Long story - I've posted about it periodically so apologies if I'm repeating myself. This is a really long post so look away now if you need to!!
My mum was a single parent who brought me up alone until I was 13. My nan helped out a lot as she lived close by, but my mum was constantly falling out with her if she stood up for herself or wouldn't agree to what my mum wanted her to do. My nan was widowed and her husband had been very controlling so after he died she didn't want to be told what to do by her own daughter.
In the end, my mum found somebody else who would look after me while she went to work so she broke contact with my nan (her mum) and forbade me ever to go and see her again, which broke my heart. I was once forced to ignore her when we saw her shopping in the town centre and when I became a teenager and secretly went to see her, she found out and didn't speak to me for days.
She had various relationships with men throughout my childhood. She was engaged several times but it never lasted and would always end in a big bust-up over her possessive and jealous nature in which she tried to control the man by not allowing him the freedom to see his friends (she seemed very insecure on the one hand and yet was incredibly vain).
When I was 13, she got married and had another child. My stepdad was okay but he had a job that took him away from home most of the week and she was constantly suspicious that there were other women. Their marriage was unhappy and she treated him like crap, so in the end he did have an affair, which she said confirmed what she suspected he would do.
After they got married and had their own child, my mother became totally disinterested in me. Soon this turned into hurtful comments and actions (such as telling me I was fat, laughing at me, belittling me) and this progressed to isolating me from anything they did as a family (going on family outings without telling me, buying three of everything during the weekly shop and parading what they had bought in front of me - for example, buying three cream cakes and mocking me as they ate theirs knowing there wasn't one for me).
By the time I was in my mid teens I'd got a saturday job because my mum refused to give me money for even basic things like school shoes. I remember her once promising to buy me a warm coat and then refusing at the last minute (out of spite and wanting to be in control), leaving me struggling with a thin cotton coat all winter. Christmas was always awful - my stepdad had a son from a previous marriage and he wasn't allowed into the house to eat dinner with us so my stepdad used to take a plate out to the freezing cold garage and the boy had to eat his dinner there. Plainly, my stepdad didn't have the balls to stand up to her.
As I got older, it got worse. She began saying awful things like how she should have had an abortion rather than have kept me. I had no other family I could turn to (my nan had died by this point) and when I seemed upset by what she was saying, she'd mock me and tell me to go and live with my real dad, knowing full well I didn't know my real dad (because she had prevented me from knowing him).
I did well at school, which was my saving grace. The teachers sort of understood what was going on at home (though I never told them outright as I wanted to seem "sorted" like everyone else) and used to let me stay behind to finish work as I couldn't get any space to do so at home (she would send my toddler sibling into my room to play when I was studying then tell her I mustn't love her because I didn't want to play with her).
In the end I met a nice lad and realised from his family set-up that mine was totally screwed up. I also had a part-time job that I fitted around my A-Levels. The fact that I had a boyfriend gave me a bit of confidence to stand up for myself at home, which she didn't like, and this made her behave worse than ever, pouring away a bottle of perfume my friends had clubbed together to buy for my eighteenth birthday (though denying she'd done it), refusing to allow my boyfriend into the house (except the kitchen).
I tried many times to "make it better", even though I had no idea what I'd done wrong. Efforts included buying her things (such as saving up to buy her a dress I knew she wanted, only to watch her parade it in front of my stepdad then hang it in her wardrobe without even a thanks) and trying to talk to her (even saying "I don't know what I've done but I'm sorry" - which led her to literally shrug me off, walk away and turn out the lights).
By the time I was applying to university things were at a peak. She refused to help with the cost of train fares to travel to interviews so the school stepped in and gave me money from their "family hardship fund" which I found really embarassing. I was offered a well paid summer job but she refused to help me with the cost of travel for the first week so I had to let the job go. I was offered another summer job in Paris but she "forgot" to pass the message on until it was too late and the job had gone.
Eventually she packed my belongings into black bin liners while I was at work and told me to leave (again mockingly saying I should go to live with my dad). I literally had nowhere to go so my boyfriend's parents allowed me to pitch a tent in the garden of their tiny house and I lived in that for three months. She had stipped my bedroom and changed the locks within 24 hours of turfing me out.
I got good A-Levels and went to univeristy but struggled with anxiety and depression and found it hard to feel motivated academically. Looking back I realise I'd been "set free" from years of emotional abuse and was suffering some sort of post-trauma stress. Eventually I got counselling which helped a lot but didn't help with my academic motivation so I eventually took a year out and got a job before changed courses and finding something I really wanted to do.
During my univerisity years I tried to maintain a relationship with my mum because I had my younger sibling, of whom I was very fond. My mum wrote to me and said I could go home for the first christmas holidays providing I stuck to a set of rules (which she listed). Having no choice I went home but it was a diaster and I cried for the whole month. She also wanted payment for "keep", which I couldn't provide, so instead she took the duvet cover and pillowcase I'd bought with my student grant and kept them for my little sister's bed, leaving me with just a duvet to go back to university in the new term. I never spent another night at home after that first year (which is 18 years ago).
Since then our relationship has been very up and down, but I maintained it for the sake of my little sister.
