Alessa to anita, May 23, 10:18 pm: “It wasn’t you personally who was being labelled. She even didn’t like any people. She didn’t trust anyone. So in her mind it would be all children are bad. All people are bad. What chance did you have being raised like that?

“You were just a child that she was responsible for. In her mind, the old fashioned mindset she kept you alive. That is the extent of her responsibility. Job done, child raised. There are higher standards of care these days and the pain the traditional methods cause is being acknowledged.

“People who hate themselves often cannot bring themselves to truly care about others. She was very sick and it wasn’t your fault. You were just there on the receiving end of it all. A terrifying experience for a child… It is a hard experience growing up being punished for simply existing.

“Your mother can’t relabel, but you can. You can acknowledge your inherent goodness and acknowledge that she was wrong about you. It wasn’t your fault that she couldn’t take care of you properly. Those were her mistakes and hers alone.

It is okay to still love her. It is your truth. She was extremely troubled and wrong. She kept you alive and it wasn’t enough. The pain she caused ignoring rest of your needs, ignoring your emotions. Ignoring you. Hurting you… You deserved so much more. To be loved, cherished, protected and seen. ❤️”-

– no one understood me better than you understand, Alessa I am crying, can hardly see the scr3een.

anita

* I am here, in my thread, to continue healing, little by little. Journaling—especially stream-of-consciousness writing—works for me. That doesn’t mean I believe you, dear reader, should approach healing in the same way I do.

If what I share here troubles or bothers you, please feel free to skip reading it.

Whatever comes to mind this Friday night:

In the Core of me, it has always been my Ima (my mother).

I suppose I never quite separated- individuated from her in due time, so she is still- and forevermore in the core of me.

All of my teenage and adult life I tried to get rid of her, to remove her from that space in the core of me.

But too late- she had already cemented herself in The Core of Me-

– something that couldn’t be reversed.

I have to live with this reality of what was done and cannot be undone.

The window of opportunity to separate- individuate had closed long ago.

So here I am: no point in.. trying to get rid of her, to remove her from my core where she cemented herself with countless histrionic, shaming, guilt-ing sessions of “poor me, evil you (evil-anita)” sessions.

I can’t get rid of her, too late.

So, all I can do- being true to myself- is to love her, from afar.

She is in the core of me, and there is NOTHING I can do to change this fact, this happening that was cemented long ago.

My love for her, a burning love is still ongoing-

This is who I am, and I can’t be anyone, anything else.

It’s a psychological thing.

It’s like I am carrying within me another person who didn’t give me the opportunity to be left alone.. to be Enough to stand alone without her.

Sincerely, I don’t expect anyone to understand what I am saying.

More so, I expect people to criticize me.

Will continue in a few moments-

anita

Just a note before I begin journaling—

I am here, in my thread, to continue healing, little by little. Journaling—especially stream-of-consciousness writing—works for me. That doesn’t mean I believe you, dear reader, should approach healing in the same way I do.

If what I share here troubles or bothers you, please feel free to skip reading it.

(I think I will start each of my posts on this thread with the above).

It’s time to fully validate myself. Time to reconnect with what was once dissociated.

Lately, there are things that bring me fear. As Alessa mentioned in another thread, I choose not to share certain personal details—out of respect for the people in my real life.

Fear has shaped much of my life. My earliest fears were twofold—fear that my mother would kill herself and fear that she would kill me. Since, psychologically, I had not yet separated from her in early childhood, those fears felt indistinguishable—one and the same.

That fear consumed me—first as a child, then as a teenager, and still as an adult. It held me captive, stalling my growth in countless ways—cognitively, emotionally, and practically.

In the last ten years, I have experienced so much healing that I am no longer the person I once was. I am not the depressed, desperate, spaced-out version of myself that I used to be. This is why I believe so deeply in healing—because the way I experience life now, especially in the last few years, is profoundly different from how I did before.

Yet, amazingly, there is still so much more healing to be done. The thing is, I know there can never be a happily-ever-after ending to healing—it is a continuous journey. Healing never truly ends, and I find meaning in the never-ending process of learning, growing, and becoming.

Being Trapped in Yesterday is a result of self-invalidation. The more I validate myself, the freer I am.

And now, Self-Validating, reconnecting Stream of Consciousness (inner-child speaking):

All I wanted, ever since my mother labeled me BAD- was to be GOOD.

I tried and tried and waited and waited for more than half a century (and that’s a long, long time) for my mother- this one person- to relabel me GOOD.

She never did the relabeling.

I feel a vast emptiness in my heart right now.

And I heard recently that she, at 85 or so, is very, very old indeed. She can never stand straight, she is permanently stooped over, and is stubborn and dizzy and deteriorating cognitively.

So, you see, she will never relabel me anything. She is dying.

My mother, the most important person in the world, is dying.

And she will never know that I loved her and she will never love me any more than she ever did, which was a very, very limited, conditional and abusive-kind of love.

Coming to think-feel about it, I lost her many, many years ago, when she was still young and standing straight.

It’s just so very difficult to let her go, even after having had no contact with her for so many years.

There is a part of me that, just now, wanted to reach out to her and make things right, the two of us- mother and daughter, now.

I am not feeling angry at her. How could I feel angry at an old, stooped over woman.

Mommy, Ima- so may years, decades- it is hard to say goodbye, goodbye to my hope that you will to here for me, on my side.

My Attachment for you lasted for so very long.

You meant so much to me.

It’s a big chunk of my heart that has been yours, for so long.

And you never knew. Couldn’t see it.

I love you, Ima. I wish you knew. I wish you were able to know or care about me caring about you so very deeply.

anita

It’s not necessarily that the enraged-within person is intentionally putting on a mask so to deceive. The person may be trying her best to find refuge in a presentation of calm, in a philosophy of peace.

But the Rage Within doesn’t buy it.

I know the rage-within very well, seeing it in my mother, over and over and over and over again.

And within me, a burning fire.

It will set anything and everything on fire until it is recognized.

So, here, I am doing the recognizing.

No words for the recognizing, only Fire Burning.

Burning Fire has no language, no words.

BURNING

BURNING

R.A.G.E

My mother’s RAGE- nothing I (and how could I) could have controlled. It was too strong, insistent, stubborn, POWERFUL.

Do not underestimate the rage of the meekest, weakest person- there is unbelievable power in the RAGE of the WEAK.

Rage in the meekest is RAGE.

I remember my mother fondly now. I miss her as always.

Her Rage- oh, that was when all hell broke loss.

Always the victim’s fault. My fault. She’d tell you she was my victim, that I was the villain, a five year-old villain.

She’d tell you, at 84 years-old, a very old woman. My mother.

She’d tell you that her 64-year-old daughter is still as always the Villain.

Oopsie, did I reveal my age?

But who is reading.. It’s amazing how alone I am here. ANYONE reading? Maybe one, maybe two.

Still, I am grateful for having this opportunity, this outlet to Express.

I just wish someone was reading.

anita