Reality of Forgiveness

A couple of days ago I saw my sister.  We were in the doctor's office, a new doctor I will be seeing, and she will be too.  So now we will have the same doctor.  She saw me first.  DH and I were walking in, and she was staring at me the whole time.  I finally said, "hello,"  She piped in with a hello, and how are you doing, how was my Christmas, as I was sitting down.  I said a simple hello, for she was just staring, and I didn't know what else to do.

I asked her, "Why are you asking, why do you care?  You said you wanted nothing to do with me, you are all about mother, and you told me to get lost?"

Now this is not unusual for my sister, to pretend everything is normal, who can turn on a dime, I can't.  However, I do know that she is not narcissistic, she has a soul but you could beat the crap out of her, and you still won't get the real authentic person who hides in there, so this has got to be the way its got to be.

At one point in time, we have all put ourselves there, unfortunately it is only up to each one of us to get the hell out.  The NP ties you down from birth and makes sure that you stay there.  Either you become one of them, or you go crazy, there is nothing else that they want.but that supreme control.  If you didn't become narcissistic yourself, or went completely crazy, and I mean crazy as in institutionalized, forever "gone", that is a very rare thing.  Think about it.  These "parents" had you straight from birth, they could do anything that they wanted with you.  You somehow awoken.  That is so big and so huge I can't even tell you.

Now, I did not answer my sister's questions.  I was not going to discuss my Christmas.  Any chance this was going to go to mother, was strong.  I know my sister's questions were sincere, she was only wanting to know how I was doing, and she did actually care.   So I really felt bad about giving her the cold shoulder, in front of people, but there was no other way.  We don't stand a chance of a bonding relationship, due to mother's tie in.  Any info on me will give the narcissist an in.  And we all know how well that goes.  Any info on me will be used against me, and I can't chance that.  Maybe after mother is dead, but who knows?  Maybe not even then, for my sister might be too far gone.  Like I said, it is next to impossible to survive.

I know what they are saying to eachother.  That I should be forgiving and continue to allow mother to abuse me, for it is what she does and no one will do anything about it.  But I am made to be wrong. Even in Christian circles, this is what I should be doing, but I have another take on the matter.

As much as this hurts, I know that to forgive mother means that I will have to stuff all my feelings down, and go along with the idea that what mother did doesn't matter, she was in the right, and that anything that came after, such as abuse throughout my life doesn't matter either, and basically that I don't count.  I am to take all that and say it doesn't matter.

When we are to forgive, the bible teaches us, that it is a "brother".  What we perceive a brother to be, and it means that we are only to forgive real people.  And forgiveness is to be real, not fake.  If I am to pretend, which I have done all my life, then I know that my anger will come out in other ways. Ways that are not good, and I can't help that.  I had to go back over my past to find out what it was that made my emotions so screwed up.

And emotionality is made wrong, in society, and in the churches even.  Is it really wrong?  Our emotions is the part where we are really living.  To call it wrong, is dead wrong to me.  I imagine it is like calling your foot wrong.  Or your hand, or anything on your body, is it wrong?  Then why are my emotions wrong?  I believe they are wrong when they are suppressed and we are acting out in ways that are bad.

Take for instance this lady I work with at the food bank.  Lots of pressure she goes through in life, and she tries to hide it.  She doesn't do a very good job at that.  I believe no one does.  We are all frustrated over the lack of funds, and she yelled at me the other day.  Then she was so apologetic, and I wasn't triggered by my anxiety.  I am familiar with anxiety, and I believe she was acting out. Feeling tense.  I used to do that, act out in less than positive ways, for it was my emotions being suppressed, and I wasn't dealing with things very well.

It sucks, for in this world, we have to stuff down emotions, one's that we perceive are bad.  I don't know, I think I have to read that part in the bible again, for I think it doesn't tell us to suppress our emotions.  Just like that lady, I have been in her shoes, I was snapping at people, and I didn't know how to stop it.  I didn't want to snap at people, but I did.  But I know that she did not mean it, and she felt guilty.  I had no problem forgiving her, immediately, it was no problem.  I didn't have to suck up my feelings, in order to be pleasing, it was natural for me to forgive her.  And I wanted to forgive her too, even before she apologized.  Not that I believe that forgiveness is always easy like this, but this was an experience that I personally had, so that is what made it easy.

I don't ever want to be in the position of sucking up my emotions.  There are no wrong emotions. Only in how I deal with it, and it can get really complicated and screwy.  As an engulfed adult child, I have to spend the better part of my day, just feeling.  I do this all the time now, and I find that I am less fleabaggy than ever.  But if I was to forgive mother, in a purely forced state, I would be acting out again.

