Dear Joanna:

“I appreciate that you share those everyday-life details..“- then I will continue to share these everyday details with you!

“Additionally when I tried to defend myself she came up with another term: that I was hormonal. She used it for years, to shame me, to humiliate me…  She disgusts me“- shaming and humiliating me was my mother’s favorite thing to do when she raged at me, carefully picking the words that will shame me the most. She successfully made me feel a lot of disgust for myself.. and for her.

“My mother used to be very skinny..  also was skinny while pregnant, also wasn’t showing… I weighed 2 kilograms at the moment of birth“- don’t know how much the baby-me weighed at birth, I don’t remember her mentioning it, maybe she did. Generally, when my mother talked, I tried to not hear, to not let the words (and numbers) register.

“Her face, her angry face.. No, angry does not describe it, it was more than that: contempt, hatred, disgust, repulsion combined with anger.  At some point she almost entirely stopped yelling at me and used only silent treatment, only her face expression, it was so powerful, all she needed to do is give me the look“-

– I can’t believe that I am reading these words. It is as if I wrote them.. this is almost unbelievable!  I used to have this recurring dream in which my mother was looking at me with pure contempt, disapproval, rejection and repulsion. There was no action, no words and no sound in the dreams, only her silent venomous, hateful look.

“Anita, there are times I confuse your memories with mine. I will repeat after you: ‘as if I wrote this’“- I wrote the above before I read this sentence (I am reading and responding to your post part by part, responding to one part before reading the next). The similarities are almost unbelievable, incredible…

“She used to tell me how grandma was giving her silent treatment and my mother would ‘wake up at night, feeling like she was going crazy. I had the same feeling’“- and she did it to you… No pity, no mercy.

“That’s why I took Xanax as a drug for years“- I took Clonazepam (a benzodiazepine, like Xanax) 1995, or 1996 – 2013.

“Earlier, when I was a young child I had this weird feeling… like a dream, but I wasn’t sleeping, maybe half a dream… like a fantasy. I apologize if this is not clear. I read about dissociation many times but it does not quite fit“- my earliest memory of dissociation is from the time I was six or so. I was alone in the apartment at night because my mother, while fighting loudly with my father (right before their divorce)  screamed that she was going to kill herself and left the apartment. He left too. So, I walked down the stairs in the dark scared, intending to look for her.. and then, I imagined that I was a movie star playing in a scary movie and I felt positively excited in the midst of horror.

“How simple and perfectly said“- thank you.

“Yesterday after we talked about tics I was lying in bed calmly and thought about how would it be like, if those tics just disappeared. There were couple of seconds I did not move my eyes, I thought ‘what if I magically make those tics disappear forever, right here, right now’.. no sudden movements, no being tired of doing it every day all the time. I felt it to be true for a moment, it felt so powerful“- powerful indeed, oh how I wished to no longer tic. I thought about it from time to time: how does it feel to not tic, how lucky other people are, people who don’t tic..

“It would be delightful to know how life would be“- again, I wrote the above before I read this.

“I was in a bus today and saw this girl and a mother. The girl (around 9/10yo) was sick, I think, was not feeling well. Mother was checking on her again and again, could not do much about it I assume, but hugged her a couple of times. Did not even say much. It looked so selfless, she was not looking around to see if anyone saw that, to be praised for that. So nice. Costs nothing.“- it is my turn to tell you: how simple and perfectly said!

The snow is continuing to melt. Seems like I will be taking my regular walk, 5.6 km (3.5 miles) in a couple of hours. I usually take bear spray with me because there are plenty of mountain lions (in addition to bears) around here. Good thing mountain lions don’t seek human prey… if they did, I wouldn’t be walking outside!

anita