Legacymaker
 Offline
Gender: 
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Parent
Relationship status: married (31 years)
Posts: 104
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« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2017, 01:49:17 PM » |
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Wow, its been almost 4 years since I wrote this post! So much has changed and yet so much remains the same. Today I find myself needing support, yet again. You'll have to go back to 2014 to see the full impact of the raging my mother exhibited, which is what brought me to this group. In the past few years, I have learned to be stronger. I have always been "the good girl". I grew up in an environment of rage, physical abuse and alcoholism. In an attempt to make my mother and brothers lives easier, I strove to be perfect. There is a long history of uBPD in our family. My biological father was diagnosed as Schizophrenic and Bi Polar. He left when I was 3. My mother married into an abusive relationship. Mostly I just wanted to stay out of the way. I spent a lot of my childhood hiding in my closet, but my default was to be the peacekeeper and parent when I needed to. This resulted in serious co-dependency with a group of adults who never acted much like the grown ups. I strove to break the cycle of abuse as soon as I left home at 17. The twists and turns of my parents and brother have kept me on my toes since then. With some serious boundaries, I have enjoyed a wonderful marriage of 34 years and the love of three amazing son's. I was about 50 when my mother decided to unleash her rage on me. Thankfully, your support gave me strength to go into NC for two years, (I had been NC with my brother for 3 years prior to that). As I sought to find "me" again, it has an incredibly peaceful time. That ended in March of 2016. After two years of NC, my mother sent me out of town concert ticket for Christmas. This was her way of making up. Knowing how much the tickets had cost, my husband and I traveled several hours, through the worst blizzard of our lives, to attend the concert. My mother and her husband "surprised" us by showing up in the seats next to us. I had feared this might happen, which was the only reason we had continued through the blizzard. Thankfully the concert was loud and I was unable to speak for the next couple of hours, while I processed all of my sadness, at what had been lost over the years. In a nutshell I use to think of my mother as my best friend. I couldn't imagine life without her. It had been her raging which had finally driven me away. My brother had extreme anger issues, I always thought he had been the black sheep. I eventually went NC with him because he seemed to be causing so many issues which upset my mother. In 2013, my brother called for a family mediation. My mother and brother both got called out on their behaviors, namely that I was being forced to act like the parent most of the time. My brother did some serious work on himself and is in a much healthier place these days. The counseling also exposed that my mother was constantly pitting us against each other through her gossiping and competitive nature. I think the counseling triggered my mother's BPD significantly. She has since moved from being a waif, to becoming very hostile with everyone around her, which she now interprets as being strong. She is constantly causing fights between family members as she gossips, judges and criticizes everyone. She has now been cast out from almost every family network she once had, and she can't make the correlation. Through counseling, my brother and I both have realized how much trouble she has made for the family with her backstabbing and gossiping. It is like a lightswitch went off. We are more aware of what she is doing, we now communicate, so we are better able to cope with it. Unfortunately, my mom lost her sounding board in me as I no longer engage in her triangulation's. Anyway, back to the concert, following the performance, she offered a simple apology for her behavior (which had been a gut wrenching rage session, meant to destroy every ounce of self esteem I had) and happily declared our feud was now over. I didn't put up much resistance, because I only ever want her happiness and peace and truthfully, I just wanted to get back home. That was in March. The next time I saw her was May of 2016. My father died and she insisted on attending his funeral. She had been divorced from him for over 45 years and hadn't seen him in 10. She was on show throughout the entire event and made a spectacle of herself as she inappropriately introduced herself as his ex-wife and discussed the child they had lost. The funeral was every bit as challenging as I had feared it would be (including her pretending to kiss my father's corpse with a snapdragon). It was exhausting. Again, we only spent a few hours together and there was a lot of activity around us, so it kept her behavior (with me) in check. After that I have maintained LC, and been able to avoid spending physical time together. She and her husband live overseas for 6 months a year, so I knew that I could have this time to work on things. This last year, my health wasn't very good so I was able to put her off as I had a lot of medical