Then this morning I read an article on elephant journal titled The Secret Language of Narcissists: How Abusers Manipulate their Victims.
I've always had a really rough relationship with my mother that exploded when I was a teenager. I am supposed to be getting together with her this weekend for my birthday. Ever since that phone call, which was the first contact in a almost 2 months after I attempted to put some boundaries in place that pissed her off and she got nasty and hung up on me, my anxiety has been mounting.
I truly don't want to see her. I will because well social convention and all. Its also simply easier to stuff my own anxiety and comfortableness than deal with the emotional blackmail and bullshit she will pull if I don't. Which most often includes calling family members to cry about how I hurt her feelings and hate her. Up to and including my mother in law.
People really don't for the most part get who she really is and the games she plays. I get told a LOT you should call your mom, shes your MOM the only mom you'll ever get and one day you won't have her. Then how will you feel. Uh to be blunt just like I do right fucking now. Hurt, pissed and abandoned, upset that it could never be anything other than what it is - which is a truly dysfunctional relationship of which no one can even imagine the depths of fuckedupness it possesses. If they could I'd never get chastised for attempting to set boundaries and breaking off contact.
This woman has lied to me my entire life about almost everything big shit - like who my biological father was, little shit like if jewelry that was a gift was real. Who's telling her hey do better try harder that's your daughter.. not a damn person. In the mean time she's running around trash talking to anyone who will listen and re-writing history to suit her. Anything I have accomplished she has attempted to take credit for, anything bad she either contributed to or decided I did it to spite her. Like being pregnant at 17, she looked at me and said you did this to me on purpose. Yeah my jaw is still on the floor over that.
Over the years she has both attempted to take all credit for any success and or belittle anything I have done. Everything I have everything I am was in spite of her. My successes are not hers. At one point when asked by an acquaintance what her daughters did my mother ran through one is a CPA and owns her own business, one is an executive at a major corporation, one is no longer able to work due to lupus and this one (pointing to me) talks on the phone all day. My "talking on the phone all day" translated to working electronic surveillance assisting law enforcement for one of the 4 major cell phone companies. Today if you ask her what I do her answer will also make it sound like I do very little if anything at all, truth of the matter I actually work in the Tech Industry as an executive. She defines it as playing computer games all day.
Yes I roll my eyes all the cliche sayings about mothers and how you should call them often because you're the only one who knows what her heart sounds like from the inside (insert vomit noise here) and once they are gone you will miss them. Yes my brain shuts down when you start telling me what I should do and what my responsibilities are as a daughter. You don't know, please stop adding to the guilt I have lived with my entire life because of my mother. She's the best at guilt trips and I have been on many. One day I hope to unpack the baggage from them all. Assisting her on sending me on another one does not help.
Well meaning people who are clueless at the damage done and the abuse suffered urge contact and turning the other cheek. Honestly what you are asking is that I ignore me and my boundaries stuff my anxiety in able to ignore me and pretend. You are telling me that her needs and wants are more important than my own which buys into her mind set and fuels her. No thanks, frankly I think I will just go apologize to my own daughter for not being a better mother simply because I didn't know how to be one.
