Dear gj:

“None of this hurt my sister or my cousin’- it only seems this way. My sister, I used to think that she wasn’t hurt by our mother, because she seemed so normal, happy and sociable, so unlike me. I thought I was a freak, otherwise, why would she be so normal, having the same mother. I was happy for her, but she was “proof” that there was something inherently wrong with me.

I thought she was independent, and as beautiful as she was, I thought she would be living a happy life, rich and famous. And imagine that: she dated, for a short while, an internationally famous movie star, at the time (early nineties). When I heard this international movie star’s voice on her answering machine, in the early nineties, it was as close as I ever got, by proxy, to those daydreams of mine!

Unfortunately, she was damaged, it is just that I didn’t see it. Now she lives with her mother, in the same tiny childhood home in a run down neighborhood, experiencing panic attacks and nightmares, not having been in one healthy loving relationship with a man in her whole life.

It only seemed at the time, when I was a teenager and a young adult, it only seemed like she was emotionally healthy.

Abuse is very common and love is rare. Parents feed and clothe their children, that is common. But … well, that is all the love most parents have for their children, feeding and clothing them, taking care of their basic physical needs. Problem is that our emotional needs are no less important. We end up being physically alive after childhood, but suffering and struggling, living a life that is greatly compromised.

The fact that this is common is no less tragic for each individual.

But there is hope for you. It will not be easy for you to make a better and better life for yourself, but it is possible. If you are patient and able to endure the distress of seeing reality as-it-is, you will make it, you will see it for yourself.

anita