The image of covering the eyes stayed with me. To explore it not with .. over abundance of analysis but with the sky in mind:

I was so terrified of losing my mother (as she expressed suicide thinking histrionically), that I instinctively closed my 👀 and 👂s and all connections to the outside of me, and withdrew inward so much that there was no visible sky that I could sense or connect to.

I just 🚫 life, minimized it, stayed as small as possible, a non- entity, the living dead.

My life-sky minimization was instinctive, decided for me before I could choose it.

And now, I am inhaling and exhaling the sky because I am no longer dreadfully threatened. There’s been a long pause ⏸️ in the terror, and I find myself having a bit of life left:

The imagery of running on open fields of green grass, the memory of dancing under the sky to live music (last Dec last year), the many beautiful socialization interactions in the taproom that closed less than 3 weeks ago.. these are “the sky”- free from shame.

Red wine 🍷 has been very helpful.

It’s been beautiful, Peter, the awakening, the spreading the fingers covering my eyes and seeing-hearing-sensing the 🎶 🎵, the sky 💙

Anatta 😊

Hey Peter:

“I wonder what you saw?”

If you’re referring to Copilot’s input 7 posts ago, 4/24)-

I reread some of it just now, and what crossed my mind was that my 🧠- in its frenzy to feel in control by analyzing and making perfect rational sense of things- wanted to analyze even the sky, to fit it into my personal analysis, to own it (ha-ha).

As to the question being the answer (“Why did the peace go away?”)- I am lost at the moment.

I will try: the peace went away because a part of me separated from the sky, looking at it from an observer POV, separated from the observed.

It’s the separated observer that’s doing all that analysis.

If I am one with the observed, there’s no place for analysis?

(I wrote the above following reading only your first 2 paragraphs, not yet having read beyond, scrolling up and down using my 📱)

3rd paragraph: the peace went away because questions arose by the separated (analytical) self aka the observer.

4th paragraph and on: “We ‘lose’ the Sky…”- Yes, I lost perceived connection to the sky, felt isolated, apart, a dreadful alone-ness.

“His face reappear that was hidden behind his fingers”- my dreadful aloneness has been all along fingers covering my sky-face.

The tragedy of losing ourselves and the comedy of finding ourselves- comedy because we were always there, all it takes is removing the fingers covering our eyes.

Hmm.. Covering the eyes because the sights were unbearable.

The faces we take on so to survive, the masks..

I need to process this message. It will take some time and probably a series of posts to follow 🙏

✨️✨️✨️ Anita

Hey 👋 Confused: I’ll answer in a few hours

Well, didn’t get to be at the computer this morning, so I’ll continue to process here (on my AI-less 📱):

First, it amazes me still how comprehensive the trauma the girl 👧 Anita suffered at the hands of her mother.

It is as if my mother read about every type of child abuse and decided to implement every single type.

One of the types has been Intellectual Abuse (IA, if you will). Gaslighting was part of it. She V.I.S.C.I.O.S.L.Y attacked my confidence in my thinking.

* In viciously, I am referring to her PASSION when attacking me. Her attacks were far from neutral. It was something she was very emotionally invested in doing.

So much IA that I spent most of my adult life doubting my own thoughts, correcting them- on a moment to moment, regular basis, silently, in my own head.

Fast forward to my communication with Neverdyed- I spent hours and hours trying to get my thinking just RIGHT in regard to analyzing her. And when she continued to be unclear in my estimation, she was gaslighting me: telling me I was thinking WRONG.

I was never as clear- in my mind- about the effects of the severe AI abuse I suffered growing up (in), as I am in these last 2 days following rereading my communication with Neverdyed.

Because my IA was trigerred back then, in this thread, that was what I focused on: intellectual understanding.

Empathy and emotional attune-ment were a far 2nd priority to the # 1 priority: fighting for my intellectual integrity.

And this is why my replies to members in general were heavy on intellectual analysis: studying and restudying members posts, producing long, dense analytical essays that were low on emotional attune-ment.

I was fighting all along for intellectual integrity: for trusting my own severely abused intellectual abilities.

I was relieved, as I was rereading the exchange of so long ago, that Tee chose to communicate with Neverdyed, taking on a much gentler and saner attitude than mine, being much more attuned to Neverdyed.

I am glad I was not Neverdyed’s last taste of tiny buddha.

I may or may not (probably will) add input by AI on my communication with Neverdyed, when I use the computer again.

On a very side note, I always wondered about the screen name Neverdyed: if it’s about never dyeing one’s hair? I didn’t ask because I had more pressing needs in mind- trying to resurrect confidence in my thinking mind (brain) 😞

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍 Anita

Wow, Confused: I’m amazed 👏 by my own insight-

Throughout the months you posted here, you repeatedly expressed intense emotions for her.. yet, your focus has been on the times you felt nothing.

And therefore you presented the situation as feeling nothing.. Just because you didn’t feel so much.. all of the time.

👀🐉🐇✨️ (me)

Oh, yes, being so focused on the “intensity/ infatuation” scent, you don’t see, or overlook.. I’m getting close.. ? Help me here, Confused (if the 🌙 🦉 is awake)

I spent some time on the 🖥 and will present the study with AI ( something that was not available to me back in 2020-21, the time of my communication with Neverdyed) tomorrow morning, when I am back to the computer.

For now, using my 📱, I want to process what I can without the use of AI:

As I reread my communication with Neverdyed, I was horrified by my almost zero attunement and almost exclusively clinical, analytical tone.

I sound so much like I don’t want to sound like: a “therapist” who is ignorant of the ABC of psycho therapy (attunement first, validate feelings first.. safety first)

Horrified by how corrective and directive I sound, and wondering how many people were turned off by my attitude and style- not only in this thread, by in many other threads- I was almost overwhelmed a little while ago).

On the other hand, I realize that I must be emotionally healthier, less consumed by toxic shame- to make it possible for me to see where I went wrong, so many times, and not collapse.

Why did Neverdyed lack of clarity (due to English not being her fluent language and due to being very emotionally conflicted (see the title of her thread)?

And why did I spend hours and hours rereading and analyzing her words 2010-21, again and again?

Because of an ongoing experience I forgot: my endless efforts to make sense of my mother words and claims and accusations- and trying to have a clear communication with her- with zero success.

I think I was excited when I discovered- as a teenager- psychology and self- help books, and I rushed to tell her about what I read, hoping for a meeting of the minds with my own mother.

But no matter how hard and long I tried- there was absolutely no meeting of the minds.

Fast forward, clarity is a life line, and when Neverdyed wasn’t clear, I did what I did with my mother: I invested many hours and energy trying to create a clear communication between me and her.

Unlike my mother, Neverdyed was kind and gracious and responsive.. but she wasn’t clear enough and rational clarity has been my number 1 need because I lacked it so severely with my mother.

My mother attacked my rational thinking as something bad and insisted on her no-sense, crazy making thinking being right.

My number one need was to trust my rational, analytical thinking and that’s why, in my communication with Neverdyed, it was my first and maybe only priority.

What’s the word.. when a person totally denies what is truly evident and doing so insistently- that’s what my mother did. Like let’s say, the sky is clearly blue and she’d say it’s grey.. oh, yes, gaslighted is the word.

So, when Neverdyed wad unclear or vague (as she was), I reacted to it as if she was gas lighting me.

B BACK in the 🌄

🤔 Anita