Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Copabanana" data-source="post: 659393" data-attributes="member: 18958">My sister SWOT married her last two husbands because each had something she wanted.  I think of the term "harvesting" in the sense of harvesting organs from people, alive or dead.Curiously, I think the most real relationship she ever had was with my mother.I think that is why I am having such a hard time now. I can't leave my son. I don't want to leave M.  At the end I could not leave my Mother.  I was a runner, too.I think your sister did want to revel in the pain and degradation of your daughter, as a stand-in for you, kind of like a sorcerer's doll with voodoo pins.My Mother, too, Cedar.  I doubt myself so much. Because I think I should have understood in the later years how much she was trying to have a relationship with me. And when she would turn into a howling witch, I just removed myself immediately and did not go back for years.But the thing I realize now, just this moment, is that the howling witch she was in my childhood, when I needed her to be different because I had no other option, no way to leave although I wanted to had imprinted itself in my psyche. And when even for a second she would do it decades later, reminded me of who she had been and still could be.Against whom I would never develop any defenses.  And I think it was a conscious choice not to develop them and I am not certain why. I am not certain if it was to protect my own innocence or to protect the vision of her as lovable. I wanted to love my mother and I still want to.  What has to stop is this binary sense of things, that it is either them or us. Rather than, what is true.This is what I am struggling with below.  How to do this, Cedar?I agree, completely, with SWOT. Your daughter has fought to be authentic. Your sister is a phantom.I always knew what my sister was.  And I stayed as far away from her as I could. The thing was is that nobody ever believed me. Ever. So, I doubted myself. I felt that something was wrong with me, that I felt that way. While I knew, and acted as if those things I knew were true, I discounted my knowing. That having perceived as I did those things, was somehow disordered about me. That if I was a healthier or more well-adjusted or less damaged person I would see and experience my sister's actions or lifestyle or cruelties or distortions as somehow less bad or even as neutral or good.It goes back to your insistence on seeing. That kind of seeing implies seeing and knowing and honoring and acting upon what you see...without corroboration and without verification...a relationship with yourself...that is based upon complete respect and love.The family relationships we had are based upon honoring lies. It is okay if I steal from you. It is okay that I bully you. It is okay if I make fun of your victimization (I am remembering now that my sister loved it when I was targeted and beaten and treated sadistically by my step-father. So this amplifies my understanding of why it so affected me when my son taunted my abuse at the hands of my father.)These family relationships establish as rules, that their pretending must be believed, that their explanations and justifications be believed and honored as real, their assertions about us are true.They can treat us in any way they want. Hysterical. Deranged. Bitter. Abusive. That does not count. To them. It must be forgotten.Their illusions of reality are what is real, and to them, that is all that count. And their command, "this is true, I say," makes it so.So, even though I have known for decades to stay away from my sister, and acted on this knowing, if the truth be told, I acted "as if" because I never, ever really accepted as true what I knew, because I discredited my own perceptions in favor of her mandates.  I never stopped seeing myself and her through her eyes, according to her system of value, not my own.Why is this so? Why could I see who she was, and trust my perceptions but never go that final, necessary step?  Was it because I needed to continue to elevate her, to allow her that protected status that she insists upon and I persist in allowing her to maintain?There is an image I have of our relationship, hers and mine, that I have held for years and years. It is the sense that at any moment I want I can swat her down, like a lion swats down a cub who is acting too big for his britches. And, like that, regain their dominance.So, I knew what she was doing, always. And I knew I could control her. The question, why did I need to perpetuate the fiction of her power??? When I have always known she was a sham.  A pretender. And that I was the one who had the real strength and personal power. And so did my Mother.Over and over again I have bought into others' system of value, diminishing my own. A traitor to myself.And now I am thinking about M and my relationship with him. The Psychiatrist I have been talking to every couple of weeks, (I have wanted to stop as long as I have been doing so, but cannot seem to get there), made the comment, "most women would not tolerate being in a relationship like yours." By this he was referring to our different economic positions, his financial dependence upon me, and his status. And I do not' know how to put into words, what the psychiatrist's judgment means to me. And why I have not so far not stopped buying into and empowering his values and judgment over my own.And I do not quite know how to explain how the realness of what exists between M and I somehow was what I was seeking...and it has something to do with what is my system of value...as opposed to those which I subordinate myself to, of others like that of my sister...and then lose myself. Sometimes for years and years. In important ways.I sometimes fear that what has happened to me in these last 2 years, is that I actually try to die like my mother, or that I come to perceive myself as suffering in a way similar to how I think my son is similarly affected. It is as if there is an identification with them, on some deep level.And why I do this is not clear to me. To restore them to as they were in my eyes. Guilt, that I suffer the same penalty and fate as do they. And why?So back to my sister.  