In a totally new place and need perspective? Cedar? Anyone?

[Copabanana]

Distance is a blessing.

That is what I did. Until the end.

And then my sister who had always lived close, and I think was close, went no contact at the end.

Still, I cannot figure that out.

 

[BusynMember]

Copa, I can figure it out.

You got away, which was smart of you. It was the right thing to do as your mother treated you with no respect or love. Your sister put up with her day after day and finally it blew up at the end. I can't blame your sister for finally exploding, as vile as she can be to you...it may be partly because she made a bad decision to stay near your mother and put up with her garbage. Maybe that's why she is so mean. That would make ANYBODY mean. Day after day after day belittling, abuse, put downs, even as an adult.

It was why you had the strength to be there in the end...you had had a reprieve and lucky for your mother that you took that break from her.

Like my own mother, yours was incapable of having a long term healthy relationship. With anybody, including her children.

You knew this and saved yourself. Why you feel guilty now, I don't really understand because you were doing what you had to do. Your sister did not and look what she turned into.

Maybe she was finally paying your mother back for years of abuse that SHE chose to put up with, but still resented. So she went no contact at the end.

I certainly could be wrong, but on paper at least it sounds logical to me.

 

[Copabanana]

Maybe she was finally paying your mother back for years of abuse that SHE chose to put up with

Serenity, I agree. Thank you for responding.

I think it was also that my sister could not bear that I was in the picture at the end.

My sister needs control more than anything. She also demands respect (but could never get it from my mother, or really, from me. Although I never disrespected her I never exalted her either.

There must have been the expectation, rightfully so, that for all of the degradation that she accepted she would at least have control and respect at the end.

My presence and participation must have felt like disrespect and as if I wrested control that I did not deserve.

She must have felt like she had paid her dues. That she did not deserve what she got.

But the thing was, I was responding to her disrespect of me. When she withheld the information that she had involuntarily put my mother in the hospital, and then screamed at me...I got afraid of her.

Then when my mother went into the hospital and I was with her, we were both afraid to call my sister and waited a few days.

This infuriated my sister, who of course, did not put the two events together. My fear of what she had done previously, and how she had treated me.

I feel for my sister. I really do. I wish there was a way back to that relationship but I do not see how. There is too much dislike of me and need to humiliate me, on her part. Unless I am imagining it.

 

[Copabanana]

There was an unuspected frog in that water yesterday. And when he leaped out because I was mucking around in there, trying to drain the water?

I nearly wet my pants.

We have a lizard. I did wet mine.

What worries me more are the snakes. I have seen one in 6 years. I keep waiting for more.

 

[Copabanana]

I want to make full disclosure here.

In the last 20 plus years of my mother's life, I did have a relationship with her. Mostly by phone.

Mostly we stayed on topics that were agreeable to both of us. Like politics. We are both cable news junkies. And for the most part we shared political views.

I am missing my Mom a lot because oh how she would have loved this presidential election cycle. M only watches the Spanish Language Media and has not any interest at all in USA politics. I have nobody to talk to about Trump and Hillary's emails or my favorite, Joe Biden.

So I miss my Mom.

This is not to take away from everything I have posted about my life with her.

She was able to show me warmth and companionship. And I am grateful that I was able to do the same.

I do miss her.

 

[BusynMember]

I used to talk to my brother about politics, although less and less as he stayed in the east and we both got busy. But I miss t hat too. Well, I would miss it if I hadn't decided to not watch the news anymore...haha. I found myself too upset about the way our country was headed to keep watching the news and decided worrying about things that were a lot bigger than me and upsetting wasn't a good plan for me. So I don't know anything about Donald Trump, what Hillary who I will vote for is up to, or anyone else this time. I do know and cringe that Scott Walker is running and probably has a good chance of winning.

Copa, have you ever heard of MIRC? They have three politics real time chat channels and I used to hang on all three of them to get my politics fix. Maybe you'd enjoy them. Very intelligent chatters, howeer the majority of conservative or libertarian and they can be mean to liberals, which is challenging and kind of fun (or I thought so). Haven't been there for years, but it used to be a lot of fun for me. For $20, you're a MIRC member forever.

