Dear Sann:

Following reading only the first three paragraphs of your post: Thank you for your concern that I don’t get triggered by sharing about my mother. It is okay for you to ask and for me to answer honestly. I am afraid of being triggered. I am afraid of the raw feelings I felt before, feelings that were too intense and therefore overwhelmed me and over time severely damaged me, hanging on to my neurons reeking havoc. I am not able, nor do I want to feel that intense fear responsible for so much suffering in my life.

i will sahre what I can- I will try to keep it short and not elaborate and when feeling uncomfortable, I will stop. I may share from a detached, intellectual viewpoint, perspective so to protect myself, but do not misunderstand: the emotions have been intense and I still fear their intensity.

Guilt has been persistent in my five decades and caused me immense suffering, guilt about my belief that I had hurt her. In my mind’s eye, I saw her as my victim. I saw her as the innocent little girl that was hurt …by me. The guilt was enormous. she told me of her sad life story repeatedly, how people hurt her throughout her life and still at the present and that I was adding to her pain. She experessed her pain histrionically with intense crying spells, wailing for hours, talking about suicide, threatenting to commit suicide right there and then at times. I split from myself sometime along the way. I didn’t see myself as being hurt. i saw her as the one hurt. Her hurt was all that mattered. I lost myself and didn’t know it until recently. I was sick for five decades, immense suffering. Now I see that although she did suffer, she was not the only one suffering- I SUFFERED TOO. I WAS THERE. And I saw that SHE inflicted suffering on me, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. I found out it was her responsibility to be a good enough parent to me, that it was not my responsibility to ne her parent, that I was not her parent, that i was not the adult, that she was not the child. I was the child.

And I am getting myself back, that child that I banished for allegedly inflicting massive amounts of pain on her.

I simply BELIEVED what was not true. As long as I didn’t see the truth, I suffered.

This is it, now for the rest of your post: I will read it later and post another comment, a couple of hours or so, most likely.
anita