Posted by alexandra_k on August 24, 2019, at 16:48:22
In reply to Re: ever not forgiven someone, posted by rjlockhart37 on August 24, 2019, at 15:42:41
thankyou for responding, rj :-)
maybe it depends, in part, on the background relationship.
i mean, there might be a meanness or a trauma that arises in a context of thoughtlessness. i'm thinking of how some people genuinely feel a lot of pain down the track that a group of kids may have been particularly mean to them, one day, on the playground or something like that.
forgiving that kind of thing might be about realising that sometimes people get a bit wrapped up in the moment when they are little. triumph on the playground goes a bit too far and morphs into something else. understanding that mostly kids (especially but not exclusively) act as sheep and just sort of go along for the ride so understanding that most kids weren't really on-board with what was happening but didn't know how to oppose it... realising some kids were probably beat on quite severely at home and that's all they knew...
then there are traumas arising without a good context or good background.
i used to very intensely hate my mother. i used to feel a lot of secondary shame and guilt that i felt that way, but that was the fact about the way i felt about her. thinking of her actions / behaviors... i don't remember much in the way of kind or loving behaviors, at all. i remember her as a source of screaming or a source of shame or a source of determined intensity or something. i remember her being forcefully... herself. always. i remember her being unable to respond to me. unable to see that i needed calmness or her to back away a bit or whatever. her seeing that i needed something different from what she was would only have her... react... further away from what it was that i needed.
how could i love that? anything about that?
i don't have good memories of her. i don't have good memories of feeling good with her. i don't have memeories of her doing good or kind things. i just don't.
i can be grateful for some things... she did not feed me garbage like a lot of kids parents do. she did not raise me on sugary drinks and junk food. i do remember being given a little plate of raw veges before dinner to munch on because i preferred raw carrot and cabbage and brocolli and peas and so on to them being over-cooked... i can be grateful for a good collection of board games and books... that she didn't spend her money on alcohol and or drugs...
but i never did feel love. it was a deep dark very very black reality indeed that i spent quite a lot of time tormenting myself over whether i should try stabbing her with the kitchen knife in her sleep to be freed of her... that's why i started running away. because i hated her that much.
do i still hate her that much? no. because i can get away from her. she does not know where i physically live (though i suspect if she thought it mattered to me that much she would trick it out of my sister and let me know that she knows where i live! she could / would even trick a key out of my property manager (and likely succeed in this nasty hell hole of a f*ck*d up country) if she thought it mattered to me that much...
but she doesn't call me. and i can send her messages to spam and check spam only when i feel able to cope with her... so...
i suspect it is true that if i had financial independence then i would never see her again.
i don't know if that is true or not.
i am realising that many of my 'friends' 'acquaintances' and indeed family... believe it to be true. that's how come i don't get to have financial independence.
it is about the whole lifeway thing... being slave to a job i hate would be only trading different...
anyway... it is their believing it is so that makes it so. they want it to be so because it is their choice in how they treat me. that is the thing. Mother likes it when i need to be in touch with her over money because then she can treat me like garbage and i'll still be forced to be in touch...
that's the thing.
it is like when i was a kid... and Mother sent me to school every day with 2 vegemite sandwiches. and it was too much food for me when i was so little. I mean... she made for me the exact same lunch Dad made for him -- but he was a grown man building houses all day... bringing the food home with me resulted in her yellling and hitting... so i would try and throw it away at school if i had opportunity.
i figured i would get in trouble with teachers if i was seen to be throwign my lunch away (this was when i was going to a small school of up to 30 kids). so i tried to be surreptitious. then, of course, a girl saw me hiding them, really, under a building. so lorded that over me 'do this or i'll tell do that or i'll tell'. then she told another girl and they played that off with them setting up impossible situations of me having to choose between them or one or the other would tell...
that hung over me for months... i want to say years... but that can't have been true...
anyway...
this whole 'do you like her most or do you like me most' set-up of a situation that people raise sometimes. my answer always was 'you are putting me in the unreasonable position of having to choose therefore you lose'.
both of those girls...
do i forgive them?
i want away from them. they don't want to know me / interact with me as an equal and free person. they want to be my lord and master and don't care what i want at all. they only want me to bend to their will.
