Freedom

[Our abuse recovery guide]

"It's over."

As I was leaving her apartment for the last time after clearing out her apartment, I said these words over and over and over, sobbing.  She didn't die.  My mother had had progressive dementia and had gotten to a point where she had to go into protective long term care.

What did this mean to me?  A lot.

First, as I described in a previous post, she had entangled me in a substantial ongoing financial obligation and now that would soon all end.  These last concrete hooks into me, my family, and my future would shortly be withdrawn.

Second, it meant that I would no longer be conflicted about having to morally be helping my sister with navigating how to ensure our mother's proper care and safety.  We were literally days away from having our mother in a secure and safe place.

I was looking at freedom for literally the first time in my life.

And yet, instead of being happy, I was tormented.  I couldn't concentrate at work and had to just leave.  It turns out my sister, also facing the same freedom, felt the same.  I figure it was a combination of:
1. simple exhaustion that this journey was about to be over,
2. some apprehension of the horrible work we were going to have to do to clear out her place, though I figured it would actually be cleansing and cathartic,
3. most of all, her being found to be so cognitively poor, it meant that we had reached the point of her "cognitive death," which meant that - yes - throughout her entire life, she constantly put her own desires so, so far above even the basic needs of all of her kids.  When I got the news, I kept retracing in my mind all the havoc her manipulation and hate had caused.

So I made my journey to my hometown (which I still love, and of which I often thought myself as an exile, due to my inability to live in the same place where she was), met my sister after our mother had moved that morning to long-term care place, and started in.

So much stuff.  So much stuff that was needlessly and wastefully purchased - multiple spare bottles of the identical expensive cologne, ridiculously expensive things never worn, so much hoarding.  It was a slog, filled with little landmines.  I lost count of how many times I found notepads filled with her rewriting of history.  Filled with her bitterness:  calling people in her family "enemies," documenting horrible things about me and in particular about the financial entanglement she orchestrated.  To hold in my hands proof of her evil ways.  Such nasty things written about friends and family who I knew had only ever done supportive things for her.  

It was an explosion of new insights, greater understanding, revisiting the past.  Reminders of how deprived our childhoods were.

But there were some beautiful things too.  As we went through box after box after bin, my sister and had time together which was more than anything we ever had had before.  We helped exorcise the evil and laughed so many times at so many outrageous things.

Between us, we kept only a couple of the most terrible writings to hold in case we ever started to forget how truly bad things were.  Actually, I didn't keep any of that crap.  But she needed to.  I think she's not quite as ready to move on as I was.  I lived away, after all, for a bunch of years.

We also found so many photos belonging to our cousin.  Most importantly, photos of her and her brother (who died suddenly as a young adult).  I saved all of these things.  When she kindly came one day to help with the clear-out, I showed her all of these items.  It turned out she only had 2 photos of her with her brother as children.  She had never seen these photos.  It was warm and sad at the same time to see her, who is pretty strong, cry holding these precious things, which she didn't even know existed.  (And I kept thinking, why, why? did my mother have these things and never give them or show them to my cousin?)

I reconnected with my best friend from way back in grade school.  That was not just cool, but awesome beyond belief.

The whole journey and work of clearing things out, was exhausting and yet filled with its own unexpected joys and happiness.

And then on the last day, as I was locking the place up for probably the last time I would be there, put my hand on the doorknob to open the door and head out, and said out loud, "It's over."

I wept, I cried.  I didn't care if anyone going up the stairs outside could hear me.  I grieved over my youngest sister, whose death and sad adult life to which I could draw straight lines from the manipulation and deprivation from both our parents.  I grieved over her child's difficult path.  I grieved over the hard life of my middle sister, living on a different continent, who forged her own way and happiness, but preceded by such abuse.  I grieved over the hard life and hate experienced by my oldest sister with whom I had been clearing things out over the past week.  And I grieved over this clear determination: yup, my mother deliberately abused me in so many ways, up to the very death of her cognition, and it wasn't just mental health as I had found her writings which showed her having made deliberate choices and so one.  I grieved over the abuse I had suffered.  But it was now over.

