Not Like Me

by Charity

Today Deborah said that she could never be like me.   She could never have my strength or resoluteness or...she didn't mention any specific qualities, but I could feel what she was thinking.

I don't want to be anybody's role model.  I don't want the pressure to live up to what they see, or the obligation to be responsible for anybody's well-being, even indirectly.  I have a difficult enough time accepting myself and living my life as myself to take on that kind of burden.

It's hard enough to know who I am.

Allegra says that hearing Deborah say what she said is a breakthrough.  That she said it is a breakthrough as well.  I agree.  And I support any progress any of us makes.  I just don't want to be responsible for it.

I'm trying really hard to ignore the old tapes that say that I should feel guilty for putting my own needs first, for being selfish, for not wanting to be the meek, well-behaved, perfect, self-sacrificing helper and "good girl."  Rachel would like our grandmother to do something physically impossible.  Our grandmother never held us to impossibly high standards, but she held our mother to them.  And even though our mother never willfully did the same to us, the imprint of our grandmother's abuse was seared into our mother's psyche well before we were born, so there was know way that we couldn't be affected by it.

I really hate our grandmother.  I still feel that I shouldn't say this, or feel it, and it's hard to ignore those old tapes.  But I strongly believe that our grandmother is the single outside force most responsible for our life being as miserable as it's been.