They gave you life, fed you and wiped your bum. No matter how bad they went on to be that should count for something IMO.
You see it all the time, people talking about their toxic parents, with zero sense that their own children may someday think the same of them
My mother did give me life, yet relished telling me that she told the midwife to take me away because she didn't want another girl. (Am I supposed to understand a statement like that?)
My mother did feed me, it was her way of showing she cared, she invested so much emotion in food and so long as I ate every morsel on the plate and showed huge amounts of appreciation, she felt appreciated, yet if I literally couldn't eat another forkful, I'd feel like I had to hide my plate, feed it to the dog, or spread it out so it didn't look like I'd left much. It was like eating love on a plate. If I threw any away, it was like I was throwing my mothers love away.
I'm sure my mother wiped my bum, yes, although I don't remember it because from 18 months old, we were toilet trained. There were to be no dirty girls in our house.
All of that means something to me. I would rather be here alive than not be here at all.
That doesn't wipe out the beatings she gave us, nor the excuses she made for her husband when he beat us, or the humiliation, the crushing realisation that no matter what we did, it was never quite good enough.
It doesn't wipe out the fact that she put men before her DC our whole lives, even leaving us to scream in fear while she got her jollies in the next room.
It doesn't wipe out the snide bitchy comments she made about our appearance and the sexual innuendo's she made if she thought we looked like 'sluts'.
My mother spent our childhood telling anyone who would listen what a terribly hard life she had, how hard she worked, how her DC didn't appreciate her enough, and we grew up smothered in a thick sense of guilt, always wanting to do more to please her, yet it was never ever enough, and we learnt to worry ourselves sick over what people thought of us, because of course, if anyone didn't like us, it mattered, it reflected on mother and it was our fault.
Upon getting divorced and becoming older, my mother found it harder and harder to use sex to attract a man, so she began undermining my parenting of DS, openly berating me for any discipline I attempted to bestow upon DS.
I grew up wanting to please my mother and wanting DS to be happy where I wasn't. Not a particularly good combination.
Once DS was 16, mother whispered spiteful poison into his ears, told him he was surplus to my requirements, offered him a place to stay without my permission or knowledge and when I had my 2nd child, my mother moved in for the kill. She waited on DS hand and foot, treated him like a king no surprises there then and I quickly became the evil parent, while mother became the saint in his eyes.
DS moved out, into my mothers, where she continues to wipe his arse see to his every need, encourages him to rely on her for everything, and since DS is HFA, he cannot see beyond the here and now and see what lies behind her motives, which I believe are partly down to jealousy that she never had a son.
She looks upon DS as the son she never had and indulges his every whim.
This is a contributory factor imo to DS racking up more and more convictions, because mother just keeps on bailing him out, he learns nothing, and lo and behold, now my son has cut me off.
Mother's two pennies worth is to advise me to forget DS and isolate myself and my other DC from him which is exactly what she has been trying to do for years.
I went into a card shop today to buy my youngest a birthday card. It is my sons birthday soon too. When I saw the birthday cards for 'sons', I felt my throat closing up, and I had to put my sunglasses on in the shop, and I didn't know whether to buy him a card or not, because I don't want to push him further away and any attempts by me to connect with him will be seen by DS, as well as my mother as proof that I am the manipulative person my mother has always told him I am. I bought a card, but I have no idea whether to send it or not because my son has cut me off. I am effectively a parent of 1 DC now.
All I can do is wait and hope he contacts me. I cannot explain how I feel to DS. He will tell me I am using the emotional sympathy crap to make him do something he doesn't want to do.
Yes, it has gone full circle apart from the fact that I still speak to the old crow. Perhaps I am one of those toxic parents too.