typing out loud

I am posting in its entirety an email I just sent my T. All I've edited is the cuss words ;-). I don't care if nobody replies, I just want this "out there," wherever "there" is, as a form of letting myself scream and feel the pain I try so hard to gloss over every single day -- trying to bear witness to myself, since no one else will do it for me. I hope it doesn't upset anyone. The mods can take it down if it does.

For simple explanation's sake, I have issues with my mother. ;-)

-- Candy
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Yupyupyup, I must be depressed. I was actually looking forward tonight to going out to Jazz in the Park with a bunch of people I haven't seen in eons, but I got home from work about 4 and decided I was tired and it was raining and blah.

So then I took a nap, and a shower, and I felt better, but it was too late to go. Now I feel like an idiot for having talked myself out of something FUN.

BJ used to tell me that the hardest part was actually leaving the house. For the first couple years I saw her, I was in school, and in the College of Communication grad student world, there is a very sharp division between full time students and the people who take one class a semester while they work at real jobs.

The full time students, most of whom were female, fairly quickly got together a "girl's night out." Every other Thursday, a group of about 10-15 of us would pick a new restaurant and just go have dinner and drinks and gab. Somebody always called me to see if I was coming, and I always said yes, and then when it actually came around, I would call and cancel. The funny thing is, when I forced myself to actually go -- I had a great time! It was just a matter of talking myself into feeling well enough to be sociable. I really wanted to see these folks tonight, yet here I sit, alone, typing to my therapist. ;-)

Anyway. I suppose that's a form of inauthenticity, but I wanted to dive into what we talked about yesterday. You hit on the very core of what I have never been able to explain to anybody else. Every other therapist has said, "Hang up on her." Or, "Do something fun while you're on the phone with her that will distract you and only marginally participate in the conversation." Or, "Remember, she doesn't control your life now." Or, "so don't talk to her, just let the machine get it." Or, "change your phone number and don't give it to her."

There are many reasons I'm so fond of you, Gregory, but one of the bigger ones is that you GET IT. For years and years I tried to explain what was so hard about talking to my mother, and only you made the connection, and put it into words for me. I don't even BREATHE right when I'm on the phone with her. My stomach clenches, I tense up, and I just sit there listening to her crap, hoping she wears herself out soon, and I get so pissed off because, as you put it, that is not the me I know, or that anyone close to me knows. She has her version of who I am, and it's got nothing to do with the actual me, and it sucks!

And then I get upset with myself because I don't stand up to her, although, in the times I've tried, she's steamrollered me and left me in at least tears, if not worse. My sister (the one who caused the most recent stink over absolutely nothing of any consequence to anyone but my mother) tells me to blow her off. But I can't. I suppose at some level I'm still holding out hope for having a normally nurturing mommy. I've never had it, and I ain't gonna get it, but my closet optimist sees the pile of ***** and starts scoping the backyard for the pony. I wish I had a normal, non-narcissistic, living-in-reality mother who either would never have done what she did to me or have enough sense to be ashamed of it. (I can't tell you how many people have told me SHE should be paying for my therapy, since she's the one who made me need it. Fat chance.)

She has her little version of who she wants me to be, and I have, honest and truly, lived my entire life doing the precise opposite of everything I hate about her. She's too blind to see it. It makes me uncomfortable to be held to a false standard. It makes me REALLY uncomfortable that she considers me her ally when most of what I've been trying to do in all my years of therapy is to get up the nerve to tell her to go F herself, and mean it, and stand by it, and weather the storm that would come out of it. When I was in the hospital last time, there was this woman who was having a really hard time with her mother's death. They lived together, Mom helped in her classroom as a teacher's aide, blah blah blah. All she could do was cry about her mother. I told her I was envious of her, because I truly don't know if I will even shed one tear when my mother dies, and that's a horrible thing to have to admit to. But until that time comes, I have to swallow so much garbage I'm amazed I don't have ulcers.

You and my friends let me be who I am. I keep pretty much to myself at work, but I'm reasonably social with the people I sit by. The disconnect between the "me" I know and the "me" my mother has in her head is hugely uncomfortable. In fact, I've gotten all tense just sitting here typing about it.

So then the question becomes, how to fix it?

Eeeeeevery winter and spring break, or Easter break, or whatever, from school, BJ and I would spend an hour planning escape routes for me -- you know, "if it gets out of hand, call a friend, go to a movie, take a walk around the neighborhood" type stuff. I had to come up with 5 alternatives before she would let me go. Sounds great in theory.

So I'd go home, and I have friends there, and there are people I wanted to see while I was there, right? So I'm sitting in the kitchen one day, talking to my best friend, and I'm looking through the movie listings and we're trying to pick a movie to go see. My mother is sitting next to me reading the rest of the paper, and as Donna and I decide on something, my mother says, loud enough to hear over the phone, "Ask her if your mother can come." Donna, sensibly, said "Is she serious?"

