I started writing this post as a response to a poll about what sort of role you have undertaken in your family primarily, which for me was the caretaker/hero, although perhaps 'hero' isn't exactly the right word...
In writing the post I began to want to speak about my mother in more depth, which I have not really done before with anyone except my husband. My question is this: in reading the below, would you also feel stress/anxiety on your relationship with your mother if you were me? Do you see a poor misguided person, or somebody who is too blind to see her mistakes, or somebody who should have known better?
I have had to rescue my mum from multiple unsafe relationships. The latest episode occurred just after I gave birth to my child. This came right after a bizarre and unidentifiable 'illness' that my mother developed during my pregnancy, which led to my husband having to drive me 200 miles other weekend to look after her during the weekdays whilst he worked, which meant that much of my pregnancy I remained out of work and looking after my mother, whilst being between 4 and 9 months pregnant with my child. Her mysterious illness the doctors still don't really understand... it started as a stomach ache, which was mysterious as this was my initial symptom also, due to having Hyperemesis ;) and eventually she just said she was in a lot of pain everywhere... She refused help from anyone except me, and I ended up with a doctors warning due to the physical strain. I was suffering from Hyperemesis which meant I was in and out of hospital myself throughout the pregnancy, often on a drip and doped up with anti-emetics. A few days after my daughter's birth her 'illness' mysteriously disappeared and I'm still convinced it was psychological due to the fact I'm basically my own mother's mother figure in life... The birth itself was a nightmare. My mother bought a train ticket to visit us several days before the birth, WITHOUT telling us. We had to transport her to and from the hotel every day up until my daughter's birth... and I was in agony every time we got in the car. I had to travel too as we didn't want me to be left alone in the event I went into labour... At the birth itself, despite me repeatedly asking my mother to allow my husband and I to be alone for the labour, my mother refused to leave, and I ended up having to calm her out of near hysterics in between each contraction. This caused massive amounts of additional stress to an already complicated birth....I digress...
So after the birth she developed a new relationship with a man she met online. I immediately picked up warning signs due to his bizarre stories, and this led to an argument between my mother and I which lasted several days, during which I tried to convince her to leave him. What I find interesting is that she deliberately dropped him into the conversation when she was speaking with me. It's like, she knew she didn't quite trust her decision but she had to run it by me, as her usual go to person. On next to no sleep due to a colicky newborn and with me still recovering from an infected episiotomy and a forceps birth, I managed to argue my way into discovering that my mum had already given him £100 which he claimed he needed to pay the bills.... she also admitted that he had asked her to sell her home and move in with him (all this after having met him online only 2 weeks prior to this... and never having met him in person )... which would involve her putting the money in his pockets.... AND SHE BELIEVED EVERY PART OF IT!!! After a final 2 hour argument she eventually relented and agreed to call the police, who tracked him down as a scammer. My PTSD was diagnosed a few weeks after this, after a series of what I now know to be panic attacks that developed into one huge cracker of a nervous breakdown, in 2015, from which I am still trying to recover...
This is one example of my mum's choice in men. The worst choice she made was my step father, who physically, emotionally and sexually abused my sisters and I for the 7 years he lived with us. I have no trust in my mum's choice in men for good reason, and the number of times I have had to bail her out I've lost count of. My PTSD is highly triggered from the fact that I feel that if I don't mother my own mother, then our family will end up in the shit. Yet again... So, my mother was warned about my step father by her own family. All of them did not trust him. They all felt uneasy around him. My aunt complained to my mother after the first time she met him she found him upstairs in the bathroom bathing her 4 year old son in the bath... for no apparent or explained reason?!!!! MAJOR red flag there that my mum chose to ignore....
Despite my sister and I complaining to my mum over and over that our step father was too physical with us, she did nothing more that argue with him about it... for 7 years! The last time I saw my step father was when I walked into the kitchen whilst him and my mum were eating breakfast. I asked my mum if she was feeling ok as she had been ill, and my step father leaped up, turned bright red with anger and yelled at me at the top of his voice 'Will you SHUT THE f*ck UP I'm trying to eat my breakfast???'. That was the last thing he ever said to me. I won't ever forget it, partly because it was yet another time that I felt powerless, full of shit, and full of self loathing. But also because it was the last time I ever saw him, thank god. I have some not so fun memories to go alongside that which include the sexual abuse, times he was physically violent to various siblings, including my step brother who he once threw across a room so hard he broke a chair on his landing. A lot of my core PTSD symptoms stem from the actions of my step father and the lack of actions from my mother I suppose...
