"The Rescued Soul" by Christina Enevoldsen
From Chapter 13 "Embracing My Anger"
"I also had a persistent fantasy of stabbing my mother in the face. The recurring image of something so horrific was quite disturbing. I'd never considered doing anything like that; blood makes me nauseous and even hurting someone's feelings bothers me."
"I tried to suppress my feelings by thinking loving thoughts and imagining kind things about my mother. I berated myself. But the frequency and intensity of those thoughts wouldn't allow me to discount them."
"I had to own my desires and find out their source. Where did they come from? What purpose did they serve? What was the significance of destroying my mother's face? The fantasy was an important clue."
"I remembered an incident from my childhood. I was alone with my dad in my parent's bedroom. My mom took great care in decorating the whole house, but especially their room. The bedding matched the drapes, which coordinated with the carpet. Their bed rested on a raised platform that was designed to make it the focal point of the room."
"My dad perched me on the edge of the platform while he sat on the floor across from me. He had several pornographic magazines spread out next to him. While my dad put his finger inside of me, I looked up at the drapes and thought that appearances were all that mattered to my mom. She could make the house look like a palace, but it would always be a dungeon."
"My mom was more interested in an image than reality. I was enraged that she chose to sacrifice me so she could keep our family looking perfect. My slashing fantasy was an expression of my anger to make everything look nice, rather than making it nice. Her face represented the image that was so important to her."
"One of the primary ways I expressed my feelings towards my mother was by letter writing. I wrote many letters and emails to her. This is one of them:
"Dear Mom,
You're such a LIAR!!! You claim I'm the one who's lying and you hide behind your religious facade and your pretty house and pretty clothes. You're disgusting! With all the effort you put into pretending you're so good, you could have actually been a good person.
All my life, I thought I was the problem. I thought if my own mother didn't love me, I must be unlovable. I took on all the hatred, resentment, judgments and disgust that you directed toward me and turned it on myself. I learned to feel those things about me.
I worked so hard for you to love me. All my life, I wanted to be close to you. I worked to get good grades, I tried to behave myself, but you didn't seem to see me.
When I was ten, the school psychologist noticed something wrong with me after she observed me for only a few minutes. YOU LIVED WITH ME!!! WHY DIDN'T YOU NOTICE?????? You never saw me at all.
But, I WAS THERE!!!! And my abuse DID happen!!! No matter how much you deny that and accuse me of living in a fantasy world, your husband did disgusting things to me. YOU were disgusting toward me too!!! How dare you make your life easier by sacrificing me! I deserve better than that!!!
"My buried anger was coming out. Through my anger, I was not only objecting to the abuse, but its false messages. My anger was the shift into validating myself instead of the lies. It was my declaration that I deserved to be treated better."
Freedom to Be Angry
"All my life I judged myself for being angry. I denied my anger and tried to cover it up with more acceptable feelings. I was doing the same thing my mom did - I was decorating over things I didn't want to see or feel."
"As long as I rejected and denied my anger, I didn't control it; it controlled me. It spilled out unintentionally on me and others I cared about."
"Displaced anger is impossible to get rid of. As long as I projected it in all the wrong places, I could never work through it; there was a never-ending supply."
"Giving myself permission to "feel what I feel" has proven the shortest way out of that emotion. Processing my anger allowed me to resolve it." Christina
First of all, this anger is towards the non-abusing parent. I get this. So, imagine the feelings towards the one who actually did the abuse. Which is in the next bold section titled "Anger Toward My Primary Abuser"
Back to the correlation between her wanting to slash her mother's face and the root source of it. How the true anger comes from her mother putting on the perfect family portrait instead of seeing what is going on with her child.
The rage is not being seen and the attention to detail goes into the decorations of the home!
I have done both.
I have raged and displaced my anger. It wasn't until I directed my anger at my parents, did the unlimited supply of anger start to decrease. And, when I placed my attention in the direction of the source of my anger, my children came into focus.
My home and its decorations seemed so minor compared to the lives of my children.
I get this completely. I also know that when we decorate our feelings instead of showing them, doing as our mother's did to our home....putting on a good front!
We are trying to make kind, things that are not kind.
The fake face and pretend life is worthy of knife slashing anger!
What we want most is for someone to see behind the facade...to see us.
"Can you see me and do I matter" is the line Oprah uses.
The rage is that the pretend fantasy of a loving family matter more.
The rage is to feel invisible...
And then as we break the silence, a full out war is raged against us. We have to prove the fantastical family didn't exist. It is to battle with our mother's to show the truth against the fictional life she created.
What is so unbelievable to me, is how strong this fantasy is. How, even when my father was in an orange jumpsuit, the family saw a father.
His biggest cover up was just being a dad.
And, his strongest supporter was my mother decorating their marriage and family...and I, her second in command.
Until I saw and felt the truth, that lay beneath.
I no longer decorated, but stood at one with reality.
My decorating with pretend feelings was broken.
All I was left with was the real raw emotion.
I was not able to pretend to pretend to pretend.
I met me for the first time.
The real me.
And, I met my real past ungarnished and horrifying.
It's brilliant tragedy was me.
By accepting the truth, I fell in love with Me.
No decorations needed!
