Dear Thomas:

Thank you for sharing your reflections 🙏.

My post was about the psychological experience of not being allowed to exist as a separate person in childhood, and about reclaiming that space now. That’s the path I’m on, and I’m staying with that focus.

Wishing you well on your own journey.

🌿 ✨ 🤍 Anita

Dear Thomas:

Aa I read that the past still haunts you, that you have so many regrets, that it’s hard for you to let go of the past, my heart breaks for you this Sat night 🌙 (I didn’t realize it’s Vaentine Day, by the way, until an hour ago… and I don’t care that it is 🙂 ]

Anyway, I.. for whatever it’s worth, I don’t want the past to haunt you. I would like you to be at peace.

Like I told you before, you ARE a good person, however imperfect (and who is..)

Just don’t want you to suffer, Thomas. You’ve done your best. It’s just that there’s so much to this complicated world 🌎 we live in.

Letting go of the past, I figure, is about letting go of the idea that you should have been a super human (a god), and accepting that you, that I, that we are only humans. Not gods/ not some perfect specimens.

May peace be with you this Sat night, and with me, and with those we care so much about.

🤍🎵🌙 Anita

Hi Everone:

I chose the title of a very famous, melancholic song 🎵 released in 1971 if I remember correctly.

I chose it because Thomas brought it up, feeling Alone himself one evening, Alone Again.

I want to invite you, Thomas, to post here again, as many times as you’d like, if you would, and share about your brand of Alone.

You too, Alessa, if you’d like to share about your kind of Alone.

I’d like to invite anyone who may be reading this to share about your brand/ kind of Alone.

This evening I will share about the Alone I grew up with, in a stream of consciousness kind of way, whatever comes to mind.

* Adding a Trigger Warning ⚠️ (after I typed for a while) because suicide is mentioned.

I was never alone when she was physically there, talking- to me or to others, in person or on the phone. Living in a tiny apartment, there was no privacy or time alone. I couldn’t help but hear her every word. And she talked ALOT.

When she was out working that’s when I was alone in the apartment, lying down with the radio playing songs like “Alone Again (Naturally)”, and daydreaming, a lot, finding refuge in make believe love stories and international success as a movie star or a famous dancer or even one who started a new religion.

In real-life there was my mother and me spending so much time in such close physical proximity and no other social life for me, almost no time outside on my own, no friends.

For one thing, she repeatedly threatened suicide, so I felt it was my obligation, my job, to be with her in the apt so to sort of watch over her, so that she’ll never be alone.

I didn’t want to leave her alone and then find out she killed herself and it’d be my fault because I wasn’t there.

And also because she instilled in me the feeling that if I get close to anyone else (a cousin, a school peer, an uncle, an aunt, anyone, and as an adolescent, a boy), I’d be betraying her.

So, there I was with her almost non-stop, Never Alone.

But the never-alone, the togetherness with her, meant that I had to not be there, psychologically speaking.

No individual identity was allowed. In other words, a distinct person with own emotions, thoughts, likes, dislikes.. none of that was allowed.

I was there with her as a shell of a person, the appearance of a person. No internal life allowed that’s any different than hers.

So, the Alone, for me, was about almost always being together with a person who did not allow me to be distinct or separate or unlike her in any way.

If red was her favorite color, why, it had to be mine, so to speak.

I don’t think she ever asked me a question like, “What do you THINK (about this or that)?”, or (she definitely would never, ever ask me), “What do you FEEL about (this or that)?”

There was no me allowed.

So, the Alone for me was within my soul, an ongoing ache TO BE a person free from the domination of another person who happened to be my mother.

So, now- fast forward, Togetherness primarily means, to me, taking space, being a 3-D person, not a 2-D extension of her.

Like right now, expressing all this in this post. This is me in 3-D ☺️

My favorite colors are snow white and blue- turquoise, I love spending time with people who are friendly and genuine. I am not owned by anyone.

I am Free 2 B me.

🎵 🤍 ✨️ Anita

Dear Alessa:

(Using the one surviving computers, so no emojis show up)

Reading your most recent 2 posts, Alessa: truly, I am impressed by your beauty as a person, a unique, exquisite beauty! And it’s not the unusually early glass of wine speaking, or the old music of my childhood that I’m listening to right now (the childhood I didn’t have; the one I am getting to have now).

The wine and music help me appreciate the truly amazing and beautiful person that you are!

I’m sorry you’re having a UTI. My sister has been having one for the longest time. It got better but kept going for a long time in lower intensity. I don’t often talk with her, mostly because I’m afraid to hear about her pains, physical and emotional. It hurts me to hear.

Having the highly-highly-highly-… highly disturbed mother has taken its heavy toll on both of us.

* Interesting that no one came up with big-boy/ big girl diapers?

I hope your dog’s cut heals.

It’s 3 pm here. Bogart is finally sleepy after his very active, call-of-the-wild walks. He’s the most adorable beagle though my shoulders hurt because of him pulling strongly and unexpectedly. I am learning how to walk him vs him walking me, calling the shots.

You asked: “Who is Anita?”. I don’t remember ever being asked that! (I need an emoji here)

Just got a bit more wine to facilitate an answer: Anita is a girl that wants to be a girl FREE from the relentless, oppressive oppression inflicted on me day after day, year after year, actively into my 20s, 30s and beyond. The oppression was intense, relentless, inexcusable, cruel, ongoing.

And no one saw, no one.

Wait, the question is Who-is-Anita?- Someone who wants to be seen, to be heard= to be, to exist as me (not as her extension/ a figment of her imagination).

When I wrote above “a girl that”, I noticed the word should be, grammatically, “who”, not “that”, as in “a girl who”, but in this case, grammatically accurate = emotionally inaccurate, because..

Did you hear of a book that came out decades ago, titled “A Child Called It”? This is what it was for me: growing up (in), I was an “it”, not a person, not at all a 3-D person, but a 2-D object.

So, who is me? A 3-D creature, person. My tics have always been about trying to break through the 2-D/ object limitation (“it”) and be/ become a person, a 3-D human.

* I just found out that I may be going to the taproom which would be strange because I normally go there sober. I won’t be driving though, of course!

(white heart emoji), Anita