Dear Anita,

I watched an incredible movie this weekend, it is about a Pakistani girl who is raised in Norway, and suffers a man’s emotional abuse her parents. The story is quite extreme and the fact that she gets kidnapped and said to Pakistan against her well because she is found sneaking around with a boy. When in Pakistan she finds herself in trouble again, and is returned back to the west. We are when she arrives they have arranged a marriage for her so that they can control her behavior more and just get her married off.   I couldn’t relate to the actions per se, but the dialogue, the emotion, the unspoken aspects of the movie were incredible. I took away a lot from the movie, much more than I would have perhaps six months to a year ago. Much of the dialogue focused on the fact that the father made it a point to make her realize that her actions were making them look bad in society. The constant phrase of “what will people think“ was used as a way to guilt trip this girl. I thought about how unlike the protagonist in the movie, this did work on me. In fact, I didn’t see this as Ludacris or try to rebel against it, instead I internalized it and thought to myself, how sad and true. I thought to myself oh my gosh they are right. But it didn’t sit well with me, internally I knew something was off, it just had not come to surface. This shows me how deep my dissociation has been for a long time, perhaps that’s not the right word per se, but the concept of on the surface truly trying to appease my parents and hiding any intuition of what I mean actually feel.  At one point the mother states, if she gets married to a great guy it will increase their place in society, or if she has a good education. The older brother agrees, he is entirely brainwashed, he wants to study to be a doctor just so that his parents role in the world could be better. Such a blind faith, such devotion it seems. But as I see it now, the entire point of the children’s life is to appease their parents, and take away their hurt, take away their anxieties, take away their insecurities.  I read some reviews about this film after, wanting to see what other people thought. It was noted somewhere that when immigrants move to the west, they raise up the culture of the Western world, Europe or the United States. The entire movie talked about how the parents made comments like if their kids were raised in the motherland they would not be acting like this, they would not be suffering. Suffering comes with this immigration as kids no longer listen and respect their parents. Just like my mother. And so because of their anger of immigrating, and feeling like the kid should be indebted to them for yet another reason, They inflict even more control. This is not just the simple: look I moved here to find you a better life situation. This is the: look how sad and miserable we are, how could you not do everything in your power to make us happier.

Interestingly, the protagonist gets her self involved in some what may seem racy actions. I did not, but the results were not that different. It reminds me how, with parents like these it doesn’t matter what you do. And innocent bystander may watch this movie and think, if this girl simply behaved her parents will be happy. But I know better, I see the brewing anger and the father’s face, our years of pent-up emotion, ready to be projected on to anyone and anything. I used to believe otherwise Anita  I did believe that if I didn’t go up and swap meet my parents happy, all with the with the well and calm. That is why over those two years, I tried constantly to appease my mother, at the risk of consistently abusing my husband. The more my mother would  torture me the more I would torture urr my husband, in a way  it was kind of like what you are saying. See mother I’m not just sitting here and not listening to you, look at what I am doing to my husband, I’m torturing to the point that he will acquiesce with you. See look at my hard work

Dear Anita,

I had a stressful day at work today, just getting home. It has been a long time since I have encountered this, due to a patient and the way that the staff acted, not uncommon in my field of course. I bring this up to you not to vent, but to journal here for a bit. I read your last post before my day officially started in this manner, and after, just now. It is interesting how you can read something at two different parts of your day, and two different mindsets, and take away two different values from it. That is the beauty of the work we are doing.

The topic of this post is about running from distress. As you have mentioned so aptly, my seeking is not actually to create productivity, it is in fact escaping, escaping from distress. This has become a coping mechanism of mine, which started early and childhood given that I had to escape from the distress that was going on in my household day in and day out. There was no space to openly talk about what I was feeling, the bad feelings, I was ridiculed for having these bad feelings, and had to immediately jump into next month. My mom would immediately come into the room and I would have to conquer the next conversation, so early on it was all about pushing through.  On my way home today on the subway, I observed a lot, my first tendency was to not go immediately home, text a friend and go grab a drink. Let off some steam so to speak. Now this is it wrong and it’s entirety. But the fact that I observed it as that was a knee-jerk reaction versus what I truly needed, that is the observation. Second, as soon as I entered the door, I noticed that I wanted to go straight to the snack drawer, I had not even put down my backpack or taking off my shoes. Once again, seeking to quell the distress, wanting to have the foods with my distress. Not taking the time to process what happened or to even sit for a moment. The next thing, I took off my work clothes and jumped into a warm shower, it was natural for me to take a quick shower, but I reminded myself there was no rush. I had to wash away the day, my husband was not yet home. We had no official dinner plans or need to cook tonight. So therefore, what was my excuse? What was my excuse for rushing? Nothing. After I got out of the shower, I wants again felt the need to do something. I started answering all these text messages in my phone, entirely irrelevant, and entirely not a priority or time sensitive. Once again, occupying my brain and doing something versus just sitting. My oh my Anita isn’t just sitting so much work? But here it is, my husband called about 20 minutes ago, and said that he is jumping on the subway to head home, he had some plans earlier. For the first time ever, Anita, I thought to myself, Let me for once prepare myself mentally for my husband’s arrival! I never felt that he was worthy of such, isn’t that so terrible. Not because he isn’t worthy of it, but I never gave anyone the respect, not even my own self! When in my life have I ever given my own self the respect of mentally preparing something or giving myself time. Clearly as I unravel my evening prior, it was rushing and escaping from the first moment.   Anyway, I made a nice large cup of tea for myself and sat down, I thought about many things. And over the next five minutes I let myself sit with many thoughts, I did some stretching and I found myself wanting to journal. I found myself wanting to journal here given that it has been a wonderful platform, and also because I wanted to share with you. I also wanted to share here because I noticed the dichotomy in the beginning of the hour when I arrived home to now, and I want to remind myself that sometimes it doesn’t even take hours to unwind so to speak, we just have to make the conscious decision to make something a priority. In this case my husband arriving home reminded me that escaping the distress wasn’t going to work, I needed to have for listening ears For when he arrived home as he has a few things going on his in his life as well as you know.  The funny thing is before, I would’ve found that this would be me putting myself second and him first. Doesn’t that sound like the mother voice? The mother voice would say, oh my dear you have had such a hard day, why are you even thinking about him, why do you even have to prioritize him, he should be walking in and thinking about you. So I would take that to mean that I don’t have to do any work in this relationship, I just have to be myself as it is. Well clearly that’s not the case, and also clearly this isn’t a competition or an antagonism. If I am a supportive and good listener to him I also feel good about myself, and I also get that love and respect in return, it is full circle. Like you said, in order for me to heal I have to believe I am a good person. I have to like myself. At the very least I do have to like myself.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 12 months ago by Cali Chica.