Reasoning behind BPD's stuck in the past?

[Our abuse recovery guide]

I haven't really been around here in years... . BPDM, whom I haven't talked to in 5 1/2 years, enDad, and I tried to escape them by moving out of state and ran smack dab into a BPD "friend" who now despises me because I "abandoned" her and took the horse she gave me with me. (The horse and I got tired of being blackmailed. Go figure.)

Anyway. Haven't talked to any of my family in 5 1/2 years. In March I had a few brief emails exchanged with enDad because my grandma had died (which I'm totally fine with) and he was the executor of her will. I ended up with a few pieces of jewelry. EnDad included a matter-of-fact letter (he has a very good business mind) explaining each piece. Then he added, "Your mother included a few pictures she thought you would like."

Stupid me, I looked at the pictures. One was of my poor dead cockatiel... . that she'd bought, and didn't react to his death "Because I didn't know how you wanted me to react." (um, like a normal human?)

Two were of musical instruments I don't play any more. (I was a music major in college.) I do believe they were the ones she bought me. I didn't look that close. I was hysterical instead.

This isn't the first time. Once she took me to lunch (under duress) and brought green Peeps (because green was my favorite color and we used to like Peeps) along with a photo album of the first pictures I ever took. That ended with her screaming at me in the parking lot, me trying to leave and her physically blocking my way to my car.

Before I knew she was BPD, she sent me a box of stuff including jellybeans with a note saying, "Remember when we used to go to this store and get jellybeans?" and a horrid decorative pillow that said something to the effect of, "I'm your mother, you'll never get rid of me." Yeah, I was hysterical after that, too.

So, I'm still trying to figure out what the heck she's thinking when she does this. I mean, I get that she's trying to say, "You should love me, look at all the nice things I did for you and all the good times we had." But it ends up all twisted and hurtful on my end.

And yet the last time I talked to my parents (er, I mean was stuck on the couch and lectured to) she said, "You're so angry, you just need to let it go." So why is anger the only reason to let things go? She obviously can't. She's stuck in her own ideas about me/us and has been for years and I can't deal with that. EnDad doesn't have a clue and I'm not willing to have a relationship with him because he's done some pretty crappy things too.

I suppose I'm looking for a logical reason to mother's actions where there is none. I have a friend who's a mother, and who knows all I've been through and is supportive, but she also feels sorry for mother and tells me not to let whatever the family does bother me. But it does. And I don't have a T or anyone else to talk to about it now.

Sigh. And on my route home from work there's a lady often out walking her dog and it freaks me out because she has the same haircut and posture as mother. Argh.

ETA: Thinking about it, ex-friend did the same thing with the horse Mother did with other things: "Here, I will give you this horse/bird/instrument you love because that means I will feel good for giving you what you love and therefore you will be indebted to me and never abandon me."

Funny thing is, I abandoned both of them.

[Sandcastle]

I haven't really been around here in years... . BPDM, whom I haven't talked to in 5 1/2 years, enDad, and I tried to escape them by moving out of state and ran smack dab into a BPD "friend" who now despises me because I "abandoned" her and took the horse she gave me with me. (The horse and I got tired of being blackmailed. Go figure.)

Anyway. Haven't talked to any of my family in 5 1/2 years. In March I had a few brief emails exchanged with enDad because my grandma had died (which I'm totally fine with) and he was the executor of her will. I ended up with a few pieces of jewelry. EnDad included a matter-of-fact letter (he has a very good business mind) explaining each piece. Then he added, "Your mother included a few pictures she thought you would like."

Stupid me, I looked at the pictures. One was of my poor dead cockatiel... . that she'd bought, and didn't react to his death "Because I didn't know how you wanted me to react." (um, like a normal human?)

Two were of musical instruments I don't play any more. (I was a music major in college.) I do believe they were the ones she bought me. I didn't look that close. I was hysterical instead.

This isn't the first time. Once she took me to lunch (under duress) and brought green Peeps (because green was my favorite color and we used to like Peeps) along with a photo album of the first pictures I ever took. That ended with her screaming at me in the parking lot, me trying to leave and her physically blocking my way to my car.

Before I knew she was BPD, she sent me a box of stuff including jellybeans with a note saying, "Remember when we used to go to this store and get jellybeans?" and a horrid decorative pillow that said something to the effect of, "I'm your mother, you'll never get rid of me." Yeah, I was hysterical after that, too.

So, I'm still trying to figure out what the heck she's thinking when she does this. I mean, I get that she's trying to say, "You should love me, look at all the nice things I did for you and all the good times we had." But it ends up all twisted and hurtful on my end.

