Need Help and Advice
JM it is a very fair and loving letter. I know I need feedback from the people around me when Im crossing boundaries with my behavior. It would be a very unloving thing to hold back and hide the truth from me that I have been so insensitive and lacking in boundaries. I would feel the loss of relationship with the person who would do that to me. I think your letter is clean of assaults on your brother. Your focus remained on your feelings about the experience. I statements show that you own your own experience in this, rather than pointing your finger at him and telling him what he should do, which would be assaultive. I hear clear expressions of disappointments and your experience of profound loss in your relationship with him because of his behavior. Again, what a loving thing to do.
My mother died twice in my lifetime. I could pretend that I still had a mother even while she was taking me to bed with her. I now know I was protecting her when I would say to myself, she just didnt understand what she was doing to me. All that agony and terror I was experiencing did not fit as a response to all the loving she was giving me, her special Bobby. It was if she was a great air ship with ruffles and flourishes decorating its exterior and floating miles above the earth, and I was hanging by an overstretched ( umbilical ) cord about a half mile long. And oh, the sensual magic of it all! Then one day the light of the sun filled the stairwell leading to and from her bedroom. It was a light so bright that the reflected light, off the rooms surfaces,
eliminated all shadows that would otherwise have been places to hide. It was the day she said, Dont ever tell anyone, they wont understand. The umbilical cord had snapped ping and I felt like I was going to die because I no longer had a mother to take care of me. I had to believe she was taking care of me, she was my mother. When I finally crashed into the earth, I had to completely rearrange my parts from the way she arranged them. How she had arranged them was not visible to me until long after I hit the earth. It was years later that I realized that I had been taking care of her needs most of my life. She had provided me food and shelter at the price of my blood, my self.
When she died the second time I was engaged to my wife. She was definately threatened by the presents of my new fiance. She was dying of lung cancer from a two pack a day habit with Chesterfield cigarettes. She waited till I had awaken that morning and was coming down those stairs that led to and from her room.. I saw her laying on the couch where she had been sleeping since picking up a bug from her visit to her little brother in Tennesee. ( I believe she incested that little brother. He came to visit once, in my adolescense ). She struggled to lift her head, as she labored to breath, in order to see me coming. When I saw her I knew the time had come. I cradled her head in the role of a dutiful son as she passed. The bitch got me one last time.
Aside from my rage it was an issue of integrity for me to care for her at the end. She did not show me how to have integriry. I had to learn that on my own in spite of her. I reasoned that I would extend the same kindness to comfort a perfect stranger who died before me. I have done this several times in my lifetime while working with sick and dying patients. Getting even would make me like her. I lost love for her when she said dont ever tell anyone, they wont understand. Although I did not know it at the time.
If my mother were alive today I know, without her being conscious of it, she would try every trick in the book to come between my wife and I. I know she would swoop in hoping for some kind of a wedge to turn my children against me and my invading wife. I live a thousand miles from where I grew up and our visits would be cordial, short, and we would stay at a hotel. The only reason for the visit would be for the kids, at some point in their lives. They would be very guarded by me, and they would never be alone with her. If she came to visit , it would be at a public place. A restaurant, maybe at her hotel (not her room), or a park. It would be cordial. If she asked for more, I would have to leave. My wife would have to understand what it was all about beforehand and we would have to be in agreement on what we would do. I think we have that understanding.
The first outsider to understand my relationship with my mother was a Navy buddy. I was stationed 10 miles from my mother and home . He couldnt understand why I didnt just live at home with all the great food my mother cooked, instead of the crappy old barracks with 200 other men. Somehow in a dinner conversation at my house, it was decided he could rent a room and he was excited at the prospect. He lived there for a couple of weeks, loved the great food, and started to get the smother mother treatment from her too. As we were leaving the house one afternoon she reached out to him to kiss him as a goodbye. There was something funny in it to him and I could see it in his reaction. It was a feeling that I was very familiar with, with her. I felt a little embarrased and I also felt validated when I saw his reaction. We said nothing when we left the house. A little while later, after a silence he said, I understand now why you dont live at home. Silence returned. What could I say, so I said nothing. He moved out. I could not, I just continued to spend as little time there as I possibly could.
I believe it wasnt long after that another turnning point occured. My older brother ( my other perpetrator ) was living at home at the time. He was leaving the house to go on a date. He was twenty minutes late,and she knew it. As he was running out the door she said, before you go would you move this ( heavy livingroom )chair over here? After 5 or six furniture moves and 40 minutes later they were hysterically screaming at eath other. I was upstairs and heard the whole thing. I knew what she was doing. I was fed up. I was fed up enough to blow the house up, but knew it was not in me to do that. I knew that anything that I would do as her favorite would stun her and I wanted to maximize that using understatement. I wasn't going to give her the opportunity to claim the role of " victim "
I went downstairs and calmly walked past the two of them screaming at each other.
