Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
The truth comes out -- and Flo's tears are flowing
Anonymous:
--- Quote from: Anonymous ---
--- Quote from: Flo ---:cry: My tears are flowing, friends, because I just had another run-in with my sister.
The final conclusion of THIS one is: We agreed that our definitions of the word "love" are different.
To me, "love" means action, not just a feeling.
To her, my definition is a laying guilt trip on her. To her, love is a feeling, and that is what love is.
Flo
--- End quote ---
Yes Flo, I'm that guest, the loo paper guest, and I thought your idea about fortune cookie comments was equally hilarious, "The task you are working on now will bring you great relief and much joy."
I cma back to your post because a couple of things you said have stayed in mind. Flo, I think it's fantastic the way you were able to get a definition of love out of your sister, and come to an agreement with her as to how you see it differently. To you love is both feeling and action. Here - here! I whole heartedly agree, otherwise what's the use of the love. I'm a great believer in love in action. The other type doesn't put bread on the table.
I don't think that's laying a guilt trip on her at all. If it makes her feel guilty, then I wonder why? Maybe because she's lost her zest for life and is trying to preserve her energy, whilst she is observing you brimming over with life. That must be hard.
I understand a certain amount, just a little bit about bi-polar disorder. My father-in-law suffers from this and he's told me some things about what he was like when his children were young. His rages were uncontrollable. He's not like that now, takes medication too. Some very famous people have suffered with bi-polar disorder I believe. It never stopped them, even before medication was available. A lot of writers actors musicians and artists. Samuel Johnson was one I think.
Anyway Flo I think anyone who is excluding you from family events is extremely hurtful, and denying you access to your great-neice is odd and not nice, to say the least. There are lot's of things hurting you here, and it sems almost intentional and is impacting on your freedom to relate to other members of your family. Does it feel like you are being kept out. That really must hurt. If you feel this is the case, can you address this in some way. Duscuss the issue in detail. Even take notes. Get an assurance and a commitment that this is not happening, so that if you have to at a future time you can reference back to this conversation you've had.
All the best Flo
Guest
--- End quote ---
Flo, I had to jump of the computer before I finished my reply. Sorry. I share it with a few others in my family. But I just wanted to say I think you are doing incredibly well. I can understand how you can feel that your father loved you. The fact that you've tried to understand him, and an can now see that he had a disorder must make sense of a whole lot of stuff for you. My husband is in the process of going through this with his father. The whole story is too heartbreaking. But the result is my husband is has NPD. In therapy. Gotta go, kicked off again. Hugs to you Flo,
Guest.
Flo:
Dear Jac and GuestCookie,
Guest, to me you are GuestCookie. I'm sure you will still sign on as simply "Guest" but your heart shines through your posts, and I can feel and spot you immediately, I think. I'm naming you GuestCooking ONLY WITH YOUR PERMISSION of course!!!!!! It's because of the fortune cookie thing. It's better than LooGuest!!!!!! :P Even though that was your joke and the fortune cookie was mine..... :lol:
I stayed up till almost 2:00 a.m. last night reading the chapter on Healing oneself in **Trapped in the Mirror** last night. What a wonderful chapter, and what a BEAUTIFUL PERSON Elan Golomb, PhD must be!!!! After reading this chapter, I truly feel I love her, or certain I would likely do so if I could only meet her some day.
Here are two things she says which address exactly what you two have written in your most recent posts above. And btw, THANK YOU BOTH for your COMPLETE SUPPORT, and total understanding. And yes, lots of famous people are/were bipolar. Ted Turner, still living of course; and Joshua Logan, one of the most famous of Broadway and Hollywood's directors -- if you were a little older, you'd remember the things he did, b/c practially every famous musical of the 1950s was one he directed. He favored plays that had HOPEFUL ENDINGS. What a great man he was!! He said that any play that had a hopeful ending was going to be smash hit -- and was he ever right. Wouldn't it be nice to see more of those these days, too? We sure need hopeful endings.
Lincoln may have been bipolar, and seeing the PBS bio of him and his wife, I am sure she was. She, like many bipolars have tragic endings. She died in a psychiatric hospital. Some die of suicide. Esp. b4 medications, but still today. I know several personal friends who have. :cry:
Joshua Logan's autobiography is called **Josh** and I highly recommend it! He talks a bit about his bipolar, in the book.'
Anyway: here is what Golomb says (p. 178):
"I remember reading Buddha's response to Ananda, his slowest disciple. Ananda said, "Friendship seems very important to me. Is it?" Buddha answered, :!: "Friendship is the most important thing."
