Really not heard..........

[kell]

My mother worked out of our home as I was growing up.  When we got home from school she was on the phone and when we tried to speak to her she snapped her fingers to tell us to be quiet.  She never went to a parent/teacher conference.  She never went to a class Halloween or Christmas party.  She only came and watched me cheerlead once in my three year career.  She was gone about two weeks out of the month travelling for business.  She left my brother and I home alone when he was 16 and I was 12 while my father was stationed overseas.  That didn't work out.  Today she probably would have been arrested for neglect.  Oh, we got the neglect, ok.  But under no circumstance could we NOT go to church.  Sunday school, church, Sunday night church and WEdnesday night church.  She would say things like "we don't smoke, we don't drink, we don't have premarital sex........."  She never said anything like, "God loves you and so do I so no matter what you do, you will still amount to a great deal and are forgiven....................."  No, I learned to lie.  I just did my own thing and then came up with elaborate stories about what I did.............rather than admit that I might have been out drinking with friends.  I spritzed perfume, put visine in my eyes, brushed my teeth, etc. all to not get found out and to get shamed by doing something that might not make her look like the perfect person that she had perfectly erected......

[Anonymous]

Kell,

You did alright!  Its not easy living with Nparents. You went through the separation and tried to find your own identity with very poor or nil guidance.  You should feel proud of yourself for surviving it, like the rest of us here.

And you should forgive yourself for the lie.  Under such circumstances, who wouldn't do it just to get through the rough period and find moments of happiness whenever possible?  Now that you have uncovered the problem, you can find your voice and be heard again.  Have a healthy and happy healing process in the days, weeks, and years to come!

[Lizbeth]

Its not easy having to essentially raise yourself, but live with twisted input from a crazy parent as well.  It affects you your entire life, no matter how successful you become.  Don't be too hard on yourself.  Humans are complex creatures, the effect of non-existent or bad mothering is devestating, it is a wonder any of us have survived.

[Anonymous]

I cannot tell you how this message board/forum has helped me.  I literally thought I was a bad egg all my life.  My mom has made me feel so insignificant.  Now to hear you all tell me you've been through similar emotional things at least verifies that I am not crazy - OR ALONE!!  Oh, by the way, I am "kell" because I didn't know you had to sign in to post a reply - new to this stuff.  Maybe I can just kind of smile when my mom is giving me her "stuff" and know that you all are with me and spirit and that we have this secret that we all know, and that is that my mother is the one with the problems!  YES!!!!  She is the one that has the problem.  I'm free from the shame and the guilt.  It's ok to drink a glass of wine!  It's ok to be outspoken.  It's ok to not NOT tell the family secrets.  In fact, it's liberating to know that if I expose the family secrets then everyone will figure out who has the problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ellie]

Hi Kell
Just wanted to re-affirm you are not alone in this journey.

My Nparents were just like your mom when it came to church stuff, but it didn't make them loving parents - just the opposite. They forced us to church every Sunday am, pm and Wed night. But we never returned home after a servcie and received any form of LOVE from the parents. Instead we got preaching on how bad we were. At 6 years old, we were forced to sit in 3 hour services on hard benches and listen to the message. We were too young! So we talked or slept or played - BIG misatke. If we weren't jerked out of the service and beaten in the hallway where everyone could hear, we got it when we got home.

Ndad made any prospective BF come to church with me prior to being able to go out with them on a date at 17 years old.

Ndad made my sister and I sit in the living room while he played Jimmy Swaggert tapes yelling hellfile and brimstone if girls wear makeup or dance. He would quiz us after each sermon and ask us what the message was about and what we learned from it. If we didn't give the answer he wanted, we were beaten or grounded.

My sister did what the Nparents wanted and married an A/G preacher. I married a catholic. Nparents tell him he's not a christian. They are not accepting of anyone who thinks are acts or lives differently from them - BUT they tell everyone they are Excellent christians!

When we were teens they made us join witnessing groups and stand on street corners handing out tracks. They would have no part of this activity, but forced us to do it so they could tell their church friends how holy we were. We had to carry our bibles to school on top of all of books and they would ask our classmate friends if they saw our bible each day. I can honestly say my Nparents were more like the mom on the movie "Carrie" than Joan Clever!

I am 45 years old and confronted Nparents this year revealing that I have smoked since I was 14, drank since I was 16 and cursed since HS. You'd think at 45, they would say something like, "we knew that all along", which I know they did. Instead they yelled, cried, screamed as though I was 16 and they could change my ways. They damned me to hell. Nmom cried, "After all those years in church, look what became of you!".

Maybe some love offered during all those years in church would have made an impression on me, but there was never any love.

I chose to go my own way and have had a very good life. I live many miles away from the family and do not have much contact with them. But they sill think I am disobeying them and I should let them tell me how to live. They tell me I'm a disrespectful child for not obeying them at my age.

During this conversation I said "mom, dad, I'm 45 and I think I can decide what's good for me now." They actually said "Yea, you think you're all grown up and can make your own decisions, but you've proved you can't think for yourself. You are acting like a 10 year old misbehaving!"

You are truely not alone.

BTW, and I also did the toothpaste, cologne, visine, fan in the face, run past them at the door to go puke and tell them I had the flu.....

[Anonymous]

Ellie:  Oh my God!!!!!  If I didn't know better I would have thought that I was reading something I wrote!!!  I had twin best friends in jr. high that were Catholics.  I basically chastised them for being Catholics and that they weren't really Chrisitans (basically spewing the venom and brainwashing that I had had all my life.)  We went to an A/G church and honestly I got the speeches about how uninformed everyone from the baptist or Methodist or Lutheran denominations and how they were'nt "true" Christians.  My "birds and the bees" conversation amounted to "here's a box of Kotex, if you should start your period when I am out of town, tape one of these to your panties....."  The first time I had sex, I didn't even know how the male anatomy worked.  I guess my mom thought if I didn't know anything I wouldn't go there and because she was such a good Christian that we shouldn't talk about such things.  (Funny she was pregnant at 17 but we never talked about that......that was a lifetime ago BEFORE she became a Christian.....)  I, too, am 45 years old and get the "I have so much wisdom to give you, why aren't you receptive to my training?"  And I say, "I don't need to be trained!!!!  The training was supposed to happen when I was a teenager!!!!"  Well the thing that blew up in her face recently was that she "lied" to our employees and told them she needed to draw a line in the sand and start spending more time with my dad and go into semi-retirement.  Well this was a ploy to take some time off to get a facelift.  So when employees asked me where she was (she had told them they were doing some travelling - but in reality they were right in town.....my dad was not allowed to go out - he had to be in hiding with her so no one knew they were home.) I had to lie and tell them she was headed for Branson or somewhere else.  Well, when she came back six weeks later and it was so obvious that she had had a facelift, several of the employees came to me and told me that they felt like they had been lied to.  Well the good news for me is that she can't come around as much as she used to because she concocted this elaborate lie about spending more time with my dad, etc. and if she didn't pretend to be doing that then the lie would be exposed.  So she got herself into this position where she lost a little control.  But now in her frustration, she takes it out on me.  When we meet she cries and asks me why I "keep her at arms length?"  And I told her it is because I do not feel safe with her and I do not trust her.  WEll, she told me that she thinks I am going around to all the employees and swaying them to be on my side and that she doesn't trust me (what she doesn't trust is that I am exposing the family secrets.........)  Well, in a way I am because when people ask me if I have lived under the scrutiny that they feel all my life and I say yes, they hug me and tell me that they feel really sorry for me and wish I hadn't.......................so they are feeling it from her and that's why all the allegiance is with me.