Last year I ended a friendship with an N. I am stil not over it. When I went to my therapist he said that it had probably affected me so badly because it was like a pitchfork. If you bring a vibrating pitch fork close to another pitchfork with the same frequency it will also start to vibate.
I won't go into my friend but my God, getting over that friendship has opened my eyes to my mother's behavior. Whenever I would read accounts of abused women I would think, "How dumb can you be? But to wear away at someone's self esteem you don't need one blow. You need drip drip drip, slowly wash it away.
I love my mother but I haven't liked her in a long time. If she wasn't my mother she would be yet another person that I would cut out of my life. Really. Honestly I don't want to see her again.
Isolating me / Preventing me from having friends
When I was younger and I made friends she would do the diss and dismiss. First she would say how nice my friend was and that she was a 'nice girl' and then when I'd spend more time with the person she would find an unforgivable fault.
- That friend of yours, 'She's really overweight.'
- That friend of yours, 'She talks too much and she's a little too loud.'
- That friend of yours, 'Her mother isn't a nice woman.'
or my personal favourite:
'You are spending too much time with that friend. its not good.'
These were preliminary shots. If you didn't take the hint, she would rage at you every time she found out you had been associating with this person.
About a year and a half ago I decided that I would get out and be more social, you know have hobbies. So I went white water rafting and loved it. I mentioned to my father that I would like to go again soon she became incredibly angry. She came down to the basement where I was sitting and started to rage at me. "Why do you need to go out so often? What are you looking for that you don't get at home?' Bear in mind that I had been working two jobs that year and had taken that as a sorely needed break. I actually hadn't been anywhere in 6 months. When I pointed this out to her she smirked. For a long time I didn't know what that smirk was about. When my brother would go out at night, she would wait up for him and rage at him when he would come back. So much so that he stopped going ouit. Sometimes she would say,' I am not telling you not to go out or have friends I am just telling you not to have this friend / go to that place.'
I never understood until now - she never said no but she made it so unpleasant that I stopped going out. I gave in.
Then she would mock us for not having any friends and rage at my brother for not going out,
Inconsistency
My mother's middle name. At the dinner table if someone told a joke and we all laughed including my mother she might immediately after get angry and say that wasn't funny! Like right after she was done laughing or she might wait until the next day or next week and tell you that what you had said was incredibly disrespectful and how dare you. How could you say something so stupid!
I stopped speaking to her because of this. I never knew how conversations were going to play out because the end of the conversation was never the end. She might come back days or weeks later and shred you for it. Everything irritated her, everything set her off. Her rants and tirades which happened at least once a week would regularly last 4-5 hours. That's not normal. I didn't know that. I really didn't
I will post more later
