Dear Anita,

1. He (your husband) should be walking in and thinking about you because:

if he doesn’t he is selfish, walking in only thinking about himself! how dare he! look see how men are, theyre good in the beginning and after a while they don’t even ask about you, see! look i told you so! he is not that great after all – seee don’t you feel foolish now! your mother is always right isn’t she

2. You shouldn’t think about him when you walk in from work because:

if you start doing that he will take advantage of you, pretty soon its going to be all about him and his family.  just watch he will call his mother every day and theyll start coming over- and slowly push us out.  you’re foolish to think this won’t happen – you don’t see anything. if you had experience like me you would know, but you are naive and foolish, and because of that your parents will suffer.  so start early and make him think about you and us- try to control from early on, be smart

Dear Anita,

I watched an incredible movie this weekend, it is about a Pakistani girl who is raised in Norway, and suffers a man’s emotional abuse her parents. The story is quite extreme and the fact that she gets kidnapped and said to Pakistan against her well because she is found sneaking around with a boy. When in Pakistan she finds herself in trouble again, and is returned back to the west. We are when she arrives they have arranged a marriage for her so that they can control her behavior more and just get her married off.   I couldn’t relate to the actions per se, but the dialogue, the emotion, the unspoken aspects of the movie were incredible. I took away a lot from the movie, much more than I would have perhaps six months to a year ago. Much of the dialogue focused on the fact that the father made it a point to make her realize that her actions were making them look bad in society. The constant phrase of “what will people think“ was used as a way to guilt trip this girl. I thought about how unlike the protagonist in the movie, this did work on me. In fact, I didn’t see this as Ludacris or try to rebel against it, instead I internalized it and thought to myself, how sad and true. I thought to myself oh my gosh they are right. But it didn’t sit well with me, internally I knew something was off, it just had not come to surface. This shows me how deep my dissociation has been for a long time, perhaps that’s not the right word per se, but the concept of on the surface truly trying to appease my parents and hiding any intuition of what I mean actually feel.  At one point the mother states, if she gets married to a great guy it will increase their place in society, or if she has a good education. The older brother agrees, he is entirely brainwashed, he wants to study to be a doctor just so that his parents role in the world could be better. Such a blind faith, such devotion it seems. But as I see it now, the entire point of the children’s life is to appease their parents, and take away their hurt, take away their anxieties, take away their insecurities.  I read some reviews about this film after, wanting to see what other people thought. It was noted somewhere that when immigrants move to the west, they raise up the culture of the Western world, Europe or the United States. The entire movie talked about how the parents made comments like if their kids were raised in the motherland they would not be acting like this, they would not be suffering. Suffering comes with this immigration as kids no longer listen and respect their parents. Just like my mother. And so because of their anger of immigrating, and feeling like the kid should be indebted to them for yet another reason, They inflict even more control. This is not just the simple: look I moved here to find you a better life situation. This is the: look how sad and miserable we are, how could you not do everything in your power to make us happier.

Interestingly, the protagonist gets her self involved in some what may seem racy actions. I did not, but the results were not that different. It reminds me how, with parents like these it doesn’t matter what you do. And innocent bystander may watch this movie and think, if this girl simply behaved her parents will be happy. But I know better, I see the brewing anger and the father’s face, our years of pent-up emotion, ready to be projected on to anyone and anything. I used to believe otherwise Anita  I did believe that if I didn’t go up and swap meet my parents happy, all with the with the well and calm. That is why over those two years, I tried constantly to appease my mother, at the risk of consistently abusing my husband. The more my mother would  torture me the more I would torture urr my husband, in a way  it was kind of like what you are saying. See mother I’m not just sitting here and not listening to you, look at what I am doing to my husband, I’m torturing to the point that he will acquiesce with you. See look at my hard work

Dear Anita,

when she is like that – i want to hide, and go to my room, or cry.  i guess I cry a lot.  or i want to scream back and be angry! and tell my mom she is WRONG because sometimes she makes up stuff.

sometimes i want to go and read my book or write something

Dear Anita,

Closing my eyes and wishing how my father was…well I don’t have to imagine Anita, because so much of the time he is good – and so he is like this:

I think of him taking to me, and he is telling me about his day, and I am telling him about mine.  And he tells me very good, and he says it is good that I am enjoying school.  He tells me about his patients, and I always ask him what he does at work, what he eats, and everything.  It is fun.  I don’t spend that much time alone just me and dad though.  He goes to work.  Most of the time,  I am alone withmom, or it is us 3. sometimes it is jsut me and my dad if we have to drive somewhere, and it is peaceful mostly

Dear Anita,

Happy Monday.  We were on a track of exercises, and focused “work” and guess what threw me off? The phone call my mother made.

I took the rest of the weekend to process it.  By saying “took the weekend” I mean I thought about it.  I was doing many different things with different people, but it would come to mind.  The old Cali Chica may have pushed through to our exercises, and your last question – but I recognized that I was triggered and distracted.

Rightfully so! I mean in the grand scheme of things, an “estranged” if it is the right word, mother reaching out, inappropriately to one of your friends – well that will be triggering.

