All About Her

When I had my first child, my mother insisted on coming over to see me the day I got out of the hospital.  I was on two painkillers and had 15 stitches.  I was very sore and extremely tired.

I had barely gotten home and settled into bed with the baby when she came over, loudly banging as hard as she could on the door.  My husband had stepped outside to tend to our outdoor stove so she just stood there banging on the door as hard as she could to get my attention.

I let her in and she requested that I get the baby from his bed so she could hold him.  Then she asked me to get up again and get her camera out of her bag and take a few pictures of her with him.  I was in pain, obviously uncomfortable and upset at how insensitive she was being, but she didn't seem to notice.  Seeing her hold my new baby son did not make me feel at all happy.  Instead I felt an intense urge of protectiveness come over me.  I wanted to snatch him back from her, run to my room and lock the door.  

She had called asking if I needed anything from the store because she was coming to see me.  I did in fact need a specific type of sanitary pad and asked if she could get them.  She agreed.  When she gave them to me though, I discovered that she had purchased the cheapest brand she could find that were not at all what I said I needed!  My mother gave birth 5 times; of course she knew what I needed!

Even my first child was all about her and how she was a grandmother.
He wasn't even "my baby" to her.  She kept saying that he was "her grandchild" like she owned him.  

The Green Prom Dress

I went to a small private Christian School.  There were only about 60 of us total in the High School and they did not do any kind of formal event except for graduation.  I had never been to any sort of prom or formal in my life, so when a neighboring Christian school invited our students to a prom, we were all bursting at the seams.

The first thing on a girl's mind when planning for a prom is the dress.  I was incredibly excited to daydream about what kind of gorgeous dress I could wear.  I had seen them at the mall, but since I had been homeschooled until 9th grade never had any reason to even try one on.  I rarely got excited over things, and even rarer did I show it; I was openly excited about this.

My elation soon faded.  As soon as I mentioned that I couldn't wait to get a prom dress, my mother told me that I should look at consignment stores first instead of "wasting all that money on a dress you will only wear once."  I grew up wearing hand me downs.  I almost never got anything new.  I had been so excited at the prospect of actually getting something that had only ever been mine.  I worked up the nerve later to tell her that I didn't want to look at thrift stores for my prom dress.  I really wanted her to go with me to the mall and choose a new one. She told me that she didn't have the money to spend on a new dress.  "That's just wasteful.  You can get one from a thrift store or not at all."  Notice she never said SHE would take me shopping at a thrift store either.  Just that my dress had to come from one.  I knew what that meant.  If it was up to my mother, I would wear some ill fitting hand me down while every other girl at both schools would be wearing a lovely new dress.  Suddenly, I was no longer excited about the prom.  

A few weeks later, I went shopping with Phillip, his mother and his sister, Rebecca who was also going to the prom.  We all started looking at prom dresses and Phillip's mother picked out a few she thought would look nice on me.  She looked at my eyes and said, "Green. We need a green dress."  And she pulled some off the rack.  I was shocked.  My mother had never once in my entire life matched anything to my eyes.  I wondered if my mother knew what color my eyes were.  I tried a few on and we all loved one.

Despite me saying that I shouldn't get a new one because mom didn't want me to, Phillip bought it.  It was $80.  When I came home with it, Mom was so angry about it. The next day she walked into the office at school where Phillip's mother worked and asked her in.the.office. why he bought it for me.  Phillip's mother said that it was his money and he could buy what he wanted with it.  Later my mother asked Phillip why he wasted so much money on a dress for me.  I was so embarrassed.  I was afraid that Phillip would "come to his senses" and realize what a fool he was for wasting $80 on a girl like me.  I obviously wasn't worth it.  He stood up to my mother so forcefully that I was a little afraid she would have one of her fits.  He told her that he wanted to buy it for me;  anyone could tell that there was a lot he did not say to her.  I felt like I had done something wrong.  Hadn't mom said not to get a new dress?  And I did.  Now she was angry at my boyfriend and his mother.  Now that I had brought the wrath of my mother onto them, they would probably hate me too.  It was all my fault.  Once again, instead of being excited about it I was sad.  

Mom continued to fume at me about the dress for weeks.  Every other day she had some snide comment about it. "I still can't believe he bought you that dress.  What if you guys break up?"  I would not say anything back to her.  I didn't dare argue.  In my head I had plenty of comebacks that I was mulling over, but I kept my mouth shut and tried not to let her see me react or I would be accused of "glaring" at her with "my evil eye."  I learned early on it served no purpose to stand up for myself.  Mom never lost an argument.  She was always right.

The day before Prom night, mom called me into her room and opened her dresser.  She took out a lovely green and white wrap that she told me she had worn with a formal dress once.  It was beautiful and matched my dress perfectly.  I was so surprised because she was being nice to me and sharing something of hers.  I actually felt like she liked me and was happy for me.  I told her how pretty it was, how nicely it went with my dress, and thanked her.  I felt so relieved that she seemed to be over how angry she had been.

On the day of the prom, the junior and senior girls went to get our hair done at a salon then we went back to school to get ready before driving to the prom.  My mother was there and I was so excited for her to see how pretty my hair was and how wonderful the wrap went with my dress.  I was standing there in my dress, wearing the wrap she gave me, with my hair done in an undo for the first time in my life wanting to know I looked beautiful and she ignored me.  Instead she focussed on another girl who's hair was also done up incredibly beautiful, and wearing the exact same style dress that I was.  She even pointed it out to me.  "Wow doesn't Emily's hair look so gorgeous!  Its like a work of art and that color dress just goes so well with her complexion!  She's beautiful!"

