anyone else with an N mother

[darky]

just thinking out loud guys, but my head is in a spin!!! after my mother devalued me and my sis two years ago i been doing a bit of digging around. shes got more skeletons in her closet than a cemetory!!! ive been talking to memebers of her family, who shes devalued in the past and with talking to them i am learning so much about my mother!!!ive got information they never knew and they have information i never knew. its weird as hell, its like none of us actualy know who the real person is behind the mask that is my mother!! one thing is for certain, this is a person who carries about so much baggage. she is so obviously very unhappy, no matter what the exteriour says!

[darky]

yes bean, i went to my uncles (mums brother) funeral on friday. seeing all the relatives there i havnt seen for many years. i was sad for the loss, but also happy for my uncle if that makes sense? he was well loved and had a millionares ending with all his family around him, he had a good life. looking around the church it was standing room only literaly. i pitied my mother, thinking of her only that when she has gone who will mourne her?? my poor sister who is just a clone and uses my mother in much the same way my mum uses her thats who, but im guessing thats all.
my mum devalued her brother 16yrs ago. im guessing now she was jelous of him and all he had achieved. i mean an "n" despises people who might be better than them right?
i have contacted some relatives that have had no idea why my mum is the way she is with her nearest and dearest. i have begun to open up to them, so they can begin to understand and move on like im beginning too. we are all learning from this experience.
so much positive has come out of this. ive had members of family telling me that i have them and they feel im very much part of them. its not the same of course, but whats the point of being sad about what i never had??

i do very much pity her now. i am detached very much so now, theres no way i could ever go back, im relieved to be out of it and i am very much a different, much more happy and confident person. it does still hurt to know what she thought of me, even when i was so very young and im only bitter towards my mother because she was so critical of me, and still has the power to say nasty things to people about me. i think it will only be officialy over for me, when she passes away. im hoping then, i will be completly free.

[2224Jessica]

Hi Darky,
I know what you mean, my nmum still haunts me even though I've cut her off. She doesn't seem to care though, my sister says she is happy(not) and continuing her facade. I wish I knew the truth about her at a young age. I took on board all the critical things she said to me. I was rock bottom all my childhood and now I am amazed at the talents, and the abilities I have that I'm discovering and accepting now.
People who she talks to now will either be accepting of what she says and they are probably ungenuine people themselves. Genuine people usually notice and are slightly in doubt because they can sense something wrong.
I pity my mum and the heartwrenching pain I once felt when I first found out what she was is diminishing. I am slowly cutting off all ties (emotional ones) to my mum and am moving on. I think there will always be sadness in regards to what they are and how they are towards us and I guess thats what we have to deal with. I so get what your saying.
Family members will admire your strength and maturity of what you have become. Keep moving forward, you are doing great.
Jessica

[LostSurvivor]

I can't tell you how many times I wish that someone had done something to prevent my Nmom from spending so much one on one time with me as a baby. I probably would be a different person today. I suppose that the person who should have been wrestling the raising of me from Nmom was my dad. But he spent a lot of time running away from her - golfing, auto hobby, etc., so Nmom did her thing with no checks or balances on her. What was worse, no one really came right out and said to me that she was messed up; if they did, that would have helped me understand and correct the problems that I had developed much sooner. Instead, relatives would say vague things like "oh.... your mother, you know how she is.....!" which looking back where possible clues that she had a problem (but is a confused kid supposed to pick up on that?). My dad woud say "oh........your mother!" with a wave of his hand. He would also say not to "rock the boat" around her, but never why. The hardest thing for me about having an Nmom is realizing that others knew how she was and did nothing to stop her. At that time, society simply believed that just because someone was a stay at home mom (which she was) she was the perfect mom.  I used to wish I was a latch-key kid when I was in school, but that never happened.  Just my two cents.    Lost

[Hopalong]

Jessica, good for YOU!!

I was rock bottom all my childhood and now I am amazed at the talents, and the abilities I have that I'm discovering and accepting now.

One of these abilities will one day to be to release the rest of the sadness, I'll bet.

Lost...you are not done becoming yourself. You are not only what she did to you. I am so so so sorry you had such a rotten destructive mother. But you are not...lost, Lost. I swear. You have made complete space for the sadness. You are not in one ounce of denial of what you lost.

But having lost, and indeed you have lost very much...does not make YOU lost. Not lost forever, not a lost cause, not irretrievably lost, not at all at all at all...
You are someone to find.

Inch by inch, I hope you can try to shift the pain aside, even just a few minutes a day, and find out who is waiting to be found. She's worth it.

Hopalong

[darky]

thankyou so much for your replies. i think that having an "n" mother is tough and i think its easy to blame others for not noticing or doing something about it, but i have learnt one thing. these "n's" lives are all a charade, i learnt that there is not one single person who knows "her" and whats in her head. people dont inteferre or question and the "n's" know it. but when the whole family do not realise the full extent of whats going on what can they do, really?
we all deep down know whats been going on, but with the "n's" abuse we all question what is real and what isnt. its a very clever game they play. this is why i have been doing so much digging arround and begining to find my true identity. this i would recommend to anyone as part of the healing process. these people have so many skeletons in their closets!!

part of what the "n" does is to turn people away from you, covering up their tracks and lies. i have got it in me now that i wont blame anyone else for not doing etc the blame lies at the door of the "n" they have just used people to continue their charade just like they have used us. its been hard fighting the natural urges to feel resentment towards those who didnt help when i was a child, but after all these people are just pawns in a clever game. if i continue to be bitter towards them, i think i am continuing the charade.

this board has been great. its not nice to think there are so many of these people walking arround able to continue as they please while we all suffer, but im glad this place exists. to read other peoples experiences its a real comfort and it has made me very determined to live my life to the full. i thank you all!!

