Breaking Down the Mother Emails

My therapist and I didn’t have a lot of time to process the emails I shared with her on Wednesday. We did touch on the most obvious points on Wednesday and we revisited some of that on Friday as well, but I imagine this content will need lots of time and room to breathe over the next several weeks months years (?).

So I wanted to take the time and space here to break down the major points, primarily for my own sanity. I’m just going to quote her words and free associate my reactions to them. I’ll start at the beginning and work my way down (so if you’ve read the original, this should hopefully make a decent amount of sense). I’m also going to try and group things together somewhat thematically so I’m not repeating myself.

Here goes…

You hate me now because I am the one that always has to deal with the problems. Everyone else can just deal with you when they want to then walk away until you’re in a better mood – the great and wonderful side of you. I can’t. I want to. I only want the good side of you, the side I enjoy to be with and share my life with, but I am your mother and I have to deal with the tough part of your life…

I will always be the one that has loved you enough to deal with telling you face to face…I have always been there for you for everything and you know that…You also know that no person on this earth has gone through more, understands more or loves your more or could be more proud of you then me.  Sometimes I think we can almost feel each others feelings we are so close but this always gets in the way.

This is so utterly fucking manipulative. It’s all part of her insistence that no one else but her (and my father) could possibly be able to deal with all of my “problems” (whatever that even means). You can also see the way she herself “splits” me into different parts: the problem side and then the “great and wonderful” side of me. It makes sense in the context of my DID, but it also helps explain the DID itself, especially since it’s clear that my parents demanded very different sides to me to meet their own needs.

I think you can also sense the absolute lack of boundaries in my family. Her comment about feeling each others’ feelings says so much about this particular component. We had a gross enmeshed relationship (something she made sure of) and she used that against me at every possible opportunity.

I am upset because I have been running around all day and I have to come home and the first thing out of your mouth is “what is for dinner?” You sit on the computer and let me make dinner…Then you put your plate in the sink and go back to whatever you were doing. You start your laundry and leave it for me to finish because if I want to do mine, I have to move yours…You don’t offer to help with anything around the house yet you are an adult living here.

I feel you have no respect for us (or at least me) in anyway and haven’t for some time. When you get upset and we ask you to leave so things can calm down you just say “F— it.” If we ask you to stop using bad language, you just act like we are not even in the house.

This is just fantasy. First of all, I was a good kid – I was always the child that helped around the house and did my chores before being asked or prompted. That didn’t change when I got older and went to college. I was always the one who’d stay up late to make sure the dishes were done and the house was relatively clean.

Secondly, I never let ANYONE touch my laundry. I didn’t even let my wife mix our clothes together until probably five years into living together. So there’s no chance in hell that I just left my clothes in the machine for my crazy mother to put her hands on.

I think this shit about chores and respect is dumb, but it’s important because when I was in the hospitals and we’d have family sessions, this was always the card my mom would pull out. She’d say that the problems at home were due to my “disrespect” and that if I just did my chores and used appropriate language, there would be no issues at all.

Sure, lady.

It might also be worth mentioning that although she doesn’t use profanity in these emails (and she even goes so far as to censor the word “fuck” in this particular segment) this woman cursed at me like a sailor. She didn’t generally use “bad language” in regular conversation, but when she was angry (so like 90% of the time), she would unleash a torrent of expletives that was nothing short of impressive.

I want to say something but I am afraid of the fight it will end up to be…I wanted to talk to you about being proactive, but I was afraid. Now you know why…I can’t have someone hurt me verbally or physically in my own home. It’s not right and you know that… I can’t allow you to hurt me and your family anymore and I have that right…A day like that day in the car will never happen in my life again. You can’t expect to treat people that way and not have consequences. I was beat up by a boyfriend for several months and I swore then I would never live in fear of being hit again, never.

