Dear Dave:

Answering your questions in your last paragraph: “With your mother, was it (and is it still) difficult to hear these things, that you contributed to the hurt she felt?“- (1) It was very, very difficult for me to hear her express that she was so very hurt and that I contributed to her hurt. She went on and on telling me many times how (she believed..  or did she..) that I intended to hurt her and went about hurting her in a planned and calculated manner.. while reality was that I never meant to hurt her. The opposite was true: I would have done ANYTHING to make her happy.. and I did My Everything to make her happy: my Everything was limited to the fact that I was a child and lacked money and resources to make money,  (2) I ended all contact with her more than 8 years ago, so I no longer hear her say anything (I still hear her voice in my head though, but less acutely, as times and healing proceed).

“Did you feel resentment for trying your best as a daughter and only hearing what a horrible life your mother had?“- I wasn’t aware that I tried my best because she told me that I tried to hurt her. I tried to tell her that it was not true, that I didn’t try to hurt her, but she argued and insisted that what she said was true. I was very confused.. believing her- yet not believing her. I felt such a painful empathy for her for having had a horrible life for so long.. I used to fantasize about being rich and changing her life, giving her the luxury she said would make her happy. I gave her my first paycheck at 18 and onward. Following a year working my first full time job in the US, I gave her ALL my money, having nothing left for me. It didn’t make her happy.

“Do you feel that you appreciated her?“- of course, a terribly painful kind of appreciation: it hurt me to eat the food she bought for me, I couldn’t enjoy clothes and toys that she bought for me with her hard earned money because earning money working as hard as she did- was a big part of what made her life so horrible, something she expressed to me at great lengths.

“was it hard to appreciate her with how she felt towards you?”- I was devastated by how she felt about me, and I was very angry with her for a long, long time, but throughout I never stopped wanting her to love me back. I kept waiting and waiting.. and it never happened.

anita