Dear Linarra:

It is now 5:29 am my time and before I got up from bed I thought about the last post I sent you and thoughts came to my mind that I wanted to tell you. I did not read your recent post, not a word of it. I scrolled down to write you this message before reading any of your response to my prison analogy. After typing out my thoughts I will go up the page, copy your recent message and respond to it part by part.

My thoughts: at first, your mother was the prison official/ the Guard and you and your siblings were the Inmates. At one point, your mother told you to take her place with your siblings, to be in charge of them once she supposedly killed herself. Fast forward, you are now Guard, and your mother is more like an Inmate. You are in charge, you are in a position of power.

I don’t know a thing about the household dynamics in your home, who makes the rules regarding cleaning, preparing meals, etc., but I think/ have the feeling that somehow you are in charge/ in position of power, as the eldest sibling, the one handed the power by her mother long ago.

Your mother is a rebelling Inmate at this point: she behaves much of the time, but sometimes she acts out (as real inmates in real prisons do, verbally abusing the guards, even hitting the guards), becomes verbally abusive, she even hit you, but in the context of your home, you are Guard. Outside your home- in the outside world- your position of power is taken away from you.

Power is inside the home, No Power on the outside.

And now, I will go up and copy your message…

“I wonder if the sky got any clearer where you live since last time“- yes, last evening it was clear, the sky was blue, light blue, what a relief!

“I am anxious about having maybe upset you or made you uncomfortable. Because people are usually uncomfortable and dislike what they don’t understand“- yes, I was .. angry somewhat, nothing intense, when I sent you the last message, for the same reason you stated here: people dislike what they don’t understand. You are very perceptive, I am impressed, but not surprised.

“The pain and sadness were… meaningless, unbearable… So I had to get rid of the feeling of tragedy, I couldn’t bear it..  and feeling them I would feel too like her.. So from here came the laughs… Laughing at things.. participated in the numbing (which felt more peaceful), and eventually, it made me believe reality wasn’t awful enough for me to deserve help“- this makes sense. I remember having laughing fits as a teenager or in my 20s, a release. But never at or about my mother.

“Just in case you may have interpreted it that way, I will make it clear: I never found anything you told about your mother funny. It would be inappropriate. We’re not in that kind of dynamic here and I never made the mistake or confusion“- although I didn’t have the thoughts you pointed to right here in this paragraph, I was disappointed (and angry) at the thought that maybe your mother was not as scary or tragic as mine, maybe not even close, because I could find nothing funny about her behavior. It was as if, in my mind, you took away our commonality, our parallel experience!

“I do not think of family as a good thing anymore. My family also evoke to my mind the feelings/words ‘dead’, ‘rotten’, ‘mental illness’, ‘self-destruction’. In that aspect, she fits very much the definition of my family“- part of my disappointment/ anger was about your use of the word Family in a positive way when your mother is included in the word. It was just too different from my experience. Plus, it indicated something strange, as in, how can it be.. given our shared, parallel experiences of childhood..

“There are times it gets very scary. But at the moment, if my actions and emotions are under control, this environment is… manageable. My mother leaves me alone most of the time because I behave right enough. And I appear to have no life, so I am of no interest to her. And when she acts up I know what to do to be less affected“- going back to my prison analogy, here it reads that you are a smart Inmate, careful to not get any attention from your mother, the Guard.

“My mother is a danger, and she is scary. I know that. But I fear not for me, I fear for others, those who have no self-defense and immunity from her and this family environment and who will hurt more“- your mother is Guard then, dangerous and scary, but you don’t fear for yourself because you have “self-defense and immunity from her”, while others don’t. I’ll keep this point in mind as I continue.

“When I was at university and came back home during the short vacations, I would always suffer from my mother’s presence more, fear more, and regret coming back home, because being out there makes me lose my adaptation to the harm and chaos… how impossible it is for me to be adapted to both the outside world and my home without having a mental breakdown“- being away from her for good (no visits) was and is the right thing for you, if you had the irl social support that you would need outside.

“The ‘prisonization’ comparison you made seems to fit my experience of it. Even this part: ‘the official authority is.. perhaps an inmate herself, a combination of authority and inmate. Maybe there is some solidarity and an inmate code that you experience with her as well.’ I would add, maybe, the outside world was an authority that we would hide from and protect against. Those would be these times when my mother was also an inmate instead of the main authority. She would incite fear of the outside world to make us build solidarity with her“- I missed this part in my analogy/ comparison, your mother, the abusive authority in the home presented herself as the victim, the one abused by the outside world.

“The remains of the person inside me don’t feel good about being an object… Emotions lead to actions. And I am lacking in my emotions… The first time I found the tiny buddha forum, I was already exploring that issue. The difficulty of feeling (or recognize?) emotions. I knew my absence of motivation was related to it… within my current situation there will be no change if I do not initiate it, and I have difficulties feeling motivated to initiate. So it seems I’ll have to force my way through it“-

– But how will you force your way through it when you are not motivated to do so… something about you will need to start to care, to get un-numbed. The object (“being an object”) will need to come to life again (like it did when you were at university and had the social support/ help of a friend).

No doubt that leaving your mother and never living with her or visiting with her again is what is right for you, but you need irl social support/ help to make it happen.

I wonder if living with your mother.. if you feel that you are protecting her from the outside world, and I wonder if you would feel guilty if you leave her (I am exploring ideas, if this is too much and too fast, let me know and take your time).

I do hope you are less or not anxious like you were earlier, are you?

anita