Continued:

This Friday morning, I will be re-reading my previous posts in page 1 of this thread, starting with the original post on March 2, two months and 8 days ago, and commenting:

Fear is different from Anxiety. Fear that is short-term energizes and maximizes function; fear that is long-term, aka Anxiety, weakens and minimizes function. Fear is a powerful e-motion, energy in motion. This powerful energy is designed to be experienced for a short amount of time, so to run away from, or to fight (to cause harm to a threatening animal/ person outside oneself). When this energy is experienced long-term, when there is no fighting that eliminates the threat, and no running away from the threat, this powerful energy is directed inward, harming the inside. I am experiencing this long-term energy in motion in the form of tics which create pain in my right shoulder at this time. This energy is also stopping me from taking full breaths, it’s contracting my diaphragm muscles, my shoulder muscles and other muscles without my intent of consent. And it’s hurting, yet it keeps happening.

When my mother attacked me, I was afraid. Sometimes I was angry. But I didn’t run away and I didn’t fight. The powerful emotions of fear and resulting anger turned against my own body and weakened me, rendering me helpless in life beyond the attacks. There really is nothing at all that’s beneficial or advantageous about anxiety, it’s all harmful.

It was not only when attacked that I felt fear that turned into anxiety, but also when not attacked, when watching and hearing my very stressed, hyper-emotional mother, particularly during her histrionic displays of self-pity and suicidal talk. Her chronic stress led to my chronic stress in the absence of attacks. Anxiety/ chronic stress caused my Attention Deficit Disorder and other cognitive dysfunctions.

Fear increases the focus on the outside of oneself, and therefore, it promotes Survival; Anxiety (chronic stress) decreases the focus on the outside, and therefore, it impedes survival.

Fear stops Time (one’s sense of time, that is) from moving for a little while; Anxiety stops Times from moving for decades; too often, for a lifetime. The anxious, chronically stressed person keep re-living the same emotional experience of the past. It is emotional-history on repeat. Anxiety prolongs the past, extending it into the present.

Anxiety is like glue that is keeping past shame, hurt, and guilt in the present.

Of all the people in the world, it is this one person (my mother) who took it upon herself to personally, directly, and severely  harm me, and having done so for decades.

True. This is her legacy in my life.

She did kind things for other people. Some people, strangers, probably know her to be a good person and nothing other than good.

She was not a bad person to me all the time. She was kind to me many times, over the years, but then she guilt-tripped me over those acts of kindness (using her moments of kindness against me sooner or later),  leaving me with no positive experiences with her or in connection to her.

And then, there were the “conversations” we had, initiated by me for the purpose of making things better between me and her, such that were aborted as soon as I pointed anything at all to her that could question her misrepresentation of herself as a Good mother and a Victim vs me, a Bad daughter and her Victimizer. She just wouldn’t, couldn’t budge from this misrepresentation. She argued against me using distorted logic, shifting focus from the relevant to the irrelevant, re-inventing/ misrepresenting past events and exchanges.. saying just anything, however illogical or senseless, so to maintain her misrepresentation. And so, I continued to be.. her victim.

Next- page 2.

anita

Continued:

I’ve been so inclined to feel guilty, it’s the first go-to place: guilty for what I just said,  guilty for what I just felt, guilty, Guilty. Suffering, ruminating.. how wrong I was, how bad I was/ am, for having said that, for having felt that, every experience being “proof” of badness, of guilt, of being bad. BAD. BAD anita. anita BAD.

It’s the legacy she left, a message she imprinted in my mind and heart: that I (anita) am a BAD PERSON, in capital letters, B.A.D.

When I have a visual image of her, it’s that of her being 30 or 40 (she is now 80), and what I see is her face, angry, the corners of her mouth slightly turned upward, and her eyes pitch black. Very, very perfectly, 100% black, looking at me, with corners of mouth turned slightly upward, a very light smile. And her message: anita, you are BAD. And she smiles as she says this, enjoying my distress as her massage lands on me, exploding, explosive, B  A  D.

It’s time for me to send her message back to her, back to messenger: you are bad, you crossed the line from good-child, to bad mother, bad person, pitch black eyes and slight smile at seeing me in pain, enjoying seeing me in pain.

Seeing me in pain gave her pleasure, made the corners of her mouth go up in a slight smile.

Time to remove any and all loyalty I ever had for her. Time to understand that those pitch black eyes were not the eyes of a mother.

I never had a mother. You were not a mother. My understanding of who I am must not depend on the understanding of pitch dark eyed devil who feasted on my pain.

Reads dramatic? It was my reality, this really was/ is what I was born into.. Welcome to the world, and… Surprise- you have a devil for a mother!

Ouch.

My Story, my reality. I am still having a difficulty believing it… a mother, pitch-black eyes and a smile, enjoying my pain.

Enjoying my pain.. NO! it can’t be. NOOOO!

My truth, my reality.. A mother who enjoyed seeing my pain. Time to stop feeding her joy, time to stop trying to please those pitch-black eyes and slight smile.

anita

Continued:

She did something every day and she did it massively, so much that it often affects me negatively in real-life, presently. I am aware of it these days more than ever before, I notice when it happens, and I want to resolve this issue. I never adequately addressed it, and I never resolved it. It is unpleasant for me to bring it up and to elaborate on it. But here it is nonetheless:

As the Paranoid Personality Disordered person that she has been all my life, she kept spewing out massive amounts of negative talk about every person in real-life: neighbors, “friends”, family members, strangers, everyone. Every person got his or her turn to sink into her verbal sewage of condemnation and vilification. Her accusatory theme was that they.. EVERYONE was using her, taking advantage of her, and those everyone were fortunate people with fortunate easy lives taking advantage of an unfortunate woman with a very difficult life.

