Dear Anita

That’s perfectly true. I didn’t even tell you rest of the details, You fill in yourself. I’m speechless. Yes she wanted to get away from her parents, and yes grandpa wasn’t that perfect and decent, was probably cold to her. Also it’s true about the excitement with the wedding and kids being born, she is obsessed with people who get married, with girls getting married, I see she’s amazed when someone find a husband, she can’t even hide her excitement. You can’t even imagine this excitement, trust me. That’s why she got so angry I didn’t iron this dress, too much emotions for her and shouldn’t deal with them, so overwhelming. When I talk about my friends getting married I see her expression, how she wants to hide it. One time I told her when she watched weddings and brides choosing dresses on tv ” You really like weddings, don’t you” She got angry at me, that I want to annoy her or something. It’s a sensitive topic.

I know this is true, I mean maybe deep down I knew but I haven’t realized until you told me all this. I noticed myself when I worked with kids and they made me angry I sometimes I yelled at them and was very unpleasant, more than it “required” me to. but at this time I already knew meditation and self improvement and kind of tried to understand: “gosh why am I angry when this kid cant remember one little thing I repeat over and over, is he stupid or what, that makes me so angry, I hate this kid, I want to slap him or beat him” – it scared me because I knew it triggered me way too much. I wanted to not feel this anger, and yes, I realized WHERE DOES IT COME FROM. I felt her anger at me during my childhood so I automatically hated any other kids. I had the period in my life when I thought I hated kids, now I can say I fixed this, I still work with kids and I enjoy it. I’d say I never feel anger at them specifically even when days are bad, I never lose patience or yell – never ever. I sometimes am annoyed but I know anger comes within me and it’s not the kid who causes it.  See how it works?Just the way you told me: the abused becoming abuser, automatically, yes, but in the long term you have to want this, don’t you agree?

Did this happen to you?

The thing is: how can she be over 60 years old and not aware of those things? Did you mother ever wanted to improve relations with you or any other people, because I assume her other relationship would be affected too. Please answer if you feel comfortable to.

I noticed recently (thanks  to those conversations, and my own thinking) what I wrote earlier that I will always have an issue with my hair, always. I sometimes see other people how they don’t even care if they wash their hair and thought how is that even possible. I will always care about it – whether I damage them (which I no longer do) or whether I grow them long and thick – which I succeed, but I will never NOT CARE or not remember if I washed it today or yesterday, that’s just ridiculous, because everyday there is one thing sure: checking my hair and my face, how it looks like. And not because of being vain, but because of insecurity. Anyway, I’m noticing improvement in this as I am more aware. Maybe it’ll change a bit in the future.  Do you feel similar about anything?

There is also one more thing about this cleaning for example. She never taught me to clean or be tidy, what she did was pointing out I don’t clean. The difference, right? She never tells me one simple thing: Do the dishes. I’d do this, because why wouldn’t I? No, what she did was: Why didn’t you clean the dishes?Why you NEVER do this? Why are you so untidy? (all the questions regarding one situation-the dishes). Making me feel guilty, what’s funny it never motivated me, on the contrary, I started to hate it because it had such a negative connection, feeling guilty. So yes, I agree with this expressing anger, she looks for the reason to finally being able to express this anger she hid through her childhood, anger she could never express to her parents.

So what next if I know all this. I still have to process it, you know. I guess today I realized it’s not all my fault, that my hair is okay and I need to slowly learn to leave it alone,because chances are my hair is already perfect, that I’m a tidy person because my room looks tidy and that’s good enough, that I don’t lisp because no one ever noticed that except one person, and maybe I’m not as flawed as I see myself. Maybe I’m realizing this not consciously already because as I told you before my self harming reduced to about 20% and I do it not automatically but fully aware so it’s way better, and it’s okay for me at this point. 3 years ago I burnt a spot on my face with acid cream, fortunately it healed but sometimes when it’s cold I still see the red spot. I’m happy I would never ever do that to myself again, but it took me a long journey.