Another thing you can do to help your void in your politics fix is to volunteer for your candidate. I worked for Obama twice and met a lot of really cool people and got to watch the election results at a party with other vollunteers. Since my own husband does not vote or care and doesn't believe any politicians are any good (which is probably true), this gave me an outlet for my great love of politics...until the tea party took over. I highly recommend working for your candidate. You'll love the camaraderie of other politics junkies.

It's not the same as your mother, but maybe it would help you to have friends who share your interest in politics and you'd be getting out of the house!

I so want your journey to wellness to forgeg ahead with gusto and keep moving.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I miss my mom too. I am assimilating the truth of who she is, and of what passed between us and of how my sister fits in to the relationship between my mother and myself.

It's an ugly story, twisted and deceitful.

As is always the case when I post such ugly things about my family of origin as I have been doing the past weeks, I had begun to question the kind of person I must be, to choose to see things as I am coming to see them. I was feeling so badly about everything that I said as much to D H last night. He became quite upset with me. He does not understand how I could be fascinated by these people who are who they undeniably are. The end result of our conversation: (Paraphrasing. D H actually threw in any number of swear words that need not be included here.)

:O)

Sort of quoting D H, then: You know what happened to you, and to your brothers and sister when you were little. You have no witness. I understand that you would question the validity of what you remember. I can see that you would question your own integrity in remembering things as you do ~ that there would be a sense of disbelief at the ugliness of it. But you have witnesses, now. I have seen you. I know what you were thinking before whatever crisis it was that your sister or your mom created, and I watched you suffer for it afterword instead of placing blame where it belonged: On them. For the actions they took. Then, D H listed the catch phrases for many of the things I have posted about, here.

And added that I should have stood up for his sake, if not my own.

Then, D H said I need to stand up.

That no matter how many times I look at this stuff, it is always going to feel toxic because it is toxic. That there is no rhyme or reason to what my family does except that someone is forever being destroyed and betrayed and the game goes on and that the web spins out from my mother and it always will.

My sister, D H says, doesn't matter. She is a betrayer. As an adult. She is not walking around not aware of what she is doing. She means it.

No integrity. Not a person of integrity and that is true and that is by her own, adult choice. End of story.

My brother, so says D H, is worse. I am his sister. I stand up for him routinely but he buckled when he could have, and should have, stood strong for me. That if my brother had stood with me, the situation could have come to a low boil instead of erupting and that I need to see the betrayal and the adult choice in everything to do with my family of origin.

Thank heavens, Donald Trump came on then, and this whole mess with my family, and with me forever feeling guilty for the actions other adults have taken, and have betrayed any good or right or decent thing to do so and why can I not see that for what it is was dropped.

But D H does get really upset with me when I keep trying to put things together and wind up blaming myself.

I need to stop pretending it was something I said or did, or that I had any control over the situation at all. There was some talk at this point about certain people (my family) walking around with their heads so far up their ~ that all they can smell is their own ~ and what they want to do is cover me with it and have me smile and thank them and ask for more.

So, that is what D H said.

I had no witness in childhood. I have witness ~ not just him, but our kids and his family ~ in my adulthood. Stop wasting time. Stop being weak. Stop blaming yourself. "You are seeing from your eight year old little girl's point of view."

Stop it.

Grow up.

You are at the end of life.

And then he said? "Tell Copa to get out of that bed."

He went on to say that the thing we don't want to face is how truly awful everything was and we don't want to name the villain for who he or she was.
D H said the harder we try to make sense of things, the more we blame ourselves because we were hurt when we were little and those hurt places prevent us from hating the perps, so we turn it onto ourselves in an effort to not name what happened to us at their hands for what it was. That we were raised by people who have no integrity because people who operate from integrity do not routinely hurt their kids and we have to face it.

Routinely being the key word.

Repetition (of a multitude of betrayals, large and small) being another.

And stop wasting any more of our lifetimes (and of our D H time) trying to believe what they do into something we did or that we can fix into redemption for any of us, now.

That we are trying to exert some kind of control, to make some kind of sense of chaotic hatred when there is not a (colorful string of swear words) thing that can pretty or change what this is, what drives it: My mother.

