Dear ally:

I have experience with “the people who are supposed to love (me) unconditionally” and who do not… love me unconditionally.

My mother would have loved me if her condition was met, which was that I was born not a baby, but an adult who was financially secure, well mannered, a great sense of fashion, one who would never disagree with her and would never say or do anything that she disapproved of. Then she would have loved me, then she would have valued me as someone who can do something for her, someone who she could look up to.

This is my experience. But yours is different. If you would like to share more, about your mother’s suicide, if you are able and willing to share, please do. It reads like an event that followed and was followed by a lot of significant causes and consequences.

anita

Dear ally:

You are welcome. It reads to me that you have a good understanding of the situation and what motivates everyone. Your father and siblings don’t want closeness because it requires what is under the carpet to be exposed and examined. They don’t want to do that. You want closeness and willing to examine what is under the carpet. Only you are alone in this quest.

I have tried for many, many years to fix my mother, to achieve closeness with her.. I tried even when I didn’t know I was trying. All  in vain. After decades I realized that indeed all was in vain, all my efforts, my time, my energy, the loss of my youth, the loss of experiences I didn’t have and wished I did.. because I was busy with attempting the impossible, again and again… and yet again.

I no longer have any contact with my mother. Seeing her or hearing her voice was enough to trigger my acute distress and so, I had to cut contact with her so to begin my healing process. I have some contact with my sister but not deep communication because although she is nice to me, she still is very much under my mother’s spell, not able or willing to face what is under that carpet, figuratively.

If you find a person who is compatible with you, able and willing to examine what is difficult to look at, a person who values what you value, then you will have a meeting of the minds and hearts with that one person. A genetic link is not necessary.

anita

Dear ally:

Your last word in your recent post is guilty. I have decades of guilt torture behind me. My guilt started early on and persisted. I know guilt too well. The guilt I know is based on incorrect thinking, thinking not congruent with reality,  but it was painful nonetheless, as if it was based on reality.

I believed that I was responsible for my mother’s pain and it was my job to undo the damage I believed I caused her, hence the fix-her compulsion. I didn’t understand that her pain was not caused by me, that she experienced her pain before I ever came into her life. I didn’t understand that in the context of she and I, it is she who damaged me.

anita

* One more part to my answer: children automatically feel responsible for a parent who is struggling, believing it is a wrongness in them that is the cause to a parent’s struggle, so we get busy trying to correct that wrongness and make up to the parent for the perceived wrongness.

The reasoning behind this is that when a child takes responsibility (for what he or she is not responsible for), she then believes that there is something she can do to change a dangerous situation, to make it safer.

If the child believed there was nothing she could do, then there is no hope for changing a dangerous situation and making it safe. Such hopelessness cannot be endured by the child.

anita

Dear ally:

I don’t feel guilty anymore. I still feel fearful sometimes, only a moment ago I did. I looked at your three line post and for a moment I feared aggression there, against me, some type of criticism. You gave me no reason to fear you. The fear exists in my brain before I knew of your existence, of course. It is decades old, the fear of my mother expressing aggression toward me, as she has done many thousands of times. This old fear, registered in my brain, got activated a moment ago.

What do I do with fear? I notice it and stay with it for a moment, not rushing to escape it.

This one sentence I wrote above takes months and years, in my case, to put into practice. It takes more to do this very day, for me. Here is the fear- notice- stay. Stay. When you stay still for a moment, after that initial spike of fear, it doesn’t feel like fear anymore. It passes on. It doesn’t stay… if you stay with it.

Tell me more about your guilt, will you?

anita