TV's Repair Journal

[lowbudgetTV]

I am a person who thinks too much. Some might say that there's no such thing but any mentally ill person knows there's always such a thing as too much.

So, I've been thinking. I'm finally doing what I need to do, want to do, and what's best for me by disengaging from a horrid family that I do not belong in. I've finally come to admit some truths, and one of those truths is the observation of if this was anything other than a child interacting with their parents, it would be accepted as unacceptable!

Yet, because I am a child, and the abusers of my life are my own parents, it seems like the fault is mine. A child is hard to rear, and for that, if non-physical issues arise, then it must be the child's fault. A child should love their parents. A child should be happy they are not beaten. Pfft. If anything, the physical issues of passive neglect, emotional cruelty, and everything in those categories should be well enough proof of an abusive relationship. I don't work correctly, like a human being should! My body is faulty, beaten by invisible weapons.

I have to remember as I move on: my parents were like an abusive partner to me. Partner, parent—they're one letter off from being a perfect anagram! We could list off so many things our parents have done to us and remove the relationship details and they'd be no different from someone ranting about an abusive boyfriend or girlfriend.

Demeaning somebody and then turning around to gift them elaborate things.
Punishments that did not match the crime, that were exaggerated.
"It's your fault I'm in trouble, in pain, hurting, ill!"
"If you don't do this, you don't really love me."
"Who are you talking to? Give me the details. I'm your —, you have to tell me! You could be doing something bad!"
"Of course I love you, just don't do these things I don't like and change your entire personality for me!"

I'm tired of living a lie. I feel like I'm not choosing to be an orphan, I think it was thrust upon me. I've felt despondent and lonely things since I was a preteen, and even in my guilt and shame of having angry, rebellious thoughts in my teenage years, I did know there was something wrong. Even if I ended up still believing it was all me. That I was ill; that I was having the delusions of grandeur and I was better than them. Well, no, I was really just a fairly normal and mature child. My parents were no different than my fifth grade bullies. Worse, even.

If anyone asks, maybe I'll say: I left an abusive relationship. No more no less. It's not a lie.

[StartingHealing]

Hi lowbudget.  Welcome! 

[lowbudgetTV]

Here's the truth: I have to get through one last weekend with my M before I work with my T to decide the best way to never engage with my family ever again is. Which I will be doing. I am lucky to have supportive friends and a real family I have crafted.

But, as I had described to my T, I am picturing my final hurrah in my mind as if I was an adventurer--an anthropologist, a psychologist! I think and reflect. I consider it a way to practice my skills and being myself.

The first night has gone fine. I looked to my partner and said: that's the problem!

(I also told my partner that I love them for being able to navigate and deflect and control a conversation. They control my M so well. I am at peace.)

The problem: my M puts on a front when not alone with me. They behave. They don't go too far or make the sounds that trigger me. Which, you'd think, would be good! And it is to a degree; I am thankful for it. But it is also torturous. I feel crazy, like I am the problem. It feels all a lie, the trauma in my brain. It was fine and normal.

My partner confided in me that me feeling the conflict and being triggered by words not being just bad enough for others to note how terrible the reality is is from that trauma. I remember, and I can never be normal around them, therefore I know what I must do. Writing it here too, to some public degree, helps keep that promise accountable.

I thought about it more and I've realized I've begun to relate to that one screenshot people online (like us) tend to tout around. Its from the Good Place (I've never watched!) and its the main character who says: My mother had the capability to change, it's just that I wasn't worth changing for. Not exact wording at all, but that's the gist and what I think about.

With the threat of death and aging, my M has changed. But that small, young child who needed them to change wasn't worth the effort. Now that I'm grown, and now that they have the fears, change is present if even just a little bit. Well it's too late. A little child wasn't worth it? Well, then you're not worth it.

I will continue to be my authentic self, ask questions, set boundaries, and love all children. They deserve respect. I did too. I still do now.

