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In a totally new place and need perspective? Cedar? Anyone?
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 665203" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I realized this morning that I have been seeing my father in a degraded way, Copa. And there was my mother. Saying rotten things about him to me behind his back. When he lost his hearing, she would say them right in front of him. Such contempt in her face when she did that, Copa.</p><p></p><p>And if he could not hear...who, in all the hells that ever were, was my mother trying to hurt.</p><p></p><p>Me.</p><p></p><p>To hold him in contempt like that. I thought that was normal, Copa and Serenity. I saw my own D H in those terms. Under everything, I mean. I thought that was how you did it; how you treated the person you were married to. To my father's face, my mother behaved in a disgustingly servile way. </p><p></p><p>And my D H told me, early in our relationship, never to do that to him. That I was not his mother; that I was his woman. (Added on rereading before posting: With all the power accruing to the Mother, the Universal Mother. That is why my mother did that. Well, I don't know. I am getting ahead of myself, here.)</p><p></p><p>You asked me once Copa, when I began to trust my D H.</p><p></p><p>Then.</p><p></p><p>That was the beginning of it.</p><p></p><p>I was puzzled at the time. I did not know another way to behave <em>with a husband.</em></p><p></p><p><em>I did not begin to treat D H that way until after we were married.</em></p><p></p><p>My mother, whispering, whispering contemptuous things to me about my own husband, about my own father. "Us" against them. Against our own men, against those who reflect ourselves to us in lust and in cherishment and in children.</p><p></p><p>Geez, I hate that.</p><p></p><p>How much have we lost, all of us, to have been taught to see the men in our lives in these ways.</p><p></p><p>What a nasty, tangled up mess.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes; and when I wrote it initially, I wrote in contempt for myself. In these few minutes since that initial response, I see instead the Child.</p><p></p><p>And I see her victimization.</p><p></p><p>At last, I see her innocence, her bruised face, her confusion and pain and puzzlement. </p><p></p><p>I see me, see the Child that is me.</p><p></p><p>Finally.</p><p></p><p>The others ~ the mother, the sister, the brother, the father betrayed ~ none of this matters, now.</p><p></p><p><em>We are coming real.</em></p><p></p><p><em>And heard, with bated breath</em></p><p><em>the tale with which its Listener replied</em></p><p></p><p><em>I...believe you, Child</em></p><p></p><p></p><p><em></em></p><p><em></em></p><p>Did these people never, ever stop?!?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This morning, believing myself to be posting for you Copa, I have seen my mother's degrading influence in my father's life. I posted about the "confession", supposedly because everyone needed to know the "truth" about who my father was, really, and not the "big boss" at all...that my mother had had an affair a zillion years before.</p><p></p><p>Do these people never, ever stop.</p><p></p><p>And I have posted before about the crash and burn of that business my father had begun. He went on to make more businesses.</p><p></p><p>With my mother at his side.</p><p></p><p>Why did he stay with her.</p><p></p><p>Why does my D H stay with me.</p><p></p><p>I am feeling pretty ugly, this morning.</p><p></p><p>Sullied.</p><p></p><p>Dirtied.</p><p></p><p>roar</p><p></p><p>Cedar roars off on the Conduct Disorders motorcycle to run the perimeter naked. Cleansing herself, proving herself.</p><p></p><p>Naming, herself. </p><p></p><p>There is such anger and such strength, here.</p><p></p><p>I am angry, you guys. Helpless and oh, man. Somewhere in our stories there is courage and choice. Or we would be like our mothers, like our sisters.</p><p></p><p>I don't see it right now.</p><p></p><p>I will hold faith with myself that it is there, then.</p><p></p><p>If this weren't true I would not be who I am.</p><p></p><p>And there is no "F you, mom" in these feelings. In these feelings, the mother figure is seen. She has no value. She latched onto the dignity of the Universal Mother, twisted that to her advantage, but it was again and forever, the same twisted meaningless meanness that is always the flavor of her. Meaningless, powerless puppet player facsimile of the honor the Universal Mother incorporates and is due.</p><p></p><p>And in this assessment, a tiny flash of compassion. Guilt, and compassion.</p><p></p><p>Why.</p><p></p><p>Why compassion, why protection, why "There but for the grace of God go I."</p><p></p><p>I still think I might be her, might be like her.</p><p></p><p>Still think there must be some reason to it; some woundedness in her she could not rise above, maybe.</p><p></p><p>Here again, D H comes to my rescue just by being who he is. "Don't treat me that way. You are not my mother; you are my woman."</p><p></p><p>Servile is how my mother turned my father into a child, in her mind.</p><p></p><p>And we all know what she did to her children.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>True, Copa.