Dear Linarra:

I will reply to your yesterday’s post first and then to the most recent. I will read one part, respond, then read the next, respond and not go back to edit, spending as much time as I want to with every part without rushing at all. It is like spending time with you this morning (7:05 am) over coffee, leisurely, taking my time, not needing to get anywhere, no objectives, just sharing thoughts and feelings:

“The trust between us is rational, but the emotional part of us is still too wounded to trust without fear“-

– the distrust of yesterday, I didn’t connect it to you until later, I wasn’t even aware that I was feeling distrust, I just felt an unease. I didn’t have thoughts such as: Linarra will hurt me. No thoughts, no identifiable feeling.. just an unease. Later on, I identified anger, and later connected it to fear: anger and fear about getting emotionally attached to you, which means expecting something and then getting disappointed. (In connection to getting attached to you: I already imagined talking to you on the phone and I imagined helping you move to the U.S., helping you escape your mother this way!)

The fear of expecting something from someone and then getting disappointed- there is anger involved in imagining this. Emotional  attachment is troublesome.

“I understand how we’d both lose if care-taking came in the way“- care-taking efforts will be in the way, yes. There has to be a mutual respect that honors the other’s difficulties, never minimize each other’s difficulties and expecting that these difficulties will disappear simply because.. we appeared in each other’s lives. All my words to you may make no practical difference in your life. They may but it will be more of a miracle if my words will result in you moving out, let’s say, and living away from your mother. Plus, if you did make such a choice, it will be you deserving all the credit. Not me.

In other words, in that emotional attachment I mentioned, there is an automatic expectation that goes with it, which is that I will make a practical difference in your life. It is a baseless expectation that will get in the way of our communication, so I need to give it up.

It reminds me of my year-after-year-after-year Expectation that I will make a difference in my mother’s mind, heart and life, that I will turn her life around and make her happy. The built-in disappointment in this regard is bitter, it  has been oozing bitterness for too long.

I wrote to you: “… The mother-part did not change and the me-part did not change. As a result I was stuck, not moving, almost dead”, and you responded with: “I think this paragraph describes the younger me very well. I forgot at some point my inner death came from this…  I remember, when my mother told me she would die, I thought ‘me too‘”- there was no  mental separation, in your mind, between mother and daughter, the two were part of One Entity: She dies = We die.

The fear that she dies was about you being left “alone, helpless… without my family“. When a young child in nature, like a fawn (a young deer) is left alone, helpless without the protection of its mother/ family (other adults in the social group)- it dies. And so, our parallel experience is that my/your mother put in me/you the fear of death when we were too young to process and endure such fear, it was an overwhelming fear.

Right now, as I am typing this (7:42 am), the sky is heavy with smoke, the most smoke this summer and I can smell it. It’s coming from wildfires from the east, fires due to the heat/ drought/ global warming-climate change. I just felt the fear of death from smoke.. from global warming (which already caused plenty of deaths in the area were I live (here is a news headline from July 12 this year, following the end-of June greatest heat wave where I live: “Nearly 800 people believed to have died in Northwest heat wave”). So, I am sitting here looking at the smoky sky, smelling the smoke (all windows closed and one air purifier near me is operating), and I felt that piercing fear of death, as I know that this smoke is not going anywhere, there is no rain in the forecast… Yet, I don  not panic. I can handle this fear and keep typing to you, keep communicating. But the young child that I was panicked.

“I killed myself mentally so many times in anticipation“- in the panicky anticipation of her/ your death. When a tree experiences drought, no moisture in the ground or in the air, it too kills itself in anticipation of death: it first kills/ sheds  its leaves, it then sheds all that it has until it is its minimal self, just the trunk.

“and when I happened to survive physically, I was half-dead already anyway“- just the trunk, your minimal self.

“my inner death felt so real. So part of me must have been really strong to have my body survive so much stress“- it is the nature of Life (of every living-thing) to survive so much stress and still want life, it is not an individual characteristic. Your stress in “so real” means to me that your shedding a lot of you, remaining your minimal self, was indeed the right solution at the time, made by Life itself.

Your recent post: “I am writing to you this morning because I want to share with you something. I have been entertaining the idea to tell you, but never found the right timing to do so. Today, after the previous messages we exchanged, it feels more right than it was before“- this is exciting, I am smiling with anticipation, now at 8:08 as I am about to read what  is next.

Ooops, I didn’t notice but I read the rest of your post all together, having arrived to the end of it before I noticed that I did not read and respond to it part by part. It is now 8:27. And, by the way, I am okay that I forgot to read and answer part by part, it is not really a mistake, just a spontaneous change (the “ooops above was a very weak ooops).

