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reflecting/therapy
Jan. 16th, 2024 07:52 ammom
yesterday, i was talking to sophie and alice. i don't know where to start with this conversation; it was a lot of me yelling and a bit of me crying and a lot of sophie and alice calming me down. my opening sentence was, "sometimes i am so fucking glad my mom died". (sophie doesn't really care if i swear in front of her, especially when i'm in a state like that.) she said a few things to me. quite a few - i need to finally get bereavement counselling, it's been two and a bit years and i'm finally going to engage with it.
she also told me that i'm allowed to be angry. after i screamed about everything my mom did to me and how i wish i had been the one to kill her, she told me it was okay to be angry. i have never really been an angry person. i was a bitch in my mainstream, i slagged people off, i guess i was a bully, but i was never an angry person. the way i acted wasn't anger, it was insecurity and struggling to deal with trauma. i am not an angry person. being told it's okay to feel that way - to loathe and resent my mother with every passing moment, even when people tell me i'm supposed to love her, even when people tell me i shouldn't speak ill of her because she's dead now - was almost surreal? nobody's ever really sat me down and validated that specific emotion, especially not a member of staff who i really, really respect.
it's okay to cry." sure.
"it's okay to feel sad." sure.
"it's okay to miss her." sure.
"it's okay to hate her." i've never heard that one before.
the thing is, nobody wants to validate a child's anger, because it might make them worse. sophie knows this won't happen to me, for two reasons. one: all my anger is towards one person, and that person is dead. two: i am not an angry person by nature. the fact that i went into her office and let everything out and i actually showed anger shows to her that something is seriously up with me. these two points are good reasoning for her to trust that validating my anger won't cause me to become hurtful towards other people, and i'm glad she has that trust in me.
another point she brought up is that there's a whole kind of dispute on how people are "supposed" to act and feel when their abuser dies. i didn't really know about this; or, i guess, i never really considered this, because while it should've been perfectly obvious that other people have been in my situation, it just wasn't to me. it's like, i've never personally met anyone in the same situation as me, so how can i be sure they exist? how can i be sure people have had my experiences? it was weird to hear.
one other thing - she brought up and helped me understand that part of the reason i feel so conflicted is that, in a way, she got the "ultimate punishment" for her actions, and this is perfectly reasonable to me. i realised part of my anger was the fact that yes, it was the ultimate punishment, but nothing comes after. in a very, very small scale sense, she got the ultimate punishment (death) and i got the ultimate reward (freedom). this is not true. i am not free, and that's what pisses me of. three years later, if an afterlife doesn't exist (and i can't say for certain if it does or doesn't), she is free from her actions because she feels nothing. i am still here, still alive, and still suffering the consequences. even in death, she managed to find a way to make me hurt. it's the after effects of it all. she remembers nothing of that year because she isn't alive. i remember all of it and i am still suffering because i am alive.
yesterday, i was talking to sophie and alice. i don't know where to start with this conversation; it was a lot of me yelling and a bit of me crying and a lot of sophie and alice calming me down. my opening sentence was, "sometimes i am so fucking glad my mom died". (sophie doesn't really care if i swear in front of her, especially when i'm in a state like that.) she said a few things to me. quite a few - i need to finally get bereavement counselling, it's been two and a bit years and i'm finally going to engage with it.
she also told me that i'm allowed to be angry. after i screamed about everything my mom did to me and how i wish i had been the one to kill her, she told me it was okay to be angry. i have never really been an angry person. i was a bitch in my mainstream, i slagged people off, i guess i was a bully, but i was never an angry person. the way i acted wasn't anger, it was insecurity and struggling to deal with trauma. i am not an angry person. being told it's okay to feel that way - to loathe and resent my mother with every passing moment, even when people tell me i'm supposed to love her, even when people tell me i shouldn't speak ill of her because she's dead now - was almost surreal? nobody's ever really sat me down and validated that specific emotion, especially not a member of staff who i really, really respect.
it's okay to cry." sure.
"it's okay to feel sad." sure.
"it's okay to miss her." sure.
"it's okay to hate her." i've never heard that one before.
the thing is, nobody wants to validate a child's anger, because it might make them worse. sophie knows this won't happen to me, for two reasons. one: all my anger is towards one person, and that person is dead. two: i am not an angry person by nature. the fact that i went into her office and let everything out and i actually showed anger shows to her that something is seriously up with me. these two points are good reasoning for her to trust that validating my anger won't cause me to become hurtful towards other people, and i'm glad she has that trust in me.
another point she brought up is that there's a whole kind of dispute on how people are "supposed" to act and feel when their abuser dies. i didn't really know about this; or, i guess, i never really considered this, because while it should've been perfectly obvious that other people have been in my situation, it just wasn't to me. it's like, i've never personally met anyone in the same situation as me, so how can i be sure they exist? how can i be sure people have had my experiences? it was weird to hear.
one other thing - she brought up and helped me understand that part of the reason i feel so conflicted is that, in a way, she got the "ultimate punishment" for her actions, and this is perfectly reasonable to me. i realised part of my anger was the fact that yes, it was the ultimate punishment, but nothing comes after. in a very, very small scale sense, she got the ultimate punishment (death) and i got the ultimate reward (freedom). this is not true. i am not free, and that's what pisses me of. three years later, if an afterlife doesn't exist (and i can't say for certain if it does or doesn't), she is free from her actions because she feels nothing. i am still here, still alive, and still suffering the consequences. even in death, she managed to find a way to make me hurt. it's the after effects of it all. she remembers nothing of that year because she isn't alive. i remember all of it and i am still suffering because i am alive.
