Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???

[Scent of Cedar *]

I think I offended her by being an unhappy child. It made her feel like an inadequate parent, which she was.

Especially our sensitive, creative, forever dreaming children need safety and stability and safe harbor and home, to help them know what is real.

You would have thrived with a different type of mother.

Blame the infant (I didn't pick you up because you stiffened in my arms)

She probably scared the heck out of you.

Smart baby.

(You think the world revolves around you. You never think of anyone but yourself.)

Remember when I told the story of my mom screaming that I was a liar? And it had nothing to do with the discussion we were having, but that my mo had just come from her sisters, where she was herself called a liar?

Maybe this theme of selfishness your mom was so focused on was something like that, SWOT?

She also called me "bad" and "lazy" and a host of other things, along with mocking me and humiliating me (sigh)

My mom never really called us bad names, that I can remember.

That first therapist called me a bad name and I have never been able to quite put it behind me or figure out what it means or know what to do with it at all.

That must be so hard for you, SWOT.

I am sorry your mom did that to you.

If you don't cuddle your baby enough, the baby doesn't thrive. That has been scientifically proven.

Yes. And what are the odds I wonder, that a baby poorly nurtured herself would grow up to provide intense, caring, constant nurturing for others?

But you did.

***

My progress:

This morning, the contempt I felt for myself, the dullness surrounding and permeating and dripping from all things, the day itself foggy and vision limited, the sun breaking through and catching the waves, the water teal colored...these things are clearing. I am seeing my sister or my mom in my mind's eye, but I no longer hear them. I do feel so badly for all I did not have, and do not have, and it is a sad thing that the dream of it is gone now, too. That they will not care enough about me to cause a scene or create drama, that my own people will choose simply to go on without me; that I am choosing against them, too. That they will feel entitled to claim the trappings of whatever position I held.

That I will have nothing.

The road is dusty; the sun is hot. I am alone. A desert time, a time when all there is, when all I know, is to come from where we are, and be who we are, and continue to see.

The sea is beautifully clear, fresh water, vibrant and cold and moving and catching and reflecting the sun.

I know it is there; I anticipate the scent of the water, wet and fresh and deliciously cold.

So I am choosing desert now, in a way.

It is very hot; very still.

Cedar



So I am still in a holding pattern regarding the toxicities learned and loosed.

Moving water.

Deep water, ahead.

Still the sense of burden, of bearing something heavy, of moving.

I am trying to learn to encompass this ennui, to acknowledge the suffering and the willingness to suffer and the knowing there is no triumph at the end but only alone.

So, that is why we must keep going back then, to our so hurtful dysfunctional families.

We love them, too. At the same time they hurt us, we really do feel love for them; we really do wish for them.

The feelings are less intense, today. I know I am moving, and not stuck.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

her black dyed hair was wild and uncombed, as always, and she wore those darned pedal pushers and her fat ankles stuck out (we all have fat ankles even though we are thin

You have posted about the pedal pushers and about your mom's ankles, before.

It feels scary to me too, when you post about your dreams.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

The shame to me is just being me. I'm just not worth it. But I don't really believe that.
One thing I do when the tapes play is remind myself of all the good things I've done in my lifetime and then the tapes turn off. The more I *poof* even my still living FOO and think about myself as a stand alone, I feel good about myself.

That is the kaliedescope feeling I post about here. Those conflicting belief systems, revving up before they settle into new understandings.

I find you worth it, SWOT. Shame and humility are close things, but are very different things.

Have you read Shame and Grace, by Smedes? A well-written book addressing shame. Let's see. Here is a paraphrase: "...but the life force from God overcame the death force of shame, and I lived."

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It's like I"m grieving E's contempt for me NOW where as I didn't do it at the time.

Maybe you can see it now as something separate from yourself. When it was happening to you, there was no separation. In a way then, you are witnessing for yourself now. As painful as it is to relive those feelings, to feel that sense of what your reality is according to the abuser, imagine what it must have been to have been steeped in that kind of contempt as a little girl.

Just a beautiful little girl, wide eyed and innocent as all children are.

After all this time and so many years of peace, why has E. come back to haunt me with her disowning? It was so long ago.

Why do I still have nightmares about her?

There is a thought that every character, every item, everything in our dreams represents an aspect of self. In my process, I learned that the most frightening aspects would turn out to be the part of me that was strong enough to carry everything ~ all the feelings, all the things that were too hard to know. Each of us does our healing uniquely. Each of us was hurt in a complex and special way having to do with our mother's psyches. But in my recurring nightmarish dreams, there is generally a house. For the longest time, it was my grandmother's house. In the dream, I was in the sun-filled dining room looking out onto the fields, the apple orchard, the stream. I would go upstairs, the tightening around me making it so hard to breathe. In the upper right corner of the hallway at the top of the stairs was an old-fashioned fuse box. The kind that had glass fuses.

