrace because Robert carlyle, who playeed the lead had very wonky bottom teeth.  Talking of teeth, ten years ago she paid for me to have all my teeth capped.  She had kept on giving me antibiotics as a child and they had stained my teeth grey.  When they were done she hated them and wrote a letter to the dentist to inform him of this.  They were not exactly how she had wanted.  She even found a picture and sent it too him.  How I felt about them was not really of any concern...

Amethyst you really touched me when you said "Once I found her I couldn't betray her by going back"  That is what I am struggling with.  Do I speak to her or not...  She sent me a birthday card, do I write back.  I admire your clear sightedness and your determination.  My daughter is the same.  She sees right through my mother and will have nothing to do with her, and my mother responds in the same way as your parents have.  She tries to turn me against my own child....

Spyralle

((((Spyralle)))) Your mom is physically strong and very flexible. She uses the weakness/illness/martyr  ploy to get supply from you.

After she gets done with you, you feel weak and sick...also as if you are the worst person in the world. A good indicator that a relationship is toxic is when you come away feeling drained and crummy about yourself.

Was it Sgt. Friday who said,"Just the facts, ma'am"???  Spyralle, you gave us just the facts and everyone here came to the same conclusion. If we were a jury on a civil case, your mother would have a whopping judgement against her in your favor. If we could, we would also take away her telephone, her writing implements,  and put her on house arrest so she could never contact you or see you again...at least until you had healed from this and were strong enough.   

[spyralle]

Amethyst, when you said "When she gets done with you you come away feeling drained and crummy about yourself"  That really hit home.  I have always delt like that in my mothers company, and towards the end I always felt like that in my ex's company too.  I thought it was just me being horrible in both settings and couldn't work out why I can't muster up enough energy or enthusiam to be myself.  It feels really funny the response from this post.  it's like I'm daring to believe that I could have actually been wrong about myself all these years.  It's so strange to realise that people know exactly what I am talking about...

I'm just debating whether or not to write her a letter.  After the birthday card asking to know how I was I know it will not be long before I have an answerphone message from her sounding in the depths os despair.  I am also debating whether or not to tell her my ex has left.  That will sent her off into space and I will have the full works about how silly I was and what a fool I am and then she would go on about how I should be more of a housewife type and make sure all the washing and ironing is up to date and he should have had a meal on the table at the same time every night.  And then she will go on about money and how he only wanted me for my house, which could very well be true, (I daren't tell her that he has stolen the 25,000 off me, because she will see that as her money.  As she has given mme so much money, what is mine then becomes hers!!!!!  So say she bought me an item of clothing, which would never be something I wanted....What she wanted to see me in....  She would then look for it every time she came over and say I had lent it to someone, or actually given it away, she would nearly have a nervous breakdown.

I'm rambling again I can tell my thoughts start spiralling o at all tangents when I get on to this subject.  So do I write her a brief letter or wait for her to phone.... and if I do what the hell do I put in it.  She writes me 10 page letters sometimes on these sorts of occasions which I have to say I could really do without, because then she will say that this is all making her ill and she has not been out because she is now unable to communicate with others.  You know the story.

Spyralle x

[amethyst]

((((Spyralle)))),

Why do you want to write your mom a letter? Is it to fend off more abuse? Is it to explain?  Why do you have to talk to her when she calls? What part of you wants to contact her? Is it the needy part? What will happen if you contact her? You seem to know already how it will play out.

I so understand where the need to contact is coming from. I used to be there, in that place of wanting love from my parents. There is a part of you hoping that just this once I can get it right and mom will love me unconditionally if I say and do the right thing. It doesn't matter what you do....the abuser will abuse and the abuse will play out.

Honey, I am afraid you are once again going to the rock for water. She will never mother you. She will hurt you. You are her whipping boy. It's all about her. I can't put it more bluntly than that.

Your mother is not going to die without you in her life. At least probably not today. And you will not die if you don't reach out to her, even though there is a part of you that feels as if you will.

Do you have some loving friends that you can spend some time with today rather than reaching out to your mother? Can you call your therapist and let her know how you feel?