Dear Reader:

I just posted in another thread:

” I need to practice the principles of Buddhism every day.. all day, everywhere, with everyone: Right Mindfulness (Practicing awareness of thoughts, feelings, and actions), Right Intention (Cultivating intentions of goodwill and harmlessness), Right Speech (Speaking truthfully and kindly), Right Action (Acting ethically: refraining from taking life, from stealing, from harmful speech, speech that deceives or otherwise hurts, unsettles or harms others..)”.

I want to elaborate on the above here, on my thread, so to promote what I boldfaced in the quote above.. all day, everywhere, with everyone:

I need to be more mindful of my thoughts and feelings, such that lead to speech and action that is fueled by wrong intention. I look within this morning (and I feel distress doing so), and I see that I carry anger  within me that has not been resolved, and at times of carelessness, it expresses itself and harms others in one way or another, like it did last evening in a real-life situation.

I feel blocked right now, not open to the intended mindfulness. I feel the tendency to .. go intellectual, so to speak, to explain things rationally so to circumvent the emotional.

I have deep-seated anger at having been left out/ ignored.. left behind in life, starting early. Life was happening elsewhere, for others, not for me, not where I was. Life was happening for others, not for me. By life, I mean joy, companionship, friendship, comfort, togetherness, love, romance, interest, passion.. For me, these happened in my day-dreams, and oh, how lovely those were.

But the daily and nightly experience was that of acute loneliness and isolation, jealousy of others who knew a different kind of life. The insult I felt (and by the way, I am typing as I think-feel, with no editing), for being left out by those who were fortunate was acute: the why me not being them? Why am I not included? Oh, how I craved associations and socializations and being treated like one-of, like.. one of them.

I remember, I think I was an older teenager, watching people my age walking hands in hands, boyfriends/ girlfriends, wishing I had a boyfriend too. But I was always alone. Alone, because I had something they- the others, the fortunate ones- didn’t have and that was my mother, the emotional vampire who feasted on my blood/ my life (I feel the anger building within me as I hit te keyboards with more force). I had a woman-mother-monster vampire whose primary message to me was: anita, your life is not your life. It’s MINE! You must live FOR ME.

I envied those whose lives were not owned.

My every word, my every act (and those were minimal) had to have her in mind. I was watched, ready to be criticized and ostracized and punished at any time the expression on my face didn’t seem right to her, anytime my voice wasn’t right in her mind, anytime I said something wrong in her evaluation. I was not free to be.

I feel that I am approaching going intellectual again, explaining all the ways she was harmful to me. Don’t want to do that.

I was just thinking about all the many people who are suffering terribly, and a voice in my head said to me that I shouldn’t complain and to get over it, over my mother.

I need to get over it, by going through it adequately, so that it stops fueling words such as the words that flew out of my mouth last evening (not name calling or threats and such, but harmful words nonetheless), so I continue:

Anger at my life being STOLEN by my mother, life that includes my whole youth, life that I didn’t get to have.

The above is the Core of my Anger.

I feel quite intense right now.

Last evening, I sat close to two people, one of them is someone who I feel likes me very much. How good it feels to be liked, oh how good. The other person sitting near me, I haven’t seen her for a long time. I’ll call the person who likes me L and the one I didn’t see for a long time, I’ll call her H. So, I am talking to both, H says something in regard to her boyfriend, and I feel the need to challenge her so (in my mind) to get L to keep liking me, taking a position in regard to her attitude toward her boyfriend, that I thought L, who is a man with traditional values, will approve of. That was my harmful talk last evening, which caused her to get upset with me. I ended up apologizing to her.

I don’t know how anger fits into what I wrote just above (and again, I am typing as I think, no editing). Maybe it’s not anger, it’s my desire to be liked, to be included- by L, such an intense desire to-be-approved of, to be accepted, that I .. that to have him on my side, I sort of had to sort of attack her.

For this was how it was at “home” with my mother: there was always someone to be attacked. When she appeared together with someone else, like a sister of hers or an acquaintance, it was always about hating someone else, gossiping about someone else, a 3rd party. Closeness between 2 people meant the two bonding over the demonization of a 3rd party; talking badly about that 3rd party.

Only my mother and her sister, let’s say, attacked the third party outside the 3rd party’s presence. I do this in the third party’s presence.

I’ll continue later. Oh, and if you are reading this, please do not comment at this point. I need to not be distracted or feel criticized by a comment that may be kind, yet, I may feel otherwise.

anita