It's done

[debkor]

Tay,

She is hoping for you to be scared and think you can't make it on your own.  In reality she is the one who can't make it on her own and is afraid.

Wow she is pulling out everything she has left (tactics).  I'll tell you N's never cease to amaze me. They just don't stop. They keep going and going then going some more.

Geeze we all here on this board could do a tape, like the Jerry Springer Tapes  *Narcissist gone Wild*
Could you imagine that?  It would either be Hilarious funny or the worst Horror Movie anyone has seen. 

How long do you have left before your in your new home Tay?

Deb

[Stormchild]

Hi tayana

Been reading your blog



what a brave chronicle!

On subject, now, I just wanted to chime in to say that actually it's possible yo' mama will eventually stop calling.

The trick is to outlast her. That's the trick. Ns know this trick... their objective is to wear US down. So they keep at us, and keep at us, until we give in to their demands, whatever they may be.

What you do, you get yourself a wall. And you go behind it and you stay behind it, and you stay behind it until she quits beating her head against it and goes away. You must face the fact that this may take months, or more, though.

At work, you already have a wall; you have a voice mail system that rolls your calls over after X number of rings, and you have an alternate line. Fortunately, you also apparently work with reasonable people, so you aren't likely to be hassled because you are letting calls roll over as a way of filtering her out.

[Question: is it safe, are the people you work for safe enough, for you to tell them that your mother is harassing you, if you find that you must explain yourself about this? You might want to prepare a detached way of explaining it, in advance, in case of need. Perhaps focusing on the impact on the business of you being sidelined by mommysitting while the work you need to do is interrupted... and this isn't emotionally good for your dear mother, either... so you have taken charge and are doing the hard but necessary thing... weaning her off calling you at work... etc. It's just possible that you could make a case for getting Caller ID on your phone at work, if the rollover strategy becomes a problem.]

At home: Caller ID and voicemail. You may want to get Call Waiting also, with voicemail. Not because you want to take her calls in the middle of talking to friends, but because of this wonderful feature: -- with call waiting, she will NEVER get a busy signal. You'll get the little silent beeps, but she will hear the phone ringing, then roll over to vmail. As long as your vmail doesn't rat you out ['tayana is on the phone'], she'll NEVER know when you are on the phone. And THAT means that she'll NEVER know for sure if you are there or not when she calls. This is one of the most blissful unintended side effects of call waiting -- as long as you have voicemail with it and incoming calls roll over. --

Also you might read Gavin de Becker, "The Gift of Fear". IMO, your mother is, for all intents and purposes, stalking you, and his advice about stalkers may stand you in good stead.

[Stormchild]

Ami,

I have always tried to please her, and it just doesn't work.  She doesn't like anything I do.  It wouldn't matter if I hit the lottery and won 800 million dollars, I wouldn't be doing something right.  She'd tell me how to spend my money.

I've had to accept that nothing is going to please her, no matter what, and that the only person I can make happy is myself.  I wrote about that yesterday on my blog. http://tayana.blogspot.com  So I just had to give up trying to please her.  She isn't happy with me living with her, but she doesn't want me to move either.  She makes no sense, and it's a waste of my energy trying to understand her.

Ah na na. She makes PERFECT sense. It's always about controlling you, keeping you off balance, getting the upper hand.

This is the essence of abuse. This is what abuse is about.

[tayana]

Deb,  I'm moving on the 30th, or at least that's when my furniture is moving.  I'm moving a lot of my kitchen stuff tomorrow.  The dishes she bought me were broke!  I did actually like them, so tonight she took me shopping, yes, I gritted my teeth and went.  And I bought the dishes myself, along with a new toaster (not the one she liked) and some other things.  Now, I know the real reason for her sudden generosity.  She's going to give me the television in our living room, and the dvd player that really belongs to me anyway.  I bought it.  So now, she's going to go buy new things for herself, and I just get the castoffs.  Gee, made me feel really wanted.  Moving on the 30th, that should be our first night there.

She is hoping for you to be scared and think you can't make it on your own.  In reality she is the one who can't make it on her own and is afraid.

Wow she is pulling out everything she has left (tactics).  I'll tell you N's never cease to amaze me. They just don't stop. They keep going and going then going some more.

Yes, I know what she's doing.  She doesn't think I can do this, unfortunately for her, I think I can.  She could never live on her own.  She told me that once.

[Question: is it safe, are the people you work for safe enough, for you to tell them that your mother is harassing you, if you find that you must explain yourself about this? You might want to prepare a detached way of explaining it, in advance, in case of need. Perhaps focusing on the impact on the business of you being sidelined by mommysitting while the work you need to do is interrupted... and this isn't emotionally good for your dear mother, either... so you have taken charge and are doing the hard but necessary thing... weaning her off calling you at work... etc. It's just possible that you could make a case for getting Caller ID on your phone at work, if the rollover strategy becomes a problem.]

