I am at a loss, but I know the one thing that helps me through anything is to understand what's going on. So long as I know what's going on, I can maintain my sanity.
My mom is undiagnosed BPD/narcissism. I saw the family therapist for a while and she basically told me without telling me, that my mom has BPD. She told me things like my mom can't control her own emotions so she tries to control everyone and everything around her, that she "hates herself," can't handle stress, and that she's extremely sensitive to rejection and constantly feeling anger. She told me, I can go to my mom for love, but it's like going to an empty refrigerator when you're hungry, it's going to be empty and you're not going to get what you need.
I firmly believe my mom is a BPD waif with slight dips into the other types, but mainly and most of the time she is "the waif." I think she has narcissistic traits too which may account for why she's gotten much much worse rather than better with age.
My massive predicament is that due to her neglect of me as a child, I became very ill and as a direct result of that illness so long ago, I am now on chemo and fighting for my life. I'm in my 20's. Since I can't work or go to school, I'm living at home with my BPD mom and very passive father. My situation is dire and treatment is extremely aggressive. BPD mom of course does not get along with my dad, ever.
Since moving back home from school, of which I have no option to move back out until I'm better, my BPD mom seems to have clamped down on me as though this is her second chance to have me as her daughter but to simultaneously turn me into her friend and emotional trash bin. Object to having either inappropriate treatment of yourself and you'll be told how mean/disrespectful/rude/bossy/ungrateful etc etc etc you are.
I just started my treatment this week and I feel like I'm suffocating with how she's treating me. It's like she's trying to turn me into a baby in the name of helping me. I had to have a surgery for a sort of permanent iv which cannot get wet. My mom now thinks it's a good and logical way to do things that we should buy a plastic lawn chair, have me sit in it, and she'll wash my hair in the shower this way for the next ten months. I thought she was joking at first but she's completely serious. I came downstairs today to find my dad near buying a plastic lawnchair on amazon with my mom directing. I had already told her no yesterday. I told them no again, I will not be doing this, and she looks at me like I now have a third eye. She couldn't possibly understand why I wouldn't be ok with this and thinks I'm incapable of washing my hair in the sink without getting the rest of me wet. She says I can wear a swimsuit and it'll be fine, but has no understanding of the dignity and independence and capability that should be that she's trying to rip away from me by trying to help me in a way that I don't need the help.
This is just the beginning. Since my surgery she is running around trying to control seemingly everything around me. My room and the things in it, where things are, the way I want to organize all the 20 million medications I have to take, the way to set up the schedule for my medications in a way so I understand it not her, EVERYTHING. I don't get to have my possessions and medications and way of doing things in a way that I prefer and which works for me, it's how she wants it.
I get it that she's trying to help (I think?) but she's taking away everything from me that makes me a person with a mind and a brain and makes my own decisions. Metaphorically speaking, if I am a box that's been gift wrapped, she's torn off all the paper, smashed the box, and is now picking away all the cardboard.
I am not allowed to have my own opinions, to direct my own way of living (particularly tangibly around me because she can influence that most), or basically to deviate from her in any way. She would say she lets me choose what I want to do with my life and have my own hobbies, but you have to understand, she is deeply affective and power strong, it's just not obvious to the observer.
I feel like she loves me, but only for the purpose that I can provide love for/to her. Like she views me as some kind of safety or lifeline (against my will) and she hates for that lifeline to talk back. I've felt at times that I'm like a doll to her that's she's proud of. Many parents are proud of their children but I've been in situations with her where she basically "shows me off" and it makes me feel sick. She has spoken of me before in the past year in terms ownership, as though she owns me because she's my mother. She thinks she can treat me any way she wants and I should have to put up with it, and when I object, labels me with whatever wrong way she's been treating me. She loves to tell me that I'm bossy whenever I let her know that she can't treat me a certain way or act a certain way that violates boundaries.