***

I understand the rewards accruing to my sister in her betrayal of me. Believing a sense of hurt drives it, I forgave betrayal after betrayal. I excused jealousy and the ruination of whatever time our families did have together. I allowed mistreatment of my own D H, who is a better judge of character than I am, in the sincere belief that he was wrong, that we could do this if all of us tried. For the longest time, I believed ~ oh, I don't know. I believed that over time we could do this, that a personal bond could be forged as adults that would lead, first to respect for the person alive beneath the role and then, to trust and real family. I would believe in her, and in all of us, again. And that is why, D H says, he thinks I will be revictimized if he should die before me, or if we are divorced. It could be that my sister was sincere in the words that she said...but does a sincere person go through a sister's journal and leave a note that she has done so at the back, where the sister whose private thoughts she rifled will not discover it for weeks? Or rifle that sister's luggage while I was staying at her home?

Or stalk my daughter on FB, that biatch.

I feel for my sister. I really do. I wish there was a way back to that relationship but I do not see how. There is too much dislike of me and need to humiliate me, on her part. Unless I am imagining it.

I feel that way about my sister, too. Sometimes, and this could still happen, I think that if I were stronger, or if I were kinder, or if I'd been more welcoming, things might have been different. Then, I realize that is not true. I had to post very ugly things about myself, and about my sister and my mom, before I could see what it is that happens between the two of us, and between the three of us.

Ours is an ugly story. Twisted and deceitful.

It has been a hard story to look at head on. Nothing is as it should be, and nothing about it is as I'd hoped or believed. I like to think my mom and my sister wish it could be different. In my heart, based on their behaviors I see this is not true.

The way things are is exactly the way they want them or they would take action to change them.

I could take action too, of course.

That's why I am doing this.

I need to freaking stand up. I need to stop feeling regret for what I don't have, as though I've lost something.

I never had it.

I never will.

***

I think what my sister wishes is not that it could be different, but that I could be seen as reviled by the mother and that my sister would encourage coming together to be seen as the good person who believes the family can come together when in fact, she would rather see me dead than to see me, at all.

My sister is looking not for a sister, but a supplicant. As I have posted, my mom would love to be at the center of jealousy between the sisters over the mother. My mom told me once that she finds the jealousy between us funny. So, she must have seen, and celebrated, jealousy from one of us. I don't think it was me. My mom is careful to accidentally say the most incredible things about what is said about the things D H and I do or do not have; do or do not merit; will or will not be able to keep.

I think my sister wishes she had a sister she did not hate.

But I think she hates the sister she does have, very much.

So, it could be that I am hateful, then. It could be that she has tried and tried and finally, given up.

That would surely be her take. That would dovetail perfectly for her. After all, she even prayed that ring of thorns or fire around me to bring me to the Lord and just look. She walks with the Lord and He may fix our relationship but as for her, she is done.

How exquisitely ripe.

***

What happens between us got so much worse after my father's death...but there seemed always to have been jealousy and, now that I see it, thinly disguised rage. Out of fairness, I am going to write that I felt those feelings too, but I am not aware that I did.

I am glad I have a sister. I just don't want anything to do with her. The more I think back to what we had, the more I see the truth in it instead of the love-which-turned-into-enabling or which was always enabling or whatever it is that happened to all of us. There is nothing to pull back together. There never was. I am glad I tried, but I am messed up too of course, and seem not to have been able to say or do or be the right sister for her either.

D H would say: Stop it. There is no right sister. Your family is messed up. Get over it.

Only he would add swear words.

I do not know if this is true. Except if you mean that the picture you had of a Mother was something created out of whole cloth from your own need.

