Deserving of dignity

[swimmer]

I'm having the hardest day.... I can't stand this feeling that I don't deserve to be alive.  Sometimes I feel like my NM murdered my soul.  I see my daughter braving toddlerhood with fits and all, and I just love her.  The only memories my mother reminded me of when I was little are negative.  I've come to realize she was what I call "needling" me from the first day I was born.  The things she teased me about continuously about are normal developmental  phenomnea.  There was a picture of me right after I was born, before I was bathed in my baby album which said, just born and already dirty.  & another picture of me was taken after I smeared liver sausage all over my hair and threw it around the kitchen at the age of 2.  My mom said, I told your brother to watch you (with the tone like I was an animal).  My brother was only 6 years old.  My mother has told this story my while life," I found liver sausage everywhere for months".  To tell this story is not such a big deal maybe, but the tone and the amount of times it was told, and for heaven's sake a picture placed in an album over it. 

I see my daughter grow into toddlerhood and I'm thrilled when I see her confidence grow, and how proud she feels when she does something new.  I just get so sad sometimes, with all these negative memories.  Intellectually I understand I deserve to breathe, but somehow I can't feel it sometimes.  I just think why am I so horrible?

Swimmer 

[Ami]

((((((((((((((((Swimmer)))))))))))))))))
I understand, Sweetie. I understand!           x o x o  Ami

[swimmer]

Thx for being so thoughtful Ami:)

swimmer

[Twoapenny]

Hi Swimmer,

I think having someone make you feel bad or wrong for doing normal things, or things that you have no control over, has a massive effect on the way that you grow up and how you feel about yourself.  There are things from my childhood - quite minor on their own - that my mum used to complain about, and to this day I have no idea what else she would have expected or wanted from us.  I was so messed up that I actually asked my therapist to teach me what was normal and what was acceptable (by most people's standards) because I found life so confusing - I never knew whether my reactions and responses were reasonable.  I became aware as I got older that most people I knew had grown up in houses quite different to my own (I mean in terms of what went on in them) and what was even more confusing was that my parents presented a very respectable, normal facade to everyone else they met.

I don't have a magic wand or know a magic solution.  For me, therapy has been a big help.  My T worked through things with me - I'd go in with a list each week of certain incidents and how I'd felt or reacted to them - some current, some from the past - and she'd tell me whether most people would think my response was normal.  I started to get more confident and was able to talk to friends about things, and they responded in the same way as my therapist - ie, your fine, it's your mum that has the problem.  Complaining about a newborn baby being dirty is beyond any kind of normal comment, or response - most mums are either so ecstatic they've just given birth they can't think straight, or so tired they can't think straight!  I just remember thinking my boy was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  I've loved his developmental stages, to me they're normal and a form of expression that shows things are going right.

I think you'll get there with feeling better about things.  I've found that my mum's power over me has diminished over the years.  She can still upset me, but I see that as a good thing now - I recognise her for what she is, respond appropriately (by getting upset or angry or whatever) and get past it pretty quickly now.  It has improved over the years and I feel better about myself now than I ever used to.  Hope that helps a little xx

[Ami]

Dear Swimmer
 If you go back and read my old posts,I moaned and moaned and moaned. I was in so much pain--JUST the type of pain you are describing. I FEEL what you are saying cuz I have been there and still am there----in many ways--but am climbing out--in others.
 I am here whenever you want to talk!  x o x o  Ami

[swimmer]

Thx Twoapenny and Ami:). I was in therapy for about 6-7 years in my 20's and will probably revisit that again.  I hear you on the what's normal and what's not thing.  I've found my visceral response is so profound, and I'm at a point in my life where I can't have contact with toxic people.  I just see no use in it.  I have a lot of friends who are not toxic, and I think this is world is too big to waste time with those people.  I have a dose of toxic people I can handle in one day or week..... and I have to save this for work and other critical circumstances to survive. 

My mother always takes takes and takes..... If she doesn't, she is saving up for later and catches me when I'm off guard or vulnerable.  Anyways.... I'm certain being NC is the only way to go and it isn't my fault I can't function around the social pollution she creates.  I'm pretty certain my NM would have made changes a long time ago if she was really interested in having a relationship with me.  She will just find another narcissistic feed and be just as happy as a narcissist can be.  My NM has pointed out other weird things out on my nieces, and this just creates a complex which is impossible to shake. 

