Dear Kyle:

You (19) shared that your adoptive mother adopted you before you were born. You lived with both your parents for some time, then following their separation, your mother moved back to the state where she grew up. Your father had one weekend a month to visit you in the state where you live with your mother, but “he never did“, and sometimes you had to cancel your visits to him.

Some of the time when you lived with your mother, it was just you and her; at other times, there were “outside influences” in the home: two or more stepdads, and other people. At home and/ or elsewhere, you were “always shot down and ostracized” for being you.

In middle school and in high school, you were bullied and otherwise rejected because of how you looked or sounded or something about your personality, “sometimes I tried too hard to keep a friendship going and that’s what killed them“, you shared. You felt like a social outcast, a social pariah.

Your mother always supported your relationship with your father, and you “always wanted to see more of my dad...(but) the times I saw him were far apart… felt like a metaphorical eternity“. During a Thanksgiving visit to your father’s home when you were 12, your father coerced you into filing false abuse charges against your mother by promising you that you “could move in with him, go to the same school his girlfriend’s kids went, hang out with him more“.

You shared that you struggled through college, that you are not happy with how you look and how you feel, that you “seem to lie automatically… it just happens… I feel I do not have integrity… I tend to lie to anyone and everyone including myself… I have been told I can be fake sometimes, acting strong so others can lean on me is how it’s usually portrayed“, and you “just want to be a better person“.

As to the nature of your lies, you shared about the following: (1) you participated, at 12, as a result of being coerced by your father, in filing false abuse charges against your mother, (2) “a case of pornography… addiction when I was younger“, (3) in your first year of college, you dropped a course and failed another, but told your mother that you were doing fine, (4) following “a ton of little mistakes… I don’t listen to what’s being asked, I do things not in the right way or order, and so on… (in context) of a family business… wasting… for a business, time is money“.

As to the motivation of your lies: you made up lies “to either protect (your mother) from what I do or to make myself image look better…  not wanting to show who I am… not worthy of love“.

You wrote: “Over the years she has grown rather tired of my constant blunders and lies, which brings out her anger more and more. She doesn’t hit things or anything violent like that… She is the best mom I can ask for, she is just tired of this and I want to make sure I make my last chance count” –

-Your mother gave you a “last chance“?

– My input: you wrote that your mother adopted you, not that your parents adopted you… just her. You described a father who has not been motivated to visit you and be in your life, a manipulative man… quite cold-hearted. No wonder your allegiance has been to your mother.

You feel guilty in regard to your mother, but you are not guilty, in my understanding.

“Over the years she has grown rather tired of my constant blunders and lies” – what about her blunders?

Has she always told you the truth when you needed the truth, when you deserved it?

anita

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