Dear Anita,

Thank you for navigating my verbose and confused post.  You are right in that it must have been distressing to write this, as my frenzied nature was reflected in the grammar of the post.  Thank you for your patience.  You have many key points that I will highlight here and comment on.

The result was your genuine weakness.

Yes, my GENUINE weakness, brought out by her FAKE weakness.  Like a talented actress/manipulator evoking the true emotions of a sweet innocent being, using her acting technique to purge this authentic quality.

 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.

The role of being the strong one is draining, yes it is.  And yes, worst of all, it is all in vain.  Just as you used to use this term, all in vain – in regards to all my efforts to reason with my mother 2 years ago.  You used to say it is “all in vain” and it stuck with me, and truly helped.  Well this is the second portion of the “all in vain.” My taking on the strong role is quite foolish as it is all based on a lie.  It is not truly necessary to take on that role, and it was not appointed to me by any sane person for a true reason! Its not like the classic example of the eldest child having to take on the “strong role” because one parent passed away, creating more of a parenting role for that child.  It is not like the example in which a teenage pregnant girl had to take on the strong role as she was now a young mother.  It wasn’t that my mother was “mentally ill” and hospitalized often and so I had to take on this strong role to help with the household.

No, Anita! my “strong” role was BULLS*** !! strong for what? what is this socalled “strength” – it is just frenzied and draining behavior.  No productive strength, just torture, pain, and drain.