Dear Cali Chica:

We communicated massively in a total of 182 pages in six of the threads that you started, the first being on July 11, 2016. You wrote yesterday, Nov 8, 2021 (in an email, after a long time of no contact): “I say ‘yes mother see, I told you I wouldn’t leave you – that I wouldn’t be like those others and leave my mom and be HAPPY!! See I am still loyal.. don’t worry I’m not one of THEM happy and away from you, I’m still loyal.. As soon as something becomes good, calm, happy – the daughter subconsciously finds a way to remind herself and (subconscious mother) that in fact things are not ‘good’ so don’t worry I’m the same – I’m still suffering, I’m still ‘unlucky’ don’t worry I’m loyal to the misery – I will never leave ‘you“-

And loyal you are. In your very first post on July 11, 2016, you shared: “I dated someone for 7 years high school -through college, to about 22, first love, who was truly the perfect guy for me in every way possible – yet at that young age I let him go, due to lack of appreciation.. no true issues“- during that first relationship, you reminded yourself that indeed things are not good, and you focused on what was missing in that “perfect guy”.

You continued on that same first post: “fast forward to 2 years ago, I met my now fiance..  truly a dedicated, devoted loving guy with a heart of gold.. but in the back of my mind I would be bothered every once in a while by old thoughts of it was right… am I settling?.. here right in front of me I have a WONDERFUL man that I am not appreciating at current“- again, you kept reminding yourself that indeed things are not good, and you focused on what was missing in this dedicated, devoted, loving, wonderful guy with a heart of gold, now husband.

November 9-10, 2016, at the age of 31,  you shared: “My mom has had a tough life.. Treated really poorly..  shunned, ridiculed, and harassed .. she truly suffered… around my teens I started realizing..  I had an affinity to overanalyze, fixate, and create a lot of burden of guilt on myself…  I feel it was engrained in my whole childhood to ‘feel bad’ I always recall feeling, wow how sad my mom’s life was.. why did people do this to her?… During this time too I noticed how negative she had made me.. I felt disappointed constantly, birthdays as a teenager I found myself focusing more on ‘who wasn’t there for me’ than the celebration or party at hand… I always went along with the well of course I’m miserable – xyz happened, of course I’m sad, this person did this…When i close my eyes I think of my mom as a damaged soul, a sad and abused (so to speak) fragile puppy“.

July 27-28, 2017: “There are some days where I have an ‘aha’ moment and say – wow okay that’s why I always felt disappointed with friends in high school, or wait that’s why I always perceived it to be my fault – because I am hard wired to think of the bad, to blame myself, and to take things as a personal attack… I am wired for negativity..  for example a friend being flakey leads to anxiety and internal negativity all day… now you may say – so don’t talk to your mom.  Well, the thing is, let’s put my mom on Mars. I still have me. and because I have a propensity to think and feel this way myself – the problem still remains…  It’s like if 40 people come to your event, you fixate on the one that flaked… I guess the theme is simply focusing outward not inward, focusing on the less important things and people instead of the most valuable.  having a great abundant life, but being unable to find true happiness as the mind wanders to what is ‘not there‘”.

January 4, 2018: “why do I let others have so much power over me, even if it isn’t something they are doing that’s personal (such as my rumination over a friend who has been flaky/not as responsive).  or why can’t I do a better job of shining that light..  to my whole happy life where I have so, so much good“?

Back to today, Nov 9, 2021: I just took a walk in the cold and asked myself: why is Cali Chica still wired for negativity today, Nov 8, 2021, more than 4 years after you titled one of your threads “Wired for negativity“? And it occurred to me that although you are aware of a lot of things, you are not adequately aware of two things (1) you still believe that your mother loved you and that she loves you still, (2) you still love her back. Believing in these two things, you are still on her side, still wired for negativity.

You wrote yesterday: “So much has changed in the last 5 years yet so much is still the same..  I am at the phase where I notice that NC or not, I still have loyalty to the monster, the mother“- what is still the same is #1 and 2 above. Look at the title of this very thread that you chose to resurrect only yesterday: “Loving but toxic parents“, let’s break the title a bit: “Loving.. parents“, and since the most powerful of your parents in your life has been your mother, let’s edit the title to: Loving Mother. Fast forward since that thread, you still believe today that she loves you, and.. you love her back.