[lowbudgetTV]

Hi lowbudget.  Welcome! 

Thanks for the welcome--Sorry I was writing a whole word salad processing my nightly thoughts while you were doing it!

[StartingHealing]

Hi lowbudget.  Welcome! 

Thanks for the welcome--Sorry I was writing a whole word salad processing my nightly thoughts while you were doing it!

You're welcome lowbudget.

[lowbudgetTV]

I forgot to mention it in my last post/entry, which makes sense because that was a very stream of consciousness scrawl (+I just wanted to make sure I wrote my main thought), but I had also had another concept come to me.

It was like a flashback, or, well, more so me trying to reflect on my past. I realized a thought I've had before and currently was thinking about after the fine outing with my M. Sometimes, I wish it would just go south. Sometimes, I wish it was worse.

I know it's a common thought, I really do. But, because it's a common thought just goes to show how abusive cycles happen. We aren't really abused—(it's not that bad / people have it worse / at least I'm...)—but we're in pain. We want the pain to stop. So, we wish that the abusive person would finally cross THAT LINE and do something we settled as unforgivable so that we could finally say it: I am abused and I can run and everyone will understand. The water has breached the wall. It can finally flow free.

But it never happens. It never ever happens. We never feel the release we need.

I remember feeling the... lack of that needed release in an innocuous way: I barely passed a driving test. I got what I needed (the license) but I didn't get what I wanted (enthusiastic success). I felt a traumatic pang of disappointment from the instructor. But, she said, I'll give it to you. I'm sure that might be something to be said about them saying "you barely passed" as a positive psychological thing but it wasn't what I needed. I had enough disappointed sighs directly at me! I wanted support. I got, instead, a look of resignation.

(I felt a little better watching someone break a traffic law in front of me on my first licensed drive right out of the driving school parking lot, telling myself that I knew I was a very diligent, careful driver. Wow, I feel terrible remembering this. Moving on...)

It's important to feel success, not just reach it. My M acting tolerable is not a success. I never got the sweet release of airing my grievances on behalf of that poor, innocent child who was tortured. I never got the sweet release of rage. I just got... loneliness.

The child was told they did not deserve the sense of feeling they were valid.

So I sit here as an adult today and write out cathartic things. I am telling that child that they were valid. Their art will be the sweet release and it is so powerful and worth it, because it is for them and nothing more.

[lowbudgetTV]

Something serendipitous happened.

There was one of those animatronic fortune teller machines that prints a fortune ticket at the mall. My partner and I did it.

I began to cry. It read: A dark haired person who is trying to harm you will soon disappear from your life and you will be extremely happy.

My M has dark hair.

[Chart]

Hello lowbudgetTV, Reading your journal was serendipitous for me too. I'm pondering the recent atrocities of my mother and thinking that there really is no hope with her. She does not see herself, she does not know herself. She is torn-out pages of a human. The face comes from one place and the heart from another. She has disguised herself so well no one recognizes her either. I am perhaps the only person who sees her completely for what she is. And I struggle horribly still to reconcile that person with the one I so desperately needed as a child.

Some deaths occur long long before the internement. I've just been in too much denial to see it.

Sending support and welcome to the forum.
-chart

[lowbudgetTV]

The last few nights while sleeping have been weird. I found myself having those emotional-type of dreams, where they don't make you feel anything when you wake up, but they bring out truths through their stories.

I suppose I should TW: car accidents for the rest of the post.

For example, I dreamt of a frequent theme in my dreams: car accidents. I don't really know why... Eh, nevermind, I think I really do. My parents were/are horrid drivers. They'd taunt me with how they'd drive. They'd insult--berate me for how I drove when I was learning! I fear cars for obvious reasons. I oft have dreams of accidents or the brakes being broken.

This weekend though, I had a dream in which I was in a car accident that was really bad. I lived, but my M did not. In the dream, all I could think about when exiting the wreck was having to deal with logistical things like insurance and paperwork... This is quite true to reality.

