Continued (trigger warning, as always):

The simplicity of feeling angry at an enemy who is a stranger vs the complexity of  feeling angry at an enemy who is one’s mother. When the enemy is a stranger, there’s no longing for love, no hope for love that’s in the way of running for one’s life, or fighting for one’s life. When the enemy is one’s mother, the longing for her love is a curse.

It takes the full understanding that a mother (the person, not the idea) does not mean a friend, or even a neutral party, not to many, many of us. And when she is an enemy, it takes the full understanding that the love/ longing we feel is for the idea of her, it is not for the person that she is. And so, it’s okay to feel the love and longing .. for the idea of a mother.

When I have her image in my mind, as I do now, and I have this loving feeling attached to this image, I no longer feel threatened by the loving feeling because it will not motivate me to reach out to the person and get hurt again.

Instead, this loving feeling will motivate me to be this desirable idea of a mother to other people, people who are not enemy.

Who is my enemy? A person who desires to inflict pain (criticism, shame, guilt, a beating) on me and then proceeds to do so, because she/ he is momentarily free of HER OWN pain when observing it in me.

She used me that way, aka abused me. She helped herself to me, taking advantage of a child who loved her, a child who had nowhere to go.

She said one time, and I quote (translated): “You think I don’t know I am wrong? I know, but what can you do? You have nowhere to go”.

Quite cruel, isn’t it? Unfair, unjust… day after day, month after month, year after year, never to stop. Never to apologize, decade after decade. Never to relinquish her unfair advantage/ her selfish, cruel use of her power as mother.

The RAGE, my rage is about all those endless moments, days years, eternity of abuse, subjugation, humiliation, soul-rape is a term that just occurred to me, soul and body rape, is more accurate. Again and again. Unrepented.

The idea of mother and empathy are synonymous. I didn’t have a mother. I had an obscene twist of a mother: an enemy.

anita

Continued:

I have a better understanding now. There really is such a thing as Anger Addiction. It’s not an official diagnosis but the principle behind the term anger addiction is part of official diagnoses such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.

Anger and rage (intense anger) involve the release of POWERFUL- FEELING chemicals in the brain. And powerful feels way, way better than feeling weak, meek, timid and anxious.

My mother aka that person was indeed very anxious, timid, meek and feeling powerless most of the time, but when she raged. Oh, did she feel powerful then!

I tried to explain to her that I didn’t mean to offend her when I said this and didn’t say that, when I failed to do that, whatever her false accusation was about, but she was not interested in what I said and never considered it. Instead, she ARGUED, a lot, and spared no twisting of logic in her arguing. She wasn’t interested in peace with me, she wasn’t interested in exploring the truth; she was interested in prolonging the war because it felt good, for her. And so, she argued and argued and argued, justifying her anger so that she can keep on angry and feeling powerful.

I used to feel guilty for not making her life better, for not helping her feel better. I didn’t know that she already helped herself to me as she enjoyed many hours of feeling-powerful (at my expense). You are welcome-not, no mother of mine.

anita

Edited and re-submitted:

Continued:

To me, she was Adversarial, not Amiable; Contentious, not Cordial; Critical, not Complimentary; Cross, not Calm; Cruel, not Compassionate; Hostile, not Hospitable; a Monster, not a Mother.

Sometimes she was nice to me, but the Adversarial, Cruel and Hostile, over time, and with repetition, deeply sunk into me. I couldn’t just peel it off and let her occasional niceness in. And if I did, the next time would hurt even more.

I am in the process of saying goodbye to the monster and become to others all that I wish she was to me: amiable, calm, compassionate, complimentary, cordial, hospitable.

anita

Continued:

Chronic Fear, Chronic Anger are making me twitch right now, aka tics. Fear and Anger, in their nature, are e-motions, energy- in motion.  They create movement: Fight or Flight. In the absence of both (I didn’t Fight, I didn’t Flight=run away), not as a child, day after day, year after year.. The motion had to happen, so it happened within me, fighting within, running away within, TICS. It’s experienced as tension within, like the body trying to exit itself.

anita

Continued:

Here is an idea: to extend as much empathy to myself as I have extended to another person, any other person for whom I felt empathy,  and to whom I expressed empathy. Not more. Not less.

anita

Continued:

The search for truth- what a refreshing endeavor, a refreshing motivation: to understand that which is true, however terrible it may be. Truth is my personal salvation, my rescue from confusion, suffering, shame, guilt and despair. Seeing Truth is my hope, it’s what I live for.

anita