There is the sense that I give her rein.  Like I am the the rider, the leader and I decide I will let her exercise her strength...at my pleasure. Always believing that at any moment that I want I can cut her off. Stop her. Cut her down. Even destroy her. And if this is the truth, this is a whole lot of power to feel that you have. And perhaps this is a clue to why I can see her, and I can know who she is, and I can act on this knowing, while at the same time, I let her have the power. Because if you believe you can destroy somebody....you are the one who needs to be restricted, limited.So, how does one develop the discipline of always seeing, really seeing and acting and empowering themselves based upon their own system of value, not that of another or of others? What could be the habits or practices that could further this?I would like to know if we are doing the same thing here, Cedar, and using different words to understand it, or if it is different.I know what I see of my sister is true, and always has been. I trust my perceptions and I act on them. But when it comes to looking at her in relation to me I just devalue myself and my perceptions. And I know that this is play-acting, I mean, I know that my perceptions and seeing is 100 percent accurate. Of this I am certain. I have always trusted it. But I make the clear-eyed decision to empower others. Until I decide in one second that it is enough.And if the truth be told, inside my self, I delight in the joke that I can win over her at any moment I decide to.  But the real joke is against me. Because I choose over and over again to give up my power and my value vis a vis her. Because I privilege her need to be above me and more powerful than I. And I seem to do it with many other people, too. Except with M I do not, of that I am fairly sure.I know this way of being Cedar. Way too well.  I feel anxious if somebody looks bored, or mad, or fill in any negatively tinged adjective. And I will debase myself to restore their pleasure. And as I type this I wonder if this is what I do with my sister, even from thousands of miles and years away...because this is what I do.  And I wonder if this is what I am doing by feeling tired all the time and needing to be in bed. And feeling gray and used up...and old.  I am debasing my value to atone, for causing somebody to feel bad.And as I type this I believe it was my mother. It was at her feet that I learned this, how to discredit myself, debase myself and my needs, to make her happier, less mad.But Cedar, this absolutely terrifies me. Because I had a therapist experience too. And I could not let the pieces fall, because the pieces were me. I let myself need him.  And when I did, and I saw he was a fraud yet could not really see it, I was already in too deep. I came to believe that without him I was Humpty Dumpty. Even though I knew I was the stronger.  With him, too, I maintained the fiction that I was the weaker and the needier, to protect him.Why? That is who she is, Cedar. This is what she does. It has nothing in the world to do you. Does a tiger have stripes? When he wants to eat you does he meditate about it?Cedar, I see here that we do the same thing. We take on their perspective, their point of view, to protect them, at the expense of ourselves.I believe, Cedar, that the ransom has been payed to my mother. And still is.Cedar, I always knew about my mother. There was no lying and no cheating. The problem is this: What if you decide to devalue what you know?  What if you decide to accept their system of value, that you are less, matter less?  And you do it to protect yourself, because that is the only way you can survive. Because they have something you need. Whether protection, or existence. Or even worse, because despite everything that has been shown to be so...about your strength or courage or resilience, there is something in you that has been so humiliated or defeated or destroyed...that when you get a signal...from inside yourself or your environment...that you accept as real and you are willing to die or kill yourself or execute some command (against your will and without your conscious consent...like a spy movie where the protagonist is programmed or implanted with something that tells them to kill).And how do you resurrect and reclaim this co-opted part of you?My life now is pretty good. If I could never leave here there would be enough....Except, I am desperate because I know that I am still responding to this kill signal.  And it is this that I am desperate to reverse. Because I do not want to be the living dead.So, I think if I can only Tango, or walk in a big urban city, or be mobile...if I can only do the things I did when I did not allow myself to be co-opted....the years I lived abroad and shortly afterwards before I went back to work.  Oh why did I work so long...I see this as such a mistake. But when I am thinking about Tango and losing weight and going thousands of miles away...I am feeling desperate. (Even if I really want to do these things. And I do.)The key is turning off the mechanism that I have introjected...the capacity and motivation to kill myself off....in accordance to signals initially learned from my mother, who I loved enough to do it.Yesterday I went to Costco and asked where my son is doing his shopping. He has shopped 3 times here in the town where I live. That he is still here and that he is buying food, continuing as he has been gives me some peace.  I will drive by the general area where I think he may be living to see if I spot him. Thank you all for sticking with me.COPA</blockquote>

Verification