I'm going to try keep this short as I really could go on for so long.
I need to start by saying sometimes my Mam has a heart of gold and she can be kind so it's not awful but here are some things that she has done/said to me and I find myself so angry with her and angry that I don't have a proper relationship with her. It seems like the older I get the more angry and upset I become about all of this.
I also need to state that I probably suffer from slight depression and am unsure if it's because of our relationship and its effect on me or if I would suffer from it either way.
She is so hard to describe as it all seems a contradiction. She is a perfectionist and believes she is the only one who can do things but yet her house is really untidy and messy as she won't throw things out that should be gone years ago. She would come across really friendly to everyone she meets and if I told them any of what I'm going to say now, they probably wouldn't believe me.
I was always compared to others as a child- she used to say that everyone was better than me, people laughed at me behind my back and I had no real friends. The one thing I've always had is friends so she is wrong there.
When I was doing exams in college I was studying at home one weekend. My feet were really cold and I put them in a basin of warm water to warm them up. She started emptying water from the kettle into the basin and when I took my feet out as the water was too hot, she hit them with a wooden spoon. That same night she asked me if I was pregnant and why I was gone so fat. I joined weight watchers the following week even though I was 9 stone and I'm 5"4 but she made me believe I was overweight until weight watchers said my weight was completely normal.
I went through a phase of bullying in a job a few years ago. The bully was found out but I still wanted to leave as I felt I could never go back to that place again. She told me I was being absolutely stupid and no place would hire me and I was making a fool of myself looking for a new job.
She always has to control things. I remember having big arguments with her when I was younger as she never let me do things for myself as she felt she could do better. Her comments would either be "I know what you're like" and also "you can't do anything right".
When my first boyfriend and I broke up at the age of 18, she read my diary and came storming into the kitchen saying she read the rubbish I wrote and I needed to cop on, no guy was going to want to be with me so I needed to get used to it.
She ended up in hospital with a stroke when I was in my early 20s as I was helping out with a job at home, she kept saying I was doing it wrong and shouting at me. I left and said she could do it herself. She was angry and her blood pressure rose and she ended up in hospital. I got the blame for this and she told me that if she ever ended up in hospital because of me again, she would have the security guards take me away.
She loses her temper so easily and she constantly makes bitchy comments. When my brother and his fiancé were trying to pick a wedding venue she said nowhere would be good enough for them, not meaning she thought they deserved somewhere posh but in a sarcastic way.
Herself and my father are constantly at each other's throats and always were. I remember as a child having to just hang up on friends on the phone as the shouting got so loud.
Anyway I need to try do something about this as I feel it's upsetting me more as I get older. My OH is supportive and he is just pleasant to her, nothing more. He thinks she is fine but she treats me differently around him, as she is always on good behaviour around anyone other than family.