No one in your life should be afraid to express how they feel to you because if that is the case then you really don’t have a true relationship with them anyway…

SHE is afraid?! I mean, seriously though? She talks so much about her right to feel safe in her own home. AM I INSANE?! Guys, I want so much to write some eloquent response to this, but my brain cannot even process the absurdity. It’s truly mind-blowing that she tells me she cannot allow me to hurt her or my family yet it was totally cool for her, my father, my grandfather, my aunt’s boyfriend, etc etc etc to hurt me? She talks about this fucking boyfriend who hit her, which…I WISH I had encountered only one month of physical violence in a lifetime. But THEN! The audacity of her statement that she swore she’d never live in being fear of being hit again? Every single moment of my life was spent in fear of being hit (among other things). 

And her claim that I can’t have a “real” relationship with someone if they’re afraid to express how they feel? Well that perfectly describes my relationship with her because I was constantly terrified to express myself in almost any way to my parents.

I hope and pray you will have the strength to be honest.

LOLZ. Does anyone think this woman ever at ANY moment wanted me to be “honest” with literally ANYONE? This is such mindfuckery though because she’s telling me she wants me to be honest while simultaneously sending a very strong message that I am under no circumstances allowed to tell the truth. Which made it VERY hard for me to even understand what “reality” or being “honest” actually meant. I still struggle with this and the impact of growing up in such an incongruent environment wreaks havoc on my life.

It took me weeks to find a doctor that would take you that was part of a large group that had both psychiatrists and therapists – everything you needed so you could build a trusting relationship for yourself. But you won’t utilize it in anyway…If you have noticed, I have been pushing you to make phone calls yourself and take control of things yourself.

This is so frustrating. She is both criticizing me for not stepping up and taking care of my own life, but then clearly took absolute control of which doctor I could see, which therapist I could see, and what type of office they’d be in. She applauds herself for spending weeks finding me a doctor and then gets pissed when I’m not falling all over her with gratitude.

She always did this – she pushed and pulled me in completely opposite directions and made it virtually impossible to ever do what she wanted from me, or to do what she thought was the right thing, or make the choices she wanted me to make. She set me up to fail again and again and again.

YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO ASK A DOCTOR TO ADJUST YOUR MEDICATIONS OR CHANGE THEM IF THEY MAKE YOU SICK OR THE SIDE EFFECTS BOTHER YOU.

But like it or not, you have Bipolar and you will always have Bipolar and you can choose to have a normal fulfilling life with good strong relationships with the people you love or you can choose to self-medicate yourself in a irresponsible way, causing harm to the relationships you value…

I confirm once again you’ve stopped taking your lithium..That is not responsible and you know it. You could have done this a better way…instead of just wishing it away.  THAT WON’T WORK and you of all people should know that.

It’s too bad you just can’t accept the Bipolar and live with it to the best of your ability and put it in the past. Lithium is just a pill. Just a pill.

I DO NOT HAVE BIPOLAR DISORDER. I can’t even with this. In fact, I’m going to save this discussion for another post entirely.

I have lived all of my adult life with doors closed because of my chronic pain and inability to do the things I want…Nothing will ever bring that back to me or fix it. It will only get worse…For the past 6 months, my oncologist has been looking for and worried about cancer. When these test are done I have to deal with my uterine tumor and cysts. They are sending me to a specialized hospital for that because no one here will touch me for that surgery either.

Oh, my mother, the eternal martyr. No one does “victim” better than this woman. She is legitimately disabled from a series of car accidents she was in when I was a small child. But she also holds herself in a place of illness far beyond what’s physical reality and she does very little to actually improve her symptoms. She doesn’t take care of herself.

And to be honest, I think she prefers it this way. She has always been either the sick patient herself or the overwhelmed caretaker (of me, my dad, my grandparents, my aunt, etc.) for my entire life. She always needs something to be going on that she can use to procure sympathy from people. It’s gross.

I will not be here forever and I realize that now more then ever. I want you to be able to deal with all your life will bring.

