Please help me understand my Mum

[justaskingabout]

Can anyone help me identify what is really going on with my Mum. I feel quite bad about posting this because I love my Mother but I want to just get some feedback about what's really going on here.

Also as a disclaimed, I am temporarily living with my Mum right now, and I realise this is a really bad idea and that I need to move and that she is doing me a favour putting a roof over my head with DS but my husband just left and I had nowhere else to go.

What I really wanted was some reasons or support or suggestions for coping with all of this.

When I was a child my Mum was half lovely and half awful. Lovely in a lot of ways but I was terrified of her too. She was always angry. She hated my Dad and complained to the kids all the time about how she hated him and wished he was dead and all sort of scary things. She was always upset or ragingly angry about "mess" and the house and complainign about being a Mum. She calls herself "Cinderella" (and still does).

I grew up with a permanent knot in my stomach, always walking on eggsells, always scared to touch anything in the house, move anything, put fingerprints on something. She ironed our UNDERPANTS. I mean, we weren't allowed to touch or clothes or toys or anything. Nor have friends over. It was like she wanted everything to be untouched and if you messed it up she'd be angry, or cry or generally make you feel awful.

I left home as soon as I could at 16.

So anyway, fast forward and I have been forced to live with her for a little while, getting back on my feet.

I have one DS, aged 11, and in a lot of ways she has been amazing. She wants to do stuff with DS like go for walks and coffees, she comes to school things, we watch movies and have Mum and Daughter giggles.

But she is so controlling.

everything has to be done her way on her schedule. For example, laundry has to be done the same day, washed, ironed and back in the closet. I am scared to cook, scared to shop, scared to do anything really.

I am also constantly telling DS to stay in his room because she gets in these moods and all she does is shout at him exactly like she did at me. All you can hear all day is her screaming from one room that there's a fingerprint on something.

She also insists that he can't get anything -not even a drink of water -in case he makes a mess. So what she does is gets him a drink of water then shouts at me that she is having to do my job as a mother.

This morning is a prime example. I woke up and told him I'd take him out for breakfast and I got in the shower. When I got out, I heard her saying "your mother didn;t give you breakfast? Well obviously I am the only one who cares" and she gave him two croissants and then did not speak to me for the rest of the day ecause she had to give him breakfast.

All she does is complain about the things she "does for me", when most of the time those things are interfering and ruin my plans for the day and instead of telling her to fuck off I have to apologise to her for her doing something "for me" that I did not want her to do!

I work from home in a VERY busy and hard job that I am trying to do well at to save to move out and during my workign day she decides out of nowhere she wants to spring clean the house and if I don't drop everything, cancel my work for that day and do it -I am in the doghouse and she is crying and calling herself Cinderella.

I also know she phones family members and tells them I don't do anything and she has to do everything for me and complains about me, when really all I do is try and follow and her wishes to a tee, down to what I eat and where I go 24 hours a day.

If I lose it, she cries. She sits there sobbing about how hard her life is and that she is going to die of a heart attack and then I feel guilty.

All she ever dos is complain about her life, my Dad, her house, her work. Literally everything is so awful for her when I am currently...

1. Dumped by DH for another woman
2. Left without roof and needing to share a bedroom with my 11 year old
3. Devastated by the above
4. Walking on eggshells 24 hours a day.

She doesn;t seem to care about me at all, and also didn't when I was a child because everything was about her and what she wanted and when she wanted it and yet she somehow comes off as a martyr in it all because she genuinely is always cookign and cleaning and doing things for people but I don't want her to and never did.

I'd much rather have had a Mum that played with me or talked to me.

I can't ever even go out and see friends. She says she will babysit, but if I go out she won't talk to me for a couple of weeks and I know she rins all my aunts and family to say how cheeky I am for going out.

What is the deal here? I just don't know what this is and she is obviously so unhappy.

To be completely honest that's the ONLY asset I have right now (useful or not) and as a single parent would rather hang on to it as meaningless as it is. One day we will all die or whatever and it's worth a lot of money. The business turns over more than a few million. Gets more every year and my son does stand to potentially see the benefit one day.

Honestly also...I don't want more arguing and drama. I just want to get out, go away and not see any of them anymore.