She used to invite those people to her home, feed them, treat them like royalty, or see them at events like weddings and holidays give them expensive gifts, and then complain to me, at great lengths, how they took advantage of her by eating the food she worked so hard to buy and prepare, how they accepted her expensive gifts and didn’t reciprocate, something like that. I used to FUME about it, to see my poor mother, my most unfortunate, hard working mother being taken advantage of by the fortunate people.

I tried my best to talk to her, to tell her to not feed those bad people, to not give them expensive gifts, but she refused to listen. And when I told her that I will tell them myself, so to stop this injustice, she forbade me from doing so, threatening to murder me if I do.

And so, I was forced to silently observe her feeding and gifting and being super, super nice to the fortunate, selfish people who ruthlessly took advantage of my poor mother; my heart was beating fast in anger, but I kept the anger in, unable, unallowed to say or do anything about it.

She viewed people negatively, suspiciously, with condemnation, presenting everyone as Selfish, Bad, Corrupt.

I didn’t have the opportunity to view any person as Good, or even Neutrally, they were all covered with Bad, and a lot of Bad, with details and stories, gossip that she told me directly, and gossip I heard her telling others. It included details of neighbors’ and cousins’ sexual practices, things I couldn’t unhear once I heard them.

So, I’d see a neighbor, a cousin.. and I’d know those sexual things they did, images in my mind.

I’d see a person smiling at me, and I’d think: I know how bad you are, how selfishly you are taking advantage of my poor mother!

Everyone I met, as a child, was covered with Bad, placed there by my mother.

Fast forward, in real-life, I see people covered with dirt every day (figuratively), people taking advantage, unfair advantage, bad people using the less fortunate (when it isn’t so, when people are imperfect, but not bad!), and I get very angry; and I remain quiet, just as I did back then.

Basically, what happens is I see a person having a selfish moment, a dishonest moment, and I emotionally over-react, as in: this person is the kind that destroyed my mother, took advantage of her, bad, bad person. I don’t view the person with moderation. After all, I am not perfect myself, I have my selfish moments.

I want to see people as they are, without the layer of dirt/ badness so easily attached to them.

To be continued.

anita

Continued:

I am peeling my mother off of my brain (I like the sound of it!). To peel off a person so POWERFUL in one’s life is.. well, impressive. I impress myself, lol. It hasn’t been easy, to say the least, to remove her inaccurate thinking from my (poor, assaulted) brain.

Brain Assaulted- a proper title to my story.

Brain Recovery= get the crazy woman off of me!

= Aka Brain Plasticity (neuroplasticity), but I am digressing into scientific terms.

She told me that Everyone was Bad (including me) and that she was Good = inaccurate thinking, a misrepresentation of the truth: in my personal life, there is only one person looming big in badness directly and personally expressed to me–

And that person is.. you guessed it, my mother.

The Truth.

Confusion was her weapon, Clarity is my salvation,

To finally.. believe Me,

I hear her voice: who do you think you are, you are a **** ****….  ****…                  ****…

Shut up, I am peeling you off, you bad, bad thing for me,

To be continued.

anita

Continued:

Once I understand, deeply, thoroughly, that she and I were always separated, never together, there is no reason, no purpose to keep her falsehoods in me. No reason, no purpose in being loyal to her.

There is simply no way, there has been no way for me to be together with her, she just wouldn’t, couldn’t.. wouldn’t be with me. And so, I could only imagine that I was with her, that there was a Together.

As a child, it was not a biological possibility for me to understand that I was alone. I had to imagine a together, so to not perish in terrible, deadly alone-ness.

And now, I can understand that there was no together. I don’t need to imagine a together with her. I can be together with other people, others who are way less resistant (than my mother) to being together with me.

Healing, sobering up, is not about separating from her, it’s about deeply, thoroughly understanding that she couldn’t, wouldn’t be with me, for me. Not because of a fault in the child-me, but a lack of an ability and willingness on her part to be together with anyone.

– To be continued-

anita

Continued:

Loyalty Unrewarded, a title of a book I will never author.

Loyalty Never Rewarded, never to be rewarded. Loyalty that was never acknowledged, never to be acknowledged.

Never Noticed.

A better title: Loyalty Unnoticed.

Better title: Love Unnoticed.

I hated people because of loyalty to her-

My whole life, hating people she hated-

But no noticing AT ALL by the person I have been decades-long Loyal to-

I was left Alone by the person I tried to be a part of

Alone hating all the people she hated-

Alone all the way around-

Alone

Simply Alone

Love for her never reciprocated, never noticed

The essence of me (love for my mother) never noticed-

Not even Noticed?

Just like that, dismissed, ignored?

Why is it a surprise- I mean, she said: “you are nothing, a big zero”-

She said it, but I didn’t believe her, didn’t believe her words

And tried, again and again to make her love the “big zero”

No, believe her

Let go, let go of loyalty to her.

-To be continued.

anita