This you wrote in response to my contention that it was never them we wanted, but ourselves. What I meant was ~ boy. Again, I will reference D H family. Each of the sibs has a sense of self. They go off on one another routinely, they posture and threaten and form alliances and come back together wholeheartedly. They are who they are with one another. In my family, we all look to the mother to see who we are, today. It has that feel to it. My sister is who she is now because she is favorite child. (In her freaking sixties, she is favored child.) She is favored child enough now to exclude the others and she is taking concrete steps to do that. (In her sixties!) That is the essence of the betrayal. It isn't that she does not know this is how our family of origin works. It is that she has been working behind the scenes for all of her life to accomplish what now exists: Herself as gate keeper, through her favored child status (in her sixties), to the mother; to the remaining parent. That she claims this status now ~ not pretends to it, not thinks about and rejects it, but steps into that role with the abusive mother at her side validating and celebrating this ugliness the mother has always believed in but could not accomplish now, when the children she once abused are adults, without the collusion of one of the kids to exclude the others and create...the twisted obscenity that passes family but that is, in reality...the vehicle for my mother's agenda: grandiosity and control, when everything might have been so different.

As D H says: It isn't different.

And that is the crime committed against us.

That it might have been different. That it should have been different.

That our abusers chose then, and are choosing now, what exists.

And we need to see that true thing.

Cedar

Serenity is ahead of us in this ability to see what is for what it is.

We will get there too, Copa.

Here is the essence of it: People who proceed from integrity do not cheat, do not prey on their own families to create environments where grandiosity is the coin of the realm.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Why do people want to hurt us?

To see us taken down. To see whether we are real. To shame us to please something in themselves.

To elevate themselves at our expense.

The "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". Hurt as we were as children, we are vulnerable to our own thinking when a predator takes us on.

D H: Stop it. Be your own man, Cedar. Trust your own self, Cedar. You are not an eight year old little girl, anymore. You do not get a pass. The world is as it is. Everyone has to stand up. Right or wrong, everyone has to stand up.

I like to think of what I might have said in response to things that are wrong. It is rare (make that never) that I think those perfect responses in time to say them to the leaping predator.

Here is one: "What do you mean?"

Easy to remember. Applicable in any situation where clarity is required. Like, when we have been attacked and betrayed by a predatory someone who is just doing what predators do. Had you not been so very good at what you do professionally Copa, you would not have been attacked. How does that saying go, something about the quality of our enemies being indicative of our strengths?

Does anyone need to know where I learned that? About responding with "What do you mean?"

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And then my sister who had always lived close, and I think was close, went no contact at the end.

Still, I cannot figure that out.

My sister has changed dramatically since my father died, and since she and my mother have formed their alliance. I believe, and I feel badly and criminal and sneaky to say so but I am saying so, that a part of that change has been in the way she has been encouraged to see me by my mother.

I say encouraged to see. In reality, my sister dearly hoped to see me destroyed and vanquished and beggared, all along. Pseudo mom and etc. My mother is giving permission; is validating unattractive interpretation of me, of D H, of our children and possessions.

The hatred was already there and is a choice.

On my sisters part, this is indicative of a lack of integrity. Remember the ring of fire she prayed against me. Remember that she walks with the Lord, and that He justifies and supports her in her actions, now.

That He may see a way to put our relationship together, but that she is done.

Justification from on high to do what is in her heart to do.

You do not know, Copa, what was the glue that held your mother's and your sister's relationship together.

Could it be that the betrayal your sister feels has to do with the mother's betrayal of her in your favor? After all the things that may have been concluded to solidify their relationship? My mother told anyone who would listen that if Cedar did not want to be part of this family, then this family ~ all of them ~ wanted nothing to do with Cedar.

All of them.

Same words used to and about my father when divorce was in the works for he and my mother.

That is my situation.

So though it may not be true for you and for your sister, that is what I would of course see, in yours. My stuff. Maybe not true, for you.

Were you in contact with your sister through those years you were away, Copa?

You have nothing to fear in contacting your sister, now. How else can you know whether you are doing the right thing? She could be hating you. She could be missing you. There may be an opportunity for coming together. Or, there may be the ugliness I find in my family of origin.

Do you want to contact her, Copa?

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Serenity is ahead of us in this ability to see what is for what it is.

You're both doing great. I had a huge head start and my FOO was far more blatant in it's dysfunction. Remember, my mother never tried to look normal or "good" for others. She barely left the house. I never saw this other mother who had friends and charmed people and had a good job. I saw a woman who never combed her hair and couldn't drive and seemed to obsess over my badness and try to save my physically ill brother. She didn't try to be anything more than she was and to me it was pretty darn awful. Since my sister can look and act normal in public she fooled me longer, so I know why you two had trouble "seeing."

