Re: Things we WISH we could say to our nada's (or fadas).

July 22, 2010

I can relate. I have been having alot of these thoughts about my own mother

after finally getting a bit of clarity about her behavior. In another thread

someone used the word 'upstage' and I realized my mother has been subtly

upstaging me and undercutting me all my life. Part of her sees me as a child

and the other part sees me as competition. I got involved in this situation with

her problems with my brother and sister in law only to have her stab me in the

front by saying I was 'causing trouble' by confronting them about issues no one

else would and then after she silenced me from doing that anymore (and more than

likely told them that I am crazy and to just ignore me) she now acts like none

of it happened and whines about how she wishes she had someone to stand up for

her.

I would like to say, " you are pathologically jealous and hated your daughters

the way you were raised to hate yourself by the drunken rapist that raised you.

you are very careful to mind your p's and q's for the public, meaning your

family and the occasional coworker since you guys don't have 'friends' but you

really saw me mostly as competition and a mirror in which you saw all your own

shortcomings. Since you learned what you lived you lashed out at me with

bitterness because that is the 'love' that you received from the pathetic excuse

for humanity that raised you. I am sorry for your pain but someone along the way

has to stop beating the child, and even if it's the adult that the child has

become that is the only advocate the child will ever have, that stands up and

says, 'enough'.

>

> So I've been going through this painful/hurt time of the reality of having to

go NC again. Now that hurt has turned into anger, and all day long I've had

these words in my head of what I really WANT to say to my nada, but never will

because I know it won't make anything better or fix anything. Maybe you guys can

post things you wish you could say. Here is my tirade of the day....feel free to

not read the whole thing.

>

> Mom, I think you are being such a b****. You are being selfish, manipulative,

and it DISGUSTS me. I imagine how you are at home with your boyfriend just

sitting around pouting about how your first born daughter is so awful, and " why

doesn't she love me " and all of that. Feeling sorry for yourself, the so called

long suffering, all loving mother. What an act. It makes me sick how you want my

world to revolve around you.

> A friend of mine got married the other weekend, and it made me think of my own

wedding. Yeah, you weren't invited. I couldn't imagine you there to ruin the

best day of MY life. I could only imagine you being fake at best. I can imagine

you not being nice to my husbands family, I can imagine you treating my husband

with disrespect. I could see you treating ME with disrespect. I wasn't going to

let you ruin my wedding day. When I saw my friends wedding pictures with her

parents smiling, and hugging, and dancing, it made me think of how you are the

opposite of those things. You would have just been sitting in a corner pouting

because your daughter didn't listen to everything you say.

> You are nothing but a little child. There have been ulterior motives for

EVERYTHING nice you have done in your life. You don't know how to truly love or

be caring.That is very sad. You could learn those things...but you refuse to.

Everything is about you all the time. You exhaust those around you and stress

people out.

> You have a sick, unhealthy obsession with your dead father, my grandfather,

who molested me. You made excuses for him, and you still do. I guess it's ok for

someone to hurt your child both mentally and physically as long as they were

your own dad, and recently diagnosed with leukemia. That made it ok. You made me

feel worthless. Your own child, your own flesh and blood wasn't even worth

having a talk with your dad to tell him not to hurt me anymore. You wouldn't

stand up for me.

> You kept people that loved me out of my life. I found those people again when

I grew up, but you are making me pay a price for that. You gave me an ultimatum

to stay away from my father and his family or not have a relationship with you.

Seeing as my father and his family don't hurt me, forsake me, or treat me like

scum of the earth, I'm not going to give in to your little ultimatum. You can

cut me out of your life for it, and maybe it's better that way. Maybe I can be

done with the pain and the crying, and the panic attacks, and the stomach

problems.

> You have ruined any relationship i will ever have with my dear little sister,

just because of your games and manipulation.

> I love you, but I also feel hate for you. Hate for complicating my otherwise

fantastic life. You are a smudge on an otherwise perfect picture. I don't know

if I will ever forgive you. You don't really deserve my forgiveness. You don't

deserve anything from me..not anymore. I've given you way too much of myself to

feel like I need to give anymore.

> You will sit and waste away an old, lonely, bitter, nasty woman. And I won't

watch that happen, I want no part of it. You can be miserable and alone...you

bring the unhappiness on yourself you old, cowering, miserable B****.

>

> ~Sara Jo

>

July 22, 2010

This is more of a rant about specific occurrences than BPD stuff, and re-reading

it, it sounds pretty whiney to me =\ it doesn't make much sense without a longer

back story, but oh well... Also, I'm really not fair on her about the whole

Tom/domestic violence thing... I can't understand why she would continually

choose to return him (marriage vs. blood-relation), but I CAN understand how

hard it is to leave a dysfunctional relationship (NC).

Dear Mom,

The best parts of my childhood are the ones without you in it.

When I was little, you left me for jobs, and I was fine with that. You left the

country for weeks at a time and left me with Carol, the babysitter, on a cot in

her living room, and I was fine with that. But then you flew me down to live

with you again. You had my father pick me up and let me spend a few days in

Alberta with the family I was never allowed to be close to. It was the last time

I'd see any of my cousins and the last time I saw my Granny alive. You took me

away from my school and my friends and my family to stay with you and your new

lover in San Francisco.

His name was Tom, Bradley Schenck, now known as TB Schenck—no mom, he's

not dead like your " psychic instincts " tell you, you can find his music on

iTunes, his blog on Google, and his employment profile on LinkdIn. He left his

wife and two kids for you. Let me rephrase, he cheated on his wife and two kids

for you, and you had the NERVE to be upset when you found out that he had a

stash of porn and several internet romances under his belt.

