the letter from my mother

[violetcheetah]

This is the first letter I have received from my mother in the last three years.  I'd written her three times.  I haven't phoned in that time, except to call and ask if there was a family history of heart arrhythmia, because my doctor wanted to know.  She has phoned me once, to tell me my aunt, her sister, had died; she called me about two weeks

Comments

[vettecat]

Wow. It sounds like you're living in parallel universes.

[violetcheetah]

My shrink's measured response, after he read the letter during Monday's session, was along the lines of, "Granted it's been a while since you last wrote her, so it's been a while since I read your letters to her, but from what I remember of them, she seems to have... rather completely missed the point."

[vettecat]

Kind of what I was saying, but he did so more eloquently.

apples and oranges

[violetcheetah]

I don't see either way of putting it as more or less eloquent, just through your individual minds. And I need all the disparate outside-my-own-head voices as I can get, so it's kinda good to get variations on a theme. Also, it occurs to me that it makes sense for my sci-fi/spec-fic friend to use the metaphor of parallel universes, in particular. 8-)

i can find in this

[trilobits]

only like ten percent truth. she is your mother. she was there. but the large screaming thing in the writing and statements (to be fair they are picked?) is the lack of dealing with reality. there is transference, and anger, and justification, and displacement, and blame shifting. none of it states "it's ok, there is nothing to fear, i am with you" as a mother should or might.

its evil and reprehensible at the worst. opinionated, judgmental and misdirected at best. fairly thin philosophically, almost turned in on itself in a strange shallow way.

sorry, i am also being judgmental with this and can be off. but this disconnect is evident. whether she can function in life seems at the mercy of the need to push illness off on others. i bet dealing with her is a huge set of issues and razor thin margins of range.

just an opinion. i really dont know her as a person.

Re: i can find in this

[violetcheetah]

When you say "but the large screaming thing in the writing and statements (to be fair they are picked?)", I'm not sure if you mean "picked by her," or if you thought I transcribed an abridged version of what she wrote; if the latter, I should clarify that this was the entire letter.

----

Thank you for commenting. Pretty much everything you wrote is what I know to be true, but I can't hear my own self thinking these things because of the visceral certainty that what she says is true. I need someone besides me to say things, because I cannot believe myself, because... some combination of believing myself to be unreliable, and also simply that daring to think I might be a better arbiter of truth brings a backlash of "How dare you presume?! How dare you contradict?!" So it is -- not comfort, exactly, but solace -- to read someone else's unprompted response and have it echo my own thin, drowned-out not-even-voice.

Re: i can find in this

[trilobits]

I was asking, cherry picked by you? Its not really central to the idea though. Whether or not that stuff was 25% or 100% of the typical is still alarming.

Since hearing the voice is important, I will continue, The bigger issue is, why would a parent be so antagonistic to their own child? Whats the issue? Why not be their advocate? Something is wrong with her fundamentally, or mentally, and what exactly that is is not obvious, because clearly this is a person that is an expert and remaking reality and social understanding for her own purposes.

I will be more blunt however.

You do not deserve for her to say those things to you, they are sharp and pointed and judgmental, and don't convey love, only distrust and brokenness. I am sorry you have to deal with it, and think that you are doing what you can to defuse those things in whatever manner you have available, even if the drowned out voice is hard to hear.

Do ok. Be well. Sadly she means less than the importance given her.

Re: i can find in this

[violetcheetah]

I debated replying via email instead of here, but I think if my instinct is to keep something private or hidden, that's probably a sign I should do the opposite.

I had a shrink session tonight, and I had forwarded your two comments here, and my intermediate reply. He asked something along the lines of how I had felt reading your words, and I first said essentially "Just what I wrote in the reply," but I realized there was also a blankness. Emptiness. Something not quite the same as the hollowness I often feel. And what I finally told him was, "It feels like having spoken of someone in the present tense, and the person you are talking to gently reminds you, 'You remember that they've died, right?' And you realize that you -had- forgotten, but now you know it anew." It is truth, and it's comfort, and it's necessary, and I'm even grateful to be reminded, because it's true and real. But still. It is beyond pain, beyond ache, beyond bruised, this absolute absence that will never not be there.