The Next Version Of Me

[dollyvee]

Hi Bach,

I relate to what you said about not being able to get distance from your mother. It's really an awful feeling because either you're racked with guilt for what you're doing or angry and frustrated with her for what she's doing. At least it was that way with me. I always felt this damned if you do, damned if you don't pull. When she died it was like a freedom from that.

I don't know if you read it or if you'd find it helpful, but I read Will I Ever Be Good Enough recently and I found it really summed up  lot of my internal stuff that I didn't even realize was a legacy from my m.  Seeing if written down was like oh, that's why I'm doing this. It sounds like you're doing a lot of it already (feeling what you need to and not bottling it up for example).

Well done for your text back to her.

[paul72]

sending a supportive hug if you don't mind Bach.
I think you're incredibly brave for how you are navigating those waters you are in.
The way you describe her version of your life was pretty neat to read and likely helpful .. I can completely believe that and empathize.
Sending as much positive wishes as I can your way.

[Bach]

The self-loathing is the worst part 

[CactusFlower]

gentle hugs if you want them, Bach. Congrats on standing up to her and practicing boundaries. The self-loathing will ease as you get more comfortable with doing that. We're here for you and you're getting stronger and stronger every day.

[sanmagic7]

hey bach, i agree w/ CF that practice in self-care, no matter what form it takes, is what is needed.  not being allowed boundaries thru much of our lives overcame our own sense of what's ok and not ok for us.  keep up the good work!  love and a hug filled w/ self-loathing repellant. 

[Bach]

Cactus Flower and San, thank you  I need that gentle support and encouragement.

I realised last week that my mother is like a drug, a very powerful drug which when managed properly can enable certain healing functions, but which comes with terrible side effects and the risk of addiction, and is extremely difficult to titrate. I definitely got too much of her last week. I was able to stay away all last week but I have reason to expect that she will contact me tomorrow or the next day. I need to be prepared.

I want to write more and will try again later.

[sanmagic7]

i think that's a great analogy, bach.  yep, relationships can definitely be addictive, no matter with whom.  best to you with managing this particular "drug" so that it does more good than harm to you and your well-being.  love and gentle hugs filled w/ support.

[CactusFlower]

more hugs to you and yes, the drug analogy is very appropriate, it seems.  Wishing you peace

[Hope67]

 

[Bach]

I’ve known two men in my life who told me about having sexual encounters with older men when they were children but said it wasn’t abuse.  One was a friend/lover I had when I was about 30.  He lived in a city I had moved away from some years before to which I used to return from time to time to see friends.  I met him through one of these friends.  He was (5? 8? I don’t remember) years younger than I was, and he was a very sweet boy There was one visit we had where we took off after a party at a friend’s house and spent most of the night driving around the city going to see places that had had significance for each of us when we were younger, then found a hotel that was willing to give us an early morning check-in and holed up in there for a few days, talking, drawing, doing writing exercises, listening to music and playing a version of truth or dare in between long episodes of delicious leisurely sex.  During one of those conversations, he told me that he used to give his uncle blowjobs when he was a kid, but that he had liked it and didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.  I accepted this without question.  I suppose I didn’t really know enough at the time to question it.  I lost touch with this lovely boy a few years later.  I still remember him with great fondness and often wonder how he’s doing.