The year I graduated she and my stepdad got a divorce, which left her financially devastated for a long time afterwards. She began phoning me during the exam period telling me about her financial problems and trying to convince me to take on her debts (for example, a hire-purchase sofa she'd got for £2,500 to "prove a point" to my stepdad). I refused to take on her debts as I had no job lined up after university but encouraged her to re-train so she'd be able to support herself financially, which she did. Incidentally, I was still with the same boyfriend I'd met all those years ago and he was now graduated and earning good money, which I suspect she saw as an opportunity a that time.
Years go by. At 32 I got married to the same boy I'd met when I was 17. When I showed her my engagement ring she didn't offer any congratulations but changed the subject to bitching about her ex-husband. In the run-up to the wedding she advised me not to have my little sister as bridesmaid because she would "show me up" (the real reason was that my sister was trying to form a relationship with her dad and my mum didn't like it and wanted to punish her). She couldn't get her way about the seating arrangements for the wedding (had a brand new boyfriend and wanted him on the top table) so she told lies about me to my uncle, which he (sadly) believed and has never spoken to me since.
In 2005 I had my own daughter. I wrote to my mum when I was first pregnant (before she knew) telling her how she'd made me feel. She wrote back telling me it had all been my stepdad's fault and he'd made her do and say all those things (which I simply don't accept). I replied saying I didn't accept this, so eventually she said she didn't know why she'd acted like this but wanted to have a "mother daughter" relationship with me, which I decided to try, as wanted to put the past behind us now I was going to have my own children.
My daughter is now almost four and I'm expecting a second in June. My little sister is not so little now (she's 22) but still lives with my mum, who has turned her against her father (literally cut him out of photographs with scissors). They are very close; more like sisters, as my mum has never really set boundaries for her and has clung onto her for dear life since she has no other friends or family any more (constantly falls out with her only brother). My sister's not a bright girl at all - calls herself "Vicky Pollard" and is scarily accurate, but she's my sister and I love her.
SO back to the present - My mum adores my daughter - only grandchild, very cute etc etc. It's a bit suffocating at times because her walls and surfaces are covered with framed photos and whenever she sees her she begs her for kisses and cuddles that I suspect my daugher doesn't really want to give (and my mother gets from nobody else).
She has often looked after my daughter (though never overnight) but I realised recently this has always been on her own terms because when I truly needed her help (because I wanted to go to parents' evening and there was nobody else to ask), she began umming and ah-ing and said she "might" do it, whicb brought into sharp focus her need to be in control and to "withold" help to make herself feel like she has the upper hand (I eventually missed the parents evening rather than be treated like that).
My mother drains my energy. She never has a good word to say about anyone. She has (literally) no friends. She falls out with her colleagues. She would cause trouble in an empty house. She's bored all weekend as has no hobbies or interests (hence offers to "give me a break" from my daughter as has nothing else to do). I have recently become concerned about what she says about me behind my back to my daughter (who is developing a good memory).
At Christmas she didn't buy me a present, which was perfectly fine because, although I knew what I wanted, I hadn't decided on the exact item (it was just something small anyway). She asked whether she could buy it at the end of january instead, which I didn't mind until she explained she wanted to save her money to get a replacement kitchen door mid-january (hence my present owuld have to wait). My sister was given an i-pod and some Ugg boots while I was being told the kitchen door had to come first. It struck me like a slap round the face that she treats us so differently and though she claims to want a "mother daughter" relationship, she appears to actually want her cute grandaughter.
Because of this incident and because of some snotty text messages she sent me in January, I decided to stay away for a while to clear my head, which seemed preferable to a confrontation.
In mid february, my sister sent me an email saying my mum was "upset" I hadn't been in touch and that I "ought to be nicer to her because you only have one mum". This really enraged me - my mother had clearly put her up to contacting me and my sister has no idea about what I suffered as a teenager because she's had a very different relationship with our mother. I told my sister she'd be better off to keep out of things she doesn't understand, which provoked a message from my mother saying (amongst other things) that I am "obviously ashamed of both of them" and that she "realises I now move in different financial circles" but she's "still my mother" despite this. And she said she would be "devasted if she couldn't see her grandchildren anymore".
She is so wide of the mark and out of order, it's hard to know how to react. I replied saying she was stressing me out, which was not good for my pregnancy. My sister replied to this saying "I know I'm in the right". I didn't read the rest of her message because it upset me so much - I just deleted it.
It's ironic that this is the sibling I tried hard to stay in contact with despite it meaning I had to have contact with my mum. She can never know how things were for me, though I have tried to explain why I don't always get on with my mum.
SO it's been five weeks since those messages and three months since I saw either of them. My daughter has never mentioned them, which makes me feel I have an opportunity to cut them off without it affecting her. I did send my mum a mother's day card in the post (ah the guilt! no present! no visit!) but I honestly feel healthier and happier without having to deal with her or listen to her griping about other people or constant streams of questioning about our life and the lives of our friends.
At the very least, I would never, ever allow her unsupervised access to my children again but my husband feels my children may feel I've let them down by denying them a relationship with their nana so I'm not sure what to do for the best. I have no inclination to contact them at all and have felt no love for my mum since I was a teenager.
I would SO appreciate thoughts on this (long) story in terms of (a) how would you characterise my mother and her behaviour? and (b) what would you do now?
I have read "Toxic Parents", BTW and I think it helped me a lot to make sense of my abusive time at home but still it's hard to cut a parent out of your life and nobody ever understands the situation apart from very old (or very close) friends. There's an assumption that if you don't get on with "your own mother" then there must be something wrong with YOU and I never know how to respond when people ask.
TIA