The prison of lies

The prison of lies
Thursday December 18, 2008

Hi Alice,

I am a man in my thirties from Ireland.
I have just finished reading your book “the body never lies” and I am now in the process of extricating myself from a
loveless relationship with my parents. The website is great, especially the letters from your readers, I find them a
great help and comfort to know that I am not going through this alone.
I have worked through therapy for four years and I really felt like I covered ground and that I had lost to my subconscious
(for very good reasons) but at the end of it all I returned to my parents looking for what they could not give.
The thinking went something like this, well, now that I have reclaimed my lost inner child and I am finally able to love
and accept myself for who I am, now I can return to my parents and love them without the risk of them hurting me
anymore. I was wrong. I was deceived again, by myself of course.
Your book has helped me see the light so to speak.
I am going through a lot of emotional turmoil as you would expect and I find writing it out on paper helps me move
through the emotions. My entire childhood was about redirecting these emotions in on myself and writing them out helps
me to understand them and sometimes what I write makes me cry or feel angry. To date I haven’t felt fear while writing
and I know on some deep level that this is the emotion I fear the most, fear itself but I’ll get there in the end.
The following is a letter to my mother/ window into my childhood (that I will never post).
Feel free to publish it on the webpage, it might help someone who is looking to connect into their rage,

Thank you for being so courageous and saying what needs to be said,

G.

Open your mouth! Have you been eating sweets?
OPEN YOUR MOUTH I SAID!!! (bordering on hysterical)
I think I can actually remember a time when she put her hands into
my brother’s mouth to take out half chewed sweets and then threw the
mess on the floor, she was fucking crazy.
And on some level we both knew it, a crazy twisted bitch who relied
on all around her to agree that what she was doing was necessary and
right. What she did was very wrong and damaging (to be nice about it).
Runs from the room crying, “RIGHT, THAT’S IT, YOU CAN FUCKIN LOOK AFTER THEM” (to the man
who calls himself my father), doesn’t return until late in the evening,
this made me feel like I was too much work, that my emotions, my desires,
my spontaneity was not just too much trouble but actually despised.
I felt like we were despised by my mother, actually hated, thinly disguised
behind a veil of “motherly care and discipline”, this was what she probably
told herself she was doing, a martyr, a real martyr, this was for our own
good. For her own good more like.
I do ask myself why did she have children?
Why does anybody have children?
Is it just a natural progression in a relationship?
There are couples that decide not to have children.
The biggest protestation that my biological father ever put up was “Ah Mothers Name, he didn’t mean it”.
as my brother was being beathen, but that wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, they were shit parents, absolutely shit,
and the fact that they thought they were good parents and pretended to like us
made it very confusing.
They were hated, then they hated themselves and finally they hated me and my brother.
They say otherwise, I remember once (not too long ago) when she said “now boys, you do know that
I love both of you”, oh God, I can’t help but laugh, it is tragic, “you do KNOW
that I love you both”. Well Mother, I always wanted to believe that, I really did
but everything you’ve ever done to me and said to me shows me that firstly you
don’t even know me and secondly you hated any real emotion I ever expressed.
You divided me and that was why you never got to know me.
Divide and conquer, Good Me, Bad Me.
You divided and conquered a child, a harmless innocent child.
You divided and conquered two brothers.
That was very wrong, criminal in fact.
It was emotional abuse of the highest order,
if that was physical abuse you would probably be in jail and you have the fucking cheek
to turn around and say that “you know that I love you”.
Not “I love you” (this would have been equally as meaningless) but “you know” “I love you”,
you still couldn’t bring yourself to say I love you both and I am sorry for what I have done.
I would not forgive you but it would have helped back when I was in great turmoil,
instead you gave me a book called “the power of negative thinking” and I spent four
years in therapy where I secretly defended your names despite everything you had done to me
and everything you have deprived me of.
How would we know Mother, tell me that, how would I know that you loved me?
The only way I would know that would be to extract myself from the real world in which we live
and relocate myself into a fantasy world, where beatings are expressions of love, where sexual
kisses and touches are expressions of love, where lies and deceit are truth, where manipulation
of a child’s desire to be loved is normal and acceptable, where refusal to let your children
be spontaneous children is not soul murder, where manipulating me to burn-out and mentally collapse
from the exhaustion of trying to please you was for my own good, where screaming the house down and running from
it crying and blaming your children for these emotions is completely acceptable and normal,
where tearing sweets from your childs hand and throwing them into the fire to burn is a sign of affection,
well maybe in THAT world I would know that you loved me but that world doesn’t exist anymore,
it is very out of sync with the real world, inverted world, where hate is love.
What you were really saying was “now boys you both know that I hated you both when you were children” and
I can barely tolerate you as adults now that you no longer threaten me with your REAL emotions”
Job accomplished, now we can all live happily ever after, can’t we? Can’t we?
Fuck Off.

AM: I know, It is painful, very painful, to open the eyes and eventually SEE what was g hidden behind the hypocrisy the child was unable to see through. But the pain opens you the door to your truth that finally offers you relief and access to new, healthy paths. I am glad for you that you found the courage to feel and to give up the illusions, which kept you over such a long time in the prison of lies.