What Next?

How far am I willing to go to protect myself? As I watch things unfold between my daughter, my granddaughter and me, I can't help but wonder to what extent I will go to feel safe. Will I go so far that the wall is so high and so thick that I will have them totally pushed out of my heart? That question really worries me.

The only thing I know for sure at this point is they are still hurting me.......well, maybe not they, as much as my daughter. But if my daughter is at the root of all of this, I can't.........no won't, feel safe with my granddaughter either. They are just too tied up together in one bundle right now.

It seems that this thing between us has a life of it's own. My daughter has something to prove or maybe she needs to get even. I don't know which it is for sure.

What I do know is that what she is saying to me and saying to other people are not the same thing. I also know she is doing something the therapists called wedging. She is trying to turn people against me........trying to convince them that I am the bad guy, trying to get them to take sides.

Of course, I'm not supposed to know these things. But you can't talk to people in a barn and think things aren't going to get around. Even things spoken in confidence somehow make their way out where they're not supposed to.

The result is I know what's been said even though I was never meant to and it still hurts despite the walls. I know that means more walls. But when will the walls stop? Are walls the only way? At this point I don't even know.

I do know that I won't put up walls so high that the whole world is shut out, one of my commentors worried about that. I will never go back to that place where I am isolated and totally alone.

I do not blame the world for this hurt I am experiencing. The root of it is clearly my relationship with my oldest daughter. The walls are directly related to that.

I just need to figure out what I am going to do to deal with them. Confronting my daughter hasn't worked. There is no point in even trying. The things I have learned make it clear that she's pretty entrenched in her old patterns and that she's really really angry at me.

But do I continue to build walls to protect myself? Or is there another way? Can I find a way for her to no longer hurt me without walls? It seems like some simple advice like "don't let her push your buttons" should work.

But how does a mother watch a child do hateful things and not be hurt by that? I guess it's much easier for me to see that working with a 3 year old throwing a temper tantrum. But for some reason being in this situation with a 40 year old daughter seems different.

I guess I'm going to have to go back to that place so many years ago when she decided to kill herself to teach me a lesson. That didn't hurt my feelings at all............it just plain pissed me off. Maybe that's part of the problem now, I need to get pissed.........or maybe I still need to cry over the fact my daughter tried to kill herself to hurt me those many years ago. I'm pretty sure I never got around to that. It's got to be hanging around in there somewhere. It's just that I'm really tired of all the pain. and I doubt that resolving it internally will fix this situation anyway. I just don't know what's next.