I saw who my mother was, but I still tried. Interestingly, I read an article today on borderline mothers, which I came across on t he internet. It said that borderline mothers often perceive insidious intent where there is none.As always, I think borderline is overused and I'm not sure she had it...but she acted a lot like the mother described in the article I read.

When I would call my mother, after the $5000 mess, I was honestly trying to make it right while we both alive on earth this time around. My sister brought my mother's interesting perspective to me once. She didn't want to talk about it but said, "I don't know, Mother thought you were just calling to bait her...."

I was truly stunned, although I shouldn't have been. But I was so careful to be nice to her during those calls. How she came up with that, is in her false perception of me, just as the article said. She saw something that wasn't there. But she always did.

"You only adopted t hose kids for the money." (Crazy).

"SWOT told me all about what you've done so I would think you were horrible." (Wrong. So you'd do something or try to be a mother to a college age kid you ignored).

"You stiffened in my arms so I didn't hold you." (No. You didn't hold me because you didn't love me).

Anyhow, I think both of you are coming along and I do t hink that Operation Oblivion is helping me tons. I think of them with less malice now and with clearer memories, but they can't hurt me anymore. Not even my mother's last stand hurts anymore. It is all just part of my path I walked and survived. You'll get there too.

The FOO Chronicles have really helped me. I swear, it's been more effective at times than therapy and group put together. You two have been so validating.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

There were dinners out, a lunch out, that were my best memories in my life. My mother did not remember.

My mother did not remember when I had given her clothing for an event well enough to ever give it back. She would take the item. I would never see it again.

I was thinking about that last night in what for me, has become my habitually unattractive way of thinking about everything to do with them.

They were very nice things, those things my mother never gave back.

Very nice.

Does my mother remember dinners or lunches....

To my shame Copa, I was in automaton mode whenever I was with my mother. I did not trust her. I did not relax around her, ever. When my father died and we came home to be here for her when she came back, I would go to my mother's. I would listen and listen. We were actually in the middle of building a house. We left it to be here for my mom. My mom talked about...my grandmother. My father's mother, and how she hated her, and how oh, if we only knew what a rat she was really. On and on and on, that is how it was.

And I would come home and cry to D H.

I would cry to D H, take a shower, and go back there.

I did not want to shower in my mother's house.

Isn't that something.

The other unbelievable thing, Copa and Serenity, is that we did not mourn my father, my mother and I.

We talked about his mother.

And all the things she was not, and all the things she had done to my mother, and how hard everything was for my mother because of the grandmother I loved. And I listened and listened and listened, because I believed that if she could be heard, that if she could once get to the bottom of the hurt, she could heal.

But we never mourned my father.

I did not mourn my father. Isn't that something. I was there for my mother and I was strong for my mother and I came home to shower and I cried to D H.

And I went back.

My father was never properly eulogized. He was never properly mourned ~ not by his wife, and not by his children.

I know, because I have seen other wives, friends or acquaintances, mourn their husbands. I have seen families come together and take comfort and celebrate who they are and what is lost.

A friend told me "Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional death."

So, I don't know. I am thinking of these things, this morning.

I am thinking of the difference between believing in and believing.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

What worries me more are the snakes. I have seen one in 6 years. I keep waiting for more.

Are they poisonous snakes? Down South, they say: A black snake is good. They kill rattlers. We have heard that many times by now. When we first heard it, we were seeing a house for sale by owner. The owner took a peek around to be sure his wife couldn't hear and told us: "See this, here? Black snakes are all through this area. My wife told me not to say anything about them, but...."

And he repeated the wisdom regarding black snakes and rattlers.

Plural.

Ew.

Cedar

The house where we are now?

Is on stilts.

 

[BusynMember]

A friend told me "Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional death."

Absolutely.

I remember the weirdest death story in my family. I mean WEIRD. To this day, I don't get it. I was in my younger 20's and went along with it. I have no idea why. I guess I didn't know any better because why else would I have listened to this? I had nothing against my FOO at that time...I still thought it was all my fault, everything. So I would have gone if told it was the right thing to do. How could I have not known? Well, here's the honest truth.

