Dearest Anita,

Today I woke up and felt a little lighter. I changed my phone number yesterday, I couldn’t take the amount of unknown and blocked numbers I was getting I could hardly get one song in listening via Bluetooth from my phone before I would get 20 phone calls. It is not a way to live. Getting a new phone number is also a fresh start in many other ways of deleting old contacts and solicitors that you may not want from other parts of your life as well. In this new life I choose who I want in it and who I want out because I am able because I am worth it.

I thought about how there is a fine line between discipline, Toughlove, and abuse. I’m talking about this in general. Many cultures especially Asian cultures value the idea of Toughlove, the generic joke is always that if you get a B+ they’re going to ask you why you didn’t get an A-. If you get an a minus they’re going to ask you why you didn’t get an A+. To a point this can be OK if it teaches hard work discipline and achieving your goals. I never dealt with this kind of discipline from my parents bc I was a high achiever naturally and I never actually had them push me academically. The funny thing is the kind of abuse that my parents gave me is so indolent it is so subtle but yet so severe it is not something that you can quantify inbconversation, not that I need to, but that is why it takes so long for children to realize it.
It is much easier to spot things such as child abuse, broken limbs and bruises. It is much easier to identify domestic abuse, a woman with a blackeye. It is much easier to spot severe parental control: the sense of if I don’t get these grades my parents punish me and don’t let me out of the room. I always thought that my parents were relaxed given that they never forced me to excel academically, and I had all the social privileges I wanted, I left the house when I wanted to I came home when I wanted to – actually had a good life. The things other teenagers complained about I never dealt with.
I had respect for my parents and knew my boundaries but I also enjoyed my life fully and did not feel constrained. Life was good.
I realize that at this point in my life I had done nothing wrong, I was not getting any sort of abuse from them because everything was going according to plan. things were simple and straightforward I was a young kid living in their house not doing anything out of the ordinary and nothing that I was doing was causing them anxiety or taking away from themselves. It was not like I was trying to go towards a path that would make them look bad in society. It was not like I was dating someone that was out of our cultural bounds that would make them look bad and make them feel like I was wrong and deserving of disciplinary action. I used to always think that wow my parents got upset with me and my sister about things so small, imagine if my sister and I were actually bad kids, running off with boys, getting pregnant, getting involved with drugs, dropping out of school. Oh wonder if we did things to that extreme! imagine how they would react when even small things are a big deal to them. This is not something I thought about until a few years ago however.

Anyway backtracking to the earlier years, I never noticed that my parents were really controlling because in fact I had a ton of freedom. But what I did notice is that there was a ton of anger and sadness festering in my family for a variety of reasons. my mother for all of the aforementioned things, the constant negativity from her side of the family, the constant negativity of my dads side of the family in India, and the constant strife between them. I did not think much of this. I thought it was sad, I thought that it was unfortunate, but I did not think that it caused me to have a very unlucky place in the world. Key point- I did not think it made me unlucky to be their child.

Slowly – I started noticing that I would have subconscious anger towards them but not in ways that I could explain. I remember being in medical school and my dad had called five times about receiving a W-2 tax form. I remember getting so annoyed and thinking OK enough is enough I know you’re trying to help me with my taxes but I will let you know when the form is here. My roommate at the time said to me, well it just seems like your dad is concerned given that this is not something that you’re used to doing on your own. I said yeah I guess you’re right. These kind of feelings were the beginning of my anger and understanding that what they were doing was out of the norm, it was controlling, and it was limitless without boundaries.

About five years ago when I had just started dating my now husband, my parents had an anniversary in April. My parents make a huge deal about their anniversary every year. This is not because they are this amazing happy couple in love, it is because they think that it should be a production to make themselves feel better and important. Growing up we made sure that we all went out to dinner and celebrated it, it was as though they were children and we were throwing them a five-year-old birthday party. I was living in Manhattan at the time of this particular anniversary, and my house was an hour away. My boyfriend and I had Just gone to their house over that weekend to visit them. And their anniversary was that following Thursday, on a weekday. When Wednesday arrived my mother called me and said: so we are making dinner reservations for tomorrow you guys will be there right? And I said wellMom we were just there this weekend, I thought that was the anniversary celebration. Tomorrow might be tough because it is a weekday and we have a very early morning on Friday. (We were both in residency at the time mind you: he in a surgical residency and I in anesthesiology our days are greater than 12-15 hours sometimes starting at 5:30 in the morning. But obviously this is just a sidenote)

She got really quiet and said well OK I get it, I guess I just really thought that you would be there for our anniversary, this is the kind of thing that only happens once a year and you have the liberty of living close by. So many families dream of spending such milestones together.

