I’ve been thinking most of the time, and I don’t like it. It’s not good thinking. The thoughts are about things that hurt. They’re dissociative daydreams in which I interact with my daughter, mostly to my advantage. I purge the hurt that is plaguing me by decimating her.

I don’t like those trains of thought, so I generally redirect. I remain a nasty vigilante but direct my ire toward people who deserve it.

I’m very much Alice from “Resident Evil” in my fantasies. I kick serious ass. I don’t feel good when I come out of my mental drifts, however. It’s not because I don’t think some people deserve a punch in the mouth, metaphorical or physical situation depending, but because I’ve eviscerated people with words in real life. They deserved some answer from me, some enforcement of boundaries. Unfortunately, once I break my chains, I tend to go scorched-earth. That it’s from a defensive position has never really ameliorated my guilt.

Mostly because I think the persecutors who became victims didn’t realize they were fighting out of their weight class. That sounds arrogant, but it isn’t. I’m a ball of suppressed rage from a lifetime of this and that bit of abuse, some minor and some serious. It never really goes away. It doesn’t inform my life most of the time, but it does exist.

I think that’s because the events that caused the rage exists. Bad things happened. I’m aware that this rage can cause harm if unleashed. That’s where the guilt comes in. I don’t need to go scorched earth all the time, but there’s a glee in knowing that I get to unleash some pain.

I’m pretty sure the glee’s a bad thing. And I am working on softening the rage. It just takes time.

I don’t want to unleash that demon on my daughter. We’ve been in touch again, and now we’re out of touch. I tried. I worked out what to say with my therapist. I acknowledged that she believes certain things. I apologized for making her feel certain ways. But I disagred with her interpretation of my thoughts and feelings. I shared how ghosting me for five months has impacted me and my feelings of trust. I told her I loved her and am here for her.

It was pretty good. I was feeling moderately hopeful. Until the phone started pinging furiously.

The response was abusive. I got a master’s class in gaslighting. I was solidly broken for a day. I’ve been lucky, however. Both times my daughter attacked, I had a counselling appointment the day of. I was able to discuss it right away, her role, my role, the whole thing. It was my psychiatrist who called what she did “gaslighting.” It was so bad, I had to block my daughter for a period of time.

But the accusations worm their way in. They do damage. And now my brain is trapped in this loop where I get to hurt her back. Day after day. It gets wearing.

I don’t like this loop. I don’t like that this is not the first I’ve had to play this game. It’s not even the first time with my daughter. It’s because I wanted things to go differently that we ended up here.

She broke the silence. I got a text:

“Hi, mom. I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. I was upset but looking back it wasn’t such a big deal. I’ve been in an abusive relationship and I think that just made things worse. How are grandma and grandpa?”

(When she ghosted me, she ghosted her brother and her grandparents too.)

My role was simple. I was supposed to do what I always do. That’s okay. I’m so sorry you were in a relationship like that. What can I do to help you? (I’m not allowed to collect details at this point.)

I didn’t go that way this time. I said I was sorry, but I still held her feet to the fire on the ghosting. That was when she exploded and the accusations were hot and heavy, all the way up to accusing me of abusing her and my grandson for the last four years while they lived with us.

It was quite a blow. It wasn’t, however, a total shock. I’ve seen her go this way before. I’ve never been the recipient, however. I usually get the disappearing act.

I’ve kept my body busy. I repainted a bedroom, including the closet and door. I redid a couple of garden beds. I moved a literal ton of river rock. I spent money I don’t have on Amazon and indulged my eating disorder too much with restricted intake and excessive exercise.

How quickly we default to old patterns when we’re in pain. I think it’s fine for a bit. I’ve come to no real harm and I made the spare room look pretty. But it’s time to start getting up. Time to remember that in my dissociative driftings, I’m fierce. Time to get busy before that sneaky bitch of an eating disorder digs in.

It’s going to be better than semi-wallowing and stagnation.

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header credit: Marian Buck Murray