Notes For Middle B

[Dante]

Hi Middle B, I'm Dante, and I also believe those exact same thoughts in the exact same order.  I'm bad I'm wrong I'm crazy it's my fault.  You're not alone!  That's the script we all were given because if we weren't bad or wrong or crazy or at fault then it meant those who were SUPPOSED to put us first and take care of us because that's what we're SUPPOSED to do for our children were the ones who were at fault.  I don't know your family, but I know mine, and I know in my FOO, nobody was capable of being at fault for anything.  In Pete Walker's book, he talks about how in families with NPD, there's always a scapegoat.  I was it.  Sounds like you were too.

You have the same right as everyone else - no more, no less - to define what makes you happy, and then to seek it out.  So long as it's not at the expense of another's (legitimate, not dysfunctional) happiness and not hurting someone else, you have the right to live on your own terms.

[Bach]

Middle B wants me to explain why her mother's trauma and adverse childhood experiences don't obligate us to forgive the bloody woman.  I know it's important but I don't really understand it myself.  So I ranted about it a bit, below, and just got frustrated and wound up and overwhelmed.  So now Middle B and I are curled up together in a figurative ball feeling broken and full of pain, and I just have to hope that we can muddle through and she can feel my love and my sincerity even though I don't know how to help her. 

Some pretty rambling and convoluted garbage follows, with possible mild triggers, I don't know.  This pain is too much, drugs aren't helping, and I don't know how I'm ever going to break out of this.  I feel like I'm drowning, though I know I'm not and that what I'm going to do here is just continue to survive.  I wish I could feel like that was a good thing.

I know that as a child you were probably treated by your mother the way that I was treated by you.  So that's an explanation, that you treated me so badly because you didn't know anything else yourself, and that most of the time you didn't in fact even realise that you were treating me so badly.  And you're not at all an introspective or emotionally intelligent person, so I'm sure that another thing you were never really aware of was how much you resented me.  You were disappointed with me.  You felt stuck with me.  Your pregnancy with me was supposed to garner you attention from my father the way your pregnancy with my brother did, but by then your relationship with him was too far gone.  As soon as you discovered that he wasn't happy about the pregnancy, you didn't want anything to do with me, but you were stuck.  Once I came out, my father was enchanted with his baby girl, and after that I was the enemy.  The scapegoat.  The life-ruiner.  All of this was in your subconscious, of course.  So then that whole business with your suffocating me in the middle of the night in my crib when I was a very small baby.  I don't think you set out to do that intentionally.  I think you probably scared yourself with how close you came.  You wanted that awful little creature to die, but you did not want to be the baby-killing mother.  Thus the origin of my eternal existential dilemma of wanting to die and knowing that I must not die.  Of feeling that I would have to die for people to love me.  Of feeling freefalling overwhelming all-encompassing terror at the idea of the pain of life continuing, and feeling exactly the same terror at the thought of death.

[Armee]

Bach,

What you wrote was not convoluted or rambling at all. It was very very clear.  None of it is garbage but i understand feeling that way. I feel that way about what I do all the time. The conflict... terror at life continuing under the hands of the person who was meant to protect you from harm but tried to kill you instead, and terror at the thought of dying makes so much sense with what happened! It's so so clear. How could you feel any differently, really, with what happened?

I've often chased my tail trying to wrap my head around how to come to terms with how my mom treated us and the fact that she was suffering. It's very confusing and it's loving of you to want to explain that to Middle B. I wish I had a person who cared enough to do that.