Dear Javier:

Before reading your most recent post, addressed to me, I did not know how much we have in common. I did not read anyone voice this part of my experience more accurately than you did, not in over 6.5 years of communicating here with thousands of members.

Like you, I too “always felt responsible for my mother’s happiness” (until recently). I too felt “responsible for her being alone, sad and unhappy“. I too got “sad and depressed when I think about her and her life“. Just like you, “when I see her and think about her life, I just see a vulnerable kid that has been through so much hurt and pain“, and I too “wish I could take away the pain and sorrow“. Like you, I too thought about “ending it all“, but didn’t for the same reason as yours: I didn’t want to add to her hurt and pain, to “crush her to thousand pieces“.

I can’t remember a time when I thought of my mother as a woman, an adult who I can depend on. To me, she was always a vulnerable kid, a hurt child who’s about to cry and wail at any time and threaten (once again) to kill herself because her misery, she said, was too great. She used to describe her misery at great length, for hours at a time, retelling her life story and how unfortunate she was, and how fortunate everyone else was, and how they took advantage of her. Her accounts were heart breaking, and my little heart broke for her, over and over again. I was overwhelmed by her misery. There was no end to her misery and to how much my heart ached for her. I felt so very sorry for her, and I hated all those other fortunate people who hurt her. I would have done anything for her, and I tried, throughout life, whatever I could, I did, but I never succeeded in turning her frown into a smile. I never succeeded in making her pleased that I was in her life.

About five years ago, or so, I realized that the child that my mother was, that child was gone long before I was born. I never met that child. I met a woman with a mental entity of a child, aka the inner child, but the child herself was gone long before I existed. No matter how good of a “mother” I could have been for my mother (a reversed role), I couldn’t have helped a child who did not exist. One day, while walking through the woods, I chose a tree and buried something under a tree, something that represented the child that my mother was.

I then reversed the distortedly reversed role and saw my mother-myself in the correct way: she was the mother; I was the child. Not the other way around!

Oh, how much misery it was for me, to be her “mother”! Unlike how a real child would be, at 3, 4, 5, etc., my mother was much bigger and stronger than me, and she was not at all open to my parenting: she did not listen to me, she did not follow my suggestions, she argued, she threatened, she threw very scary temper tantrums in which she insulted me and blamed me and sometimes hit me. What chances did I (a child/ teenager) have to parent that kind of a “child”???

Fast forward, throughout my later teens, if not earlier, and throughout my adulthood, I really did not want her in my life because of how miserable it was having her in my life. But I felt too guilty to cut contact with her because I was afraid that she will be miserable without me, that she might even kill herself if I refused to have contact with her. I thought that she couldn’t live without me. Fast forward, what a surprise: I discovered that it was me all along who felt that I couldn’t live without her, and when I did cut contact with her, to my surprise: she did not at all complain, not to me, neither did she chase me for contact.

I then realized: oh, if I was important to her all these years when I was a child and in her presence every day, she would have been happy to have me in her life. She was miserable all along because I didn’t mean much to her. Every time since, whenever I felt guilty for not having contact with her, I reminded myself: in all those years that I did have contact with her, she wasn’t happy. If I contact her now, nothing will change, she’d still be unhappy.

Back to you, Javier: I know that our stories are not identical, stories never are, but we can benefit from understanding each other’s stories.

anita