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/2012/sorrowsmiley2.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":sorrowsmiley2:" title="sorrow :sorrowsmiley2:" data-shortname=":sorrowsmiley2:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I do too in a way, Copa. But you know how I was just posting about holding faith that, though I sure don't feel it this morning, there must be courage here in me?</p><p></p><p>There it is.</p><p></p><p>We are choosing to see it when we might have remained comfortably in denial.</p><p></p><p>We are breaking through on two levels here, then. Breaking through to what it was for us growing up, and breaking through denial strategies that have kept that truth safe from us for all of our lives.</p><p></p><p>No wonder I feel all ugly this morning.</p><p></p><p>Phew.</p><p></p><p>Okay. So one more F you, mom. But there is no fire in it. It's like holding up a sign that says ~ that has a portrait of my family of origin.</p><p></p><p>No surprises.</p><p></p><p>Flash the picture.</p><p></p><p>On we go.</p><p></p><p>Smoke and devastation in our wake, and the tiny, greening plants that come first, after destruction and before the burgeoning hardwood forest is reborn.</p><p></p><p>All we had before was a picture of ~ a distillation of haunted desires, right? An intense longing for something that never was.</p><p></p><p>Us.</p><p></p><p>What we wanted was never them. It was us. Here is the question: Where is the wisdom in seeking redefinition from those whose every smallest intent was to see to it that we would forever define ourselves as they presented us to ourselves.</p><p></p><p>These people are like, snaky mean.</p><p></p><p>My sister, praying a ring of thorns and keeping a picture of the two of us in her bathroom so she could fixate on me every single day of her sad little life.</p><p></p><p>What.</p><p></p><p>Nothing here makes sense.</p><p></p><p>Until we pull the threads out.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/starplucker.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":starplucker:" title="starplucker :starplucker:" data-shortname=":starplucker:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Oh. Good thinking, Copa.</p><p></p><p>I am not clear on how to forgive myself. </p><p></p><p>It's all so cheap and ugly. If there were a win here, if there were some ~ there must be some sense to be made of this.</p><p></p><p>I am thinking of those articles we read about sociopathy and gaslighting and psychopathy.</p><p></p><p>Those people in those articles were never able to make sense of things, either.</p><p></p><p>When I think like that I feel stronger, a little. Like, "Whew. What a really bad way to grow up. Even if I did get a John Wayne doll for Christmas."</p><p></p><p>And I really liked it, too.</p><p></p><p>And that brings the feeling of the woman with the bruised face, eating the breakfast her abuser bought. </p><p></p><p>Circle.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You compromised every value you had lived by, every painful admission you had made about your upbringing, to provide not only the responsibility to see that your mother was cared for, but love. </p><p></p><p>To love her.</p><p></p><p>We have posted about the feeling of "automaton" each of us has experienced, has lived from, in our adult interactions with our mothers.</p><p></p><p>Could it be that you forced yourself to give to her an honor she did not deserve.</p><p></p><p>D H sneers at my mother's contention that she is the matriarch of our family. He says she does not deserve that title.</p><p></p><p>My mother held D H mother in contempt; she hated the love her children have for their mother. It is a different kind of thing than I have ever seen. I have posted about the feel of D H family being the way it feels to watch a litter of puppies. Everyone getting what each needs; all being cared for and cleaned and protected by the mother. all of them sleeping together, comforted by the warmth and the struggle and the certainty of the milk and the mother and the safety and nourishment she represents.</p><p></p><p>They still feel that way as they now protect the mother.</p><p></p><p>There is that feeling to them.</p><p></p><p>That is nothing like my family of origin feels.</p><p></p><p>Scorpions; a nest of scorpions. Ugly and poisonous and really, really black and wicked.</p><p></p><p>And scary.</p><p></p><p>Whew.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/916wildone.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":916wildone:" title="scream :916wildone:" data-shortname=":916wildone:" /></p><p> </p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/9-07tears.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":9-07tears:" title="crying :9-07tears:" data-shortname=":9-07tears:" /></p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Thank you, each of you witnessing for me, here. I can move through it when I know you are here. I would get stuck in devaluation without you.</p><p></p><p>You matter.</p><p></p><p>Thank you.</p><p></p><p>It truly sucks sometimes, but we are doing this.