Dear Linarra:

I would like to thoroughly read and reply to your recent post in about 14 hours from now. For now I have a comment on this: “Mental illness make people do strange thing…”-

– unless a person is suffering a psychotic breakdown, he/ she is aware-enough of what is happening, this is why a violent parent beating their child stops short of hurting the child badly enough to kill the child, or badly enough to require hospitalization.. and why parents avoid beating their children in public (where child protection laws exist), etc.

I told you about my uncle early in your thread, that he asked me questions about my thoughts, my feelings, my opinions,  and it meant so much to me. Well, this uncle had a childhood about as extreme as my mother’s, and yet, he asked me those questions, and seems like he asked his children such questions too.. as they grew up to be (unlike me) very functional, from an early age.

One more thing, my mother, as mentally ill as she was (no less than yours, I imagine), told me that one time: “You think that I don’t know that what I am doing is wrong? I am not stupid, I know. But what are you going to do.. you have nowhere to go”!

anita