My mother would tell me to go ahead and kill myself.

[Greeneyed Girl]

My mother could and still does sense when someone (especially me and my deceased father) was/is in deep emotional pain.  As I was growing up, rather than comforting me or putting her arms around me if I was experiencing some crisis, she would insult me horribly about the situation, blame me for it, and say things to make it worse- vulgar, curse-filled, blaming language.   I learned early on not to go to her for comfort but when I tried to hide my pain she would sniff it out like an animal ( I make no apologies for the analogy) draw some response from me and proceed to grind her heel into my wound.  No one could or can mourn around her about someone's death, for example.  She will actually say something such as, "go dig such and such up!" or, "You are abnormal! You should be over this!"- two weeks after an untimely death of much-loved friend/family.  By contrast, when her own mother died she lay across the grave kissing it, stared into space for months while playing sad songs about mothers non-stop.  I wonder where this comes from.  I could never cry about normal things, never say I felt, as a teen that I wanted to die.  My mother would tell me to go ahead and kill myself.  How do you deal with it?

Cherry Sky

[tiredmommy2]

Hi Greeneyed Girl, I'm not here too often anymore, but occasionally scan through to check on everyone here.  Your thread title quickly caught my eye, so I had to respond.

After being diagnosed with major depression by the age of 9, I also went on to have suicidal thoughts for many years to come, even being hospitalized at one point for an attempt.  I remember pouring my heart out to my mother about feeling so depressed that I once again wanted to die; that I was actually angry every morning when I would actually wake up.  She got tired of me complaining I guess and said something like, "Just     ing do it then!"  In hindsight, I have to really wonder why that stung so much; this was the same woman who informed me that she wished she would have had an abortion.

You reminded me of something else that I don't think about too much anymore (over a year of NC has done amazing things  ), but it was always a big deal if I was upset about anything.  I should "get over it" when she thought I should be over it, not when I was actually ready to be over it.  Now since we were working on her timeline, I was expected to grieve major losses and be "over it" within days, or if I wasn't, I had to pretend that I was.

Here's the irony. When her child molesting husband left her for another woman, she laid around in bed like she was dying of terminal cancer.  She drank herself to a point of vomiting, stayed in bed all day crying and listening to love songs, and spent her spare time begging him to come back... .  This went on for months while she 100% neglected her children and everything else in her life, and it was fine because it was how SHE felt.

To answer your question about enjoyment, yes, there absolutely were times where my mother took great pleasure out of my pain.  She would humiliate me in public just for that purpose... .  I remember a time where I was beaten mercilessly by her, and the next day when I stumbled into the kitchen, swollen, bruised, and barely able to walk, she laughed at me, saying in a cheerful voice, "Bet you won't do that again!" (referring to whatever I did to deserve the beating to begin with).  My mother was definitely in that special little category of sadistic people who lack a normal conscience... .  At the time, it made me sick and even more depressed, but at this stage in the game it makes me angry! I am full of more righteous indignation than I've ever been in my life.

How do you deal with this?  Good question.  I can tell you that it isn't easy, and going through the grieving process sucks, but it's worth it.  I'm in the healing part of the survivors guide now, although I occasionally I slide back into mourning... .  According to my T, people like me usually end up dead, in prison, or on drugs.  Well, none of the above for me, so I'm a survivor - obviously you are too.

What set me on the path to healing was initiating NC 18 months ago, then getting myself in therapy for a bit.  Other than that, I surrounded myself with good families (to learn more about what normal looks like), and with people who absolutely loved until I learned to love myself... .  My mother robbed me of almost 30 years of my life, and I'll be d*mned if I give her one more minute!

Regardless of where you are at in your healing process, you are understood here - there are quite a few of us who can relate.  

[redroom]

   Hi,

I don't come here as often as I'd like.  I get so spacey sometimes that it's hard to put thoughts together.  So I apologize in advance if this ends up making little to no sense.   

