I grew up in an environment where I became more and more aware that my mother's emotional vulnerability had more voice since she was pregnant with me when my father passed away and so her coming back to live with her brothers as their gesture to readapt her back into the family and the house where she had grew up in where I was born was all put together I assumed in her favor for want of understanding of negative emotions whatever they be.
I made way unknowingly for her vent, her frustrations, her ruminating on being all alone to handle me specially when I got sick and kept trying to get attention from her brothers and their wives for the victimhood she embodied and lived.
I assumed that her feelings had more validity than my own even if she neglected to check on how I was doing or feeling mentally which became my pattern of getting stuck with her trauma bonding with her since I didn't have clarity in expressing my discomfort for this forced sense of conditioning which broke my authenticity in whatever shape or form.
I was a child then and didn't realize the morphing of my real self identity that this fog would consume me into and the more that I numbed feeling any feelings about my neglecting my feelings and abandoning them which was just mirroring of what I thought best was what I could do to thrive in a volatile environment with her and her brothers and their families.
So, neglecting my feelings for giving importance to hers was a way of my being and it included not grieving for my dad and just feeling guilty whenever my health situations reminded my mother of my father's health and his demise. I was so shadowed by my very own empathy for my mother that I didn't know how far I had gotten away from myself. I thought that was supposed to be the way that things worked at my place and learnt from then on to see myself second to the others. I got too comfortable to the point of seeking approval from others for any choice that I would like to make by myself and reassurance if the choice didn't go well and criticized myself endlessly holding myself to blame for making this 'mistake'.
A mistake is who I felt I was in her life as I was never enough for her as she never accepted me for who I am and just made me feel like a victim for being health sensitive. And I assumed that by becoming emotionally numb and denying my feelings or to express them is how I can take care of it myself and be hypervigilant in the process not to show any signs of 'weakness' of my emotions - it was always black and white - strong, weak, and my life revolved around proving that I am strong enough even if I maybe weak physically which is not again always.
It was all about her and her dysfunctional mental framework which I could not understand back then since I was so enmeshed in her way of seeing me as an extension to herself.
The reason why this inner wounding hurts me so much I get it now is avoiding to face my hurts, my feelings, and my wounds, and just giving in to her over indulgence in me materially is another coping up thing which just kept the wound in me deeper and more covered in all these layers. I never honored my true feelings and neither did I honor my negative emotions, and my inner wounds, and just repressing them as I did earlier is something that makes me feel sad and angry at me in turns but that doesn't help in recovery now. It was all about her and nothing about me but her insecurity that my health made it all about me and nothing about her and hence she made me feel guilty for making her feel so helpless, so frustrated ranting about being a single parent and that she is having to face my health ups and downs all by herself just adds more hurt to my existing wounds, and not to forget confusion and a sense of shame for myself for being who I am.
I became who I thought I was based on the above factors and became very insecurely attached to my negative image of my body while also giving in to whatever material comforts she provided, be it money, medicines, clothes, food, jewelry and so on - it's like I sold myself off to all these in a bid to earn my worth in her eyes.
She has a sick mental health which I was not aware of then and being so grappled by anxiety, loneliness, depression, and avoidance of my evolving realities, I became so infested by this disease which I am not sure what it's called but it chewed me out of my consciousness and just made a spillover of who she thought I was as I was fighting within me and so conflicted to want to prove it wrong by trying to be judgmental, critical, minimizing my feelings, expecting that things/people get me while I tried to hide behind them or situations so that the real me remains as oblivious and unconscious as it has been always. So, proving her wrong on the one side but not having enough self esteem and confidence in myself to prove myself right but yet egoistically doing so was how I thought I won. There was never a self let alone a self esteem.
And all these discoveries made over few years now being true to myself, my feelings, my feelings of betrayal of my mother and her family as they played on my innocence, empathy, generosity by being emotionally manipulative as is the case with my mother, and being emotionally distant as is the case of my uncles and aunts, are all true. No amount of numbing is going to make it all go away. And I need to accept it whether I like it or not.
The point is not to settle scores with them or allow their voices to play in my head, in my consciousness and just pluck them like weeds and oust them but just do so patiently and kindly. Some are alive and some are not, but bitter memories live longer than the expiry of people and I do not wish to spend the rest of my life reliving them as it's not worth it.
Even if by being patronizing as is the case of my aunts on me and my mom, or sadly my mom being patronizing towards me as if she did what she did and still seeks a sense of achievement and validation the way she has brought me up and the things she had to do in order to raise me are so convoluted and tailormade according to her narrative that not many in my family would buy my narrative much despite having moved on from her overbearing protection. Just moving on in whatever shape or form that's feasible for me will not do but rewiring myself with new thought processes slowly and gradually will be a journey of many miles.
No comments:
Post a Comment