Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
A letter to my mother on the anniversary of dad's death.
Wildflower:
Hi Rosencrantz,
I see Portia and CG have posted, and I don't have time to read their posts so this may be repetitive (but maybe we need all the reinforcement we can get).
--- Quote ---That's what's so hard for me to find/define. The truth. I know that's the truth and I know those are the choices I have. But it takes SO MUCH WORK for me to 'analyse the situation' and get there. Thanks for the script!!!!!!!
--- End quote ---
This reminded me of how I felt for a while with Dad. Under so much pressure to DEFINE MYSELF because if I didn't, he most certainly would. Faster than I could blink. It was before I knew about NPD, so I just had these vague ideas that I was being violated. I knew something was wrong, but not what. He would run over me in conversation (hah, conversation), and I would kind of grunt and try to push him back. More a gut feeling than anything. I couldn't find words.
But he saw me trying to push him away and it made him LIVID. He had tantrums and DEMANDED that I explain myself. WhenI tried to say, I don't know, I'm trying to figure that out, he responded in a desperate rage by "advising" me that I couldn't know what I was thinking until I found the words to describe it (read: the words to give him so he could dismantle my thinking, argue it down). Well, he's right in a way. I have the words now and I'm much stronger and more in touch with my feeings. But no amount of pressure could change the way I felt, and I deserved the time to figure out how I felt without someone yelling at me.
You deserve that time, too. So it's okay to say, hmmm, I think this is how I feel so I want to try to respond to what little bits of truth I'm holding onto so far. You do NOT have to have all the answers right now, though I can understand how your mother might pressure you to feel that way.
And by the way, it's so much easier to say this to someone else - I'm not attached to your mother so no cloudy thoughts there. My mother, though? :roll: :roll: :roll: Hopeless I am. :wink:
Take care (of yourself),
Wildflower
Portia:
Wildflower, good advice towards the end there.
R, to add to WF's post: you don't have to post back quickly either. No pressure. I won't go away, I won't take it personally if you don't post for a month (tho' I might worry about you). So don't think you have to talk to us, answer us, whatever. Because this thread isn't about us - it's about you. And that's ok. Maybe you can take some time to think inside, without the pressure to 'solve' it.
Sometimes the best answers come when we least expect them (like when I'm washing up!) - give the brain a break...let it run free and lazily and it does incredible things all on it's own, like dreaming.
Give yourself a break gal if you want to, you deserve it ("because you're worth it!") P
rosencrantz:
Picture : I just keep marching along, dragging my ball and chain with me. The ball and chain just turned into my mother hanging on for dear life and I'm just trying to ignore her. Anybody got a hacksaw (except I'm afraid I'll lose a leg :idea: in the process of prising her away - or I might hurt her even more than she's hurt herself already).
As my mother hasn't let go the past, neither have I! She didn't let go of me and I didn't let go of the shock!!!
It was a shock - to have your own mother DESPERATE for you. Desperate for you like a lover might be. It's creepy. Wanting you over and above your father. What can you do with that? Sorry, mum - if I had more than one life, I'd dedicate one of them to you but I've only got one and I've got work to do. Guilt, shame.
I just can't remember what I felt. I know I limped!!! (Now I know why!!) Guiltily I have feared I must have been an N! I didn't care, did I? I didn't 'see' her anyway. I really was indifferent. She was being a pain. I'm sure I used to do this a lot :roll: If I talked about her, it would be in a disparaging way. Oh, 'her'! Shake of the head. :roll:
But I think it just got worse over the years. Her pain got worse, her blame got worse. She didn't recover. She didn't 'get over it'. She didn't 'make a life'. She drowned.
Or did she? What I'm discovering is that she roped in all my cousins - or the ones she could manipulate. Do this, do that. Run this errand. Get me that. (Oh, gosh - N Queen again) She gave up on me, she gave up on the world and decided to become Miss Haversham - totally, totally dependent instead.
I wasn't interested in her AT ALL (well can you blame me? I'll take it as read : of course not!) Until, after 20 years she started to say 'well, if only you'd say you love me/us' and it would stick in my throat. Thoughts : "Honestly? No, I don't love you. I almost despise you. But I've been indifferent for so long and had to get along on my own for so long, I don't even know who you are." Even that was probably more painful to her than if I'd hated her.