I thought about how many things I've read had talked about interpreting our intense thoughts as the body warning you, rather than you actually wanting to do that thing. My dreams and my thoughts signal to me that I want to be rid of my M very badly, and I'm stressed, and I have no love in my heart for her so it's like she's not even really a consideration. So, stop considering her! It's easier said than done when you've been conditioned to think of family in such certain ways.

Another dream I had was really inconsequential but it made me awoke crying and despairing. I predict it was a feverish dream of sorts, considering I took the day off today feeling slightly with cold. Still, I thought it odd that a simple dream could make me feel so terrible. I haven't felt that bad from a dream in forever!

The best I could describe it was that the dream was me getting shut down from expressing my opinion and thoughts. The details don't matter--(it was dream nonsense)--but that made it stranger. My parents were there, and a third party was rebuffing me, so maybe it was an emotional flashback to feeling so outnumbered and alone and being made to feel as if my opinions and thinking were evil, wrong, bad...

A mix of all the above: flashback, fever, stress, etc... that probably made me wake up sobbing. Still, it's strange.

[lowbudgetTV]

I've informed my therapist of the happenings of the weekend, and now I am tasked with the consideration: how do I fully estrange from my family?

I was fully prepared to ghost them. Run away, metaphorically, even though I am far from them. But there are benefits to sending one, final letter. For me. I only must think about myself and my interests because doing anything else would be keeping to the same mindset of the past twenty odd years.

Oh, and if you're reading this, feel free to add your advice on how you "broke up". What was the safest for you?

[StartingHealing]

Hi TV. 
This is what I did as a person who survived infant adoption to genetic strangers.  I do appreciate the roof, food, clothes, that was provided.  thing is IMO children need more than just that to thrive.   This covers a dozen or more years. 

I moved for work related reasons. About 2000 some miles away.  I only forwarded the physical mail that I needed to instead of a general mail forwarding.  Different #.  At that time it was still land lines and long distance was a thing.  Different email address.  I basically went incognito from the adopter family.  Then I moved for work again. And followed the same process. I retained the data of #'s for them, mailing addresses, emails, etc.  Just in case. 

I didn't worry about a letter because I knew that the person in the role of mother wouldn't have "got it" even if she actually did.  Yeah, there was some mental / personality "things" about her.  She played stupid real good.  She also played the professional victim real good as well.

I don't remember exactly when ... anyway I had set up a specific email to communicate with certain members, a person in the role of sister who was cool, a person in the role of 1st cousin, etc. was 5-6 years maybe a tick more after I went incognito that I set this up.  Then I waited.  Not much action on their part even after emails sent.  No surprise.

Got word that the person in the role of mother had gave up the ghost.  The freedom I felt from that knowledge.  Hard to describe. Twas as if a curse had been lifted from my soul actually.  That sparked some emails from them to me and over time it's gotten decent in regards to the relationships I currently have with them. 

With what I had been through with the pwBPD, no F's given any more in regards to concern of what other people {might} feel / think etc. Sure as Hades not going to pander to them or take any toxic BS either. Not going to be an a--hole either. If there isn't a certain level of respect twixt me and the others.. Cool don't need ya. You know?

  And that also played into the current relationships I enjoy with certain members.  Toxic people are toxic people and to me it doesn't matter what kind of connection there is, genetic, legal, etc.  I as a self-determining individual have the right to not put myself in harms way. 

One thing I did learn that helped me a great deal is that no matter what actions I do, there are people that are going to cast me as a villain in the story that they are telling themselves about themselves.  Not a single thing I can do about that. Even if there was absolutely 0 things on my side for them to go there.  To me, I don't want to be around those types of people.  Since they already consider me to be a villain, then it's no skin off my back to not have any interactions with them.   They usually let me know based off of behavior of what going on in their thinking meat / verbiage.

