Comandments of dating
13-Dec-2019 16:18
You are not an individual, separate person to your NParent, you are an extension of him, her, or them.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t change when you grow up.
She had a thin leather strap, once a dog leash but with the metal clip removed, with which she would “spank” me.
These were no spankings, they were whippings in the truest sense of the word, because The Strap left the same thin, raised red welts across my tender flesh that a whip would leave.
Somehow I expected that when I turned 18, not only would I have boundaries, but NM would be obligated to respect them. I had never thought of myself as being an extension of my mother until I learned about boundaries: the better your boundaries, the more autonomous you are…and I was not allowed to be autonomous, nor was I allowed to have boundaries.
To even hint at having them was to invite a retaliatory rage; to give away the slightest feeling of dismay or displeasure at having my boundaries violated risked indignance, aroused suspicions, and punishment.
I was not allowed to move during the whipping—if I so much as rolled to one side in my agony, I was given more lashes for attempting to get away—“defiance,” she called it.
She could hit, slap, pinch, whip, push, trip, beat me and even pull my hair, but I was not allowed to even look like I wanted to protest.
At the end of one her forays, I would be missing clothes, books, toys, cards from my grandmothers and drawings I did (“worthless trash” in NM’s estimation), and even pets.In other words, boundaries define who we are and who we are not.