After a few minutes, I shifted from grief, to amazement:  "It's over?"  to the reality of "It's over."  to the tremulous joy "It's over?"  Tremulous.  I have never been free of her.  It's kind of like Red in The Shawshank Redemption: First you hate the walls, then you get used to them, then they're all you know.  

While I never like the entanglement, hate and manipulation she sent my way, I have never known otherwise.  I was truly heading out into a new free world.

I was walking through the foyer of the building, and thought, there is a song that is just right for this.  I walked to the rental car and remembered, it's "I can see clearly now".  I tried to find in on my phone, and found the Holly Cole version and played it.  About 7-8 times, singing along, first through tears, then slowly to joy and resolve.  That I could finally see clearly now, that the pain was gone.

For sure, there are still some bits and pieces of things to sort out, fix up the apartment, get it on the market, etc.  I kept a very small assortment of things from our family, papers related to my grandparents and great grandparents, photos, etc.  But it's over.

I am free.  Free in a way I have never been.  As I drove to the airport to find my way home.  Again like Red in the bus heading to the Mexican border, feeling an excitement like only a free man feels at the beginning of a journey whose outcome is unknown.

And I have felt that way every day since.

To all you - my virtual brothers, sisters, siblings - who have responded to me after some of my most difficult postings, and those of you with whom I've never connected and have struggled with the hate and manipulation and abuse - I right now feel such sorrow for your paths, and I want you to know what I knew intellectually would one day come for me (either through my death or hers) but was kind unable to think would actually would really happen:  freedom will one day come.  I hope it will be soon for you all, but know that it won't for many.  Please come to this website for support when you need, focus on your family and your needs, find the strength to go to no-contact when you need to and keep to it.  And when you're at the same point as I was and have to climb that final hill like clearing out your borderline parent's place or being there when they're dying or whatever it is, know that you will have strength, and at the end will be this sorrow then freedom.

Thank you all so so much.  I wish you all the calmest journeys on this path which was given to all of us.  Take care.

[joinedtheclub]

"It's over."

As I was leaving her apartment for the last time after clearing out her apartment, I said these words over and over and over, sobbing.  She didn't die.  My mother had had progressive dementia and had gotten to a point where she had to go into protective long term care.

What did this mean to me?  A lot.

First, as I described in a previous post, she had entangled me in a substantial ongoing financial obligation and now that would soon all end.  These last concrete hooks into me, my family, and my future would shortly be withdrawn.

Second, it meant that I would no longer be conflicted about having to morally be helping my sister with navigating how to ensure our mother's proper care and safety.  We were literally days away from having our mother in a secure and safe place.

I was looking at freedom for literally the first time in my life.

And yet, instead of being happy, I was tormented.  I couldn't concentrate at work and had to just leave.  It turns out my sister, also facing the same freedom, felt the same.  I figure it was a combination of:
1. simple exhaustion that this journey was about to be over,
2. some apprehension of the horrible work we were going to have to do to clear out her place, though I figured it would actually be cleansing and cathartic,
3. most of all, her being found to be so cognitively poor, it meant that we had reached the point of her "cognitive death," which meant that - yes - throughout her entire life, she constantly put her own desires so, so far above even the basic needs of all of her kids.  When I got the news, I kept retracing in my mind all the havoc her manipulation and hate had caused.

So I made my journey to my hometown (which I still love, and of which I often thought myself as an exile, due to my inability to live in the same place where she was), met my sister after our mother had moved that morning to long-term care place, and started in.

So much stuff.  So much stuff that was needlessly and wastefully purchased - multiple spare bottles of the identical expensive cologne, ridiculously expensive things never worn, so much hoarding.  It was a slog, filled with little landmines.  I lost count of how many times I found notepads filled with her rewriting of history.  Filled with her bitterness:  calling people in her family "enemies," documenting horrible things about me and in particular about the financial entanglement she orchestrated.  To hold in my hands proof of her evil ways.  Such nasty things written about friends and family who I knew had only ever done supportive things for her.  

