I am sitting with the feelings of strength after sending the letter to my mother. It is never easy to write what you know they don't want to hear. Nor is it easy to be brutally honest with your self and say what you feel. And yet, it is by doing just that, that my life returns to calm.
It was helpful to get it down on paper, to sort out the whys and the why nots, to sift through the past and envision the future with two distinctly different sides in abuse and say what I needed to say.
I can feel the unease or the disease of being silent and 'hoping' and 'wishing' for the other side to come to reason on their own.
I know that in the past I never clearly stated what I needed...and how I felt, without regard to how it would impact the person's feelings before my own.
I felt strong standing up for me.
I felt empowered and grown up.
I felt that I wasn't being a bully, but rather stating to me, the obvious...to someone who would try and slip back into my world, caring less about my feelings...and believing I would have no outright objection.
While it gave me moments of fright, it honestly gave me much strength and determination that I have the right to ask for space, for consideration, to be honored as the estranged.
I can't know how it was received, but have to believe that there is no way she can not know how I feel.
And oddly, my actions in the past 8 years are a clear indication of how I feel. I want space. I have kept space...removing myself from relationships that I felt were blind to my feelings...or what I felt would be inconsiderate to a victim of sexual abuse.
I can see how the old silence self would have been....just hoping and waiting for my mother to finally see, to change, to do different, while I did nothing overt to stop her current behavior.
We somehow want the other person to change, so we don't have to.
So we don't have to speak up and say what it is we feel, to express and object to their behaviors, we expect them to suddenly be hit with a streak of kindness and finally see us.
See our needs.
See our feelings.
See our hearts and souls.
When, it is up to us to show people how to treat us.
Isn't that what Dr. Phil says, "We show people how to treat us."
That means we speak up when we are mistreated. We set boundaries. We say how something feels to us. We don't just bare the pain and wish for them to change.
Will my letter asking for space and continual separation be enough to keep my mother away from me...or will she come in boldly, arrogantly righteously right and once again wreck havoc in my world?
I feel I have a better chance of her staying away by sending the letter, than I do by being silent.
I just didn't know that silence and staying away wasn't a clear signal, that I would have to put it in writing. That some would still press forward into my world. Perhaps feeling that time heals all wounds....and that I may have changed my mind.
What I felt yesterday was that the boundary keeping will be a life long event. It isn't to just step out once, but to do so repeatedly with each new event.
There is no returning to life as normal...where I will not be put into the same position again and again. That my family of origin will not be asking to join or be part of my life and my family events.
I guess I never dreamed it would never end. That unlike a death, it is to be a living ghost, and to have past dead relationships surface time and time again.
It is to be comfortable sitting relaxed amidst the evil and swirling energies of abuse....is to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.
