my mother couldn't regulate herself. so i learned to. you can't be close to someone + be their regulation at the same time. one will always cost you the other.
Ohhhh, I lived in such a room and house as this. I was Mother’s audience and container, and then I became her competitor. None of these roles suited me, but I played them to minimize peril.
This forced me into molds where I only felt safe around the opposite: the silent ones, the avoiders and vanishers. Nothing hectic or dramatic or overt. A classic overcompensation for the first poison created many subsequent toxic liaisons.
There are so many phrases you use in this post that respond like a crystalline ping. It’s beautiful and pristine and clear, achingly clear. I’m so glad to see you through this, and see myself as well.
We survived. We didn’t allow the stains to stick. We got through, beyond it. It’s this cost I see now i was finally glad to pay.
the audience and the competitor were never roles you chose. they were roles she needed filled.
the silent ones felt safe because silence doesn't need managing. that's not overcompensation. that's a nervous system that already knew what noise costs.
“it’s something i learned
in a house
where the weather inside
was always someone else’s decision.”
😭 💔
“you make yourself into a buffer
between another person’s chaos and the rest of the room …
… while you quietly swallowed glass.”
What’s it like to have readers quote you back to yourself?
Woof. That read like a body blow.
it's strange.
you spend years turning a private mechanism into a sentence someone else can hold.
then they hand it back to you sharper than you wrote it.
that's not flattery.
that's someone finally being fluent in the thing they survived.
— author
I consistently leave your posts with gratitude for the read, and the knowing. Thank you for being here and writing about all of it.
Ohhhh, I lived in such a room and house as this. I was Mother’s audience and container, and then I became her competitor. None of these roles suited me, but I played them to minimize peril.
This forced me into molds where I only felt safe around the opposite: the silent ones, the avoiders and vanishers. Nothing hectic or dramatic or overt. A classic overcompensation for the first poison created many subsequent toxic liaisons.
There are so many phrases you use in this post that respond like a crystalline ping. It’s beautiful and pristine and clear, achingly clear. I’m so glad to see you through this, and see myself as well.
We survived. We didn’t allow the stains to stick. We got through, beyond it. It’s this cost I see now i was finally glad to pay.
the audience and the competitor were never roles you chose. they were roles she needed filled.
the silent ones felt safe because silence doesn't need managing. that's not overcompensation. that's a nervous system that already knew what noise costs.
— author
Ooooh, you did it again. “What noise costs.” Chef’s kiss. 💋