It was an explosion of new insights, greater understanding, revisiting the past.  Reminders of how deprived our childhoods were.

But there were some beautiful things too.  As we went through box after box after bin, my sister and had time together which was more than anything we ever had had before.  We helped exorcise the evil and laughed so many times at so many outrageous things.

Between us, we kept only a couple of the most terrible writings to hold in case we ever started to forget how truly bad things were.  Actually, I didn't keep any of that crap.  But she needed to.  I think she's not quite as ready to move on as I was.  I lived away, after all, for a bunch of years.

We also found so many photos belonging to our cousin.  Most importantly, photos of her and her brother (who died suddenly as a young adult).  I saved all of these things.  When she kindly came one day to help with the clear-out, I showed her all of these items.  It turned out she only had 2 photos of her with her brother as children.  She had never seen these photos.  It was warm and sad at the same time to see her, who is pretty strong, cry holding these precious things, which she didn't even know existed.  (And I kept thinking, why, why? did my mother have these things and never give them or show them to my cousin?)

I reconnected with my best friend from way back in grade school.  That was not just cool, but awesome beyond belief.

The whole journey and work of clearing things out, was exhausting and yet filled with its own unexpected joys and happiness.

And then on the last day, as I was locking the place up for probably the last time I would be there, put my hand on the doorknob to open the door and head out, and said out loud, "It's over."

I wept, I cried.  I didn't care if anyone going up the stairs outside could hear me.  I grieved over my youngest sister, whose death and sad adult life to which I could draw straight lines from the manipulation and deprivation from both our parents.  I grieved over her child's difficult path.  I grieved over the hard life of my middle sister, living on a different continent, who forged her own way and happiness, but preceded by such abuse.  I grieved over the hard life and hate experienced by my oldest sister with whom I had been clearing things out over the past week.  And I grieved over this clear determination: yup, my mother deliberately abused me in so many ways, up to the very death of her cognition, and it wasn't just mental health as I had found her writings which showed her having made deliberate choices and so one.  I grieved over the abuse I had suffered.  But it was now over.

After a few minutes, I shifted from grief, to amazement:  "It's over?"  to the reality of "It's over."  to the tremulous joy "It's over?"  Tremulous.  I have never been free of her.  It's kind of like Red in The Shawshank Redemption: First you hate the walls, then you get used to them, then they're all you know.  

While I never like the entanglement, hate and manipulation she sent my way, I have never known otherwise.  I was truly heading out into a new free world.

I was walking through the foyer of the building, and thought, there is a song that is just right for this.  I walked to the rental car and remembered, it's "I can see clearly now".  I tried to find in on my phone, and found the Holly Cole version and played it.  About 7-8 times, singing along, first through tears, then slowly to joy and resolve.  That I could finally see clearly now, that the pain was gone.

For sure, there are still some bits and pieces of things to sort out, fix up the apartment, get it on the market, etc.  I kept a very small assortment of things from our family, papers related to my grandparents and great grandparents, photos, etc.  But it's over.

I am free.  Free in a way I have never been.  As I drove to the airport to find my way home.  Again like Red in the bus heading to the Mexican border, feeling an excitement like only a free man feels at the beginning of a journey whose outcome is unknown.

And I have felt that way every day since.

To all you - my virtual brothers, sisters, siblings - who have responded to me after some of my most difficult postings, and those of you with whom I've never connected and have struggled with the hate and manipulation and abuse - I right now feel such sorrow for your paths, and I want you to know what I knew intellectually would one day come for me (either through my death or hers) but was kind unable to think would actually would really happen:  freedom will one day come.  I hope it will be soon for you all, but know that it won't for many.  Please come to this website for support when you need, focus on your family and your needs, find the strength to go to no-contact when you need to and keep to it.  And when you're at the same point as I was and have to climb that final hill like clearing out your borderline parent's place or being there when they're dying or whatever it is, know that you will have strength, and at the end will be this sorrow then freedom.