I went into the pantry, and with a calmness on the outside that hid the erupting volcano inside, I felt that had nothing left to lose.
I took a glass from the shelf. I filled it with only quarter inch of water. I did not want to overstate anything. Rage with the utmost of control was extremely important to me.
I returned to where they were embattled. Before they would stop to acknowledge my presence, I threw the water in her face saying, Cool it.
The look in her eyes told me I had gotten her attention.
From a place of deep indignation and betrayal she said, And I protected you.
I had gone from being her love object, to being the object of her contempt.
I went to a place deeper and said, From what?
She was stunned speechless. Our relationship was now changed forever.
The role between my brother and my mother changed too. He was now in an opportune moment to scramble for her favor. He started to defend her from me, but now had two loyalties to be torn about.
My role to him was his scapegoat, and here I had just defended him, and because of that he was also stunned.
She was now dissuaded to provide favor on any of us.
I have described her behavior at this point before, using the Freudian image of the Oedipal Sphinx with her phallic talons. These talons were easily capable of penetrating the flesh and tearing open a heart with their razor sharpness. She did this without hesitance to satisfy her hungers. Oedipus had to solve the Freudian riddle that asked something like "What begins life by crawling on its belly then walks on four legs, then on two legs? The answer is, "A man." I had dared to solved her riddle too. Just like when Oedipus solved the riddle, my mother too became so enraged that, she too dramaticly threw herself unto the rocks, smoking cigarrettes until she became cancerous, and died. Isnt that a poetic ending. It was 20 years later in a therapists office, before I could fully comprehend what I had done. I felt exhilerated. It was my first mountain top experience culminating all my years of anguish, agony and struggle in and out of therapy. I had actually done it on my own years earlier, but it took all those years of therapy to reach the point where I could grasp what I had done. WOW!! I was on top of the world!!!
That lasted a week and I was back in the struggle again (that kind of sounds like an old song: "Back in the saddle again.") There are layers and layers to these issues.
I dont know if my experience that Ive described here is helpful. Your struggle certainly triggered me and percolated lots a stuff up to the top. Like they say in 12-steps,Take what you can use and leave the rest.
YEP, THAT'S MY STORY AND I'M STICKIN TO IT!
Thanks for posting, I needed that.
You're doing some incredable work.
My mother died twice in my lifetime. I could pretend that I still had a mother even while she was taking me to bed with her. I now know I was protecting her when I would say to myself, she just didnt understand what she was doing to me. All that agony and terror I was experiencing did not fit as a response to all the loving she was giving me, her special Bobby. It was if she was a great air ship with ruffles and flourishes decorating its exterior and floating miles above the earth, and I was hanging by an overstretched ( umbilical ) cord about a half mile long. And oh, the sensual magic of it all! Then one day the light of the sun filled the stairwell leading to and from her bedroom. It was a light so bright that the reflected light, off the rooms surfaces,
eliminated all shadows that would otherwise have been places to hide. It was the day she said, Dont ever tell anyone, they wont understand. The umbilical cord had snapped ping and I felt like I was going to die because I no longer had a mother to take care of me. I had to believe she was taking care of me, she was my mother. When I finally crashed into the earth, I had to completely rearrange my parts from the way she arranged them. How she had arranged them was not visible to me until long after I hit the earth. It was years later that I realized that I had been taking care of her needs most of my life. She had provided me food and shelter at the price of my blood, my self.
When she died the second time I was engaged to my wife. She was definately threatened by the presents of my new fiance. She was dying of lung cancer from a two pack a day habit with Chesterfield cigarettes. She waited till I had awaken that morning and was coming down those stairs that led to and from her room.. I saw her laying on the couch where she had been sleeping since picking up a bug from her visit to her little brother in Tennesee. ( I believe she incested that little brother. He came to visit once, in my adolescense ). She struggled to lift her head, as she labored to breath, in order to see me coming. When I saw her I knew the time had come. I cradled her head in the role of a dutiful son as she passed. The bitch got me one last time.
Aside from my rage it was an issue of integrity for me to care for her at the end. She did not show me how to have integriry. I had to learn that on my own in spite of her. I reasoned that I would extend the same kindness to comfort a perfect stranger who died before me. I have done this several times in my lifetime while working with sick and dying patients. Getting even would make me like her. I lost love for her when she said dont ever tell anyone, they wont understand. Although I did not know it at the time.
