Dear Kibou,

Thank you for your detailed reply. It does paint a little different picture about your relationship with your mother. It appears she was a very loving and caring mother, and provided emotional support to you – up until she got unwell. You said she was your best friend and provided a sense of stability amidst all the moving and “nomadic lifestyle” during your childhood (“My mum has always been the most “constant” person around me“.)

You started suffering from depression before your mother got sick, and it seems it wasn’t because of your mother, but because of your father (was it because he wasn’t around too much?) and because of your school friends.

In your earlier posts you shared that those friends were rude or jealous towards you, but you didn’t hold it against them, rationalizing that “hurt people hurt people”. Btw, now that I know a little bit more of your story, I wonder if you started rationalizing only after your mother got sick and you had compassion and understanding for her, and by extension, for your school mates as well?

Your depression might have been caused also by the fact that you moved a lot in your formative years. You said you moved 4 times by the time you were 7 years old. You moved once at the age of 4, before your brother was born, and then again when you were around 6, before your sister was born. You remember how on the day your sister was born you were alone in the house for a while, everybody being at the hospital with your mother, and you felt alone.

I guess it was a new house, in the new city, that you had just moved to prior to your sister’s birth? You say you don’t remember it with negative feelings, but still, it was another big change for you. In fact, it was the second time in 2 years that you moved house and a new sibling arrived to the family. Both of those are big changes (new sibling and a new environment), and it happened twice for you in 2 years.

Even though you said your mother loved you the same and you didn’t feel neglected even after your siblings were born, these kinds of changes can be hard on a child. You might have still felt alone, but you didn’t have anybody to blame because those were “the circumstances”. Your mother did the best she could, she was giving her all to you and your siblings. Perhaps you did blame your father for causing those moves to happen, or for not being home too much?

In any case, I believe your first depression has a lot to do with the frequent moves and changes of the environment and the circumstances you lived in. You felt neglected a bit, perhaps abandoned a bit, but you couldn’t really express this disappointment to your mother because she was doing her best. And besides, once when you expressed it – when you told her she doesn’t care about you – she started crying. And you were made to apologize. If you expressed your negative feelings to your mother, she would be hurt, and you knew she doesn’t really deserve it either.

Maybe this is why you started getting depressed – because you felt guilty for having those negative feelings. You said you felt like a burden for having those feelings. You didn’t want to share them with anyone, but once you made something that made your parents alarmed – when you swam far out in the ocean, hoping to get a cramp (and perhaps drown?).

That’s when you told your parents a little about how you’re feeling, and they took you to a therapist. But when you blamed your father for your depression, he got very sad (“looked like he was about to cry, a face I had not seen before on my dad”), and you regretted mentioning it. You decided not to share your negative feelings again because it hurts people.

So basically, the message you received from both of your parents was: you make me sad if you express your negative feelings. You mother cried (when you were 7 years old), and your father almost cried (when you were around 11-12, I guess?) The conclusion: If I share my negative feelings – if I am authentic – I will hurt the people I love.

It’s very similar to: “People only want authenticity if it’s according to their own liking”. Your parents could tolerate your authenticity only if it didn’t make them feel bad. You related this belief to a school debate when you had to debate in favor of an idea that you opposed to. It made you feel inauthentic. However, it could be that the core of that belief is related to your family and that you couldn’t really be authentic with them.

Soon after your first depression, your mother got unwell and you needed to take over a lot of responsibilities:

Although it did feel a bit better coming open with my difficulties it was not long till I found myself saying “take a grip” to myself and started to worry about my mum primarily and the rest of the family.

You didn’t have a chance to deal with yourself, nor did your mother have a chance to perhaps help you cope. She got sick and suddenly you lost her support and the only constant person in your life:

I always had my mum thought to count on, and at a time when I needed her a lot (my depression), she was not available.

As longs as I had my mom, I was fine, but when she was not available it really did feel like I had no one. My mum has always been the most “constant” person around me.

With your mom getting sick, you felt truly abandoned, your felt like you had no one:

The sentence “No one cares about me” is something I would start to say early during my early teens. The time when my mum got unwell.

You had to cope with caring for your siblings, and you were also your mother’s only support:

There was no one else there to help, no friends, language barriers so no professional help, my dad had tons of things going on and between the two it was tense at that time, she only had me who she trusted and felt safe to talk to. Doctors that she went to, well they prescribed the wrong medication which made her condition worse.

And given all the other things that happened or needed to be taken care of, I honestly to this day do not see who could have supported her beside me.

You had to become the care-taker, and suppress all of the negative feelings you had, both the old ones and those newly occurring due to your mother’s illness and the new circumstances you found yourself in.

And then another trauma happened: you had to flee Cuba, literally overnight, without much explanation by your parents. You returned with your mother and siblings to Germany (if I understood well?), while your father stayed on Cuba for another 2 years.

You weren’t warmly received in Germany (“Our arrival back home was messy and disappointing.”) I remember you shared that when you returned to your old school, your old school mates hardly wanted to communicate with you. So you lost at least one close friendship from Cuba, and arrived to a cold and unfriendly place, which was your “home country”.

I see how the trauma accumulated over time, and how it was difficult for you to even be angry at anybody, because no one did anything wrong, and yet you suffered, and your needs weren’t met – due to the “circumstances”. Perhaps your parents’ decisions had brought about those “circumstances”, but anyway, there was always some excuse, some reason why things are bad and no one is to blame – which led to your rationalization. And specially with your mom getting sick, you needed to rationalize a lot, and suppress your anger for suddenly losing your childhood and having to care for your siblings and your mother (at least emotionally).

I will stop here, because this post is long already, but these are my thoughts for now. I’ll wait for your reply before writing more.