Facing the Rage~~~3 times~~~and still 'lost'~~

[isittoolate]

Thank you OC

My daughter is just 42, but will be 43 on May 13---maybe this is her time

My life has been a long hard process since I knew, from mid-teens, that I had problems.

I tried very hard to not allow my dysfunction from my FOO affect my daughter's growth.

What I told my therapist, she did applaud me for recognizing what I had, and also the things I did for my daughter, that I never had, but, naturally, I wasn't perfect, so daughter inherited some of my vibes and unspoken things. Even though I messed up I was happy to have the therapist say that.

Now you see, as a teen I knew I was deficient, and maybe my daughter felt the same but her leaving home implied for good, but my leaving home, at 17, was to get a job, support myself, take the burden from the parents and go home and visit every weekend or two.

I also felt that my mother required help with the cleaning and the upstairs, so I did these things for her. I dusted her china cabinet top first of all, then crocheted her a runner to put on top, as it was right by the entrance door and now no one could see the dust when I was not there.

Daughter met an N, so her leaving and seldom returning, was very very hurtful to me. I am sure she knows now how she was controlled adn dominated by an  N.

Hugs
Izzy

[pennyplant]

It would have been better for my spirit to have felt abandoned and angry about it because it would then mean I thought I had some worth.

By me excusing everyone else's treatment of me (the ignoring, dismissing, picking on, coming in second place to my younger sister, etc.) I wasn't necessarily understanding what they were going through and why it was too hard for them to "give".  I was in fact understanding these kinds of things: "Well, of course, I'm in the way, I'm not important, I'm worthless, I'm not lovable, etc." 

The anger that I did have, I tried to repress.  I actually felt sorry for my parents that they got stuck with me for a daughter.  Wow, I was so brainwashed.

My own son fought me as a little child, and I have to wonder, how did he know I was wrong?  How did he know he deserved better?  I did not know such things when I was a child.  I wanted better.  But I didn't think I could have better.

It's all well and good to be very understanding of someone's real obstacles such as physical disability and things like that.  But a child's first task is to understand their own world not the world of the adult.  So, I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing for a child to let herself feel abandoned by an ill mom even though the mom didn't do it on purpose.  The child has a very real need in this situation and if she can be allowed to feel the hurt, abandonment, anger, whatever, then she can eventually move on.

I got stuck for a long time because I didn't get to feel those things.  I was meeting the adults' needs first.  Rarely got around to mine.

So, I hope this makes sense in explaining that particular comment, Izzy.

PP

[isittoolate]

Oh pennyplant. Life should be easy but it isn't

I understand all you said and it sounds so similar to me and my siblings!

As I tell my Therapist, I am still naive, at 68 (on April 28th). I disconnected very early in life and I never even knew that anger was anger etc. I never knew what to do! I was lost from away back then.

Very interesting about your son fightiing/knowing.

and NO. I am sorry. I don't get the quote! I am naive!

Now I am feeling less than adequate! but that is not new for me.

I never knew I had a spirit or a soul or a heart. I am disconnected from life/self. I am a logical "report it as I saw it happen" without any emotion.

Even when my Therapist tells me where I was 'wrong', I take it without falliing apart! I accept it as a truth.

BOY I AM IN DEEP!

LOVE
IZZY.

[Gaining Strength]

And then after that was the post when I said, "This is the point I usually leave!"--as once people knew my history I felt I wouldn't be liked. .............................and this is the first time I stayed.

That's what I'm talking about!!! It would have been easy to post and run but you DIDN'T.  You stuck around and posted and asked questions and help some of us luddites and became "community" with us and most of all you have made astonishing changes in the few months you have been here.  You give me so much encouragement.  I admire you very much Izzy. - your friend - Gaining Strength

and Pennyplant - I find your words on this tread so powerful, so clear and so helpful to read.

[isittoolate]

OH GS

You make me feel so special

I am so glad I didn't post and run because I have realized that I am not the only one who has experienced many of the things that I have experienced, and are still here to write about it!

I learn from them too!

--AND I know I am welcome here!

Love
Izzy

[Hopalong]

Oh Iz.
This made me tear up:

And then after that was the post when I said, "This is the point I usually leave!"--as once people knew my history I felt I wouldn't be liked. .............................and this is the first time I stayed.

"Deficient" as a teen. My butt.

Such love your way,
Hops

[isittoolate]

oh Hops

You're a doll!............................................and I made your eyes wet

You are good for me!

Love
Izzy

[Margo]

Hi all--are you keeping track of my Therapy days?-- 7 under my belt now

My father was a rageholic and I just climbed into my little hidey-hole, to become a nobody. I never liked my father. I never loved my father. I was glad when he died and I never grieved for him.

My daughter meets an N (before I know about N-ism) and I don’t like him. I ask her to please not marry him. He already had her under his thumb and then he had me by the short hairs. He was a rager too, as time would prove.

I could not stand up to raging. It made me shrivel and hide away inside.

When SIL kicked me out, and I drove away from my daughter and my 2 grandchildren, my spirit was broken. (Okay okay Poor me!!) 3rd grandchild would arrive the next year!

I never thought of this as abandoning my daughter. I thought I was leaving her with her husband and children and I was on the outside. Just because she never told me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I drove away and left her trapped with him, no sitter for the kids and she and I lost contact.