If my mother were alive today I know, without her being conscious of it, she would try every trick in the book to come between my wife and I. I know she would swoop in hoping for some kind of a wedge to turn my children against me and my invading wife. I live a thousand miles from where I grew up and our visits would be cordial, short, and we would stay at a hotel. The only reason for the visit would be for the kids, at some point in their lives. They would be very guarded by me, and they would never be alone with her. If she came to visit , it would be at a public place. A restaurant, maybe at her hotel (not her room), or a park. It would be cordial. If she asked for more, I would have to leave. My wife would have to understand what it was all about beforehand and we would have to be in agreement on what we would do. I think we have that understanding.
The first outsider to understand my relationship with my mother was a Navy buddy. I was stationed 10 miles from my mother and home . He couldnt understand why I didnt just live at home with all the great food my mother cooked, instead of the crappy old barracks with 200 other men. Somehow in a dinner conversation at my house, it was decided he could rent a room and he was excited at the prospect. He lived there for a couple of weeks, loved the great food, and started to get the smother mother treatment from her too. As we were leaving the house one afternoon she reached out to him to kiss him as a goodbye. There was something funny in it to him and I could see it in his reaction. It was a feeling that I was very familiar with, with her. I felt a little embarrased and I also felt validated when I saw his reaction. We said nothing when we left the house. A little while later, after a silence he said, I understand now why you dont live at home. Silence returned. What could I say, so I said nothing. He moved out. I could not, I just continued to spend as little time there as I possibly could.
I believe it wasnt long after that another turnning point occured. My older brother ( my other perpetrator ) was living at home at the time. He was leaving the house to go on a date. He was twenty minutes late,and she knew it. As he was running out the door she said, before you go would you move this ( heavy livingroom )chair over here? After 5 or six furniture moves and 40 minutes later they were hysterically screaming at eath other. I was upstairs and heard the whole thing. I knew what she was doing. I was fed up. I was fed up enough to blow the house up, but knew it was not in me to do that. I knew that anything that I would do as her favorite would stun her and I wanted to maximize that using understatement. I wasn't going to give her the opportunity to claim the role of " victim "
I went downstairs and calmly walked past the two of them screaming at each other.
I went into the pantry, and with a calmness on the outside that hid the erupting volcano inside, I felt that had nothing left to lose.
I took a glass from the shelf. I filled it with only quarter inch of water. I did not want to overstate anything. Rage with the utmost of control was extremely important to me.
I returned to where they were embattled. Before they would stop to acknowledge my presence, I threw the water in her face saying, Cool it.
The look in her eyes told me I had gotten her attention.
From a place of deep indignation and betrayal she said, And I protected you.
I had gone from being her love object, to being the object of her contempt.
I went to a place deeper and said, From what?
She was stunned speechless. Our relationship was now changed forever.
The role between my brother and my mother changed too. He was now in an opportune moment to scramble for her favor. He started to defend her from me, but now had two loyalties to be torn about.
My role to him was his scapegoat, and here I had just defended him, and because of that he was also stunned.
She was now dissuaded to provide favor on any of us.
I have described her behavior at this point before, using the Freudian image of the Oedipal Sphinx with her phallic talons. These talons were easily capable of penetrating the flesh and tearing open a heart with their razor sharpness. She did this without hesitance to satisfy her hungers. Oedipus had to solve the Freudian riddle that asked something like "What begins life by crawling on its belly then walks on four legs, then on two legs? The answer is, "A man." I had dared to solved her riddle too. Just like when Oedipus solved the riddle, my mother too became so enraged that, she too dramaticly threw herself unto the rocks, smoking cigarrettes until she became cancerous, and died. Isnt that a poetic ending. It was 20 years later in a therapists office, before I could fully comprehend what I had done. I felt exhilerated. It was my first mountain top experience culminating all my years of anguish, agony and struggle in and out of therapy. I had actually done it on my own years earlier, but it took all those years of therapy to reach the point where I could grasp what I had done. WOW!! I was on top of the world!!!
That lasted a week and I was back in the struggle again (that kind of sounds like an old song: "Back in the saddle again.") There are layers and layers to these issues.
I dont know if my experience that Ive described here is helpful. Your struggle certainly triggered me and percolated lots a stuff up to the top. Like they say in 12-steps,Take what you can use and leave the rest.
YEP, THAT'S MY STORY AND I'M STICKIN TO IT!
Thanks for posting, I needed that.
You're doing some incredable work.