I hope that I am posting in the right the right place to introduce myself. I am 47 years old. I've been married for 19 years and we are raising two remarkable daughters, ages 15 and 11. This is my story and no one with a "normal" mother can understand why I honestly do not love my mother. It is so hard to convey to the "normals."
As a very young child, I recognized that my mother was very unhappy. She seemed lost in her own head, which I now recognize as total detachment. She fed us, got us to school & kept the house clean (with ample complaining about it). She never read to me. Never helped with homework (or even asked). She didn't like us having friends over. She never was excited over Christmas or any other holiday. She was just totally uninterested in her children as people (and still doesn't know the first personal thing about any of us.) She had given up her career of college level teaching when she married my father in late 1950s and lamented that over and over. My father was well aware of her moodiness and used to instruct us over and over and over again, "Whatever you do, just don't upset your mother today!" We learned to walk on eggshells around her. As we became teenagers, she became more miserable because of my father's career change. She'd rail & scream & lock herself up in her bedroom. I often wondered when I came home after school if she'd be dead lying in a pool of blood in her bathroom (from cutting her wrists.). She never laid a hand on us, but she never hugged or kissed us either. She ruined holidays by constant complaining about how hard she had to work and by screaming at my dad for buying her the wrong thing. At my three graduations (high school, college and law school), she came up to me and expressed that she was disappointed because I had not won awards and gotten public recognition. She didn't offer to come and help me when either daughter was born claiming she couldn't come because my father was still working. When I'd call her, I often would be in the middle of telling herself something about my life and she'd interrupt and say, "I've got to go" and she'd hand the phone over to my father.
I won't go into my father in detail right now, but my father was a very loving man who adored his children. He lavished us with much attention and was our constant champion and advocate. All three of us loved him dearly. He died 4 years ago after an arduous battle with cancer (my mother complained the whole year how hard it was on her.) Without my father to buffer her, her personality came raging forth. I tried to take her on family vacations with us out of a sense of duty, but she destroyed them with her constant talking about herself, her politics, stories of how people have wronged her, railing at me for having a different view, griping about not wanting to be somewhere or do something. She'd talk to my brother on the phone and be very sweet to him. She did nothing but complain and complain and complain about being a widow to me. She's been left totally and utterly set for life - no mortgage, $100,000+ in pension income, and she is in great physical health. She is afraid of the world and refuses to travel alone, yet she is depressed about not traveling. She watches TV constantly and bombards me with horribly negative new stories (the swine flu, rape stories, murder stories, you name it) via email. She is racist and can be such an ugly, ugly human being. She has two friends (if you can call them that) and she trashes them to me all the time! One has cancer and is all puffed up from drugs, and my mother derides her for being "fat."
I have gone to limited contact for my sanity. I don't call her anymore because the hour-long calls nearly kill me. We live 6 hours away by car and I haven't been up there since Christmas because the entire visit is all about her complaining. She totally ignores my daughters when we visit. If one is talking to me, she will start talking right over her (my daughter). I hold up my hand to tell her that one of the girls is still talking to me, and she gets mad & says, "Oh....." She is angry with my lack of attention and tells my siblings all about it. Honestly, if I had the guts, I'd cease all contact with her. Guilt is my constant companion. I don't miss her at all. When I see her, I try very hard to avoid hugging her because it feels so awfully wrong. When in her presence, I cannot look into her eyes. I am terrified of her for some reason and terrified to speak my mind around her. We have a totally superficial relationship grounded only in biology.
If I could, I'd move to another country just so I didn't have this constant pall hovering over me (the guilt from not visiting or calling.)
I am glad to have found this site and look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new.