My grandfather passed away. Granted, nobody was close to him. He was a nice, harmless man who was henpecked to pieces by my grandmother, but he didn't say much and we didn't know anything about him. But he was our grandfather anyway and he died.

But I didn't go to the funeral. I do not think any of us did, except my mother. Why? My gradnmother didn't feel we should have to go through it.

Were we little kids?

No.

What was she thinking?

Why did our mother think this was ok? Because she was a slave to herh mother (my grandmother) and honored her request that we not be subjected to the horrors of a funeral, even though we were grown up and almost grown up.

Boggles my mind.

In the same spirit, my aunt died. We were not close either as nobody was close in our FOO. She was my gradnmother's sister and they had an "iffy" realtionship and I liked my cousins, although I barely knew them. When I saw them I liked them. They had similar family dynamics to my familys. There was a GC (golden cousin) and a scapegoat, who I heard horrible things about (both about her a nd her husband-to-be).

I should have gone to her funeral, but my grandmother didn't want us to go. Whether anyone did go, I have no idea because I listened and did not go.

Scapegoat cousin dumped the family after that and I don't blame her. What has happened since with Scapegoat Cousin I have no idea. Golden Cousin has moved across t he country and is at least in touch with my brother, but they are both so golden, they forgive anything...haha. J/K. I don't know wht happened after I was told that the funeral caused problems, probably between my grandma and her nieces too, but my memory on that is not clear.

Isn't that bizarre? I'm ashamed that I didn't go to both. But I clearly remember being told not to do and asking, "Are you sure?" and my grandmother said, "Yes. I don't want to put you through this." Now I could have said, "I'm going. I can deal with it." But I didn't. I didn't think to say it. In truth, I was scared of the idea of funerals back then. I had tons of phobias and fears and if somebody told me not to go to a funeral, maybe I was relieved? I can't remember.

At any rate, I am thinking that children in a regular, well loved family would want to say good-bye to those who passed on. I just had no idea of what was normal in a family.

This is a different take on dysfunctional deaths.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I should have gone to her funeral, but my grandmother didn't want us to go. Whether anyone did go, I have no idea because I listened and did not go.

In my family of origin, both parents presented funerals as bogus events. My mother was the parent who implied, as an aunt died, or a grandmother (her mom, not my father's mother ~ that funeral, I attended) that we would not be missed, so why bother to attend when really, we had no place, there.

Isn't that something.

And I did not know then anything about the core of family, or the strength and sense of identity to be found there.

My mom (and my sister, to this day) are the same way about births in our family. Remember my posting that my mother did not come to see me while I was in the hospital with my new baby.

You believe this?!?

I just had no idea.

D H mom and dad came, of course.

Cedar

Here is the difference, this morning: Always before when I thought of those things that happened to me, and to my new babies, I had no feelings about the right or wrong of it.

Now, I do.

Hatred.

How did these people dare do what they did to their own children? To me. To my children.

?

This means I am getting better. That I see it, now.

Good.

Strangely, all I ever had to do was want to know.

And believe myself, and believe in myself. And in the wonder of my having had a child; and in the wonder of that child's life, and of my own life.

Wow. These people really were twisted, evil people.

It rings so strangely to me.

Like a bell.

Another level, then.

Good.

 

[Copabanana]

"I don't know, Mother thought you were just calling to bait her...."

Have you stopped beating your wife, Serenity?

I can see that you would question your own integrity in remembering things as you do ~ that there would be a sense of disbelief at the ugliness of it. But you have witnesses, now. I have seen you.

Yes.

Then, D H said I need to stand up.

That no matter how many times I look at this stuff, it is always going to feel toxic because it is toxic.

This is true.

I think that is the premise behind don't cheat. The only thing that came from looking at my sister's house was to reenter it and feel bad.

The thing D H is not factoring in is something called "working through." This is an emotional process. A process of getting the emotions on board and modifying them. This is not like reading a newspaper article.

That there is no rhyme or reason to what my family does except that someone is forever being destroyed and betrayed and the game goes on and that the web spins out from my mother

M looks at this kind of thing like D H. Why go there?

