Reply to If you grew up with violent or addicted parents and now have a happy family life, do you get angry?

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "If you grew up with violent or addicted parents and now have a happy family life, do you get angry?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Years and years and years of therapy.  [b]So now, every once in awhile, I wave a passing hello to that big box of anger that is off to the side, and then put it back behind the curtain where it stays[/b].  There is no real resolution for soemthing like that, I don't think.  Instead, you can just choose to move on.

[/quote]

I feel exactly this way, too. My parents are alive. My abuse was at the hands of a stepfather, and my mom let it happen so she was complicit, although certainly a broken person herself. Her entire family was messed up, and I know at least one of my cousins (she's one of my best friends) was similarly abused. We talked about it once, how, as kids, it seemed normal to us, especially since so many other family members were also in really f-ed up situations.

My mom is still alive and I love her. However, we do not have a mother / daughter relationship. I know she is deeply sorry and filled with regret over what happened, and that makes it easier to move past it. But honestly, I haven't forgiven. For me, the person who did that to me as a little kid is dead to me, and the mother who let it happened is dead to me, also. It's as if the person my mom is now has risen from the ashes of the person I killed off in my mind / heart (the one who let that stuff happen to me). And as long as my mom doesn't push the boundaries I've set up, we can actually get along very well. But, my mom occasionally pushes and I get extremely angry because it makes me face the box of history I've got packed away.

I agree with PP. You don't really resolve it. You contain it and refuse to feed it, unpack it only as much as is necessary for your own mental health, and otherwise focus your energies on the present and on preventing the past from becoming prologue. I love who I am now, it took a looooong time to get there. But I do. And I don't flinch when people tell me I should be nicer to my mom because I know it is okay to handle this the way I need to handle it. It's not about punishing her, it's just self-preservation. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics