Which one has the personality disorder?

[Singer]

So, it was Friday evening and I decided, for some reason, to try again. Called the Nmother around 6:30 pm. Local department store is having a summer sale; would she like to go sometime this weekend? Trying hard to be normal here – just Mom and daughter out for a shopping trip. Pretty usual stuff, right?

Ok, she’ll go. Make it Sunday because she has to color her hair first, (can’t have the waiting world suspect that there’s a gray hair on her seventy-nine year old head). That’s fine, Sunday it is.

Saturday morning the phone rings. Nmother can’t go because she thinks she’s getting a sore throat and cannot color her hair. Maybe I could bring her some groceries on Sunday instead. No problem, just tell me what you need. Spend forty-five minutes going over the grocery list; I’ll call her tomorrow before I leave for the grocery so she’ll know what time to expect me.

Sunday morning the phone rings. Nmother has decided she wants to be alone all day and spend the day in bed. Her throat is still scratchy and she has a vague pain somewhere in her midsection.

This is where I’m supposed to insist on bringing over the groceries. I know the drill. Spend the next hour listening to her various physical complaints, complaints about the neighbors, complaints about my brother and sister, complaints about her brothers and sisters, the grandkids, the gardener, my deceased father and all his relatives.

Ok, she’s old. Maybe everything does hurt when you’re almost eighty, Maybe everyone you’ve ever known does drive you nuts over time. I’d be more willing to chalk it up to age and play along except that she’s told me and others that she can’t stand the sight of me. Which leads me to believe that she’d like to go shopping, like to have her groceries delivered, but she’d like me to accommodate her invisibly. However, she’d like me to do it with visible annoyance so she can tell others how self-centered I am.

Plus, if I really loved her I’d know whether she really doesn’t want to go out, or to have me bring her groceries, or whether this is a test and what she really wants is to be persuaded.

Nmother to whoever will listen: “I really wanted to be alone last weekend, but she just INSISTED on doing these things. You KNOW how I always have put the needs of my kids (?!!!) first.”

I am certifiably nuts.

Thanks for listening,
Singer

[Patsy]

No your definately Not nuts....all this game-playing by N's takes some working out to be one step ahead of being manipulated by it. (emotionally and physically)..doesn't it?

For me I short circuit it now by deciding what type of experience I want to have with them and whether thats possible or not given their condition.
Sometimes I let them be nutty and see them anyway..sometimes I can't be bothered putting myself through it again. The experience is always the same. I decided my flat forehead(brick wall bashing injury!! ) needs a break.

Anyone want to adopt me?? I sure would love a normal parent experience

[Singer]

Well it was a set-up anyway. After regally commanding that I never call her again two weeks ago, she called last week to inform me that she wasn’t mad at me anymore. Nevermind that she had no reason to be mad at me in the first place. She was feeling chatty and I was the only game in town.

So I fell for it again. Now I’ve gone and left my poor, ailing elderly mother alone without food and companionship when I should have guessed that she really wanted me to come, but didn’t want to trouble me since I’m always so busy and she would never dream of asking anything of any of her children. Even though she always anticipated ALL our needs and all the relatives WARNED her that we would be spoiled.

I felt the old familiar dread while driving my spoiled self around this afternoon. I was going to be in trouble when I got home, even though I’ve lived alone for many years and I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. And nevermind that my mother's favorite companion is her big screen television from which she regularly orders Kansas City steaks and gourmet goodies which the UPS man leaves on the doorstep so that the issue of whether or not she can stand the sight of him isn't an issue.  Doesn’t matter because what I don't do is as damning as what I do do. Plus there's the matter of my evil thoughts.

There was a time when that cloud of doom would have led me to some emotional forehead bashing too, or at least rendered me immobile with guilt and shame, more my pattern of behavior.  This time I went to the summer clearance and bought two nice white blouses. Age does have it’s bright spots.

Singer

[Patsy]

Sure was a set-up!!!
I call them "hooks" or "dangling the carrot" when I see them coming at me. Mind you these people are cunning as foxes and know what we want to..love/attention/approval or whatever..so they just change tack when the last one doesn't work.

New blouses..you go for it!!
Age sure does have it's compensations and other delights.
 

[Anonymous]

Oh Singer - Big, Big hugs to you.  I know exactly how you feel.  I just keep hoping that one day things will change.  That is a question that I think can never be answered - it is totally unknown and that is why it hurts so much.  

I too drive myself crazy with all the uncertainty.....Are we doing the right thing?  Are we really the crazy one?  Do I have the personality disorder and she is normal?  Is it better to have a crazy mother than none at all?  etc etc etc.

