Hello again, sorry I haven't been back sooner.
I think I belong on this thread, the more I read the more I can accept that I had an abusive upbringing.
I am going to follow Mummiehunnie's advice on posting and say why I think I have moved from thinking my mother was perfect to thinking she was abusive.
My mum was a single mum until I was about 4/5 when she met my dad (I call him dad, although we no longer speak, it's complicated). She went without so that we could have things and I ended up with good qualifications and a good job. People would always comment on how well behaved we were as children and compliment my mum on how lovely her children were. I suppose I took all of this to mean that she was a good mum. She told us every day that she loved us and when she was in a good mood she would do special things for us like plan days out and little surprises.
I have a DD who is almost 2. She is my absolute world. Her birth was dreadful, she was the only positive thing about it, and it left me a life-long condition and post traumatic stress disorder (which I think I am over now).
I found a therapist to help me with my PTSD but instead of talking about the birth I talked about my mum. Every week. I kind of realised I had some issues but I didn't know what.
All my childhood memories with mum in are of fear. Of walking on egg shells trying not to upset her or get on her bad side.
If we made her cross she would line us up and lecture us for hours. Honestly, plans would go out of the window and we would stay home all day having her lecture us on how ungrateful we were and not to answer back but then if we didn't answer when she wanted us to she would scream. All I can see when I remember being shouted at by her is the pattern of the lounge carpet.
DD was about 4 months old and we had come to visit my mum who had taken a week off to look after my two young nieces (4 & 6 then). She had promised to take them to the zoo but decided that she wanted to clean her entire house first. It didn't need it. She spent hours rushing around while the two girls got more bored and restless. They entertained themselves but not in a way my mum considered to be consistent with living in a show home and she just flipped.
She lined them up in front of her, just like she would do with me and my siblings, a lectured them. Guilt trips (I bought you this, I took the week off, I dont even like the zoo) and threats (we're not going now, I'm taking you back to your mums (they're both scared of their mum - shes separated from my step-brother, my mum knows this is an upsetting threat). So the girls sobbed and pleaded and were so apologetic and frightened and it was like looking at me 25 years ago. I saw what it must have been like, how irrational, unreasonable and nasty she was. It was more than a telling off, I wouldnt speak to an adult the way she spoke to the girls.
Instead of standing up for the girls, when my mum left the room, I told them how to win her round. What to say, what to do. It was like I a child again. I realised how scared I was. I will always be ashamed of that. I was an adult and should have said stop but I didn't. It affected me for a long time and I suppose it started me thinking.
A few months later I caught up with a conversation on facebook between my mum and my cousin which was absolutely ripping me to shreds. I knew they would say it was a joke but this was my mum, insulting me in public for the sake of being the "fun" aunty. I was so upset and I think I posted something stroppy. She called me at work the same day and lectured me about how it was a joke and couldn't she even joke about me now, did they make her such a terrible mother, she'd always tried her best and if I couldn't see that then she'd have to just cut all ties with me. I was so shocked. Cut all ties? It was so out of the blue and extreme. But I wouldn't back down, she wanted me to be the child she controlled, to say I was wrong, she should be allowed to call me all kinds of awful things in front of my friends and colleagues on Facebook for the sake of a joke. I said "Well I think that's quite extreme but it's your choice". She replied "Well, I will miss X (DD) but what choice do I have? You seem to hate me". I said I don't hate you but if you don't want to speak to us then thats up to you" and hung up. She text me a few hours later saying she was sorry, she overreacted. When I called her (and I didnt want to because I knew it was all just part of the manipulation) she said "I'm sorry but you do need to learn to take a joke". So not really an apology.
It got me thinking that actually, my whole life she has tried to control me through fear. Through the fear of being abandoned. I know that sounds dramatic but bear with me. Some examples:
If we were being naughty then she would pile the 4 of us into the car and leave us crying outside the "childrens home" until we behaved. Or she would threaten to take us to my biological dads house and leave us there ("and he lives with his 9 brothers and sisters in a caravan, you won't have a bed and they won't let you go to school, you'll have to cook and clean for them"). I think that threat had a double purpose - be good and don't think about looking for your real dad when you get older - don't leave me!
