Jezebel 
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New York, 2:22 AM
Mon Nov 30
18 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/28/09
My friend finds it easier to remain under the familiar misery of her mother's control than to face the unknown and fight for her freedom, probably because her mother has told her since birth that she isn't capable of taking care of herself. I've even offered to let her stay with me, but she can't seem to work up the courage to get away.
It boggles the mind how deeply a parent's lies can burrow inside their child's mind and warp their existence. Boggles the mind and breaks the heart.
08/28/09
I'm a 22 year old woman set to begin her first minimum wage job on Monday. I have a severe eating disorder, which I recently -- beat back enough to be functional, and one of the most haunting things my psychologist ever said to me was, "You need to get away from your mother more than anything, and your eating disorder is the thing that keeps you tied to her." That was motivation. It was motivation last time, too, at 17, when I abruptly hit remission, got into out of state universities, and applied for jobs left and right. But after my father's death and my mother's cancer diagnosis a year later (and my mother's response to my dream university yanking my aid, her kicking me out of the house in the immediate aftermath of my father's death), the constant abuse and undermining started to sink through.
It's very hard to explain, but when you grow up constantly being told that you have no friends, that you're too expensive to keep, that x/y/z/the other thing, that you're too stupid to find your way out of a building (no lie, that happened when I was sixteen), that you can't even vacuum properly: you find yourself more comfortable receiving and believing those messages than constantly fighting them off. In my case, anorexia was a great FUCK YOU to my mother, as being thin, eating less, exercising more: that was the one thing I could do that she never could. (Naturally, my mother asked me for tips.)
So my heart breaks for your friend. I want very much to join the Air Force, to acquire those skills and that kind of strength, and it makes me so sad that someone you describe as so capable and wonderful is fighting the same battle so many of us are. For what it's worth: I know that it is possible to win.
But it's not just freedom of the unknown, sometimes. In my case, it's not having any other family, extended or immediate. With the freedom gained in breaking away, there is a loss: nowhere to go at holidays; no more calls home with good news just in the hope that someone might care; the fact of it being your f'ing mother. I know that people think that I'm insane for still talking to her, even, at this point, let alone living with her, but when the mother-daughter bond changes from dysfunctional but pulsing to a true break, it's hard to contemplate. Harder still when you know the person on the other end would be willing to walk away, which makes you cling even harder in the hope of making this work, somehow. I don't know if that's an issue with your friend, but it's... definitely something that I struggle with, and it's very hard to explain to the outside, because, yes, I could 'cut my losses' but getting the hell out of Dodge, but I'll acquire a new set of small griefs. At least when my mother is reminding me that I'm worthless, I know how to deal with that. The fear of the 'unknown' in my case, at least, is the question of: 'How can I -- can I? -- cope with the fact of nowhere to go at the holidays? At least if I'm miserable, I'm connected, but to have silence as the proof of what I already am, totally alone, oh, God, I don't know, maybe I can just get through this....'
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08/28/09
I'm sorry that you have to go through that. Being rejected by a parent can be crippling but it seems as though you recognize the pattern and will be strong enough to break it. Hopefully you can build a support network apart from your mother and rely on these friends and mentors to help you through. I wish you all the best. You write beautifully.
08/28/09
I, too, wish you all the best.
08/28/09
I told mine "no one is allowed to talk to me that way" finally. When I was 45.
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08/28/09
Dude, this kind of shit happens constantly to varying degrees, it's really not that "perplexing." You can be smart, you can be beautiful, you can be any number of wonderful things and still be controlled.
This mother is a total psycho--keeping her daughter in a crib during her toddler years? I hope she get jail time.
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as creepy and horrific as this story is, the locale is too close to home for me as i don't live far from garwood.
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[1heckofaguy.com]
08/28/09
ONLY FIVE YEARS?!
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I don't know why they couldn't charge her with a more serious offense considering what this poor girl went through :(
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Has anyone read The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold? I just finished it, and this story reminded me of the book.
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And the father already plead guilty, so unless his attorney was total crap, it seems like the DA must have some case.