Hopefully you can glean something useful TV.  Wishing you all the best
Wishing you all the best

   

[lowbudgetTV]

Hopefully you can glean something useful TV.  Wishing you all the best

   

Thanks SH, this is helpful.

I've been thinking of the pros and cons and I have to tell myself one of my affirmations: having conflicting feelings and changing my mind means I am processing.

I think I have an idea of what I might do. My issue is I feel like I've been so hurt that I learned to stop trying very early, so I don't know the best option or how my M truly is. But saying that... I know it's not on a child to try and get their own parents to not be cruel to them or act appropriately.

In this vein, I think I am on the path of writing an email to her and sending it on an email address that I'm retiring. A final send off that's important in multiple ways. It'll be a final kindness, but it will still not be very... Nice for her. But niceness is not kindness, and I must be kind to myself more now. My body is hurt enough and I must learn kindness for everyone. I think that's a rebellious act enough given the details of my dysfunctional upbringing: being kind instead of more hate.

[lowbudgetTV]

I wrote a whole thing in preparation for my next therapy appointment in which I will finalize my decision on breaking away from my abusive family. It's so long so I'm still editing it down, but I figure it's nice to send it here and yell out my truth. It felt really correct to say this.

TW for a few sentences about death/dying/tragedy.
__

It was hard to choose what was the best thing to do. I feel as if I am I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't. The truth of the matter is I do not love my mother, and haven't for many years. I think about that a lot. As a teenager, you think that there must be something wrong with you or you're just being stereotypical when you think that, but the feeling only got worse and never went away. I was very physically ill when I was around them. I felt like a child again when I had some modicum of freedom in University.

When I think about my mother, I recall how she has dismissed my health needs, so I feel complicated when I am made to care about hers, especially when forced upon me out of family obligation. The hypocritical truth is she does not truly care for me and I think is unable to learn how to in a way that doesn't re-traumatize me and continue to make my muscles too tense to function as a human. She cares for a concept of me. And I, in turn, care for the concept of a Mother, one that does not exist in my birthmother.

Despite all that, I would say I do appeal to her humanity. I have done this many times in my life. I have often felt I cared more about my parents' humanity than my own, considering that I often don't feel like a person, instead feeling as if I'm watching the world move around me. So, in my childhood, all the world I had was watching two miserable people go through life, which made me very sad considering I was powerless to do anything, and if I tried to do anything as an innocent, ignorant child, I would be snapped at and retract further away from being able to express my true feelings. I understand both my parents, and I feel for them as humans. However, I think what is truly best for everyone is that I stop, to some degree, thinking of them and instead focus on myself, which at the state I feel I'm in, does require drastic action of disengaging entirely from my family.

It felt most realistic and kind to my true self to write a letter. My younger self would've loved to write out her thoughts in a letter, but she never did out of fear, having no escape from the consequences of writing out her thoughts, and knowing that nothing would change. There is evidence enough of that. As I've written out my memories to feel like I am less crazy, I see that very traumatic events were the result of adult people with no regulation over their emotions taking out pain on a helpless child. I remember, with the help of a previous therapist, telling my mother that what she did to me once was wrong. She had accused me of trying to hurt her on purpose because I hated her and wanted her to feel pain. What I actually did was fail to not hit a pothole while learning how to drive. She then tried to rationalize her actions and I said no, I don't want to hear it, you were wrong. The first time in my life, at the age of 19, I was rebuking my mother, and she could not accept that what she had done was simply wrong. She retreated to her room and loudly sobbed, and as my room was near to hers, I heard it all the rest of the day. In truth, I felt nothing regarding it. All I could think of was the many times in my life where I was alone, crying as silent as I could, because I feared receiving false care from people who failed to truly love me in a way that felt real and safe. The truth is I wonder how it got to the point where being valid and respectful to my needs caused a grown woman to break down as if someone close to her died. It did hurt me. I continued to fear. I didn't want her to cry anymore.

