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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 3 of 3. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by sunny10 on November 18, 2004, at 14:26:47
Just a last letter to explain why it will be my last.
I've been in and out of therapy for 21 years. You all are the reason for that. Each of you in your own way have contributed to "create me". I am the youngest in a most-denied dysfunction family.
You, my brother, watched as my mother ignored me and criticized me every day. Stood by and allowed her and others to tell me how I should never have been conceived, that I was supposed to be aborted (and the one family member who stopped that is now dead), that I was worthless. Stood by and watched our new stepfather, when I was nine, beat me with belts, the french breadboard, then finally his fists. You don't even care that our sister has been missing for four years. You know that I will never forgive my mother for her treatment of me, nor that she also stood by and watched me get beaten- she, the adult who should have actually DONE something. Yet you invite her for the past two years to Christmas at your house instead of keeping to your prior plans and having Christmas eve at your house and THEN going to her house on Christmas Day. You took my Christmas and, with it, the rest of the family away.
And, you, my aunt, you go along with this, when the prior plan had always worked for you also, with you going with to your sister's on Christmas Day. At least I got to see you and my cousin on Christmas Eve, before. You used to stay at my tiny cramped apartment over the holidays, sleeping in my bed I gave up to you, coming and going at your own schedule to see my mother, which I never condemned. Now, aha, you have to drive less- isn't it nice- and didn't even bother to tell me starting last Christmas that you wouldn't be the houseguest that you had been for five years (at least) prior. You didn't even tell me you weren't coming.
Up until last year, I had a brother, a sister in law, a nephew, an aunt, and a cousin. Just because it made your Christmas holiday a bit more convenient, I no longer have any of them. Except when they want to call me and give me a hard time because I don't call them anymore. Or because I cancel plans that I made with one of you during a weak moment when I ignored my heart and went with "conventional mores". "Family is important".
No more. I'm sure that my therapist didn't have all of you in mind when she said I needed to cut out all of the bad, heartbreaking, interpersonal relationships. Cut out the energy suckers and those that did not treat me as well as I treat them, she said. She was right. I'm cutting you all out. Hell, you were gone from ME, anyway.
(sunny10)
Now, if I could only send it....
Posted by just plain jane on November 21, 2004, at 17:54:21
In reply to a letter to my family, posted by sunny10 on November 18, 2004, at 14:26:47
Your letter touches me deeply in many places of my heart and mind.
Wishing you could send it is a normal thing, and I don't find it at all strange that you probably will not.
In my family I too am the youngest. There actually was an abortion attempt. Any wonder one of my closest friends called me a survivor.
If my perception is right, you would feel poorly about yourself if you sent it. They cannot grasp it, for one, and you aren't a vengeful person, if I am correct.
Congratulations on being yourself, most people never achieve that.
jpj
Posted by sunny10 on November 22, 2004, at 17:14:18
In reply to Re: a letter to my family » sunny10, posted by just plain jane on November 21, 2004, at 17:54:21
I may revise it- but I will be sending one somewhat like it.
Yes, the language is vengeful, but you,see it's written in a language that they taught me; one that they will understand and just leave me alone!!!
This is the end of the thread.
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