</p><p></p><p>I go on about D H all the time here, I know that. But this is what he said to me the other day re: family of origins stuff. "I feel badly for you that you have to use this time, this time that is your time for your life, for assessing your life and the things you've loved and the things you've won or lost or survived, on them. I will be happy for you to be done. You deserve better. They weren't worth it the first time." He added something about my own life, the time I will be here, alive in this life, drawing down to the time it will be done.</p><p></p><p>The other side of that is when I think back to how scared I was of them. Remember my being so afraid that my sister would call, or that they would show up, uninvited, at my door.</p><p></p><p>I am not afraid, now.</p><p></p><p>Okay. A little trepidation.</p><p></p><p>For heaven's sake.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/919Mad.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":919Mad:" title="Mad :919Mad:" data-shortname=":919Mad:" /></p><p></p><p>Cedar</p><p></p><p>That's okay. LIke D H said yesterday about the mud: "Good. Now we know where we are."</p><p></p><p>In mud.</p><p></p><p>Speaking of which, that is where I am going, now. Out to dig a trench.</p><p></p><p>Know what, you guys? There was an unuspected frog in that water yesterday. And when he leaped out because I was mucking around in there, trying to drain the water?</p><p></p><p>I nearly wet my pants.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/cutie_pie.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":cutie_pie:" title="cutie pie :cutie_pie:" data-shortname=":cutie_pie:" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 665203, member: 17461"] I realized this morning that I have been seeing my father in a degraded way, Copa. And there was my mother. Saying rotten things about him to me behind his back. When he lost his hearing, she would say them right in front of him. Such contempt in her face when she did that, Copa. And if he could not hear...who, in all the hells that ever were, was my mother trying to hurt. Me. To hold him in contempt like that. I thought that was normal, Copa and Serenity. I saw my own D H in those terms. Under everything, I mean. I thought that was how you did it; how you treated the person you were married to. To my father's face, my mother behaved in a disgustingly servile way. And my D H told me, early in our relationship, never to do that to him. That I was not his mother; that I was his woman. (Added on rereading before posting: With all the power accruing to the Mother, the Universal Mother. That is why my mother did that. Well, I don't know. I am getting ahead of myself, here.) You asked me once Copa, when I began to trust my D H. Then. That was the beginning of it. I was puzzled at the time. I did not know another way to behave [I]with a husband.[/I] [I]I did not begin to treat D H that way until after we were married.[/I] My mother, whispering, whispering contemptuous things to me about my own husband, about my own father. "Us" against them. Against our own men, against those who reflect ourselves to us in lust and in cherishment and in children. Geez, I hate that. How much have we lost, all of us, to have been taught to see the men in our lives in these ways. What a nasty, tangled up mess. Yes; and when I wrote it initially, I wrote in contempt for myself. In these few minutes since that initial response, I see instead the Child. And I see her victimization. At last, I see her innocence, her bruised face, her confusion and pain and puzzlement. I see me, see the Child that is me. Finally. The others ~ the mother, the sister, the brother, the father betrayed ~ none of this matters, now. [I]We are coming real.[/I] [I]And heard, with bated breath the tale with which its Listener replied[/I] [I]I...believe you, Child[/I] [I] [/I] Did these people never, ever stop?!? This morning, believing myself to be posting for you Copa, I have seen my mother's degrading influence in my father's life. I posted about the "confession", supposedly because everyone needed to know the "truth" about who my father was, really, and not the "big boss" at all...that my mother had had an affair a zillion years before. Do these people never, ever stop. And I have posted before about the crash and burn of that business my father had begun. He went on to make more businesses. With my mother at his side. Why did he stay with her. Why does my D H stay with me. I am feeling pretty ugly, this morning. Sullied. Dirtied. roar Cedar roars off on the Conduct Disorders motorcycle to run the perimeter naked. Cleansing herself, proving herself. Naming, herself. There is such anger and such strength, here. I am angry, you guys. Helpless and oh, man. Somewhere in our stories there is courage and choice. Or we would be like our mothers, like our sisters. I don't see it right now. I will hold faith with myself that it is there, then. If this weren't true I would not be who I am. And there is no "F you, mom" in these feelings. In these feelings, the mother figure is seen. She has no value. She latched onto the dignity of the Universal Mother, twisted that to her advantage, but it was again and forever, the same twisted meaningless meanness that is always the flavor of her. Meaningless, powerless puppet player facsimile of the honor the Universal Mother incorporates and is due. And in this assessment, a tiny flash of compassion. Guilt, and compassion. Why. Why compassion, why protection, why "There but for the