You are welcome, Cali Chica. Glad you had a good weekend and I appreciate the update. I am fine and am looking forward to read more from you when you have the time and the mental space.

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

The last day being Dec 31 means you already gave your notice and you will not be employed Jan 1?

If so, this is wonderful! You definitely need a break, a different kind of life starting at the very beginning of 2020. Sometimes I still look at numbers for meaning (not a divine meaning, mind you), two 2s in 2020, a 2nd chance perhaps, a second beginning in life, a second birth of sorts.

And your husband, will he continue working at his current job for now, even though he gave his notice??

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

And a team of 2, an inner circle of 2, I like it. I knew that he gave his notice, but didn’t know if the notice holds, so it doesn’t, he can continue to work Feb 1 if he wants to.

I can imagine you free in Manhattan, to do as you wish anytime of the day, how exciting!

I am fine, gray and dreary here, evening arrives on days when morning didn’t happen yet. A bit bored. Still don’t know about that something-new I mentioned to you before.

“continue the conversation”- please do, if you want to, if you can. Hope your head stops hurting!

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

Your parents in law sound wonderful, being great listeners, kind and wise, what a valuable resource to have!

I wonder what new insight and new understanding 2020 will bring to me, and to you. The understanding you expressed regarding your sister reads perfectly perfect, to me, from “we were raised in a household of sickness” to “I  know my distance will create alarm in her. I also know it will create alarm in me”.

Let’s look at what you wrote: “our interaction is based on sickness. There is resentment and anger within each one of us”

Also, you wrote that her hidden manner of communication with you is the reason why you feel “uneasy and uncomfortable many times”, doubly distressed- angry and guilty for feeling angry, invalidated.

All very well said, very accurate, excellent job on your part.

Then you talked about primal love and here I am confused. You wrote that you had that kind of love for your mother, “instant of course as a newborn”, I agree. But then you wrote that this primal love evolved (“evolving as I grew with her”)- primal love does not evolve. It stays the same. If a child grows up to have an honest, healthy relationship with her mother, then a different kind of love is added to the primary love.

You wrote: “I do hope to establish a good balance of ‘closeness with boundaries’, suggesting that you will not over-communicate to her what she doesn’t have “the capacity to understand”, to not worry what she thinks, t say ‘no!’ to her.

I don’t think it’s going to work. I will explain: what I wrote to you earlier in that primary-love post is that truly, better keep the relationship with her primal, pre-verbal. I don’t mean that you no longer speak to her, articulating words. What I mean by it is that honest, healthy communication with her is not possible. It is not possible because like you wrote yourself: “our interaction is based on sickness. There is resentment and anger within each one of us”.

Well, if it is based on sickness, it is not healthy. And if she is angry at you, then she will sometimes intend to hurt you, aka bite you. How can this possibly be healthy.

If you intend to heal this relationship, it will take no less than the two of you being motivated to do so, then attending professional family psychotherapy for a long time, the two of you attending sessions together. You can’t heal this relationship by yourself, can’t do that.

What I suggested in my earlier post to you is to keep the relationship primal, meaning, you view your closeness with her as primal, something that is there and will never change, a closeness that doesn’t require changing of any kind, including healing. It will always be there, that primal love/ primal closeness. Have no ambitions to create a better, honest communication between the two of you. Let it go, let go of any such hopes, intentions and hopes.

It will take no less than a miracle to add an honest, healthy closeness to this primal closeness. So don’t try. See her and interact with her as if indeed, you are interacting with a delightful puppy that will bite and act in hidden ways sometimes. If you see her and interact with her as that puppy, her bite will not hurt anymore because it’s a small puppy’s bite, a nibbling of some sort, no blood, no bruising.

(If you hope for more with her, her bite will feel, as it has felt, like the bite of a big dog, and that does draw blood and leave bruises).

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

You are welcome. I figure (thought about it further on my walk today), keep the relationship with your sister primal, meaning emotional. Express to her affection any time you feel it, a sincere smile, an affectionate gesture, and minimize thoughts- exchange. Spend time with her talking little, keep it superficial on the cerebral level. Let her do her cerebral exchange with other people and limit your relationship with her to the heart, pre-verbal, pre-thought. Like with a puppy.

It is not that she is not intelligent enough for you to converse with, it’s that it is not a good idea to do so, not for you and not for her.

I hope you rest today and enjoy that hot tea, and a massage this weekend. I’ll be here tomorrow.

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

“have fun, but don’t get too deep”- I say don’t get deep at all, no depth at all regarding insight into childhood and her relationships. A bit deep is too deep. Like I wrote to you before, best for her is to keep her job, to keep her employment, being able to make money and live independently, paying her own rent and so forth. This is her # 1 resource, materially and mentally.

Her relationships with people, anyone and everyone, that will continue to be problematic for a long, long time. You can’t fix that. You can only get hurt trying to fix that.

Regarding the possible move, the “lot of pros to each side”, let me know if and when you want my input (I figure you probably need time off from trying to decide, being you are still working and busy. Maybe better postpone considering the two options for next year).

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

Okay then, I will begin with the emotional part:

1. It takes a whole lot of work, time and money, to accomplish a permanent move (unlike a visit) across the country.

2. Excluding times of being moved by a spirit of youth and adventure, we feel comfort in what is familiar to us (People, Place, Routine), and we feel anxious when anticipating the loss of what is familiar to us.

3. We humans, like all other animals, are motivated primarily to avoid pain in all its forms (discomfort, anxiety, work that is too difficult, etc.), and to seek pleasure.

— so it would take your familiar, nyc- being very distressing in order to be motivated to move away from it. And/ or it will take what is not familiar, SD- to be viewed as very pleasurable/rewarding in order to be motivated to move there.

As is now,

– husband believes his workplace is not that distressing and may get better.

– you and husband enjoy nyc.

– you and husband enjoy and value his parents and would not like to cause them the discomfort of moving out of their familiarity.

– husband prefers a salaried position which he has in nyc and is uncomfortable otherwise. Although SD offered an increase of two years of salaried position, from the previous one year, two years is not that great of an incentive.

– your employment possibilities in nyc are no less than in SD, maybe more.

All in all, emotional considerations lead me to believe that a move out of nyc is not likely. Says I.

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

The SD option has a few Ifs: if he meets his overhead costs, if he kills enough to eat enough (“the private model of eat what you kill”), if the somewhat-retiring doctor’s plan to back off from practice doesn’t change.

These ifs may be okay for some people but not for others. Imagine your husband having a day with only one patient, when the plan calls for three, how many white hairs are added to his head? One day spent being anxious is a long, long time. Even low-level worry, like a persistent itch, adds up.

You want a husband who is as calm as possible, a calm father to your planned children. The tidy list of pros and cons is a list on a two dimensional medium, a paper, but the man, he lives in a three dimensional medium where time has to be considered in connection to anxiety:

-on paper, you write if X happens (ex.: other doctor stays as busy), then we will do Y (whatever it may be), but in the 3D medium of life, X happens and there is that long, long space of time that nothing happens. There is no immediate, quick jump from X to Y. Within that time, for many people, white hairs grow and the heart and brain grow heavier and heavier.

anita