At home: Caller ID and voicemail. You may want to get Call Waiting also, with voicemail. Not because you want to take her calls in the middle of talking to friends, but because of this wonderful feature: -- with call waiting, she will NEVER get a busy signal. You'll get the little silent beeps, but she will hear the phone ringing, then roll over to vmail. As long as your vmail doesn't rat you out ['tayana is on the phone'], she'll NEVER know when you are on the phone. And THAT means that she'll NEVER know for sure if you are there or not when she calls. This is one of the most blissful unintended side effects of call waiting -- as long as you have voicemail with it and incoming calls roll over. --

Also you might read Gavin de Becker, "The Gift of Fear". IMO, your mother is, for all intents and purposes, stalking you, and his advice about stalkers may stand you in good stead.

Stormy, I just got my phone set up today with all of the goodies and internet in a package deal.  Of course, she didn't like what I'd set up and harped on how high my phone bill was going to be.  I just didn't say anything.  She said, "You should have got what we've got."  I do have call waiting and caller ID and voice mail.

"I have got exactly what you go, only I added the internet to it."  She didn't say anything else.

I've told one of my co-workers who seems fairly trustworthy a little of what's going on, just because she kept calling me and after I stood my ground on the phone, I'd start crying.  I'm trying to avoid having to come clean to my boss, although we are probably going to have to talk about M maybe coming to work with my for a few minutes until time to go to camp in the morning.

Ah na na. She makes PERFECT sense. It's always about controlling you, keeping you off balance, getting the upper hand.

I know it's about control.  It's always about her control.  If I'd talked with her about this and explained that I wanted a place of my own with my kitchen, etc, then she might have helped me find a place she approved of, one I didn't like.  If I'd let her be involved in this whole process she wouldn't have been so nasty, but I wanted to do it on my own.  I wanted it to be my place, and when I move from this place, that one will be mine too, hopefully I'll be able to buy that one.

[Stormchild]

... and when I move from this place, that one will be mine too, hopefully I'll be able to buy that one.

Words to live by. Words to hope by. Words to build on.

The 30th, eh?

Ten days to lift-off and counting... and in two hours' time, at least on the East Coast, it'll be nine days and counting.

[lighter]

Every time I open this thread I think it's not named properly.

"It's Done" isn't right.

It's just started. 

It isn't done till you're moved and feeling safe and calm. 

It isn't done till you believe she can't touch or harm you and your son again.

[tayana]

Lighter, you are exactly correct.  It has just started.  Unfortunately, it might take some time to set boundaries in my new space.  I'm hoping she isn't going to want to visit all the time.  *shudders*  I do plan to keep going to the local flea market on Sunday mornings with my dad though.  M can go too, and he likes doing that.

Stormy, I'm counting down.  We're going to clean Sunday.  I'm taking lots of kitchen things tomorrow.  Sunday we can put all of the new dishes and silverware in the dishwasher and put them away.  we can get the kitchen ready to go.  There's food already there, even  It's going to be so nice to just be able to relax.

I wonder if the constant tension I have knotting my shoulders will go away . . .

[Ami]

What Storm said about abuse was short , sweet and true. I got "weak' today and e mailed my mother . It was my birthday, so I felt nostalgic. The first was a "poison" one and the second was that I understand that she could not "help it". However, I did say that I cannot have contact
   Tay, when I see your mother, I can see how hopeless it is to have any kind of quality relationship with her. It is harder to see how "sick" mine is because she is 'mine'. One thing that I am starting to see is  that when you are in the "throes" of mental illness, which I was, you really cannot 'help" your distortions. You still have free will. However, I see that I could not "help" the crazy way that I thought. I am getting a "small"understanding of how awful it must be to be in her head. HOWEVER, I cannot have contact b/c I would be pulled back. She is much more sly than I am. I think that her "evil" gives her an "advantage" over me in pure strength and cunning. I cannot fight this degree of evil. It is strong, as Peck says. I cannot go up against it. However, I am getting a little understanding so ,hopefully, I can forgive, for me.
   Hang in there. I am praying for you and you inspire  me to be strong      Love Ami

[Stormchild]

(((((Ami)))))

[tayana]

Ami, I've just accepted, finally, that ours is going to be a shallow relationship.  There are things I would like to tell her, but I don't think I ever will.  In a way, I hope she and my dad do move away to give us more distance.  When I'm around her, I just feel so down, so depressed, so compressed.  I understand how you feel.  Although, I'm not ready to forgive my mom.  I'm still angry.  I wrote her a three page letter I don't intend to send, and the very last thing I said was, I can't forgive you, not yet, maybe someday.  I think forgiveness is overrated.  I think we need to be angry.  We didn't ask to be treated like this.

