We have not been in our daughter’s life for 3 years (unless it’s at a family friends social event like a wedding...(side bar: The friends are movie star and his family - and our daughter has adopted that family as her “new family”.
We literally have no idea how she explains this exile and exit of her family, but learned recently she bad mouths me, her mom, not by birth, but by raising her mom.
Last Friday went to California for two special events. While at our friends home last Saturday, we talked at great length about K’s issues. Prior, our friends (the movie stars) did not get the fact our daughter is sick and thought it was a matter of communication. In fact they suggested our extending their invite to include our daughter and essentially they invited her to join us at their home for the weekend. But K told me she was going out of town, (to a wedding :check so we dodged a bullet, instead, we met K for lunch - lunch went surprisingly well (surface cocktail talk) and as we were getting up from the table, K stopped us and said,
“WAIT! I have something to tell you!”
My husband and I sat back down...and then K threw us the curve ball,
“A is going to ask me to marry him and I want you to like him!”.
We asked if he had asked her, no says she,
“But he asked my ring size and we have talked marriage.”
And this has happened with K before. Last time she was marrying a man named C who also had not officially ‘asked’. We were told he told her he would pay for the ring and that K was just to pick it out and buy it - K literally asked me to drive to LA and pick out an engagement ring with her. I declined but in a way that I thought she might understand. That job was for the couple to engage in.
At that time, after she had spend 2 years knowing his family with us never knowing C. She asked us to like and even love C as she did. She begged us to spend time with him We caved even during a difficult time for my husband and me. She brought C to us when K’s father was in a stage three cancer facility having blood transfusions for mold poisoning. She told us C would do the cooking. (I even had to beg K to visit her own father when he was deathly ill). She went once for two hours and that was it.
Needless to say K had spend two years getting to know and love C’s family, only sporadically allowing us time with C. And every time we were with C and , it was strained and uncomfortable because she would belittle him, and over-power him in every way. Emasculate is the word that comes to mind. I usually had to excuse myself from the conversations because I couldnt’ handle the mean vibes I was getting from K - along with the dagger eyes. Black, dense and cold looks would always be sent my way. We saw C as a shadow to K. Prior to C there was a man in San Diego she wanted us to love because he was the one. They lived together immediately too- and then that of course also fizzled.
Our daughter has been off the rails since she was about 16 years old, but before that we have always had her in therapy. She has a very sick birth mom and there was a serious custody battle in her childhood. K has two half sisters much older than she. One is schizophrenic and the other was like the birth mom immediately as a child. That is the sister K is most attracted to. And that sister would not let K live with her in San Diego when K needed a place to live and was alone. That sister gave her a room for the time K looked for a rat hole to live in that she could afford. There was no peace for K growing up in either family - tho my husband and I tried and tried to be normal and give her what every normal kid had, she was torn...broken and confused and she had all the markers for serious issues ahead, but we were in denial. We glossed over seeing them, (teachers, therapists and even church teachers tried to alarm us). We just were always thinking the doctors would prevent K from being as sick as her mom. K had an eating disorder before she was 10, suffers from depression, has dark and mean moods, mania presented as she became independent from us. She can’t hold a job, and is a nanny now. She has moved from place to place, and has a friend who provides jump seats on airplanes for her so she chases her self all over the USA...she is addicted to travel. And every man is has been a live in boy friend who she is going to marry. K is 26.
So back to our lunch last Friday. We asked K how can we get to know A when she banished us from her life?
She said she could come ‘visit’.
Then her father asked K if this meant she is going to be accountable?
I point blank asked her if she was going to pay us back for the money she stole from us (twice, she abused a line of credit, the last time, she illegally re opened a line of credit at the bank. We had to borrow money to pay it back).
She looked me in the eyes and said, “No.”
She went to try to control me by saying she was not going to argue, and that we contributed to her doing the bad things...as if we, as hosts to her needs were culprits in her eyes to her behavior being ‘triggered?’ (Truth and reality and other’s views have no place in K world) I have not a clue what goes on in her head. I get defensive of who I am and thought to myself, “Bad things? Like what? Giving her expensive presents, supporting her throughout her life - especially when it was difficult - she is just so mean...and my husband and I both helped her in her all her endeavors. I paved the way in getting her a great job in a town she didin’t know anyone - I talked her up, and she got an assistant pastry chef job in a cute restaurant in town. On my reputation - which eventually resulted in my being cut off from the people that were my friends where she worked, even the owners - several months and jobs later. Room mates after room mates, then she moved in with C and shortly thereafter we were exiled from our daughter on her on all social media (literally she had been square cashed a large sum of money from us to enjoy on a trip in Japan) and the second the money hit her bank she cut us off from seeing her in Japan and any time - we were de friended. Then she went to California to start all over again, dumping C. It was then we decided to pay for her therapy (at least we could be comforted knowing she was in therapy ). After two years and never hearing a peep from her we decided she could pay her own way with her therapist. By then she had cozied up to our movie star friends by spending all the holidays with them even just normal weekends. She brought the new boy friend, A..to their house, to their events, to their weddings and we were talked about as if we were cockroaches in her life. Well here we are not cockroaches but true loving parents and friends. We spent a few days in LA and we explained our situation face to face fact with facts - instead of in emails, and as all of you are painfully aware, many people think BPD people are not mentally ill. This is the toughest part. The loneliness we feel in being parents to a BPD daughter. We both had to mourn a loss as if she were dead. And kiss goodbye to my dreams of having a close mother-daughter relationship with K. Her father only sees his ex wife in K’s behavior and he has emotionally distanced himself from feeling anything.
As we move forward, I am not interested in being a part of any wedding for K because right now she is dishonest to her ‘groom’. Or I should say, “ A “ since there is no proposal. And to be marrying anyone without telling then you were born with issues that required bi-weekly appointments with a therapist - then K is starting out on the wrong foot.
I have been told I cannot intervene with the family she would be marrying into at any time. I want to pour out my heart and soul but I am told by friends that she is 26 and so is he - and they are adults.
Life is unfair. Having a child who suffers from BPD is unfair, but it is what it is. I need support for this journey...and I would especially like to talk to a BPD parent, or anyone who has BPD who is in therapy who can enlighten me to how to protect myself and show I am a loving mom to my daughter at the same time.
Thank you for being the light in my otherwise dim existence
But I have a feeling its an impossibly. BPD people have no rules, esp if they are not in specific therapy for BPD. Thank you all for reading this far...to help us with the latest twist...God knows this is not the nitty gritty of our past issues, but its a glimpse of where we are now, and how we got here.