This is an extra special type of manipulation, specifically programmed by my mother herself. Up until probably four or five years ago, my biggest fear in this entire world was losing my mother – to illness, to estrangement, to death. I was always terrified that she would be gone somehow and I’d be left to fend for myself. So by strategically placing this line, she is reinforcing that fear and thus holding me under her control.

Also, she says she wants me to be able to deal with all my life will bring. What does that even mean? What could my life bring that would be worse than her? And, again, this is a subtle jab to remind me of how utterly helpless I am without her.

Calling the police on you when you were in high school to get you admitted to the mental hospital was the worst day of my life and I never want to go through that again in my life. But I should have called the police that day in the car when you hit me. But even then, I was still thinking of your future. Even then!  Even after you had just gone off on me and hit me and almost caused me to crash the car. I should have called the police.

I will tell you now – make no mistake. If anything like that ever happens again, I will call the police and you will just have to deal with your own future. I was upset for days and days after that incident.

GAH! Okay, so when she called the police? It was indeed because she wanted to get me admitted to a mental hospital. But I wasn’t actively suicidal or posing a threat to myself, so she couldn’t get the professionals on board to admit me. However, she knew that if I posed a threat to someone else, I would have to be taken. So she provoked me to the point that I started to seriously deteriorate. I ran into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and asked her if she wanted me to just kill myself so she wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore. My father came up behind me and grabbed my wrists. In an effort to get away from him, I pulled my arms away and slipped free from his hands. The knife sliced through the air, HITTING NO ONE. But my mother called the police anyway and told them I tried to stab her. So they arrested me and dragged me the the psychiatric ER in handcuffs.

But, yeah, I am sure that was the worst day of her life.

And, wow, how noble of her to spare me the damage of being arrested yet again for an act of violence I did not actually commit against her.

Also, can we just briefly touch on the fact that I never called the police on EITHER of my parents, despite the many crimes they committed against me? *SCREAMS*

You are not in control of your emotions or you would have not left me at my friend’s house that night, taking off with MY CAR. You would have not hit your mother in the car when we were driving. You would have not broke my glasses and threw stuff all over the car. I had to get out of the car because I was so upset, I drove through a stop sign.

 

Again, the hypocrisy of this is astounding. My parents never once demonstrated any control or regulation over their emotions, leaving me with no one to model appropriate or healthy ways to manage my own emotions. Her accusations are inherently false because she’s a delusional liar. I did not hit her, break her glasses, or literally touch anything in the damn car. And I only left her at her friend’s house because she was being a psycho and I only took her car because there was no other way to get away from her at that moment.

All I am is just your mom, but I am the only mom you are ever going to have.

This is another way to control me. It’s guilt. She’s reminding me of the ten commandments, specifically “Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father”. She is playing into the family loyalty she beat into me and (once again) playing into my fears of being without her. Luckily for me this turned out to me false because I have a Mom now and she is one million times the woman my biological mother could ever be.

So if you choose to come back, call us. I will not read an email response. I just personally can’t take anymore insults from you ever again. From this point on in my life I will only demand respect from all of my children.

So she’s allowed to emotionally vomit all over me via email whenever the mood strikes her, but I am required to call if I want to communicate? This is also about control and about asserting power over me, especially because she knows that if I were to call, she’d just hang up on me the moment I said anything she didn’t like. Which is yet another way to take away my power to speak and thus ultimately render me mute.

Her line about demanding respect makes me ::eyeroll:: so hard. She always said this and it’s so ridiculous. Not because respect is ridiculous but because it’s absurd to demand respect from anyone at all, let alone someone you abused for several decades. The fact that she feels deserving of such respect says so much about her level of narcissism.

I used to try to talk to her about the crazy idea of mutual respect and she would literally laugh and say, “I am your mother. You are the kid. You respect me, end of story. You can have respect when you’re a parent.”

Umm, okay then.

I hate this wretched bitch and I’m so grateful I had the strength to cut her out of my life.