Dear nycartist:

What you shared in your most recent post is heartbreaking. You feel empathy for your mother (“she was only 23… my poor mother… She doesn’t really have any friends… I feel badly for her… I’ve been able to see things from her perspective”), but my empathy is with you, and my perspective is that of the girl that you were:

A girl who was left behind by a mother whose priority was not to be a mother, but to “be a single woman with friends and go out and be a girl in her 20’s”; a girl who was exposed to “some really horrific boyfriends”, including one who lit matches in her terrified face, unprotected by your mother; a girl who was left alone while her mother hibernated in her room for years; a girl who therefore had no one to tell about being abused by her father on weekends; a teenager forced to move into a strange man’s home, a teenager watching her mother have a stroke, staying alone with this strange man and his sons while her mother was in the hospital for months.

It is very important, nycartist, that you direct your empathy primarily toward yourself, and that you honor your perspective over your mother’s. It is most important that your focus is not to grow closer to your mother (“It helped us grow closer”), but that you grow closer to the girl that you were, the girl that is still in you. She is still afraid, understandably, and she needs your attention and empathy, she needs to be.. your number 1.

What do you think/ feel?

(I will soon be away from the computer for a few hours).

anita