I first realized that my family wasn't normal when I was in college, and my friends' parents treated them very differently than mine. My mother basically stalked me in college, especially once I had a car and had some autonomy. I didn't really call her behavior abuse then though, although some of my friends thought it was bizarre, and my one roommate told her off once. She called me back and yelled at me for my roommate's actions. I can't remember what was going on with my roommate, but she was in the middle of some sort of crisis, and was talking to family and friends, and my mother demanded to talk to me about nothing. She was very rude to my roommate.
I still didn't really call it abuse, even though the counselor I started seeing my final year of school did. I'd started seeing him for depression. I was considering suicide. I'd stopped eating. My parents weren't helping me, and wouldn't listen to me. I felt like I'd lost connection with my friends. Seeing the counselor was the first time, I said, I can't do anything right. He was the first person who ever said that my parents' expectations were unreasonable. That's when I started thinking something wasn't quite right.
I didn't really know about NPD, and I'm not really sure what I was searching for that I found out about it until a few years later. I'd taken M on vacation with my friend in Ohio. My mother went into a rage over the whole thing. I wanted to get away from her then, and I was trying to find a place, even though I was deep in debt, I could have just squeaked by as long as I lived close to work. By that time, I had doen some reading about abuse, and my friend in Ohio had just gotten out of an abusive relationship, so reading the things she was sending me, I started putting the pieces together and realized that my mother was abusive. She wasn't really abusive to M when he was small, except for some unreasonable expectations for his age, but she was very abusive to me.
I found out about NPD and Borderline Personality Disorder about the time I tried to get a home loan and was denied. I'm not quite sure if my mom is a full blown N or if she has BPD and some N traits. I guess that was about three years ago, about the time I found this site. I started reading, and I finally found something that sounded like my family. I'd never considered the things that my mom did or said to me abuse because I hadn't been physically or sexually abused. The more I read about NPD and BPD the more it sounded like my mom, and the more I started planning to get away. She started to get more and more abusive to my son, and that was the final straw. The day he told me she pulled his hair and screamed at him when he didn't do his work right, that was the day I was determined to get him away from even if I ended up on food stamps and welfare.
When I first got pregnant, I turned down all of the free things the state could have given me. I should have gone ahead and used the WIC program. They would have helped me get out on my own, find a better job, given me parenting classes, etc, but my mom talked me out of that. She told me I didn't need that, even though when M was first born, I barely made enough money to pay for my bills, let alone childcare. I really let my mom intrude too much when M was a baby, but I didn't know what to do with a baby. I'd never been around children. I didn't think I liked kids, and I'd never wanted children. I hated the way my mom talked to M as he got older. She treated him just as bad as I'd been treated, except I don't really remember being 8,9, 10, etc. I don't really remember much until I was a teenager. So I don't know if my mom did the same things or if she really is worse with M.
So, I've read about NPD off and on for about the last three or four years. For a little while, there was a sort of denial period where I didn't think this could possibly be right, but eventually I had to accept that my mom just really didn't care. She'd complain because I took M to lunch and she wasn't invited, so I'd invite her and she'd say, "Well I don't know what your dad wants to do." I tried to include her in things. I made an enormous mistake when I tried to homeschool M. My mom took over, inserted herself in my role as parent and started working her tricks on M. I think that's when I started to see how little she really cared and how much she only loved as long as I did what she liked. She'd make my lunch, and she wouldn't ask what I wanted, just fix me something. I'd inevitably go buy lunch someplace because I couldn't stomach what she made, or I'd go to lunch with a friend. She would be incensed if she found out because I was wasting her money. It was things like that that really drove home what was going on. When I was injured and homebound, I really suffered because I couldn't do anything to help myself. I was immobile, and she had to take care of me. I hated that, and her abuse actually got worse. So did my depression, to the point where I was thinking the world would be much better off without me. I finally got out of that way of thinking, but the depression didn't really get better. I mistakenly thought that leaving my extremely stressful job would help, but leaving my even more stressful home life is what has actually helped.
I used to say I couldn't handle the situation at home/work/ and with Michael in school if there was a crisis in all three. At least one had to be stable. If all three were in turmoil, I think I would have had an emotional breakdown. Usually I could get one relatively stable, but the other two would be causing great stress. Now, I almost have two stable, for the first time in my life.