In the window on the landing, a spider. I pass the window to finish climbing the stairs to where the fuse box is. I don't know where I am going. The spider behind the glass, the glittering fuse box ~ these things are just there.

Always, the dream is the same.

Always, from that dream: And the wires connect and the music...plays of its own accord.

I have written some of the most incredible stories about that dream.

Another dream has to do with a Victorian mansion. At first, it is a frightening house, a haunted house on a street near my own. Then, it becomes a house I own. There is a top floor, a place where the air tightens and the space closes down and it is difficult to breathe. I am very afraid to know that room, that series of rooms, is there. Then, I begin to go there. I go as far as I can, each time. I never decide not to go there. I always go there, go further. It never stops making me feel I cannot breathe, cannot escape, cannot move.

So, a year or so ago, I dreamed of the house again and that is when I realized I had always dreamed of that house.

I don't know what either dream means, yet I do. The language of dreams is not so easily translated, pinned down, into words.

So anyway, that is what I know about dreams.

Maybe SWOT, you are questioning the part of you that held the poison your mother believed about herself and poured into you. Maybe you are strong enough, and healed enough, to explore that part of yourself, now.

In the poetry I have shared here, the glass-eyed witch is me. All the parts are me. I did not know that when I wrote the poetry. Except that somehow, I did. I was telling myself how it was with me.

Remember the dream of hair, and my mother in the dream, and the connection to the real-life visit to WalMart and whatever else was involved with the imagery surrounding that dream. Had I faced these things before I was strong enough, before I was healed enough, to consider and recognize and refute them, I would only have been able to teach myself what my mother taught me about myself in the first place. Because of these experiences, I think it is true, when they tell us we will never give ourselves more than we can handle.

We are meant to be whole.

Everything, even the nightmares about your mom, could be your psyche's insistence on healing.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Okay. So here is a potential insight. Where we hold heartspace for our mothers (my mother/myself) and for our sisters (my sister/myself), for our fathers and brothers and grandmothers and grand children ~ for everyone in our lives, those parts are not really them. They are parts of us where we keep our remembrances of them. Mostly, for most of us, we keep our remembrances unsullied. We remember the child in the sunshine, absolutely delighted as we come into the room. We remember our own response, and how it took us by surprise. We do not keep in the forefront of our remembrances the time we came in and the room smelled awful and the baby had painted the walls of her crib with her own excrement. That memory is in there too, where our children as babies remembrances live, but it isn't an important one. It does not hold a candle to the sunshine remembrance. In doing what we are doing with our moms and our sisters and brothers, in undoing what we stubbornly insisted was who they were really, however rotten what they actually did was ~ we are letting go of the very things that enabled us to make sense of our childhoods, and of our people, somehow. In stepping out of denial regarding our FOO, we are destroying, challenging, cheapening the very remembrances that made it possible for us to hold faith with our deep and unshakable certainty that they didn't know or that they didn't intend. It is such a hard thing, to let that go.

They did know.

They knew what they were doing, they knew how they were thinking. They had the same option to choose to cherish, to keep their remembrances of us unsullied, but they didn't choose that. In their secret hearts, in their heartspaces, they really do not think well of us. They despise us.

I am so surprised, and so hurt. I don't really believe it could be so.

And they told us and told us that they found us foolish and so easily disregarded a thousand times over, and we refused to hear it. We think everyone is like us. Everyone is not like us. They do not think like us. They are not hurt by the same things we are. They do not see the same things we see. Or if they do, they disregard the very things we find to be the only valuable thing.

That is the sense of bereft; that is the desert I walk through, everything dessicated and blown away.

I don't know what to do about this part, either. I think it is a fairly accurate representation of what is happening as we rebalance our psyches, though.

It isn't that I don't want to be in the desert. It is that I am so sad to be there where I need to be, where I have intentionally placed myself, that I do not see the miracle of tears as relevant.

It is what it is.

We don't get to cheat.

This is day two or three. It will be another day or two, at least.