I abandoned her for the second time.

The first time was when she was 5 and I was in the car crash and gone for a year.

I can see it—my Therapist and I were working with this last week and again today.

My daughter resents me for abandoning her and the children to be left with an N.

NOW!! No negative words re my daughter, so be kind with responses, please! Would you have resented your mother’s leaving you, to never return, with an N husband and 2 little children while you were being emotionally abused, but you hadn’t told your mother?

Then said mother (Me-IzzY) moves 2000 miles away with an N--- and is now putting all the pieces together--after being in a rageful situation for the third time

May the Good Lord have Mercy on this wretched soul!!

Love and Hugs
Izzy

You know where I stand.  I think both mother and daughter can come together, in understanding, to heal.  She's not allowed to harm you in the process, though.  I think laying down some rules for communication.... i.e.  No name calling, no raising voices, no bringing up more than one problem at a time, no saying "You always...."

I can understand that she may very well feel like a child abandoned by her mother..... given her age at the time she became involved with the N.  She was just a child, by my reckoning anyway.  It doesn't mean she didn't make big girl decisions she's absolved of because she was "young." 

You must also remember.... she's probably picked up on lot's of her N's blaming guilt inducing habits. She needs therapy too. 

She's allowed to "feel" any way she's feeling.  Feelings aren't wrong.... they just are.  Maybe she needs to vent and feel understood before she can make higher connections to do with her part in her life.  That's going to be hard on you.... I think. 

On the other hand.... there's a saying..... "We often judge, and seldom forgive, our parentst."  I believe that involvment with an N leads to confusion beyond any kind of regular confusion.  She may still be reeling from that and just needs a bit of time to come out of the fog.... before she can see clearly again?  Margo

[isittoolate]

Thanks Margo,

I hear you.

She has been in therapy since 1992, the year after "I drove away on demand" and she had a baby I didn't know about. She went into a depression.

Both the children with her are in therpay as well. I thiink she is doing well to get them in therapy early, The granddaughter does not even speak to her father (daughter's ex.)

This thing is generational. I can see it from my grandmother to my father (and mother) to me, to my daughter---it MUST stop somewhere.

Anthing I know about her after 1991 is piecemeal but I do know she worked and attended University for 5 years and has her degree, while her ex brainwashed her eldest child to go live with him, so she lost a child too.

This is not a simple misunderstanding. This does involve mental disorders brought on my emotionally retarded,  or dysfunctional  people from 4 generations.

Izzy

Edit in: They married in 1984--- this is 23 years later--her children are 20, 18, 15  this is not new.  I expect her reeling time is over and the fog lifted when she left him in 1994

[teartracks]

Iz,

This thing is generational. I can see it from my grandmother to my father (and mother) to me, to my daughter---it MUST stop somewhere.

It is generational. 

My regret is that I didn't know sooner.  But now that I do, I won't stop trying to stop it in my family. 

tt

[Hops guest]

The fog takes soooo long to lift in some lives.

Izzy, it is so good that you're beginning to see through your own, and that is a triumph of the spirit whether your D's foggy view ever changes or not.

Hops

[axa]

Izzy,

I want to tell you I admire your courage and determination.  I hear how sad you are about the pain you have experienced in the past.  I am sorry your daughter is in pain. 

you are a brave woman who tried the best she could to protect your daughter from the pain of her alcoholic father.  She must have anger towards his abandonment of her but you STAYED.  Often it is the one who is accessable is the one who gets the rage.  This may seem silly but her rage is HER rage.  I see you trying to peel back the layers, grow and understand.  This is the best you or any of us can do.

I salute you Izzy,

axa

[isittoolate]

Thank you tt, Hops and axa,

I was thinking just last night that the day would never be seen that MY mother would have gone to therapy, let alone think anything was 'out of whack' about her.

I think Daughter's fog has lifted but she might have thought the same of me as I just mentioned about my mother----however I told her differently so she knows my fog has lifted.

Now it is to piece together the things that fell apart.

Considering this "Edit in: They married in 1984--- this is 23 years later"--the length of time since she met the N, I can no longer think of her as the 19 yr old who went off to work in the city. Everything has changed, and it changed without my being around enough to see the cause--although I suspected her N.

Stopping to think of it, "I don't know her anymore" . Whatever words I read in an email, I picture the 19 yr old, but this is the 43 yr old saying them. So much time for us both to think our different thoughts and be apart doing are own thing!

I will not come out of this any worse than when I went in, I expect!

Thanks all
Izzy

[teartracks]

Iz,

I will not come out of this any worse than when I went in, I expect!

All of us here whack our way through the jungle armed with a plastic picnic knife at our own speed and with different results, BUT, I am proud to say that I am a better person today than seven years ago.  I'm no longer Velcroed to the wall accepting whatever is thrown my way as if that's all there is.  I mourn the losses, and there are many, but I celebrate when I  successfully cast aside yet another dysfunctional fragment of what was handed to me from the cradle.   

What you said is true.  But from my experience, what seemed incredibly dismal and hopeless in the beginning, has, even with all the pain, become priceless.  I found me.  I think you will too.

tt

[CB123]

All of us here whack our way through the jungle armed with a plastic picnic knife at our own speed

TT,

You have such a way with words!   I want to put that line on a T-shirt!

CB