Thank you all so so much.  I wish you all the calmest journeys on this path which was given to all of us.  Take care.

[joinedtheclub]

(Sorry about the "FM" tag!  I hadn't signed on in a while and thought we were supposed to use the pull-down to tag the general topic, and once I did it, couldn't figure out how to get the first-message FM tag off.  This is not my first posting for sure.  bpdfamily.org has been an amazing support to me in my journey.)

[Harri]

Hi and thanks for writing this post today.  Reading it I could feel the hurt and the joy and relief.  It was both beautiful and riveting to me.  I helped me remember how I felt cleaning out my mothers things and then later my father.  I too kept little.  My mom kept notebooks of her writing.  Like you I got to read things about me and my brother.  Hurtful stuff and so indicative of who she was.  Not all of it was bad though and I am grateful for that.

One thing I found hard to deal with and only recently found the words to express is that it took time for me to learn to function without her being physically present in my life even if by the time she died I had moved away (physically and somewhat emotionally).

I am glad you are free.  Free of the abuse, the internal struggle with guilt and that there is relief for you.

Thanks for stopping by. 

[joinedtheclub]

Hi,

Wow, I didn't realize that BPDers writing their slanted narratives was a kind of common thing.  I'm glad you found some nice bits mixed in with the hurtful stuff.  The only nice bits I found were from when I was very young - like 4 or less - and they seemed pretty superficial.

She's been not physically present for a long time.  She didn't even bother to learn the names of my kids, back when there was no dementia.  I'm sorry to hear about your challenge in learning to function without her presence.  On my end, I think I will continue to have moments when I think, I can't believe how nasty and terrible she was.  Probably these thoughts will continue for a long time.

But that's a different thing from something that is active and alive and could pounce on me and hurt me and/or my family at any moment. 

Thanks,
JTC

[zachira]

Thanks for sharing your new found freedom with us after such a long journey of dealing with a BPD mother. It seems you have been ready to let go for a long time, and just needed to know that the worst is behind you. I admire how you were present with your feelings while cleaning out your mother's house, and how you and your sister were able to sort out the positive from the negative. Posts like yours mean a lot to our members, so many of us who are hoping to finally know that the craziness and abuse will one day be in the past. So many of us fear that the end to the nightmare will never come, and worry that maybe we will so overwhelmed by the end that we will not feel relieved.

[joinedtheclub]

Hi Zachira,

For sure I wondered if I would have any energy or life left in my by the time the journey was over too.  I was never sure that the nightmare would end.

I actually feel a bit guilty now that I'm free and so many on this board are not.  There will always be stings and scars (and lot of money that was manipulated away never to return), but I'm still essentially free.

I will try to do my part to sign in and offer support.

I know in my early days on the board, it was someone else who put the larger story into perspective, who helped me.  I hope that my tale - from horrible stuff to a final freedom - may in some small way help someone else stay strong.

Thanks!

[Harri]

But that's a different thing from something that is active and alive and could pounce on me and hurt me and/or my family at any moment.

This is so true.  When my mother died, and then almost 2 years later my dad, I felt such relief.  There was sadness too but mostly relief.   I buried a lot of the grief though and in the last year it has come out... or maybe I just needed to process the grief in a different way.  Hard to say.

I know in my early days on the board, it was someone else who put the larger story into perspective, who helped me.  I hope that my tale - from horrible stuff to a final freedom - may in some small way help someone else stay strong.

I think it is important for our members to know that they will get through it and what they feel is okay.  Crying, no crying, relief, sadness all of it is okay.

I hope you do check in more and let us know how you are doing while also supporting us here.   

Be well.