Cedar

Well, how does this sound. What I am doing, as I examine the truth in the changed parameters of what I have always believed, is sort of taking a walking tour of my feelings. Each of the tumbleweeds, the horror, that shocked feeling response to each of the wizened and dessicated bodies, all of the places where water once ran and then, stopped, the sky that high, dry, cloudless blue that means no rain ~ those things were things I believed alilve; things I believed real life into. And now I don't. And without my belief in them, they mean nothing. In a way, this is creating space for whatever it is that comes next. I don't exactly feel foolish for having chosen to believe...but I hear my mother's voice, I see the sneering certainty: Cedar is the romantic of the family. Just not right in the head or the heart; a thinking problem and this has always been so. That is just how Cedar is.

Just don't think, Cedar.

Don't you dare.

So I'm having a look at that, too.

My mother/myself.

Where is my sister. Where is my sister/myself. Emotionally united with the mother, the sense of contempt rolling off both so intensely it would be easy to miss that smaller sister that is my sister/myself beneath the glittering glare of my mother/myself striding through the desert.

I am still afraid of my mother/myself.

She is so powerful, still.

Both of them visiting my true feelings about what has happened, about what I insist on knowing. That same feeling of contempt; a desperate sense of if Cedar does not have it then it will be mine and Cedar will mean nothing.

Even from my mother/myself.

Something too about that tapestry I am always posting about. The colors are very vibrantly alive.

***

There is the scent of rain in the wind. Far in the distance, roiling thunderheads.

But for now, I am in a desert that stretches to infinity.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

That same feeling of contempt; a desperate sense of if Cedar does not have it then it will be mine and Cedar will mean nothing.

It could be that I made meaning for myself through loving them. Without that, without that automatic cleansing and reordering of the remembrance places where I know who they are, there is no point, no challenge, no win, in any of the things that happened to any of us.

So, this is where the suffering of the Mary comes in.

How to do that.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Copa, it is hurtful in my opinion to know what these strangers (and they are actually strangers) are doing.

They probably are strangers. I think they must be, because I cannot understand the things they have been doing since my father's death and even, before that.

But I still do have the my sister/myself place within. And that my mother/myself place. My mom is so darn mean though that nothing she would do would surprise me. Well, it does surprise me, what she does. But it's more like a dull shock atop a mountain of shocks. But my sister is a horrifying surprise. Like the way it feels when you see a really big, black spider with red eyes and dripping venom. and you realize that is only your sister, your little sister, and so you excuse it and disbelieve the intent in it.

Until the skanky biatch takes after your daughter.

Ahem.

Cedar

Well, and here's the thing about that. Until she was hurt, my daughter was never vulnerable to my sister. She would like an aunt, so she loves her whenever that option arises and forgets about her when it doesn't pan out.

So my sister has tried to do this to her before, then.

But when my daughter was hurt and so addled and so defenseless ~ maybe my sister did what she has always done. I just never cared what she did before, because I cleaned it up and put it in "That's My Sister" land and forgot about it.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Have I posted before that my sister (supposedly) had something fall on her head hard enough to alter her thinking processes twice this past winter? She had posted about it on FB. It was one of the things she told me in the second or third phone conversation we had. She had left a message to the effect that she hadn't been calling (this is when I was not picking up for them) because she had sustained a kind of brain damage when this happened to her and then, happened again.

I didn't address it, either of the times on the phone, or on the FB post. It was a post on my brother's site. I think my sister may have unfriended me. I don't see her posts, only those she has responded to on my brother's FB. I did get a friend request from her, now that I think about it. I didn't address it, but I don't see it there now.

So that's strange, isn't it?

There was something else too, before the brain damage post.

But I think my sister lies.

So I don't know what to believe, and I don't feel an emotional response to her.

She is fine. She has all kinds of people around her who love her, and who will take care of her.

And whatever her situation is or was, and whatever the truth of any of this is, her situation is not what my daughter's situation was when my sister stalked and hurt her.

So this could have been a true thing, or this could have been a manipulation on my sister's part. Or, it could be that she was putting me in the position of not being kind either, to dilute what she did to my daughter and then, to me, in posting that she already knew.

Now, why am I feeling badly; feeling mean and spiteful myself.

And unworthy.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have been frail the past few days. Feeble again. Again I fear that I will never get up from bed.

What would that mean Copa, if you never got up from bed. There is a circle here somewhere, some place you are trapping yourself because there is something you know but refuse to know at the same time. (Huh. Looks like I know everything again this morning. Forgive me.)

Here is a story.

There is a young samurai warrior. He is training in a monastery. Something happens for which he is not responsible; something to do with the woman he loves. She rejects him or he loses her to a stronger, wealthier samurai. He learns of the deception. He is shamed and defiant and enraged. He leaps into the community cesspool. He stays there, grimly determined. The moon rises; the sun sets. He remains in the cesspool, grimly determined that he merits nothing more, not even the release of death. Time passes.