appointments I had to attend to. Since the funeral, I have communicated by phone weekly, because I still feel some obligation to her, but I keep the conversations very brief and platonic. Recently her husband retired, which has freed up all of their time. They are returning to the States this weekend. Today, she has asked to come spend time with me (she lives in another state). I said we'll see if we can work something out. She confronted me that I am flat every time she mentions getting together. Trying to set a boundary, I told her that I wasn't ready for her to come back to my home (we use to spend every Christmas together). The truth is, my husband will never allow her here again, since the last time she went on one of her rages, she nearly mentally destroyed me. I won't tell her this is his wish. From the moment I left home at 17, I have put up safety net after safety net to keep our lives peaceful. My counselor suggested that I try to verbalize my feelings. In the course of the conversation, I felt myself having a panic attack. My anxiety was through the roof as I struggled to find gentle enough words to share with her, knowing that telling her she couldn't come was going to cause her pain. Normally I can change the subject but this time my mother had asked me directly, why I was avoiding having her here. I decided to be honest and told her that although we had been speaking, we had never really confronted the issue that had gotten us to the point of NC. I tried to explain that my self esteem continues to be shot, because of her criticisms and that I am scared to spend time with her, for fear of returning to that place where she puts me. I don't want to keep reviewing "the" argument, but some of the things she said were so fierce and vicious that I simply can not unhear them. While I know she loves me, I have had a lot of trouble separating out her choice of words to me, from her BPD behaviors. I have given her several opportunities to apologize over the years. I pointed out where she was hurting me and how these comments made me feel. These were met with letters stating that these have been "her truths". When I reminded her of this today, she denied saying any of it, even though I reminded her she had even made sure to put it in writing for me. So even though she has asked for forgiveness, my brain has continued to hear that, "I am a bad daughter, that my own children don't love me, and that I will never be as smart or successful as she has been... .and everything else she has spewed onto me for years." Logically, I know that none of these phrases which she throws out really matter. I try to look at my children and know that they love me, but they are grown and moved away from home now. They are young adults and forget to call. I hear my mothers voice as my self doubt creeps in. I think of the father that I spent 10 years taking care of as he battled mental illness, dementia and parkinson's. I hear my mother telling me what a bad daughter I've been. I think about all the ways I've tried to be there for her, tried to form beautiful memories to replace all the bad ones she has had. I hear her telling me that I only pretend to love her. I know that most of her words are her reflection of herself. Somehow, with this last rage, I haven't been able to let them go and my walls remain up. Immediately I found myself in familiar water as her tears, guilt and ruminating started. She reminded me of her age. She started to tell me all the things I had done wrong. She begged me to be the daughter I once was. She wants me to go back to the daughter who would have done anything for anyone. In a nutshell, she wants the old me back, but this is the child she killed on the day she last chose to rage. I recognize that the waif has arrived once again. I stood my ground and now I feel like crap for expressing any of my own needs. I feel like I am living up to that daughter that she is so incredibly disappointed in. In minutes of hanging up, I messaged her with the solution of meeting somewhere other than my home for a couple of days. Someone please help me process these feelings of anxiety. I love her dearly. There was once a day when I couldn't imagine my world without her. I spent 50+ years working hard to be the best daughter I knew how. I hate to admit that the past couple of years have been some of the most peaceful ever for me. Today, I'm a bumbling mess. I feel like that little girl who never had enough ways to solve all the problems. My husband reminds me that because I let her back in, we're seeing some of the same old cycles, as I fall into the rabbit hole once again. He reminds me that I am functioning from a FOG mentality. He reminds me that as she began stabbed at me once again while she was breaking down today, that she is still quite capable of causing great pain. It kills me to know she will spend the weekend trying to self sooth. Her husband will reinforce that she is wonderful. He will not have heard the things she said to me. He will only hear that I have upset her "again". I will always be the bad guy, painted black. My mirror is once again dirty as I am trying to see my reflection. I mourn for the little girl lost, yet I have become the old woman.
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