My mother's ex-husband tried to stab me to death when I turned 18 and had started thinking of moving out, to get away from his abuse. The only reason he didn't succeed in killing me is because my mother physically tackled him to the floor and wrenched the knife from his fist, and I bolted.
I ran away from home that night and never returned.
The abuse had been escalating for years before that, but no matter how often I tried to ask my mother for help, she just ignored me or called me a liar. She said she had enough bullshit on her mind without me being an annoying little liar on top of that.
Afterwards, my mother called her husband's attempt to murder me social clumsiness. Those are the exact words she used.
She stayed with him for another decade after the murder attempt. Initially she tried her best to repair that relationship and try to trick me into seeing him again, but the one time she succeeded, I hyperventilated and wept for so long, she never tried to trick me again.
During that decade, we maintained a polite relationship. We saw each other about once a month (never with her husband present). This frequency seemed to suit her just fine. She regularly would just not show up at all, because he'd suggest a fun date and she'd rain check me.
I thought about cutting her off altogether, but I just couldn't bring myself to. I still held a lot of love for my mother, despite her flaws.
She continued doing her best to repair the relationship between me and my attempted killer, but I always refused. I developed increasingly severe anxiety and feelings of worthlessness, because of my PTSD and because my mother kept choosing my would-be murderer over me.
After a decade of this arrangement, she grew tired of her husband's cheating and divorced him. After that, I think she became bored and lonely. She went from contacting me once in a while, to contacting me daily.
I learned that the only reason I wasn't constantly in a state of distress, is because in the past, I had had so many cool-down moments. I would always feel awful for 2-3 days after seeing my mother, and then slowly reach equilibrium again.
Once my mother started trying to be in my life daily, I felt awful 24/7. The abuse I've experienced has already left me a shell of myself, but it became much worse.
I asked her to please back off and give me some breathing room, which she took as an invite to become even more overbearing. Any boundary I tried to create, she turned into her personal challenge to trample asap.
I started feeling like I would actually lose my mind. I stopped sleeping. I started having difficulty speaking and thinking. One day, after she'd been calling me over and over and over during the night, trying to get me to pick up the phone, I just blocked her everywhere. The relief was so immense, I was shaking.
This kickstarted a period of intense stalking. I avoided her, and then moved abroad to feel safer. She entered a period of continuously making new social media accounts, getting new numbers, harassing my friends and acquaintances. I continued blocking her everywhere.
It felt like something snapped inside of me, during that period in my life. All the ties of love that had kept me connected to my mother, it felt like they had been strained to their maximum limit and all snapped simultaneously. She went from someone I couldn't help but love and care for, to someone I no longer cared for in any way. I didn't even have any negative feelings. I just felt nothing anymore.
I had already been in therapy, but started attending more therapy. I started making some headway fixing my PTSD responses. Until that point, I had fooled myself into thinking I had mostly moved past it. Clearly not!
I think my mother eventually tired herself out, because the stalking slowly came to an end.
About a year later, I started having nightmares that COVID had killed her (she's been a chain smoker all her life), so I checked in with her.
She was doing just fine. She hadn't really changed much, and immediately went back to being very overbearing. So I blocked her again.
In the two years since, we've slowly rebuilt a relationship. Now when she tries to trample a boundary, I just stop speaking to her and give her some time to reconsider. This upsets her, but is easy to do now, because I no longer care if she gets upset. I seem to have slowly made my boundaries clear to her in the last few months — she actually does her best to respect them now.
She apologised for not prioritising my well-being, and it finally seemed like a genuine apology. I accepted the apology.
A small tendril of love for her reappeared, and I embraced it. I do want to love my family, I really do.
With the love, some of the negative feelings came back too, but more muted. Overall, I'm just not as affected anymore. I don't really consider her my mother anymore. It's more like she's a person who received that task, and then totally fucked it up. She's not really a mother, she just happened to give birth to me.
When I was growing up, she'd frequently become weepy while drunk and ask me if she was a good mother. I'd feel bad for her and say yes, even though I didn't feel that way. But now I don't feel bad for her anymore, and let the silence reply for me.
Now, whenever she gets drunk, she sends me weepy texts apologising all over again, and calling herself a bad mother. Saying she should've been a better mom to me, saying she failed as a parent, etc.
These texts make me feel queasy. I feel disgusted by her actions all over again. She just keeps reminding me of the worst period in my life. My PTSD has improved greatly, but I hate having a bad night because of her drunk texts.
I think she craves my forgiveness, but I don't think it will ever come. I'm not particularly mad at her, but I don't forgive what happened, and I don't think I ever will. She's right, she did fail as a parent. It just is what it is. I can't change the past.
Is there some way I can get her to accept that I will never forgive her, and just be satisfied that we are on speaking terms and friendly again? What can I tell her, so she stops weepily apologising. These weepy texts are for her own sake, not mine. I'm tired of hearing her apologies. While I can imagine that she thinks she can never apologise enough, I actually think one genuine apology was enough. I don't care that she feels bad, it's really none of my business.
I've tried encouraging therapy before, but she says she's fine without.
TL;DR my mother allowed years of abuse, and now wants me to forgive her, but that's not going to happen. Is there a way for me to encourage her to figure out emotional self-regulation and leave me out of it
Submitted August 25, 2022 at 06:46PM by desolate_heartbroken https://ift.tt/7dW5EL1
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