And yet the last time I talked to my parents (er, I mean was stuck on the couch and lectured to) she said, "You're so angry, you just need to let it go." So why is anger the only reason to let things go? She obviously can't. She's stuck in her own ideas about me/us and has been for years and I can't deal with that. EnDad doesn't have a clue and I'm not willing to have a relationship with him because he's done some pretty crappy things too.

I suppose I'm looking for a logical reason to mother's actions where there is none. I have a friend who's a mother, and who knows all I've been through and is supportive, but she also feels sorry for mother and tells me not to let whatever the family does bother me. But it does. And I don't have a T or anyone else to talk to about it now.

Sigh. And on my route home from work there's a lady often out walking her dog and it freaks me out because she has the same haircut and posture as mother. Argh.

ETA: Thinking about it, ex-friend did the same thing with the horse Mother did with other things: "Here, I will give you this horse/bird/instrument you love because that means I will feel good for giving you what you love and therefore you will be indebted to me and never abandon me."

Funny thing is, I abandoned both of them.

[lucyhoneychurch]

Hello 

I dealt with a box of items last year about this time after my abusive mother's passing. The box was packed by an enmeshed sibling and my passive self-pitying elderly father. It had all the same touches you describe - on top of the stuff in the box, 2 photos of a niece and nephew that none of them at first acknowledged of a late sibling's - but obviously now almost 2 decades later, new school portraits, *right* on top of the newspaper wrapped items.

The oddest things - basically because where have they been all this time and why was I never given them before? My own baby shoes. 2 little leather worn pairs of shoes.

Things from late relatives that were apparently intended for me years ago as written note from each relative - some gone for half my lifetime now.

Hand-picked childhood photos with little scribbles on them that tried to indicate we were just one happy bunch. Yes, well, no abusive parent runs a Minolta in the midst of beating children, verbally and emotionally assaulting them, do they? All you have left are (some were moldy, in a plastic sandwich bag) photos of very tense little kids trying to grimace into a smile, as you'd smile and then catch hell for "why can't you SMILE when i take your picture?"

You know the drill.

Antique things were mailed within a few months that were not wrapped, we're talking some fairly expensive vases and a really gorgeous table lamp of a great aunt's with a slag art glass shade - well... . when you pack anything like these nice old collectibles in a *microwave* box that was last opened in the 80s for the monster microwave she got when they first came out - the slag glass shade gets cracked, and the lip of one vase is ruined.  So be it. They weren't in my life all these years, but still... . the idea that you can go to walmart and buy the biggest bundles of bubble wrap now... . and nice firm sturdy container boxes for shipping. I get it... . the idea I guess was, Well we mailed the designated (by the deceased) things.

It's passive-aggressive. Sure, you're getting these items. But the box is so so loaded with messages, like little ambushing goading digs... .

Maybe you can turn it around in your mind like my  initial thought as I unpacked it outside ( my parent was known for keeping things full of mice and roach droppings)... . what's to be surprised about really? (my question to myself)... . this is how it's worked for all our lives, why in the world would any of it change now? Esp the enabling self-gratifying old man... .

and the sibling that wields the title of "executor," albeit dealing with perhaps literally tons of crap and the few somewhat nice items buried amidst it all - days of dirty nasty work... . my thought was they were welcome to the rest of it for their trouble.

BPDs rewrite the past. They are not stuck in what really happened. If they were stuck in reality they might actually have to address the calamity they wrought upon children.

When they rewrite it with "see all these things I got you, what I spent on you, how often we were on the road [never mentioning the agonies of being in a big car with the entire nutso family for days and nights at a time]... "

So it's a scam. On themselves.

If you are enlightened that it was really a boatload of misery, like I know I have been for  a long time now, at least you and I aren't still in the delusional thought pattern of an enmeshed family member who is still trying to squeeze the square peg of PTSD and flashbacks (I know they have them) into the round hole of "we were just one big happy family."

Lies suck.

Secrets and lies really suck.

When the propaganda machine rolls out this type of garbage, you are free to call it what it is - crazymaking fiction.

I do know how much it hurts to feel the childhoods we had were such cesspools of pain and abuse.

I see children in refugee camps in news stories and I never suffered to that degree - but wow, do I know abandonment and fear and anxiety and heartache... .

I'm sorry for yours.   

[Sandcastle]

That's so very well put, LucyHC. Yes to rewriting, yes to crazymaking fiction.

Thank you!