I can't remember a time of 'love'. I really have no idea what that means. Comfort, warmth in exchange for being a 'good girl'. She knelt at the side of my bed and listened to me when I whimpered about how everyone at school hated me. Oh, she loved that. In fact, they didn't! They all put together to buy me an LP - my first!!! I put onto them the negative stuff I was experiencing at home. I didn't know how to react to the gift and hid it.
By the time I was in my late 30s, I was so frightened of her calls that my husband had to hold onto me to keep me from 'flying off the handle', getting my buttons pushed. Had she no shame? Trying to control me from a distance. Putting herself in the firing line. Getting herself consistently and constantly rejected.
I think when dad was ill, I opened up for the first time to HER, to what she was, to her pain and I was horrified at what I discovered. And the guilt was crushing.
But I hadn't banked on the manipulation (I didn't know what it was - like I said - I don't KNOW I just FEEL. Wrong words - there's more than one way of knowing. Knowing as in knowledge/brain and knowing as in intuition/sensing. I don't KNOW in either sense!!!!! I really solely only FEEL. And then I have to ratchet up the brain cells to try to put meaning to it all. The community psychiatric nurse gave me the word 'manipulation'.
So there I am, great gaping wounds, father dying, mother much quieter than I might have expected, much less demanding than she used to be but I know I'm going to have to avoid getting the blame for so much that went wrong at that time. She got close a couple of times, but I've steered her away (sensibly cos I know I couldn't stand it).
But time and again in those few days I was with her, she nearly drove me mad. I don't know how or why but she'd just 'go on and on'!!! Stop it, I'd plead. Stop it, I'd shout. Stop it, I'd rave. STOPPPPPP IIIIIIIT. AAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHH. Let my brain alone.... (I guess she wants to take over my brain, so things are done her way???) "I want this thing done" "OK" "Now BE ME, I'm in control. Move 3" to the left, now wave my magic wand and pouf! Where's what I wanted? Oh, it's all wrong - why did you do that you horrible, horrible child - you did that on purpose just to get at me." Or if I ignore her and go ahead to achieve this thing she wants, she'll go on and on at me until it's done. How to survive??? She has no idea how to achieve some task but wants to control how it's done.
Oh Portia - brain - yes, I know I don't know what's going on in her brain. Except I used to think that she'd say black was white if it suited her. And I know you understand what that means. This is different. I'm guessing that it may not be in your experience if you've had a 'distant' relationship with a parent. What I describe is accurate and true. I found this idea of 'projective identification' in the Nina Brown books - and I recognised it as 'that thing' I think my mother does. I could be wrong - I've been wrong about so much, why not that, too. I have had great fear about it - but no more - remember, I believe in me now! :-)
But I'm wondering when I first thought this. When did I come up with this idea that I feel other people's feelings???
School's out - gotta go. CG - Perfection - no that's not my mother - it's me but not her. I'll be back.
R
rosencrantz:
--- Quote ---They call me stupid, wanna know why
My mum F**KED up her life and I've
given her mine to F**K up too.
--- End quote ---
Priceless! Ever thought of setting up your own business. You know like The Shrink is In from the Peanuts cartoons. Get a life T shirts. Mantras R Us. Fortune Cookie T shirts.
You'd make a bomb with your spot-on accuracy and searing wit. :lol:
R
Portia:
R, fine, yes, I understand projective identification and I’m starting to recognise when it happens to me (it happens to me, not I make it happen). However: you understand the concept, you understand and feel the feeling, but then you stop it. You stop it happening to you. You stop it. People will still send those projected feelings to you – but you learn how to stop them.
It’s like tennis. They serve, you catch the ball and hold onto it.
Instead: they serve, you watch the ball, catch it but then go ‘oww it’s hot’ and drop it.
--- Quote ---I recognised it as 'that thing' I think my mother does.
--- End quote ---
It’s not one way. Someone has to be there to catch the ball. And then they ‘choose’ to hang on to it. You have to find how to make that choice.
I have felt this. And I’ve caught the ball and held it for minutes and then chucked it away. If only I could reach the stage where I don’t even catch that bloody ball. Now that would be progress.
R – you are responsible for your mental health. You are not responsible for your mother’s mental health.
--- Quote ---It was a shock - to have your own mother DESPERATE for you. Desperate for you like a lover might be. It's creepy.
--- End quote ---
Yep, I know. Very yucky. It’s called emotional incest and it’s just as bad as physical incest, except you can never be sure it was really all that bad can you. Where are the scars? Where is the evidence?
RUN AWAY. SEPARATE. Do you want to?
I have to go buy food now. And I should really have a shower.
I will be back too – sometime! P
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