Dear Mark:

I understand why “‘Mother’ has such a  bad connotation for (you)”.

“saving others because I couldn’t save myself… my self loathing makes it difficult for anyone to be in a relationship with me”- these sentences stand up in my mind as I read your post.

Whether is was better to remember or better to have blocked it all out”- even when we don’t remember events that affected us deeply, we remember the affect and keep re-living it. We remember the fear and we keep re-living the same fear. We keep re-living a lot of our childhood emotional experiences without remembering events, images and so forth.

“I wonder if it is why I seek comfort in food.. maybe keeping myself overweight”- I sought comfort in food for decades while being thin, never gaining a pound. We seek comfort in food primarily because eating food feels good.

“I only see my parents about once a year or once every two years”- maybe that is too often. After all, your sisters see them less often than you do and they still “have to be drunk or high” to visit them.

“The sisters don’t talk to each other… I hardly ever see them or talk to them either”- it is common in a home of aggression and abuse for the siblings to keep distance from each other and often turn against each other aggressively. Aggression breeds aggression- not affection and emotional intimacy.

anita