I'm going to try and write some down. I can't decide whether my mother was just an insecure depressive with problems and that she still is, or whether I am just intolerant and find her irritating and should forgive her now she is old and coping with my dad's dementia. I think about things and wonder whether it was that bad, or whether she was generally normal, and we have just demonised her. It's certainly nothing like the abuse some of you have been suffering, but at the same time, I can't ever remember being comfortable with her.
There are three of us - me, older brother, younger sister. My earliest memories are not of warmth and love but of shouting and unease - shouting at us, shouting at my dad. Once she was combing my hair in the bathroom. I must have been very little, because we were in our first house. Anyway I had tangly, curly hair and she was dragging a comb through it so hard, I was crying and screaming. The more I screamed, the louder she pulled, until the comb broke. Then she burst into tears and put her arms round me, saying "Sorry". Maybe it was PND after the birth of my sister, or stress and depression. She was hospitalised when I was about a year with depression.
I can never remember feeling at ease with her. There were always scenes - shouting, yelling, accusations of being horrible children, or stupid. Most of these, to be fair , were directed at my brother who was "a difficult" child. Who knows if he actually was or not? Intelligent, active...yes, he could be difficult. Show me a child who never is. There were good times e.g. holidays, but I don't ever remember her playing with us, or getting the impression we were anything other than a pest. Sitting on the sofa, I remember trying to snuggle up and put my head on her shoulder and she would shake me off and snap "Stop drooping on me." I have seen threads on MN where women are sick and tired of children crawling all over them. Maybe it was that. DB used to lead me astray and DSis was too young to be included, so it was mainly us who attracted her ire. I can remember her at a couple of meal times, having brought out food for herself, and DSis, and not bring any for us, and her glaring at us as though we were scum. I guess we had been playing up at the table or something that children do. Once DB and I were arguing while we were on a picnic in France, and they packed up the car and drove away and left us for what seemed like ages, but was probably only about ten minutes, to teach us a lesson I guess. I was hysterical and DB was trying to calm me down, saying we would be ok and we could live in the fields. If he was saying that kind of stuff, we must have been quite small. This teaching a lesson was a common theme. Once I misplaced my watch when I was washing up in the caravan. She didn't let up all week about it, saying how careless and stupid I was, and how little regard I had for possessions. It turns out I had taken it off while I was washing up, left it by an open window, and she had seen it and hidden, to teach me to care more about my possessions. She gave it back at the end of the week. It didn't even occur to me to be angry with her, I was just grateful to her! I must have been about 14 then.
She and my dad's relationship is utterly dysfunctional. I can't ever remember a time when she didn't appear to openly despise him, undermine him, run him down in public. As I grow older I realise how weak he always was, and how he has just put up with a shit marriage and any sympathy is kind of evaporating. He is very absent minded, which I have inherited to a certain degree - he is one of those clever, daft people, who lose things a lot. She appears to think this is a major character flaw. For over forty years she has been implying he is stupid, and he came to believe it. Her expectations of people are insane. I once heard her shouting at my brother for not knowing where Tristan da Cunha was, when he was about fifteen. WTAF? We were woken one night after they had been out, because he had left the immersion on and the water was boiling hot. He was stupid for forgetting it. I came home from university to do an essay once, and had to hurry to get the train back again, and left the essay behind by mistake. It all worked out fine, but the drama was ridiculous. She didn't speak to me for weeks because she "couldn't believe I had been so stupid".
Oh God there's so much, but I don't want to be tedious. Everything is about her. Everything. If someone is in a mood, i.e. they just happen to have got out of bed on the wrong side, there is a row, because it is automatically something she has done. She can't understand that something might be nothing to do with her. She treats other people's health issues she has been told about, as items of gossip. I can't express how distasteful I find that. She loves being confided in, loves it. But I was once off work with stress, and (this was while I was still trying to have a "normal" relationship with her), and I phoned to tell her I had been off with stress and she said "Oh God, you're always ill. What is it this time?" at which I put the phone down on her. She called back to find out what it was and she started to cry, saying she didn't want me to turn out like my brother. He has been mentally ill for years. He put us all through hell, after drug use and psychotic episodes and depression and a suicide attempt. It's only now I start really appreciating her probably role in all that, but she thinks it is simply her bad luck to be cursed with such a troublesome son. She definitely used to bully/abuse him, and my dad didn't do anything about it. I guess he tried to persuade himself that it wasn't too bad, and that some of it was probably his fault. She stamped on DB's his feet in heeled shoes, and once spat in his face. She told him again and again there was something wrong with him, that he wasn't normal.
It's not that we lacked for anything. I was a musical child and I had piano and flute lessons for years and got quite good. I was no trouble, academic, passed exams, did school work. So did DSis. DB was an underachiever, despite being so bright. She was very proud of me, in her own way. When I performed a concerto once, she was so proud, as she said she was when I passed exams with flying colours. She just never remembered that on a day to day basis. She wrote me a letter on my 18th birthday telling me how much they loved me and how proud they were of me. This is the kind of thing which confused me utterly. She was generous, once we'd grown up that is. Paid for us through university, help with house deposits and so on. But on the other hand, my dad once tried to buy me a hat I tried on in a shop which suited me, and she wouldn't let him, saying she had already bought my Christmas presents. He put it back as well, instead of telling her to fuck off! Weak. I never wanted children in case it turned me into a person like her. But then four years ago we decided we did, and ironically have fertility problems and we're doing IVF. I told her we were having it, and she said "Well now I know, I'll be very upset if you don't keep me updated about all of it." That wasn't why I told her. But she can be warm and funny and kind and generous. Most people think she is those things. She has good friends.
I already can't believe I've written this much, but there's so much more. So much. But I don't want to bore anyone. There are lots of people with bigger problems and worse families.