It must be summer

It must be summer. I’m thinking of my mom and turning that whole thing around in my brain again. Summer has become one of those times of years that has become increasingly triggering for me. Not in huge ways, but certainly in what I think about, how I think about it, and what I explore. It was the time of year my marriage broke apart. It was the time of year my mom and I had a falling out. It was the time of year when my fight with a corrupt land management company hit its peak, and I moved. it is also the time of year I decided to seek mental health help that I have been extremely thankful for having done.

Not gonna lie, last week talking about people being unkind and just blatantly mean and talking about my mom and her mistreatment of the animals left in her care really made me stop in my tracks. It was something I had never really thought about because it had been such a “normal” occurance that it had just been a non-issue for all this time.

I have been trying to find a proper way to explain my mom’s mental disorder(s). Narcissist doesn’t seem correct. She doesn’t have a sense of self-importance, or, if she does, she portrays it in such a way that it looks as being humble and thoughtful, and not as one might think of. She doesn’t have charisma. She has no friends. But she does put people down, even if not to their face. She does have a way of making people feel bad about their decisions, even without being the direct cause of the shame. She absolutely *loves* pitting people against each other and does so in so many manipulative and horrible ways. She loves making it deceptive and works based off the idea that people will react emotionally and not talk to the other person to find out the other side of the story and often says there’s no point in talking to the other person because they will deny it or give some reason or excuse as to why they are in the right.

My mom is an instigator, a manipulator, and a separator. She deliberatly creates drama to make people upset at each other so they don’t talk to each other. She strategically will talk about things that happened years ago that she is either still upset about or just feels like it’s a good trigger to create that drama, and does so as if that just happened, not giving any timeframe for reference. She has literally brought up things that happened over 5 years ago as if it happened yesterday to elicite a reaction from whomever she is talking to. She feels that if you don’t ask, she isn’t obligated to be transparent and say when it happened because that wouldn’t allow for the drama and anger.

She manipulates my sister by buying her. She tried to buy me. She makes people reliant on her and in debt to her so that she can hold it over their heads. She won’t do it to them directly. Instead, she will complain about how someone took advantage of her and her “kindness” to another, so they get mad and do the dirty work for her by confronting them and starting the drama.

She will tell stories about someone else she is upset at or doesn’t like but makes it a story that makes the listener uncomfortable to approach the target and talk about it. She did that constantly with my father. I don’t know if any of the stories she said were true. They certainly had a bad effect on my psyche and my relationship with my dad. She absolutely put a wedge in that potential relationship I could have had. (I will stipulate, my father also did not make it easy to get close to him, nor did he have any sort of loving expresions towards me growing up, so he made it far easier for her to plant that wedge.) The only info I have that might substantiate my mom’s comments and stories was my grandmother saying that she never trusted my dad around children, but wouldn’t explain why, just that she openly told people to not let him babysit. I didn’t question further because it tracked with what my mom had said and what I had experienced personally.

I do think she is either a sociopath or psychopath. She shows no empathy for anyone. Ever. We used to say she was stoic, but now, I greatly wonder if it isn’t just a manipulation to get us to feel for her, comfort her, and make her feel in control. She doesn’t seem to be able to think of anything beyond herself when it comes to emotions, outside of what she can manipulate others to do or behave. When her elderly friends died, she was sad for a few days, but then was talking about the things she got from their estate right after. Her sadness looked like it was almost a production. I wonder if that was started when our family friend passed away and she received an inheritance from her and saw that there was some value in befrending the elderly.

I remember my mom always saying that she never wanted to become her mom. Now, she knew I hated her mother. She was a horrible, awful woman who I made no effort to be courteous to once I realized she was just a bitch. I removed myself from her space as soon as I could. It upset my mom that I wouldn’t respect that nasty woman, but I refused. Now I look back and wonder if it was a sign to my mom to not push me, or push me differently, otherwise, I’d remove myself from her too. But she is her mother. She is the same person. She manipulates people for attention, affection, comfort and to feel important. She pits people against one another for her entertainment or self importance. She literally is her mother, except she isn’t insulting to your face. At least I can respect her mom for that. She let you know what she thought and felt directly at you and didn’t use the emotions and feeling of others to convey that in a cowardly decepitve manner.