See Anita, I didn’t give myself this credibility in the past. I allowed things to just “pass through” as you know.  When I was out to dinner with my friend on Thursday, the person  I was going to meet on the subway – I had sent you a post right before meeting her.  I didn’t say to myself oh its fine, don’t worry about it – just have fun.  I observed.

This is a friend I actually made on vacation 2 years ago in Europe, and she lives in NYC now, we had 2 years of catching up to do.  Well guess what my last 2 years have been…I let her go first.  She told me about her ill father, a move to LA and back..some dating ups and downs.  Then it was my turn.  I started off by telling her the craziness that started after the engagement, and thereafter, and ending to last FEb 13, the day of no contact.  I told her the last comment – I should have an abortion with you – and she was apalled, jaw dropped.  Like anyone would be.  I explained to her that this wasn’t the worst of it.  The worst of it was all the abuse that wasn’t blatant, that required one to read between the lines, or do this — process and heal for years.  To see through it.

It isn’t difficult to say if a mother speaks such obscenity/insanity that it is wrong.  Anyone would say so…but its everything else isn’t it.

Anyway, as you can see this friend and I are quite close – although not seeing each other often or having spoken in a while – and this is what else I see.

i felt my heart open.  I felt my heart speak out loud – not just to her, but to myself.  I have surrounded myself now Anita with only those people I can feel this way with.  Now are there some great friends that don’t have the emotional capacity, background, understanding, etc – to comprehend and respect what I am saying – of course! And that is just fine.  It isn’t my MO to announce this all.

So now – back to our conversation.  My mother called, good for her.  I talked about it, processed it.  And do not feel triggered.  I feel like while on the mountain path, a lion roared out to the right, so it caught my attention for a moment, but then it quickly ran away.  I too moved forward.

I would like to continue our conversation, exercise, whatever it may be – and which suits you – at any time

Dear Anita,

I felt it – I felt some pain this morning.  I felt some sadness for the sweet young Cali Chica who had a bad parent.  A bad mother.

I felt a little, on the subway on the way to work, some tears welling up.  I saw a young boy 8-10 or so sitting with his mother, on the way to school.  She was reading out loud to him, and he was looking at her – not the book.  It reminded me that this boy, would rather/naturally look at his mother and not the book.  It is innate perhaps.  She is his world – she is his everything. He values her every word and opinion.  She is it.

My feeling of discomfort hardly more than a few seconds, of course subway stopping  – my going off to work – but I noted it.  To myself and here. That I felt SOMETHING and this was triggered by my mother.  It was triggered, and I responded with some emotion.  cause and effect. it felt good for this sequence to occur.

unlike this boy on the subway, when my mom “read to me” she was just reading to herself.  it was always to herself.  and now at the age of 33, she wants to reach out to my friend and ask about my well being – at this age really mom, after all these years of nonsense – of not nonsense of nothing motherly – you care about nothing. but yourself

Dear Anita, I will do that, I will find one small tangible goal, and stick to that. In fact, you read my mind, I reached out to a small business that is doing something along the lines of what I like, I may go in there and just meet a few people nothing official just yet. Keeping myself humble that this all takes time. Sometimes I see other people that are closer to my age, 35 or so, new doctors, who seem to have already built an empire. This makes me often doubt myself a question myself or put myself down. Of course this is deep rooted and the mother voice as well. Why can’t I do what they do even though I have the talent, maybe I need to figure that out. Anyway, I forgot to add that my husband job here in nyc Is pretty rough. I mention that he has been recently opening up to me more. I have noticed the effect of the stress of his job on him considerably. This combined it with all the trauma he went through with myself and family he is severely approaching burn out. He is not one to complain. But I noticed that this job is quite toxic in the sense that the environment is not very positive, and it is difficult for him to do his job as a good surgeon because the infrastructure and administration is quite an organized and frenzied., As is often, and in big New York City hospitals., He is at a point where he doesn’t really believe it could get better. However I do have some hope that he can find a career path, as in an opportunity and what she doesn’t have to suffer so much. It is a shame because he is such a “qualified surgeon with great talent, but is unable to utilize the skills often because he doesn’t have a great set up     I have talk to him about this more recently, and there are days were he is very frustrated, and days were he is very optimistic and feels that overtime a lot of it will get better. I noticed that this has increased my stress level tremendously. I noticed that I want to do something to help him, and perhaps a lot of the reason why I want to jump on the business bandwagon is so that we can both find an out. Not financially, but more so to have freedom. Perhaps I believe that if at least one of us finds a way to not be controlled by the system will you can have more freedom at least mentally. If that makes sense, I am by no means blaming him for this increased motivation, because as you know this is something I have been wanting to do for a long time, but I think that I am even more frustrated and disgruntled recently. Seeing my husband, talented young physician, Being in a non-ideal environment, and seeing many other people finding such good opportunities. I hope for him that he could find something great like them too, but the negativity and we often takes over feeling that those who have the connections make it – even though we may try and try – he may not find such a situation  so then what? Makes me feel does more and feel frustrated, and so I sometimes find myself thinking that there has to be another way, perhaps I can carve out the path for both of us. I spent a great deal of time looking for opportunities for him, and seeing if there is a market for him to also become more entrepreneurial. However he is so burnt out mentally from the trauma that my parents and family put him through that he doesn’t have much energy in his tank to go that route given that his field is so difficult and his mind is maxed out