Hi anita,

No, I do not think you are being dramatic. On the contrary I think your analysis is 100% correct. But it’s taboo in this society to place responsibility on parents. People think just because someone brought life into this world they can do no wrong. People especially think mothers are always good, loving, kind. It’s okay to blame fathers but not mothers. I remember as a young girl my aunts yelled at me if I ever confided in them about how my mom treated me. My college essay was how I loved my camp because it was the only place I felt loved. When I asked my aunts to review it for me one of them got mad: “this is a lie, your family loves you”.

I have known for a long time that my parents have internalized racism and have subscribed to a colonized belief system. They never wanted us to be “too black”, we grew up in a majority white town to escape blackness, things like that. I tried to escape physically but I haven’t been able to escape mentally. I think because my abusive relationship wore me down so much, and I felt so much guilt because I stayed away from home for 4 years. During that time my parents sent me guilt trips for not coming home (unsurprisingly, when I told them I couldn’t afford to go back home which I really couldn’t, they never offered to pay for me to come back). The guilt is how they keep power over me, and how other abusive people have kept power over me. Also, the projection onto me that I am not a good person. So I try even harder to be good, but it’s like I am chasing my own shadow. No one ever said anything to mitigate this guilt. so it remains hoovering over me like a dark cloud. Sometimes I think about moving even farther away, like to Europe. But physical distance isn’t enough, I know that now. I already live halfway across the country from them, they guilt me about that too. Everyone complained about attending my college graduation because it was so far. The intermittent reinforcement is also confusing: they are nice to me when I do what they want or succeed at something. So my inner child thinks “finally! i will get the love I need!”. But it’s just an illusion. This trap is what kept me chained to an abuser for almost 5 years. She’d scream, be abusive, then be nice and pretend like nothing happened. Even now she is still trying to contact me out of “concern for my well being”. This is why I am so foggy headed all of the time.

The problem is I don’t have any support and I don’t know where I would get it. It’s tough to find a decent therapist. A few months ago I tried online therapy, but it was more of the same unhelpful stuff. Every time I’ve tried to make connections with other people it’s always more of the same, which is why at this point I’m almost always checked out from life.