oh.... so interesting! It's just so satisfying when a plan comes together.
Last few months, I've been sleeping irregularly. Mostly craving sleep - long naps on weekends, sleeping 10 hrs at a time overnight. Sometimes, waking early but spending hours in that fuzzy zone between sleep and wakeful consciousness. What I wasn't permitted to do "back then"... was sleep, let myself rest, heal. R-brain activities: the games for Nintendo DS, Bejewelled... so-called "wastes" of time... but so necessary for R-brain & L-brain to put old patterns aside and re-establish ways of working together without invoking the fears of abuses past. It's mind-body work like tai chi - only beginning with mind. A deep calm is seeping in.
Hearing from Twiggy's long-lost friend was a trigger. Whether he remembers anything that will spark more memories isn't as important now. Just hearing from him was enough to awaken the sensation, the feeling of "me" - before I was squashed, snuffed out and programmed into a life-long battle. The emails back & forth are enough to help this me come out from the rock it's been buried under. ahhhhhhhhh.... so much better.
I'd written a long post this morning on the Spooky-Bizarro thread that got lost when my connection timed out. The inspiration was a Twiggy proclamation that I heard loud & clear, the first thing waking up:
As far as my mother was/is concerned - I didn't exist; and when I did get her attention - I always really, really wished I hadn't.Can't think of a better first-hand description of disturbed attachment, ya know? It concisely expresses what my experience of my mother has always been like. But what kept me from walking away from this - what kept me dragging it up over & over again - was blame. Blame was my mom's defensive weapon... blame is what let her be "always right"... what made her misery into someone else's fault. I became the target for all her blaming after my Dad escaped.... when I was the most vulnerable, physically, psychically, and emotionally injured, no less. When I started feeling guilty, over-responsible, that things were all my fault - my mother said this was my "conscience" talking to me. BULLSHIT.
For me to have any needs - like for a mother, for instance - was a blameable offense. And when I asserted my independence... she just didn't know what was wrong with me. No, I was supposed to accept the blame, understand that it was all my fault and focus my attention on crawling back into her good graces by fulfilling the reversed role - mothering her and my brother. So, no matter which way I turned... I was cornered, trapped, not allowed to be a whole, separate individual. In Dec 1974, I moved out.
Now, that should've ended all this... except that I'd internalized all that nasty blather. I was held captive by what I was taught to do, when I felt bad: BLAME someone else. And I blamed my mother, even for being mentally ill. But the fact is - she really, really couldn't help being herself; no more than I could. It's just as unfair for me to blame my mother for being a crappy mother and ill, for subjecting me to abusive parenting as it is for her to blame ME, for simply wanting a mom and to be recognized as a person separate from her idea of me.
But more than that, I wanted someone to KNOW... I wanted justice... someone to tell me that yes, she's ill; no it's not you... and it's not your fault. I wanted it on a billboard on every major highway in the US. I was just egotistical enough (Nish, if you like) to think I was important enough to warrant this kind of validation. Some expert or judge to sign an official looking document (or proclamation) that said, Yep - you're right. She was wrong. And I wasn't about to stop blaming her, until I got this. I secretly hoped that like the wicked witch of the west, she'd go up in a puff of smoke when forced to admit that she was sick.
That's what I wanted when I was 12-13. Yes, it was unfair - and no, I really didn't have any business blaming myself for feeling this way then... any more than an abused wife who fantasizes her husband dying. But I was programmed to blame myself; to put myself last on the list; to look, act, and appear to be completely under my mom's projecting control. It succeeded more than I'd like to admit, true. But then, there were those wishes... the shifting of blame back to her... turning the tables...
And that shifting of blame back & forth between us is the functional mechanism that kept me "stuck".... unable to leap off my perch on the cliff... It was 40 years ago. There is no one to blame. She still doesn't know what she did - won't admit to it if she does know - and still
doesn't know it's wrong. There won't be any justice or vindication or validation that I've been right about her being "not right" - all along. Ain't to be.
But if I just lay this down and walk away - stop playing the game, even in my head - she'll be very, very angry. Might even go up in a puff of smoke... but it won't be my fault. She simply can't do those things to me anymore. And I have all the evidence I need that she's "not right" - my hubby, who's soothed and reassured me that her latest attack on me and my understanding of "reality" is totally delusional. My friend - Twiggy's friend - who's as real as can be; just like Twiggy. Who thought I was important enough to ask if I were the same person he went to school with... who was sad when I moved.
I don't have to punish my self - either my now self or Twiggy self - for being angry about how I was treated anymore. Damn STRAIGHT I was angry!! And I can just walk away from my mom's perverse, upside-down, inside-out, paranoid delusions and "right ways to be"....
it's a nice day outside. That's not my fault either.
