Anita,

I hope you’re having a good, peaceful day.

it’s good enough to form the intent to write spontaneously. (If you put any pressure on yourself to write spontaneously, it will not happen).

I agree. Good to know, thank you.

Fast forward, she is now the adult, I am the child, guess what position she wants for herself: the abused and powerless or the abusing and powerful?

The will to not be the abused is very strong, but I think the will to be the abusing and powerful is much stronger for them (both).

“… she had the chance to move out to Canada with her high school boyfriend … but could not as she was already married …“- I don’t know what part of what you found out was true, if any (is it something she told you?) But if it is true, I doubt that she stayed with you and with her husband at the time because she was a devoted mother and wife.

I know this story only because she told me this, no other source. Now I think she didn’t go because she just met the guy she later had an affair with (around the same time-when I was 6). She probably made a choice only because of him. I never thought of the real reason she didn’t go! Seems completely plausible.

“She just hated me“- and she just hated me.

I wish we both didn’t have this feeling.

 A 3rd Win-Win/ Mutual Respect/ Shared Power… was not an option they had a personal experience with.

I like that you mentioned the 3rd option, Anita. “Mutual Respect/ Shared Power” sounds good. I think I will be coming back to that thought in my mind.

yes, consistently assuming wrong, then insisting that her wrong assumption is the truth, and that their accused person’s honest and true protest ..is a lie.

I just remembered how she sometimes got text messages on her phone and she immediately looked at me with questioning, angry look, as if she wanted to ask “What again?” (as if I sent it to bother her).

I had a feel of how I felt coming “home” from school (home didn’t feel like home).

indeed. A place where you lived but not a home, not a family anyone should be raised in.

 reads like she was replaying a scene from her childhood.. only, like my mother, she had the adult role this time.

Must have felt so satisfying.

 thank you. I needed this validation. Part of my lifelong emotional dissociation has been to emotionally understate the abuse that was done to me by my mother (and by others).

You’re welcome, Anita. Part of the will to survive, as I see it. We tell ourselves it’s not a big deal because otherwise it would break our hearts..or we get used to scary things and see them as normal, perhaps.

 just in case you need the assurance: you are not a burden to me. The opposite is true: you are a resource, you are helping me! Also, neither one of us is a fool… and if I ever feel offended by something you say, maybe misunderstanding what you said, I will check with you and ask you if my understanding was correct or not.

Thank you Anita, that’s very kind of you to explain that. Every time I read your reply post to me, I never doubt it. I know it’s the thought that occurs, comes to my mind. Has nothing to do with me, and nothing to do with the other person.