Sunday

Had a whole variety of recontextualizations today. The one that has the most terrible context is where Mother… 

Consider if there are any versions of the end of that sentence that you want to read before consuming the rest of today’s message.

…used me in a multi-session narc suicidal ideation experiment. She smothered me with a pillow and showed me “what it was like to start suffocating” and rewarded my for not fighting and did it until I could not resist my body’s overwhelming urge to not die and started attacking. It happened enough times when I was about 4 for me spend time practicing holding my breath to be better at it. And she paid a lot of attention to me and the ritual of it so I felt like it was a positive social interaction. At least positive parental attention.

I think it was really just her trying out suicide – either the general concept or a specific implementation – and imagining me as a proxy for her, so she could test to see if she liked it without any risk to herself. She did that with a bunch of stuff she knew she would hate or that was likely dangerous but wanted to “check” with me because why not when she won’t suffer the consequences. And that’s the part I thought was good. The part where she liked me for being an expendable but temporarily trustworthy extension of her.

I think it’s also part of what became a negotiation to have a third kid after the second was nearing 3 and therefore losing its shine. She got depressed thinking about having no more babies and finally resolved that state when it was agreed that I could move out to the porch and she could have one more baby (and then infantalize it forever). I’m not super clear on the timeline and details of this depression-infant negotiation but it fits a lot of facts can prove, and the feelings hit dead square. Even if it’s not true it makes me feel better to imagine Mother had motivations for waterboarding me as a toddler beyond shits and narc giggles.

I know all of that is sad and terrible and makes it impossible to talk to me because its overwhelming to imagine. And that’s a sensible reaction. But the actual thing I discovered today was not that even the times I remember being good are bad, or that there’s no kind of abuse I didn’t suffer, or that Mother considered 4 year old me unimportant enough to practice murder on just to see how it went.

It was that I shouldn’t be afraid to claim identities related to my traumas, that I am allowed to have clothes that precisely fit, and that I don’t understand the sort of help a physician could provide to me. Those are the bits I actually want to share, and that I need help living. The sad child murder bits are just the path I needed to walk to understand a particular way that my suffering was never under my control. To unravel the lies I built as a toddler to imagine the situation as subject to my influence because the alternative was worse.

Other things happened today. Things that are eaiser to understand as positive. Things were mostly good. There was hockey logistics and a dog walk and I worked out my phone image backups and I got a base layer down on my nails. I figured out what I want for Christmas and I mounted the power supply for my living room work chair. Tomorrow is busy with the dentist and robots and work and keeping myself alive. But I think the week might average out to a more sustainable level if new SRs don’t drag me down.

And on the plus side this week is statistically unlikely to involve anything more sad than it has already.

ZiB

— 
Sent from a phone.