Dear Sann/ Reader:

You first posted on March 10, 2015, seven years, a month and 10 days ago. I replied to you for the first time on June 21, 2015, and you replied to me for the first time the day after. Your last post, addressed to me, was on September 20, 2016, five years and 7 months ago.

In August- October 2015 you shared for the first time about your childhood: “I’ve learned… when I was a child … mockery… the way my parents and family used to (and still) be ‘funny’ at me. By pointing out things that I can’t and in a way that put me down and make me lose confidence in yourself – maybe I’m just too sensitive… so many people have gone through much worse things, with me it was just the way I was treated, there was not really physical abuse, so what am I complaining about…?… one of my parents is dead, and the other does so much for me, so I don’t like to go on about how they didn’t have the best way to raise me, because they did what they could. My mother had major mental AND physical problems herself, and she just wasn’t in control of herself, she had such a hard time with herself, and I think she just wasn’t ready for a child…

“I just remember, my father told me that I had a lot of severe constipation problems already when I was a baby. So yes, that might show that I learned from very little to be blocked on holding myself in – of course I don’t know anything about that time… I have actually, in the past, confronted my parents… Especially my mother, I said some very, very harsh things to her (probably the worst things that a child can say to their mother), then I switched the phone off and didn’t take contact for a year or so. Then we had a talk with the therapist in the hospital where I was, and then some on and off contact again (in a bit an awkward way), and a few years later she died. I can’t even dare to start to imagine what that must have been like for her. Perhaps I am putting so much emphasis on understanding her, because I still feel guilty for that. Almost a year after she died… I became suddenly very suicidal and desperate… it was all the guilt for saying these awful things to her and treating her like that… the reason that I am so afraid to get really into it, more than just with my mind. I might still be afraid that I will have to deal with these words of mine and not being able to deal with all the self-hatred and self-blame that comes up….

“I feel different than you because I don’t think my mother was bad and she didn’t want to hurt me. She was in too much fight within herself and couldn’t cope with herself. She probably wasn’t ready or able to raise a child, but she was not bad”.

June 2016: “When I was a child, it was hard to be real. My mother had a lot of problems, physical health problems as well as emotional problems. When I was in hospital, I saw once on a report that I described her as having borderline – not with those words but because of the way I described her. She didn’t have control over herself, had a lot of self-loathing and worked it out on me. She was very unpredictable, and I was scared of her. she would have big rage-outbursts, shouting and shaking me around. Maybe I was already sensitive as a child, but I was scared. And then at times she would regret and come to me ‘oh my little sprout, you love your mummy don’t you…’ I don’t know if these were the exact words but in that kind of attitude. With a kind of feeling that she needed my reassurance, that everything was ok. Now I realise, that was actually already a kind of helper role that I was taking on. When I was scared of her, and when she burst out in anger, out of proportion, then I was already taking on the responsibility to comfort her, and to tell her that everything was ok. While I was hurt, and scared, but who was there to comfort me, to give me the assurance that everything was ok?

“There was never real affection, real safety. My father was the safe person, the reliable person. I was not afraid of him. But there was also not really affection, or attention. When I was 18, my parents divorced, my mother took me with her but later the court decided that my father should raise me, which is what he had fought for and also what I wanted, because I was scared of my mother. My father did what he could, but he didn’t know how to give me affection. When I was an adult, he told me that he never gave me a hug, or never even put an arm around me, because he was afraid that people would think about child abuse. I remember there was never the time or the space to listen to me. I would come back from school or other activities and wanting to tell something, and he would act with ‘yes, yes…’ on a tone that said, I showed some attention but not whole-heartedly, and then ‘and now I want to watch tv’. Meals were always in silence.

“I never remember a genuine smile from either of them. I still find it hard to smile genuinely, and usually don’t manage it. Especially when I like somebody. With my mother, later, as a teenager, I remember a lot of times where she would be complaining to me about how bad her life is, and what the point would be to keep living. So as a teenager I was trying to support my mother, listening to her, trying to show understanding, trying to encourage her. She would sometimes give signs in a very indirect way. I remember once, when I was spending the weekend with her, and in the morning would come downstairs and find a paper on the table ‘who to call in case Xx (her name) would die’, and then names and phone numbers in order of priority. This was further making me scared, because there was always a kind of thread (in my feeling) that it would be my fault, that I would be responsible in case she died, I wouldn’t have done enough to help her.

“Also, as a teenager, I felt a huge pressure from my mother, to act as if everything was ok between us. That we just got along well as mother and daughter. A lot of acting. Pretending. Acting in a fake way, with a fake kind of voice. I think this is what really messed me up, because things weren’t ok between us. She hadn’t been there for me, and she had never given me the safety or love that every child needed. Maybe she couldn’t she had had problems with her mother and that had been the way for the previous generations. But then I had to put up this kind of play, which I did, probably because I felt this would be safer than to be honest and rebelling or not playing it. When I would be impolite (I was also a teenager, remember), she would give me comments that would be guilt-inducing. So I think that made me feeling not real, feeling that I had to put up a huge facade and faking, in order to be accepted (and is that not one of the basic needs, as a child?). Pushing myself further away.

“As an adult (now less because I live abroad), my father would sometimes complain to me about his problems with the attitude of his girlfriends’ daughter, who is not very nice to him, even though he does a lot for her. And I would listen, trying to support him. Give him the emotional support that I kept longing for, to get from him. My father tries to support me a lot, on the practical level, and is always there for me when he can. When I was in hospitals and completely desperate and suicidal, he would try in his way, to give me hope, but really listening to me, he just can’t. There was never a lot of physical violence. Anyway, I don’t think the bit of physical stuff messed me up. But psychologically, probably a lot more than I still would like to admit to myself. And these things are more invisible. People don’t notice easily what’s going on with this way of acting. Or, I don’t think they notice, even if they did, it is a lot more complicated and less open. So, I think I have learned as a child, that there is no place for me. People are scary, I have to try really hard to please them and it is nearly impossible. People are cold and distant”.

– to be continued in the next 24 hours,

anita