Wow, it's pretty amazing what's happening!  I've talked so much about the Barracuda for these past two years in therapy--how intrusive she is, how controlling, how critical, how cold.  I think I really needed to talk and talk and talk about all the terrible things she did to me and what a bitch she is.  Somehow I'm getting to a point where I feel like my therapist and I TOTALLY get what she did and what it was like for me to grow up with her, and I just feel sort of settled or something with it.  Like what I've always needed--to have someone understand how it felt to grow up with her--is just totally satisfied or something.  I didn't even know that could happen.  I guess I thought I would feel exactly the same about her for the rest of my life.  The really weird thing is that I'm starting to remember good things about her!!  WTF, right???  It's scary even now to say this stuff--I realized I've felt like I had to only focus on the bad stuff--like my life depended on not letting anything good leak into my or anyone else's awareness.  I guess I thought if anyone knew anything good about her, they'd tell me to stop whinning about her--that it wasn't so bad after all!  I guess that's it--I feel like nothing could change my therapist's understanding about how bad it's been for me--I absolutely know that she absolutely knows and nothing could take that away.  So I feel less scared to say anything good about her.  I keep remembering more stuff too.  I remember times I was sick and she was really sweet and loving and nurturing.  I think of her as so cold, but what she really was was so busy.  She was gone working a lot--evenings and weekends she showed people houses.  But when she was with me and she wasn't all pissed off at my Dad, or worried about whether he was going to get home alive from the bar, and she was relaxed, she could actually laugh, and play a little and cuddle me!  It is sooooooo weird to remember this about her after only remembering her as a bitch on wheels for years.