I've been having a really hard time writing this Blog entry. My goal was to be more consistent with my posts, but my emotional block has also lead to writer's block. It is frustrating because most all things in my life are going well. When I am able to write away from this Blog, I am happy with my writing and the direction it is going. I am in a new relationship with a wonderful man who brings out the best in me. I am anxiously and excitedly awaiting the wedding of my oldest daughter and my youngest daughter brings me so much joy with her creativity and contagious sense of humor.
Yet, I continue to battle with this depression. I am hurt. I am confused. I am exhausted. I've written before about the dysfunctional and toxic relationship that I have with my mother. I haven't spoken to her in several months. The last we spoke, she was comparing me to a "wife beater" when I apologized for talking back to her. Bear in mind, I'm 43 years old, but yes, I apologized for upsetting her with my raised voice and my "insolence." She proceeded to tell me that I was as toxic as Fukushima, that everyone I know will always see me as a liar and a thief and that I am nothing more than an abuser and a waste of a human being. This confrontation took me back to places I have tried to hide from my entire life. Every reminder of her very existence is as if each trauma she has inflicted on me, is happening again... and again... and again. My therapist tells me that this "reliving" is part of my PTSD. How can these symptoms ever go away unless I am able to let her go. My initial gut reaction to how she treated me that day was that I told her "you are dead to me". Yet, she can never be dead, she is always there, somewhere in my distorted psyche.
After months of regretting my last words to her, the guilt continued to burden me. How screwed up is that? She hurts me and I feel guilty for reacting in a negative way. I am so conditioned to believe that I am a "nothing" person when compared to her. I can't remember when this altered sense of identity began to secure itself. My earliest memories of her violence begin at 4 years old. The emotional and physical abuse that my mother inflicted on me throughout my childhood is nothing short of vile and morally wrong. Yet I've never been able to let her go, even after becoming an adult and receiving continued emotional abuse. Our cycle is textbook. I do something she doesn't like. She hurts me with her toxic and painful words. We stop talking for awhile. I reach out and apologize. She lets me back in. I am back in my place of victim.
As mentioned before, my daughter is getting married. She wants some kind of connected family with her and supporting her. After months of procrastinating, I sent a letter to my mother. I did not apologize, but I did let her know that I missed her and that I felt working on our estrangement is what would be best for our family and for my children, her grandchildren. I suggested that we go into counseling together. I did not offer my forgiveness, but I let her know that I am working on it and will continue to do so for the sake of our relationship as a mother and daughter.
I won't go into her response. All that I will say is that I know that I can never have contact with her. She is a cruel human being. I want to believe what my therapist tells me... that my mother does love me, that I should feel sympathy for her because living with the kind of pain and anger that she must live with has to be debilitating both emotionally and physically. I want to believe this, but I can't. It just does not compute in my brain. I look at the pictures of me as a baby, at the letters she used to write me when she moved away, at the art she made for me, the care she took to fill out my baby book... How can she do these things and then turn on me, beat me, hit me, insult me, destroy my self esteem, abandon me, break me over and over? This is not love, this could never have been love. She does NOT love me and now I have to find a way to stop loving her.
Anything good in my life today will occasionally take a back seat when compared with the pain her words bring to me. She let me know that it is OK if I write back, but her assistant has been given directions to "file" my letters away as she will not be around enough to take the time to read them. I am so easily dismissed, discarded. I am 43 years old and 5 small paragraphs can destroy me. I become nothing but that little girl wishing that she could just die rather than endure one more day of the abuse being inflicted on her by her mother.
My life IS good today. Though, on any given day, I continue to fight back the tears and force the smile. I enjoy time with my friends and family. I get up every day and live it to the best that I can. I continue with my therapy and with the management of my mental health. Yet, I now must learn how to let HER go. She is not physically dead, but she can never be "alive" in my world again. Every day will be another day that I fight for the "life" in me that she destroyed. I live and she... SHE is just gone.
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| Borrowed from InspirationalQuotestoLive&Learn |
Born and raised in beautiful southern Idaho. Divorced with two gorgeous daughters. Currently living in Boise's historic North End where I write, hike with my 3 dogs and spend countless hours enjoying all that this amazing city has to offer.