reposting.

Anita, I hope you are fine today. How was your recent daily walk? I thought about this today while looking out the window. (I am still too sick to get out)
I will be responding to your last post this week.
There was this one time when we spoke here about trauma, reliving traumatic experiences. I wrote one day I would like to describe it. Another day you wrote that (paraphrasing) you do not believe one can stop feeling pain entirely when thinking about painful events. It made me sad but.. I do not know why, I had courage today to relive one of them. I felt sad today, maybe because I haven’t left the house in days, I still feel sick and wasn’t eating too much. Also I have some issues at work and feeling overwhelmed and when I feel overwhelmed and exhausted I usually have this one memory stuck in my head.. little kitten, me in a car with my mother, and this kitten meowing and screaming, me leaving this kitten on the street and driving away with my mother.
I feel like I cannot move on with my life because of this. I cannot live with those memories anymore, it’s exhausting. All I had, all my childhood, my home, everything was lost that day. My dad, my room – my bedroom, my cats, my dog! my cousins. Plans I had, plans we had together with my cousin, the plays we did: we sang songs, made poems for fun. I had to pretend I will be there when we planned to perform them (just for ourselves) although I knew I won’t be there. My mother told me to lie, to pretend, to keep a secret. I could not tell anyone we will be moving out that day. Then one day we woke up, took some things while my dad wasn’t there (he probably still had not come back from a night out) and left. He came home and saw empty room… as I assume. My cousin sent me a letter after that when she found out I was living at my grandma’s (my mother’s mom) about 30km away. I was such in shock I don’t even remember calling my cousin and telling her where I was (we were inseparable till this day).It’s one of the worst things that happened to me (until then at least because what was still yet to happen was my mother’s worst and worst abuse AND her partner’s). I feel so hopeless thinking about it, like.. I will never get rid of this. It will be here in my head till the rest of my days. Every time I look at my cat (which I love a lot) I think of the cat I had to leave on the street, opened the car door and leave him because he was screaming too much, I don’t remember exactly…. probably decided (me or my mother) that better to leave him and take him with us. And leave all I had, all my life, my identity. Thinking about this and re-living this I am hoping to process this a little bit. I never had the courage to truly re-live it until today. It’s a nightmare thinking about this.

Anita, thank you for responding right away. I appreciate it, and appreciate you being here.

Yes, my friend buys my groceries and medicines. I am better but still afraid to go out because one time I went on balcony and felt worse. So I am at home for almost two weeks now. I am planning to go out tomorrow though.

It was: “better to leave him and not take him with us” sorry, I  misspelled.

What if you figuratively go back to where the kitten was left, and pick her up, take her with you and take good care of her… take really good care of the long-ago lost Joanna?

How do I do that?

I thought it would feel better after I face this memory. Maybe it will tomorrow or later. I wrote it all down in order to read it tomorrow, calmly. Maybe it will help me.

bring this memory to the present time, like I suggested above, make the connection between the past and the part of the past that is still here: the precious little, lost Joanna is Here and Now. Take care of her gently, consistently.. show her that she can trust you.

I will try to do that, Thank you Anita.

Dear Joanna:

It is Sun 7:32 pm here, Mon 4:32 am your time, I hope that as you are reading this Mon morning, your time, you are feeling better, or you are thinking that you will be feeling a lot better as the day unfolds. Good night to me, good morning to you, Joanna!

anita

Dear Joanna:

You are welcome. Reading your positive update this  morning is making my day! So good to read that you went out for a walk, for the first time in 2 weeks, CoNgRaTuLaTiOnS !!! What a difference a walk outside can make?!!

anita

Dear Joanna:

You are welcome. Nothing like a somewhat brisk walk on a cool day to stimulate blood circulation and promote mental (and physical) health!

anita

Dear Joanna:

You are very welcome! Very good to read about your progress today in practicing mindfulness… see we can get better, we can heal, one day at a time, building tomorrow on the progress made today… little by little, gradually with patience and humility!

anita

Anita,

I am good, still a bit sick but Ok. I am planning to visit a doctor next week. Sorry for not responding earlier. I have not felt that good. Work problems and sickness exhausted me.

I have been thinking about you today, Anita. How are you?

 It amazes me how similar our mothers are, and this is why we are a great source of understanding to each other.

I am thankful for that, good you feel that way – I am glad to be and have a source of understanding!

The good list/ bad list phenomenon as I now call it, is a bpd hallmark, a result of the bpd extreme all-or-nothing/ black and white thinking. The borderline anger, or rage is also a bpd hallmark.

My grandma and mother both have this condition and this exact symptom. Although what I noticed some people never return from bad list. They stay there forever.  I am reading a lot to understand some of my own behaviors like getting angry at people for no reason, just sudden anger. It feels better to understand it, to try to heal from this anger.

I figure if my mother didn’t want to be this way, she would have said something at some time during the DECADES I was in contact with her, something like: I am so sorry that I hurt your feelings.

I think so too. Even if they did not have control over the anger they could still see us hurt. My mother heard my crying multiple times, heard me smashing things in my room, crying from anger, helplessness.. heard me coughing because I cried so much. I will never forget thinking: what kind of person is okay with this, how cruel she must be.. She was there, in the other room and knew she did this to me.

a victim-child should not be ashamed of having been victimized; it’s the victimizer-mother who should be ashamed of victimizing her own, vulnerable child!

I agree.

please do not hide and do not pretend.. anything.

Thank you, your words give me strength, hope and courage.

I don’t think that I’d dare saying this to my mother.. that would could easily bring another episode of borderline rage against me. I am imagining it now: she would react angrily and if I told her right there and then something like look at yourself, don’t you see that you have an anger issue?! She’d say something to indicate that she was having a bad daughter issue, that she is responding reasonably to a horrible daughter, and how sad for her… She never presented herself as the Actor of real abuse (ex., saying the most hurtful words for the purpose of hurting my feelings), but as the Reactor of alleged abuse (ex., mentioning to her that she had an anger issue for the purpose of helping her, if I dared to mention this).

This was the one time I dared to say this to my mother, to text this actually, over a text message. I wouldn’t have dared to say this to her face, she would have given me the look that could kill.. –  I learnt to avoid this at all costs. The context of this was the fact that she first texted me that she was sorry I was treated badly or something.. Not sure what exactly she meant, she may have meant her partner’s behavior because I talked to her about him at the time, how he abused me (she mostly did not accept the truth). But I felt brave enough to ask about her anger issues, I thought maybe she was apologizing for her own behavior. But she responded she was having menopause, as in: it’s not actually her fault. Interesting what was my reaction: I recommended her a doctor, a gynecologist, to help her! I even did an appointment for her, I was so caring and really wanted to help. She went there (she had to pretend to be a victim here, I tried to help her so she had to go) and was mad at me later about how much money she had to spend and.. stopped speaking to me that day even before she went! As in: I forced her to go there.

Anita, I am thinking about your advice to process a traumatic memory. I thought about other memories I have, the ones that are very strong but on the other hand, I am not that afraid to think about them – actually I recall and relive them quite often. I learnt after some time, instead of being past memories they become..less past, so to speak, in a way that I sometimes no longer think of that moment in the past – I think of other moments later when I recalled this memory. I feel stuck with it though.  I am trying to “bring this memory to the present time, … make the connection between the past and the part of the past that is still here” like you suggested. It is hard!