I do hope that space felt filled just a little. You deserve to be cared about. Something good came out of those mothers, the hurt, all of it. We did.

I wonder if my son will find his way back to me. I keep comparing myself to my mother and wondering what I did that was so awful for him he chose this pathway. Logically I don’t think I did something awful, but my whole life I’ve looked within for the answers for why painful things happen, so I can somehow avoid bad things. I’ve done that a fair bit this week. I went to my default survival emotional state, the one I spent my childhood and early adulthood in, the one I’ve been in a lot since he left. Consciously moving through it, it won’t rule me!

I have finally calmed. The conversation with my cousin really hit me hard. His father hates me and, rather than say no he doesn’t etc, my cousin was honest. He said, ‘nothing you do or say will change that and it’s on him not you.’ Seeing as I’ve never had anything to do with my uncle his opinions are entirely made up of what my mother says to him. Yup, present tense. My cousin put that fact forward but I’d already worked it out for myself.

I’m not devastated my uncle hates me. I just walked away from our conversation feeling so anxious. Anxious is a gentle word for it but I can’t think of a better one. So much emotion towards other things came about just because him hating me was finally spoken about.

My lovely mother. The one who blamed everyone for her losing her children, blames her children for who they are, twists and turns every story so she is the hero and I’m the villain. Every move she ever made was nasty, purely evil sometimes, but she tells people I did and said the things she did and said, and she was the victim.

Anyway, life like that. Luckily it’s been chaotically busy at work and in my spare time I’ve done my favourite thing or watched too much Netflix 😂 way to get through!

How are you? I read your other post. I agree, the feelings carried now have been carried since birth. Why did they have us? I know, the answer doesn’t fix the issue. I don’t know how to fill the void. Only one person could and they didn’t. It’s a basic necessary emotion as important as food is for survival.

Sorry I don’t have any answers but I’m with you.

PS so I don’t muck up your topic and I feel the need to sympathise, I read what you said, and I feel it in my soul. I used to wish I was adopted so I could be rescued. I was jealous of orphan children. Their lives seemed so much nicer than mine. Because in many ways their lives were nicer. That song that says: No mumma’s kisses, and no daddy’s smiles, nobody wants me, I’m nobody’s child. I knew how that felt. Nobody wanted me, nobody cared what happened to me, they turned away from it and told themselves it wasn’t their business.

A few years ago I spent a meal with an aunt I hadn’t seen in more than 35 years who was attending a visit to my dying father. She was trying to get me to be reasonable and go and make up with him, but that’s another story for another time, and I had gone through the motions for his sake and my future emotional wellbeing in any case. I vaguely explained things from childhood that were the reason for our estrangement and she said she didn’t know these things happened to me. I said, ‘if your daughter had displayed some of the behaviours I displayed, you would have jumped into action, because you would have known something happening was very wrong. You would have protected her.’

Instead, every single human who saw turned the other way and ignored.

I know you know how that feels <3

When I was growing up my grandfather used to say awful things about my mother. I had no way of knowing if they were true, and didn’t understand what they meant, just that she was wicked. That’s the one time in my life I argued and got angry. I was so hurt and angry he said those things even if I didn’t know what they meant. I argued, with almost rage, with him and got sent to my room. It’s a wonder I didn’t get flogged but I don’t remember being hit for it. He normally would not have tolerated that sort of thing from anyone.

Relatives on my mother’s side have confirmed that what he said is mainly true.

Aside from that, she’s always maintained how awful her life was losing her children. It took my children recently pointing out that she didn’t try to stay connected with us and they said I would have moved heaven and earth to be near them. Which is true. I would have done anything to be near them. And she didn’t do anything. She built her version of a happy life and lived that. I can start to see that the excuses she gave for failed contact are untrue. It’s taken a very long time to even begin to evaluate her and her actions, because she’s been so high up on the pedestal I gave her, so important to the little person inside me, and so high up on the moral high ground she gives herself.

When I moved to her to get to know her she only called me vicious things. She waited till I was here though, and when the only solution I could see to fix it was to go back to where I came from, there were even more vicious things to say which destroyed me entirely. So I stayed and lived a life of trying to get her approval and silently carrying everything she said I was in my heart that was so broken.

There was all kinds of things in my childhood but I can begin to think that her words have been the worst. Yet society thinks being beaten, starved, locked away for days, is worse.

As I said, she cut me out of her life a couple of years ago. About six months ago, in despair, I sent her an email saying: I wish I’d never loved or trusted you.

I was so hurt at the time, because several unforgivable things she’d done had finally proved how she really felt about me, but after I clicked on send I was horrified I’d done that. The shame I felt in saying such a huge hurtful thing made me feel sick and shaky. I felt like that for months. After a while I started to be able to feel less awful about it. Now a big part of me thinks she deserves every last word. And I hope she hasn’t changed her email address. So I do truly believe she deserved those words.

Thank you for reading. This aloneness isn’t how I pictured life. I feel like that coyote baby only no one’s coming.

Fine and dandy works for me. How did Anita the wild animal snack go on this particular giggly walk? 😂