Stepmother died at Christmas, not torn up by it?

[isilme]

I think this is the only place I can really post this. I learned tonight my stepmother died right before Christmas. I haven't seen or spoken to her since 1997 when my father kicked me out of their home at age 19. Well, I heard her voice at a shopping mall maybe 10 years ago and ran away before she could see me.

I am NC with my actual mother since about age 30, she and my dad both have BPD. My sister in law, a bit strange, apparently saw a newspaper clipping of the obit tonight and sent me cryptic texts telling me she wanted to call to make sure I knew something. I put two and two together, searched first for my dad (still alive it seems) and then for my step mom (my actual mother lives in another state, local papers won’t carry anything about her).

I feel weird. It took 10 years after being kicked out to realize my stepmother never reached out to me. Never tried to get me to come reconcile with my dad. Nothing, not even a letter or card. They started dating when I was about 15 or 16, not long after my parents divorced. I as isolated from my mom by dad, to hurt both of us I now see. I was enmeshed badly as her caretaker, and I was her comfort animal wubby.

I tried so hard to like, love my stepmother. I was so starved for affection, I did anything to earn my keep when we moved to her home. I babysat her daughter's kids, sometimes for a week at a time. I cooked, cleaned, was an honor student, never rebelled, never drank, smoked, no drugs. Dad beat me as a child, and I was very conscious of needing to keep his approval or end up in the streets, so literally lived a little slice of Cinderella, just trying to earn love.

How am I feeling? I feel sad a person I tried to love didn’t seem to love me. Didn’t seem to care about more than maybe the spare bedroom being open for use by someone not me.

I feel embarrassed I didn’t know and my weird sister in law dumped this in me at dinner. I just got diagnosed with an immune disorder, I’m exhausted just making it to work and felt proud even during a flare I managed to cook real food for dinner, even if it was a hello fresh kit.

I feel bad for not feeling too bad about a lady who didn’t seem to care much for me passing. I’m not happy, but it’s not like when my husband's grandmother passed. I was almost inconsolable.

I just hate how I am a BPD orphan, and I am denied normal grief. I avoided every funeral I knew about on my dad's side. They didn’t respect my need for privacy regarding him after he kicked me out, and enabled him to stalk me by sharing where I lived and worked. I hate how I can’t go to funerals that I want, in case he is there, or how he denied me the chance to grieve my mothers fathers death, or her brothers (he chose to tell me on Valentine’s Day 1996 that they’d been dead a year and 6 mo the, respectively. The next Valentines, he kicked me out, I was old enough, he couldn’t get in trouble for dumping a minor).

I just need to share this with someone who won’t judge me for not knowing, and not being super broken up. I’m more upset about how I don’t feel, I think.

[Turkish]

People die.

Like calls to like (she and your dad)  and it sounds like she never cared for you.  You tried desperately. Is the guilt you feel about not grieving or being left with your feelings and hurt unresolved?

[Maya L]

If you did so much to try to please her and she did not repay it, is she really entitled to your love of grieving her? I don’t think that you need to feel guilty over not mourning her, we feel what we feel. 

I’m thinking that maybe you feel that not grieving means that you somehow wants her gone, but it does not have to mean that. Your grief of her could also be like the one we feel for strangers who dies, there is not a lingering sad feeling, but we did not wish them dead.

Why should you feel embarrassed for not knowing? Your stepmom and dad is in fault of your bad relationship, not you. They treated you bad, you did not have to look after them and see how they were doing. If any your father should be the one to instigate contact and tell you the news.

[isilme]

I am embarrassed I guess because my sister in law has some BPD fleas of her own, and I know she and her husband refuse to understand the abuse and neglect I lived with - they make comments like, "yeah my dad may have been mean but it makes me a better father" about themselves. 

I'm, like, "ok, but did your dad pick you up and throw you by your hair?  Slap you while teaching you to drive for not speeding?  (ON THE HIGHWAY!) Leave you covered in bruises up and down your back, legs and arms where you had to cover up in long sleeves and pants year round?  Give you $100 a month to walk to the small Mercado for groceries and tell you what's left over is your lunch and clothes money, and then disappear to his GF's house for days?  No?  then you don't get it"  That doesn't even cover BPD mom when my parents were together.

Anyway, she judges me and my husband, her brother, and while I often don't care, I guess it felt like a test - did I know?  is she a better person for finding out?  She also sees funerals as social events to be sure you show and make the appropriate sounds.  I end up going and ugly crying as quietly as I can, because if I go, I knew the person and cared.  If I can't go I make sure flowers are sent. 

I'm kinda raw these days as I am finally being treated for my immune disorder, and the medications are helping, but chemically, I bet I am quite the mess.  As I combat the high histamine and other mast cell mediators, my body is using ignored serotonin, dopamine, and other things, making me a bit spacey but emotional? 

