Dear Jana:

Thank you. I appreciate your sensitivity, this is indeed a painful topic and I feel some pain this very morning because of an event that happened last evening in real-life. I will elaborate on it later on, in this post.

“I can feel (and this is only my subjective feeling from the text) that you cannot leave her in your thoughts, let her go away from your life for good. Is it true?“- I used to think about her a lot. She used to be .. my center. For years now, I’ve been thinking about her very, very little. So, no, it’s not that I cannot leave her in my thoughts. What I can’t leave, because it’s impossible to leave/ undo/ reverse, is some of the damage she inflicted on me, with which I struggle.

I’ve suffered from Tourette Disorder since I was maybe 5 or 6 and have suffered from it every hour, every day of my entire life. Imagine feeling this physical tension in your body day in, day out, all day long, finding this or that muscle moving when you don’t want it to move, and the feeling is that of trying to stop the move (tic) and failing, so there’s a fight within/ tension. Imagine growing up being made fun of, because of these tics, feeling ashamed and wondering why I was such a freak of nature.

Although I tried my whole life, I wasn’t able to undo this disorder and there is no reason for me to believe that it is possible: my neurological-muscular connection has been irreversibly damaged. If you do a research, you will read that stopping tics for someone with Tourette’s is not possible.

So, although I left her in my thoughts, my neurological-muscular connection hasn’t and will not leave her. It was done and it can’t be undone.

More damage that was done and can’t be undone is ADD or ADHD as well as learning disabilities (often associated with Tourette’s), that although can be managed better and somewhat improved.. these too cannot be stopped/ be reversed.

Glad to report that my 30 years of OCD, in regard to physical compulsions, is over with (Yeah!) Also, I no longer fit the Major Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Anorexia I was diagnosed with over the years. Although I do.. obsessively count calories in- calories out every day. So, healing was done and continues to take place, for which I am grateful.

“with my lone wolf personality and tendencies to run away from bad people I would completely reject her and wouldn’t give her a space in my mind or heart“- this is an important point that I will be making here, and it is important for me that you understand, so please try.. Here it is: she inserted herself into my brain-body before I had the ability- and no child has this ability- to reject her/ protect myself.  I don’t think about her, I suffer the consequences of what she did to me when I didn’t yet have a self separated from her.

I don’t think I ever shared this much as I do today with you (on a public forum, I know): parents damage their children, more often than I wish it happened.. I wish it never happened, but this one thing I am telling you, which I have never told anyone in my whole life: the extent of the damage, the extent of the physical discomfort (Tourette’s) and emotional pain (shame, guilt, acute loneliness, acute interpersonal/ social deprivation was so acute, so immense. that I don’t know how a person can still be alive after years of this.

There are certain books and movies that clicked with me, as in telling my story: Stolen Lives is one. The movie Awakening is another: people waking up at an older age from being catatonic for decades. The movie Seven, when the bad man said, as far as I remember, paraphrased: I am not allowing him (the character played by Brad Pit) to live, I am allowing him to live the life I allow him to live.

What happens to a child, to a little girl, when her mother finds pleasure in hurting and harming her little girl? When it’s not her ignorance alone, her lack of education, her limitations that hurt and harm her daughter, but her own desire to hurt and harm?

I don’t think that people normally understand this point, The Pleasure Factor of a mother hurting her daughter.

I am trying to weaken the power of this factor by expressing it here, by elaborating on it, if I may, more than I ever did (and I don’t even know what I am about to type next, trigger warning just in case it’s needed)-

– for her, I was not a child, I was an adult,  a combination of all the adults that have hurt her. The name of her game was not parenting, but taking revenge, while appearing outwardly, like a good, kind person.

So, she’d be a great hostess for others, she’d buy me toys and my favorite cake, show me some affection.. until it came time for Revenge: acidic words thrown at my face, feasts thrown at my body, hitting, saying: “You think I am stupid? I will not break your bones so that evil-you you can get me in (legal)  trouble!”

“You think I am stupid? You think that I don’t know that I am (doing) wrong? But what can you do? You have nowhere to go!”

In her two sentences above, there was no empathy, do not be mistaken: she was angry at me for thinking that I was thinking “my mother is stupid!“, which I was not thinking because all I was.. was terrified. But see, I have to explain myself right here, to defend myself from her accusation.

These experiences, right above, are not such that I am normally thinking about, it’s things I bring up (again) because I am trying to heal further.

“But I feel that she really hurt you so bad that it is very difficult to let her go. (?)“- it’s not about letting her go, it’s about me trying to heal from the damage she had caused me.

“When you faced her, how did you feel? Was it liberating?“- when I stopped her from hitting me (in my early 20s), it wasn’t liberating. I was upset, disappointed as I thought to myself: that’s all she got? This is all I had to do all these years to stop her from hitting me? It was that easy, and I didn’t do it?

“Did you ever tell her how you feel/felt about her?“- my last gift of mercy to her is to not let her know. If it’s at all possible for her to hold in awareness anything I say.