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there is this thing about cycle of abuse... how those who abuse most likely were abused themself. don't know any different. do what was done to them because they don't know another way.
forgivenss is supposed to free you from the cycle. forgivenss is what is supposed to make it such that you won't go on to do that to others. forgivenss is supposed to be about your choosing not to retaliate by t*t-for-tat abusing them in return (if you think you can get away with it).
so... by forgiving my mother... that is supposed to save me from elder-abusing her if i think i can get away with it down the track to repay her for all the years of child abuse i suffered at her hand...
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i suppose most of the worst of the 'abuse' comes from melt-down. not knowing what to do... i do have some memories of my mother acting more as a normal person who i may have actually quite liked... i remember her hanging out with some of her friends and later boyfriend. i never did like how she treated me -- but she seemed to be having mutually enjoyable / amicable friendships with them and interactions with them for a while... doing pottery and arty things. bush walking / hiking. hanging out at family festival types of things.
i guess there was a stress in our interaction that was too much for her and she genuinely did not know how to cope. i can totally forgive her for that. feel empathy for that. it's this... malevolent machiavelli thing that i detest and never will forgive where she seems to embrace evil, somehow... mischieviesness... of seeing that something is important to me or causing me pain and she only seems interested in hurting or harming or upsetting me as much as possible...
in an attempt to go 'see! see! see! you are no better than me! you can't do it, either! you are just like me! you would have done to me what i did to you if you thought you could get away with it!
and the whole thing of child abuse / elder abuse just becomes part of the whole / the same thing. do unto others as you would have others do unto you... is flipped on it's head. reversed. turned inside out. expect others to do to you what you did to them... oh, but wasn't it worth it! you can spend out the end of your days in an off-shore detention facility in pennance for the rampant bullying and exploitation and so on that you did and got away with doing in your younger days... but wasn't it worth it?? you get to hold on to those memories for always...
i think it is a game some people choose to play.
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i am just articulating different cases of... things that might need forgiving.
so to... illustrate(?) introduce(?) the different sorts of forgivenesses that might be fitting or appropriate for different kinds of situations....
there is the whole 'behavior' and 'intent of the behaviour' thing, too...
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i think you are thinking of something more along the lines of the AA sort of notion of forgiveness. i did the step program at some point and i remember the whole forgiveness thing.
it seemed to me it was meant to be about letting go of traumas instead of holding on to them.
the idea being that many people engage in reminiscing over their traumas when drinking. i think that might be the idea. instead of reliving / remembering as a sorry drunk, the way that people do, articulate the traumas when sober.
only... it wasn't about traumas done to you it was about traumas done by you...
i guess as the result of traumas done to you...
it wasn't supposed to be confronting it was supposed to be apologising. for the good of...
peace. i guess. there can be a thing, sometimes, about whether apologising is for the good of the person doing the apologising or for the good of the person who they harmed...
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i can't forgive my mother because she's still the same person she always was. forgiveness doesn't make any kind of sense at all. i understand in fact that much of the worst of it comes from her genuine inability / ineptitudes. even her machiavelli aspect comes from her genuinely not knowing basic principles of emotion regulation and her having a genuine inability to understand cause and effect on things like its too cold -> depression and emotional numbness and hurt...
maybe... i don't belive in forgiveness... any more than i believe in alcohilism (as a life-long chronic disease of the person). which is not to deny that people do harmful things, sometimes, and which is not to deny that it is heaps easier to not drink at all than to get into habits of drinking a bit sometimes.
anyway... just something to bounce off...
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1105867
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20190715/msgs/1105894.html