Hi anita

Thank you for the wishes and the compliments – you have the courage to address and consider personal, emotional topics that most people automatically reject. Add to these your intelligence and genuine kindness, and … I think that your work colleagues are fortunate to have you and I know that you are not a loser – Feels really nice to hear good things about myself from you. I am glad to hear you say I am kind and honest. I need to overcome those fears. I want to be okay with who and what I am. I think one of the main causes of this inner turmoil is constantly worrying about what I am coming across as to people.

I think I’ve discovered something, adding to what we discussed about what I meant to my mother. I am worried about appearing useless at work. That might be because of the fear of getting fired, like my father. But also, there has always been fear of not doing enough for my mother. At home, I find myself constantly checking in with my mother to see if she needs help with anything. It is strange that even after close to 3 decades, I don’t trust my mother to come to me if she needs help. She has never hidden her suffering yet she carries the image of a silent sufferer. I may come across as rude, but if she was keen on hiding her suffering, we wouldn’t be aware at all. I think it was a game, doing everything herself and complaining about having done everything. Instead of communicating up front, we were expected to guage her burden. So, it naturally instilled this guilt that we weren’t good daughters for not looking for ways to ease her burden with house work. But now I also realize the same principle applies to emotions as well. I see this with my sister too, no one does this. It is not normal. You either feel like doing some work or someone asks you to do it, so you do it. This constant worry that my mom might be doing too much house work is really strange. Today, if I asked her if she needs any help, she’ll say no. But, where does this worry that she needs help come from? It is from feedback in the past. She used to look so done with everything. That now we want to pre-empt that mental/physical exhaustion. Sometimes it looked like she was done with life.

We had already re-hired the lady who washed dishes a few months back, there’s still other work to do, but any of us could do it. I don’t know why it’s a burden when she does it. Why is it a burden. You either do it or you don’t. Why act like we’ve imprisoned her.  There’s also the angle of – they don’t have a lot of retirement money and she doesn’t want us to spend money on them. But I can afford it so instead of doing it myself, I hired someone. Again, if it is on me to find a solution, I’ll find something that is convenient for me. But I feel guilty. So, coming back to appearing useless, instead of thinking if they have some work for me, they’ll tell me. I am constantly worried about looking useless to my seniors and boss.

Talking about a prison, I think our culture contributes to this – we are expected to look at her being miserable and complaining, but not doing anything about it, and be grateful for that. And in turn are expected to be okay with us feeling like we are imprisoned but stay, to be good children.I once expressed wanting to move to a paid accomodation and I can’t describe the anger on my mother’s face. It was going to be in the same city, but she didn’t like that. Why would any parent want their child to continue living in their hell. Sometimes I wonder if my mother is actually as hurt as us. She gets upset when I pick fights with my father now. Almost like a general upset his soldier got into a fight without being commanded to. She never directly pushed me to fight, but I used to fight a lot when I was younger. Now I am expected to stop, like a robot.

As for what you mentioned in you last post, you’re right, she tried to turn us against our father so she could control us and she succeeded. My fear and worry benefit her immensly. She positioned herself as good and constantly threatened to oust us from her side. I wasn’t even rebellious, I was genuinely unwell mentally and she dealt with it with being cold and self-centred. I feel broken. I don’t know how to fix this. You are asking me not to feel guilt, but I honestly don’t know where the boundary of a healthy mother-daughter relationship lies. I don’t know how to take care of her without the worry or guilt.

Girija

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.