I will now tell you about last evening: I was at the local taproom. The server poured me a third glass of wine before my bod could handle it. Before I knew it, I drank it and .. I remember little of what happened next. I was told this morning that I became belligerent and used the F word repeatedly, something that I NEVER do, something I criticize others fordoing. I was mortified to hear it, couldn’t believe it. My ANGER, my decades-long suppressed anger erupted to the surface.

In more details: there was a competition for a gift basket that including some hats and whatnot. This guy won the basket, and I gave him a hard time, saying something like (I am paraphrasing from what I was told I said): I never get to win anything! Why don’t I get to be a winner at anything!!!

Next, the guy gave me one of the hats in the basket he won, and I said: So, now I am a F*** winner!”

Next, I was taken home feeling sick, closing my eyes, trying to not feel sicker than I was already feeling (this I remember). Next, I went straight to bed, couldn’t brus my teeth or change clothing or anything. Next, I woke up remembering nothing, wondering what happened, if anything..

And all the above, my post yesterday about my ANGER, it was part of what was to take place.. the anger, such a powerful emotion that is difficult for me to encounter, to address.. to.. what do I do with it, with this anger at having been mistreated sadistically, of my life stolen, all the years, decades of loneliness, uninterrupted acute loneliness and pain.

anita

Dear Jana (J):

“By the way, did you enjoy Thanksgiving Day? Do you have some traditions you follow on this day? 🙂 I’ve always been interested in American culture.“- yes, I did. Traditions: turkey and good people. I was around good people yesterday. Not perfect (including myself, lol), but good.

“This is really perfect for EFT… try to tap the feelings connected to the specific memories away. It does take time and it can be emotionally difficult, but it really works”-

– okay, let’s take a specific memory: she (my mother) is looking at me with those eyes of hers, no bit of green in those eyes, no bit of yellow, no color, no bit of softness in her face. She is looking at me with those hard, hateful eyes, not a hundredth ounce of empathy in them, and she says, with a harsh tone, the harshest, blood-chilling harshness: “I will murder you!”

And there I am FROZEN, Fear-Frozen. Now, tap, tap, just tapped the center of my head. Tapped the face, but nothing feels right other than tapping the center of the head: Tap (Thaw the fear), Tap, Thaw the fear. Tap, tap, tap, I feel a bit sleepy, an unexpected sleepy feeling.

“I understand this that we have to accept our fear, it is a part of us, and we should try to offer peace and comfort to our fear. By accepting the fear, it becomes smaller“- tap, tap, tap, my fear is falling asleep.

“Sometimes when I feel fear or I am unsure of myself, I imagine myself as a little girl, the scared child (yes, I have her in myself, too.) and I hold her and kiss her and tell her something sweet and nice in my head… I have a picture of me when I was about 5“- little girl anita, little forgotten girl: I remember you now. I remember you at five, I remember you!

“I remember you wrote that you used to see a therapist. Do you still see him/her?“- no, I left the state where I had therapy with him, and so the therapy ended. I don’t plan to see any other therapist in the (new) state where I’m in. My therapy is right here, in these forums of tiny buddha, and right now.. you are my therapist, Jana (not a professional one, I understand). Because I trust you to be a good person.

“What also helps me now is that I have someone who respects me and loves me the way I am. I am trying to shift my focus from those who didn’t give me love in the past (or now) to those who give it to me. I was wondering if your husband can be this support and love to you now?“- I keep expecting him to scream at me, although he never did. I keep seeing disapproval in his beautiful blue eyes, although he has been most supportive.

I used to hear loud screaming. Now it’s quieter. All a reminder of who has been the most powerful person in little-girl anita’s life: “I will MURDER you“- was her promise.

Tap, tap, tap, center of the head. Tap, tap, tap..  sh… sh..

I can’t help but feel this ANGER at her, an anger silenced throughout the years by people who repeated the biblical command: you must honor your father and your mother.. no matter what.. a strong cultural command, if not a religious command (where I grew up, grew in, that is).

Yes, honor her desire to kill me, to murder me..

No.

Tap, tap, tap, center of the head is the only place my tapping feels like it’s working.

Oh, I forgot to share this with you, Jana: none of my efforts to help her, none of my love for her stopped her from passionately running toward me, not so to hug me gently (gentleness was not the name of her game), but running passionately to hit me, arms extended forward, hands preparing to hit. Nothing stopped her but on that one occasion: I was in my 20s, she ran toward me, in the small living room, in the small apartment, running with.. suffering in her face and passion too, passion to hit me.

I extended my arms toward her, for the first time, and I grabbed her hands in mine (what an icky feeling, to have her hands in mine), and I extended my arms  just enough force to stop her moving toward me.

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, her hands melted in my hands, becoming weak, and she withdrew, never attempting to hit me again, never again.

See, it was not Love that made her withdraw and no longer try to hit/ murder me. it was Force, my physical Force that made her stop.

With some people, with  a lot of people, it’s not love that makes them stop their aggression.. it’s force.

Tap, tap, tap. Thank you, Jana. I hope that this is not too intense for you. It’s just that life is such that.. confronting the true nature of things is necessary.

anita