Dear joanna:

You asked me to  be honest with you. I was always honest with you, always will be. It doesn’t take an effort on my part to be honest with you, or with anyone. Honesty is my passion. It allows me to see and learn. Honesty is not something I do for you. It is who I am.

I believe that seeing reality for what it is- helps us, never hurts us. And so, I will not say something to you for the purpose of you feeling better. Because I don’t believe it will be good for you. I say only what I believe is true to reality.

About your mother being right about you- imagine this: person A stabs person B and then complains: Person B is messy, blood everywhere! Is person A correct? yes. Person B is messy, blood everywhere, sticky, messy.

In a less dramatic way, yes, I suppose your mother is right about you being messy (I never observed your room, your living areas, so I don’t know, I am assuming you are).

You asked: “Am I the reason my mother complains about me?” Back to my bloody example, if person B wasn’t there, there wouldn’t be any blood, so if you ignore the fact that there was a stabbing, then you can say: if person B wasn’t there, there wouldn’t be any blood, any mess. So Person B brought about the mess.

You asked: “Will my mother magically stop complaining and bringing me down if I start being amazingly neat?”

Back to my example: person B cleans herself, cleans the wound, cleans the floor, gone is the sticky blood, the floor is smooth, better than before, no sign of mess. Person A still holds a knife, still driven to stab. So she stabs the newly recovered person B again, and there is blood all over again. “I told you that you are messy!” A neighbor comes over, and person A says to the neighbor: look how messy person B is! And the neighbor says: Person B sure is messy, why only an hour ago she was messy. Messy again, so soon, my goodness, she is so very messy!

Your grandmother abused your mother and she is abusing you. She is motivated to abuse you, so she keeps doing so.

anita