There’s a long and complex backstory and I don’t wish to drip feed, so thank you so much if you do manage to read to the end of this. NC for this as DM knows my MN name, although I have been on the site in one form or another since 2012. Still, a few extremely minor details have been changed to stop me outing myself.
I’m an only child and I had an extremely happy childhood – both my parents were incredibly nurturing, plenty of emotional investment in me, home cooked meals every night, peaceful home life, lovely holidays, full support to help me achieve my dreams, etc. I am fully aware how incredibly fortunate I am to have had such a great start in life.
Things started going wrong between DM and I when I hit puberty. I developed anxiety and depression leading to panic attacks and mood swings which resulted in me bursting into tears and crying uncontrollably. DM said that I turned into a “monster” - where had her “perfect, happy daughter” gone? No combination of medicine or counseling has ever helped with my depressive spells, although I have found that regular exercise has helped me control my mood swings, so that they don’t impact on others.
Despite these setbacks I went to university and got myself a good degree, made lifelong friends, met my DP and found that a lot of my ideals differed greatly from DM’s - ie: she is an introvert and a homebody, has never been drunk in her life as she doesn’t like the feeling of being out of control whereas I love nothing more than a few glasses of wine and a good dance to let off steam (admittedly, I do drink more than I should, but not to the detriment of my goals in life). She never plays music as she prefers silence and finds it an intrusion on her peace, whereas I play several instruments and I’m incredibly passionate about music – it’s like therapy to me when I’m feeling tense. She votes Conservative and calls my left-wing sensibilities “ridiculous and naïve”. She is incredibly practical and pragmatic and scorned me for the fact that practical tasks don’t come naturally to me and I tend to let my emotions drive my actions. Despite her high intelligence being at odds with her lack of career ambition (she has a degree and is qualified to teach, but hasn’t worked since I was born), she constantly criticises me for supposedly wasting own talents (never mind that the field I’m in is incredibly competitive and it’s not through lack of ambition and want of trying that it’s been a struggle to get to where I want to be) I was so used to her black and white stance on everything, it took me a while to get my head around the fact that as much as I loved her and was grateful for everything she has done for me, my opinions were as valid as hers and just because she was telling me that she was right and I was wrong, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
When I was 24, my DP, who had bipolar disorder, committed suicide in the house we shared. (He had been sectioned on a psychiatric ward, was raped by another male patient and couldn’t live with the shame of it) I was traumatised and couldn’t face living in the house any more, so my parents said I could move back home while I got back on my feet, which I did, for the next 2 years. During this time DM moaned at me every time I played music and constantly shouted at me for not living up to her insanely high levels of tidiness, despite the fact I was known to my friends as “neat freak” because I was so tidy! I started a new job and a married man 15 years my senior started flirting with me. Because I was feeling very low and vulnerable and had moved away from my friends and the city in which I gained my independence I was flattered and flirted back, but I soon came to my senses, found another job and cut contact with him. DM then found a string of emails between us on our shared computer and grew convinced that I’d had an affair with him. I swore blind that nothing physical had happened with this man and that I deeply regretted the flirting. To this day, 12 years on she still doesn’t believe me and frequently calls my actions “unforgivable” and “despicable.”
It came very apparent during those 2 years at home that DM completely despised the person I had become and my outlook on life. My DF has a strong relationship with DM, but even he admits that she has an acerbic tongue and is not the kind of person you want to get on the wrong side of.
When I was 26, DF helped me to buy a house (in retrospect probably because myself and DM under one roof had become unbearable and I couldn’t afford to move out on my own in the area of the country in which we live) DF generously paid just under half of the cost of the house upfront and I got a mortgage for the other half. Both our names are on the mortgage, but I take responsibility for paying it. I saw the house as a lifeline and to this day I take great pride in looking after it.
Things had become so fractious between DM and I by that point that I moved out that we had no contact with each other for the first year. When I did swallow my pride and reach out to her, it seemed that we couldn’t be in the same room for more than 5 minutes without her getting offended my some perceived slight of mine, or disparaging of my point of view. I was constantly on edge, wondering what on earth I had done wrong. Still, I kept trying – partly because my relationship with my DF is great and I knew it upset him that DM & I couldn’t see eye to eye and partly because I had such fantastic memories of DM from my childhood that I hoped we could regain that closeness.
When I was 27, I reconnected with someone from university and we began a 4-year relationship. By then, my self-esteem was in tatters from the constant criticism I’d received from DM. When my DP didn’t turn out to be the person I thought he was I tolerated his behavior because I genuinely didn’t think I could do any better. He moved in with me and I agreed to pay the majority of our living costs while he studied for his Masters, on the proviso that when he graduated he would support me through doing my Masters, which had been a long-term goal of mine. The relationship went from bad to worse – DP constantly took his frustrations out on me and exploited my poor relationship with DM as “proof” that I was unreasonable (FWIW, she was very vocal about the fact she hated him) He lost two jobs and numerous friendships due to his aggression, which he never took accountability for. When I found out that he had joined a gay dating site he blamed this on me for “not being very nice to him’?!! I wanted to leave him, but by that point I was pregnant, doing my MA and had no income, so I buried my head in the sand as I couldn’t cope with the fallout of splitting up. His behavior while I was pregnant became abusive, ie: turning the mains water off so I couldn’t shower, preventing me from going out and meeting friends, accusing me of an imaginary affair with the guitarist in my band (citing the “affair” I had with the married man as “proof” of this,) scouring through my bank statements to see what I had spent my money on, then accusing me of “hiding” something when he couldn’t find anything untoward. As a result of all this I miscarried the baby and the same week he walked out on me.
