Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Finding voicefulness......losing......finding.....practicing..
sKePTiKal:
Those are the kinds of parents that are a threat to a child's ability to be their own person.
But with some self-reflection - and persistent determination - it's possible for the child to overcome and become invulnerable to the parental threat.
I'm not so sure the parents have that advantage.
Gaining Strength:
Imagine, just for a moment, that we are that infant, that "Who would want it?" child who somehow, against the odds managed to survive physically. But the internal scars and the psychological wounds left a prickly pear that society was quick to throw stones at or uninterested enough to allow to lay fallow on the streets of life.
Now, in a non-sequitor, shifting to an outsider with wisdom and empathy and extraordinary insight, what would we tell that being about getting into a space in life where there is flourishing???? Shifting again to the being - how could we receive that wisdom and insight that is the elixir of true, substantive life and living?
Shifting back and forth - between being the "Who would want it?" child and the person of wisdom and insight, might we create a dialogue that we could understand and give and receive all that we need to guide ourselves out of the knot of destruction and into the light of life-giving life?
Phoenix Rising is writing about a dichotomy between pain and feeling good (if you feel good then you are bad but feeling bad is good (permissible) [my interpretation] . As I read your extraordinary writing -terse and powerful I am seeing parallels and I am longing and determined and seeing an organic development of individual cells symbiotically developing a map, a system to overwrite the scarring, to use the scarring organically to become the fuel into something no longer debilitating but on the vanguard of consciousness shifting into a healing that is beyond what is baseline and normal for those born into the love and nurture and protection of a loving family.
[I am not going to reread this even though I know this needs editing but I don't want to lose these thoughts and trying to rework them would mean I would not express them b/c there is no way to get them written in a way that would suit me.] MB - I am reading your thread as something more powerful that I suspect you are aware. I think it significant and I truly believe you are on that razor's edge of something that is transformative on one side and dangerous on the other.
Meh:
Just writing here, it may not make a lot of sense. I've decided that rehashing and complaining about my Narcissist mother no matter how old it gets even to myself is important because it's a venting that I need to do that helps me to not haul off and kick her poodle.
Mind's-eye sometimes sees myself punching my mother....the image flashes through my head in an instant....but I don't do it... I better just avoid her as much as possible...punching her would equate to assault. On a personal level there must be some sort of crime of violence that is done to children of Nar-parents but of course it's not visible to most people.
I have childish ideas. I believe that there is the opposite of prayer for goodness. I believe that there is prayer for badness, not against badness, but instead in favor of hexing a person. So when I get very pissed off I pray that my mother's husband gets sick and seems to have worked because he did get sick right after I prayed for this. It's not very enlightened or Buddist like of me but there is only so much hope for people once they reach a certain age. I figure they are not contributing members of society (ha ha), only depending on unearned increment and behaving as if they are more deserving.
Yesterday I managed to get some of my boxes of paper work etc. that my mother had at her house. I reminded myself very clearly in the middle of it that I had a plan to...Get in and get out.
I have noticed that when I spend some time having discussions about the news and current events that it helps me to exercise my ability to have a dialogue or a debate.....and then the conversations with my mother that occure after this are easier for me to feel confident in holding my own verbally. There is something key here in the true meaning of "Voicelessness"....and the myriad of ways that Narcisists manage to remove the voice.
My mother is not very good at true debating or conversation and she rarely ever backs herself up with facts.
Therefore if I have the energy and have been practising I can usually out-debate her....
I just can't......out b*tch her.
I suppose a good defense for me would be to elevate a conversation beyond her own capacity for debate....that would probably close her yap.
My mother has actually told me literally to "shut-up". I realize how rude it was and didn't want to go down to that level but I did just to see what her reaction would be so I told her to "shut-up".....at that point she told me I was being disrespectful as if I was a teenager.
I find this to be a strange psychological thing where she can be disrespectful to me but I can not be disrespectful to her.
Confirming this through my little "shut-up" experiment also shines a big floodlight onto some aspect of my personality....the part of me that somehow does not believe that I am good enough or worthy. I think my mother knows that her ability to beat me down emotionally must be coming to an end.
I just wish I had understood more of these things when I was a teenager....but honestly I don't think that would have been possible.
This morning when I woke up I stood up on my tip-toes and peered out of a little window that overlooks water and a gray sky and so much fog and rain that it almost looked like it was snowing. I got in the shower and thought about how much energy it takes to keep things clean and organized without having a real place that belongs to me. A type of community exists in some homeless shelters because it is a collection of people that all share certain challenges--the challenges of scraping by, so we can exchange details and tips about the best food banks to go to, and also the ones that attract the most criminals. The area where I'm in right now is not a hardcore city area, it is more of a derelict industrial area where there are men who never left "out in the sticks" mentality behind.
This Sunday I'm sitting in a coffee shop facing out a window onto a street that once had a steamtrain railway along it. One block away there is an old building that houses the main Newspaper for this town, there is a big sign on top that lights up at night, it makes me think that maybe I'm somewhere important but no real news comes out of this place! Oh well. No news is good news. I've been in places where there is always a shooting in this neighborhood or that, so I'm a bit relieved to be temporarily away from that. I'm tempted to paint but I have no paint with me right now.
Ok, possibly I should go find something fun to do today.
I'm ashamed to admit that between the shelters that I have stayed at there were a few nights I stayed at my mother's house. The women's shelters fill up quickly in the winter and the only other option I had was to stay where all the chronic inebriate men and probably sex offenders end up--the entryway of that place has a man that sits behind a wall of plexiglass. So I avoided that place as much as I could because I don't have my own box of plexiglass.
At times I wonder if I'm a loser at Social Darwinism. I suspect that my Aunt views my father and me and my brother as such.
I have to look out onto the world and not believe this 100%.
Meh:
The "missed-calls" area of my phone showed a distant area code, so I traced it down to an area where my father may live.
If my father was to die, my alcoholic brother would probably tell my nar-mother and she would email me.
I haven't talked to him in over 10 years, I think. Not one day went by that I missed him. There are many days that I don't even think about him.
As a kid I was too innocent to realize how degrading my parents were on my spirit.
I'm not in a position to help my father, right?
Right.
There is a pressure there, an obligation, it's a feeling that makes me feel stiff and stressful.
I don't enjoy avoiding my father, it is not a good feeling of revenge, it's just a sad remorse. Not personal remorse for not doing something I think I should but a remorse for my whole family and their whole collective disfunction.
sKePTiKal:
I can tell you to "shut up"... and you can't tell me the same thing... when I'm physically bigger than you; when I can punish you for saying it - go to your room & forget about eating supper; don't come out until I tell you to... and you think about what you did wrong... you're going to have to apologize to me (but because I'm bigger, I don't have to apologize to you... I'm the "mom" you know - you have to do what I tell you.)
I've been calling this stuff "RULES" in all caps...
it doesn't work so well now, 'coz except for spewing negativity all over you... she can't really punish you anymore, huh?
The negativity washes off - and if you don't put it on yourself, no one knows about the negativity "back in Foo neighborhood"; they don't see it - it's not tattoo'd on your forehead. You can just be YOU.
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