All Humans Suffer

This post has been in draft form since July 8, 2005...

ORIGINAL:

Although Rachel might love me, she doesn’t like me. She doesn’t respect me. If I encounter people in my life who don’t like me or respect me, I may continue to love them, but I minimize activities such as contacting them, caring for them, helping them, or even thinking about them much. Today — July 8, 2005 — I will try to begin to do the same with respect to Rachel: to let go of my deepest bonds of love and concern for her. She doesn’t want to love me or be close to me.

Here are words that Rachel uses to describe me:

- unstable
- mean
- scary
- evil
- psychopath

- borderline
- manipulative
- selfish
- bitch

These loaded words are used carelessly, and accompany the lies Rachel tells to propagate her story, which begins: “Hello, I’m Rachel Grossman, and I hate my mother.” By doing this, she will please her paternal aunt and grandmother, and continue to operate in her psychological comfort zone (where she’s been trained to be part of a triangle of uncomfortable family relations, in which nearly all praise and attention was earned when she dishonored me — her mother, the one who provided consistent love, attention, care, and protection — the only one who always put Rachel first). No wonder she’s so negative, self-sabotaging, and depressed!

I’m not sure why I demean myself in response to Rachel’s treatment of me, but I don’t want to do it any more. All of my friends, including those most fond of Rachel, have advised me to stop doing anything for her, and to stop “sucking her ass.”

(perhaps these quotations are enlightening:

“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.”
- Honore De Balzac, 1799-1850, French Novelist

“A mother who is really a mother is never free.”
- Honore De Balzac, 1799-1850, French Novelist)

UPDATE:

Reading this draft today, nineteen years later, I now exist on a plateau of detachment, nearly indifference. I do not think about Rachel very often (today is rare, and triggered by reports of someone reading nearly every post in this blog).

To my knowledge, Rachel continues to fortify her mendacious stories. I doubt that she is able to work out her own attachment issues — issues that will continue to plague her throughout her life, and will harm any and every one of her relationships. She has rewritten history (and amplified her rewrites with each retelling) such that her distorted and false memories of very specific situations and conditions are seared into her persona. The fundamental reasons for her feelings and behaviors continue to be unrecognized. Rachel has buried her early trauma — of neglect and subsequent abandonment by her birth mother — under a mendacious mountain of fallacious tales about me. From around age 18, new personality patterns emerged that were instigated and fueled by her Aunt Patty, and Rachel began reacting to discomfort with hysteria, disproportional anger, and irrational accusations. Before that time such reactions never occurred, but Patty’s and Nanny’s alienation efforts reignited the reactive attachment disorder that I had worked diligently with her to overcome. 

As Rachel approaches her fourth decade, her “mother issues” continue to be easily triggered. It is sad that she cannot recognize — and has never come to terms with — their actual source.

I have accepted that this will never change.

Today’s Thought

 

Everybody Loses

 “I do not find in my research that there are gender differences in the proportion of parents who have their children weaponized against them by another parent.”

Yet, the illustrations always show that the mother is the abuser, driving a wedge between father and child. In my case, the father and his family (mother and sister) are the abusers.

Whatever the situation, the child is the biggest loser. Every one of the outcomes for the child that are mentioned has happened to Rachel, in addition to other insidious effects.

Here is the article.

Mommy

Between May of 1987 and May of 1988, I became a regular caretaker for Peter’s 18-month old baby girl.

May 1987 in Stow, Massachusetts

 

On July 1, Peter and Rachel moved into a new apartment in Brookline, and Peter was able to enroll Rachel in a pre-school called Copper Beech that was near their new home. After several days at Copper Beech, Rachel began addressing Peter as “mommy,” presumably because all of the other children had mothers who participated in the classroom and she heard the term used often. Her vocabulary was fairly limited; no one taught her words and colors, etc. until I started taking care of her, but she caught on quickly. After about a month in Brookline, Rachel spoke her first phrase as we were mobilizing to leave for dinner: “ready to go?”

Whenever Rachel called Peter “mommy,” he became annoyed and would retort, “I’m not mommy, I am daddy.” After a few such rejections, Rachel tried calling me mommy. I tried to be gentle and loving in response, but told her “I’m not mommy, I’m Carol.”

Fast forward to August of 1988. Peter and I agreed to build a committed relationship. I had moved to San Francisco and found a beautiful apartment for us. When Peter and Rachel arrived, we sat down together to talk about our changed circumstance. I told Rachel that I wanted to be her new mommy if she wanted me, and that she could call me mommy. She assumed a proprietary attitude, took my hand and then hugged me. From that moment on, we became a family of sorts.

October 1988 in San Francisco, California

 

But an early warning that foretold of problems in our family took place soon thereafter: Peter began to tell Rachel that she could call him “mommy.” I was dumbfounded, but assumed that he was feeling a bit threatened by how quickly Rachel pivoted to needing and wanting me. He and I had agreed contractually, before moving in together, about certain principles and responsibilities in child-rearing. I was asked to take charge of the potty training, which was actually very easy. Rachel was ready. But then, Peter started to tell her that she could pee her pants! When she was undressed, he told her it was okay to pee on the floor!

These initial family scenes set the stage for years of undermining. There were so many times I just wanted to leave, out of utter frustration with Peter’s behavior. But I always felt that it would have destroyed Rachel’s fragile psyche to be abandoned yet again. So I stayed and did my best.

But as we know, my best was not good enough.
 

Good Advice for All

 ... from Rob Brezsny for November 2-9, 2021

♒ AQUARIUS

(January 20- February 18) 

As author Denise Linn reminded us, “The way you treat yourself sends a very clear message to others about how they should treat you.”

With that advice as your inspiration, I will ask you to deepen your devotion to self-care in the coming weeks. I will encourage you to shower yourself with more tenderness and generosity than you have ever done in your life. 

I will also urge you to make sure these efforts are apparent to everyone in your life. I am hoping for you to accomplish a permanent upgrade in your love for yourself, which should lead to a similar upgrade in the kindness you receive from others. 

 

Been There

 “Here's the secret indicator -- when people advocate destroying your healthy intimate relationships, they mean you no good.  And are likely psychopaths.”

10Q Review

Since 2012, every year for Rosh Hashana I participate in a series of ten daily questions on the DoYou10Q website. I don't always answer every question, but each year it is gratifying or interesting to read my responses from previous years. This year, I was shocked to read an answer I wrote in September 2020.

 

Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

My brother Michael died on January 5. This is still an unimaginable loss. I grieve every day, and I remember the times we spent together in the past four years with great gratitude. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the entire year and kept us at home. 

November 29, 2020 is Rachel's 35th birthday. I "became" her mother when I was age 35. For 17 years, I was devoted to her and made sure she had every support and resource that I was able to give her. Then she turned on me, telling truly vicious lies and betraying my love and trust. 

Until last year, I struggled with this, but my brother's illness put things in perspective. People that disrespect me and betray me have no place in my life. Ever. So, the same is true now for my sister Jill. I love her (I can't actually say that I love Rachel any more — she is just a lousy memory of a waste of my time), but Jill invented a story about me that she told so many times that she believes it. I will love Jill always, but from afar, and let her live with her invented history without me as a part of her every day life.

The feelings I expressed about Rachel are harsh, but they are mine. I have no interest in interacting with Rachel in any way, ever again in my lifetime. She is an unrepentant liar and a documented traitor.