Hello
Feeling a bit down today after comments from my mum yesterday. Wondered if anyone can offer any insight as to where I'm going wrong. Will try and not make this to long.
I'm eldest of three, myself and sister local, other lives abroad. Raised by father, mum went back to work, they are still together.
I worked full time in very high pressure job. Struggled for years with many miscarriages and infertility. Recently had DD.
Both parents retired, care for sisters kids basically full time.
I'm now at home with DD. Not sure if relevant but mums mum died when I was pregnant and I was very close to her.
Relationship with mum has become more and more difficult of late. She is involved in everything in the community and wider area. She wants to know everything. During all the years of infertility I rarely discussed it with her as she would cry and say how sad it made her.
When DD came I went into shock and had a lot of counselling. She was very dismissive and often railroaded me and suggested I should just talk to her. She has never asked how it went.
There are so many examples recently where she has made me feel so small. She seems so bitter.
I arranged to meet a surprise visitor from abroad at her home and she was screaming at my nieces. She clearly cannot cope with them. It was awful.
Yesterday I told her I had booked a baby first aid course and she looked at me in disgust. Why would you need that, you've got me she said. Then laughed and said imagine you doing first aid. I asked her to stop being so dismissive and she told me I was an ungrateful drama queen. That books were more my thing.
You see I can't decide if she's always been like this, and I'm only noticing now I'm about more. Or whether she herself is unwell.
The public perception is this warm, kind helpful lady. Behind that door she is mean and cruel. I fell out with her before Christmas because she called my lovely dad stupid because he didn't hear something I said. No big deal, he just didn't hear me.
Today I went to see a friends mum to get a dress altered. She was so warm and welcoming. She made lunch and cuddled DD. I cried all the way home.
My mum is always shouting and criticising but in a way it's seen as everyone else's fault. She texts me about a hundred times a day asking what I'm doing, where I'm going, who I'm with. Then if I was to invite her she would be no help at all. She keeps asking to look after DD but I don't want her to. My dad was cooing at DD yesterday and she growled at him for making a stupid noise!! I took her into office the other day as I had some tax stuff to do. She was meeting a friend for lunch and I said why don't you take DD in or am as asleep. She said her friend had flu so she would go alone. Then came back and sat in my room huffing when the secretary was holding DD.
I'm sorry this is all very rambling. I just don't know what to do. It's like I'm damned whatever I do. This public image she creates but isn't real, it's really pulling me down.
Does anyone have any thoughts, if you got this far.