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My mother and BPD... A bit of help rationalising my thoughts please.

156 replies

filee777 · 20/07/2013 08:36

So, to cut a (very) long story short, I have not been in contact with my mother for the last 5 months.

This stems from my childhood, the fact i was abused by my older brother emotionally and physically and she ignored it, leaving me alone with my two older brothers from around aged 8 for 2+ hours a day, plus leaving us for 10 days to go to vegas when i was 12 years old. My brothers are 3 and 5 years older than me.

She had plenty of money and there was plenty of opportunity that things were not right which she had just ignored.

When i got to 17 I tried to cut them all off but she stopped me and put down a deposit on a house for me to live in, which i did for the next 7 years. I loved my house because it was the first place i ever felt safe but i still felt very angry with my mum and she made me see that this was terrible of me, how could I be angry with someone who gave me so much/treated me so well.

So, with little else to go on and still believe i was the most awful, irrational person in the world, I ran with that and amended my behaviours and taught myself not to be angry with her. Despite this work our relationship has always been fraught with underlying issues and constantly revolving around money and what she gives to me and why aren't i more grateful.

Throughout life i realised a number of things, i met my husband and he changed my perception of a lot of the stuff that had happened to me, like my brother would kick me in the stomach so i was winded and hold me down screaming in my ear that this is what death felt like and i would die alone because nobody would ever love me because i was so evil/pathetic/ugly etc etc. So obviously DH has had to break through a lot of barriers and teach me that him loving me is not part of some great plot or whatever. Its been hard because its always there in my mind but we work through things.

The other major issue has been that when i have flashbacks i find it really difficult to talk to him because when i did open up to my parents my mum would tell me that i had wound my brother up and i should be better at not getting him angry so that he would leave me alone.

This is hard because he would just randomly attack me for loads of stuff like leaving a cup out of the dishwasher, or colouring in while he was watching telly and making a scratching sound on the paper... etc etc.

So all this stuff went on, at one point i picked up a knife because he said he was going to kill me and ran out of the house, he followed me and rugby tackled me and received a downward scratch on his chest, it was not deep, needed no medical attention yet my mum spoke of it like i had 'stabbed' him and beat the shit out of me and refused to listen to my point of view about it. That was when i was 12 and because i was punished so much for it and he was not, it sort of made it clear that he could do what he wanted to me and there was no self-defence or comeback towards him. So he just used to torture me for fun and there was nothing i could do about it.

Anyway, so it was suggested that i visit a child psychologist when i was 11 and i did that, they told my mum they thought i had Borderline Personality Disorder but it could not be diagnosed formally until adulthood.

I heard my dad and her speaking about it and they said it was a 'made up' condition and just shrinks wanting money and ignored it.

Moving on.

When i got older and met more and more people and learnt to open up, i realised that peoples general perception was that no matter what i had 'done to wind him up' i didnt deserve to have three of my teeth shattered or any of the other stuff he did. I mention the teeth because though not the worst thing i remember it was obvious to my mum because she paid a private dentist about 2k to veneer my four front teeth.

So back in February, we are driving in the car and she asks me for a 'balcony view' of why i dont get on with my brother (this is honestly the way she talks) and i begin to tell her. So she says that I was the difficult one, i was the one that caused her the most 'bother' and that it was my fault because i wound him up. Well i stopped speaking to her from there really because i am not up for being told that anymore.

We had a lot of email communication but it was basically her ignoring everything i said and instead just focusing on one point of an email and telling me i was awful for not moving on with my life and that i blamed her and how dare I and I had so much anger in me and it was totally irrational.

So we stopped communicating that way and agreed that she would stay in touch with my husband to get updates on the kids. This all went fine until she started sending him emails saying that she was 'praying for my happiness' and bullshit like that which made me really angry.

So i told her to stop it and husband didnt know what to do so it was hard for him.

So thats the background, now 2 weeks ago Thursday, i got an email from her saying that she had researched BPD and agreed that i had it, that she had ignored the obvious signs of personality disorder because she wanted a perfect family and it was getting in the way of that. She said that she wanted to be a part of my family life now and didnt understand why issues in the past were getting in the way of that.

I sent one back basically saying that BPD is a product of abuse in childhood and that she was not prepared to lose this 'golden boy' image of my brother in order to validate me and i was not interested in a world where i constantly had to scream to be heard, it hurts my head and its created real damage within me.

she ignored all of this and focused on the last line which was that i agreed that it was nicer for me and the kids to have her around sometimes.

