Difficult situation with DM (v long)

[LadyLonely1]

Hi Mners, i need some help/ words of advice with what's going on in my life.

The problem is with my family. My mother has been emotionally abusive throughout my entire life. My childhood was so traumatic, I often wonder how I even survived it. She picked me out from my other 3 siblings and really took it out on me. She seems to believe that being a good mother to them that she was a good mother all round if that makes sense.
This set me on a path of becoming an anxious,stressed people pleaser, and she controlled me by showing me affection when she needed something and taking it away.

She is very sociable, charming and someone people are drawn to. Family/friends somehow got the hint to treat me differently from my siblings and its very evident till today. My siblings are also very much controlled by her and although today we get along, they will never acknowledge that she was wrong in what she did to me.

After uni i moved away and being away helped me see how toxic my home life was. I met my dh and I truly feel that my entire life of misery was made up for by meeting him. He has helped me through so much, most of all by just believing me. We now live in another country from my family and this has been so therapeutic for me. We however go back home once a year however he does not ever leave me alone with them and I cant bear to be.

The situation right now is that she is very ill. And this is where my battle is, I feel truly awful but I don't feel much for her. I don't wish her any bad, just don't want to feel obligated like I should care. I feel so angry thinking about all that I went through, Just feeling like I don't want anything to do with them, then feeling horribly guilty about thinking of an ill person this way. I don't know how to stop this feeling of guilt and obligation as it sometimes just consumes me. Late last year she had a major op, and when she told me It didn't cross my mind to go visit her. She asked me to, so i flew 14+ hours and I think the fact that she had to ask me to come rather than me jump and offer irked her, so she took it out on me when i got there. My dh was not able to come with me. That experience set me back to my childhood and it took me this entire year to move on. It really was traumatic and I feared leaving home again.
She is ill again right now, so what do i do. How can i stop feeling so obligated and guilty like i should be doing something.

Sorry for my long rambling on and very long post. Thanks for reading.

I would suggest

A) Don't go and visit and

B) See a counsellor to address the totally understandable feelings of obligation and guilt

Thanks Carrot. I am thinking its time for some counseling too just won't be able to get to it right away.

From an entirely practical point of view, there is nothing you can do as distance prevents you from attending her sickbed.

I suspect that even if you had booked a flight unasked and gone to visit her last time she was ill, she'd have treated you in exactly the same way.

For reasons known only to her she singled you out and, in making you her scapegoat, she ensured that your siblings would band together out of fear that she might turn her hate-filled attention to one of them. As it is, they've no doubt spent their entire lives kowtowing to her wishes and after she's gone it could be a very long time, if ever, before any of them realise how toxic she was.

You're worth far more than her and your siblings put together and there's no reason whatsoever why you should feel obligated to what was, effectively for you, a mother and a family in name only or feel guilty for being indifferent to their fate.

Without knowing her precise state of health, it could be that she will have many more illnesses/periods but that's not reason to put your life on hold or revisit the past and re-live what were extremely unhappy times for you.

Your future is bright while hers isn't, but that's ever the way of the world and nothing to beat yourself up for.

Send a card wishing her a speedy recovery and be glad that you were the one that got away.

goddess thank you for your very kind words, am tearing reading how spot on you are.
She singled me out because she had a bad relationship with my dad and I was very close to him. In fact looked like him so that reminded her more of him.
My siblings are now left to care for her and i feel very guilty for that, why i don't know. She would always tell me when i was little that she would never live with me and every one would chime in and laugh.
Its just really, really hard some days to keep perspective of it all.

When you were children your siblings were as helpless as you were in the face of your mother's determination to make your life a living hell simply because you took after your df.

As adults they've never broken free of the chains she bound them with, but that's their choice and you are not responsible for what they've chosen of their own free will.

It's patently obvious that you bear no malice whatsoever towards your siblings and, had circumstances been different, I have no doubt that you would have been a wonderful sister and caring friend to them.

As it is they've lost out, while you've been justly rewarded with a lovely dh and a life that many can only dream of.

Count your blessings, honey, and, while you're at it bless your siblings too because you are, and have always been, the bigger person in the unhappy dynamic that is your biological family.

for you - past hurts can only hurt you now if you let them.

I think that we are "expected" culturally to show compassion for the ill and dying, which is why we feel guilt if we don't have these feelings.

But it is extremely difficult when the person concerned has always been unpleasant/hurtful/manipulative etc

IMHO being ill doesn't constitute a "get out of jail" card for someone who has been toxic all their life. If they weren't ill they would doubtless continue as before. Some remain toxic to the bitter end.

I completely understand you feeling as you do, my own mother experienced something similar with my grandmother. She is still suffering because of DGM's treatment of her, and she is 85 now and DGM died over 30 years ago.

Be kind to yourself, don't be guilt-tripped by your DM or siblings, and preferably get counselling. Your DM tainted your childhood, don't let her spoil the rest of your life