My mother has been depressed for as long as I can remember, and never really reacted to things in the same way as other mothers seemed to. Because she was unhappy she was sometimes violent and very angry. I'm listing some of the things she would do to try to work out if we were emotionally abused. Maybe labels don't matter and maybe it's not helpful, but being very anxious has made my life difficult sometimes and I'm now being medicated for it and trying to work out where it comes from. Was this abuse, bearing in mind that the hitting happened in the 70s when people did hit their children much more?
She washed my mouth out with soap when I was 4.
She walloped me when my sister got bad grades when I was 8.
She tried to whip me with a metal-buckled belt when I was 10. My sister intervened.
She grabbed my nose and twisted it when I failed my cycling proficiency test when I was 10.
She hit me round the head with a shoe for failing another exam when I was 11.
She called me ‘liar’, ‘spoilt brat’ and ‘bitch’. She said I smelt (I didn’t). I was lazy and a disappointment.
She read my private letters and diaries.
She laughed more than once at my pubescent body. She pulled open my nightdress to see how big my breasts were and pulled down my pants to see if I was growing pubic hair.
She humiliated me repeatedly in public, by shouting at me and making me cry.
She forced me to do activities I hated but which reflected well on her. Church. Church youth group. Church music weekends.
She told me that my Dad would die young of a heart attack from working too hard and it would be my fault for being selfish, when he gave me the money to go on a school trip.
She hid my money and asked where it was to see if I’d tell the truth about having lost it.
She broke my possessions by throwing them in fury to the ground.
She tore my books in half because she was furious I was reading Enid Blyton when I was eleven.
She was furious when I said I was reading Pollyanna at the age of 8 because she thought I was lying. (What we read was a big deal, because she thought we should be cleverer than everyone else because she thought she was.)
She told me I looked ‘ghastly and really very odd’ without makeup.
When I got a bad report she rocked back and forth on the ground sobbing and saying she was old (she was 45).
Even though my sister was allowed to choose her own clothes, I was not until I left home for university. (She has terrible taste in clothes). If I didn’t like the clothes she chose, she told me I was spoilt, ungrateful and hurtful.
She kept saying she would walk out of the front door and never come back.
She told me she hated her children. She said she should never have got married and had children.
She asked me to be her mother.
She told complete strangers that I was square and frumpy. (this was true – because she made me wear the clothes she chose!)
When I got the best exam results in the year she was really pleased right up until the moment that we bumped into the pretty, slim girls from my year. Then she switched and told me how horrible, and scruffy and odd I looked, and how I should be more like them.
She could also be very loving – she often said sorry and said she hated herself for it. She was kind when we were ill and would read us stories. She was kind to homeless people. She was very kind to other people who were ill. She used to buy me special sweets if I had a lot of revision. When she knew I was working hard she would cook me breakfast in bed on a Saturday. If I did look nice, she was genuinely pleased.