I apologize in advance for grammar and spelling errors, I am very very tired.
Let me preface this by saying that this is my first post on Reddit and after reading other posts, I was extremely impressed with this community. I am sorry for the ridiculously lengthy post but I hope you stay with me since this is something I could really use help with. I am hoping writing this down will be its own therapy.
A little back story. I am an only child to two extremely career minded parents. I wasn't, in fact, supposed to exist as my parents were told they couldn't have children. Looking back, I was an extremely lonely child being bounced from one daycare to another. I was a typical latchkey kid until I was old enough to stay at home alone. My father was gone on business trips for months on end (government/military work) leaving my mother and I alone. I was always the last kid to be picked up at the end of the day and the first kid dropped off. I am not complaining, I know I had a good childhood and decent parents. I know I was given a lot of opportunities that a lot of kids my age didn't have. I think my parents felt like if they put me in enough activities that something would stick. Nothing did, much to their disappointment. They never really took an interest in anything I did, never really sat down and asked me what was going on, what I was interested in. They just hoped something would stick and their job would be done. It sounds callous but it's where my head's at right now.
In my family, it's not about how good or kind of a person you are that determines your success. It's where you went to school and how much money you make. I was always told college, career, marriage, kids. College, career, marriage, kids. College, career, marriage, kids. These things, in that order are what determine your success. My mother has two undergraduate degrees and a masters. My father has two undergrads and two masters. My mother grew up almost a rabid feminist. She never really wanted kids and if she did end up having kids, she certainly wouldn't have stayed home with them and sacrifice her life or her career. She followed through on that. The moment they found out she was pregnant with me, my father went and got snipped. It was most certainly a surprise and accident as both of my parents were in grad school when I came along.
Disappointment is the name of the game here when it comes to my mother's feelings towards me. I was a solid "C" student in high school. Don't get me wrong, I had the brains but zero motivation. I was lazy. I never did drugs, I never stayed out late, I didn't even have sex FFS. What I did have was a deep and ever-growing resentment towards my mother. With my Dad gone for months on end, the brunt of my teenage angst fell on my mother. Again looking back, this wasn't really fair to her but she didn't handle it all that well. I think she read every parent book she could find and tried every technique to make me respect her but I just couldn't. My mother got it in her head that I was one step away from juvie and told my father that they were going to a support group for "troubled teens." They got to the support group and as everyone took turns introducing themselves they briefly explained what their child was in to (drugs, etc) and what issues they were experiencing at home. My father could only take so much of other parents truly troubled teenage issues that he got up and left. He said they didn't belong in a support group like that. I wasn't troubled and that it was a waste of his time. This is an example of how dramatic my mother can be.
My mother is the constant victim and unrepentant liar. She doesn't lie about the big things. Just tiny things. She half-asses almost everything in her life and when she gets called out on it (i.e. work or my dad getting upset with something) she lies about it. They're small lies but I grew up with them. I grew up seeing her lie to avoid repercussions of her laziness. There was no abuse in the household from what I am aware of, she just didn't do the right thing most of the time. She didn't put in the hard work, which proceeded in to her not understanding why things didn't go her way, and then lying about the amount of work she put in to something. She did this with EVERYTHING. To be clear, I think she does this so people won't think ill of her for being lazy or forgetful or a shitty mom, etc. I think it's a confidence thing. Regardless, I grew up lying too. I would do a half-assed job on my homework or something and I would lie about it to my teachers and to my parents. I became a liar. Looking back, there was a fair amount of neglect on my parents part.
Fast forward to me barely graduating from college with a degree I still don't use to this day, my parents had a mediocre student on their hands. I had no idea of what to do with my life. I had met a man in college and I lost myself in him. I put him before everything to the detriment of my future, my education, and any hope of me knowing myself. He broke up with me the day after I graduated from college. There I was with a fresh new college degree I didn't know how to use, heart broken, and living at home with my parents. Oh and I was in a a shit ton of debt. Not from student loans because my education was free because of my parents but from ridiculous credit card purchases. To say I was a spoiled, entitled little middle class girl would be an understatement. I had had everything handed to me and I squandered it. I realize that and I own it.
