11-1
Write about how I feel
How do I feel about mom
I am angry at her
I feel neglected by her
Hurt by her
I feel like I deserve better
The way she treats me and others in my family and others in general is unfair
She is selfish
She is disturbed
She is unable to control herself
She is not an adult
She is taking the easy way out
I feel frustrated
Sometimes I feel guilty
Like I should be helping to fix her
I had the idea though, realization, that I cannot control her
When she got cancer I tried to be there
To help her see things more clearly
To support her when we were scared and not sure how things would turn out
She seemed to get worse and that angered me
I’m angry because there is nothing I can do
I just have to let her be how she is
Even though I disapprove
And do what is best for me
To protect myself from her
To keep a distance between us
Set and respect boundaries with her
And to be able to judge when it is worth it to interact with her and when it’s better not to
To deal with her tirades, her ranting, her cruelty through words
To remember how she raised us in the house on parke street
I wish she would move out of that house
So many painful experiences in that house
When j pushed k into the wall and broke through I thought ghosts and crying children and memories were escaping from the drywall
She is exhausting
It is so ridiculous and extreme that it seems unreal
I feel intimidated by her at times
Not quick enough to escape her clever cruelty
Not distant enough to stay out of range of hurt
Not mature enough, humble enough, to not take it personally and not react
She makes me mad
She triggers reactions in me that make my emotions fly
She doesn’t listen to me
She is always talking and doing and reacting at the next level
Not even there with you
Acting like a ghost
Like a haunting spirit who is following around and burdening the people in her life
Reminding them of her sorrows
Reminding them once she’s convinced them, that they are not real
The only thing that is real is the suffering in her life
Not yours!
Not mine
She has apologized to me in the past
But it doesn’t really matter
Because she did it by phone
And couldn’t say what it was she was apologizing for
She said she thought she was doing what was best for me
What about how she hurt j
I used to be afraid of how she would attack him
And I used to cringe and shrink and shrivel at the names she would call him
Meanness she would spew
Guilt and shame and belittling she would lay on him
Pressing on him like the weight of boulders
Flattening like the condemned of the witch trials
Hysterical
She never heard or showed that she did, anyone else’s fears, pain, tears, tenderness, vulnerability, love
She never really showed love, did she?
I don’t think she could love us,
Love anyone, love me…
She might have wanted to love me, thought she was being loving to me, tried to be loving as a mother
Tried to nurture
She did some beneficial things
Involved me in reading books and visiting the museum, learning
Involved me in music and instruments
Took me to the zoo and the library and the park
She encouraged me to read and travel and go for education
But I felt the sting of her manipulation
Because she wanted these things for her
And since she couldn’t she was determined to use me to get what she wanted for her own
She thought she could suck it out, vacuum it right through my body, like I was just a conductor, a vessel to be used to placate her
To salvage her life
She dumped a lot onto me
Smothered me with a lot
And also squeezed a lot from me
Today I was at a thrift store looking through the book section
And I saw the book Reviving Ophelia, a book from the nineties about troubled girls, wayward souls who were beyond help, who were problematic, disturbed, ruined, sad cases
And I realized for the first time, that when I saw that book of mom’s, found it laying around the house or wherever it was
That that book was about me
She considered me a problem, trouble, fucked up, mistaken, misguided, lost, needy, astray, ruined, twisted, shamed, blamed, guilty, basically unworthy, disobedient, ingrateful
She thought I was a bad kid
That I was becoming a problem child, a girl to be worried about
A destructive and misled teen
Who was damaging her life and her family life by my behavior and being
I never before put it together that she must have seen that book and bought it with me in mind
The subtitle is Saving the Selves of Our Adolescent Girls
It includes stories about maladjusted young girls who get into low self esteem, sex, and drugs and alcohol, and who are powerless against peer pressure but can’t fit in
I think that might have been one of the first times, when I
encountered the copy of that book lying around, that I thought I even “should” be afflicted by any of those problems, any of those societal issues plaguing young girls my age
I hadn’t thought of any of that as applying to me
But she did
Thought of me as being or being susceptible to rebelliousness, self consciousness, angst, causing familial relationship problems, being unsuccessful in school, getting into trouble through pregnancy, std, or trouble with the law, causing embarrassment, developing an eating disorder
The feeling that I disappointed my mom
And also irritation and anger that she was so hard on me
Feeling mixed about wanting to appreciate that she refrained from putting me in extremely dangerous situations and was not consistently physically abusive
But feeling wronged and hurt and confused about her being consistently psychologically abusive and continuing to be manipulative, difficult, embarrassing, and unable to provide any kind of support for me emotionally
Being upset that I will not be able to share with her the changes I have experienced and resenting that I have to hide the brain injured self and disabled self from her out of fear of retaliation
Feel like she will never accept me
And wanting to reject her for what feels like her rejection of me
Feeling like I was a disappointment to her even though I was always trying my best
Even though she wanted the impossible from me
Even though I am still doing my best and I’m not perfect
She wanted me to be perfect
ptsfree 