Dear Anita,

I read your post entirely, several times, before starting to reply. I’m doing it spontaneously and it will not necessarily be very chronological.

“reading this made me feel good, brought a part-smile to my face following waking up too early again (3 am).”

I am glad it did. I am glad I am still able to bring you even a part-smile.

The anxiety came back today. I think I’ve been worried at what it would mean that you considered I might have overpowered my mother enough to have more authority than her. Overpowering my mother to me, would mean being a bigger monster. Which isn’t good. My mother is pretty destructive and ruthless, she fights authority unless she is too afraid, if I were able to contain her through real authority it would make me the abuser she sometimes thinks I am. It would make her right. But it also would make me no good to be around people in the future. I wouldn’t trust myself to be around anyone if I had taken harmful such habits…

Though, I wonder what makes you sure now that “she did not lose her authority. She is very much in authority. (I was confused recently in regard to who’s in authority, but not anymore.” ? After all I do stand up to her and… I’d say her authority has always been flawed. We didn’t obey her, a lot. We would fear her, not when she ordered us, but when she would put us and herself in danger. We weren’t/aren’t very respectful with her, but we are fearful. Is it still enough of an authority?

Your new analysis in this post is interesting, it is… Hum I am not sure. “A perfect adaptation of a daughter to a histrionic mother“. The prognosis I infer from this isn’t very good from a personal standpoint, but I would rather that than being a harmful authority. There’s still a better chance of recovery than if I were, well, destructive.

“you developed yourself in any which way that will prevent fires or put them out when they start, including developing your intellectual analysis skills.”

When I was younger, I was quite proud of the analysis skills I developed. But at some point, they started to annoy me. What good is it to have strong analysis and make damage control if I couldn’t heal/eradicate the source of the perpetual fire? In the end, it wasn’t very smart of me to stay in “fire hazard” house. People told me to get away. I knew they were right. I knew the best option would be to get away, have a job, help my siblings to get away too. That’s partly why I went to university too. But… I failed. I couldn’t focus on outside world survival. I was still… trying to figure out how to help my family at the core, without extraction.

“this is your Job: to stay in the household and protect your mother, your siblings and yourself from your mother’s fire.”

But it isn’t a good job, isn’t it? It doesn’t prevent the time loop and the regular fires… It would make sense to resign for something more efficient, but I do not have the qualifications for the other possibilities…

“You are trapped in this job. Did you ever think of it as your job, with a capital J?”

Not really, no. It depends on how you look at it… I did think things like “I will never leave before both of my siblings are already out, because I could never leave them alone with my mother without help.” This wasn’t a job, it was common sense. But I also thought “I am so unfunctional, anyway, I’ll be the last to leave. Especially if I’m aiming at an art career, not enough money means no way out.”

Though, maybe you’d be interested to hear that after I left university and didn’t have a plan for the future, my mother was telling people : “She is stopping her studying to take care of me and her brother (15 year old at the time), because I’m ill and will need to be hospitalized.” It wasn’t true, it wasn’t my motivation and I thought about that “Wow she’s so ashamed of me she would tell such blunt dramatic lies… I can’t exactly correct her because telling I have no idea what to do with my future wouldn’t look good but, please…”

My real reason for coming home was my absence of aspiration/motivation for any typical job. You can infer that it was because I already had a job… I don’t know. I just assumed I was a coward with too much mental illness and dysfunctionality which isn’t false either. My adaptation caused that. I couldn’t have aspirations or motivations for anything when I didn’t consider myself as a person and had diminished emotions/motivations.

I want to tell you I am impressed by your patience, I didn’t expect you would go back to reading the beginning. It was interesting to read your analysis, and I’m curious to see if it’ll change later on.

It is 11:40 pm for me and I believe 2:40 pm for you, I wonder if you are feeling well right now or if it’s another low-energy day for you (especially with the sleep deprivation).  Of course, even if I replied tonight, you don’t have to answer today if you are tired! Either way, I’ll be patient.

I wish you a good afternoon,

Linarra.