In the past week, with all this medical stuff going on, she's like she's on speed. Anything medical going on, whether it's an iv or taking medication, she flips into high gear and starts talking about her professional medical experience that somehow relates. I can hear the self satisfaction and intensity dripping off her sentences. These arn't comforting stories but instead 20 minute+ explanations of how a medication works and why and how she was a fantastic medical professional in her career. It makes me feel sick listening to it. It's both boring, overwhelming, and things I don't want to know. You haven't lived until you've had medication that makes you feel really sick pumped into your veins at full speed with your mom talking nonstop for 25 minutes about how she made iv bags in her career and the sterile procedure involved. At 23 minutes in, I finally asked her if we could not talk about medical things and she got mad at me and said "what do you want me to do then?" And I said "we can talk about anything else." She angrily says "like what?" as though there is NOTHING else to talk about except this topic. I said "I don't know, anything else, I'm just tired of talking about medical stuff." With that she tells me "You're so bossy. You should hear yourself. I'm going to start video taping you so you can see yourself. ... .I just can't win with you." Silence. She picks up her book to read and punish me with (welcome) silence.
This is one of many fights that have transpired over the past week... and always. We DO NOT GET ALONG ever since I returned home and she's been trying to turn me into a child again.
I've received lectures this past week that I'm lazy while being sick because I objected to her touching a part of an iv tubing that is supposed to remain sterile and you're not supposed to touch it. I received a lecture the night before my surgery that I leave everything until the last minute, when the surgeon hadn't yet decided what type of sedation he was going to use on me and called to speak with me about it the day before the surgery. The day of my second chemo she was telling me all about how much she hates my dad and how horrible her life is because of him (my dad is actually a good guy), and when I told her I didn't want her to complain to me about him, she got mad at me and told me "fine, you don't get to complain to me then (about anything, ever)." I told her it's not ok because she is my mom and I am her daughter and that doesn't change no matter what age I am. She acted as though she couldn't possibly understand that and again resorted to the reading of the book to punish me (or escape, I don't know).
It's just... .it's absolutely maddening. And now she's ripping away my independence and dignity with lawn chairs and insisting on washing my hair for me. In her mind she probably thinks she's doing what's best for me or the best she knows how, but trying to make me 10 years old is not what's best for me and it's not ok. She won't let me be my own person nonetheless an adult and I'm trapped here in this condition, because of HER ACTIONS in the past. I'm so angry with her it's hard to see straight. Not only has she destroyed my life/health but she's working hard to make me miserable currently and blaming me for being anything but happy and content with her angry and controlling behavior. She's also tethering me to herself by trying to make me even more dependent as though I can't even wash my own hair right. I just... .I'm suffocating here in this hellhole of entrapment and infantilization against my will along with parentification. She wants to wash my hair, paint my room a hideous color that she knew I hated without telling me, behave improperly and tell me I'm awful when I'm not ok with her crazy and angry behavior, and NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE so I have nothing. It is 100% her fault that I'm in this situation and that I'm here, and I can do nothing to escape being here unless I get better or drop dead.
What scared me was this realization that I'm not sure is right, but it could be. A lot of times she makes comments to me about how me being sick can't be that bad or hasn't been that bad. (I was
very sick for a long time up until getting diagnosed and starting treatment this week). It dawned on me that what if she views what I'm going through as being the same as what she's felt while observing me being sick? What if her mental separation between what she feels and experiences and what I go through is not there, making her think that what she feels by observation is exactly what I have felt going through this? It's like she has absolutely no concept of how hard it's been and the physical and emotional strength it takes to go through what I have gone through and am currently going through. Like her own observation and perspective is the only one that she applies to MY experience and what it must be like for me. It feels like that's how she sees it.
She doesn't seem to understand and I wonder if she sees my experience as being cared FOR by doctors and nurses and surgeons etc and none of the effort and stamina and worry and pain and exhaustion and doing that it takes to be a patient and fight every single second. And then on the flip side, for herself, probably only sees that she's trying so hard and emotional pain and self victimization and self pity. What do you think?
I have to power through treatment, I have no choice, but being around her is HARD. I get no emotional comfort from her, ever. She does things for me, buys things, but there is a lot of fighting between us over her constant boundary violations and emotionally she's empty unless it's anger. With that, she's full to the brim and it's always readily available. I wish I could be in my own apartment but I just can't afford it.
