Hi anita

Thank you for the wishes and the compliments – you have the courage to address and consider personal, emotional topics that most people automatically reject. Add to these your intelligence and genuine kindness, and … I think that your work colleagues are fortunate to have you and I know that you are not a loser – Feels really nice to hear good things about myself from you. I am glad to hear you say I am kind and honest. I need to overcome those fears. I want to be okay with who and what I am. I think one of the main causes of this inner turmoil is constantly worrying about what I am coming across as to people.

I think I’ve discovered something, adding to what we discussed about what I meant to my mother. I am worried about appearing useless at work. That might be because of the fear of getting fired, like my father. But also, there has always been fear of not doing enough for my mother. At home, I find myself constantly checking in with my mother to see if she needs help with anything. It is strange that even after close to 3 decades, I don’t trust my mother to come to me if she needs help. She has never hidden her suffering yet she carries the image of a silent sufferer. I may come across as rude, but if she was keen on hiding her suffering, we wouldn’t be aware at all. I think it was a game, doing everything herself and complaining about having done everything. Instead of communicating up front, we were expected to guage her burden. So, it naturally instilled this guilt that we weren’t good daughters for not looking for ways to ease her burden with house work. But now I also realize the same principle applies to emotions as well. I see this with my sister too, no one does this. It is not normal. You either feel like doing some work or someone asks you to do it, so you do it. This constant worry that my mom might be doing too much house work is really strange. Today, if I asked her if she needs any help, she’ll say no. But, where does this worry that she needs help come from? It is from feedback in the past. She used to look so done with everything. That now we want to pre-empt that mental/physical exhaustion. Sometimes it looked like she was done with life.

We had already re-hired the lady who washed dishes a few months back, there’s still other work to do, but any of us could do it. I don’t know why it’s a burden when she does it. Why is it a burden. You either do it or you don’t. Why act like we’ve imprisoned her.  There’s also the angle of – they don’t have a lot of retirement money and she doesn’t want us to spend money on them. But I can afford it so instead of doing it myself, I hired someone. Again, if it is on me to find a solution, I’ll find something that is convenient for me. But I feel guilty. So, coming back to appearing useless, instead of thinking if they have some work for me, they’ll tell me. I am constantly worried about looking useless to my seniors and boss.

Talking about a prison, I think our culture contributes to this – we are expected to look at her being miserable and complaining, but not doing anything about it, and be grateful for that. And in turn are expected to be okay with us feeling like we are imprisoned but stay, to be good children.I once expressed wanting to move to a paid accomodation and I can’t describe the anger on my mother’s face. It was going to be in the same city, but she didn’t like that. Why would any parent want their child to continue living in their hell. Sometimes I wonder if my mother is actually as hurt as us. She gets upset when I pick fights with my father now. Almost like a general upset his soldier got into a fight without being commanded to. She never directly pushed me to fight, but I used to fight a lot when I was younger. Now I am expected to stop, like a robot.

As for what you mentioned in you last post, you’re right, she tried to turn us against our father so she could control us and she succeeded. My fear and worry benefit her immensly. She positioned herself as good and constantly threatened to oust us from her side. I wasn’t even rebellious, I was genuinely unwell mentally and she dealt with it with being cold and self-centred. I feel broken. I don’t know how to fix this. You are asking me not to feel guilt, but I honestly don’t know where the boundary of a healthy mother-daughter relationship lies. I don’t know how to take care of her without the worry or guilt.

Girija

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.

Hi anita

I hope you’ll feel better soon. Omicron is spreading like wildfire here too. But as you said people are recovering well.

Everything I’ve written is from my perspective of what I want to take care of. I don’t even want to be the caretaker. I just want her to have one. What I mean to my mom is worse than what you’ve written.

What I know I am to my mother or mean to is her personal diary where she filled pages with vitriol and her stresses since I was 10 -11. I don’t have memories before that. We had to be grateful to her for her sacrificies. I honestly don’t know what those are. What I really mean to her is I am her safety net. Goes beyond what you’ve described. It’s worse. She’ll just step aside and have us fight her fights. She is the biggest victim. Anytime we used to go to my maternal grandmother’s place, they used to tell me to take care of my mom. From very early on. What can a 10 year old do? They were telling us to be more mature and not trouble her. We were “troubling her” by being what we were, kids. So even now, what I mean to my mom is a burden. She used to project my father onto me. I started worrying that I will hurt her from a very young age. Now I remember it is because she used to express with her words and actions that we were troubling her. And we used to hate our dad for causing us pain, we didn’t want to add to hers. She used that to say don’t do this or that, you will turn out to be like him. I am really scared of turning into my father and she used that against me. Everyone around us used to call us docile. We were just kids being kids. We had to be the elders. I am an elder to her. From a very young age both her and the extended family has instilled guilt in us. I have expressed to her before that I am worried about leaving her and getting married. She has never tried to assure me that they will be ok. I am expected to worry about her.

So, if I had to paraphrase yes – live-in home caretaker with the ability to drive her to the hospital and such? I don’t drive though, take her by cab.