The moon is full.

In its silvery light, he sees a lotus.

He climbs out of the cesspool.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

They knew what they were doing, they knew how they were thinking. They had the same option to choose to cherish, to keep their remembrances of us unsullied, but they didn't choose that. In their secret hearts, in their heartspaces, they really do not think well of us. They despise us.

You're right. When I think about it now, I realize it was not just my mother, although she was the perpetrator. She was sort of the head of our small family and they all were just waiting for reasons to think badly of me.

Funny nobody else has the opinion about me (or you, right?) that they did. I was seen as stand offish and unfriendly (I was very afraid to meet new people). People who new me better than stranger status saw me as silly and kind and generous and imaginative and I had a big rep as having a super duper cool sense of humor, if not offbeat. I am thinking of my friends, although I never allowed many in. Coworkers? I was shy and quiet at work, like at school, and sat in the break room alone sipping coffee, reading the newspaper, until I felt safe with somebody. Then I'd come out of it and be friendly and fun.

This is why my therapists say I do not have borderline. If I'd had it, I would not only clash with FOO. I'd have trouble with everybody and I never did. I would not have been able to have two long term marital relationships, close friends for decades and good relationships with the majority of my children. And I had a good one with Goneboy until he became engaged to a very religious woman...and things do happen. Especially when they did not arrive until age six. In general, borderlines don't get along with anybody, but they do have similar issues to people with PTSD victims, except that PTSD victims have good hearts, remosre, and feel guilt. And, boy, thy name is GUILT! I used to feel guilty all the time. Like everything I was told I did wrong was true and I was "baaaaaaaaaad." I didn't blame others. I blamed me.

Thus, I was never formally ever given a Borderline (BPD) diagnosis. I gave it to me, which makes sense since I always look at the worst possible scenarios regarding myself. I suspect Thing 2 uses it just to be mean, as she can be very mean, and has been to various family members. I will never hear her say it or see her write it again though. That is the blessing of, not only no contact, but mental obliteration. Sometimes, when people never quit telling you what you are, that is the best way.

"What you think of me is none of my business."

FOO saw a very different me and I suspect they didn't act toward others as they acted toward me either. We had our roles to play.

 

[BusynMember]

Have I posted before that my sister (supposedly) had something fall on her head hard enough to alter her thinking processes twice this past winter? She had posted about it on FB. It was one of the things she told me in the second or third phone conversation we had. She had left a message to the effect that she hadn't been calling (this is when I was not picking up for them) because she had sustained a kind of brain damage when this happened to her and then, happened again.

LOLOLOL!!!!!

I loathe FB But this is hilarious.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

general, borderlines don't get along with anybody, but they do have similar issues to people with PTSD victims, except that PTSD victims have good hearts, remosre, and feel guilt. And, boy, thy name is GUILT! I used to feel guilty all the time. Like everything I was told I did wrong was true and I was "baaaaaaaaaad." I didn't blame others. I blamed me.

That's exactly right. I mean, that is how it feels to be me, too. I don't want to get stuck in the parts of things that don't matter because they don't lead to resolution or something. I have that free-floating sense of guilt, too. Like, when I kill an insect in the house? I always say to myself that while it was wrong to kill it, this is my house where I live and if I don't kill it, the creature will lay eggs and etc.

I mean I go through that every time. Flies, spiders, whatever.

One time? The dog had fleas. And I heard that if you pick them off and put them in water containing Dawn, the fleas will die. And I hated those fleas because they were hurting him, but it nearly did me in to put them into that deadly water where they would be trapped and would die and there was no way out for them.

Cedar

Thank heaven, we learned Frontline would never work on Southern fleas. We switched flea medications and I could stop thinking about it.

 

[BusynMember]

Wow. We are a lot alike. I won't eat lobster because of how they are killed and find it sickening to SHOW the lobsters when they are going to be boiled alive. Makes my skin crawl that anyone could do that.
Also, when my hubby caught a bat in our house I begged him to let it go, not kill it, so he did.
I was not always this way. As a child me and sibs used to watch ants drown in the toilet.
I am sickened by that now, even though they are ants. Sick, si ck, sick. So glad I have changed so much t hat the girl who watched the ants flail to stop from drowning actually makes me sick.

My mother was not a part of the ant bit. My dad used to do it. So I thought it was ok. He would throw them in and laugh. It is SO not okay.

As I become more and more Buddhist/New Age, I wonder why we kill living things with no remorse. And I wonder how this sits with my karma.

I am not getting more hardhearted as I age.

