Learning to write

[Saluki]

I'm sitting at the circular white formica kitchen table on my high chair. Not a high chair with a built in tray- but an adult chair with very long legs which enables me to sit at the table alongside the adults. I've not started school yet.
My mother writes in a book and I have to copy what she's written.
I pick up the pen with my left hand and copy her writing.
"No, you're doing mirror writing again"
I've written what she's written just right as far as I can see.
She tries to take the pencil out of my hand but I'm gripping it really tight. I can feel her trying to get it out of my hands and it's uncomfortable. I don't want to let go of it.

I copy what she's written with my right hand.

I discover that if I hold a pencil in each hand that I can write the same thing at the same time. I start in the middle and work outwards and write the same thing simultaneously with both hands.
I like the mirror writing best.

I don't know what inner child work is.

I know that I hated being a child and that it's been very difficult being an adult.

My mother never wanted children and she treated me like a school pupil rather than a daughter.

Whilst I genuinely value the academic things she instilled in me, the fact that she taught me to read and write before I even went to nursery school, I felt like my only value to her was that if I could learn things she wanted to teach me, my success or failure was her success or failure and she hated me if I failed. My ability to succeed directly correlated with her ability to like me. I never felt actually loved by her. I don't know if I felt loved by my dad either, but I felt at least cared about.

My dad didn't change the way he related to me on the basis of anything. He got mad at me sometimes but I understood why generally. I didn't understand why when my mother did, or why my dad was mad at me because my mother was mad at me.

I remember him saying things like "try not to upset your mother" but I didn't know how not to upset her.

She had post natal depression and she never did bond with me.

I was a difficult child.

Because I wasn't wanted.

If I'd have been wanted I'm guessing I would not be on this forum now trying to make sense of things.

I know that little me is still crying and crying and crying in a small bedroom in a separate wing of a big old house with three doors closed between me and my parents' room, and no matter how much I cry, nobody comes.

I know that I sometimes hear my mother's angry voice shouting "No, you must leave her to cry, she has to learn"

But I never did learn.

[Hope67]

Hi Saluki,
I felt so many things when I read what you wrote, as I related to a lot of it.  My heart reaches out to the small child you once were, and I wish that things could have been different for you.  I wish that a kind and lovely nurturing figure could have heard your cries and come to see what you needed - instead of being left to cry alone behind three closed doors.  I feel angry at your care-givers for how they neglected you in that way.

When you wrote 'My mother never wanted children and she treated me like a school pupil rather than a daughter' - that could have been something I would have written about myself - my M was a school teacher too, and she treated me like that as well - she taught me to read before nursery school, and it was like I was performing for her, to get her attention.  It didn't feel like there was any love there.

I really related to what you wrote, and I just wanted to send you a heartfelt hug, if that's ok 

Hope

[NarcKiddo]

So much of this resonates. So, so much. What did we ever do to end up with mothers like these? Nothing, of course. And it is weirdly difficult to find a way to love the little ones inside us that need and deserve so much love and encouragement.
 

[Saluki]

Yes- performing for her. That's what it was. I was my mother's performance artist too, Hope . It's just horrible, isn't it?
It is difficult, so difficult,to find a way to love the little ones because they were shown that they didn't deserve to exist in the first place... maybe that's why?