Mums strange lie

I’m not mixed up.essentially op wants a confirmation and/or explanation about her memory of her mums unknown event. That amounts to disclosure, as op is seeking confirmation that her recall is accurate , this is still seeking an affirmative response from mum that there were body markings and the daughter saw them. What if the mum doesn’t want to go there,at all?What if the mum Doesn’t want to acknowledge, wants it to remain a closed event that isn’t discussed.

I think you’re mixing things up.
Im not saying the mum should explain what happened to her re the markings.

Im saying she should tell the OP that the OP seeing her crying in the bathroom with markings all over happened.

There is no disclosure because the OP was there! She was part of it!

Yeah, it's ok to gaslit your children, they can always get therapy 🙄

Absolutely agree.

Millions of people go through traum they'd rather to take to the grave.

I've had counselling for some things and there are others I'm not ready to talk about yet.
One includes someone close to me who might remember the incident or not.
If they asked about it, I'd probably deny it unless I was ready.

Not because of gaslighting them, but because I know, once that can is opened, the aftermath won't be pretty. My mental health comes first.

I might bring it up one day, but that's for me to decide.

OP wasn't told a lie initially, that only happenafter after she kept asking.

The saying let sleeping dogs lie .... comes to mind.

If it wasn't a big deal, she'd have told you by now.
Your DM maybe trying to keep it together and going there might set her back, why take that risk?

Get therapy for it OP if you need closure and let your DM deal with her issues her own way.

Being there for her is respecting her wishes.

Life isn’t a show and tell. I have had experiences that are solely mine(good &bad) that I won’t disclose to anyone . I’m not an emotional vending machine I don’t dispense disclosures on demand. Irrespective of who is asking

It's possibly but not sure it makes sense, there were hundreds of tiny markings covering her whole body, ankle to wrists to neck

About 20 years ago in London (and probably other cities) it was extremely common for photo studios and model "scouts" to hand out cards on the street. They would find women and flatter them into getting a free or discounted photo shoots. The trick of course was that they would have to pay significantly more for extra prints or digital copies of the photos. Some studios were reputable in the sense they were just a business and made money doing those vanity photoshoots all day long. However it's fairly likely that dodgier people used the same trick to lure girls into weird modelling sessions or art projects.

Based on the description, the markings sound almost like an artistic choice, maybe someone trying to replicate a Keith Haring style pattern all over the body. If drawn with pen, they would be easy to remove the next day. Could be possible she was lured into a false photoshoot and it ended up being more nude than planned or it felt invasive to have all those marks on her. Or they promised to pay her and then refused.

Global why about life?or a specific why?

So angry.

what garbled paranoic ramblings! Essentially at the heart this is op seeking a disclosure to satisfy curiosity about what she thinks she remembers. Except she cannnot expect a disclosure from her mum. Her mum is entitled to her privacy regards this event. . Lies? Unaccountability? It is unclear what happened and there is no compulsion upon her mum to reveal . If that makes @dontsaystuff feel she’s being misled or not included then she needs to deal with her own disappointment. As I said parents are entitled to privacy and don’t have to reveal all their experiences to their children upon asking.

My memory is of a magician putting himself in one of those boxes they use.. you can see the head at one end, feet at the other. I remember this happening and the magician was putting swords through the box.. it went wrong... blood everywhere, Cilla Black hysterically screaming. None of this happened (Not that I can find reference to anywhere) yet I clearly remember eating a chicken sandwich in my pyjamas and watching it on tv. I would have been around six years old so around 1987. Maybe I saw something on Suprise Suprise and mixed that with the Tommy Copper memory.

@PaperAeroplane Tommy Cooper died on stage - it was televised live too.

@Zone2NorthLondon fighting the good fight for lies and unaccountability 😂

Actually your memory of a comedian dying onstage is correct.
It was a live televised show from the London Palladiumi n the 1980's.
Tommy Cooper did in fact have a heart attack and die in front of a packed house and a TV audience.