grace of God go I." I still think I might be her, might be like her. Still think there must be some reason to it; some woundedness in her she could not rise above, maybe. Here again, D H comes to my rescue just by being who he is. "Don't treat me that way. You are not my mother; you are my woman." Servile is how my mother turned my father into a child, in her mind. And we all know what she did to her children. True, Copa. :sorrowsmiley2: I do too in a way, Copa. But you know how I was just posting about holding faith that, though I sure don't feel it this morning, there must be courage here in me? There it is. We are choosing to see it when we might have remained comfortably in denial. We are breaking through on two levels here, then. Breaking through to what it was for us growing up, and breaking through denial strategies that have kept that truth safe from us for all of our lives. No wonder I feel all ugly this morning. Phew. Okay. So one more F you, mom. But there is no fire in it. It's like holding up a sign that says ~ that has a portrait of my family of origin. No surprises. Flash the picture. On we go. Smoke and devastation in our wake, and the tiny, greening plants that come first, after destruction and before the burgeoning hardwood forest is reborn. All we had before was a picture of ~ a distillation of haunted desires, right? An intense longing for something that never was. Us. What we wanted was never them. It was us. Here is the question: Where is the wisdom in seeking redefinition from those whose every smallest intent was to see to it that we would forever define ourselves as they presented us to ourselves. These people are like, snaky mean. My sister, praying a ring of thorns and keeping a picture of the two of us in her bathroom so she could fixate on me every single day of her sad little life. What. Nothing here makes sense. Until we pull the threads out. :starplucker: Oh. Good thinking, Copa. I am not clear on how to forgive myself. It's all so cheap and ugly. If there were a win here, if there were some ~ there must be some sense to be made of this. I am thinking of those articles we read about sociopathy and gaslighting and psychopathy. Those people in those articles were never able to make sense of things, either. When I think like that I feel stronger, a little. Like, "Whew. What a really bad way to grow up. Even if I did get a John Wayne doll for Christmas." And I really liked it, too. And that brings the feeling of the woman with the bruised face, eating the breakfast her abuser bought. Circle. You compromised every value you had lived by, every painful admission you had made about your upbringing, to provide not only the responsibility to see that your mother was cared for, but love. To love her. We have posted about the feeling of "automaton" each of us has experienced, has lived from, in our adult interactions with our mothers. Could it be that you forced yourself to give to her an honor she did not deserve. D H sneers at my mother's contention that she is the matriarch of our family. He says she does not deserve that title. My mother held D H mother in contempt; she hated the love her children have for their mother. It is a different kind of thing than I have ever seen. I have posted about the feel of D H family being the way it feels to watch a litter of puppies. Everyone getting what each needs; all being cared for and cleaned and protected by the mother. all of them sleeping together, comforted by the warmth and the struggle and the certainty of the milk and the mother and the safety and nourishment she represents. They still feel that way as they now protect the mother. There is that feeling to them. That is nothing like my family of origin feels. Scorpions; a nest of scorpions. Ugly and poisonous and really, really black and wicked. And scary. Whew. :916wildone: :9-07tears: *** Thank you, each of you witnessing for me, here. I can move through it when I know you are here. I would get stuck in devaluation without you. You matter. Thank you. It truly sucks sometimes, but we are doing this. I go on about D H all the time here, I know that. But this is what he said to me the other day re: family of origins stuff. "I feel badly for you that you have to use this time, this time that is your time for your life, for assessing your life and the things you've loved and the things you've won or lost or survived, on them. I will be happy for you to be done. You deserve better. They weren't worth it the first time." He added something about my own life, the time I will be here, alive in this life, drawing down to the time it will be done. The other side of that is when I think back to how scared I was of them. Remember my being so afraid that my sister would call, or that they would show up, uninvited, at my door. I am not afraid, now. Okay. A little trepidation. For heaven's sake. :919Mad: Cedar That's okay. LIke D H said yesterday about the mud: "Good. Now we know where we are." In mud. Speaking of which, that is where I am going, now. Out to dig a trench. Know what, you guys? There was an unuspected frog in that water yesterday. And when he leaped out because I was mucking around in there, trying to drain the water? I nearly wet my pants. :cutie_pie: [/QUOTE]
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