My niece’s husband, over Easter, told me that my mom truly misses me. Honestly, while it was nice to hear, the underlying truth is that she doesn’t miss me. She misses the way she could control me. The way she could manipulate me. They way she could get me to fight her fights for her. Now she gets my sister to do it, but my sister is fairly ineffective. I admitted I missed my mom too, but my mom knows what she needs to do to have a relationship with me and year after year that passes, all she shows me is that she feels she is more important than doing the healthy thing of seeking therapy and having a healthy relationship with me and everyone else around her. She chooses every year to remain unhealthy, sick, and mean. She chooses every year to blame me for the fallout rather than to look inward and face her own accountability and actions that caused this rift. She expects me, every year, to eventually come crawling back, defeated and begging, which I would rather be out on the streets, poor and alone, than have an unhealthy relationship with my mother. The price my mother requires to have a relationship with her is not one I ever want to pay. I don’t care what help I may need or how alone I feel in this world. I would rather suffer on my own than deal with the price. Her lack of wanting to address this part of her is what keeps us apart, and she is competely aware of it.

I haven’t even pursued the fact that she committed grand theft auto with my motorcycle, owes me at least $1,500, and stole the tax refund on the trailer that was due me because she felt since it was in her name, she was entitled to it. She doesn’t care that money directly stolen from me impacted  my ability to take care of my children, her grandchildren. She felt entitled to do all that. When she claimed that since the trailer was in her name and I owed her for that, I presented her the forgiveness of debt letter she signed, and sent her a list of all the money I had spent on the trailer to repair it and keep up to the standards the land management was putting on me, the property taxes I had paid for 8 years on her behalf and the other various expenses that totaled well above $35,000, more than she said I owed her. I told her if she owned the trailer, then she owed me for all those repairs and expenses, as those are the responsibility of the landlord and not the tennant, and she had violated the laws there too. That was met with silence, of course. And let’s not mention that I had paid off the $20,000 on a credit card that she had allowed me to use over the years, without any late payments, overdue payments, or over the limit expenses, unlike her other daughter who has continually ruined her credit.

I don’t know if my mom is a narcissist, but she isn’t mentally healthy. She isn’t well. She has a lot of issues that she refuses to get help with. As long as she refuses to get help, I refuse to have a relationship with her. I spent 26 years dealing with her behaviors, her manipulation, her activity. When I left and went out on my own, I learned how to live better. When she came to live with me, I learned that I needed to set up boundaries. She got mad that she was unable to manipulate me and control me. I don’t feel bad about that. I don’t feel bad when I reacted with laughter when she said that my boyfriend at the time was sitting in the room “thinking negative thoughts about her” when he was literally thinking about himself, a costume idea he had at the time and how it would be received by others. He literally never thought about anyone but himself, so her comment was laughable. My advice was to talk to him about her feelings. She refused, insisting that she was right. It was at that point I realized she had to leave my home. I wasn’t able to be manipulated again, and it was destroying the peace of my home. I hated to say those words to her, but after her behavior upon leaving, the not even having the balls to tell me she was leaving, but just planning to be gone when I got home from work, I can honestly say, fuck her. She thought so little of me, my feelings, my desire to help her, and disrespected me so blatantly.

That hurt more than anything I can say. That a mother thought so little about her own child. That a mother acted with so little to no love. She doesn’t love me. She tells everyone I kicked her out. I’d be happy to share with anyone the letter I handed to her outlining my issues with her. She won’t talk about that other than to say that I gave her a “list of demands”. I don’t know if she has said any of these things. I can only feel fairly certain that her lack of any feelings for anyone not her has her saying these things.

I love my mother, but she is not a mother. She is a person I don’t want to have anything to do with. She is a mother who removed her love from her child as a form of punishment for not falling into line. I can’t love a person like that. No one can, nor should. I don’t know what her actual mental health issue is, but I know that whatever it is, it is unloving, uncaring, and not something I want to be around. I don’t know how else to word this. I wish she’d change, but I’m not holding my breath or my hope. She is “happy” the way she is. I guess I’m glad she’s happy doing to people around her what she does. I have to believe that is the reason she is the way she is, otherwise, she would want to change and want a healthy relationship with me and others.