i can't take it any more

I'm letting it all out and damn the fucking consequences.

I've been trying to get through the pain alone since I was a little girl: First through hiding in books; junior high was the usual hell of bullying and hazing; in high school it was a little better because I was able to take advanced placement classes and spend less time with the mindless, madding herd; then when I had to go to college and deal with the world alone, I became bulimic because the shame at my continual failures to make any sense whatsoever of the way other humans behaved was so paralytically humiliating that I constantly stuffed food in, became a junk food addict in vain attempts to fill that aching, echoing void.

(And if mom were to read this, would she feel sad for me? Would she feel an echo of my pain, and cry that her own, only daughter suffered so much? No. She would only feel anger and resentment that I dare to speak so of her, when she had only the very best of intentions. She's such a good little person, after all. And no, I will NOT take on her shit. Been there, done that. She's on her own, just as I have been all my life. As a poem someone sent me once said, "The only person you can really save is yourself." Damned if I'll sacrifice another SECOND of my life for her.)

See, the difference is, I know when I've hurt her. But she? She NEVER knows when she's hurt me. I think I learned early on that expressing my fears, pain, anger, bewilderment only resulted in the further hurt of her walking away from me, literally, leaving me with my hurts and resentments. She abandoned me, over and over again, right from the beginning: I am a mother, and this is a child. Yeah, great, you self-centered nitwit. Nice going. And I'm supposed to, what, feel reassured by this fabulous revelation of yours? Yeah. Cute little story, oh-so-funny how clueless and out to lunch you were. No matter that you absolutely TERRIFIED your daughter, who could feel to the depth of her tiny marrow that you weren't there for her.

Starvation, indeed, at the very deepest levels of the soul. Ironic (or, fucked up, maybe?) that she ran out of milk for me when I was eight months old - I think the prolonged labor and the epidural (spinal block?) they gave her interfered with our bonding properly, along with all the other reasons. I read somewhere that when there is a failure to bond, the child stops reaching out for the mother because it feels unsafe, the mother doesn't feel like a genuine source of nourishment. And this can be a vicious cycle - a mother whose infant is not properly 'attached' often stops producing milk. I also remember she said something once about fearing that I was anemic because I was pale and underweight and sort of ghostly looking. The doctors tested me and I came out as borderline anemic, but never enough to do anything about.

My theory? I was born starving, starving for love and attention.

Re-reading this, I notice my mother's apparent concern about me being anemic. And yet, I've never felt that she was concerned about me. Her worries seemed to be primarily focused on whether she would be perceived as a bad mother or wife rather than actually having any sympathy for/empathy with her daughter.