Dear Cali Chica:

I am trying to understand what happened that day, just the facts (I can tell how distressing it was for you to tell the story above because of the syntax, spelling and grammatical mistakes, unusual to you): There was a fight between your mother and you. Your intent was to visit your parents’ home the day of the fight, or the day after. You called her all that morning but she didn’t pick up the phone. You later drove to her house but it was empty. You figured that your mother was at your aunt’s, so you drove there, and indeed, she was there, “sitting there looking like she had just gone through labor or something, distraught, dark circles under her eyes, hardly able to walk… sitting on one couch with a blanket meekly over her body staring out into the world looking like she was hit by a tornado”. Next, you tried to reason with her, got so tired and distressed yourself, and sat on another couch, in “slightly better condition, but terrible nonetheless”. Then your husband entered the aunt’s house.

Your point in telling this story is that your mother left to the aunt’s house and put on a big show of suffering, with the message being: my daughter is hurting me, persecuting me, and therefore I had to seek asylum from her. At first, entering the aunt’s house, you tried to reason with her (“I recall reasoning her”), but quickly you “began to feel as crazy as her… As frail and tortured as her… I too felt like I wanted to crawl into this couch, and lay there under a blanket waiting for my Savior as well” –

– your mother in this example, and in all of her poor-me-I-am-frail-and-tortured shows, pretended to be weak, but truth is, she was strong. By strong I mean, she wasn’t genuinely weak. There are a whole lot of people who exert force on others by pretending to be weak/ appearing to be weak, they lie. Yes, they are weak in other contexts, but not in the context of putting on a show. In your example, your mother purposefully carried on a show of weakness so to hurt you as you witnessed it and got involved in the show. Her “frail and tortured” show is her weapon, it is an exertion of force.

What happened in this example, is that she aimed her weapon at you (not answering the phone, leaving for the aunt as an act of seeking asylum, getting her aunt on her side, then the show when you entered the aunt’s house) and she succeeded, she hit the target and injured you, so you ended up on the other couch, really weak, genuinely weak.

It is not that she infected your brain (“infecting your brain”) as you suggested, as in infecting you with her weakness, because she was not weak there, on the sofa. There was no passive infection of weakness. It was a strong person aiming a weapon and hitting her target successfully. The result was your genuine weakness.

The second part of your post is about a get together Saturday, a going away party, the participants were not family or people very close to you, and you were “so relaxed at the entire event”. You wrote: “I am easily distracted when someone close to me somewhere, quite fixated on what they are doing or what they want. Especially if it is my sister “-

– in your childhood home, in the context of you and your mother, she pretended to be weak and you took on the role of the Strong One, Super Cali Chica. On the other hand, your sister took another role-  your mother’s role perhaps (?)

About the Saturday party, you wrote: “I was able to engage with other people without being outward the whole night.. my energy was not distracted and focused on everyone else but me.. it was just a simple good time”- the role of being the strong one is connected to that outward focus and it drains you. Worse of all, it is based on a lie, a pretense of weakness.

You wrote more, made excellent observations but I don’t want to move away from my current point: you took on the role of the Strong Cali Chica based on a lie, a performance, a pretense of weakness by your mother.

This does not mean that your mother was strong overall, that her life makes sense, that she didn’t suffer. She did suffer, but in the context of her interactions with you, she performed weakness, she pretended weakness. She lied to you.

Your Strong Cali Chica role is therefore based on a lie. And now, it is best that you allow yourself to be weak and strong, both. And watch for the people who will perform weakness so to take advantage of that Strong CC role.

anita