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