Revisiting

[bethanny]

I have had so much help revisiting this site from time to time. Also perusing an incredible book called Understanding the Borderline Mother..

I am grateful for the recovery I have managed though regret the degree of isolation I have spent most of my life in. The first part of my life was desperately trying to fulfill my expected good daughter role. Fighting to deny the irrational malice that erupted from my mother from time to time and left me so confused, self-hating and anxious. I blamed my mother’s ambushes on her stress from my alcoholic father, who was often cruel, but now that I know about bpd personality disorder he had so much to deal with from her.. I also had brother my age who constantly exploded with rage at me.

Between mother and brother I was a disaster as a human being and my mission in life was to present someone better than my real self to the world because that real self apparently brought brutal condemnation. I became pathologically shame based.

By age of 30 I finally but modestly asserted myself to my mother. Like an adult to adult. It triggered more of that horrifying psychotic rage that terrified me. I pulled away from her hoping the rage would dissipate but my mother couldn’t do conflict resolution. Also she went into dramatic victim role misrepresenting to immediate and secondary family a preposterous lie. That I was abandoning her.. I thought the issue would be addressed between us but within days she had appealed to everyone in our mutual lives and had generated so much pity and good will for herself from them she totally gutted my support network. She presented herself to them as confused and wronged and worried about me. To me she was the terrifying Mommie Dearest.

I learned that my so-called intimate relationships with parents and siblings and friends actually had no depth and my mother was ruthlessly willing to successfully character assassinate me.

I was estranged from family primary and secondary for a decade, though at beginning kept assuming things would right themselves. But deep down I learned my mother was not capable of loving me and I was fighting this recognition all my life actually. I felt like Nora in a Doll’s House.

The most important quote I ever heard was “recovery is learning to let go of what you never had.” I am still trying to let go.

[Riv3rW0lf]

She presented herself to them as confused and wronged and worried about me. To me she was the terrifying Mommie Dearest.

I learned that my so-called intimate relationships with parents and siblings and friends actually had no depth and my mother was ruthlessly willing to successfully character assassinate me.

I was estranged from family primary and secondary for a decade, though at beginning kept assuming things would right themselves. But deep down I learned my mother was not capable of loving me and I was fighting this recognition all my life actually. I felt like Nora in a Doll’s House.

The most important quote I ever heard was “recovery is learning to let go of what you never had.” I am still trying to let go.

Hi bethanny

Thank you for this post. It personally hit me like a brick yesterday when I read it first... Especially the part about learning our mother are incapable of loving us. This is something I have been struggling with the past few days... Well for longer than that, but I have been a bit shaked this past few days.

My mother birthday is coming up in a few days, and it was my daughter's birthday last week. I have been no contact with my mother going on two years now, but she still sends small gifts and letters to my children who cannot read, never to me. When she adresses me, I am a terrible person, a monster... And it hit me recently that this truly shaped itself when my children were born.

Before that, the relationship was manageable. But when they were born... It's like I became the main obstacle between her and what she truly wanted, her grandchildren, and so.. instead of being a loving, helpful grandmother, she was a tyrant and the rages multiplied. Her jealousy increased, and I became increasingly triggered by her presence... As my spider senses kept telling me to protect my children, although I didn't know why at the time...

I've been playing with this idea of reconnecting with her... But a part of me is just... So so against it, it blocks any and all attempts I could potentially make. Mostly because this part knows quite well what you put into words :
- my mother doesn't love me
- my mother only wants access to her grandchildren through me
- she will never forgive me for "taking" two years away from her grandchildren's life while they were young

And in a sense I get it... I know it deeply hurt her. But what was I to do? Tolerate her rages and disrespect toward me, allowing her to do what she pleases with the most precious beings I know? Two beings I am ultimately responsible for protecting from abuse.

I am ranting now... Just wanted to say thank you, your post resonated with me. I didn't know I needed it until I read it. It kind of eased the pain a little bit to be reminded I am the the only one with those thoughts, going through this.

[bethanny]

Riv3R,

My heart goes out to you.

That irrational malice and jealousy we had to endure as best we could growing up was totally beyond our control. Ever will be I might add.

