Mothers. A lot of discussion about bonding, recently - or not bonding. I suppose it's obvious that my mother wouldn't have bonded properly with me, after the death of the child before - she has said that she was scared of allwoing herself to get too close, because of that bereavement.
But I tend to think that's a symptom or a facet of her general disorder, rather than the root cause of it all. I think she was probalby always like that, and if she hadn't been, she could have reacted differently to the circumstances. Her own mother died when she was 19, and she once told me that at the time she "prided herself on how quickly she got over it". She was saying this with some awareness that this was not actually the best thing to have done after all, but still - to me it speaks volumes. It shows how dysfunctionally she was brought up - to regard all feelings as weaknesses to be stamped upon and got rid of as quickly as possible. Sometimes it seems like the only real feeling she didn't get rid of was anger. That was certainly the only feeling that was expressed with any passion in our "home".
But my mother confused me greatly because she did all the right things, on the surface. She fed me, she clothed me - she was the kind who would be always on at me to put another layer on, a hat, a scarf; she loves being a hostess, making tea and cakes, she made some of my clothes herself fgs (although I never really liked them and then felt even more guilty for "rejecting" her, so I never consciously admitted, even to myself, as a child, that I felt yukky in them). She always hugged me and sometimes said she loved me - so on the surface I had this great mother who ticked all the boxes.
But I didn't. She hated me. Others have spoken of this recently - the active hate - my god, the look on her face when she was shouting at me, the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice - it took me years and years and years to work out that this was not OK and not normal and not loving. AN, you came up with the term "poison container" - well I was absolutely that for my mother (for my whole family). She just spewed her venom into me. Like she really wanted to destroy me. And I think, in her mind, she did - and does - see herself as perfectly justified in doing so, she really believed and believes that I was the person who had made her like this. She's getting quite bonkers now, actually - when I last had any contact with her, she was semi-desperate to be restored to a relationship with me as DS had been born, so she was saying whatever I wanted to hear, admitting how wrong she'd been and how she hadn't been a good mother (this is only the tip of the iceberg, btw) and saying she took responsibility and wanted to make it right etc etc. But the need in her to go back to her old ways and try to control me and use me to make herself feel better about her own crap was just too strong and she was back to shouting at me and blaming me and painting herself as the poor injured martyr within a few weeks of phone contact. Or just forgetting or denying what she'd said the day or week before, even minutes before in the very same conversation. (Both my parents are adept at that.) Basically, she would only say she'd been wrong as long as I kept acting like everything had always been fine and as long as I wasn't angry with her at all. So it was worthless and meaningless, just like her "I love you"s and her empty, cardboard hugs. actually, no, it was worse than meaningless, it was utter selfishness as usual from her - she wasn't doing any of it because she genuinely recognised she'd hurt me and she wanted to make me feel better in any way; she was doing it because she wanted contact with me and her gs, to make her look normal to herself and her friends. And that's it. I don't actually feature in her world at all.
You talked about annihilation, AN - sometimes I really don't know how I wasn't annihilated completely. Despite all the "good", "normal" stuff in our family, there was something so crazy and so evil that I still can't believe I got out alive. Sometimes I feel like I escaped from Colditz. But it was pretty much nearly all psychological, it was the environment I grew up in that was so dangerous, not specific acts as such.
It's hard to write this. I still always worry that people will read and think - well, she's making a big fuss about nothing Which was one of my mother's favourite lines - oh, along with how useless I was, thanks for reminding me of that one PM. And how I hadn't got any gumption, how I lacked any common sense, how selfish and lazy and greedy I was, how I was all take, take, take. Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about. Stop laughing or you'll be laughing on the other side of your face. Stop doing that or I'll knock you into the middle of next week, I'll give you a thick ear, knock your heads together. And my mum wandering around like the biggest martyr in the world, like I was ganging up on her with my dad and my brother (huh???) and she was so poor and put upon and hard done by. Oh no, that was me always acting as if I was hard done by. Or a dog in the manger. (What? what did that even mean??? I had no idea.) Or being melodramatic. But then conversely, if I actually wanted her know that I was upset, "it's not like you to be miserable" - huh?? ie let's pretend you're not upset because I'm bloody well going to completely IGNORE it.
So this is the milder end of the scale, and from the one person in my family I did feel I got any love at all from. Am I attention seeking??? AN, when you write that I want to scream at you, no, of course you're not! (in the nicest possible way, I hope you understand. And it was so sad to read what you went through and the way you listed it as if they were just normal routine things instead of acts of betrayal and abuse and terrible hurt that happened to you). But when I'm writing I feel the same way. I feel there is even less concrete evidence of what I went through, and that a lot of people would judge me for being stuck in the past, unable to let go, over dramatising it - you know these really anti-therapy types who call it whingeing and emotional self-indulgence? But IME it's usually those people who are themselves actually really stuck in the past, only with no awareness of it whatsoever, so they just repeat it without realising again and again. A tangent, sorry.
I'm aware this is becoming a bit stream of consciousness, sorry, but - anyway, the facts of my life are that for years - decades - it was absolute shit. I had no proper job, no regular income; no healthy stable relationhips; no solid, long term friendships; no husband; no proper home of my own; no children of my own - no normal life at all, really, just nibbles at it. Not even good health; not even a cat. And everything I tried to do to make things work just backfired and seemed to land me even deeper in the hole. Or the spider's web. Literally, everything.
Then I found my present therapist who saw what had really happened to me, and also saw how hard I was prepared to work and how determined I was - and my life slowly started to turn around. And now, finally, I have a loving DH, a beautiful DS, a lovely home, some lovely friends... my life is totally unrecognisable. What changed? I started to really blame my parents. Really see it as black and white, actually - there are NOT two sides to every story - Baby P and his mother/abusers, Josef Fritzl and his daughter, Mugabe and Zimbabwe... sometimes it is very clear, there is a wrongdoer and an innocent victim, whether one person or a whole nation. Obviously these are extreme examples but I have to see it the same way, because it's the only thing that makes sense of my life. They were the wrongdoers and I was the innocent victim. They hurt me, I paid the price. All those years before, I thought if they hurt me I must have deserved it/provoked it somehow; or before that even that if I was failing at life it was because I was just crap. But they hurt me and I paid the price. This is what most of my conscious mind thinks. Some of me is still in denial and hence the worry about being condemned. But I do think I know the truth now. Long time coming. Hope I haven't scared you off.