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I have always been the kind of woman, like Bridget Fonda's character in Singles, who after many arduous attempts to make a bad relationship work, suddenly clicks in to the thought "Wait, I don't have to be here anymore!" and I break up with the creep and move the hell on.
Well, today, I gave myself a Mother's Day gift and broke up with my own mother.
Sometimes it takes awhile, a LONG while to realize how you are in the middle of a seriously abnormal and dysfunctional relationship. In this case, the tipping point was when my oldest son asked me "Why is nana so mean to you?" He asked me this right before we walked in to a family BBQ a few weeks ago. We walked in and sure enough she performed as if on cue. With in 15 minutes of seeing me she said in front of the entire gathering "You are so selfish" because I didn't want to get married on the same day as my brother (who coincidentally didn't want to do that either). I KNEW I should have asked my kids to get out of the pool and just left immediately, but I didn't want to upset them or ruin their fun. So, I endured the abuse for the rest of the party.
When faced with another family BBQ this weekend, I told her she is welcome to come to my house, but she may not insult me. She replied "Well then, I shouldn't come. You are the only person I don't get along with. And Princess Buttercup, you need to work on your control issues." Then, at 3:30 the next morning she emailed me, "Why are you so negative? Are you upset about driving a long way to work or that your ex-husband got a new job?" Of course, I couldn't possibly be upset about her behavior.
As a mother who I am SURE could carry a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, she has succeeded in longitudinal degradation of her children. She herself was sexually abused by her father as a child and refuses to seek treatment (of course she advises everyone else in her life to seek treatment). She was the "star" of her rural high school (cheerleader, editor of school paper) until she got pregnant with me and coincidentally gave birth to me on her graduation night. She divorced my father when I was 6, remarried a man 15 years her senior when I was 8. The man classically had Narcissistic Personality Disorder which complimented her BPD nicely.I literally came between her and a knife and her and a gun- all before I was 10 years old. I was the parent in this situation, afraid to go on sleep overs for fear she would be sad and alone or worse yet, get killed by my step-father. There were many times when she would put my brother and I in the car in the middle of the night and drive around for hours- telling us we may never see our friends again or go to the same school because she was leaving our step-father. We would always go home. And I have been battling anxiety my whole life. Are you shocked?
There was at least a good year when she rarely got out of bed because of her "chronic fatigue syndrome" and she is regularly disabled by migraines.
I was always in trouble when I was doing nothing wrong and never in trouble when I was.
My brother and I are never "good enough", yet she brags to everyone else about our careers and accomplishments. She tells everyone what they should be doing. I was given the message that I must not screw up my life they way she screwed hers up (don't get pregnant and you MUST go to college). She sent me to live at college during my freshman year. In the spring, she called me one day to tell me I had to drop out of college and move home with her because she was going through a hard time with her husband. So, being the parent, I did just that. She divorced her husband and became very depressed. And there I was, taking care of it all.
The next year, I moved out with a boyfriend and went back to college. One night I came back to my apartment after watching 90210 at a friends house only to discover the police rummaging through the place, accompanied by