Guilt trip much?

My poor boyfriend (now husband) looked at me, and just shrugged. He had told me prior to the conversation that he really needed just an evening to rest because we had run over to my parents house that past weekend did a ton of driving, rushed into work the next few days, and now Thursday evening would also require three hours hours of driving and little sleep. I listen to him but not really.

I call my mother back and at this time I try to make up a different plan perhaps maybe meeting another weekend to “make up for it.” She seems sullen like a child that was just got his candy taken away. So of course I felt the need to pacify her, I say it’s fine we will be there we might just be a little bit late.

Once Thursday evening rolls around I recall being so stressed and rushing to get there, traffic getting outside of Manhattan, feeling the need to get there on time, but also being angry at why are we doing this. My boyfriend was getting quite annoyed but not saying much and this was the beginning of him seeing how demanding my family is but not really realizing it himself either.

We got to the restaurant and it is a normal dinner nothing special, at the end of the dinner we are going outside to the cars and my mom makes a comment that I can’t really remember but it was something that was extremely triggering. Something like: “see now that wasn’t so bad was it, you guys came here, and look how great the dinner was you know it shouldn’t have to be that difficult.”

And Anita I lost it, I went off on them I started screaming I literally lost my marbles. I probably made a scene. My sister started crying my boyfriend at the time was horrified, and tries to call me down. It ended with my mom and father going to the car and crying and saying “all we wanted was a nice anniversary and you had to come here and act like that and ruin it, what have we done that is so bad as parents for you to treat us like this. So many people can just go out and have a nice sweet holiday with their kids, and you come in here and you treat us like this”

My sister was also angry at me at the time because she was protecting my parents and saying how dare you come in and ruin this for them our poor parents are always so sad they deserve this anniversary. Brainwashed we all were. Even getting in the car to go back to Manhattan, my boyfriend said to me that was wrong of me to lash out at my parents like that and where did that anger come from? I couldn’t answer.
But I know now. That was the beginning, that was the beginning of the truth emanating from within me, I saw how wrong that whole anniversary dinner scenario was played out, it wasn’t about the distance that the dinner was it wasn’t about the day, it was about the sense of “of course she will do this for us and if you don’t we will be sad”. The manipulation, the narcissism, the evil. Something in my body was trying to escape and express that, but it didn’t come out in the way that I had expected to, and of course I did not identify this rage and anger within me. I see now that it was just me trying to break out of those shackles.
Now if I said the story out loud to a third-party it would sound like I was just getting annoyed for making that sacrifice for my parents, but the point of the matter is that it doesn’t matter what the story sounds like from the outside, it is the internal subliminal feeling that I got because their subliminal control.

The abuse from them has never been about the actual events themselves it’s been about the weird background messages that they would give us. For example many parents may not want her children to move far away, but the way that my dad handled it and guilt tripped me this week and made it apparent that if I moved I would be unhappy and that I would be doing them a disservice, now that is a different story.

The anniversary incident is quite pivotal in my life, my parents of course remembered that for years ahead. Any time something would happen they would say that I’m the kind of daughter that can’t even come to a dinner an hour away without causing a disruption.
Funny thing is that I have spent a lot of my life with guilt, but that was one incident where I never felt sorry. I never apologized for, and I never felt truly apologetic. I know this because it was the beginning of me seeing the truth. I did not feel sorry because my emotions were true, it was a little girl inside trying to escape and so there was nothing to be sorry for.

How amazing it can be that someone so educated and smart in other parts of her life was unable to identify those types of emotions, where they were coming from. The power that abuse has over a child is incredible as you say. Their evil is incredible. I realize that there is no greater bond then between a parent and a child and therefore there is no greater ability for abuse and battering. It is biologic and natural for a child to trust their parents as you have said, and thus brainwashing and abuse can be so detrimental that It can truly change the soul of a child. These days when I hear about terrorism and how young children are performing terrorist acts, I am not even surprised, I see the effects of abuse and brainwashing, parents can convince their children to believe almost anything.

I knew that anniversary dinner was the beginning of my hatred towards my parents, my anger my rage. My frustration with myself as why I would let myself live this sort of life. But I was having trouble with it, I felt like I didn’t know how to say no, but yet got angry at myself for always feeling pretty crappy. It was a vicious cycle and it has continued of course until about a few months ago.

I recall two months before the wedding my parents and in-laws both came over for a family meeting. Don’t get me started on how we actually decided to have this meeting that is a whole other story that involves some fake chest pain of course.