I found a job (through my mother) doing a kind of research. This is the kind of job that you fall in to when you are looking for your "real" career and never leave. To be fair though, I never left because I am amazing at it. I have a head for researching old documents and piecing together information. My employer saw my potential and rewarded me constantly. I was proud of how good I was at this job and knew what it felt like to not half-ass something for the first time. To take pride in my work was something I had never felt before. In the meantime, my mother kept expecting me to find my "real" job.
I met my husband two years after I started this job, at work. We fell in love instantly and we moved in together two weeks after our first date much to my mother's horror. I still didn't really know who I was or what I wanted and I feared completely losing myself in a partner again so the first few years of our relationship were tumultuous.
So here I was NOT using my degree, NOT continuing my education, living with a man out of wedlock, and getting fatter by the minute because it turns out I had severe depression and anxiety and ate my feelings. What's our word of the day again? Right, "disappointment." She never really came out and said anything, just made snide passive aggressive comments and how she would never do something like that. When my husband and I decided to get married, she never got involved in the wedding planning or the general happiness of the occasion. She tended to make it about her and how stressed she was or how put out she was at the moment.
Fast forward almost 15 years of marriage, a move to another state, and two beautiful boys. My husband and I have been through hell and back and we are stronger for it. I no longer lie. I own my faults and work hard to be a better person everyday. I am NOT a victim. Things don't happen to me for no reason. If something bad happens that I could have prevented, I own it, I learn from it and I move on. I now own my own thriving business in the work I originally fell in love with after college and I am damn good at it. One of the best in my field. We opened our business (which is closely tied to the real estate market) right before the bubble burst in 2008 and we struggled but our business survived and thrived. I still have a weight problem but I work out three times a week with a trainer and make healthy choices. I teach my boys that I am not a victim of my circumstance. I need to live with my choices and learn from them. Yet because I do not own my own home (we rent from my parents actually), I still have a weight problem, and I stay at home with my children instead of being in a career she determines is successful, I am a disappointment.
I have come to terms with being a disappointment. My cousin (who is like a brother) is a millionaire with his own company. My mother often tells me that maybe I should talk to him to get a few "pointers" even though the two businesses are completely different. It's incredibly insulting because she doesn't know the first thing about me or my business and hasn't tried to understand. I know she feels that if we don't have a huge house, nice cars, etc is just isn't good enough. And that's fine. Really it is. I thought we would have a better relationship but I now know it will never happen and I am ok with that.
Now to get to the crux of the issue (I know, it took a long time. For those of you actually reading this, I appreciate you and the time you are giving me). I have ALWAYS been open about my mental health issues. Hindsight, being the wonderful luxury it is, tells me I was deeply depressed in middle/high/college. It took my beloved husband to tell me to go see a damn doctor or we would have to get a divorce to understand that I needed help. So I got it and I never looked back. I don't see taking medication as a weakness. I view depression and anxiety as an issue that needs to be maintained. I have helped several people find their way to getting mental help including ex soldiers with PTSD. I openly and willingly tell people who are struggling that they are loved and needed on this earth and to call me anytime for help. I have become a very open and honest person who views passive aggression as a poison. I value my relationships and take time to mend them, tend to them, and make sure people feel loved. My mother is MORTIFIED by this behavior. You could chalk this up to a generation thing where you just dealt with these things and admitting that you are getting help is a weakness to be exploited. She would say to me "once you go on those medications, you can never get off of them."
So finally, two weeks ago, I think my mother had a mental breakdown. It may have been longer than that but two weeks is when it came to my attention. She comes to my house every few weeks to spend time with the boys. When she showed up on my porch this day, she barely said a word. Her eyes were sunken and she looked like hell. She didn't even say hello to my youngest son. When we got him off to school, I asked her what was wrong. She said she wasn't getting any sleep and she felt like she had no where to turn. Her brother was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and she said she was stressed and upset about that which is weird to me because she has always disliked her brother. I understand that coming to terms with death via one of your siblings is rough but this feels like she is taking other people's pain and making it her own to have people feel sorry for her.
