Hi,
Randomly asking you lovely lot for advice because I’m at a loss how to handle this anymore - particularly as I’m in the process of recovering from PND and not feeling as if I have the mental reserves to figure it out.
The issue is my mum. My siblings and I had a very emotionally abusive childhood. She would smack us over the head (hard enough to get ear infections), literally mash food all over our faces if we didn’t eat everything, had affairs but told us not to tell our Dad, repeatedly tell my Dad we’d done something naughty when he was out (literally making stuff up) and encourage him to discipline us. They finally divorced when I was 11. Younger sister and I lived with her. Elder with my Dad. She then had a number of relationships with hideous men (meet them in a nightclub on Saturday, move them in on Monday and tell us they were our “new” Dad). My actual Dad remarried and while he’s not a bad person, just disengaged from us completely and moved on with his life. I see him as a more like a “friendly uncle” type figure.
In my teen years, many of these men were physically and sexually abusive. My mum made out like it was my fault - she’d take me out to buy a bra or to the GP to put me on the pill for heavy periods - then get them out in front of Aunts, work colleagues etc and be all like “Poor me, look what I’m dealing with, my children are sluts”. My younger sister went off the rails with it all. I was daft and tried to please her, in the process ending up isolated from anyone my own age and with a pretty bonkers idea what was normal. I stopped eating and washing. I think I just didn’t want to be attractive, I wanted to be invisible. I was referred to Camhs by the school nurse. My mum explicitly told me that I was allowed to talk about the bullying at school, not about anything at home. From then on, any time I argued with her, her trump card was always “Marzipan, I think you need to see your counsellor again, you’ve obviously got mental problems”
When I was 19 I went to uni. Realised how fucked up my life had been and took an overdose. My mum sat next to me in hospital and said “Honestly, I think I’m going to need some counselling myself to get over what you’ve done”. She then moved abroad...without even telling me, I found out two weeks before from her husband’s work colleague. When I confronted her she said “I didn’t want to upset you what with your mental problems”.
In the end, it was the best thing for me. I had years of counselling, CBT, mindfulness. I made friends, met my husband, went back to uni, got a degree, do a job I love.
Then when I was pregnant, my elder sister told me my mum had breast cancer. I decided to write to her and tell her my news, but also tried to explain that I needed space and time and her to respect my boundaries. She wrote back, was thrilled, happy days. Miraculously, the “cancer” was a cyst and without any histology etc they managed to tell her this on the same day as her op!
Only now she won’t leave me alone. She’s done some pretty out of order shit (to cut this rambling essay short), so when I asked for some space she has since repeatedly phoned me. When I reiterated that I needed space, she continued to ignore me and has today sent me a letter saying she’s “sorry for whatever I am supposed to have done”. I just feel like she’s gaslighting me again.
I’m not really expecting anyone to reply to be honest. I guess writing this down, I needed permission to end all contact with her. I feel bad because I know she’ll be gutted not to see my baby anymore, but I just can’t trust her not to do something batshit and I can’t trust myself not to allow her to press my buttons.