Dear Anita,

“Occasional affection in between abuses is not Love. When there is abuse- there is no love. This is why between you and me there never will be abuse, not in its “mildest” form of.. casual disrespect, and not in any other form.”

No, there will not be. I really trust these words.

I said: “Plus I’m living with a monster who has been messing with my head since my birth, not exactly the most reassuring thing ever. I understand it very well, this kind of worry. It is why I need to be emotionally mature and responsible!.. to be worthy of your trust in me, to be worthy of saying ‘I love you’ meaningfully” and you asked “I don’t adequately understand what I quoted here: what you are referring to in “this kind of worry”, supposedly my worry?”

Alright, I’ll try to explain this feeling. Me still living with the monster is a worrying factor because… well I’m going to give an example :

What if the way she keeps messing me up / or even just prevents my healing ends up impacting our connection… what if she invents a brand new way to destroy me and I can’t take it without numbing myself, which could lead to an emotional withdraw from my relationships with people from the outside (hopefully temporary but we wouldn’t know), including maybe our connection. Which I guess would make you sad. Meaning that indirectly I could let the monster have an impact on you if I am not able to protect myself well enough.

Or when you mentioned your thoughts about the possibility of hearing her while having a phone call with me, things like that.

Of course, I intend to keep my promise, keeping her away from you during our exchanges should be easy enough. And for the former example… I really want to do what is best for our connection, to not let the monster ruin this good thing for us, but I am less confident so I cannot make it a promise (it wouldn’t be right). I can only say I’ll try my best on my healing journey, so I can prevent to possibilities that it comes to that as much as I can… But is it enough to prevent the worry… mine or yours, I do not know if you worry, but I do because I feel the wish I’ll be able to do what is good and right for me and for our connection. It is conflicted by the difficulty I have to leave. I feel internal conflict I guess, between what I want (be a reliable, strong person, with no ties to a monster that could harm directly or indirectly those I love) and what I think I’m able to do (… not much). It makes me feel disappointed in myself, but I’ll keep trying to figure it out. And until then, what I can do I will do, and hope it’ll expand. So I’ll be to provide an entire safety from the monster because she’ll be nowhere near me. And not just promise to prevent direct harm. I want to be able to prevent the indirect ones too…

” you do deserve love and you are worthy of love!”

Thank you.. You are too, so so so much.

“How can Affection be Wrong.. why is it a Problem.. What happened to that affection blocked by her anger… an affection accused of being Wrong, a Problem… well, it becomes wrong and a problem.”

They always find a way to twist affection. Whether it is by imposing their affection in-between abuse, forcing us to express affection we do not genuinely feel… rejecting, shaming, making wrong the affection we genuinely felt. What THEY did to us was so wrong.

“I learned most recently that it is these spontaneous eruptions of positive emotion that are most trustworthy.. what a difference it makes to spontaneously express what you feel inside vs the academic/ robotic way of life.. being so careful and suspicious of emotions.”

I am happy you learned that, opening up to emotion is beautiful. I hope I’ll be able to feel my emotion without having to worry. I feel safer in our connection than I did in any other one… and I have many friends (for someone who fear people). Yet I still worry. Because it is still new to me, and I am very grateful to have you in my life, so I really want to do things right. Even in the best conditions, old habits are very lasting. But that’s alright, slowly but surely I’m learning too.

“I thought about it, I wondered to myself: what is your real name. When we do exchange email (it can happen anytime you want to, no rush), I will find out your name, how exciting! Mine is anita.”

I’m ready for it at any time. Oh, there’s a thing I’ve been curious about. Usually, people do use the uppercase at the beginning of their name, except maybe when in a rush, but you seem to never do. Is there a reason to it? And if so do you prefer I drop the uppercase, writing “Dear anita” instead of “Dear Anita” at the beginning of my posts?

” I said it above, in boldface, naturally!”

And it makes me very happy!

” I will say the words when it feels genuine and comfortable, like earlier in this post. And you are welcome to say these words when it feels right or.. true, natural.”

It seems to be a good way to go about it.

” no, you are not messy or unclear or rambling.. This is making me think of myself, of how messy I felt because of my conflicting emotions, strong shame, strong guilt, confusion. I tried to compensate for all that turmoil with my academic/ intellectual/ analytical Thinking Persona. But that persona did not calm my turmoil nor did it increase my understanding of what I most needed to understand … I discovered it is the spontaneous expressions of emotions that calm me and make things.. crystal clear.. amazing”

This similarity between us is somehow very helpful because you understand it well. The cores emotions, the ‘not so helpful’ coping mechanism and… what really helped you. I want to follow you on this path.

Very often, when I read your reply to me or other members, something in me is soothed. I really admire you and the way you go about things, the way you use your words.

“It is now Friday 9 am my time, 6 pm your time. I hope that you have a much better night tonight, I wish you would!”

Thank you! I will try. Being tired and in some physical pain today made me less patient with my mother. And earlier, just hearing her loud happy voice as she was playing another role, I was very overwhelmed. I almost felt the physical pain getting to my brain just hearing her. I had to take loud breathes (lately I need to do that a lot, especially when she’s around…) When I am tired and not exactly numb or patient, she doesn’t even need to hurt me to be suffocating. Her entire existence is difficult to bear at those moments because I cannot deal with my own problems and deal with her.

Linarra