I endured. 10 year estrangement that I guess it took for me to acknowledge my mother’s disorder prevented her from ever seeing the real me, the parts that at times were celebrated by others and though validating from them pained me by  illuminating the black hole that replaced the enlivening support of a genuinely loving parent.

In my 20’s after a blessed period of being away during college semesters from my mother’s terrorizing malice and my father’s frightening alcoholism and narcissism I lived in my parents home again and fell into pit of clinical depression. I spent more and more time curled in a fetal position sobbing.  I was so frightened as to what was happening to me and feared I would need to be institutionalized since I couldn’t control and hide my inner angst any longer. I think my inner child had had enough of the trauma coming at me from caretakers who were toxic. I think my anger wasn’t safe, so it poured out of me in despair.

My mother had responded to me with some empathy when I was sick as a child. But my horrifying depression which she mainly was the only one who knew the extreme degree of unleashed even more of her excessive rage at me. I was dumbfounded. There was a gross stupidity in her. As if I could control the overwhelming despair I was feeling if I could. It reminded me of her rages at me when I wet the bed as a child. I would ask myself why does she think I can control my bladder when I am sleeping? I would never dare communicate with my mother in her psychotic anger state.

I was still in her physical and emotional thrall. I was dependent on her for most part for food and shelter. I tried to accommodate her when I could. I pitied the pain she must have been experiencing in such a miserable marriage. I fought with denial the reality of her deep contempt for me. Stayed obsequious. Her psychotic anger was more the incentive but I rationalized it was my pity for her. My good daughte ness.

It took me so long even after experiencing a mother bullying a suffering child though young adult.  It was gobsmacking the hatred rather than empathy that erupted from her. She seemed at war with my growing adulthood and wouldn’t let me go there if she could help it. She also demanded I perform to our social network as a successful and happy adult she wouldn’t let me be.

She was saintly in front of others. The witch only emerged at times one on one.

That period of profound depression was a wake up call to a reality I fought to deny but couldn’t.

Same as when later in life when a modest assertion triggered our estrangement her lack of willingness to communicate with me to do conflict resolution was emptier than even I was prepared for, even though on a subconscious level I knew  it was bad. And how easily she manipulated others to sabotage my potential support was ruthless and demoralizing.

She couldn’t see me. Appreciate me. But felt entitled to have me serve her at all times. Without appreciation the more I struggled to take after my own needs. I had no permission from her to do that.

This dark disorder brings unhappiness to the ones who suffer from it, but the children, especially the designated scapegoats, the victims of these victims, have a sad lot —  years of being discounted and discouraged from ever reaching for their own joy. Like getting tasered every time they  reached for it.

When my estrangement ended not from my mother’s reaching out but one of my brothers’ finally she was physically ailing and less formidable and I surrendered to the reality I could offer “affinity” not intimacy and allow that to fill a small part of my hunger for unconditional love. I knew and took myself off the hook as much as possible by accepting that  emotional intimacy wasn’t possible EVER. What I hoped our estrangement would incentivize when it happened but after 10 long years had to accept she wasn’t capable. And the sacrifice of my sanity let alone happiness shouldn’t be my life’s role and to finally learn that.

I think there is sometimes a slippery slope to the denial of our childhood where the loveless reality of our parents that allowed the irrational malice to burn was too much to face down and we so minimized eruptions of that dark annihilating anger.

Like that quote says, we have to let go of what we never had. We didn’t get it and we can’t have space for real support, especially for support of our own selves by our selves if we don’t let go of the hope and hunger. Or I like to think of it as raising our own inner child finally that got abandoned for the out of control inner child of our parents that sabotaged our life maturation and self esteem so massively with it’s unfair and crazymaking demands.

I realize our life situations are not parallel but I am glad some of my thoughts have resonated. Thank you for validating my perceptions.

I find myself reaching periodically for a book that is my recovery Bible, Understanding the Borderline Mother by Christine Ann Lawson. It combats the mandates of social sentimentality and even Christian orthodoxy of honoring a parent and not taking into account when that role is massively dooming to ourselves.

Best,
Bethanny