For the longest time I have been ashamed of mother.
Let me explain before I make myself sound like a total b. My mother had 6 children including me, all of whom suffered some form of mild physical and emotional neglect which sometimes crossed over to mild abuse( being left unattended, not bathed for weeks, told we shouldn’t have been born etc.) To set the scene, I’m the oldest, two of my siblings are biological and the other three are half siblings. My dad left us when I was about 5 and my mum met another man who is the father of my half siblings. we grew up in a three bedroom house, my mother claimed benefits most of her life (she did work briefly when I was a teen) and basically we were viewed as ‘hillbilly’s’ by our neighbours. We were hardly washed, our house was filthy inside and out, my mum hoards everything, cleans but doesn’t clean properly so you’d find crisp packets down the back of the sofa, dishes piled up with food left on them overnight. If anyone stepped in to clean she would get defensive and call us snobs, my stepdad did a lot of the housework but he worked full time and I’m sure he eventually gave up because my mum would never keep it clean.
Anyway to get to the point, I moved away and lived in Canada and now live in the UK. I had so much resentment towards her for years but still kept in touch with her and visit the family home in Ireland a couple of times a year (pre Covid). It’s only in recent years I have started to be slightly more understanding towards her as I am now training to be a psychologist so I understand a lot about behaviour a lot more than I did when I was younger. I am honestly starting to wonder if she has some sort of ‘special need’ or mental health problem that was never diagnosed.
These are some examples that make me think she might be neurodivergent
Firstly she used to do strange things when we were small like hide in various parts of the house to see if we’d go look for her. We used to panic of course, we would call out to her and then find her hiding in a wardrobe. I copped on at about age 8 to what she was doing so didn’t look for her anymore but saw her do it to my younger siblings.
She used to masturbate in front of the tv even if we were in the room
She never closed the door in the bathroom so I used to think it was normal to leave the door wide open while going to the toilet. She would do this when I had friends over too.
She is unable to clean, hoards things, keeps laundry on the table, old broken items out in the garden. We even had rats in the house as kids.
She has never really had friends, isolates herself away from family, gossips about people and judges them in a very obsessive way.
She is extremely chatty and appears friendly and gentle to people who wouldn’t know her but she doesn’t know when to stop talking and talks about silly things. For example, when I lived in Canada and phone her once every three months she would ask questions like, ‘do they have frozen pizza over there?’ She still checks the weather for Canada and texts me sometimes to tell me what the weather is like there even though I’ve lived in the UK for 5 years now. She knows this obviously but still thinks this is interesting information to me.
She acts like a child, will blubber at the drop of a hat. When she worked in retail briefly, the manager asked her to work Christmas eve once and she said she just burst out crying straight away instead of handling it like an adult. She also cried before because I told my younger sister (who was 12 at the time) that Santa didn’t exist, this was because she asked me. My mother cried like a baby and asked me shy I was so evil to tell my sister such a thing.
She doesn’t have great personal hygiene, rarely showers and can be smelly but when she really needs to appear clean she can do so. She seems to be very socially aware in that sense but just lazy.
She is morbidly obese and can barely walk
or find clothes to fit her. Myself and siblings have encouraged her to lose weight, she always says she will but never does.
She apparently struggled in school but did ok in English as she likes reading. In fact she can read long novels, nothing too difficult but a good long story.
She told me she walked out of most of her leaving cert exams (equivalent to A-levels) and couldn’t grasp maths at all. She did grow up in rural Ireland where she said she was constantly out down by teachers and told she was stupid. One of her sisters (whom I’m close to, had a similar experience with teachers but did ok in life).
The list could honestly go on, she’s basically very uneducated and is socially awkward and I’m beginning to think it’s something more. The thing is nobody else in her family are like that, her sisters all did ok in life, some became teachers or nurses others married ‘well’ and became house wives who raised children that excelled in life. we all struggled and all of my siblings have mental health or addiction problems, never even completed education or got jobs. I think my sister could have the same problems that my mother has as she is quite vacant compared to my other family members and reminds me of my mother a lot.
My mother had a difficult upbringing as she was brought up (unknowingly) by her grandmother and only found out at 13 that this was in fact not her mother and her real mother was her sister (who was, and still is quite mean to her). Apparently she told my mother that she would have aborted her if she had the chance. I can only imagine how confused she would have felt growing up. She talks about feelings of abandonment a lot although I think she goes on about it a little too obsessively as she wasn’t left on at some strangers doorstep but brought up and cared for by her birth family.
She also has a ‘feel sorry’ for herself attitude to most things in her life including her divorce with my dad which happened over 25 years ago. She would talk about it for hours and hours if you let her and she has done, it’s almost an obsession.
Anyway I don’t really know what I’m asking for with this long, exhausting post but I just wonder could it be a personality disorder, ASD or is she just uncaring and unbothered? Anyone have family members like this, what do you do?