Mom... do you like my hair?  "It looks fine."

She went on about this girl and her hair and her dress until I left.  It didn't ruin my night, but it was a smack to the face.  I felt ugly.  Of course my hair looked terrible if my own mother couldn't bring herself to compliment it.  My dress must not have been the right color for my complexion.  I felt embarrassed.  I considered ditching my glasses for the night, but I couldn't see without them.  I guess I thought that maybe they made me look bad.  I just didn't know what was wrong with me.

Phillip told me I looked beautiful, but I couldn't believe it.  My mother's opinion counted and as a teenager, there was nothing I could do to not want her approval or to not feel crushed when I was not good enough to get it.

I was crowned queen at the prom that night, yet I simply could not shake the feeling of being unhappy.  I knew I should be happy.  I had a boyfriend.  I was crowned prom queen.  I had my hair done.  I had a beautiful dress.  Yet I felt like I did not deserve any of it.  I felt less than everyone else.  On the outside I smiled.  Inside, I was miserable and because I didn't know why, I beat myself up for being ungrateful and selfish, for not appreciating what I had.

It was 11pm when Phillip dropped me off at home after the prom that night.  My mother had locked the doors and turned off all the lights.  I had to get my brothers to let me into their room and sneak into my room to get ready for bed.  Even though we had agreed that I could stay out until 11pm, I was still left feeling like I had done something wrong.  My mother was routinely up until 12-1am on her computer.  Why had she locked the doors and turned all the lights off when she knew I was coming home?  As I took all of the bobby pins out of my hair, I felt sad.  What was so wrong with me that my mother wanted nothing to do with me.  What had I done?  I assumed she was still angry over the dress.  She routinely told me that I was so rebellious and ungrateful.  Of course she didn't like me.  I went to bed and thought about what I did most nights.  I recounted every event of the day in my head over and over telling myself what an idiot I was.

If only I had known then what I know now.

Going Through the Museum

The purpose of this blog is to provide a place to put my painful memories.  I realize now, that if I do not have somewhere to let them out, look at them, acknowledge them, and finally leave them; I will forever carry them inside of me.  It is my hope that by writing down the stories of my life that have caused me to carry around so much shame, guilt, and hurt, that I can inspire others to do the same.

There is no shame in telling your story.

Because abuse survivors carry around so many lies about themselves, embedded in their psyche from their abusers; I want to start with some truths about myself.

This is incredibly difficult for me. 

Even as I type it out, I feel the potential judgement.

I worry what others will think about me when they read this.

Its ok.

I will not live like this any longer.

This will only get easier if I take the first step.

I'm tired of pretending that what my mother did to me didn't hurt.

I'm tired of not feeling like it was ok to share what happened to me.

I am tired of having my mother's words echo inside of my head every day.

I am tired of caring that family and friends believe her lies about me.

   

My therapist has explained that part of what I need to do to heal myself is to revisit those old memories where I had assigned blame to myself, and forgive the innocent and defenseless child that I was.  I have tried to do this for a week now and my brain shuts down when I try to pull old memories up.  I think this self preservation mechanism is an old imbedded habit.  My brain knows I cannot handle the pain of just randomly strolling through a lifetime of hurt, so it will not allow me to do it.  I can remember the very basic part of something, and my brain shuts it down.  The only way I can access a memory is to feel the emotion tied to it.  So if something happens right now that causes me feel an unpleasant emotion, I can suddenly flash back to the other times I have felt that emotion.  Once I can revisit the memory and acknowledge what I felt, I can determine why I felt it.  Then I can determine if what I felt (as a child) was accurate.  Did I feel like it was my fault that my 2 year old brother wasn't buckled into his carseat and fell out of our moving vehicle into the road? Yes.  Why?  Because my mother told me that it was my fault for not buckling him in before she started the van and drove off.  Was it really my fault?  No.  I was a little child who should have been taken care of by an adult.

There.  Now that is laid to rest.  The guilt I had assigned to myself for being a horrible daughter and sister can be squarely placed back where it belongs: on the adult who put 5 little children in a vehicle and drove off before making sure they were safe, my mother.

I have carried the guilt from memories like that around in my head, blaming myself for things that were not actually my fault.  These inaccurately assigned emotions of guilt have made me as an adult feel like I always have something to be ashamed of.  I cannot just suddenly pull every inaccurately assigned emotion out of my mind and flag it to be fixed.  

This is something that will take time.  My frustration at the moment, is that I do not know how much time and I desperately want to be assured that there is an end in sight.

It is my hope that by writing and typing things out a little at a time, I can give memories to these old unwelcome friends of mine named anxiety, depression, and raw fear.  I do not like showing my emotions because I often feel like they are out of my control.  Emotions are not logical and I am a logical person.  A person cannot logic their way through accurately functioning emotions, and my struggle in particular seems to be that my emotions are not quite functioning properly because I was raised by a mother with a personality disorder, who took a great deal of pleasure in toying with mine.

The one thing I have always been able to take solace in is my mind.  Emotions can be played with, but I always knew that what my mother was doing was wrong.  My mind was never fooled.  I can remember many times as a child I would not understand the meaning of something so I would quietly commit the word, phrase, or conversation to memory so I could remember it when I got older and understand the meaning of it.  I remember many times that I finally "got" the meaning of something and was able to immediately tie it back to the event I wanted to understand.

In many ways I am doing that exact same thing now.  I have finally been able to attain the proper lens through which to view my past.  The knowledge that my mother has a narcissistic personality disorder has given me the codebook to decipher all of those things that for far too long never made sense.

This is the beginning of me cracking the code to all of the things that have made me, me.