Anita,

I’ll try to write spontaneously. Still I need a lot of thinking and therefore pauses.

I returned from my walk a little while ago- no animal sightings, snow and ice is almost all melted

I googled mountain lion – looks big and powerful, beautiful but scary. Good there is less ice, more safe to walk!

 She felt that it was her job to make sure that I was clean, and she hated this.. cleaning job

Exactly this. I wonder why is that.. Is it not wanting to have family/children after all… It is still difficult to me to comprehend how this behavior may not have roots or reasons – it is a disorder, a personality, something they (our mothers) learned through their trauma but also developed in a way, from what I understand.

All my life I saw it was my mother’s job, duty to take care of me and she hated it. (Later I found out she had the chance to move out to Canada with her high school boyfriend when I was 7, but could not as she was already married and had me.) When I heard it, I thought “now it makes sense why you hate me so much”… but I don’t think it was the reason. She just hated me. (Anita, if you tell me your mother too wanted to move to Canada… I will be speechless 🙂 )

– Only a week ago, it happens that I told a young woman I know: “I was NEVER a girly girl“. From puberty  (which for me started a few years later than my peers) and for much of my life, I felt intense shame regarding secondary sex characteristics and great discomfort regarding the period thing. I never liked the idea- or experience- of being a woman. To this very day, I don’t dress like a woman: I wear jeans, no makeup, no going to the hairdresser, etc., and I keep myself as slender as I can be.. because it makes me look prepubescent.

I relate to this so much. My clothes as mostly black, neutral.. hoodie is my every day look, martens style boots. No earrings, no heels, no dresses (Although I did wore them on some occasions). Prepubescent – a very accurate term.

“She always used to come into bathroom when I was taking bath“- reading this today, I again thought to myself: did I write this?

How is this possible.. How does this happen. I still haven’t come to terms with how can someone fit so well into the description of narcissistic mother: she was not taught this, did not have a course on how to behave, what to say, yet she is a textbook, perfect example, and now…. we are seeing how our both mothers fit such similar description  (I am afraid of saying… “the same” – it’s terrifying, impossible.)

 in her mental experience, whatever she felt and did was caused by someone else, in this case, by me. If she felt angry- I must have done something wrong to make her angry (or I must have thought or felt something wrong and she, having read my mind, got angry as a result). And whatever she said and did while angry, was my fault entirely.. because I made her angry.

in her mind, she did not exist as an independent agency (one who acts, one who initiates, one who chooses): whatever she thought, felt and did… was an automatic reaction to me.

other people (including myself)- in her mental experience- did not have their own thoughts and feelings.. it was her thoughts and her feelings that she was inaccurately projecting into everyone..

So it’s a part of the “assuming”, as I see it. Accusing people of thinking this and that.. getting angry about it and then acting on it.  How delusional.

I remember my usual day was coming back from school, being sad, or at least not cheerful, (every day since early morning her partner was at our place, mocking me, then I was bullied at school- nothing to be cheerful about after surviving this, I would rather call it “tired”) her asking me “What is wrong with you”, me saying nothing, and then she always got angry “so you won’t speak to me now, huh?” and stopped speaking to me for the rest of the day. And on repeat, next day the same. What was on her mind then – is a mystery to me.

it is a terrible existence to be trapped in another person’s sick brain, in the distorted upside-down reality that exists in their brain. It is refreshing to experience freedom from that trap!

It is indeed.

I knew it was fantasy. On the other hand, my mother’s fantasy (that I thought what she thought, that I felt what she felt), she didn’t know it was fantasy and there was no convincing her otherwise.

Yes, it’s a completely different fantasy, different purposes.

it was my mother’s PANIC that scared me the most. It was her uncontrolled and histrionically (exaggerated, showy) expressed upset, distress and panic that scared me so very much. It was the alarming tone and loudness of her voice, the extreme despair in her face, in her voice, in her words… she showed me the underside of her arms, showing me where she will cut her wrists and make herself bleed to death…  going on and on and on about how miserable her life was and how much better it would be for her if she didn’t live anymore. It was scary and heartbreaking.

After I answered your question in the morning (spontaneously, for once) I wondered all day “Maybe Anita was right and it was not such a big deal, maybe she was too small and did not even understand this word..”. But now after what you wrote now I no longer have doubts about it being a big deal. It was scary and heartbreaking. – Yes it was. A horror movie, as you once put it. I tried to imagine this situation, I may know it from movies. Scary.

 I kept going over what I said and correcting myself, or I’d say things in a very cautious way, so to avoid being misunderstood or misinterpreted, covering all possible misinterpretations and addressing them before being misunderstood.

I kept feeling that I was making mistakes and that the consequences will be terrible. I felt that there was something very wrong with me, and therefore, whatever comes out of me spontaneously, will bring disaster. It wasn’t that long ago, that I said to myself: it is okay to just type away/ talk/ think because there is nothing wrong with me (not more than with any other person), so there is no danger of something terrible being revealed if I am spontaneous/ not careful.

Interesting how I think the same, remembering to be cautious, careful. My biggest worry is making a fool of myself and offending people unwittingly. And being a burden.

It’s that simple, I agree. I noticed people rarely see it or they just ignore it/it happens to them too.