Dear Joanna:

You are welcome. You said that you will post soon and you did (It feels good when people keep their words, thank you!)

“So many times she took one small detail, analyzed it for days, weeks, years and build a whole new story around it“- another commonality between your mother’s behavior and my mother’s behavior.

“One time my mother said to her mother (my grandma) that ‘Mother is supposed to do parties and Christmas for her children!’ (grandma never did) – shows how delusional my mother is. She hardly ever made me a party or Christmas!“- like I said, they (your mother, my mother) are- throughout their lives-  the same wounded children they were. They don’t see themselves as adults. They see themselves (as wounded children)  everywhere they go, they don’t see anyone else.  They didn’t see us (the real-life children)

“She also has those attacks, rage. It could be anywhere: in the street, in the shop, post office. Someone would disrespect her, refused her and she would call this person names, offensive words, yell. There was no limit to it. Let’s say she wanted to get in the bus and someone was blocking the way, she would destroy that person, (not physically – not in those situations at least)“- my mother was often angry at other people but didn’t tell them. Instead, she told me about it.. a whole lot, on and on. But sometimes she exploded at others and it sounds like both our mothers exploded in the same way. My mother tore apart the other person with her words, loud, no-mercy words… and it happened anywhere, on the streets… one time in my elementary school, in front of all the students and teachers who were watching her explode at one of the teachers, my then music teacher.

“When I go for a walk I force myself to notice trees, signs, because I normally don’t see them. I am not attentive at work either, I have to force myself and focus to see thing“- it is as if I wrote these words. It amazes me how much I do not remember about my physical environment. Let’s see…I am trying to remember the color of the walls in the rooms where I live (for more than 8 years), and didn’t remember.. looking: it’s some sort of green in the sun room where I am sitting and typing these words right now, don’t know about the other rooms.

“I feel sorry for myself – that I did not have a real mother, that I wasted so many years, could do so many things, travel, meet people“- I was thinking about it only yesterday: that I really don’t know how it is for people who have mothers who are like mothers are supposed to be.. how does it look like…  if it happened to me.. how would it sound like.. feel like?

“I regret living with her for so long, but I do not blame myself for it. She is to blame that it was hard for me to find job, to be successful, to be in healthy relationship, that I had cuts and wounds on my face and it kept me from moving on with my life – it was all her fault that I was stuck“- true.

“If she was supportive and loving I would not have had all those difficulties“- true.

“It is freeing, though, to know all this, to realize she is in fact sick“- it is freeing: freeing from the guilt and shame that we felt as children, shame and guilt that did not belong to us then, and do not belong to us now!

anita