I couldn't get a straight answer out of her. I keep asked her what was wrong. At this point we were on my front porch. She would get up walk down the stairs and halfway to her car and then turn around to walk back up and sit on the stairs again repeatedly saying she was so tired and she needed to go home (she lives a few hours away from us). She did this maybe ten times. I told her repeatedly that I was not comfortable with her driving and putting herself and others at risk. Finally I told her very strongly to go in and lay down on my bed. She slept for maybe two hours and got up again. Before she got up, I called my father to find out what the fuck was going on and he said she wasn't sleeping and that she had been taking two ambien a night. Knowing what I know about what ambien can do to your brain, when she got up I told her she needed to stop taking those. They may be making things worse. She then asked me if I had called my father and I said I had. She flipped out and said "he's going to be so mad at me. Please don't do that again, he's going to be so mad at me." She acted like he was going to beat her which I know for a FACT that that wouldn't have happened. At this point I had asked my husband to come home because my mother's strange behavior was freaking me out. He noticed it right away and suggested we go to the dr. She refused saying they wouldn't be able to help her. She then leaves to go to the bathroom while my husband and I talk. When she comes back out, her pants are down around her ankles. My husband immediately starts staring and something interesting on the ceiling while my mouth drops open. Not noticing our behavior, she slowly pulls her pants up like she was still in the bathroom. She then proceeds to start walking back and forth to the car again, this time over 20 times. At this point, I had had enough. She is obviously going through something and I have offered her so many options to get her help and I am seriously considering checking her in to a hospital for mental help. She starts to walk to the door to walk out to the car to leave when she looks at me expecting to say something and I snap and say "Fine. I have given you plenty of options. You could stay here over night. You could go to the Dr. We could get dad to come pick you up. Driving home would be wrong and irresponsible. But do it. You aren't listening. You are choosing misery. I don't know what's going on but I can't stop you." It was almost as if she was trying to manipulate me in to feeling bad for her because the moment I stopped she said "ok well I guess I need to go to the dr." She stopped putting on that bullshit act. At this point, my workday is completely gone and my ability to make money for the day has gone down the drain. It's fine, I can handle that but my stomach turned at the thought that this was some kind of manipulation to get attention or sympathy. I cannot take her to the dr because I need to get some work done and my husband has taken the rest of the day off for obvious reasons so he takes her. She does not like this. She repeatedly asks me why I can't take her. I want to believe at this point that she couldn't help her behavior but it felt like manipulation to me. The Dr ends up telling her she needs fucking help (no surprise) and to stop taking the damn ambien. He gives her a sleeping drug and tells her to spend the night at my house.
She comes home and it's evening at this point so she gets ready for bed. She walks out AGAIN WITH NO PANTS ON this time in front of my children. I tell her she needs pants and she says to me "but this is the way I sleep" and then proceeds to the couch to watch a movie with us. Ten minutes later she looks at me and says "I guess I need pants." WTF? She goes to bed and gets up at 4:30 am to go home but not without leaving and then coming back, ringing the door bell, waking the house up to tell us she loves us over and over and over again before she leaves for good. When she gets home she texts "Friday stays between you and me. Your father is a good person. Don't tell anyone about Friday." Over the past few weeks she has been extremely clingy and loving which really really bothers me. She keeps calling and asking if any of her friends are calling me. Telling me they were acting weird and asking if they talked to me. I don't talk to ANY of her friends more than once a year.
Guys, I am not going to hold back here. I am physically (literally) repulsed by this behavior. I know she might be having a mental breakdown and I know that if she is, she deserves sympathy and I am having a hard time giving it. I feel disgusted with the way she has treated my mental health issues in past and that her refusal to get help up until now has lead us to this point. She still acts like the victim. Verbally she has always acted very loving. She expects hugs and "I love you's" all the time from me and I am hard pressed to give them. It's become quite a joke in my friend circle (my true family) that I am not a hugger. I feel like a hug from her is manipulation. I don't feel like hugs or physical contact should be given lightly. She sees that a sign of love. I cannot stand to touch her. Even before any of this happened.
How do I move forward? Should I feel like a complete POS because I don't have empathy for her? She always looks so wounded when I don't give her the sympathy and affection she wants but I find it almost physically impossible. I love my father. He has shown every kindness. He shows love and patience and acceptance. I have no feelings like this towards my mother. So my questions are:
1) Am I a total POS because I find her behavior repulsive even though she might not be able to help it?
2) Is it ok to say I may not love my mother?
3) Could this be a sign of dementia? Or could this be her seeing that she completely fucked out relationship and now she regrets it?
TLDR; My (F39) mother (65) may have had a mental breakdown and I have a very negative reaction to it. I am not sure how to move forward.
Submitted May 29, 2019 at 11:01PM by Captainf100 http://bit.ly/2Wbln7w
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