Do they really kick us when we're down?

July 1, 2010

I'm still fairly new to this whole BPD parent idea. It's only been a few months

since a counselor pointed me in this direction, that my mom is like this. I'm

still trying to find out what is part of her BPD and what is me reading too much

into her behavior.

Does it seem like when things are going wrong for you, the parent ramps up the

drama and demands a bit more?

I've been sick for the past week and feel crummy. My nada keeps calling to see

how I am. Sounds nice, right? Except she starts by saying she wants to know how

I am then goes right into a long tirade about how much pain she's in, how

horrible her life is going. Has to list every little thing she's done around the

house. I'm sitting there with a lot of sinus pressure and coughing up my

toenails :-) but she keeps on going. Yesterday she called twice. The second time

she was in a tizzy because her garden hose sprung a tiny leak. She acted all

helpless: should she call the water company? Could I call them for her? She was

too weak to turn off the water all the way. What is she going to do? Will it

destroy the foundation of her house?

True, I'm exactly dying here but I didn't need to hear that. She turns the water

on and off all the time when she cleans the doggie yard. Now she's too weak?

Or the time I had to go to ER and she got royally angry because I couldn't be

there to pick up her dog from the vet.

Or when my Dad was dying and she decided she needed to go to ER because she was

having a heart attack. Or all the other times she's called in the middle of the

night and wanted us to take her to ER because she was dying. The last time she

did that, we got smart and told her to call 9-1-1 because we live 30 minutes

away. But we still had to disrupt our work day and call for subs and spend hours

(wasted) at the hospital.

OK, I know I'm getting wound up here and just venting. But you get the idea. I

could go on and on about her putting pressure on us when we're already having

problems of our own. I suppose this is just part of the BPD and I'm not

imagining this? To be honest, we don't tell her anything any more about our

life. If we tell her we're going to be doing something nice like a musical

downtown or go to the beach for the day, 9 times out of 10 she'll come up with a

catastrophe to mess it up. I don't tell her about any health problems either

because she'll blab it all to strangers at the mall to get attention. Blecch.

irene

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