What else? So there was the time that my mum slept with the partner of her sister, just after she died of cancer. And then she couldn't understand why none of the family wanted her to have custody of her sister's child, whose father, the man who slept with my mum, had rejected him after the death of his partner. Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried! I often 'joke' with my close friends that my life could be something out of some sort of sick TV drama.
There was the man she met after my stepfather, who brought drugs into the house on various occasions to smoke whilst my youngest sister and I were upstairs. My sister would have been around 6 at the time. I remember my mum coming upstairs completely high off her face. When I complained she told me not to be silly, she hadn't touched it so how could she be high? My mum does not smoke or do drugs. She is completely gullible to the point of madness in my eyes...
The list goes on.... the fact she was calling me nearly every day after the birth of my daughter, complaining about this and that, the fact that her relationship with me revolves entirely around her own needs, the fact that after she split up with my step father, I spent 2 years effectively counselling her every evening in our living room whilst my own feelings around the abuse that I suffered at his hands were smothered until I developed anorexia, a battle which lasted from the age of 14 until 21.
My mother has never sought counselling for me over any of the abuse I suffered. She has never apologised for her role in it. In fact when I finally made the decision to speak to her for the first time about my feelings about everything, a few months ago, she came back with anger and denial. When I asked her why she never sought help for me regarding what had happened, she told me it was because 'I seemed fine'. She had an anorexic, self harming daughter... who to her 'seemed' fine. Fair enough.
So I hadn't spoke to my mother since this summer, where I finally lost my rag with her and told her I needed time out. I called her for the first time last week. The phonecall was 'ok'. But I felt shit after. I still harbour all these feeling around her and don't feel good being in contact. I don't trust that she will be able to hear any of the things I would like to be able to say to her.... I'm in a 'Should I stay or should I go' frame of mind at the minute ;)
Am I being over sensitive? Reasons to still feel mad at her?!
What would you do in my place?
In writing the post I began to want to speak about my mother in more depth, which I have not really done before with anyone except my husband. My question is this: in reading the below, would you also feel stress/anxiety on your relationship with your mother if you were me? Do you see a poor misguided person, or somebody who is too blind to see her mistakes, or somebody who should have known better?
I have had to rescue my mum from multiple unsafe relationships. The latest episode occurred just after I gave birth to my child. This came right after a bizarre and unidentifiable 'illness' that my mother developed during my pregnancy, which led to my husband having to drive me 200 miles other weekend to look after her during the weekdays whilst he worked, which meant that much of my pregnancy I remained out of work and looking after my mother, whilst being between 4 and 9 months pregnant with my child. Her mysterious illness the doctors still don't really understand... it started as a stomach ache, which was mysterious as this was my initial symptom also, due to having Hyperemesis ;) and eventually she just said she was in a lot of pain everywhere... She refused help from anyone except me, and I ended up with a doctors warning due to the physical strain. I was suffering from Hyperemesis which meant I was in and out of hospital myself throughout the pregnancy, often on a drip and doped up with anti-emetics. A few days after my daughter's birth her 'illness' mysteriously disappeared and I'm still convinced it was psychological due to the fact I'm basically my own mother's mother figure in life... The birth itself was a nightmare. My mother bought a train ticket to visit us several days before the birth, WITHOUT telling us. We had to transport her to and from the hotel every day up until my daughter's birth... and I was in agony every time we got in the car. I had to travel too as we didn't want me to be left alone in the event I went into labour... At the birth itself, despite me repeatedly asking my mother to allow my husband and I to be alone for the labour, my mother refused to leave, and I ended up having to calm her out of near hysterics in between each contraction. This caused massive amounts of additional stress to an already complicated birth....I digress...