Go down to the council and talk to someone. If you have been out of the country for 2+ years there MIGHT be a problems but you need to get out of there. If she won't let you work, then you will never get enough money together. Talk to her, try and set up a rota for cooking, cleaning, washing etc? Explain he's your son and you will do for him, if she wants to do something please ask you first. Be strong and don't feel guilty (at least don't let her know you feel guilty). Talk to your siblings, they know how she is and they maybe in the same boat as you and things might not be as rosy as they seem, especially with your brother and his children. Good luck just asking about xx

No advice re your mum, but here you would be classed as high priority for council or housing association stock because you are sharing a room with a child (more so because of child's age/sex). Appreciate this may not be the same everywhere and that stock is low, but I would definitely chase them up. Hope things improve for you soon.

Thanks both of you. I will go back to the council now. I might get a beter response now I am in the borough and am sharing with a child. I did read on the website this puts me as priority.

Only read the OP but it rings bells with my mum who I'm now sure is autistic/has aspergers.

It would be hell on earth living with her.

OP

As you wish - and I completely understand. It must all be so much to carry right now.

I'd agree with Judy on your housing priority. Sharing a room with an 11 year old boy is really not on from the providers' perspectives so get on to them first thing.

x post. Good luck.

My Dad has Aspergers! And DS. Dad is also very tough. Very cold and says horrible things. Sorry about your Mum! It's tough

x

Narc Mum and brother, Aspie Dad and Sister.

Didn't stand much of a chance did I?!!!

But you beat the odds anyway x

Re your shares would it not be an idea to get some legal advice even if you decide to do nothing?

It's really hard to explain but when you grew up with it, all of this just feels normal.
When I write it down I see how bad it is, but when it's how you grew up it feels sort of normal in a way. It hurts and upsets you but not in an OMG this is mental kind of way. It's more like a circle you get trapped in.

XH was 20% emotionally abusive and I didn;t see it because brother and Mum are 100% and so to me he seemed lovely and normal and it wasn't until someone pointed some of it out I realised.

Just going through realising all of this, and I think the next and final stepp to healing and figuring this all out is when I move out.

I feel deep down like getting a lawyer or arguing just sucks me into it when all I want to do is get away from it and re-find what "normal" is.

My son reminds me. He's so unafraid of me.

Oh my goodness. I am the family scapegoat and I know a lot about this dynamic - but I haven't read a story quite as bad as this op.

No, you didn't stand much of a chance! I can relate entirely to, first off, not knowing my family was fucked to high heaven - until I got into therapy and the whole thing unfolded (got into therapy after walking out of a hideously abusive marriage and I had to know how on earth I ended up with such an awful man). I didn't stand much of a chance either!

You seem to be experiencing a high level of FOG - fear, obligation, guilt. Par for the course when in an abusive dynamic - but do get some info on this and work towards making your way out of it. Whether your mother is OCD , has OCPD or is a full-blown narc (I'd go with the last one, myself), you have been severely abused for the duration. That is, from the year dot.

Whether or not your horrific brother is a product of a full-blown narc, therefore a full-blown narc himself, is neither here not there. You are not his keeper, nor your mother's (or father's) keeper: your priority is you and your boy.

You wouldn't be in this horrific woman's house if you had the £500,000 that belongs to you. You wouldn't be back in the vat of acid that is her orbit, reserved especially for you. I'm sorry for such strong language - she had her chance to be a decent mother and all she has done is abuse the hell out of you.

You may not want to fight now but I do hope the time will come when you can and will fight to get what is yours and belongs to you. Ime it took many years of therapy to get myself straight (6 years for, at that point, 36 years of wall-to-wall abuse from formative and impressionable years to endless abuse as an adult). I appreciate feeling it is the very last thing you want to do - I relate to that: I felt I had been through enough hell and all I wanted to do was slough it off and go forward. But ime I took it with me and I had to go back over it with a professional as an effective way to get it out and off me for good; only then could I leave it behind effectively.

I see you've already got wind of scapegoat/golden child as a 'thing'! I hope on your travels you can get to grips with FOG and at least start to take it from that end that you owe her zero, Nada, zilch.

You are fab. I hope you get that

just thanks for your good wishes that's really kind. I do very much agree with pps that it's so unfair and just plain wrong that dbs business owes you I understand why you don't want to start a legal battle at the moment, but perhaps when you are in your own place you might feel differently? You know you would only be collecting what is owed, not getting anything handed to you.

I hope things are bearable at the moment and you will get your own space soon xx