Thank my HIgher Power!!!!

I am getting kinder to myself, but one of the things I cherish the most about me is my good heart and I am trying hard to care for living beings even more than I used to when I stuffed $10 in beggar's buckets and mailed my coat to a woman in the Chicago Tribune who the reporter claimed had no coat. In fact I sent her two coats.

This is one thing about me that I self-talk about because I know I've done good things in my time. To strangers. To animals. Now even thinking about the pain of insects.

Cedar, we need to value our good hearts more. Nobody can take them away from us and, unless we listen to their nonsense, we don't have to hear about how we don't have good hearts.

This is one thing I always knew I had and E. couldn't remove my knowledge of this from me. It is an intristic part of who I am.

Cedar, do you know who YOU are?
Copa?
Anyone else?
I did not know the real me and could not recite anything about me until I h it my late 40's and it become a more clear picture as I hit 50. I was so fragmented before that, as everyone with trauma issues is. It took so long for me to get to know me. Do you all feel the same way?

 

[BusynMember]

That first therapist called me a bad name and I have never been able to quite put it behind me or figure out what it means or know what to do with it at all.

You should have reported him.

 

[BusynMember]

I still wish I had chosen her instead of myself. And I feel I will punish myself as long as I live for this error. Sometimes in my secret heart I blame M. It is his fault I tell myself. If he had not stuck up for me, I would not have not broken the rules of my family. To save myself.

I am far down on the totem pole. I broke the rules. I pay the price.

This would have been very unhealthy.I'm glad you didn't.

What price did you pay?

 

[Copabanana]

What would that mean Copa, if you never got up from bed.

If I never got up from bed, I would want to get up. And I would. So there.

So, the bed is neither here nor there. It could be a sofa. It could be a bar stool. For that matter I could have run away to some unknown place and be doing some undetermined thing.

What seems to be so, is that waves of sadness and defeat keep washing over me. And I get afraid. Because I fear they will stay forever and I interpret, that is the important distinction, I react to them as if they will be forever

He remains in the cesspool, grimly determined that he merits nothing more, not even the release of death.

when, in fact the next moment:

In its silvery light, he sees a lotus.

there is something you know but refuse to know at the same time.

I get frantic because I try and try to figure out what I know or what I see right before I get so afraid.

So, afraid that I say I will give up. I will give up everything. Pay the ultimate and highest price if the hostage is freed.

Because I am believing as I type this that going to bed I am paying a ransom. It is the price to be paid at that moment that someone dear to me be saved.

I wonder if it is something about my father...some ugly secret of abuse. I wonder if I cannot permit myself to live...able and complete...when my sister is so damaged and flawed.

And I fear it is my son.

That as long as my son is floundering and vulnerable...and worst of all...that he feels I have rejected him...or I feel guilty that I have done so...and...

This is it. Again. I fear that by setting that limit with my son, telling him if he continues to disrespect me, I would think about putting a block on the phone.

M thinks I spoke too harshly, that when I am angry I speak in a voice that is not mine.

But I think this is my voice, it is just very seldom used because I fear it.

I have written before that when I was about 26 I decided to no longer see my father. By that time he was a real drunk and I could not back away from the idea that I was degraded by him.

There were all sorts of boundary issues, some quite disturbing. When I would go to see him we would go to a bar together and drink until we were in a stupor.
When I was that drunk I would spend the night.

I think I began to recognize at that time that I was in danger. I will not spell it out.

So, I stopped it. And I have posted before that when I chose to no longer see my father, he had nothing in his heart for me but hatred, and denounced me to my brother and I guess everybody else, as guilty of sexual proclivities that he invented.

And then, the next thing I knew of him was that my mother (I had been estranged from her for 11 years or so) sent a letter telling me that my father had died maybe 4 years before.)

And this was the first time of devastation. But this time I only went to be for maybe 6 months and had to get up to go to work.

So, I think I fear that having set a limit with my son, means I may never speak with or see him again. And worse still, that when I set a limit it is almost killing in its' power. And I do not want to hurt my son by making a limit. And I did. And it's too late to protect him.

There is a circle here somewhere, some place you are trapping yourself

Or maybe I fear that my son is punishing me and that he will decide like I did with my father, that he does not want to see me or talk to me.

And it will be forever. And that I could not bear. And I think I go to bed, because I could not bear to never ever see my son again.

There have been so many terrible, terrible losses and assaults in my life. And I do not know how I survived intact, or at least alive.

But then, when I fear I may not ever see my son, I remember that I should be dead. And I think I kill myself off again. Because that is only way that I feel that he can be okay.

