Dear Anita,

Thank you for your detailed input again. I won’t reply to everything, I’ll just tell the things that are coming to my mind, and I’ll see if I have more to add tomorrow.

“Is it appropriate to feel empathy or sympathy for a person who is hurting you? What would happen to a deer who feels empathy for the mountain lion approaching the deer for food? … it is not appropriate for a victim to feel empathy and be influenced by empathy for her/ his victimizer.”

At least this is clear. I’ll keep it in mind for next time. Thankfully my self-questioning is less painful than it used to be when I was younger and felt her accusation like a vivid truth. Now the self-questioning is lighter, and more out of curiosity of reaching a true understanding than out of distress.

“Clearly, you are having a difficult childhood. Your difficult childhood is not in the past. It is still happening. Three children (2 girls and a boy) are still living with their mother, living the lives she allows them to live.”

We have a bit more power than when we were kids though. But yeah this is a just slight upgrade from our childhood.

“Question is, why isn’t there a lock on the inside of your bedroom door so that she cannot enter your room whenever she wishes, and why is there no lock on the inside of the bathroom door, so that she cannot enter the bathroom while you are showering.”

Actually, there is a lock. I just didn’t think about it because it isn’t on my door, but my sister’s. We live in a separate building from the main house and the entrance of this building leads to my sister room. We have a key we mostly use when we leave or when my sister really feel like keeping my mother out when she’s crazy and had trespassed her room a little too much. But that’s about it… Mostly because it easily gets annoying to lock-unlock every time we need to access the house.

The bathroom also has a sort of primitive lock but it is only used by my brother when he’s showering, I believe. All the girls of this house don’t use in case anyone needs to use the sink or retrieve something, because there are too many cases of bad timing. Patience isn’t always a quality everyone has in this family anyway. Mostly it isn’t a problem because we don’t care much about looking at each other.

I guess it gets more uncomfortable when my mother uses this tacit rule that allows people to enter when they have something necessary to do just to… have a talk. This is especially unnecessary since she’s already used to talk to me when I’m showering since her bedroom is directly connected to the bathroom. But whatever intimacy isn’t a thing I’ve been taught, just respecting others people’s intimacy, mine really have to have purposeful and ill-meaning invasion to feel violated. Thankfully she never touches me when I bathe, and when she entered to talk to me she was only focused on herself.

It probably doesn’t change anything, I felt like giving precisions about those points because there are subtleties, but you can ignore that if it doesn’t bring new input.

“My summary today: The danger for you has been and still is inside, not outside. Your adaptation to the inside of your home has been so effective that the danger for you feels like it is outside. The empty shell is not completely empty, but it/you need help to fill that shell with more of you.”

This summary makes sense to me.

““Healing and becoming functional” is not possible when living in these abusive circumstances.”

I understand your point. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to change those circumstances. Leave sure, but I don’t feel up to it without a plan and at least a bit of motivation, and coping mechanisms/support that would work under the new circumstances.

I’m still too much of a ‘nothing’ to be able to get away. I need to gather energy and courage, and well those things are rare in this context. And the few time I go out it isn’t exactly giving more energy. Sometimes it even depresses me more.

I guess we’re reaching a point where we’re going round in circles. I’ve been on this loop for quite a while, I cannot predict what will break it. I am patient though. It could be a flaw, if I was impatient I would be more courageous/reckless, there would be more probability of change. But my adaptation made me patient. And I’m just stuck in a vicious circle for now.

Now I wrote my answer, I don’t think I will have anything to add tomorrow. There’s only so much to tell about all of that.

Have a good afternoon,

Linarra