Thank you - I tried.  I've had friends' parents give me more love and affection than my stepmother.  One close friend's mother invites me and my husband to all family events as if we are like adopted cousins. 

I just worry, and it's hard to say, that my "wall" I built to protect me actually makes me a sociopath like my dad.  I can honestly say I feel nothing a lot of the time.  There's no time for feelings - I feel tired.  Or hungry.  But emotionally, I tend to ignore things unless they are forced upon me, I am so busy trying to keep it together as my husband's caretaker and trying not to fall apart myself, my feelings often aren't in the forefront - trying not to do this, let H know I was hurting that night and cried, openly, and again quietly in the shower.  Does this make me dangerous?  bad?  cold? 

[Maya L]

It can be difficult for people to understand abuse. They just don’t get it or don’t want to see it. Bruises fade but the actions and neglect stays with us. I saw a documentary where people talked about coming home from the First World War. People around them could not understand how it had been, no one except the ones who were in the war. Abuse can effect us more that others can ever imagine. I’ve tried to tell a few good friends, but they just don’t get it, unless they’ve seen it or been through similar things. In this forum though people have been through it and knows the feeling.

 Could you turn the steak around and tell your sister in law that maybe your dad should have contacted you about your stepmoms death?

Your dad sound like a really bad parent. It is such a grief to think about those kind of memories. Are you seeing a therapist?

To think about: In your mind are funerals for the living or the dead? Will the dead mind if you did not come? If the dead could see you and know your true intention, would they know that you cared about them? 

I hope your medications will help you! Sad that you have to struggle with health too. You seem like a strong person to live with the memories and health problems now. I’m glad you have adoptive family to cover up for some of the broken family! 

[isilme]

I've been NC with Dad since he kicked me out in 1997 when I was 19 (also NC with mom, circumstances were different, queen/waif issues there). 

So no, I'd have not expected nor wanted him to let me know.  It's not about knowing.  It's being upset I know the "normal" people will judge me for not knowing. 

I know my sister in law is not quite "normal", their family has PD issues, too, not as bad as what I grew up with, but it's there.  it illustrates for me that my sister in law still, after 20+ years, has not paid attention to the fact I am NC.  NO CONTACT.  That I was actually kicked out, disowned in writing, not just had a few fights as a teenager as she did.  She likes to think she's some sort of ignored black sheep when she's the golden child pride of the family.  I'm a non-entity.  I didn't matter when I lived in the house with my stepmom and my dad... why would I matter now after not talking to them for 20+ years?  It's like she could not understand that I would not know, had no reason to know, and assumed I was like her, claiming to be mistreated but calling home regularly. 

It IS the fact no one gets the abuse and neglect.  It sounds crazy when I mention to people how I was treated as a kid and teen.  It helps if some friends have a mentally ill person in their lives, but they still can't imagine the god-like power parents have over kids.  They just look at it from their adult lens and assume they'd have left, gotten "help" and found a solution.  No one can fathom being so helpless, not knowing there is a better world out there, that your home life is not what others experience, not at age 5.  Not at age 8.  You only start to see things by maybe 10 if you're able to observe it. 

Dad stalked me for a while, even coming to my workplace where I had a fight or flight reaction simply to seeing him.  He worked in a fundraising area of the college campus where I was working in a research division.  I froze, went cold, acted like he was a stranger as he had come as a guest of my boss who was taking him around the building.  My boss actually picked up something was wrong, and got him out of my office, and I ran across the street to my husband's office and hid, crying, shaking.  I had to go into the embarrassing cliff notes of "he beat me, was horrible, please don't put me in a situation like that again" speech.

Yes, both parents were terrible, no, not in therapy.  I live in the same small town where my dad grew up - we moved here while he was divorcing my mom, and it's not the town's fault he came from it... but I can't talk to anyone and feel safe,  Too many went to high school with him or knew him in college, "such a great guy!"  During the divorce, he put me in therapy, but he had a session after mine... I knew the T was supposed to be filling him in on what I was sharing, and that I'd get in trouble if it was "wrong".  So I just talked about TV shows, and a few things I knew were expected about missing my mom. 

I can't trust Ts.  Dad has been to several to "help" him - didn't do much.  He went from beating me physically to beating me psychologically, and emotionally, and he saw nothing wrong with the neglect I was subject to since early childhood to my teen years when still with him.  Also, I get frustrated with the "I'm okay you're okay" BS.  It sounds so fake, so pedantic, I get irritated. 

I see funerals as a time to say goodbye, and if possible share some good memories with others there, let them know you're glad to still see them.  It's an event to help the living move through being let behind.  But my sister in law treats it like a tea party, where you're there so people can make note you wore the right clothes and your kids knew how to behave at a solemn occasion. 