Sorry that happened to you
It's possibly but not sure it makes sense, there were hundreds of tiny markings covering her whole body, ankle to wrists to neck
It was summer and I saw her arms and legs at least the next day and following weeks and there was no injuries where the markings were.
@dontsaystuff
I can't come up with any other explanation as to why your mum would have drawings on her body, do you have any thoughts as to what it could be?
In general is your mum a caring mother who doesn't lie and gaslight you?
It's also worth bearing in mind that it's extremely likely that your memory of how many drawings you think you saw on your mums body could be wrong. You were seven years old, memories distort all the time and are rarely reliable.
As someone else mentioned, false memory is a very real issue.
I have a strong memory of a magician's trick going wrong on surprise surprise (80s tv show) and the magician died on stage! This obviously didn't happen, it's a distorted/false memory.

clarification? She’s not entitled to any clarification or disclosure of an event. The potential event is with her mum. Her mum doesn’t have to revisit or disclose what may happened
The op memories of the event won’t be clarified, so in reality she’s best to accept that and not keep pondering the what ifs and what happened

Not telling a child or the OP as an adult what happened is fair enough.

But that’s not what the OP wants. She wants clarification on whether a certain event happened or not. One she remembers clearly but her mum said it didn’t happen. One that is part of HER past and experiences.
And the mum apologising fur having lied/gaslit the Op would also go a long way tbh.

None of that needs the mum telling the OP what happened to her to get the marks.

@dontsaystuff I wonder why there are so very many disingenuous answers on this thread.
The DM now has visible tattoos which (possibly) refer to whatever happened, yet denies it ever happened; what a piece of work.

• OP is NOT asking for full disclosure as some are pretending she is.
• OP was the child, the DM the adult in charge: she chose to let OP witness something upsetting she couldn't understand, ignored her, and lied to her about it.
• If OP's questions had been addressed appropriately at any time, there would be no issues now.

The DM's trauma doesn't trump OP's. Whatever the DM went through does not justify trying to trick OP into doubting herself.

The adult parent will filter and censor what they disclose to their child for number reasons. She is also entitled to privacy she’s not compelled to disclose everything to you. you are not owed an answer or a disclosure. It is time to accept you don’t and won’t know what went on,and leave it

Lots of possible explanations and I get why she didn’t tell me the full story when I was a child. I just don’t get why she’d lie that if imagined it and then get the tattoos. happened. She could have just told me it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about

She could have lied to you because you pushed her for an answer when she wasn’t ready to share. That’s not to say you were at fault for trying, just to say that she wasn’t ready to acknowledge it to you. You may need to accept you that you may not get an answer for this.

I just don’t get why she’d lie that if imagined it and then get the tattoos.

That's not really for you to figure out though.

You know that you didn't imagine it.

For whatever reason she doesn't want to talk about it.

She should have said that rather than lying.

They did look like surgical markings just completely excessive.
@dontsaystuff
Reading your responses it really sounds to me like they probably are markings that are used to show evidence to a crime.
Speaking from experience this is how evidence is sometimes photographed to use as evidence later down the line.
I'm in my forties and have a son in his twenties who overheard me talking about it to a friend last year and asked me about it.. I also told him that he must of been dreaming and denied it took place.
I don't enjoy lying to him but it is my story to tell and I don't want him to know. There is a lot of shame involved with this type of conversation that doesn't make sense to people that haven't experienced it.
Add to that the dot dot arrow tattoo it also matches this theory. (Past present future, moving on)

It's still for her to talk about If & when she feels ready.

There a could be other explanations - a creepy boyfriend (or so-called "friends") who thought it was funny to draw on her when she was asleep. A pervert who drugged her and did it while she was unconscious. Her getting plastered / high and drawing on herself and thinking it was hilarious and encouraging her lover to draw on her too and then sobering up and suddenly it didn't seem funny.

But one way or another, it's probably a sex thing, which is why OP shouldn't try to force the issue. We're not supposed to know about our parents' sex lives.