To reflect a little bit on my mothers role in my life I first have to reflect on mine in hers.
My mother and I have never gotten along.
Obviously starting with mistrust that my father created, but it goes so much deeper than that.
I became fully estranged from my mother in 2017. She is and always has been verbally and emotionally abusive to me, but why?
She adopted three girls after I turned 18, and she is....wonderful with them.
They all love her and she loves them…they will never see the witch I do, and I’m happy for them, but for myself, I have spent many years lost in angry confusion over it.
What could force a parents to be so cruel to their child, yet so kind and loving to others?
My mother never wanted me. I could have put it together before I was 24, but I didn’t.
In the 1990s my mother was at the top of her game, she had just graduated college with a PhD in chemistry and had traveled from one end of the country to the other twice to pursue her dream. A brilliant young chemist and her husband moved to a little place outside of an up and coming city.
She wanted to start her career–he wanted to start a family.
My mother told me several stories, and done several things over the years that didn’t really sit with me at the time, but now that I have them all at hand, and think back on them in a calmer frame of mind, I realize she’s been trying to admit to me for a very long time how she wasn’t ready for children, and how being forced to have me put her back in her career.
1- Her business trips were not business trips. She had been having an affair.
I actually found this one out after we stopped talking. She had claimed to have met my step father sometimes in late 2000, the year before leaving me with my father. I believed this for a very long time…right up until I stumbled across a patent.
I was searching for my parents (I wanted to know if they’d left the country yet, my mother is not a difficult person to find online) when I found a patent filed in 1995 containing the names of my mother and step father.
They had met literally YEARS before they claimed to have met…and at least 6 years before my mother left. It was in 1996 that her business trips started…they were very....random…sometimes she would leave like it was planned, other times it was like she decided it was time for a business trip and she would up and leave, packing very little and not seeming dressed to go to work.
Despite not asking her if all of this is true, I am willing to bet a hefty amount that it is.
2-After I was placed in her custody she would frequently belittle my experiences, often implying that she had been treated the same way or worse.
This used to enrage me, she would wave off what little I had to say about my father and say “He’s capable of so much worse”
The one that sticks with me to this day is “At least you’ve never tried to crawl hands and knees out of a house only to be dragged back in by your feet.”
I wanted to say “No…I never dared try to escape, and if I was on my hands and knees I was already trapped....”
I wanted to ask her “Did he ever tie you to the inside of the dog cage you guys had for your Great Dane? Because he used to leave me in there for hours…”
I couldn’t, I couldn’t argue with her, and I couldn’t be honest with her.
I should clarify one thing
She never knew, nor does she know now, the extent of my abuse.
It was not similar to what she dealt with because I was not there by choice. I feel for her, and I hurt knowing the extent of my mothers domestic abuse, but her “worst” was something I wished would be my worst. I wish I had been honest in the moment, it would have helped in the court case.
3-She adopted 3 girls about my age when I was almost 18, she would shower them with love in front of me.
This included vacations for them and their significant others, showering them in gifts, outings....and her time.
My mother could hardly listen to me speak without snapping on me, but she would spend countless hours getting to know my sisters and their significant others. I was being pushed out of the loop entirely. When I was 19 I started dating…my mother didn’t object, but she did hide the car keys before giving me permission to take the car. When it came time for them to meet him…I was horrified at her reaction. She was more than disinterested in talking with him and she pulled my step-dad off about 5 minutes after we came over to the house. We waited an hour or so but they never came back into the living room. We left eventually. She had just walked out of the room and started doing something in an area of the house I wasn’t allowed in without a word. From then on she would belittle both of us and our relationship.
She made me feel horrible for dating someone that I liked, while supporting my siblings choices from the very beginning. Excuse me for sounding bratty, but it was unfair.
Well lucky for me he’s still around, he outlasted and put up with her bullshit for as long as I wanted to try to make a relationship with her work, he was happy I finally cut her out of my life, but he would have helped me try to make things work with her as long as he needed to.
(I got a little side tracked with this one, she just hates me and everyone I love and she makes it very very clear is the point.)
4- I found her drunk and crying on the floor several times when I was 13 and first placed in her custody again, she would tell me “It’s not your fault, but I just didn’t want kids”
I know this seems really obvious and like “Uhm, duh, she straight up told you.” but she would deny it after, explain it away, she would say that she mean’t it was a very hard time in the job market and it wasn’t my fault that I was suddenly dropped on her, but it was hard to afford the things she had and that made her sad sometimes even if ‘I’ made her happy.
I’ve believed this less and less over the years, she may have been upset about having my financial burden, sure, I believe that, but I don’t think it drove her to sit on the floor, a drunk crying mess, lamenting about how she “Didn’t want kids”. I think there was a lot more behind it. She was drinking because she had me back.
5- She started drinking when I was left with her at 13, quit when I was in treatment, and started drinking more and more heavily when I came back at 18.
This is a huge red flag to me. I remember when she would have a couple glasses of wine with dinner, and I remember it being the end to the night no matter how early that was. As I got closer and closer to residential therapy she would need to have at least one drink just to put up with me. She wouldn’t talk to me about day treatment until she had her second glass of wine in her hand.
Then she was done. While I was in the full-blown psyche-ward…she quit.
I made a joke about how they weren’t allowed to bring wine on visitation and she calmly folded her hands in her lap, gave me her sweet fake smile, and said “I don’t drink much wine anymore” when I asked what she did drink she said “Nothing”
I didn’t press her further, but she tried to make it a big deal “Why do you ask?” “not that it’s any of your business but I’m just…less stressed now.” “I just realized that I don’t need it often, if at all.” I felt like it was my fault then, but I also felt like a self centered prick for thinking that way. I dropped it, and was excited that maybe when I got out she wouldn’t be so hard to get through to. I was wrong. It took her a whole two months to start alternating between her ‘two new favorites’ “Sailor Jerry’s Rum” and “Hendricks Gin”. She would make 3-4 mix drinks a night and start making fun of me for having been in a psychiatric facility for so long. The running things in this family was to act like everything was sarcastic so no one has and grounds to be upset with one another for saying horrible things; one day she asked me a question and forgot to be sarcastic about it. She asked me “So why did it take you so long to get out? are they bad at their jobs or are you retarded? What am I saying, I met them and they are doing a fine job, you’re just....you’re just....what is it....untrainable! You can’t learn. That’s why you’re not going to graduate high school.” She said it all like she was thinking to herself and hadn’t actually meant to say any of it yet, not before painting it up to look nice. She then laughed and said “No but it’s good to have you home though.” before she walked into her bedroom and shut the door. The mirror at the end of the hall showed her smile fade immediately as she turned away from me. In that moment I should have stopped putting effort into having her on my side, I should have focused on what little school I had left, I should have focused on friends and activities, gotten a job, anything to take as much of my time as possible and get it far far away from that toxic witch.
I’ve written this over the course of several days, so it may ramble on a little bit…or a lot.
If you hate it, try just reading my other books and ignore everything out of this one, it’s a lot of shit like this.
I also wouldn’t say I hate my mother, sometimes I would, but for the most part I feel sad for her. She is far from leading the life she wants and the one she’s living is laden with guilt and regret. I have a better shot at happiness than she does with more life ahead of me, so I usually can’t find it in me to truly hate her, she’s suffered quite a lot already.
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