Dear Linarra:

“So it is what love actually looks like. It is so… simple. Unlike the twisted unrequited love I had for my mother“- Your love for her was so simple. That simple Love was who you were. When she twisted your love for her, she twisted you.

“over time I was able to… understand some people would really stay with me for other reasons than the wish to hurt me“- you acknowledge here, perhaps without awareness, that you know that your mother wished/ intended to hurt you, and that she is still wishing/ intending to hurt you when she goes about hurting you.

“It comes naturally“- love is simple, love is natural.

“I barely look at her. And the rare times I do, I don’t smile. Even when she’s doing something nice for me, I’m just polite with her. I am not happy to have her in my life. Does that mean I really don’t love her anymore?“- unfortunately, you still love her, but like you wrote above, your love for her is twisted. It twisted because it’s been unrequited for too long, and because the one you love has been wishing to hurt you, and going about hurting you-  too many time, for too long.

“Yeah, she just doesn’t care about my feelings“- it gets worse than that. It was a shock to me when I realized that my mother felt a relief when she was hurting me, and sometimes she enjoyed it, sometimes it excited her seeing me in pain (looking back I remember the excitement on her face, in her breathing, as she anticipated to see the hurt on my face after saying something hurtful).

Before I realized that, I thought wrongly that .. she just didn’t understand, that she hurt me out of ignorance.

“I guess it is an appropriate time to say that our conversations make me smile, especially when I see you enjoy them too“- it is appropriate to say that you smile, when you were smile. I am smiling now!

But I also worry about having presented you the concept above, the joy of hurting: there is nothing smile-worthy about that.

anita

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