I can't force myself to stop acting out, it has to be deep seated, and the only way I can do it is to feel all my emotions.  With mother around, this would never be allowed.  She has all the say, and that is to pound me into the ground.  And my sister is doing that.  She is doing that to herself, and her children, and her children's children.  My sister is forcing everyone to comply and let mother be mother.  Somewhere in that mix, mother will find someone who is worthy to be engulfed, and that is a very sad thing.

I think I did my sister a huge favor, by expressing my vulnerability and saying that it was she who doesn't want anything to do with me.  But she has a different view on the matter, for she believes that it is wrong to ignore mother, and she is not talking to me, for me not talking to mother.

It is tough.  She is my older sister, we used to sleep in the same bed.  She received abuse at the hands of mother too.  And as much as it pains me to tell her to get lost, I know that I am actually doing her a favor.  It might help her awaken, although a very small chance of that happening, so I did my duty. But I don't deny the pain that it caused me.  It probably caused her pain too, but there was no other way, there really wasn't.  Many months, perhaps a year ago, she told me that she would have no other dealings with me if mother was not to be in my life, so be it.  I wasn't going to play the "nice" game, and give her information that would be used against me.  I'm sure she told mother of our meeting, and what I said to her, so there was probably was some smear campaigning, but she has no info, not even about my Christmas, so it can only go so far.  Maybe they'll make up things, and tell to other people, but this, I guess, is the burden an ACON has to live with.

I felt what I said to her was vulnerable on my part.  I had no time to think or react when I saw her.  But I think it was good.  This vulnerability on my part, the part where I said, "You said you didn't want anything to do with me," forced my sister into a corner.  Since she said that, then why is she even talking to me now?

I've been working hard on kicking that evil voice out of my head.  Its liberating but its tiring to say the least.  Sometimes I feel like I wish the day would be over, so I can relax.  I have to remain ever diligent, in making sure, I am not listening and heeding that voice.  It comes to me, and its forever hard to be mindful of it, that is the real challenge.  It is not in my emotions yet to feel safe that I'm not going to be listening.  It takes a great deal of effort.

But I am also aware of the fact that pain like that can only go on for so long.  I am not abandoning my FOO, I am actually liberating them, giving them the truth.  They can do with it what they want.  Even if they say I am abandoning them, that is not the truth.  None of us are abandoning our FOO's.  We are giving them the opportunity to wake up, but unfortunately that will probably never happen, but we did our part.

It is this story we tell ourselves that we actually do have real parents.  We don't.  I like to play that record too, but in doing so I would be lying to myself, and that would be manifested in lots of horrible ways, in my life.  This MN parenting came about, and it wasn't me that made them that way. We like to pretend that in some way, that if I fixed this, or fixed that, somehow our hard work would pay off and we would earn their love.   And nothing could be further from the truth.

If I could earn my mother's love then I would be the most powerful person on the planet.  I would be even better than God.  That is the truth.  There is not that person that I think is there.  She does not exist.  That is why I tend to not believe that narcs are just like drug addicts, they only need supply.  This is hard for me to understand, for that would mean that they are normal people with normal emotions, who can have normal addictions.  And addicts can quit.  Narcs just simply won't.  It is out of range to call this an addiction.

In a way, I feel it is very inappropriate to call it an addiction.  This is just me saying this, and I am not talking for everyone.  I've seen real addicts, who would give anything to recover.  It is not the way of the narcissist.  But sometimes an addict doesn't want to recover, it is only because the addiction is meeting deeper needs, and if only they can find what that is, only then they can recover.  Sorry, down the rabbit hole with that one, kinda interesting though.  What can I say?  Narcissism is not in the same dimension of addiction.

I don't try to understand narcs.  There was a time I was curious about them, about this "false self" but that was only because I like science.  In no way was I trying to "get them".  For mother never did love me.  It didn't mean I wasn't loveable, it only meant that she was the problem.  She didn't hate me for anything I had done.  She just simply hated me, for that is what she is about.

I used to think that at the beginning of my no contact mother was missing me.  That was before my awakening, for mother went no contact with me for I pissed her off and she was trying to teach me a lesson.  So I felt bad.  I felt like I was needing to go apologize for some non-existent thing I did, to make amends.  So I could get mother's approval.  So that she would love me.  For I was worth nothing without mother's approval and love.

No.  She is not sitting in her apartment missing me.  She may be thinking of me, but only in a malicious way.  Any feeling that I have that she is longing for anything but supply is a story I tell myself.  I stopped telling myself that story long ago.  I listen to my heart, and keep the record player out of my head.

It is hard to understand the love of a real parent.  Or of a real person.  That is the danger we all face as ACONs.  We have to learn what that love is.  I know I didn't do everything I needed to do when my kids were growing up.  It was hard.  I failed them lots.  I constantly am aware of that.  But I am also aware that I was a real mom, with real feelings.  It wasn't easy to always express that to them, but it isn't over yet.  I wasn't called to heaven right after my awakening, so my time here is not done.