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Sunday, August 04, 2024

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.

Sunday, May 22, 2022

Everybody Loses

 “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.

Monday, November 29, 2021

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.
 



Sunday, November 07, 2021

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. 

 

Tuesday, November 02, 2021

Been There

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

Saturday, March 06, 2021

Today’s horoscope seems highly accurate and insightful!
Personal Daily Horoscope of Saturday, 6 March 2021
for me
***

Concentrating energy

Valid during many months: This influence can bring both fulfillment and difficulty. Roughly fourteen years ago you went through a period of adversity and low vitality. But at the same time you made new beginnings, which are having results now. These efforts will either reach a climax and be successful, or you will realize that they have failed. In any case this is a time of tremendous responsibility and hard work, either to guarantee the successful conclusion of your old projects and endeavors or to salvage the best from the failures.

In those areas of your life that you have handled successfully - in your public life, your domestic life, or whatever - the responsibility of bringing your activities to a successful climax will limit your freedom of movement. Even if you know that events are turning out as you want, you may feel restless under the burdens. Try to be patient and concentrate wholly upon the tasks at hand.

Do not take on any new projects at this time that are not directly connected to what you are already doing. The additional responsibility could be too much for you and could cause health problems, especially with your heart and circulatory system. When you have successfully completed all your current projects, you may start new ones. This is a time of perseverance, hard work and heavy responsibility.

Those areas of your life that have not worked out as expected should not be regarded as complete failures. Several years ago when you embarked on these projects, you may not have understood as much as you understand now. This influence will make you aware of this fact. Don't start out on a new course until you have cleared up whatever has not worked out.

During this time you may feel cut off from others and lonely, but do not be too concerned about this. Even if this influence coincides with the breaking up of a relationship, which it may, it means that the relationship itself is distracting you from matters that you must attend to now. This is a time for concentrating energy, not scattering it.

The interpretation above is for your transit selected for today:
Saturn conjunction Sun, activity period from 26 February 2021 until mid-December 2021


Here is a photo of my succulent garden from fourteen years ago. One of my projects is to restore it.



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