So after the birth she developed a new relationship with a man she met online. I immediately picked up warning signs due to his bizarre stories, and this led to an argument between my mother and I which lasted several days, during which I tried to convince her to leave him. What I find interesting is that she deliberately dropped him into the conversation when she was speaking with me. It's like, she knew she didn't quite trust her decision but she had to run it by me, as her usual go to person. On next to no sleep due to a colicky newborn and with me still recovering from an infected episiotomy and a forceps birth, I managed to argue my way into discovering that my mum had already given him £100 which he claimed he needed to pay the bills.... she also admitted that he had asked her to sell her home and move in with him (all this after having met him online only 2 weeks prior to this... and never having met him in person )... which would involve her putting the money in his pockets.... AND SHE BELIEVED EVERY PART OF IT!!! After a final 2 hour argument she eventually relented and agreed to call the police, who tracked him down as a scammer. My PTSD was diagnosed a few weeks after this, after a series of what I now know to be panic attacks that developed into one huge cracker of a nervous breakdown, in 2015, from which I am still trying to recover...
This is one example of my mum's choice in men. The worst choice she made was my step father, who physically, emotionally and sexually abused my sisters and I for the 7 years he lived with us. I have no trust in my mum's choice in men for good reason, and the number of times I have had to bail her out I've lost count of. My PTSD is highly triggered from the fact that I feel that if I don't mother my own mother, then our family will end up in the shit. Yet again... So, my mother was warned about my step father by her own family. All of them did not trust him. They all felt uneasy around him. My aunt complained to my mother after the first time she met him she found him upstairs in the bathroom bathing her 4 year old son in the bath... for no apparent or explained reason?!!!! MAJOR red flag there that my mum chose to ignore....
Despite my sister and I complaining to my mum over and over that our step father was too physical with us, she did nothing more that argue with him about it... for 7 years! The last time I saw my step father was when I walked into the kitchen whilst him and my mum were eating breakfast. I asked my mum if she was feeling ok as she had been ill, and my step father leaped up, turned bright red with anger and yelled at me at the top of his voice 'Will you SHUT THE f*ck UP I'm trying to eat my breakfast???'. That was the last thing he ever said to me. I won't ever forget it, partly because it was yet another time that I felt powerless, full of shit, and full of self loathing. But also because it was the last time I ever saw him, thank god. I have some not so fun memories to go alongside that which include the sexual abuse, times he was physically violent to various siblings, including my step brother who he once threw across a room so hard he broke a chair on his landing. A lot of my core PTSD symptoms stem from the actions of my step father and the lack of actions from my mother I suppose...
What else? So there was the time that my mum slept with the partner of her sister, just after she died of cancer. And then she couldn't understand why none of the family wanted her to have custody of her sister's child, whose father, the man who slept with my mum, had rejected him after the death of his partner. Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried! I often 'joke' with my close friends that my life could be something out of some sort of sick TV drama.
There was the man she met after my stepfather, who brought drugs into the house on various occasions to smoke whilst my youngest sister and I were upstairs. My sister would have been around 6 at the time. I remember my mum coming upstairs completely high off her face. When I complained she told me not to be silly, she hadn't touched it so how could she be high? My mum does not smoke or do drugs. She is completely gullible to the point of madness in my eyes...
The list goes on.... the fact she was calling me nearly every day after the birth of my daughter, complaining about this and that, the fact that her relationship with me revolves entirely around her own needs, the fact that after she split up with my step father, I spent 2 years effectively counselling her every evening in our living room whilst my own feelings around the abuse that I suffered at his hands were smothered until I developed anorexia, a battle which lasted from the age of 14 until 21.
My mother has never sought counselling for me over any of the abuse I suffered. She has never apologised for her role in it. In fact when I finally made the decision to speak to her for the first time about my feelings about everything, a few months ago, she came back with anger and denial. When I asked her why she never sought help for me regarding what had happened, she told me it was because 'I seemed fine'. She had an anorexic, self harming daughter... who to her 'seemed' fine. Fair enough.
So I hadn't spoke to my mother since this summer, where I finally lost my rag with her and told her I needed time out. I called her for the first time last week. The phonecall was 'ok'. But I felt shit after. I still harbour all these feeling around her and don't feel good being in contact. I don't trust that she will be able to hear any of the things I would like to be able to say to her.... I'm in a 'Should I stay or should I go' frame of mind at the minute ;)
Am I being over sensitive? Reasons to still feel mad at her?!
What would you do in my place?
