Pandora's Box again

I'm reading a blogger right now who's at the age I was when everything started going AWOL (which was the year Dad died, when I was 24).

She's inspired me to start drawing, which makes me happy, because it satisfies at least one of the three D's: Distraction. Actually, that's not really true - the drawing just makes me happy, period, it's something I've always liked doing. And it's a good way to express things. Sometimes the silliness of some of the drawings makes me happy in itself, or when something goes differently than I expected, I can laugh at it, because hey, it's just a drawing, right? And it's actually pretty funny the way things come out sometimes.

I was thinking about how her mom and my mom seem similar to me, or rather our relationships with our mothers seem somewhat similar. I've tried explaining my relationship with my mom (or lack thereof) many times and am most often left with the sense that my listener isn't quite getting what I'm saying, that my meaning isn't really coming through.

***
My mom used to be intensely involved in my life (and still would be, if I let her). Which sounds like a good thing, on the surface, right?

But when it's a *substitute* for living *her own* life, then it really sucks. Because she's always projecting *her* thoughts and feelings onto you about what's happening in your life, rather than *listening* to what's actually happening to you in your real life.

So your real life stops feeling real, and instead you're caught in this nightmare of projected hopes, dreams and unfulfilled fantasies from your *mother's* Pandora's Box.


It's like a kind of gaslighting, only it's worse than that because, in gaslighting, you can eventually escape when you realize that the person is intentionally messing with your head and is really a jerk.

With someone like my mom, she has no idea she's doing it, so there's no way to ever get her to stop. And if you shun her, or try to stay away from her, then she's like this pleading puppy dog who gives you those sad, wounded eyes and never, EVER understands a thing you're talking about. It's like trying to live with a Martian disguised in a human body - they LOOK like a human, and many of the things they do APPEAR human because it's a human body doing it, but the CREATURE occupying the cranial cavity of this homunculus is NOT what you think it is. It is an ALIEN.

***
I went over to Paint to try to draw a picture of how 'communication' between me and mom goes (or more accurately, *doesn't* go).

Sometimes the act of drawing makes the problem so clear that you wonder why you didn't see it before. And sometimes it helps you see that something is so ridiculous, so completely ludicrous that you *really* shouldn't be wasting any time on it.

***
On the whole chakra thing: I'm realizing that maybe the really tight 'cinch-y' feeling around my middle, just above the third chakra, may actually be my best protection against all the overwhelming feelings. When I can't SOLVE any of the problems, or can't solve them at the rate at which they're confronting me, then I HAVE to find a way to block off the excess emotions so that they don't overwhelm me.

What I have to do is to figure out how to reduce the number of problems to a number I can MANAGE. Working on that :-)