SWOT pointed out that I seem to not feel as if I can be okay and thrive without taking care of others. And there is truth to this. I keep going back for survivors. Kind of like Frida Dickers Kramer, the artist in Nazi Germany I wrote about.

Until this last time, when I went back, I died, too.

So I cannot figure out what to do. M is here. With me. And he I think will stay with me and help me survive. Whether it is in bed or somewhere far away. And for that I am grateful.

So, that is what it is. By going to bed, again and again, I am paying a ransom so that others live. And I think once that person was my sister. And now it is my son. Or maybe the both of them.

But then, maybe, I am trying to save myself. Maybe it is me.

Thank you Cedar and SWOT.

 

[BusynMember]

So, I think I fear that having set a limit with my son, means I may never speak with or see him again. And worse still, that when I set a limit it is almost killing in its' power. And I do not want to hurt my son by making a limit. And I did. And it's too late to protect him.

Maybe you made a limit you and he are not feeling good about. There are limits and then there are LIMITS. When my son was rude to me, I told him I would hang up for now, but that we could try again in a few days. And we did. And he was usually nicer. And now he has been nice for a long time.

We do not have to make harsh all or nothing deals with our kids. And when they say things that hurt us, we don't have to react the way they want us to. Your son can not possibly be like your mother or father in any real way because he doesn't share their DNA.

If it were me, I would not say things such as "you disappoint me" or "you are living in a way I can't accept." I may have said it at one time long ago, but not anymore. I would say, "You are choosing the way you live your life. We can meet for lunch once a week." I would not cut it off completely because it hurts YOU and it makes him feel like you really didn't want him after all. I would continue limited contact and talk about light things and if he tries to get nasty, try to ignore and turn it around. He DOES have challenges. Not all challenged adults can go out on their own and make it. Some need help from social services. It is not doing too much to show them where to go and what is available to them. Perhaps this would make you b oth feel better. I think everyone does better if he/she feels somebody cares. He may think you no longer care. Adopted kids, in particular, always feel that abandonment in the back of their heads. My well-adjusted adopted daughter Jumper told me once, "Adoption should be considered a special need." I get what she meant. It's harder to know you are not, for whatever reason, with the parents who gave birth to you.

Should you go no contact with your son?

It will hurt you too much and probably make him feel worthless. I wouldn't. I have never knowingly gone no contact with an adult child. I have had to cut it off with Goneboy as this was his idea, but I would not have done it myself. And Goneboy is was very confused by his identity. Am I Chinese? Am I yours? Can I love you? Do I want to love you? I think I want to be Chinese. I will marry a Chinese girl. I will have kids who will be raised in Chinese culture. He also uses extreme religion as part of his identity. He is part of a church, a very strict church. I understand. Must have been hard to come here at six after living in an orphanage in another country.

I'm babbling now and not sure what I mean anymore. I hope I did not offend you. I just feel your pain and think no contact is perhaps cruel to yourself and I want you to have joy in your life again, although I want that joy to come from YOU and not from taking care of other people. You can see your son without caring for him. You do not have to approve of what he is doing in order to accept it. It is what it is, but you still love him and want him in your life. A few moms see their adult kids once a week or so and no longer judge their lifestyles as right or wrong, but simply different.

 

[Copabanana]

that my own people will choose simply to go on without me; that I am choosing against them, too. That they will feel entitled to claim the trappings of whatever position I held.

That I will have nothing.

I am trying to learn to encompass this ennui, to acknowledge the suffering and the willingness to suffer and the knowing there is no triumph at the end but only alone.

Is this what I feel when I go to bed? Am I taking on the willingness to suffer, and feel as yet I do not have the capacity to bear it?

Is it my own suffering, past or present, or is it that of others *my sister or son, or is the mourning for all of it? For a story of victory, but at the same time so sad and so dirty in parts, and so cruel and treacherous, as to be unable to take it in or bear it...as yet.

So, that is why we must keep going back then, to our so hurtful dysfunctional families.

I am not clear here, why we must go back.

In my case, I know this is the case. That I went back for my mother, at great and continuing risk to myself. And I believe I go back to bed to save someone or something, but am not clear who or why...

What is your sense, Cedar, of what the returning is about? Is it penance or recovery? Regressive or forward moving? Either, neither?

We love them, too. At the same time they hurt us, we really do feel love for them;

Yes. But it is a strange fruit, this love. I asked M today if he thought the evil that permeates my sister is genetic. He answered, No, because if it was you would be the same and you are not.

We found pictures today. Many. That my mother had secreted away and my sister or her henchman husband did not find. My grandparents among some, and many of my mother as a baby, child and younger woman. Whew.