When his sister took the parents' house he felt very bad and betrayed. I think he feels sad still. But he does not agonize about it. He does not revisit it over and over again, like we do. That is because he was not traumatized.

Repetition is a symptom of past trauma. The disbelief. Being stunned. Questioning oneself. Looking at it from every angle.

M and D H were not traumatized. Therefore there is no question. No reason to revisit. No analysis and reanalysis necessary. It is cognitive. It is not emotional. They move on.

No integrity. Not a person of integrity and that is true and that is by her own, adult choice. End of story.

True. My Mother, too.

their heads so far up their ~ that all they can smell is their own ~ and what they want to do is cover me with it and have me smile and thank them and ask for more.

This is striking given the event involving your mother, brother and you.

You are at the end of life.

And then he said? "Tell Copa to get out of that bed."

Thank you, Cedar and D H.

He went on to say that the thing we don't want to face is how truly awful everything was and we don't want to name the villain for who he or she was

True.

D H said the harder we try to make sense of things, the more we blame ourselves because we were hurt when we were little and those hurt places prevent us from hating the perps,

True. That is why we have to go over and over what happens to heal those places. As many times as it takes. I think D H cannot stand to see you suffer. Maybe you need to not show him until you feel more sure.

That we are trying to exert some kind of control, to make some kind of sense of chaotic hatred when there is not a (colorful string of swear words) thing that can pretty or change what this is, what drives it: My mother.

This is true. But I do not think we are trying to make sense of it so much as to integrate it in a way that we master it.

The way things are is exactly the way they want them or they would take action to change them.

This is absolutely true.

But as a child you took all of the responsibility and fault onto yourself in order to avoid this very conclusion. You or me or SWOT could not bear at that time to understand that our parents at the very least could not have cared less whether we suffered. And made conscious choices to victimize and humiliate us.

I think my sister wishes she had a sister she did not hate.

But I think she hates the sister she does have, very much.

Mine too. This puts the idea of calling her in another light.

As D H says: It isn't different.

And that is the crime committed against us.

Does D H understand that you built a lifetime around the wish to deny this? And that it takes work to weed it out? Because it is twisted and hidden in everything we are?

To see us taken down. To see whether we are real. To shame us to please something in themselves.

To elevate themselves at our expense.

Yes.

D H: Stop it. Be your own man, Cedar. Trust your own self, Cedar

Cedar, I think you are your own man. As for accepting the world as it is, that is the problem. For me too. I do not like the world of betrayal and abuse. Maybe that is why I am so fixated on politics.

Everyone has to stand up. Right or wrong, everyone has to stand up.

True.

Does anyone need to know where I learned that? About responding with "What do you mean?"

D H? This is my favorite. For its neutrality. In whatever setting, it fits. Copa doesn't have any boundaries. What do you mean?

You do not know, Copa, what was the glue that held your mother's and your sister's relationship together.

Could it be that the betrayal your sister feels has to do with the mother's betrayal of her in your favor?

Yes, I think so.

You have nothing to fear in contacting your sister, now. How else can you know whether you are doing the right thing? She could be hating you. She could be missing you. There may be an opportunity for coming together. Or, there may be the ugliness I find in my family of origin.

Do you want to contact her, Copa?

I am afraid. M says, go ahead and call her. But you need to accept the consequences. You may want to talk to her. She has her own agenda. Whatever that might be.

 

[Copabanana]

As for accepting the world as it is, that is the problem. For me too. I do not like the world of betrayal and abuse. Maybe that is why I am so fixated on politics.

Even as a child, I would not watch cartoons...because I could not stand the meanness.

Even now, I stay away from movies and books about corruption...that do not have a hero to resolve it or a happy ending.

In my work I am immersed in tragedy and corruption and dirtiness. I think in my mind it is tolerable to me because I must feel I am playing the hero role, and making it right. And I do whatever is in my power to do so. I think you do stand up, Cedar. I do too.

If you are trying to stand up as the child you were vis a vis events of long ago where you did not have the power to do so, it will not work.

We do not have the power to do that and will never. There is never a better outcome to be found. It is what it is.