[madeline7]

Hi JTC,
Your post was cathartic to me. You see, I keep saying to myself, "I just want this to be over. So much of what you said resonated with me, as I'm sure it did for many on the board. I am happy for you that you feel a sense of freedom and relief. You give me hope that soon, I will experience the same. My elderly uBPDm moved to assisted living last month from independent living. She does not have dementia, but her short term memory is starting to go. I am relieved she is now in a place where she can get care when she needs it, and it will not be from me or one of my siblings. She is acting out from her rage that her adult children are not doing the care taking, and she said one of the most hurtful things to me last week. I tried to rationalize that it was her mental illness, but when I read in your post about finding her notes and feeling she was being deliberate, I understand that my Mom is mentally ill AND mean and deliberate. Wow, you really do have a perspective that I think fits the abuse my Mom has enacted on me. I am so close, yet not there yet, but I am finally seeing an end. How sad that a cognitive death or an actual passing is what it will take for me to get to where you finally are. I struggle with the guilt and then remember my childhood and my adulthood, and then struggle with the grief. Thank you for sharing your experience and reaching out in order to help others on our journey.

[zachira]

Joinedtheclub,
Your generosity and caring in continuing to offer hope to our members now that you are through the worst part of your journey with your BPD mother means more than you will ever know. We have so many members that need hope to get them through the ups and downs of having to deal with the next round of unsettling behaviors from our family members with BPD. Thank you for being willing to contribute and give back.

[joinedtheclub]

Hi Madeline7,

Wow, what you said, "I understand that my Mom is mentally ill AND mean and deliberate," is bang-on.  I feel I had the following phases in my journey:

1.  No clue - I was a kid and assumed all of this was normal.  Including having to crawl under our front window so no one would see us.

2.  Early insight - knowing that I could never ask for anything, because if I did, I would never get it or get to do it; no insight that this was abnormal, just thinking, "oh, well, I guess that's the way things are in families."

3.  Growing insight - comparing my situation to other kids and seeing a real difference: when other kids went on vacation, they got to do some things they liked; usually my mother went on vacation alone; the times I got to go too, all of it was hanging around changing rooms in expensive clothing stores.  Still, I felt firmly, of course my mother loves me, because that's what mothers do.

4.  Jarring insights - by then I was older.  I remember saying to her so many times, "X is actually a friend of yours; why don't you call her up and go for a coffee?" to which she would reply, "Her?  That thing/slut/whore/bitch/nasty person?"  X was any person ever I mentioned.  Also hearing, "I am the most beautiful woman in the whole world, you know how lucky you are to be my son?" and, of course, threats to kill herself - holding loads of sharp knives, etc.  Still, I thought, she must love me.  She's got an illness.  I remember me pleading for her so many times to go to her family doc.

5.  Out-of-this-world insights - her calling my wife "Satan" the night before my wedding.  And not like, "she's like a devil."  No, it was, "You must listen to me!  X is the devil incarnate.  She is Satan here on earth to take over your soul."  Another time begging me to hit her, saying, "It's okay, I won't ever tell anyone.  You hate me, I can see that, you just punch me over and over until you feel well."  The two things together made me realize that I was dealing with something horrible and deliberate - true evil.

6.  Seeking answers and help - I only got to this point after finally realizing that (A) she doesn't love me like any mother loves their kids, (B) she has made deliberate choices to hurt me and sell me, and (C) this is never getting better.  This was my true low point, but it brought me to this board.  I can still picture sitting at the computer in tears reading all these other posts, yet finally comforted that I wasn't alone.  And to hear that, though some of this was mental illness, some of it was deliberate choice on her part.  And I could stop letting her have control over me.

7.  Moving to No-Contact (NC) - it took years to eventually move to lower, then low, then ultra-low, to NC, at which point I said to myself, "I'm done."

8.  Freedom Phase 1 - NC!  Though I still had hooks in me, mostly financial, but also others, including different memories, and in looking at the chaos and carnage she had wrought, and trying to heal those wounds in my family and in me.  A lot of therapy in here too.

9.  Quicksand before Freedom 2 - Her continuing rapid decline in health, with me mostly letting the system care for her, but eventually me having to help my sister cope with all of the logistics, etc.