Among them were a couple where my arm circled her back, protectively. This was real. It was love. Where I learned to love as a mother loves. I will not give up this love. I will not.

I will use as example, SWOT, who had it in her to love her mother until the end, if her mother had permitted it. That is courage. I will try to emulate you, SWOT. To be open forever to be the best. Because to say no in my heart is to kill off part of myself. And I like you, SWOT and Cedar, am love, not hate and fear.

Well maybe fear, but we're working on that that.

I learned that the most frightening aspects would turn out to be the part of me that was strong enough to carry everything ~ all the feelings, all the things that were too hard to know

So, Cedar, is that what you are getting at when you ask what is it that I both know and do not want to know? ?

And is the fear of this strong and horrible place that it will put us to bed? That at once it is borne but feared, feared with such force that it as if kills us off to know it?

It seems like a paradox. Strength and fear. Strong enough to carry a terrible burden. Wanting or needing to close our eyes to its contents.

Today I went through a large box of my mother's papers. Remember in the last box I found the note declaring her wish to never see me again. And I found the will she hid so as to steal our inheritance.

In today's box I found the records of money she had promised me, a large sum 100k, to restore equity between myself and my sister, who she had helped a great deal throughout her life with hefty gifts and support, and paying for her college. Support I did not ask for or get.

But then, she rescinded, the restitution. I knew it before she died, but to find the papers hurt me.

And records of jewelry which was to have gone to me, to redress gifts to my sister, over the years. How my sister must have laughed when I gave her the jewelry as part of the estate, knowing she had already received more than her part and what
had been left was to have gone to me.

It is like dividing zero. There was zero. Never more than zero. Zero then. Zero now. I do not miss the things. I grieve the loss of what never was.

Where we hold heartspace for our mothers

I found many, many pictures of my beautiful mother. As if she saved every picture ever taken of her. Because this was where she was the closes to perfection, in a two dimensional image.

I am grateful to have them. It is almost as if I recovered her. Strange, I know. I guess I am able to accept, finally, that what I missed all of those years when I did not see her was really, not that much. Because what I had wanted from her could only have come at the greatest of risk to me, or not at all.

This paragraph or two I added later:

I cannot let this go all together. Because she did try. And my son and I were hard to take as a package. All that chaos and disorder in her pristine house. She would at the end get hysterical and accusing...maybe that is how I get. And because I had no defenses from this, I would retreat to not return. For years and years. And maybe that is what I fear my son is doing now. Retreating. And that this will be my punishment. That he will not see or call me for years and years because I said I might put a block on the phone if he kept mocking me about my father's cruelty to me.

I guess I do not have defenses against that which was my true life. And I am trying to take it all in. All of it. And I am. Little by little.

Except I want my son to call me. I cannot live without my son in my life.

And here I return to the main entry:

And so I know now. I went back for me. When I went back to care for her and be with her until she died, it was to find me, to find myself there. And it was worth it.
I just haven't figured out how to stand up carrying all that I found. So I have to keep going back to bed to rest myself. So, as to regain strength to begin again.

They had the same option to choose to cherish, to keep their remembrances of us unsullied,

My mother did keep my baby pictures, and some elementary school pictures. She did remember.

And I will always remember that she accepted my love at the end. She let me love her. What a great gift.

She had left a message to the effect that she hadn't been calling (this is when I was not picking up for them) because she had sustained a kind of brain damage when this happened to her and then, happened again.

I too cannot stop from chuckling at this. Only Spanish has words that capture this idiocy and I will say them. Tonta, Pandeja. Idiota. I think you get the drift. Pardoneme, Por Favor, Cedar.

Now, why am I feeling badly; feeling mean and spiteful myself.

I do not know, Cedar.

At least you do not keep looking at the for sale pictures of your sister's home on Zillow. And I am almost tempted to give you the address except then I would not be anonymous.

SWOT, remember Urban Sophisticate? If not, search in the threads, please. So, I looked at my sister's address on Neighborhoodscout.com. And guess what came up? Urban Sophisticates. Like 85 percent. And I will go right now and lift the description.

I mean what kind of person wants so badly to create an image and hobnob with other urban sophisticates...when they are really at heart so shallow and so mean...oh pardon me Cedar, I didn't mean to disparage your sister too.

I mean, I know I love M. But do you think I sought out somebody in his situation (and you know what it is) expressly to deny and negate urban sophistication? I mean, pleaaaaasssse. Let me turn into a Valley Girl, right now. Pleaaaasssse.