She also wrote of her experiences in Tibet. One in particular moved her. It was when she was visiting an outback family and saw the naturally loving way in which children were raised, and honored.
"Both of them [mother and baby] seemed content as I plunged into a deep depression that lasted days. I did not know what made me sad. Now I know it was seeing a child fully respected and loved. I had never felt that way with my narcissistic parents, who only gave me what they wished.
:arrow: "I was in mourning. Children of narcissists need to mourn the knowledge that such a childhood will never come to us. I saw how things can be and that my narcissistic parents [and sister: Flo] could not give me this...My wish and hope of receiving such love from them steals away my energy. I molder in waiting."
I know I am in mourning now.
In my case, such a loving adult relationship with my family can never be -- no matter what words they use! Words are cheap. No matter how many "I love you's" or beautiful greeting cards, their actions belie these words and show that the love we shared as children is gone for good.
And HERE IS THE REAL KEY:
Golomb writes (p. 179)
:idea: "Surrendering one's expectation of such a full love from the narcissistic parent or a narcissistic surrogate [or sister: Flo] is childhood's end.
"There wil be a vacuum in response to my need and not the kind that nature fills....I must rethink what I call love. [See, I have already done that! But my sister and mother have not. Flo] ...... Childhood leaves its scars......I will heal myself by finding love to share." :)
Love and gratitude to all on this thread and all who read it,
Flo
Anonymous:
Hi Flo, very moving. Sometimes we just have to move on understanding that people don't change at the same rates, or sometimes they don't change at all. Am looking foreward to reading the book as it is in the mail Surf
Anonymous:
Hi Flo, it's me Cookie Guest, I was wondering if you have any children of your own? I don't remember you mentioning any, though I may have missed it. And by the way, how are you going today? You certainly got a whole truckload of a mix of feedback and opinions to mull on, didn't you? I like the way you handled it all too. Explaining and sometimes re-explaining, clarifying, and so patiently, without taking exception. You were totally cool babe.
Love Guest
Flo:
Hi, Cookie Guest and Surf,
I guess I am feeling rather blue. Or blah, maybe.
Thanks for being here for me. It is quite difficult to lose my sister. I have not really had total trust for her, at any time in my life. But now, she has grown in a completely different direction and is in a totally different "place" from me. During the time we have live geographically close, which is the past 11 years or more, I have helped her with some stuff. Like once a long time ago, I helped her move her classroom stuff to another room at the end of the school year. But later on she told me I was just in the way! She has NO ability to delegate.
I have cleaned out her closet. But this, too, was a nuisance, it seems.
I was right there for her when she wrenched her back and could not walk. At least THAT was needed. I stayed with her for a few days, and was there for her to lean on when she first went to the doctor, too. I fixed her food, and did whatever she needed, pretty much, despite my own exhaustion which is part of my life at all times. I did what I could.
And I loved helping her out. I loved it because she was my sister.
In 1998 she and I took a swing dance class together, too. It was so fun. That was one of the most wonderful things, for me, that we have ever done together. Since we shared an apartment in San Francisco in the 1960s.
And Cookie Guest, no, I have no children. Not really. I am a birth mother to a daughter. She was adopted when I was 22. I knew due to my extreme mood swings, the craziness and brutality of my dad that I would be a bad parent. Just like him, even though I did not want to be. I did not know how to be a reasonable person. I had so much trouble taking care of MYSELF -- and I really could NOT take care of myself, nor support myself financially, either -- that I knew I could not bear to be with another person 24/7. I could not even stand to have a room mate in college, but had to have a single room. And only a few weeks before I got accidentally pregnant, despite using the only birth control available to me in 1963, when I was 21 physically, 13 emotionally, with a college degree and a teaching job, alone in a new small town over 2000 miles away from home by choice! and no friends, no support! that I could never raise a child. I had even tried to have a cat, and after less than a week, had given it back to it's previous owner.
Everyone who knows me well thinks I did the right and wise thing to release the daughter for adoption. Later she went through an illegal search to find me, lied about who she was to friends, etc etc, and disrupted my life. But what I did learn is that she has a lovely adoptive set of beautiful parents who have given her tons of love and a beautiful upbringing. Too bad they supported her by breaking into her county's archives to start the trace for me. NOT the way to meet a birthmother!! Very deceiptful. Deception and lies do not a relationship build!!! Only brews grief and trouble. She used me for information about the family gene pool, of which I knew nothing due to the secrecy in my own family.
So anyhoo, that's how things are and were with me. I wish I could come back to life. I'm just real blah and down. Not terribly depressed -- just down-ish and blah. I see others around me, and by comparison I am a complete dud.
Love,
Flo
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