Continued (trigger warning.. sensitive topic):

Fear, the fear of being alone (autophobia), that’s been my fear for as long as I remember.

There were 2 kinds of Alone: (1) being without that person (previously referred to in this thread, as my mother), once she does what she repeatedly said she will do: kill herself (commit suicide). And that, as she repeatedly said, that she’d kill herself because I was a bad, bad girl, the worst. The worst girl in the world.

(I remember her threatening to kill herself when I was younger than 6, when I was 20+, and last time I remember, I was in my late 30s or early 40s).

(2) being with that person: the crushing criticism, guilt-tripping, shaming.. shaming, lots of shaming, shaming me to the core. Crushing my spirit while keeping my body alive.

Couldn’t live without her, couldn’t live (as in truly live) with her.

The first was fear; the second was fear and anger: great anger, RAGE.

I want to talk about that RAGE (talking to her, in my mind, here): You tell me: who do you think you are..? (you big zero).  Today, I ask you: who do you think YOU are? Your shame does not give you the right to inflict it on ME!

You literally cut your head off in photographs, it’s a shame.. but you have no RIGHT to figuratively cut off my head by shaming me to the core, and at length, crushing my spirit, mutilating my brain. You have no such right!!!

And yet, you took the liberty to do what was oh, so very wrong for you to do.

You took that liberty because you were not afraid of retaliation, not from me, not from anyone else. For there was no one for me, no one with me.

Who do you think YOU are?

You called me names, you told me how bad, bad, bad, bad… bad, bad of a person I was- am.

You are!

It is a bad person who returns shame for the unconditional, most dedicated love of a daughter for her (perceived) mother, the love of a little girl looking up to her mother for love in return.

Alone without her; alone and condemned with her. RAGE.

anita

Continued:

I am taking a break from fear, anxiety and rage to mention Love. Here is a bible quote about love that I like very much (1 Corinthians 13:4-6): “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth”. 

This is how I want to love.

anita

Continued (trigger warning, as always):

I keep posting here because it is working for me, it gets me closer and closer to peace-of-mind. And if what I post here helps a single other person out there, that’s good enough for me, a worthy cause.

I am alone this evening, not yet dark, autophobia. I feel the scream from the inside, inaudible, yet intensely, quietly, terribly loud: Mother! Help me! Somebody help me!

This is not an intellectual exercise, here, it’s emotional: Help Me!

I feel the despair. I feel the what’s-the-point, no one is here for me, no one is there for me, no one to hold me and help me.

The Alone-ness.

How is it that no one hears me, no one hears my cries?

All alone, I am all alone, no one there for me?

Autophobia, this means.. I am going to die, all alone?

And no one knows, no one cares?

I hear a noise outside,  a helicopter in the sky perhaps, The noise is gone now, It’s quiet again. Alone. A bit of darkness outside, alone inside… Here’s the helicopter sound again.. someone is out there, a human being.  Who is that person in the sky..?

Those Formative Years of childhood, what they formed into me is a desperate alone-ness and loneliness, the there’s no one there for me.

Judging by the desperate cries of a coyote pup a few years ago, one who found himself (or herself) alone, separated and far away from the pack that one night, it’s a terrible feeling, death-about-to-happen any moment. For a highly social animal (a human, a coyote, a dog) separation/ alone-ness = death.

It’s darker now than when I started this post, not yet dark but really close to being dark, the closing of a day.

anita

Continued:

I just wrote a poem for a friend. I like it (I hope she likes it), so in the spirit of liking it, I’ll write another to.. you guessed whom (if you did), I’ll write it to that person:

I guess you were right all along

I didn’t love you

I loved what I needed you to be, just for me

Not who you were.

I loved the idea of a mother

Not the person that you are, the person you have been

For how could I love or like a person who hated me

I loved the idea of a person (a mother) who liked me

You disliked me in so many ways, thoroughly, inside out

And in turn, I disliked myself, I disliked you, I disliked everyone-

– A great start in life

Not.

And now, as I tie loose ends in my heart and mind

I say to the idea of you: farewell idea.

Left is what’s always been there; that person who disliked me

I can’t change this reality, not retroactively, not in any other way

it just so happened to be this way.

Farewell.

anita

Continued:

Saying goodbye to a non-mother means saying goodbye not only to that person, but also to her Message: that there is something wrong with me, something so terrible, that she had no choice but to get oh, so very angry at me.

There was nothing wrong with me. I was not at all the reason for her hurt, and for her RAGE.

To say goodbye to her (almost 11 years after talking to her last, on the phone) means to say goodbye to her message that there was something wrong and bad/ Guilty about me to bring about her rage, her revenge.

As I typed the above, I felt love.. for the memory of what I wished she was, for moments when her voice was soft, for when she sounded like a mother.

The complexity of being human: inside every bad person, every abusive person, there is a hurt, abused child, one that shows through at times. But often, that child is locked behind an impenetrable wall, inside a bad, abusive person.

Goodbye locked hurt child, I wish I could help you, but I was born (to you) too late to help the child that you were.

Goodbye non-mother.

anita

Continued:

I have a problem with anger: I don’t know how to feel angry without feeling that I am a bad person for feeling angry. Feeling angry, to me, indicates that I am a bad person.

I tend to be judgmental of people and .. jump into feeling angry.

I need to fix my relationship with anger and moderate my rushing into feeling angry.

Feeling that I am a bad person fuels my anxiety (hence the relevance to the title of this thread). I need to feel that I am a good person, and I often do these days, except when I get angry, and when I rush into it.

I got angry at a woman, the day before yesterday, in real-life, because she sells eggs (she raised high quality chickens) for $5 a dozen instead of the $3-4 or so that the supermarket charges for free range eggs, and I told her that she overprices her eggs (which now I acknowledge, is not true). I was also angry at her for this or that other reason. Yesterday, I apologized to her and she accepted. But on the same day, I got angry at someone else, irl,  and was fuming inside me. This fuming in anger is difficult for me to endure. I can’t feel okay with it.

The origin of my trouble with anger is two folds: (1) that person, formerly known as my mother, was very, very… very judgmental of people, often venting to me her judgments and anger at length, telling me how terribly they hurt her feelings, and in so many ways (which she generously detailed and elaborated on). As she vented, my empathy was with her, and I joined her in-anger at .. everyone, at one time or another, leaving me no people to not be angry at. Fast forward, I get judgmental and angry at .. well, almost everyone,  sooner or later.

(2) I was angry at that person a whole lot. VERY ANGRY, but would be silent about it.  Angry at her and.. judgmental of, and angry at myself, for feeling so angry at her, as in being a bad.. bad.. bad daughter.

Feeling Guilty for feeling Angry.

To be continued.

anita

Continued:

Every person needs to feel like a Someone,  not like a Nobody. It is a non-negotiable human need, withing the family of origin, and within society at large, nationally and internationally. Everywhere, a human being needs a basic measure of respect.

And every human being who needs respect, needs to extend respect to others, to others who still hold on to a measure of humanity.

There are humans who crossed the line into non-humanity. Come back to humanity, please.

Make it better, not worse.

anita