Sometimes I think I'm being a selfish *itch because I don't want anything to do with my mother.  I feel guilty when I buy something for myself, so I almost never buy anything for myself.  I buy things for other people.  I do things for other people, but I feel guilty doing for myself.  Does that mean I'm not selfish?  When I was a teenager I wanted two things.  I wanted to be a writer and I wanted to help other people.  I still want to help other people.  I look at various charity things and think I'd like to do that, and then I come home, and the energy just drains away.
 
You are strong, Ami.  Keep fighting.  You can do this.

[tayana]

After our mother/daughter shopping trip last night, this morning she wants to be my friend again.  She says, "I'm glad you're getting your house, but I would feel better knowing that M will be somewhere safe.  I don't think you've thought this out."

I just didn't respond today.  I didn't want to argue about it.  She finds fault with anything I bring up.  So M and I will have to have a talk about what he wants to do.

She also told me this morning that M has reverted to dinosaurs and that's all he talks, thinks and does is dinosaurs.  Well, last week it was spiders.  And when I came home last night, he was jabbering about the  move until just before bed when he dressed the dog up as a dinosaur.  He was a little unruly when we went shopping, and the whole time my mom was saying things like, "You're being obnoxious.  You weren't like this earlier, I'm ashamed to have you with me."  I was thinking, "Tell me he doesn't internalize that.  Tell me that some of his "Obsessive behavior" is not because he hears things like that."  I hope I don't end up forcing my son to have an emotional breakdown, but I don't think I will.  I think he needs routine, consistency, and stability.  I think he needs to know that people are going to be there for him, and he might be nervous for a little while, but once he knows he's not going to be abandoned, he'll endure.

My mom has kept him like a little child.  She has toys put away just a certain way, then berates him if he doesn't put them up just right. She won't let him help around the house, despite my many pleas to let him have chores, so I give him chores and pay him an allowance.  She alternately indulges and deprives him.  One day, she'll be very indulgent.  The next day she'll deprive him.  Surely, some of this factors in to his behavior.  I hope so, or maybe I'm just as bad a mother as she claims because I'm going to put my son into a camp or daycare and shove him from pillar to post with strangers.

[tayana]

He said that he realized that the proverb was describing us.  We have all lived with two hands full--we had a lot of "things" and a steady income and apparent security.  Now we are poor and we have very little.  But we were all sitting in the living room together and none of us was waiting for the other shoe to drop.  We were completely at peace and enjoying each other's company.  There was no one glowering in the corner.  We have one hand full of so much.

CB,  That is so beautiful.  I hope we will have that.  I doubt myself when she says things like that to me, like I would put M in a place I didn't feel comfortable with.  I even felt so uncomfortable with my orignal plan that I started looking at other things for him.  I didn't find anything better than my original plan of sending to camps here where I work.

It's the whole things she says about strangers, I think that unnerves me.  But they are only strangers as long as we don't know them.  If I let M stay in the familiar, he never learns to experience something new, and I don't think that does him any good at all.  Yes, he's anxious, but he seems anxious in a good way.  I keep telling him I'm scared to, but I know this is for the best.  I keep hearing that little voice inside say this is for the best.

[tayana]

CB,

I understand what you're saying.  Fear of the unknown is both exciting and scary.  I figure as long as I keep telling him it's okay to feel what he's feeling, and that I feel the same way, that will help him deal with everything.  Unfortunately, I can't do much about the tension in our current situation.  Nothing for that but time.

I disagree with my mom though about shoving him from here to there.  I think a certain amount of that is good.  I think he'll have fun, maybe make some friends.  I grew up much as M has so far, very isolated in a rural area.  No one wanted to come to my house to play because we lived so far out.  I wasn't really allowed to have kids over.  We moved to town when I was a little older, but although I did go to friends' houses some, it was very restrictive.  I stayed after a friend's birthday party once to play, and she came and got me, then yelled at me because I was supposed to go right home.   Only she never told me I was supposed to go home.  I just remember feeling very lonely as a child, and I had a hard time relating to other kids my age.  I think M has some of that going on now.  He asked many times if he could have a friend over, and I knew it wouldn't happen.  Or he would ask for a birthday party, and we'd never have one because my mother thought it was too much trouble.  Normal kid things.  I didn't have them either, and my mom thinks they are unnecessary.

So, I know it's going to be scary going to someplace new, but I think he'll enjoy it.  I think he'll like not being stuck playing by himself all day and night.

CB, his obsessions come and go. Tomorrow it might be Harry Potter or Transformers.  Dinosaurs and spiders are safe right now, so he clings to those, much to my mother's horror.  I think that will be all right.

I will have to look into the safety programs though.

[lighter]

I will have to look into the safety programs though.

tayana:

Two books I recomend for keeping safe.

THE GIFT OF FEAR

STRONG ON DEFENSE

Both relatively short reads and very helpful.

[tayana]

I will look for those.  Thanks, Lighter.