I think this is D H's frustration. There will never be a time where you can confront your past and stand up to it, because no 4 year old in the whole world could have. The only adult in the room was your mother and we know what happened there.

That is D H's frustration. It is if he sees you keep going back and back to a 8 alarm fire...with the hope you will resurrect yourself, the house and your family. He sees both of us sacrificing the life left that is growing less and less to fight a fire that already destroyed too much. And there is nobody to save. Nothing to save. It is already lost.

D H wants you to accept that.

I think we do accept it. To a point. I will speak of myself, here. When I began on this forum I could not entertain one bad thought about my mother because I had nullified them in the course of taking care of her, and mourning her.

I was desolate and depressed. The minute I began to tolerate remembering even a little bit of the reality of my mother, I felt better.

If we elevate these people to prized specimens we depreciate ourselves to victims.

Cedar, a choice must be made. Do we pick ourselves, our mates and our lives or our mothers?

Your great suffering, I think, is that you have not decided. If you decide to decide, you will be spared the great suffering of having to re-decide every memory, every day. Decide this. To decide for yourself, each time doubt arises.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am afraid. M says, go ahead and call her. But you need to accept the consequences. You may want to talk to her. She has her own agenda. Whatever that might be.

I was afraid too Copa, that my sister would call me as she had promise/threatened to do. By the time she did? We had done enough work here that I was no longer afraid.

When the time comes, you will know. Until then, there is nothing you need to do. We are healing at explosive rates.

That is job one.

If it were not a matter of the heart for me, it would be a fascinating thing, to see the colors change.

What we forget, I think, is how hard we have had to fight for every. single. inch.

I will tell D H you said "Thank you."

He will like that.

It was interesting to learn how similar D H and M takes on family, and on what happened to us, are.

I am happy for you that M is there with you. This is the other thing that has been happening to me as I heal, Copa. I am seeing my D H as if for the first time.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Copa. I am seeing my D H as if for the first time.

Good.

 

[Copabanana]

I feel shame because I keep coming down on the wrong side. I want to explain myself.

I believe our children are our children not our enemies.

I believe while we must declare and insist upon correct behavior for them and toward us, as parents we bear a greater responsibility to sustain and to recover relationships with our errant children.

I believe that as long as we live we will miss and need our children.

This does not mean that we should submit ourselves to abuse to be with them or to overlook their very real transgressions.

By writing this I feel sadness.

I feel sadness because my mother while she tried in her last years to make and sustain relationships with her children (who were difficult, but not that difficult) for many years did not fight for a relationship with me.

She acted like the wounded party. She wanted her terms. She wanted me to overlook really wrong things she did. She ignored the elephant in the room. I could not.

I think we cannot have it both ways. My Mother was the mother. I was not. She had the greater responsibility to act as the mother should. Think about the story Run Away Bunny.

We are still those mothers to our children. No matter how much they have become men and women who act in whatever way they act.

Again, I say, we do not accept their abuse. We state what is right. And restate it.

We also have a responsible to be there for them.

What am I not getting?

I guess part of it is that I do not know the backstory for many of us. Probably most of us. I do not know the specific agonies to which each parent has submitted. I only started here in mid April. I do not know a whole lot. I am questioning if it is correct to post on threads where I do not know the details.

Or whether the issue is the validity of my perspective.

 

[Copabanana]

Copa, have you ever heard of MIRC? They have three politics real time chat channels and I used to hang on all three of them to get my politics fix. Maybe you'd enjoy them. Very intelligent chatters, howeer the majority of conservative or libertarian and they can be mean to liberals

SWOT, I am thin-skinned, and fall apart when challenged. I fear I could not survive this MIRC website.

I am not a supporter of Hillary. I think she is like the wicked witch and is now dissolving into a puddle, because of her rigidity, sense of superiority and self-serving ambition. I do like Elizabeth Warren a lot, but Joe Biden most of all. I think he is a good person. A good man. Who stands on principal above all else.

I do have a misogynist streak, I know it about myself. I guess I have so long stood against my own strength...I have to always second guess myself, with respect to powerful women.

I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee, but I doubt she will be. I really do. Every day there is a louder crescendo of doubt and fear about the ramifications of her email server and continued defense of same.