[Maya L]

I know it might be hard to accept it, but her opinion does not matter because she is wrong. She doesn’t get it or she wants people to feel more sorry about her than you, don’t you think?

It is terrible being treated like that. My stepmom tried to strangle my mom, the court agreed that she did it but gave her no punishment since she had kids and no previous convictions, and no restraining order on seeing me ‘since she lived with my dad and it would make it hard for me to see my dad’. Spending weekends with my dad and stepmom was full of fear as a 7 year old, I was imagining how I would protect myself with knives if she attacked me, she didn’t physically, but she treated me really bad, tried to make me feel like and outcast, humiliate and hurt me emotionally. People in this forum has been through similar things as you have. It is horrible, truly horrible, it forms us, it scares us and it hurts us. We were just kids trusting our parents and we try so hard to please them, because maybe then they’ll love us. We think that we are just not good enough, why else would they treat us like this? ( but it’s wrong, the parents are the ones not good enough, they are the sick or faulty). I agree, as a child you don’t get it, we think it’s normal behavior, because that’s just what happens, mom or dad gets angry, abuse happens.

Some of us do understand. I struggle too with people not getting it, but some out there had a life just like you and they understand. There is hope, many here has with time and effort healed some or a lot, through the forum, therapy etc.

My point was not really that you would care that he is not in contact (I would not want contact with him either) but that you’d bounce the blame ball she’s throwing on you to him, in front of her.

I’m sorry you had bad experiences with therapists, they are supposed to help, but some are bad at their job. Many here has gotten really good help from Ts, me included, but I understand that it might not workout great in your small town. There is online therapy if that would be something for you.

I’m so sorry your dad was so horrible towards you, it’s so very unfair, no child in the whole world deserves that. It must have been and still is very scary! I hope he will never bother you again. You did not deserve it, it was wrong, not ok in any way, you don’t owe him or your stepmom knowing anything about them. 

[isilme]

Thanks - I know she's wrong.  It just gets tiring, so I come here to talk where people get it.  She's very certain she's right, she lives 1 block away from us but is too "good" to interact like a normal person so we don't see her except holidays.  I have a b-day gift for her son, sitting in my dining room.  we aren't invited to her kids' parties unless I make a point to contact her, and I've been too sick to play those games.  The kids get their gifts when mom deigns they can interact around their schedule.  I take the time to make them a gift and find them one from their specific wishlist, so they have something that may have more sentimental value later, but they also have something they marked they wanted now.  I'm getting close to just mailing them from now on. 

Talking to her always feels like phishing, so she can compare her tally of points and see who's "winning".  And while I've gone NC and been the better for it, BPDH is not one to go NC himself, LC, maybe but not NC, and so we can keep interactions with her to a minimum.  H does not do well with her so why push it? 

She just made it all weird, not a quick, "hey, saw an obit for your stepmom, did you want it?"  message.  Do you talk to your [half] brothers [from your dad's first wife you did not grow up with, don't see, who live in other states or over 12 hours away]?  Not really, we're not close, why?  Call me.  Maybe tomorrow I'm eating?  Call me anyway.  Later?  Is it important?  I want to be sure you know something. 

So her approach was just as bad as the news.  No, I should not feel bad a person I knew for about 3 years who did not especially seem to like me passes away.  I am neither happy nor sad about it, sad that death, in general, is sad.  I did my best by her, maybe a 17-year-old's best isn't much, but it was all I had to give.  If she wasn't receptive, I can't help that.  Do I rigorously keep tabs on my dad (or mom) and his family?  No.  I'm like Harry Potter, I'm not going to stalk the Dursleys just because. 

Thanks for listening.  I'm sure T is good for some people.  My brain is just wired a certain way, and after decades of two parents manipulating me, it feels about the same.  writing here is my outlet, it helps a lot.  I tried talking to a friend, but she doesn't quite get it.  She understands I was abused, but she also feels her mother is the worst person in the world.  She's a horrible narcissist to be sure, but I don't think she ever descended into the depths my parents did...

I'm sorry you felt you had to defend yourself.  I was worried it was my job to defend my mom, and got so mad her own BPD had her goading him into trying to hit her, kill her.  He tried to strangle her Fathers Day 1992, I was old enough to stop it, and that's the day we left her.  I know how scary that was, and I am very, very sorry.  I learn more about how badly we all were all raised simply by wathcing my friends raise their children with love. 

[Maya L]

I understand it must be very tiring and anxiety filled. Nice to have this outlet!

Yes, it’s sad to see caring parents, I imagine what could have been. Sad that our parents have built such a bad life for themselves and us.