Resentment

It has been a long time, so I wont fill you in on the minutae. I had my birthday and my birthday surprise which was a jeep trip round Longleat. This was fabulous, check out our Flikr links as I'm sure pictures will appear there soon. Hard birthday to have, first without Dad. Mum came to stay last weekend, which was very useful. Absolutely terrifying in so many respects as she really is a total child. It's amazing how much responsibility I've accrued over the years, and how that is manipulated to form aggression by both of us. So good to see, but kind of "ouch", and a big "ouch" too. A very good "ouch" though.

This leads me to my topic - resentment. For so long, and I still am, I have been in a state of seething resentment about things. Why do I have to mother my mother, why cant we talk without ww3 breaking out, why doesn't my body work properly, etc, etc. At the moment I've started a new regime for my eczema using "The Eczema Solution". It's very interesting, from a Buddhist perspective it's all about bringing awareness to the itch, and to the subsequent scratch. I actually started the programme last year, but felt that I was perceptive enough to read it the whole way through, and simply practice the habit reversal without first gaining an understanding of my scratching behaviour through use of a clicker when I do scratch. I learnt the hard way I'm not that perceptive lol, so hopefully at some point a lesson about humility will be learnt too. The first day I logged my scratches I logged something like 497, today, after starting the habit reversal, plus temporarily increasing my steroid use, plus daily bath, my number is so far 41. My skin is looking a lot better too.

Now I am paying attention to my skin, I'm no longer feeling resentful of it. It's quite interesting, I feel like I'm entering into a relation with it, or at least a more positive one. But all I've really done is start to pay attention to it. I had a similar experience with Mum. She had an abusive relationship with her mother, who basically infantalised her, and in fact would not give Mum attention unless Mum either mothered her, or was her child. The same continued with me, and is still in our conversations today. Mum is a bit like one of those misbehaving children you see in TV shows - she actively misbehaves to get attention. As an adult this means she will deliberately set traps, which I run into with no awareness, in order to get shouted at. Me, with my seething resentment about not having a real mother, will then use this vent my own frustration, and shout, and thus confirm Mum's belief that the only conversations that really matter are the ones where she get's shouted at. I had started to unpick some of this, but it all went when Dad died. I felt I had to look after Mum, and naturally enough, in her grief, Mum reverted to her default position of toddler. Luckily Ian kindly pointed out to me that I was being very abrupt to Mum, and I realised that what I need to do, is simply to listen. Like with my skin, and like with the pacing that has helped my experience of ME so much. Listening means I dont have to have an opinion, unless I feel it's really worth sharing, and it will also honour Mum with the respect she deserves. It's also less exhausting and worrying for me, listening to the resentment means I dont need to act it out.

I figure there's a bit of a theme emerging...

Love to you all.