[Hopalong]

Darky,
imho it's wonderful that you have foud a positive side:

so much positive has come out of this. ive had members of family telling me that i have them and they feel im very much part of them.

good for you for opening your mind to a family created out of loving behavior instead of just...eggs.

Hopalong

[LostSurvivor]

Bean,

You speak of a lot of familiar things. I couldn’t stand vacations either, because they were all about nMom deciding what to do. And they felt so mechanical, pretty much keeping almost the same routine as if we were home: rent a place at the beach, and make sure that we had every meal there (never went out). In the evenings, we simply looked at the sights, like the amusement park and miniature golf, but never played. We just walked around then returned to the house at an early hour and went to sleep. I really don’t know why we bothered to go anywhere, it was so boring. HOWEVER – she would talk about vacations to others and to us kids like they were the best family times ever.

When I was a kid, I loved animals and wanted to be a veterinarian. Nmom stomped on that dream by declaring that no way would she pay for me to go to college and go into that field (although it was my dad who was working). Of course, the shock of her response froze my common sense in that I could have looked into loans, other options. That was a common theme throughout my childhood: always feeling like she was opposing or ignoring the identity that I was trying to develop. What made it worse was that she had me in a Catholic school whose message at the time was to be yourself, everyone loves you for being yourself, but Nmom didn’t want to have anything to do with me being myself. It was horribly confusing and carried on into later life, causing problems that only now are being fixed.   Lost

[Sugarbear]

I'm still coming to terms with the idea that my mom is an n.


She married to get out of her childhood home and become a housewife who didn't have to do anything, and freely admitted that she never loved my father. This said to me as a child who DID actually love my father. She also said (again when I was a child) that she had decided that she was bored with the relationship, and that my dad was too controlling and that before she left him, she decided to have another child, so she could have 2 - since that was how many she had always wanted. She didn't tell my dad any of this, just sprung it on him when she "accidentally" got pregnant with me. My dad loved (and still does) me, but he was not ready for another child at that time, and they were having marital difficulties, so it was a really selfish decision, both for my dad and for me being born into a family that was definately not going to survive intact... she also claims that I am more "hers" i.e. I belong to her, since she "planned" me, and I happened to be born near her own birthday.

She made sweeping life-changes without considering how they would effect anyone else but herself, and got angry when my sister and I (as children) weren't "supportive".

She constantly plays my sister and myself off of one another. There is always a "golden child" and the "child from hell," (even with both of us in our mid thirties!) and the child in disfavor is gossiped about and berated to the "good" one. My sister and I used to be close, but between differences in personality and the constant feeling of competition between us, we are little more than cordial. We are both just now figuring out how badly our mom has hurt our relationship, but my sister is trying to play peacemaker, and in the process excusing my mom's narcissism under the guise of "but she's getting old and sick and needs help" and saying that I am "too sensitive" and need to let her "vent" i.e. call me names and control my life. My sister is, (obviously) the golden child right now.

I excelled at art and went into the graphic arts as a career. I graduated with honors from an art school. My mom tells everyone that listens that I was a good artist because she allowed me to have finger paints and nurtured me and it is because of her that I have any talent. (this type of "stealing thunder" is common all throughout my life)

There are so many incidents in my childhood that I look back on now and shudder about. The realization that she is so selfish and controlling and believes that she is right in everything is just mind blowing. She is smarter than everyone, men have crushes on her (she is NOT attractive at all - over 200 lbs, dresses like a bag lady and rarely brushes hair or puts on makeup - and don't get me started on how embarrasing it is to go out in public with a VERY saggy woman who won't wear a bra and has her "headlights" on all of the time!  ) she should have been in politics because she is so eloquent... you get the idea.

My mom now thinks that I must be her best friend, her servant, her caretaker and handyman and gets angry with me for having a life independant from her and worse, for not telling her every little detail so she can criticize and critique everything.

I am married, have a full time + job and am trying to have a child, but my mom still thinks she must be my top priority. AAAARRRGG!

[Hopalong]

Sugarbear,
It is very painful and shocking when the "diagnosis" first begins to dawn. I feel for you.
If there's a brighter side, for me it was that learning about N patterns explained so many many things...long-term, it did reduce my sense of craziness.

The other N around...is the word NO.

I wish you much luck and courage as you begin to use the word with her, and hope you will determine to stay calm within yourself, no matter what her reaction is. My failure to do that sooner, and to fully embrace that it was not only my right but my obligation to in order to take responsibility for myself, has been cause for great regret.

As you are much younger, I wish for you that you will learn "NO" faster and more successfully than I did. I know it can be done, I just wish I'd done it sooner!

good luck to you, and sympathy,

Hopalong