Deat Anita,

I didn’t know about this similarity either before you mentioned the suicide threats. I thought back about whether or not I did mention my mother’s suicide threats in this thread, I guess I didn’t, or not explicitly. At a time, it would have been one of the first thing I told about her when I was able to open up. But I’ve grown tired of it.

Once, when I was sent to a worried school nurse in middle school, I had to reassure her, tell her the half truth that, yes, my mother was having hard times, but we were treated alright and everything would be fine eventually. Because I couldn’t risk me and my siblings to be sent away in an unknown place with strangers due to an unhealthy household. Our mother warned us about her own experience of being abused and exploited when she was sent away herself because her mother was too mentally sick to take care of her and her siblings. So we were cautious of that.

I guess I only started mentioning the suicide threats of her when passed majority and there wasn’t such a risk anymore. It was the first thing I told about her, because it was safer to tell about that than other things. Her suicide threats were more outstanding for me anyway. She wasn’t discreet about her depression and she liked to act publicly as a victim so she wouldn’t have minded as much.

The other things, like the verbal abuse, I didn’t dare for long. If I mentioned publicly something that might accuse her, she could have get back at me and tell publicly I was a bad person causing her intense distress. Telling people I was the reason why she was so mentally sick, and use my words as a proof of it.

I felt guilty for not feeling or acting compassionate towards her anymore, I felt guilty for the mean words I told her when she was hurting me, and I still felt a bit responsible for not being able to save her from herself too, so it was harder to mention anything that could hint into that. I was hiding a crime, almost, because I wasn’t able to tell if really I should have been sacrificing myself for her. I believed people outside would think I should have, because my mother was so confident about my responsibility in all of this. So I kept the most dirty parts of our relationship secret.

All my life, it was a choice between saving her or saving myself. I couldn’t do both. When I was young, I tried saving her and I noticed I was powerless, even when I prioritized her, because she was resisting and was out of reach. So I chose to save myself and bear with the guilt and accusations.

I was younger than you when my brain followed the thoughts of “so do it, do it already, just do it…“. Maybe middle school, maybe highschool. I tend to mix up my reaction to my father’s and my mother’s self destruction. Anyway, there are no doubts that I thought those things because I remember telling it out loud to my family. If it isn’t to my mother, it would be sharing my thoughts about the situation to my siblings. I was quite open about the fact the hurt needed to cease, one way or another. Even if it made me a bad girl for thinking life would be better without the self-destructive behavior of our parents, I had to speak up, because it felt true.

My mother told me she would die and I would have to replace her, to be my siblings’ caretaker in her stead. She told me she might die before I would reach majority (but I made her promise to wait until then, something along the way of “you can do whatever you want after I am 18, but if you do it before there’s no way I’ll be able to be legally chosen as a caretaker”). I don’t know how old I was when she started with that, but it was too young. It broke me. I couldn’t worry about her when I had to worry about me and my siblings. I couldn’t be both a parent and a child, she had to chose, I had to chose. Well, in the end, I was a child trying to parent her mother with hope I wouldn’t have to be the parent of my siblings, not alone. I couldn’t be an adult if nobody was teaching me how. And my mother couldn’t teach me, she was behaving like an adult child.

“much of the fear is gone, much of that fear. And the depression too. The more I see the truth, the healthier I get. But.. nothing can undo those early years, nothing can undo the betrayal.” “there is an amount of fear that I can endure and still be Alive= not shut down.”

It is a relief. I am glad it is something that can happen. I am glad it happened for you. The past and betrayal can’t be changed. But if the consequences of this can be diminished enough to be alive, it is hopeful enough.

“I am not clear about what you mean, but if you mean whether it’s too late to love-and-be-loved by our mothers, my answer is a definite-and-forevermore: No.”

I am not sure about what I meant either. About what I would want. Love with my mother is more often poisonous than not. I think the part of me that is able to love her is the part who sees the human, not the mother. And I also don’t feel good about her love, and I won’t be able to feel good about it for as long she sees the daughter, the object, the reflection of herself instead of the person I am. I am able to see her as a person now, but I am unsure she will ever see and love me as a person.

Either way, I can live without that. I have my siblings. She’s not the only family member I can bond with.

I do hope someday I’ll be able to find love on the outside. Intimate enough non-romantic non-sexual love. Something that would not be objectifying, something that would be respectful, with safe boundaries, with healthy enough minds to allow that. It feels like a silly fantasy, it feels childish. It hurts. It is dangerous for me to want that, because it hurts every time I notice someone want something from me, something I can’t give or feel unsafe to give. Loving fully is giving someone the opportunity to twist it against me, to use me, or to leave me.

When someone is reaching my heart, the first thing I do to protect myself and to protect them and the relationship, is to imagine the absence of it, and accepting it. It allows me to make sure I’ll survive it, and to make sure I wouldn’t disrespectfully cross a boundary if someone wanted to leave me and for me to take step back. For me it is the healthiest thing I can do.

I do it openly. I tell to the friend who’s getting too close I would be ok with either outcome. I think, most of the time, while I find it reassuring, the friend may find it cold and worrying. If they have some kind of internal wounds they can take it like a personal rejection. It isn’t like that to me, for me you can both love someone and build your resilience against the pain that could happen related to the relationship. So I try to explain where I’m coming from to make it clear there’s nothing personal. I don’t think it is enough reassurance for people with too much rejection fear though.

In the end, I wonder if I’ll be able to fully trust someone again. Especially when it comes to be loved. It is easier for me to love than be loved. Or maybe this statement is inaccurate, as it is not easy to actually express the love, since it could hurt someone, or give them the opportunity to hurt me. The feeling is there, the expression of it is passing a lot of control check in order to keep everyone safe.

I feel safe loving without being loved back. I feel uncomfortable/weird being loved and not loving back. I feel both dreadful and unspeakably joyful at the idea of loving and being loved back. I think it’s a good way to summarize.

Linarra