10.  Unexpected Grief/Anger - when I finally knew that she was going into long-term care and I knew I would be free in literally a few days - mourning afresh all the loss, the hurt, the everything.  I think I've had a peek into what someone who was abused in other ways feels when their abuser dies.  Some relief, but mixed with anger again, and wounds hurting again, and, frankly, I was really angry that - she had won!  She had been able to skate through her cognitive life without ever really being held accountable (though I did, once, call her up and lay it on the line a couple of years ago; water off a duck's back), and she entered long-term care leaving my sister and I to clean out her apartment filled with so much junk and hate.  She kind of ducked accountability.

11.  Freedom Phase 2 - what I wrote about.  It's over.

I'm thinking I've got some more phases:

12.  Reclamation - underway - this is me exorcising evil by throwing out her photos, reclaiming my hometown, reclaiming the music that I love and she loved too; more importantly, reclaiming some of the lost opportunities by saying, f*** it, I'm going to do it (I've started playing a sport just 2 months ago that I always always wanted to play, for instance).

13.  Her physical death - I suspect that though I've mourned at the time of her cognitive death, I will have lots of memories and wound-reopening at the time of her physical death.  I'm done hiding things, though.  I won't go out of my way to destroy the memories of others, but if someone keeps pressing me to say how wonderful she was, I anticipate I will say instead, "I'm glad you had great experiences with her.  She was actually terribly abusive and hurtful to all of her children, including me.  I'm glad she's at peace; we certainly are now."  Maybe not, but who knows?

14.  Freedom Phase 3.  She's really gone now.  It's up to me to continue to live my life and be there for my wife, kids and family.

When I look back at all of this, it took great pain, terror and abuse, for me to find the Board.  Which ended up being a critical step for me to heal, to learn more about who I am as a man, to learn autonomy and choice, and to set the guilt she imposed upon me down and walk away from it.

Yes, Madeline7, how truly sad it is that a cognitive death or an actual passing is what it will take.  That's the grim truth of being a kid of a BPD parent - they will almost never change.  Me learning that on this board made it easier for me to say, "I've got to do what I've got to do for me, my wife and my kids, because my mother ain't changing."

I hope your journey comes to a calm end soon.  That's what I like about this phase.  It's just calm.  I haven't known calmness in my life, or at least to the extent things are now calm.  Calm is good.

Harri:

A key thing my therapist had said to me was that it's important to physically mourn and not just intellectually mourn.  That's why when I could feel the building emotion and tears coming as I had my hand on the doorknob, when I was about to just firmly bury them, I remembered my therapist's words, and thought, 'Okay, let's just go with it.'  I can't explain the peace I felt after sobbing just inside the front door and after singing "I can see clearly now," over and over.  I hope you can deal well with the grief that is starting to come out.  Maybe the physical mourning idea from my therapist may help?  Take care.

Zachira:

I'm not generous, I feel I'm doing my job as an unplanned member of this club.  I think all of us feel "duty", but if I have helped anyone with my writings, then it's just me doing my duty to the group.  When I look back, I wish I had learned early the value of NC.  I remember reading about it on the board, and thinking, "there is no way I can do that."  Wow, life would have been so much better had I found the courage to go NC years earlier.  And cheaper too.  I did the math on how much financially I was entangled, and I almost vomited in her apartment.  I won't share the number, but it's a lot.  And I can never get that amount back.  I do feel shame at how I let down my immediate with this financial loss.  That's a lot of college tuition for our kids just gone up in smoke.  But I've forgiven myself, and moved on.  It's over.

Thanks all.  Now off to watch our older daughter play in her game!  Freedom is nice.

[GaGrl]

My mother's stepmother was uBPD/NPD. I don't think my mother felt freedom from her SM nor a sense of relief from Fear, Obligation, and Guilt until SM died -- and my mom was in her mid--sixties by then. I saw a new, more relaxed woman -- it was wonderful.

I hope you experience a sense of personal renewal!

[madeline7]

Hey JTC,
Your Mom called your wife Satan the night before your wedding. My Mom called my husband Hitler the day we brought our baby home from the hospital. We certainly can relate and empathize with one another, those of us in this unplanned club of ours.
Madeline