I remembered something else, when I used to be down or depressed around 14-15 she used to tell me she was already tired of dealing with my father and just can’t deal with it if we turn out like him as well. I think that’s where the fear comes from. She essentially told me I was not normal and she didn’t want to deal with it.

Another time, I was really depressed and lying down in bed for days and my dad started praying for me. My mom is scared when he gets prayerful as that means he is really anxious and may spiral down, so she came yelling to my room saying my dad will get worse if I lie down. I had to get up immediately. We always had to be her foot soldiers for dealing with my dad. Worry about him. Why did I have to worry about him?

Girija

Hi anita

I wrote the closeness you feel to her, not the closeness you experience with her. By feeling close to her, I mean that there is, within your mind and heart, a desire for closeness with her. This is a tricky distinction to make, and I will try to explain it best I can: – I understand the difference now. I certainly had and continue to have a desire for closeness. I agree with that. Probably this post originates from a lack of closeness and love. If I had my mother, I wouldn’t wish for someone else, a man to love me and marry me and worry about whether I am good enough for a man. I wouldn’t feel so tortured about myself. The chaotic one inside. If she felt like she was fine and safe to be herself, I could have subdued that with my mother’s support. I might not even have had this chaos inside me. I have, however, shared more with you than her. But I know, she knows. I never presented “normal”. She did not care to get close and help me. Just like you’ve written, the desire or yearning for support and love has robbed me of my confidence and motivation.

Does this mean that if you were able to pay for an in-home care, someone to live with your mother, do all the housework and drive your mother to the hospital in case of emergency, etc., then you will no longer feel scared of causing her harm, and you will be able to live peacefully away from your mother and father? – Yes, absolutely. But usually the people here come from smaller villages and are very careless. We saw that with my grand mother, even with us in the house. If I could find a service of good quality, I will vanish from this house in a second.

Girija

Hi anita

Putting feelings aside, I can’t kick my father out of his house. I discussed with my mom and sister about us leaving this house. But, he won’t be able to live on his own. My mom doesn’t want to leave because it is their house and she doesn’t want to lose this asset. We discussed divorce but both people have to agree for it to go through here. My father will not do that. And my mother won’t do it because divorce is a taboo, so she probably thinks no one will want to marry us. She and I can’t bring ourselves to leave him like that knowing he can’t survive. At the same time there are parts of him where he is just selfish, so it is hard to accept him. So if I put my feelings aside, the best I can do is leave the house myself as I can’t change anyone else. I am considering interviewing for jobs in other cities. At the same time, I feel a certain way about leaving my mother behind – I can’t find the right word in English, I don’t know if this is guilt, it feels different , forgive me, I’ll describe the feeling – I feel like if I left her I would be doing something wrong, like, it is wrong to think like that. It bothers me to imagine what it would look like for me once I leave, like I am turning my back on her. She won’t have anyone to take care of her. However, if I was to get married that would be the case anyways. My parents need support unfortunately. If I turn my back on them, they won’t survive. If I were to put my feelings aside, I would look for a job in a different city, which I will anyways, for the money atleast. But I am afraid I won’t be able to live peacefully leaving my mother behind.

Girija

Hi anita

Girija speaks this way, in a way that moves. – that’s nice of you to say.

I wonder if she can put this gift into use, develop it and put it into use – for that to happen I need to be significantly less chaotic and detached. Maybe I am in the process of developing it.

what are these situations that you need to break away from? – the theme of my life is I don’t have safety nets. Like a shelter to rest and refresh. I hate working . I can’t believe I’m saying that knowing how important it is for me to earn, but that is what it is. I don’t have ambitions yet I’m forced to climb these stupid ladders because I can never afford to be unemployed. That stress sucks. I need to factor in the entire family’s retirement fund for me to retire. No breaks allowed, it just sucks. Most people don’t need a break, but I am just weird, not normal.

People bother me in general. I am uncomfortable around most people. I cannot forgive people at all. When someone at work hurts me I can’t shake it off and move on.

But this is the main thing I want to highlight – I somehow seem to draw out the bullies in people in the family and at work. And I somehow land up in places with no support. It just so happens that my lead does not lead us at all at work. The pattern repeats. Just like my parents didn’t parent. I can’t bear to simply pass the pressure down to my juniors, so it weighs me down. I know the simple answer would be find a new job. Which I will. But at the same time I am demotivated. I don’t really want to be who I am in all of my “situations” – the daughter that has to earn, the developer that has to do things way above her experience. Atleast with the latter, some people love the challenge, I would too but I stress myself out. I want less stressful situations. Atleast one situation where it’s ok to fall. Atleast one situation where I have support.

It always feel like me against the world. But it has always been this way. In college, one of my teachers pulled me aside and said you look like you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Oddly enough my first manager said it looked like I finally dropped the weight on my shoulders when he was giving me my first promotion – this was because my mom’s health took all my attention and I decided to stop caring about my manager and work. He caught on to that.

Girija