On June 19, 2019, in a post to you I wrote to you and quoted from you in regard to an inner child exercise we did: “I.. asked you: ‘Your mother loves you, she wants you to be lucky, she wants you to be happy?’ You answered: ‘Yes so very much, she dedicates her life to me“.

The part of you who still loves your mother now (the child within you, aka the inner child) loved her before you ever came up with the terms you use for her: pathological, toxic, mentally ill, Narcissistic, monster, etc. This part is not impressed and not at all affected by the terms you use for her.. or by our long communication over the years. In that same June 19, 2019 post, I quoted you saying: “I..  was a blinded saint/devotee to my mother for many years“- part of you is still blind and still a saint/ devotee to your mother.

Your love for her is like GLUE that glues your wiring to negativity ongoing.

On June 25, 2019, you wrote about your mother: “she values no one.  not me, not my sister, not my husband… it is not a human, it is a monster with no value“- part of you came with this understanding, but the child in you is not at all impressed by this understanding, still believing that her mother loves her, still loving her back.. loyal.

This brings me to myself: I still hold on to some of what my mother taught me, things that are raining on my parade of life, so to speak, making me annoyed and miserable to some extent or another, teachings like: when you (anita) give to others, you are taking away from me! This is still keeping me from being as generous and as connected to others as I would like to be. I mean, it will make me happy to be more connected to people, but I keep hearing her voice, saying that I will be betraying her if I connect to others.. so loyal to her still, I keep my distance from others.

And so, even though I did not see her since May 2012, I think it was, did not talk to her on the phone since March 2013.. I still hear her voice, I still want to please her.. still loyal. The child within me survived all of my therapy of 2011-13, all of my MASSIVE writings in these forums since May 2015…  still feeling the way she always have.

She still  NEEDS to feel that her mother loves her, that her mother wants what’s best for anita-the-child. Child-anita cannot stomach the idea that her mother does not love her, it is unacceptable! She rejects the idea.. why, of course my mother loves me. anita-the-child has to believe this because to believe otherwise, is a death sentence for a child.

And so, I am taking this opportunity, this Tuesday afternoon, to tell the child within me: it is okay to understand that she doesn’t love us, that she never did. We will not die for it.. we lived so far without her love. I want you to understand that she never loved you so that you can let go of what she taught you, so that you are no longer loyal to what she told you. Look, child-anita, if she loved you, she would have noticed you.. she would have noticed how lonely you were, how anxious.. how much you needed her, and she would have made the sincere effort to love you, if not by feeling love for you, then by behaving in ways that would have helped you. She behaved in ways that hurt you, repeatedly so, no regret.. never an apology, never an effort to .. stop hurting you.

I know that she seemed sometimes like she had love for you, but it was not a deep feeling on her part.. it was a superficial affection like for a puppy that crossed her way one day..  and her enjoyment of you…. it was like the enjoyment of eating a cake.. nothing deep, nothing lasting.

It is easier, Cali Chica, to stop loving a person when you truly understand.. deeply understand, or at least, when you are being open to truly understand that the person you loved all these years, never loved you back. It is when we keep believing that she loved us.. that we keep being invested in getting more of that (non-existent) love.. loyal to her still.. while all along, really.. there was no love on her part. The proof is in the pudding, really.. look inside yourself.. where is that alleged love of hers.. what of it is left in you.. I mean, you don’t feel loved or loving, do you.

Read above your great empathy for her, intense lasting empathy.. where is her empathy. You wrote, “I felt disappointed constantly, birthdays as a teenager I found myself focusing more on ‘who wasn’t there for me'”– your mother wasn’t there for you. “(I) rumination over a friend who has been flaky/not as responsive”- Maybe the flaky friends you repeatedly focused on, on many, many occasions- all represent your flaky mother.. who appeared to love you.. and then flaked out.

anita

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