My parents arrive first and my in-laws arrive second. Later in the meeting my mother says out loud: “that I didn’t seem to be as happy when they arrived, as when my in-laws arrived, it is really apparent to her and it hurts her.” She then faces my in-laws and says to them, what have you done to my daughter for her to become like this. She was so close to us and we have always been so close our whole life, now that you have entered the picture you have ruined the relationship between our daughter and us what have you done to create this. You may try to take her away from us but you will never succeed, the bond between mother and daughter is endless.

This scenario is out of a textbook, no understanding that something she may have done would cause a rift between her and I, no understanding of the abuse that she is pushing on to me that has caused me to detach and retract some, only looking at others as a source. The interesting thing is that prior to the incident I felt like if my mother was angry she was allowed to speak her mind whether it was to a stranger or to a family member, of course she’s allowed to say that to someone: she is upset!. Looking back at this incident it was entirely inappropriate for her to say that about me in front of everyone first of all, not to mention it was not true. Second of all to blatantly point a finger at my in-laws. More than abuse this also shows me a true lack of respect for human beings, she feels that she can say whatever she wants whenever she wants, and that we are all supposed to forgive that because she is speaking her mind and she is hurt.

She always says this one thing, I speak from the heart and I speak truth and that is why you don’t like it because you don’t like to hear the ugly truth. Her emotions are always the truth, if we don’t like the way it sounds and feel offended by it, we are wrong because we are unable to “handle the truth“

About 10 years ago I started thinking: what makes her emotions more true than mine? That was also another beginning for me.

I say now,
Well in fact mom it’s not that I don’t like to hear the ugly truth I just don’t like to hear your ugly self, everything that spews out of you is ugly, for it is not the truth it is a lie.

Going back to the situation above I never thought of it that my mother should have enough self-respect for me to not bully me like that in public in front of other people (let alone her reasoning was wrong but regardless). I always felt like she is my mother so she is allowed to say whatever she wants to meet even in front of other people. If I had said something about that : she would say a lot of parents do that because if their daughters are acting a certain way of course the parent has to intervene and show them. She also will attribute it to the guise of Indian culture in which parents know best and that children need to respect their elders and so an elder is just setting the way. That all other daughters respect their parents and get this and wouldn’t even perform the acts I do that would require a parent to intervene.

I see now at the age of 32 that I am much older than many people, but yet much younger. And regardless no individual deserves disrespect, I have no right to bully a 15-year-old patient in front of her mother because that is it inappropriate. if I want to tell her something I can take her aside. My boss has no right to bully me in front of all of my colleagues because that is inappropriate. if he wants to say something to me he can take me aside. This is not because I am special it is because I am human and I deserve this respect just like anyone else. This is not any culture, it should be all cultures -because all cultures should promote self respect.

It feels foreign to think this way and it feels almost like do I deserve that? It almost feels like too much freedom if that makes sense.

It almost feels like anarchy because in the other world there is control and hierarchy. In this world is it a free for all, if all are respected equally? Oh my.
Nope, it’s not. In fact in the world where there is hierarchy and the elders are allowed to say anything there is a free-for-all because it can lead to unlimited one-sided abuse. On the contrary, In this open world where there is equal respect amongst all ages and all individuals- there’s not a free-for-all because given that there is that mutual respect, people DO NOT cross those boundaries and do not feel they have limitless abilities.

Similarly, Anita, about once a day my mind goes to this new place- a place that thinks “wait so now I can literally do whatever I want?” And then it quickly shies away from that place because it feels too foreign and unruly. I think “So wait without all of this control in my brain over my life -then I can be free in my mind, that seems to good to be true!”
My brain has gone there a few times but it quickly has walked away because it not only seems too good to be true, it seems like a world like that cannot exist, how can it? without feeling controlled by something exterior would everything just be a free-for-all?
And I remind myself, again no. Because what did that external feeling of control and constant anxiety lead to, a life full of achievements and a life full of memories but– no feeling of living at all. External control manipulation and anxiety have no bearing on what someone can amount to as all they amount to are abused victims!

the only point there is is to live, is to live each day with mental peace. And so this can Only be done in a world that is free of mental torture and control and abuse.

When my mind goes to that place I think of it like a puppy exploring a new room and then quickly taking his paw back because he feels that he is not sure if he’s ready to go there, or if he’s allowed to. Well I’m glad that my puppy self is at least exploring the vicinity of that room (the room of freedom) and I know that one day he will enter.