I started this post as a reply to some recent posts by Ami and James on the 'My Mother' topic, but soon realized that it was too long and also going in another direction from that topic. Inspired by the topics current on the board, though.
Thinking we were '"bad" was the safe decision,then, based on our home life, the only safe decision.
Ami
Yes and also And I want to add that in my experience the abuser reinforces that. My dad also agreed that I was bad. Every single day I spend as a parent, I see more clearly how incredibly wrong that was. And whenever I confronted the issue, because I did in many ways at many times, he disclaimed all knowledge, all responsibility, all memory, gaslighting, dismissing, minimizing.
Ami.........what I found about my rage/anger, is that it was a psychological defense protecting myself from the dangerous realization that I was not loved. IMO there simply cannot be a more devastating, painful reality for a child to face than this. True healing in many cases is about facing this.......Love, James
This describes exactly where I am now and I so much appreciate you sharing this insigh James. I was furious all the time for at least a year from 2006 to 2007. Now I am viscerally feeling the unlove. Just this morning, I was overtaken with yearning for my parents love and affection. It is really in my face these days because I have a 14 month old and every day I give him love and affection and nurturing. And I am so glad to do it and feel huge commitment to him and to doing my absolute best. But every day while I experience the happiness and meaning of this commitment, it brings to my awareness the reality of my own history. This is what I was in denial of. I lived a pretense of love.
And I have to say that because I lived a pretense, I find I was not able to seek love elsewhere or in other forms, because I could not/would not admit that there wasn't any. So I can understand that to really come to grips with this unlove is very necessary to my future freedom and to breaking the pattern, because by denying this I fooled myself and had many friendships, and a couple of boyfriends, where I would not admit they were users - I refused to recognize, again and again, even right at the very time someone betrayed me or lashed at me to provoke a reaction out of their own issues. I think the rage and then the actual experiencing of the unrequited love is bringing me close to the source of the frozenness and paralysis in living and loving that I struggle with and that I understand we all struggle with.
On rage, this weekend I was cleaning. Often, I become angry when I clean. And I think of my grandmother and feel guilty and shameful, resentful. And that's how it goes, for years. And I think of her nostalgically and all the stuff she taught me about cleaning and housekeeping.
This weekend, the work that has happened with me on denial helped me break through to more insight. I feel nostalgic because she is the only adult who ever took time with me to teach me things and check my work and instruct me in useful things. Now I use that knowledge often. And so I feel gratitude.
But I also feel resentment and fury, because she only taught me these things because she intended for me to keep house for my father. She made it clear she had no use for me unless I served her son. That was her one priority. She told me she loved me as much as I took care of him, and only as much as I was his daughter, but she hated all in me that was from my mother. The pain of the things she said to me, and the way she used me, and her expectation of affection and obedience from me, is white hot. And my fury is commensurate. And when I was cleaning on Saturday, I finally blew through the usual pattern and was able to be with and accept those experiences with her, and the intensity of the pain from the only adult who gave me something that was a useful skill of life.
And you know, I would forgive her if she asked for it. But not until. If I could stand to let her speak to me. And yet I loved her and love her. But love and yearning for love in return - led to pain and more pain. Always the coercion. And always I had to act like there was nothing wrong.
Just think, if she had taught me with love, every time I clean I would re-experience that love and gratitude and feel happy. I find a huge lesson in that.
But it is the experience of unlove in my dad that still almost is too conceptually huge for me to even grasp. I feel it, but it is still as if my mind can barely process the reality. I can cite many interactions that were unloving over many years, but still I want to say that he doesn't know how to show it but it is there somewhere. But you know what? It isn't. It isn't there!
Or he would find a way.So okay. It isn't there. So why does he constantly come around acting like he should have a relationship with me? Why?? Constantly, the possibility of backsliding into denial.
He has said again and again, and shown again and again, that he will not accept any responsibility as a parent, that I should never expect him to think of me, of my well-being, to be interested, to have a concern, to ever do anything he does not wish to do, to ever listen to anything that does not interest him, anything, nothing. He has actually said 'I have nothing to give. Don't bother me with ANY needs or expectations. You have a roof and food and that is IT.'
So why does he THEN keep coming back? And he expects me to act, for my part, as if we have a family love relationship and that I will be there for him when he thinks of me or wants something. Honestly, I believe he thinks that because I am female that is my function. But if I was male, my function would probably be to fulfill his fantasies of brilliance and achievement - so I am not saying it's any easier the other way, only different.
It is SO painful for me, that he keeps calling me. It brings the current painful reality and it calls up the string of the past like dredging up a submerged rope in the water that is covered in weeds and seaweed.
Does anyone recognize what I am saying here?