I am having to take things one day at a time.  I don't know much, but I have at least figured this out:  Since I cut my mother off, my life has been better than it has ever been.  But every day is equally, if not more difficult.  I miss having a mother - even her.  It is hard to come to the conclusion that things will never "get better".  That she will never "see the light".  On my good days, I realize that it is not me - it is her.  My life has changed so much for the better in the last 2 months.  I am happier, less stressed, peaceful, and childlike.  The last one is the hardest.  I have been out of touch with the child within me for so long that I am having to slowly let her out and become familiar with her.  And most of all - just seeing my mother's phone number on the caller ID or her email address on the email puts me over the edge in anxiety.  That is the final sign I need to know that right now, this is right.   This is for me.  That is something she has never been able to offer - something just for me.

Will I ever stop second guessing myself?  Will I ever stop wishing things could be different?  Will I ever stop missing having a mother?  I don't think so.  But I have to take care of myself and so do you.  I know how sad the truth is.  I am in that valley with you, but the difference between your mother and me (and all of us on this board) is this - we are for you.  we want the best for your life.  we want you to be happy and fulfilled and successful and peaceful and allright.

Sending big healing hugs your way - and lots of prayers for clarity and peace.

Lots of love,
Your friend,
Michelle

[Singer]

Thanks, Michelle

There’s a great big chunk of my life where I thought things would never get better, but I’m beginning to realize that much of the reason I felt that way was because I thought in order for things to get better, my Nmother had to change. She had to change the way she saw me, the vision she had created, or I would always be that person.  Awkward, sullen, nerdish and clumsy, and later escalating into actual evil.

I looked so much like her that it was scary, but to her I was a perversion of her image, a receptacle of everything she must have disliked about herself, projected onto me and thereby kept at a safe distance. To this day  I hate catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror or a store window and seeing her face.

But it was the pushing and pulling, the rejection and the neediness, that in a way opened my eyes. Once, not too long ago, I had taken her to buy new eyeglasses. When I prevented an unexperienced clerk from overcharging her by half she gave the clerk a self-satisfied smile and lovingly referred to me as “my daughter, I don’t know what I’d do without her.”  I think my jaw must have hit the floor. This from the woman who routinely banished me from her home and couldn’t wait to get on the phone to report my latest “crime” to whichever family member would listen.

So, Michelle, as you know she will never see the light. But I hope you won’t let as much of your life get away from you as I did waiting for the impossible to happen. I had a fantasy that one day my Nmother would become the person that she always claimed to be. So in that sense, I was as delusional as she is.

Anxiety is a warning that things just aren’t right, so I hope you can accept the warning and use it as a means of getting at the truth.

Your friend,
Singer

[nassim]

Hi Singer,

I'm new here so I don't know your whole history. Can you tell me why you engage your Mom at all? I mean knowing how she is. She seems very destructive. And I guess that question applies to everyone here who still has or initiates contact with these people.

I know some of it might be to an aging parent who can't take care of themselves or whatever. But even then arrangements can be made to have groceries delivered, etc..

Just like some feedback. Thank you all.

Nassim

[Singer]

Hi Nassim,

You’re right that it’s not about groceries, or not being able to find someone to take care of her when the time comes. Maybe I just don’t want to accept how things were or how they are now, so I keep going back just to see if maybe I was mistaken.

Or, more likely,  it’s just because I can’t accept it.  I’m having a hard time bringing myself to abandon someone who was at the heart of everything I grew up believing. Sometimes I’m angry; sometimes I want to turn my back on her, and maybe someday I will.  Or maybe I’ll just keep giving it one more try.  She always told me I was a stubborn know-it-all and no one could tell me anything.  

Singer

[Portia]

Hiya Singer:

She always told me I was a stubborn know-it-all and no one could tell me anything.

But you're not are you? What else did she tell you that you were, that you may have unquestioningly accepted as part of your personality?
(Me: According to mother I'm a party-girl, always out all night given the chance, very strong, independent, motivated by sex and not emotions. What a legacy. I'm actually more like a dependent introvert!)

I too struggle with breaking the bad emotional bond. Because any contact, any acknowledgement of my existence, still seems good to me. Even when it's pitiful and damaging. I keep trying to see her more clearly, but it's not easy and it doesn't happen quickly. But it does happen!   P

[Singer]

Hi Portia,

My sister received the party-girl label.  Actually my sister is a rather reserved, person who lives alone and has taught elementary school for thirty-six years. Who knows where the label originated? Probably just part of the N tendency to see things as "either-or" and the bookish nerd label was taken.  

Be that as it may, I think I'll just lay low this weekend and tend to my own business. Violet's thread on the approaching visit from her N father has put my little once a week dilemma into perspective and maybe I can just let the guilt go for awhile and be thankful that things are not presently at a crisis point.  (Hello Violet, nice to make your acquaintance, albeit under stressful circumstances   )

I keep trying to see her more clearly, but it's not easy and it doesn't happen quickly. But it does happen!

I hope you're right about that. Maybe it would happen more easily if I'd think and stop reacting.

Singer