“I found this forum (as a reader) in June 2020, because I was searching for people discussing the experience of loneliness… I was reading some of those forum threads during June and July 2020. Among them, I was exposed to a lot of your replies to the members of this forum… while reading those threads was very nice, I felt like something was missing. That’s when I realized ‘Ah, she seems similar to me… She helps others, but it isn’t mutual.’… I wondered ‘Is it alright with her? Doesn’t she need someone to pay attention to her, too?’ At that time, I knew already I needed someone to pay attention to me sometimes… Yet I wasn’t here.. Why? I realized it was because… It wouldn’t change anything for me. If I were to speak about my difficulties, I was probably going to be told to leave my family, and I wouldn’t do it because it isn’t so easy“-

– I was different years ago when I started replying here, I was different not long ago: I too suggested to people to do things that are very difficult to do.. as if they didn’t know already that they should or are supposed to do this or that. I was ignorant and arrogant (thinking that I know the simple things that original posters don’t know, suggesting superiority). I know better now and am more humble.. I like myself way better this way! It sure feels better to .. feel Equal vs Inferior or Superior. Yet, I have to remind myself of this principle once in a while.

The reason why I did not post a request for help here in these forums is that I didn’t come across any member whose help I would like to get. I knew that if I posted a request for help I would get a mix of some good input (nothing new, as I read plenty of self help books and resources before I started to post on this website, plus had over two years of quality psychotherapy) and some bad input that would infuriate me. Soon enough I learned that I was helped, not by requesting help but by my very communication with members every day, over six years by this point.

“I am not comfortable with people wanting to help me and burdening themselves with me… I needed help, but I didn’t want someone to take care of me. I needed attention, but I didn’t want the emotional dependency and fear that goes with it“- when my mother took care of me, she expressed that it was indeed a burden for her, and it felt like a burden to her, one of the many household chores she had to do, but didn’t want to do. As a child, I desperately needed attention, just not hers, not that very unpleasant attention.

“I knew if I were to heal, it would come from myself and not anyone’s help“- as a child and a teenager, I needed help so to protect myself from my mother’s help, but I didn’t have any idea that such help was possible. For example, my mother insisted that I needed help scrubbing the dirt out of my head and back when showering, way into my teenage years. I didn’t want her help, but she insisted that it was necessary. I had to call her, naked, holding the shower head with one hand and hiding a part of my body with the other (one part had to be exposed when hiding the other), and then I had to call: MOTHER?!

She would then come in and scrub my head so hard with her hands that it hurt. She scrubbed my head as if she was scrubbing the bathtub, or a toilet, real hard. She then scrubbed my back. The shame was intense: I was scrubbed clean of outside dirt, but filled with inside dirt: shame. There was a relief when it was over, until the next time. It didn’t occur to me that someone could have stopped her from showering me… I tried to tell her No, but my success was limited to her agreeing not to wash my other body parts, and wash only what I couldn’t reach well, so she said: my head and back.

As crazy as it sounds, what if I posted on the forums and someone insisted on .. violating me this way, or some other way. When help becomes synonymous with violation, you don’t want it.

“I didn’t trust myself to talk with someone like you without making a mess. I needed to be stronger“- connecting this sentence with what I wrote above: did you need to be stronger before getting help so to endure the harm that comes with help (?)

“I only came back reading a bit in October 2020..  I wondered, once more, if talking with you would teach me more than what I could learn by reading others’ threads. But I refused to fall for this temptation when I was feeling bad. It was too risky“- the risk is about receiving harm when asking for help (?)

“I needed to..  keep coping/healing on my own. If I were to discuss with someone like you, it would be as a mature healed adult, out of curiosity, when being able to pay attention to you and be on equal grounds“- because being helped on an unequal ground, like a child being helped by her mother, brings more harm that good, so you needed to be strong enough to sustain the harm that comes with help (?)

“Fast forward, when I started this thread in July 2021… While I prepared myself to be emotionally responsible and not burdening anyone, I wasn’t prepared for the revelation you had a similar mother and similar trauma. When I noticed this discussion was likely to emotionally affect you, it was ‘uh-oh’ situation, I was worried about how it would go… I was pleasantly surprised that despite the emotional turmoil, there were signs of… something good, for both of us“-

– Emotional turmoil as expressed by our histrionic mothers, minor things blown out of proportion,  means that any emotional movement within us or around us/ any emotional exchange feels dangerous, doesn’t it.. So, we stay away from emotional exchanges with others, best we can, fearing an escalation into histrionics, being attacked, violated (?)

“I want you to know I will be patient. Even if you feel the need to postpone your answers to me. I understand this need very well, because… I guess I postponed this thread for an entire year. It is important for me to respect the pace you need to be comfortable and ready for our discussion“- thank you! I want to reciprocate your kindness and be as equally patient with your pace!

It is now 9:18 am, my coffee is cold, it’s very smoky outside, all the windows are closed, I will be walking on the treadmill indoors today, so to not breathe the outside air. I am not editing anything I typed above as I submit this post next.

anita