So eventually, after many emails i got her to understand why it was so hard to grow up never being heard and being treated like a thug (like with the knife) and never helped to see how i could communicate with people better.

So i thought we were getting somewhere and i was putting numbers by paragraphs on a very long email detailing everything so she would actually answer it rather than avoid it, but i did say to her that it was not acceptable for her to make me feel guilty for being angry with her, that i didnt anymore and also that i do still have flashbacks and emotional issues stemming from my childhood and that she would have to work with me to deal with those things

so she sends an email (about 4 days ago now) saying 'I think we both need to go and have a think about everything'

and thats it, have heard nothing more

opened up to her, told her what i needed and what she needed to do, really allowed her an opening into my life and i feel like shes sent me an email telling me that she'll 'consider' whether its a good enough offer or not for her!

I dont know what to do now, i feel like just telling her to fuck off again but i dont know if thats a bit presumptuous .

I am happy to copy and paste a couple of the emails, or the last few or something that describes everything in detail but i wondered if anyone was up for helping me with this? Because i dont really know where else to turn right now and i could really do with some support... Thank you in advance.

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filee777 · 22/07/2013 11:24

My response is here

I don't understand,

How, if I was never left, did a situation occur when I was 12 that I was left for a week?

How do I have endless memories of returning to Allington way, which I left at 14, of Ian and Marc and nothing else?

Are you saying those things didn't happen?

Because they absolutely did mum.

I can't remember most of my childhood, I have flashbacks which open up various parts of it for me. When Marc was 10 I was 5, so what happened between 5 and 12?

When did we start to be left after school?

That year you went to Vegas with dad, I was 12 and I was left with Marc and Ian a lot because you would work later than dad did, so when did I start being left alone with them? How old was I?

You say you can't remember, I disagree I want to know.

You say you took me to 'birthday parties' and 'activities' when was this? I remember stagecoach, I remember a lot of 'no you can't do that' and I remember weekends of you cleaning and dad watching golf and very little family activities or events actually.

Maybe you are right, maybe my perceptions are so warped by the abuse that I have not be able to remember all these good times that you insist we had when I was between the ages of 5 and 12

But you could fill in some gaps, you say Marc was at boarding school until he was 15, so I was 10, is that when you started leaving me, when I was 10? When you say 'Helen from next door used to mind you' do you mean in our house or hers? Do you mean that in the same way that you would mean 'maggie was minding you' when actually you'd left a 12/15/17 yr old alone together?

I don't remember ever walking home to Helen's house, I remember walking home to my own. Could you clarify what you mean?

I was at boarding school for two terms, what happened in the holidays? WhAt happened in the long summer? What happened when the boys came home for summer?

No mother, you didn't 'have to deal' with the situation between me and Ian, you made quite absolutely sure of that by completely ignoring it.

I think it went on for a LOT longer but even how you remember it, we are looking at 12 onward minimum, so what's that? 4 years of constant abuse? More like 5 actually what with college and me not moving out til then and trust me that is quite long enough for any lovely happy family joy you may have put in in my childhood to have been absolutely and completely ripped apart by that psycho.

No mum I don't think you put much thought into our interpersonal happiness, I think that you watched me get more and more angry and sad and I think you positively allowed Ian to get more and more arrogant and righteous and I think it's been difficult for both of us to live in a world where what we were shown as normal and right simply are not.

By the sounds of it, you were a great mum until I hit 10 or 11 and then you decided to just stop. That actually the bank and the work was now more important and hey, we were nearly grown up so why worry about it?

I think when you made that decision you had to stick to it and I think you ignored the abuse because it did not fit in with your master plan of buying a house and retiring.

So what happened mum? What did I do at 10 to lose the right to be raised?

If what you are saying is true, and I cannot refute it because I honestly cannot remember, then mum what the hell did I do? Did you not think a 10 year old still needed some sort of minding?

I am not going to go into the 'how can you punish me' crap because I've been living it for so many years mum and its bullshit. This is not about you, it is about me.

If we are at the point where, as you say, I was carefully parented (as was Ian) until the ages of 14 and 11, then please is there anything you can think of that may have happened to us to create this? Because there must be an answer? You don't grow suicidal children overnight anymore than you grow psychotic children over night. Any ideas?

You said I had signs of BPD at 3 years old, something before then maybe?

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