I'm re-posting this first part from my introduction page.
Hello everyone.
I am a 34 year old mother of three. Married for 11 years. After a lifetime of struggle with my mother I believe in the past few days I have just started to scratch the surface of why she is the way she is. I fear this post may become lengthy as I not only try to sort through my feelings but also accurately address the behavior she exhibits. As I'm sure many of you know there is a lifetime of stories I could tell but I will only be shedding light on one from when I was first married that has led me to today.
I don't want to demonize my mother here. She has many wonderful qualities about her. Like my husband says, her heart is in the right place, its the the delivery that is flawed. I have learned over the years to choose my words carefully and try to remain objective in all areas of my life. When I met my husband I was a single mother of a 14 month old boy. My mother has doted upon him for years. She adores my children as they do her. About a year into our marriage we spend an evening at her house for dinner when my son needed a diaper change. Being that he was in the thick of the toddler years he fought my husband in the bedroom over the diaper change. Seeing as how my mother has always been very meticulous about her home my husband feared the dirty diaper fight would leave behind a mess and possibly an argument. So a swift smack to the bottom was in order. Immediately my son complied but not without putting on a major show for my mother. My mom has always coddled the kids to detriment. So they have always known if they put on a show in front of her that the attention they seek will be received. As a result of being in a new marriage and my mothers illness she witnessed the pink skin from the spanking and immediately started throwing accusations of child abuse. The raging was like nothing my husband had ever experienced before. As always I tried to talk to her but my words fell on deaf ears in that moment. I also felt the need to defend my husband whom I felt was within his rights to use the discipline he did under the circumstances. In that moment she looked to my step father for validation and when he didn't give it to her because he too realized she was overreacting she turned to the police claiming child abuse and that there were welts left on my son. In that moment I knew the best decision was to leave. We got in the car and immediately called our pastor from church who lived down the street and photographed my sons naked body. When the police arrived we showed the photos taken within minutes of the call to the police. My pastor also looked over my son and attested to his well being. Nothing came of the incident other than my husband feeling very angry and throwing up walls and boundaries immediately with my mother.
In the weeks that passed my mother would as we refer to "rally the troops". She is very good at compartmentalizing. She will tell her side of the story to friends and family or post vague statements in the social media world with her side of the story in an effort to gain support and validation. My aunt called me days after my mother spoke with her about this incident trying to convince me that my husband was abusive and I was exhibiting signs of "battered wife syndrome".
These episodes are always followed with long spells of the silent treatment as she feels ganged up on or an injustice was served. The dynamic has changed as I grew into adulthood. I pull away not only in an effort to protect myself but to protect my children from this behavior.
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Ok so this brings me to today. I need to go back a couple years to give more history on my mothers behavior. September 2009. My husband and I are going to Cancun for 7 days. My mother offers to keep the kids. She is to keep the kids 4 of the days, The rest will be my sister and friend. Two days before we leave my mom tells me she's using my truck for work over that weekend while were gone. When I explain to her that my sister is using the truck when she picks up the kids and taking it to my girlfriends house so there is a vehicle large enough to cart all the children around, She explodes. :)emanding the use of my vehicle because she's "doing me the favor" and I will need to figure out something else for the other parties caring for the kids. When I disagree she tells me all of 48 hours before I board the plane to find someone else to watch the kids as she is no longer available. This is not the first time this has happened before I leave town. Once she comes to her senses we mutually figure out a reasonable solution for everyone involved and she gets the use of my vehicle for the entire 7 days.
When I return home she drops off my truck asks how the trip was, it was a nice conversation. Later that evening I notice the windshield has a huge crack in it. I want to talk to her about and my husband asks if I think it's a good idea. So I call her and basically ask what happened? She denied any responsibility or even knowing it was there. Then said she believes a rock chipped it. I explain with a certain amount of irritability in my voice that insurance would have fixed it had someone emailed me I could have contacted them. But now that it's a full blown crack I have to pay to replace the windshield. She starts screaming about how ungrateful I am after she took care of the kids and how I'm trying to extort money from her and hangs up on me. Now of course I'm fuming and leave her message that under no circumstance will I tolerate her behavior when I was merely trying to have a civilized conversation with her. Next the phone rings. When I answer she screams into the phone "And you can tell your husband I said to F*** Off!" and she hangs up.
We went two years with N/C. There were emails by her and that were blaming and torturous. Emails from her husband who lord knows deals with her BPD on a daily basis. Asking for time with the grand kids. My response was always the same, no. How can I trust her with my children when I cant trust her with myself? Prior to this I was probably more open about sharing intimate details of my life with my mother than I should have been. I had shared some of our financial struggles and so forth. About a year into the NC my husband who is an executive within his company gets called into a meeting with some of the shareholders. A call had been made to one of the share holders stating that my husband was committing fraud in cohesion with the other shareholders of the company against our government and that this person was going to go public with this information if it were not handled immediate with the termination of his position. I can't really explain the details of that but basically we were talking about filing bankruptcy and my mother got it into her head that were somehow doing it illegally because we didn't actually qualify according to her. Oh boy.
This lit my husband on fire. Rightfully so. It took another year before I finally started spending supervised time with my mother and my children. She was not allowed in our home. And another year before my husband could even look her in the eye. Yet only this year did my husband and I start talking to my step father who was the one who initiated that phone call. I now see how desperate he was in that moment with my mother raging. She was depressed, she wanted to see her grandchildren, and after a fight in court for grand parenting time and she lost she was desperate and raging for my step father to ":)O SOMETHING!". Sigh.
The past 24 months have been touch and go. I have kept her at arms reach. We talk weekly but it's always raging about her husband, her siblings, my sister etc... Someone is always the focus and sadly the rest of us look on in pity for the person at the head of it for that moment but also breathing a sigh of relief when the focus is not on you.
I apologize for this post being so long. I just need to get through this so I can start moving forward. And I ran out of space so I will post a part ll of this next. "To be continued... .
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