My mother has told me to never contact her again as I'm 'disgusting'.......

[FamilyOutcast]

Long running saga of me trying to come to terms with the abusive childhood that has caused me mental health issues as an adult. I had to have therapy as I was literally paralysed with panic attacks and extreme anxiety and after a lifetime of disassociation, I finally woke up to my scapegoat role with the help of a wonderful therapist!

Mother went nuts when first confronted (as did siblings). Denied it, minimised it, told me to get over it (we're taking sexual, physical and psychological abuse here), said I deserved all I got as I was utterly 'evil' etc. I was still deep in the FOG then and was desperate to continue contact even though she had started name calling and favouritism with my DCs . I was bloody stupid!

Anyway there were still questions I needed answers to (concerning my absent father who I lost contact with for 32 years) that she refused to discuss and told me that she would never speak to me again unless I shut up about it. Then followed 6 months of NC where I was left out of several big family events (which were pasted all over facebook) and I was really in pain about it so I had to practically beg my mother to speak to me again and after keeping me waiting for over a month, she agreed to a face to face meeting (her idea as she wanted to tell me 'the truth to my face').

So a few weeks ago I drove over 2 hours, highly agitated as I was worried about what she had to tell me, to meet her in the garden of a stately home (ha bloody ha). I started off by telling her that I did not mean to cause her upset by bringing all this up but I had to for my own mental health. She then started saying ‘do you think you’re the only person to have panic attacks, I’ve had loads’ etc. She spun the usual line that I was attention seeking and she worked 3 jobs to feed us and had to starve etc. She used to compare me to my paternal grandmother when I was young but I have no memory of her. I said to her ‘do you remember that you used to call me a FAT, UGLY, STINKING BITCH just like ‘his’ mother’? She replied, well yes, you were. That answer alone validated all my childhood memories. I was a stick like child and very pretty . Too bad I can only see that now 35 years later.

After that we got to talking about my DCs and I said I did not want her seeing them as I felt that contact with her would be harmful to them and I would not allow her to damage them as she had damaged me. She went puce with rage and called me ‘disgusting’, said she would get my stepfather to sort me out (ha) and said it’s always been ‘all about me’. Then stormed off. I waited a while as I hoped she would come back but then saw her leaving through the gate with my stepfather. I tried to ring her later and she texted back that I was never to contact her again and she would be emailing all my siblings to tell them every word I’d said to her.

Apart from the validation I mentioned above, the other thing that came out was that for the first time ever, she told me that my father left her, packed his bags and went. I (and my siblings) had always been led to believe that she left him in fear of her life as he was a violent abusive drunk. I have always wondered why she allowed him to take us kids out unsupervised after the divorce, and until we moved across the country if he was violent, and why she would apparently scream at him in front of us on the doorstep if he brought us back early if she was so afraid of him. There was no court ordered access. This I got from my father who insisted her version was all lies. Part of the reason I never built a relationship with him again was because of what I was brought up by her to believe and I still don’t know what to believe. He said he could not bear seeing us kids crying at the shouting so he decided not to see us anymore.

If you have got this far, I still don’t know how to feel. There is no going back with my mother and my siblings too it seems. It’s all so shit and I am alone.

Hi Outcast. Your post resonates with me - especially since I woke up at 4 this morning following a bad dream (about my crap family) and lay awake thinking about it all. It's only since lurking on Mumsnet it has all become clear to me that the dynamic in my family is the cause of my chronic low self esteem and the reason why whenever I spend any time with them I feel like shit for a good few weeks afterwards. I'm dreading Christmas. It's so hard though to abscond from family events because my kids love spending time with them. Just wanted to say you are not alone and well done for standing up for yourself. The whole thing is so enmeshed in who you are it's so hard trying to assert yourself in line with your (and everyone else who isn't part of your family) reality. I don't know how old you are but getting past 40 is so liberating in some respects. So true what they say. By the way my family nickname was Ugly Ducking, fleabag (because my hair was never brushed) and Number 2 (as I am the second child but not in a good way).

Try not to dwell on things, put this behind you and move on..............without your mother. She's done a pretty good job at wrecking your childhood, don't let her do it to your adult life.

My mother always told me that she wished she'd never had me, couldn't wait till I left home and was rid of me. Well I left once I left school and got a job. She'd contact occasionally (when she wanted something) but it would always descend in to the same verbal abuse from her and disowning me.

I've not seen her for 8 odd years nor had any contact after the last 'I'm disowning you, you're no child of mine' outburst.

It's not worth the worry OP. Forget and live your life without the heartache. Some parents don't deserve their children.

You are brave, and wise (even if you don't feel like it)!

Don't think of yourself on the outside looking in at your family, all happily together. Think of yourself as the one with the strength to climb out of the snake pit they are all still in, locked in dysfunction and misery. There is no love or harmony in that pit.

My DH is the scapegoat child, NC and in many ways still grieving over that and over the family he should have had. But he knows he is well out of it. The love and acceptance we all need is simply not to be found in his birth family, and probably not in yours.