I got the same kind of care and concern from my uBPD mom (part waif, part witch) growing up.  I also had an uNPD (now deceased) who had singled me out for physical abuse, and my mom was quite all right with it.  They got along perfectly.  Sometimes she instigated the abuse; sometimes she just sat back and watched.  She was also abusive on her own... .  

I've been thinking about death and suicide since I was 8, when I ate a bunch of posionous berries.  I told my mom, and she made fun of me.  When I was about 12/13, the thoughts (and abuse at home, and alienation at school) got a lot worse and I was thinking about it all the time.  I was severely depressed.  No one gave a crap, unfortunately... .  

When I was about 15, I just couldn't take it and took an overdose of tylenol w/ codeine (about 30 pills total) and went to "sleep".  I started to feel everything shutting down and I got really scared and I went and woke up my mom.  She got up, and my dad got up, and thus began one of the worst nights of my life.  Both parents screamed at me, my dad told me that he was going to "bash your f**king head in".  I was hysterical.  My baby sister got out of bed to watch what was happening.  My mom wanted me to throw up in the kitchen sink, but I was unable to.  Finally, they just sent me back to bed, without having thrown up and still groggy.  Not only did I never get any mental help, but they didn't even take me to a medical doctor to see if I was physicall OK.  This was a Sunday night, and they woke me up for school the next morning.  I threw up on the way to school (there were tons of pills mixed in w/ my vomit), and got to go home sick.

It doesn't end there, however!     At age 16 (almost a year later), I had again gotten to the point where I just couldn't take any more, and attempted to end my life again.  I took all of my mom's pain pills (a ton, because my mom is a major hypochondriac), everything that I could find in our house.  I went to bed, at peace with what I had done.  I didn't want to wake up, and when I felt everything shut down again, I accepted it.  The only problem was that it didn't work.  I woke up two days later to my parents sitting on my bed, asking me if I had done this to hurt myself.  Remembering what had happened the year before, I told them that I was just trying to get high off of all the pain meds.  I was a straight-A student who had never done drugs in my life!  My parents bought my excuse, though.  Over the next two weeks, I tried many, many times to end my life.  I tried more pills, hanging myself... .  

I was 18 and away on my own the first time I had ever seen a psychiatrist or counselor of any sort.  Even after two serious attempts and tons of evidence (I had no friends, I would cry all the time, I banged my head against the wall, etc) that there was something terribly wrong, they didn't care enough to do anything.  As evidenced by their actions in other situations, they knew what to do and they weren't ashamed of one of their children getting mental health treament.  A few years after all this happened, my parents paid for my sister to go twice a week for therapy and meds because she felt "stressed". 

I've tried asking my mom in the past (as an adult and on my own) why things happened the way they did, and I kept getting nonsensical excuses, and like your mom, constantly told to "get over it" and move on with my life.  Sometimes she was curt and rude about it; sometimes she said it in a "kind" way. 

My point w/ all of this though is that you're not alone.  It's such a bizarre thing (parents who don't care if their kids die) and uncommon, but there are a few of us out there.  Looking back on my mom's actions, it seems as though she would have benefited from me killing myself as a teen.  Waif BPD's love that sort of attention!  That sounds really harsh, but the attention my mom would have received as a parent who lost her kid was worth more to her than my life was.  I was expendable.  And this whole issue is the hardest thing for me to deal with, the one thing that I just can't get over or come to terms with.  Whenever I hear about teens and depression or things along that vein, it's like getting kicked in the chest.  It completely throws me for a loop. 

If your mom is like mine, she's a selfish drama queen who, barring a life-altering event, likely won't change.  She doesn't deserve you. 

Distance is what helped me the most.  I cut all financial ties at the very moment I was legally able to, so that nothing could be held over my head.  I'm also on medication now to mellow myself out.  I still think about what happened, and I still get triggered, but it's duller now.  That comes at a cost, though, because the medication has messed up my health.  I'm doing therapy, finally w/ a good therapist who understand all of this stuff, and that's slowly helping.