As I sit here now writing and reading this, I think of my fears in doing what I know I must do. As a child, I do admit, one of the reasons I didn't kill myself in a deep depression was many fears of how my parents would react. I felt their despair, and sadness, and anger, and grief. Then, I grew a bit older, and I feared death because I was afraid of my parents controlling my story after I was gone. I feared control over my true self, and in turn, they controlled me through fear. Even now, thinking about doing this act of setting the final boundary: never seeing them again—I feel their sadness. The sad fact is, though, that I know how many times I have sat inches away from them, myself feeling so strongly of despair and sadness and terror and emptiness, and they went on living as if the dreadful presence wasn't there, as if they had nothing to do with why their child was so off. I don't know when it happened—I do not remember when it was—but clearly at some point in my life I gave up being open and safe around my parents, and nothing they've done or I've tried has rectified this. I have nothing left for them. It's all gone, used up.

So my decision is that I have crafted the best letter I could, one that is kind to both me and my mother. Previously, I had felt fear in sending something due to what I had to say. I suppose I also felt empathy for how I knew to some degree my mother would feel inside, and I've acknowledged that I've somehow developed a fear and repulsion to the thought of my mother feeling so despairing. But it is sadly, a necessary thing, because while I've protect them from the truth, I have despaired for two decades.

I have thought about the consequences and I feel the pain they will feel—but the saddest fact of all is that it had reached this point. They could have made the choice to care for me. They could have made the choice not to torture a child by forcefeeding her eggs she accidentally broke bringing the groceries in. They could have made the choice to be curious about me instead of controlling me and assuming things about me that weren't true. They could have tried to listen when I wanted to talk about deep, emotional things I cared about. They could have learned my innate personality and wants instead of saying everything I was was because I hated them. They had the adult mind to make the choice not to scream at a child who was asking the definition of one of her elementary school spelling list words. They had the choice to not call me stupid, weak, a brat, lazy, difficult, and worst of all, [ableist r-slur]. They had the choice not to gang up on a child to make fun of her for wanting to watch a children's movie she got from Netflix. They had the choice not to say that black children deserved to be murdered because they had been suspended from school, not realizing I still remembered playing with him on the playground. They had the choice to show humanity to a man who had recently killed himself in town, not knowing that I was friends with his daughter, not knowing that I had gladly lent that child twenty dollars to have a fun day at a school fair and then they had gotten mad at me for wasting money on someone else, despite the fact I enjoyed the act of watching someone else smile, none of us knowing that the next day her dad would shoot himself. They could have been a bit more kind. I asked that of them. They made fun of me for not being tough enough. They could have made the choice to listen.

In short, they had the choice to act like an adult to a receptive, sensitive, smart child. In turn, it feels like instead I am now an adult and they are still forever children. And I am so confused about it, for I never really got to learn how to be one. So here we are.

I have felt most powerful when I am in control of my words and I thought it might be healing to actually go through with properly preparing my thoughts, sending them, and then blocking all possible easy ways to respond. I don't know what will happen, but that's fine. I'm fine with being vigilant for one last time to achieve true freedom. I am okay with the unknown and I think that's good practice for my anxious tendencies.

I considered the "humanity" of my mother, as you have previously mentioned. I have thought long about the humanity of my mother. I decided that I am done being considerate towards someone who has not been considerate towards me. I have decided that the letter is for me more than it is her. It is to set my final boundary. It is for closure, in hopes she will finally respect it and abandon me. I expect a lot. I hope for the best. I feel as if I have run out of supply. I can't do it any longer because being an adult has taught me that I have a choice and a personhood to respect. This letter is the best I can give with what I was given.

When I was younger, I was not shown or modelled kindness. I love kindness; my parents love being cruel and bitter and mean to others. In a way, it is a final act of rebellion: to be kind to them, sending them this letter.