Dear Cali Chica:

What a post, my goodness, I am letting myself absorb this. I feel the upheaval, the distress, you expressed it so well.

Save yourself, save your life and keep the no contact resolution. When you were with your father on the phone and a patient was in trouble, a life or death kind of trouble, that could have been you.

Save yourself and do right by your husband. Save him too.

Listen to your parents’ recent input to you, read it well: “they never respected you”- don’t you see, no matter how hard you tried, they did not respect you all along.

“that I’m a terrible daughter”- don’t you see, no matter how hard you tried.

“and what bad have they done in this life to deserve this”- well, stop their perceived injustice, don’t give them more of “this”, more of what they perceive as bad for them.

“that God always helps them”- well they will always have that god and that community that holds tightly to the belief that one is to obey parents, no matter what.

“that God will punish me for this”- well, they have been doing god’s work for a long time, ever since you were born.

“because torturing parents is an ultimate sin”- no, betraying the trust of an innocent child is an ultimate sin. That is what they have done.

“One of the last things I heard is my mother screaming: I was saying to your father, if I knew that having a daughter would have been like this…we would have been better off having an abortion”- help your mother get “better off”, having a better life, by performing… sort of a retroactive abortion and abort yourself from her life. Help her this way.

Your parents are indeed cruel. I know cruelty and indeed, they are cruel.

May what you heard your mother say last, may it be the last you heard her say.

* It is a matter of time (and may have already  happened) before you feel guilty, before you get scared and distressed, before you consider calling them and apologizing and … well, it is only a matter of time. They know it and expect it.

Their community and most of society otherwise supports them because they are parents and nothing else matters.

When you feel that guilt, that is your insanity. I hope you do what it takes to no longer accommodate what is insanity, on your part. Be is psychotherapy at this point, be it posting here. Do what it takes.

anita