Dear Cali Chica:

Even though you didn’t post since yesterday, I am thinking about you first thing this morning. Went back to your yesterday posts, things I didn’t respond to. You wrote:

“I always wanted to know- what does it feel like to have a sense of relief… to take a deep breath in and out and … feel a release… I can’t recall ever feeling a sense of relief… waking up the next day and feeling that ‘phew’ weight off your shoulders. Nope never.. My baseline has always been suffering and anxiety. I have no idea what it feels like to even come back from a vacation and feel ‘lighter, more relaxed, at ease’… what does it feel like to REALLY FEEL better…just got married… don’t feel better just the same (like body is tensely holding onto something unable to let go)… my mind also finds other things to be stressed about if one stressor does pass… felt physically ill so many months, losing weight… constant muscle tension everyday of my life… insomnia… now my husband given I too abused him, and projected all my abuse and negativity onto him for the past few years, which has caused him a great deal of trauma… inability to ever daydream, feel excited about the future… kinda feel nothing…

When I look back at my childhood all I can see is sadness… sadness for my mother who is suffering… and sadness in general because there was always a sense of unease… Sure I can be at a five-star luxury hotel, I do medical conference, be on a wonderful date with wonderful man. What does it all matter because I have suffered mental torture from the day I was born… I suffer from insomnia, headaches, chronic muscle tension and of recent over the last year and again now deep feelings of despair anxiety and sadness.”

My input this early morning: your baseline is not genetic. Your baseline was created by your mother. She is the weight you need off you. She is what keeps your muscles tight, your head aching, your brain tortured.

Other than her mental representative, as well as societal messages that you hear, your brain, your body is aching for freedom from its tormentor.

It is only justice for you to end all contact with her. That will be the consequence of her actions against you. It will be justice. It will cause her unpleasantness but not devastation (no intimacy will be lost on her part, because there is none to lose), and it will free you from a life of torment and suffering.

If you end all contact with her, you will know how it feels to have that “sense of relief… to take a deep breath in and out and … feel a release…waking up the next day and feeling that ‘phew’ weight off your shoulders”.

For you to keep contact with her is a violation of justice. For you to not hold her responsible, while you are both alive, for what she did to you; to continue to submit to her abuse, is a violation of justice and a meaningless sacrifice of your life.

To not hold her responsible by ending all contact with her is also choosing to pass on your distress to others in your life, most tragically, to your future children.

Save yourself and your future children. Do what is right; do what is just.

anita