If I'd had it, I would not only clash with FOO. I'd have trouble with everybody and I never did.

SWOT. GET OVER IT. YOU ARE NOT. YOU NEVER WERE. You are NOT. NOOOOOOOTTTTTTT Borderline.

What you were is injured. And betrayed. But you are almost through the worst of it.

Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline (BPD))) diagnosis. I gave it to me, which makes sense since I always look at the worst possible scenarios regarding myself.

SWOT, If we all agree that this was an act of self-sabotage, cruelty to self, can we not let it go? Every time you consider it again, even to reject it, it is to act cruelly to yourself once again. That is a bad habit that you got as a baby. Your mother modeled cruelty and you learned to do it to yourself, in her absence. It is almost the cruelest thing of all. That we learned to hurt ourselves as they hurt us. Stop it.

 

[BusynMember]

SWOT, If we all agree that this was an act of self-sabotage, cruelty to self, can we not let it go? Every time you consider it again, even to reject it, it is to act cruelly to yourself once again. That is a bad habit that you got as a baby. Your mother modeled cruelty and you learned to do it to yourself, in her absence. It is almost the cruelest thing of all. That we learned to hurt ourselves as they hurt us. Stop it.

Yes, Copa. I will let it go. Thank you.

I am so used to buying whatever FOO says that I even buy things I didn't say to them. If they told me I was schizophrenic, I'd probably wonder about THAT too.

But, yeah, I have to let that go. Yes, it is a habit from my FOO. I was a brat, a dummy, lazy, bad, selfish and a host of other things to them.

I hope that eternity of cutting them completely out of my life will make myself more gentle with me. And I hope you are more gentle with yourself too as you are also a very good person. That's why we got picked on. We were and are sensitive, vulnerable, and easily hurt. And the vultures swoop down to this day.

I need to invent vulture spray

Thank you again, dear Copa.

 

[Copabanana]

I would continue limited contact and talk about light things and if he tries to get nasty, try to ignore and turn it around.

But, SWOT, he is not calling me and his phone is turned off. I don't know where to find him, because he wouldn't give me the address he was staying at.

I never said No Contact. I said if you keep disrespecting me, I will think about putting a block on the phone.

I don't even know how. I just wanted him to stop being so mean to me. And I felt I had no defenses against what he was saying.

I think everyone does better if he/she feels somebody cares. He may think you no longer care.

I adore him. I know he knows that.

But he does interpret limits, sometimes, as you don't love me anymore.

And I did put up walls that were not there before. That is true.

I defended myself. And perhaps I got confused. I may have forgotten for a second that he was my son, and thought he was my father. I know this is confusing. I am confused too.

This is not rational or purposeful SWOT.

But the thing is, a lot of the way he was living I did not like. I did not rub it in his face. For a long time he acted badly to us. And we had a hard time deciding what to do. For too long our boundaries were not clear. And then it was hard to figure everything out.

Should you go no contact with your son?

Never. I never thought about it. Never wanted it. Never ever. But my son may have gone no contact with me. That is my fear.

What if he is doing what I did with my mother? That is, when she hurt me, I would stay away for years and years. And that is my punishment. Please G-d. Let it not be this.

I do not deserve no contact just because I said don't make fun of my father abusing me. That would be too cruel.

Here is the urban sophisticate neighborhood my sister lives in (from neighborhoodscout.com). It makes me sick:

If you come to know the people here, you will recognize that you're in the company of one of the wealthiest communities in the nation. In fact, a mere 3.6% of America's neighborhoods are wealthier than the xxxx neighborhood. Real estate here is exceedingly well-maintained, and similarly, tends to maintain its value over time. The cars driven are mostly luxury brands like Mercedes, Audi, BMW, and Lexus. If the public schools aren't up to snuff, the residents of this neighborhood preferentially send their children to private preparatory schools. Vacation to Disney? Yes, but equally popular are summers in Europe. As one would expect in a considerably wealthy neighborhood such as this, xxxxx also has one of the lowest ratings of child poverty in the nation.

In addition, if you're a regular supporter of the arts and enjoy outings to the theatre, weekend boutique-ing, or even a finely aged wine with dinner, than you're in good company with the people of the xxxx neighborhood. This neighborhood is uniquely immersed with more "urban sophisticates" than 99.8% of neighborhoods across the country. The people here truly stand out as a class among their own. They are an exclusive community characterized by refined tastes, cultural inclinations, and the means to live well. Urban sophisticates live a big city lifestyle, whether or not they live in or near a big city. They are educated executives or managers by week, and serial patrons of the arts by weekend.

Yuuccck