Homework Assignment 1

I might start this therapy homework assignment with the letter I wrote to my mother at the beginning of last year. I wrote this after the last phone call I ever received from her. At the time, I worded the letter reasonably carefully as it was my intention to send it to her. I never did send it, however.

13 January 2004

Dear Mother

During your recent telephone call to me, you asked why I didn't care for you. If you take the time to read through and understand this letter hopefully you will gain an understanding of what happened in our relationship.

It is not that I don't care for you. If I did not have any feelings for you, talking to you would not negatively affect me the way that your last phone call did. Rather, it is that I am reluctant to contact you any way other than through writing. The reasons for this, I will attempt to explain throughout the rest of this letter.

Firstly, from my point of view, every time we speak it seems that your behaviour is quite abusive and accusatory. For example, during our recent telephone call, you called me "pathetic" when I began to explain to you why I did not contact you via telephone. This is what caused me to get upset and slam the phone down. Historically, this has often been the case in other voice contacts as well. This behaviour extends to my husband too. You described my future husband as "controlling" during a telephone call around the time we were married.

Secondly, you may deny it, but you did send me a letter when I was living in Dysart which stated that you no longer wanted any contact with me. I did not keep this letter, so unfortunately I have no proof that you did this. Instead, I burnt the letter in order to dispel its "negative energies".

The above are only a few instances I can pick out of many of which have occurred in the past. It seems from my end, ever since I reached young adulthood and moved away from South East Queensland, you have had difficulty relating to me in a positive manner. I am clueless as to why you act in this way. All I can tell you is that your behaviour has hurt me deeply and I am affected by it even now that I am in my mid thirties.

So, in essence, I am reluctant to contact you via telephone as I am trying to protect myself from your negative behaviour. All that I ask, if you are able to do so, is for you to begin to take responsibility for your own actions and not lay total blame on others. No-one's actions in a relationship are totally without blemish.

My apologies if this letter offends you in any way. To offend is not the reason why I wrote this letter. Rather it is hopefully to give you some insight on why I am reluctant to contact you via telephone.

I wish you well for your future and hope that your health is holding up adequately.

Regards
Kym

Maybe I should take a quick moment to explain what happened during the phone call in question. My mother rang me in January 2004. Initially she tried to make small talk, but all of a sudden she took on an accusatory manner and came out with the question, "Why don't I care?"

I remember being rather taken aback by the question. For years I had felt that our communication, which was very rare anyway, was incredibly strained. She wanted a definite reason though, so I stumbled out with something about a letter that she had written me years before (in 1995 I think) that stated she no longer wanted anything to do with me. She denied ever writing such a letter and then called me pathetic.

I lost it at that point. I slammed down the telephone, except instead of hanging up, the phone fell on the floor with the receiver still off the hook. I raced into the kitchen and started screaming incomprehensibly. It's not the first time a telephone call from my mother resulted in me doing the same thing. Unfortunately she would have heard it all, a fact that still makes me pretty annoyed to this day.

Hubby ran out to the kitchen, however, and hung up the phone for me. She rang again straight away, but neither my husband nor I answered the call. She left a long message on our message bank, but Hubby deleted it straight away. The only thing that Hubby has ever said to me about the message is that my mother sounded like she believed she was talking into a proper telephone answering machine and therefore thought that we could hear what she was saying as she was saying it.