I always feel like a failure that I have to be NC with my NM.... I just don't have enough time to keep track of her tricks to dodge her manipulations and negativity.  I was doing fine with all of this until I got married, then my NM really usd this as an entry point, and I finally put a stop to it when my daughter was born.  All I know is, anger is a natural boundary which I take very seriously.  I owe my mother nothing, that is the way a child parent relationship should be.  The child is the gift, all the love you put is is reflected in the joy of the child... And hopefully the child will love you back sweetly.  Otherwise I wish my mother should written up a contract and placed it under the picture that said dirty already.   

[Hopalong]

Swimmer, I hear you.

What jumped out at me was the word "tone".

So much pain can be delivered with tone of voice.

You know this. There is something savage, sneering and primitive about the ways your mother spoke to you about your innocent wholeness. Sure you were a dirty baby...we all were! Your mother made that pathological because in HER mind, there is some deep disturbance that makes her unable to love cleanly.

Sadly, it's her psyche that is infected, dirty...in all the ways disease pollutes.

The very very best thing you can do is to recognize that she has a disease that is communicable but not contagious, if that makes sense.

Your love for your child AND your NC stance are the preventive (and curative) measures that will allow you to regain your emotional health (have faith--occasional dips into the mud don't turn you into a golem) and protect your child's.

You're not sick. You're recovering.

love,
Hops

[Logy]

Swimmer,

This is such a small experience compared to the pain of your NM's comments on your baby picture.  (I can't imagine a mother calling their own just-born infant dirty!)

My daughter was 2 1/2 years old and wanted to select her clothing for the day.  I was so proud of her initiative, of her wanting control over things in her life, that I could have burst.  So I helped her go through her clothes and she dressed herself.  She happened to select two different colored socks.  I thought that if that's what she wants, so be it.  Well, when NM saw her different colored socks, you would have thought the world had come to an end!  I was the WORST mother in the world!  So I explained that I let her choose and that's what she wanted.  NM had such disdain for a toddler's selection.  I was happy my daughter wanted a voice.  NM was horrified that she didn't look like the perfectly put-together child.

Hugs.
Logy

[river]

I appreciate much of what has been said.  WHATS AN NC??   

[Lucky]

What jumped out at me was the word "tone".

So much pain can be delivered with tone of voice.

You know this. There is something savage, sneering and primitive about the ways your mother spoke to you about your innocent wholeness.

Don't get me started on tone of voice, that savage, sneering, hostile tone of voice I often had to hear when I was a child and considered to be doing something wrong. And most of the time I had no idea what I was doing wrong.

[Ami]

Dear River
   NC is no contact.        x o x Ami

[river]

Dear River
   NC is no contact.        x o x Ami

Aha ! : ) 

[river]

Hopalong said: 

  What jumped out at me was the word "tone".

So much pain can be delivered with tone of voice.

You know this. There is something savage, sneering and primitive about the ways your mother spoke to you about your innocent wholeness. Sure you were a dirty baby...we all were! Your mother made that pathological because in HER mind, there is some deep disturbance that makes her unable to love cleanly.
   

...this has a lot of meaning for me.  Its the 'between the words part, the implication, the hidden intent.  The thing that is felt but not seen, and therefore in combination with denial can leave you feeling crazy.   Its the 'hidden  current' ~ Patricia Evans I think called it that.   
I was in reciept of the consequences of these 'implications' thro my life, and I saw the consequences for others also.    And my hunger was to bring this hidden intent,  into the light and out of hiding, and further to resolve it.  Deep down that is why I acted out, got addicted to an abusive relationship, and again, and again, until I knew what this was, I discovered name ( i had my own disorder), and explanation.   But then it has been still difficult to access the true healing relationship/ s that I needed.

 What I struggle with today, is not so much the original, but how, and particularly in the health professional world, the hidden current is still there, albeit in different formes,  and unaddressed.
And I feel I need to start a whole new post with this, if thats ok, - not wanting to appropriate ! 

[Hopalong]

I would like to hear more about tone and hidden currents, too, River.

Will look forward to that thread.

Hops

[river]

Thanks.
And further to this, in an attempt to create a reality to counter this:

  just born and already dirty 

I remember when my baby was born, the smells were sweet and from heaven,  the primitiveness were an experince of love that I knew I could never repeat, it was something that I felt connected me to  genarations past, to love down the ages of man,.... even these words cant really capture it.   I was distraught that I'd allowed him to be washed even. 
This is the love that would naturally have been yours if nature had been allowed.