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FFS, I am right back to feeling like an anxious ashamed 10 year old all over again.

33 replies

AstridWhite · 29/10/2017 06:29

This is a long stream of consciousness rant. Sorry.

My bloody mother. AAARRRGGHHH! I am a middle aged woman for crying out loud. I am usually so together, pragmatic, calm and accepting of the fact that no-one is perfect, we all make mistakes as parents. I am self sufficient, I don't ask for help from anybody, least of all emotional help. I am a coper and a 'get on with it and don't make a fuss' type. I bloody well should be, I've had a life time of practice, but I'm pretty damaged on the inside. I have dealt with it, buried it, come to terms with it, had therapy for it, I thought I was mended and now she's gone and raked it all up again. I feel on the edge of something I can't get a grip of.

I want to blurt it all out on here but what's stopping me is the fear that it somehow get back to her and she'll feel such hurt and bewilderment that I'd betray her like that after all she's done for me - never mind how I feel, have felt my whole life, I still have this need to protect her from the harsh reality of what is has been like being her daughter.

Emotionally, I am the mother and she is the exasperating errant child who needs my patience and understanding. It's always been like this. Because for all her many faults nothing she ever did was with malice or cruelty, just stupidity and self absorption.

She really thinks she's been this fantastic martyr mother, she tells herself and everyone who will listen this, still forty odd years later. I can't stand her being around my friends or my DH's family because I know after a couple of drinks she will turn every conversation around to how she was abandoned by our father when we were small and start waffling on about how hard it was for her, Christ, she's like the Only Gay In The Village but for divorced mums. It drives me fucking insane.

She's so in denial about so many things, she rewrites history and has the world's most selective memory and what drives me most nuts now is that she is so fucking judgmental of other young women with absolutely zero awareness of how she herself has behaved in the past.

Something has happened with her and I have gone into a period of binge eating to try to self soothe (something I have done intermittently my whole life when stressed or anxious as a coping mechanism) I KNOW why I am doing it, it's my childhood repeating itself and I can't seem to stop.

She's is/was not toxic, not intentionally cruel or abusive exactly, just so fucking emotionally unintelligent, so emotionally stunted and repressed (except when she's with a man, when she's the complete opposite of stunted and repressed) blinkered, so stupid and neglectful.

I did initially type 'mildly neglectful' but then I deleted the 'mildly' because it's has just dawned on me after 50 years like a lightbulb going on that NO! It wasn't 'mild neglect' it was neglect, plain and simple and I can give myself permission now to call it what is was. Just because she always insisted on good quality school shoes, we were clean and we were ticked off if we dropped our aitches, doesn't make us less neglected, just differently neglected.

I have been conditioned my whole life to see her as this struggling victim who had no choice in how my sister and I were parented and the stuff we had to put up with. But I see now that that is just not true. She frequently made MASSIVE errors of judgement (and is still making them) just because she wanted what she wanted, and felt entitled to 'have a life' (a sex life in other words) above all else.

She had no idea of sensible boundaries when we were children, used me as a sounding board for all her problems and burdened me with some pretty heavy stuff. I was trained to think and behave like an adult from a young age but I was a CHILD for crying out loud, I needed reassurance and routine and some sense of stability. I needed someone to look after ME.

She still has and has never had the faintest idea of how her self absorbed behaviour and weird priorities and her obsession with needing to be with a man impacted on us as children and the lasting damage it's done to my sister and I. My sister in particular was damaged in a more obvious way that manifested itself in bad behaviour at school etc, being a bit of a wild child. My mother dragged her off to a child psychiatrist, bewildered by her inability to just be a good low maintenance little doll that you could stand in the corner and ignore while you got on with your life. It never once occurred to her (and still wouldn't) that everything my sister did was a blatant cry for help for some decent parenting, some consistency and stability at home and for someone to listen to her.

My mother thinks she's a victim. Nothing is ever her fault. She takes no responsibility for anything, everyone else has let her down and even now something has happened and I know she thinks I am being an overgrown spoilt child and throwing my toys out of the pram, trying to manipulate her because I don't want her to be happy.

I had a little meltdown at her a few weeks ago for the first time in my life and blurted out some things that would have been a metaphorical slap around the face for her. I didn't intend to do it but she poked a hornet's nest and once I started I couldn't stop and she did look exactly as if she'd been slapped. There was a brief one sentence apology alone the lines of 'I'm sorry if anything I did made you feel like that.' and now she's gone straight back into self absorbed denial mode and is trying to pretend nothing has happened. Because that's what she does. That's what we do. Just bury stuff for the sake of remaining dignified and civil. She is incapable of taking part in any sort of grown up conversation where she might be found at fault.

Meanwhile, weeks later, I am slowly spiralling out of control and trying to eat my way out of this feeling of shame, fear and anxiety and a sense of having no control, just like when I was a child.

And yes I knew my father, he was equally useless and self absorbed and equally culpable in screwing his children up, but after many years of analysing it all, I've come to realise that I was conditioned as a child to see him as the pantomime baddy who was single handedly responsible for everything that was crap in our lives, but the plain reality is that she is as much if not more to blame for how I am feeling now.

Thank you so much for listening.

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Cambionome · 29/10/2017 07:03

I don't really have anything helpful to say but I really feel for you. It sounds as if you had a totally shit time as a child.

Is it possible for you to just cut down contact with her? How often do you see her? I would be keeping her very much at arms length, although I know that's easier said than done.

Keep talking on here - you need to let it out.