She would shout at us and then tell us that as we were so naughty and hated her so much she just fely like killing herself. She'd say "I'm going to jump into the dock" and walk out the front door, leaving us all sobbing. Evetually she'd come back and we'd be so relieved that she was alive we be silent and loving and grateful.
Another time she took an "overdose" in front of my sister and I and collapsed on the floor. It turns out it was a handful of rice but when you're 8 you don't pay attention to the detail.
If we were naughty in public (and that might mean we picked something off a shelf in the shop) then she would dig her nails into the tops of our arms or crush our hands to make us stop/punish us. Effective because it wasn't very obvious to passers-by and hurt like mad.
My siblings all talk of the time she lined us up to hit us with a stick. They laugh about it but I asked my sister about it last week and she insists it happened. I don't remember it. My therapist thinks it too painful for me to remember. I believe my version of the truth and my siblings, which isn't possible is it? I know that they aren't liars.
She eventually withdrew from the family, we hardly saw her, she would shop alone at weekends and worked long hours as did my dad. My dad, although he did the basics for us - roof over our head, etc, I favoured my brothers and my sister and I would be punished for things we hadn't done. He would invent things we'd said to justify to my mum why he'd punished us. Looking back, I don't think he was well or the strain of his marriage was showing. I recall my mum talking to my sister and I when we were in our early teens saying she knew he made stuff up and she knew he didn't really like us. She just kind of ignored it though.
When I was 15, my mum didn't come home from work one evening. We discovered she'd left us all for another man. They're still together now, 17 years on, so she feels vindicated in her decision but she left and we had no contact for 2 months. We thought she was dead. It turns out she was in London (quite a way from here). They even managed to squeeze in a visit to the palace so she wasn't completely consumed by missing her children.
So now, I have a child of my own. There is not one part of my upbringing that I would replicate with her. My mother says to me "shes so naughty" and I look at DD and just see a curious 2 year old. My DD will do things and my mum will say "shes so like you at her age" and I feel sorry for the 2 year old me. I didn't deserve to be smacked then or shouted at or made to feel afraid of my mum all the time.
I cannot understand how I could have been such a dreadful child from birth to warrant her heavy handed approach and her need for control. What could I have ever done that was so awful she had to pretent to drop dead in front of me? I feel sick at the thought of doing anything like that in front of DD.
I had a mc amost two weeks ago and she came with me to the scan. DH couldn't get away from work. The second scan confirmed the baby had died. When I looked up, my mum was crying. Now I know that this will sounds really nasty but I don't think she was crying for me. She was crying so that she could tell people she cried. Does that sound awful? We came out of the room and I said something like "Shit, I've got to call DH at work, this is going to kill him" and she got all angry and said "this isnt just about you two you know NotAnApple, this was my grandchild too, your stepdad will be devastated and it will bring it all back to your brother, he'll be really upset". Even when it's about me it's about her. I said we'd like to put a plaque in the baby garden and she said "yes, I'd like to have somewhere to go to remember your brothers baby too".
Mum took time off to be with me and play with DD while I slept (she is more relaxed with DD that she was with me). Except my mum was tired and she fell asleep on the bed next to me when she brought my lunch up and I had to watch DD having just got home from surgery. She just wanted to climb on me and cuddle, I had terrible pain and cramps and yet was there desperately trying to keep DD quiet so I wouldn't wake my mother. And I still thanked her for looking after me when DH came to pick me up. See, scared. My SIL had a miscarriage in the summer, my mum bought her and my brother a new 40 inch tv to cheer them up. I didn't even get an hour alone to cry/sleep (I don't give a shit about getting a new tv!).
I think I should stop there. I don't know what to do next. I still have contact wuth my mum, I can't imagine not. I can't ever tell her any of this because she will twist it around to being my fault and me being a bitch.
If you've read all of this, thank you. It's helped to just get it down. Any idea how I make my peace with it all? Am I being too touchy? I can be oversensitive, perhaps I was very badly behaved or maybe this is just what all parents do. She isn't awful all the time and I do love her. I just feel so confused.