Um, well ... yeah. Because when I went home, I was supposed to spend EVERY WAKING MINUTE with her. God forbid I leave her side, or not run her errands (she had only 25,000 miles on her car in 10 years because she made my dad drive her everywhere), or have a life of my own. In fact, one time I was there, the night before I was supposed to leave, she started bugging me to stay. I said, "No, time to get back to my own life." She said, "WHAT life?" I suppose it makes sense (to her) if I'm not supposed to be ever separated from her, but it really pissed me off. People at church (when I used to go, that is) did the same thing to me, always. I got asked to take on every task and be on every f'ing committee on earth because "you don't have a family, you have lots of time." I got news: Just because I don't have (and don't want, something else the busybodies never understood) a husband and kids, I STILL HAVE A LIFE. I really resent people thinking I don't just because I don't conform to societal standards.

In actual fact, I have worked very hard both to establish my life and repair it, as required, and not many people know the full details. And the fact that I have to listen to my mother ****** and moan without being truly able to ****** and moan back -- not pretending to care about her when I'm sitting there with the phone to my ear, staring at the floor, answering monosyllabically so she'll shut up and hang up -- she asks me how I am, and I say "fine" and change the subject, because she'll never understand how I am or how she made me how I am. Every f'ing conversation, I hear, "Cheer up! You're young. Enjoy life." And I sit there and think, "If I *ever*, once, truly enjoy life instead of paddling like hell just trying to stay about 51% functional, it won't be because of you."

I can never tell her how I really am, because she'll blow it off or discount it, or yell at me, or otherwise make me feel like I don't deserve to breathe the same oxygen she does. I can't tell my sibs, because they won't believe me. It's a complete non-issue at work, obviously. Some of my friends know, but it's not exactly casual dinner conversation, so rarely comes up. The only people who ever know how I actually, really, truly feel about myself or my life are you and Dr. Grade. I am grateful I have at least two people I can lay myself bare to, and I truly do know how much both of you care about me, but man, just ONCE I would like to be completely honest with someone in my life besides my therapists.

Part of the inauthenticity is having to hide myself away when I really want to scream as loud as I can. I'm thrilled to have a safe place to do that if need be, but one of my fondest desires is to tell absolutely everything, start to finish, to someone besides a mental health professional, and have them validate it and listen and believe me and care, and not try to get me to shrug it off because they're uncomfortable with the telling. Nobody has the patience or the empathy to do that for me outside of you two. It hurts, because it means I can't even be my truest self with my best friends. They don't want to hear all the bad parts, they just laugh and say "what else is new?" when they ask how I am and I say, "I suck." No one has ever really, truly gotten at the depths of my despair and pain, because it scares them. If it scares "normal" people, can you imagine how *I* feel? There is this endless place of blackness and hopelessness and crushing psychic pain that I live with every f'ing day of my life, and sometimes I can shrug it off, and sometimes I have no choice but to feel it (like now) and it sucks. I hate being this way. I used to have a button that said, "Why be normal?", but I know I will never, ever be "normal." You can't know how much that hurts. You try so hard for me, Gregory, and I love you dearly for it --you do your best to get right down in the abyss with me and feel what I feel, and you do a decent job. But it's a very lonely feeling to know that no one will ever be able to feel it ALL for or with me. I feel so safe with you and so comfortable with you because I know how much you care and how hard you try and how much you want to help me. It's not that I don't WANT to be helped, it's that I think I can't be.

I didn't know I was feeling this bad until I started typing-- but we have plenty to talk about on Wednesday!

Thank you for hanging in there with me, Gregory. You've been the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time.

Candy

</rant>

Hi Candybear!! I know you expect no replies and maybe you won't even read this one. Heck if I know. All I know is that your words touched me a great deal. The pain you are feeling must be horrid. My heart aches for you . Here is a Hug if you would like it and my prayers that your life becomes better than you had ever hoped it could be. Take care of yourself for yourself. Linda

Candybear....wow the pain your feeling must be overwhelming....my heart is breaking for you...you are in my thoughts and prayers and I wish you all the best....take care and God Bless

((((((((((((((((candybear))))))))))))))))

i FEEL your pain. i'm currently not speaking to my mother for a month now in an attempt to heal myself. in all respects, they sound one/same.

be safe and much luck on your journey.

kd

Hi Candy,

I haven't seen you post for a while and was wondering how you are. I remember you started a new job.

You describe your feelings with the effectiveness of a born communicator. It is a tragedy that you can't communicate your feelings to the one person you need to hear you.

Certain types of parents close the door to their children, for whatever reason, and make it impossible for us to get through to them. I know about this stuff, sadly.

Good thoughts, Myzen