The other is, well, Other.  I don’t remember exactly when it was that he first told me about what he referred to as a relationship that he had with a male teacher when he was somewhere around puberty, but he mentions it from time to time, and is steadfast in his insistence that it was a genuine loving relationship that he wanted and participated in with not just full consent but enthusiasm, and that he didn’t consider the teacher to have done anything wrong.  He believes that he was special to this teacher, that the teacher really loved him and that being loved was a good experience for him as the affection-starved child of a narcissistic mother.  I have never challenged this belief, but over the years as I have gotten to know Other better and better, I have come to believe that there’s more to the story than he has told me, or probably ever will tell me.  Other is not very forthcoming about his feelings or his experiences.  He’ll talk endlessly about his profession, about the music he loves, about the movies he’s incessantly quoting, about his ideas for how to improve everything from his industry to the political media to the rules of baseball, but personal things about his life, not so much.  Nor is he always very truthful when he does talk about personal things.  I don’t think that he consciously lies, but I think that his self-protective mechanisms cause him to withhold, minimise and mislead.  Truths slip out in small bits here and there when something I can’t fathom aligns and more of him starts to show.  I don’t think he even realises when it happens.  The bigger picture is revealed only gradually, only because I cherish his occasional bouts of openness, and pay close attention, and as stories morph and details emerge over months and years, I add things up.  It’s unsettling.  Other says the relationship with the teacher was good for him and that he liked it, but subsequent to it, he had problems in school that led to significant trauma.  I have theories about connections between the relationship with the teacher and the problems that Other developed.  But what do I really know?  I’ve loved this man for the better part of 30 years and I still wonder almost daily about the great dark storehouse of Other.  He takes in more than I expect, and lets out less than he knows. 

I have no idea what the point of writing this was supposed to be, but it’s on my mind.  This is another thing that troubles me that I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time, but now that I have, I’m not sure that I should.

[Armee]

What it makes me think of is how important a male-identifying version of metoo would be and how far off it is. How eye opening it was to hear the stories that were coming up in public that I identified with but had never allowed myself the luxury of thinking they were a big deal.  Men still don't have that. I'm sorry for what happened to those men in your life and that they cannot allow themselves the luxury to feel grief for what happened.

[Bach]

Armee, thank you for reading and replying to my post.

Not sure what to do with these or any of my other feelings. I'm having a very hard time lately coping with all the pain in life, the pain around me, the pain within me, mental pain, physical pain, social pain, real pain, imagined pain, pain feared, pain felt. Pain, pain, pain, everywhere, nothing but pain, can't escape it. I wish I could go to sleep and not wake up until I felt rested and happy and ready to have a real life. But that's not going to happen. So I'll go to sleep and hope for the best, and tomorrow could be better. I don't really expect that it will. But it's always possible. I guess that's what keeps me going.

[rainydiary]

I resonate with your post.  I hope that you find ease and rest each day even if it is brief.

[sanmagic7]

bach, i've spoken w/ men who have had similar experiences, either w/ males or females, and who have looked on them as something they enjoyed, gave consent to, didn't think of as abuse.  truth is, using a minor in such a way is always a form of abuse, even if they don't recognize it as such.  they often get different messages about it, fears and enjoyments they're ashamed of, trying to wash it clean in their own minds.  they're too often made to feel special, which is often lacking in their lives, so the attention makes them feel good.

i'm sure knowing these things are part of the pain you're feeling.  it's awful, i know.  just make it from today to tomorrow, ok?  we're with you. love and many gentle, caring hugs   

[Bach]

rainy  san 

I wish I could stop being so self-destructive.  I'd like to do something positive for myself, but all the things I can think of that would make my life better involve things I need to NOT do rather than things I can do.  I had a therapist once who asked me to keep a journal in which every day I would write down positive things I did.  They had to be positive things, though, not absence-of-negative things.  So I couldn't write "Didn't binge today" or "Didn't abuse drugs today" or "Didn't stay in bed all day today".  But I usually couldn't say something like "Ate healthily today" because "didn't binge" is far from equivalent to "ate healthily".  I couldn't say "Had a productive day" if I did one chore around the house and then lay on the couch for the rest of the day instead of staying in bed.  I couldn't say "Used drugs responsibly" if I had one of those days where I smoke weed all day so that I can do chores and then end up stuffing my face all night because I got the munchies.  What's my point?  F*** if I know.  But I'm really getting too old to live like this, and indeed, I won't live that much longer if I don't figure out a better way.