My Masters was the only thing that kept me going throughout this period – I was wholeheartedly passionate about it and once again my DF stepped in, saying that he would pay my share of the mortgage for the duration of my studies so I could achieve my Masters – a course which was so intensive that I was unable to work at the same time as studying. I am eternally grateful to him for doing this, but it was clear that my DM resented the financial sacrifices they had to make as a result.
Fast forward 5 years. I am now married to a wonderful man who I have been with since 2011. He is utterly right for me, totally “gets” me, is incredibly kind, calm, hardworking and the most emotionally intelligent person I have ever met. Despite this, and DM telling me that she was glad I had finally met the right person, she was full of derision in the lead up to my wedding, sending me newspaper cuttings from articles saying how “unnecessary” wedding receptions were and how “excruciating” they were for the guests, when in reality she was simply dreading the evening reception herself because of her social awkwardness. She kept telling me that “the grander the wedding, the weaker the marriage” and that she and my DF (who have been together 46 years) would have been happy getting married on a shoestring and would have done if it wasn’t for her interfering parents who usurped their wedding plans. The fact is that DH and I paid for ever penny of our wedding ourselves without any financial help from them and it cost just half the cost of an average wedding, so was hardly extravagant. All our friends looked forward to the wedding with genuine excitement and anticipation and we had an amazing day. Which brings me on to the fact that through DH, I have made the best circle of friends I could ever ask for. The women in the group are like the sisters I never had and we have an amazing relationship.
I passed my MA with distinction, the upshot of which is that I was equipped with the skills to write a novel and the gain representation from a literary agent – after years of trying to achieve this I was over the moon. In March, I sent a proof my book cover to DM, hoping that she would be proud of me. Instead, DM went nuts, citing the fact that I was using my married name on the cover (as opposed to her mothers maiden name which I had used for my writing prior to getting married). She saw it as an insult to her late mother, saying that without the money she had inherited after nana died, I would never have been able to complete the MA. (It’s worth mentioning that during the last 7 years of my nana’s life, my DM went out of her way to stop me seeing her) I tried to appease DM by changing the name back, but still she let rip, assassinating my character for hours re. my “horrendous” behavior in my late teens and 20s, my “poor life choices” which had left her and DF picking up the pieces, that she has no sympathy because I “brought misery on myself” through my judgment in relationships and a whole host of other times where I “misbehaved” back in my teens of which I have absolutely no recollection. (Really bizarre stuff like me supposedly taking the laces out of her shoes and hiding them in the garden when I was 15, which I’m 99.9% certain I did not do!) Regardless, all of these things bear absolutely no relevance to the place I am in my life no! At 36, I’m finally at a place in my life where I feel stable and optimistic about the future and have tried to make DM see that the person I am now is a far cry from the person I was then, only she doesn’t know who I am now, because she has barely been in my life for the past 10 years – think only seeing me once every 6 months despite the fact I only live 5 miles away, never speaking on the phone, etc. Finally, she seemed to accept that I had a point and said that she wanted to give me “one last chance.”
In the two months since then, she hasn’t tried to make contact once, even when I had a pelvic prolapse and DH caught the norovirus. As an upshot of our ill health, DH & I were unable to handle several jobs around our house, including hanging a door and assembling a wardrobe. DF said that he would call over with DM to help with these, but as soon as they arrived last Friday, there was evident tension between DM and myself. She accused me of being “demanding” and “ungrateful” despite the fact that DF had offered to help with these jobs, rather than me asking him. She also presented me with a fistful of political articles which she’d cut out of the newspaper with passages she’d highlighted, saying that she was “sick of my ridiculous politics and needed educating”! Obviously I was less than thrilled by this, leading her to say that I had no “respect” for her. I responded, “How do you expect me to respect you when you don’t respect me?!” Then I began to state that I couldn’t believe her disinterest since she’d said she wanted a clean slate, but stopped myself, saying “If I go into that, our relationship will be irreparable.” She then shouted, “Don’t you think it already IS irreparable? You hate me don’t you? Go on, admit it!” I said as calmly as possible that I didn’t hate her at all – she had given birth to me, I loved her despite hating some of her actions and if she could see inside my head I suspected that my feelings for her would be entirely different from what she perceived. She stormed off out of the house and it was only an hour later after much mediating from my DF that she let me hug her when I reached out to her.
Since then, my head has been all over the place. For years I have truly believed that I am the horrendous person that DM paints me to be, and that if only I could be “better” I could win her affections back. When I think of her in an abstract way, I crave getting her relationship back on track – she and DF are the only blood relatives I have, discounting DM’s sister who she has no contact with (and therefore I have no contact with) due to personality clashes. DF is an only child and all my grandparents are deceased, so I would be distraught if DM and I never managed to resolve our relationship. In reality, whenever we’re in the same room, we can’t seem to manage more than a few sentences without her disagreeing with me and putting me down. She doesn’t talk to other people in the condescending way she talks to me, so why does she find it appropriate in my case? I’m not going to suddenly change my entire outlook on life to appease her – why can’t she accept that people are different and develop some tolerance?! I keep trying to tell myself that I wouldn’t have so many loyal friends and an amazing DH if I was “impossible” – true, these people are on my wavelength, so they’re going to embrace me more easily that she does, but I find it heartbreaking that while so many people in my life refer to me in such positive terms, ie: trustworthy, open, warm-hearted, generous, witty, quirky, gregarious, that she just condemns me as a pain in the arse??!
I have tried to paint as fair a picture as possible here. Am I in the wrong and do I need a reality check, or should I give up on trying to extend the olive branch to DM and forge ahead in my life without her?