Dear Anita,

I am glad to hear from you again. I find it interesting how similar our mothers are. It is very rare to find someone with such a familiar experience.

“By excellence I mean your excellent adjustment to abuse/ coping with abuse, and living with a sense of meaning and power. It seems to me that the abuse itself provides you meaning and gives you a sense of power: you are the strongest in the context of your abusive household. It is outside the household where you are not coping well, where you feel no meaning and no power. “

I am indeed very well adjusted to this lifestyle now. I wasn’t always as calm and adjusted, but gathering helpful knowledge and finding a reason to bear with those circumstances, I ended up adjusting well.  Mostly, my resilience relies on my choice of aiming at an art career. My current living condition is the optimal situation I can get to meet the requirement of low living cost, a lot of time to dedicate to my passion, and enough difficulty to keep myself stimulated/inspired.

When you know what you are facing and why you doing it, it is easier to deal with it than when you have no idea what you are facing and what for (which would be my situation if I were living anywhere else). I stay in this household as a strategic choice. Hopefully, it won’t be the end of it. Hopefully, I will be able to reach a point where I can take my leave too, and learn to feel strong enough in the outside world. I got myself mentally ready in the case it never happens though, and that makes me able to deal with my present situation.

‘’Evidence of your excellence as well are your very well-structured, grammatically correct, thoughtful, attentive, logical, smoothly-written posts from the very first to the last, evident of calm, organized thinking done while living with an abusive mother, never knowing when she will attack you or your siblings next.’’

I am at my best with forum threads because they allow me to not take time to write and rewrite, correct myself and try to make sense. I like doing that, it makes a bit of clarity out of my own chaos. It is soothing.

That being said, the fact I am (or appear?) very well structured for someone who’s been going through abuse and trauma is one of the reasons why I avoid therapy. I am uncomfortable with the possibility to have my difficulties invalidated just because I found a way to adapt to my circumstances a little too well. I am grateful for my adaptability to my current environment, but I am afraid it causes the unadaptability to the outside world.

My ability to sound collected makes my issues even more invisible to people. But they are still there. I feel like a fraud in both my functionality and non-functionality. When my issues come in the way, it feels silly and unreal. How can I be both so calm and so anxious? How am I able to take abuse so well and yet unable to face casual interactions with outsiders? How can I be so functional in a messy environment, and feeling like a mess in situations that seem manageable for other people?

My “excellence” in my messed-up environment feels both right and wrong. It is a two-edged sword. For my household it is working just well, in other circumstances it works against me.

“it is in their desire to possess us completely, in each and every way. Their parenting mission is to own, or possess our thoughts, our feelings, our perceptions, our understandings, our words, our actions, our friends, our associations with others, out  minds, hearts and bodies… our everything. “

I do agree with your thoughts about our mothers. It is very objectifying. Her children are considered as an extension of her. She owns our victory and failures, she owns our suffering, everything we would try to build for ourselves was at risk to be possessed or broken by her. She used us to make her life worthwhile.

The things I ended up finding meaning into were safe. It wasn’t like she could reach or understand my feelings about creativity, psychology, or philosophical explorations. It was too deep for her who mostly cared about appearances and surface, so it was protected.

I think the things that weren’t protected (relationships, mingling with the outside world) were the things I explored less. I had a vulnerability and less disposition to explore those already, so I wouldn’t go out of my way to do it when, instead of support, I had extra risks with her around. Anyway, I wasn’t able to find enough meaning in the outside world to take the risks alone. Even now, as I might see more potential of meaning in the outside world than I used to see, I am still tied to my safer path. The appeal doesn’t match the difficulty and risks.

I do not know how to feel about all of that now. Part of me used to wish I was different, that I was more motivated to explore the outside world. And another part was worried the first part’s wish was due to social pressure. The need to find belonging somewhere is a bit desperate and chaotic, I am not comfortable with… this.

Yet I do not want to ignore the issue entirely, or I might end up very incapacitated in the future.

I really don’t know how much I am willing to invest and risk in the outside world. In my relationships with people. Am I willing to let other humans get close to me? Is it worth it? Even if my mother was gone, I am too guarded and cautious, too much focus on damage control. It is very complicated and exhausting.

What are your thoughts and your experience on this, Anita?

Linarra