Why did you stay and play house for him? He strangled you, twisted wrists,

broke windshields, and eventually cracked your head open. Why did you wait so

long to leave him? Why did you wait until AFTER your daughter saw your blood

spattered on the walls and helped clean it off. Until AFTER your daughter

watched you lie to the doctors about how the gaping wound in your head happened

and watched them pick point chips away from your skull bone with long tweezers.

You were so busy with him that you forgot about me. You sent me back to Terry

after I TOLD you he molested me. You had the nerve to yell at me for everything

that happened. After you left Tom, you sent me to boarding school—for legal

reasons, I know. You'd rather have had me with you to take out all your g-ddamn

rage. You sure has hell saved a lot of it for visits home.

Why is it that what I remember most about school vacations is your fists

pounding against my back as I hunch inward crying in vain. You running away from

me in large crowds. Your palm slapping across my face. Your fingers pinching me

until I bruised. You throwing things at me. You kicking me out of the bed we

shared and telling me to sleep on the kitchen floor. You pushing me out of the

apartment and locking the door. You screaming at me for everything from not

doing the dishes fast enough to not making a low-carb dinner to being fat to

reading too much. Dammit, mom, you were the parent, not me.

Remember when I tried to kill myself? I lay on a hospital bed lying to the

doctors, just like you lied to them in San Francisco. I told them that I was

upset about not being elected to student government and my bad report card. It

was hard to say ***my mother finally saw my report card, threatened me, and

rented a car to drive up to do g-d knows what to me. She's been driving up to my

boarding school nearly every weekend, systematically isolating me from my

friends, and not allowing me to seek therapy for my struggle with depression,

eating disorders, and that cutting habit I developed in response to years of

helplessness. You know, she's pretty terrifying, and after the years of verbal

abuse and emotional blackmail, I couldn't handle the idea of having her invade

my safe space with one of her rages again. This was not an impulsive move. After

a few weeks of research I decided that liver failure was the best way out of the

situation should it escalate to this point. And that is why I took 31.5 grams of

acetometophin when my research showed that 20 grams was sufficient to guarantee

liver failure and death in the typical adult male, and oh yeah, I'd've taken

more but I ran out of ginger ale.***

You were in the ER glowering at me. You berated me. Yelled at me for the

traffic. Yelled at me because you got lost. Yelled at me for the way the

houseparents told you I was in the hospital. Yelled, yelled, yelled until the

nurse removed you. When you came back, you counseled me on what to say to the

psychiatrist. You gave me the words you hoped would get me out, and stood next

to me to make sure I repeated them. You wanted me home, back where I was at your

beck and call. You didn't tell me that my school had already refused to take me

back, and when I found out, I refused to go home, so the doctors sent me to a

psychiatric hospital. You didn't even leave me alone there!

You didn't like that hospital. They asked you to calm down, be reasonable,

observe boundaries, act your age. The therapist notes from our family session

say that you became disruptive to treatment after the session when you were

confronted about your behavior. You refused me antidepressants, and insisted I

be transferred to another hospital. They only let me leave because there was no

way in hell I'd get better with you hovering around every day. When I left, they

told me that I'd have to set boundaries because you wouldn't. They told me to

spend as much time out of the house as possible, to get away from home, away

from YOU.

You don't know what they did to me at the new hospital, Kings County in

Brooklyn. You saw the waiting room, the dining room, the therapists office on

the other side of he building (the side that didn't have the thick locked

doors). You like to believe that they saved my life and that you were

responsible for putting me there. Yes, mom, YOU were responsible for putting me

there, but I am responsible for surviving that hell hole. No, really, look up

the report the city filed against them… it's in the New York Times and

everything.

My first night there, they took away my clothes, even my underwear, and gave me

a set of hospital gowns. I had to wear the same ratty pair of terrycloth undies

every day and do my best to clean them in the shower. You claim that your

objection to the first hospital was medication, but do you know that on my first

night at the new one, they tied me to a bed and shoved a syringe-full of blue

liquid into my hip. It didn't work the way they wanted it too—I wasn't

sedated—but I couldn't sit or lie down properly for days.

If I was ever upset, they drugged me. It's called Thorazine. They crush it up

and mix it with juice so you don't cheek the pill. When it hits you, it's like

doing a vertical bellyflop into a pool of jello. Thick, heavy, sticky, sudden.

It's like stepping into a car that's been parked in the sun with the windows

shut. Your mind turns off and all you can do is sit and watch the world go on

without you. They gave me this multiple times a day: not therapy, not treatment,

sedatives, DRUGS.

They gave me too much of it once. I couldn't breath and my tongue swelled up. I

panicked. I was dying. It was not a panic attack; it was an overdose. The nurses

didn't bother to read my chart. It wasn't until the therapist flipped through my

" acting out " behaviors later that week that anyone bothered to tell me I had

been given too much too soon. I looked up the drug when I got out of the

hospital—I had every symptom of an overdose except seizures and death.

You don't know this because you won't admit to yourself that you were wrong.

You won't admit that I was getting better without you. You won't admit that your

presence was detrimental to treatment. You won't admit that they had good reason

to call Child Protective Services and give me my own lawyer. You won't admit

that they were right to call you out on your emotional blackmail. Instead, you

had me punished for trying to set boundaries.

You don't know that you're the reason I tried to kill myself—death was a better

option than living with you. I was responsible for my actions, but you took away

my agency. Systematically isolating me from my friends, not letting me get help

for my insomnia, calling me late at night, verbal abuse—you know, those are all

brainwashing techniques. You blame schools for brainwashing me whenever I say

something you don't like. You say that now I act like an institution. Well

you're wrong, and I won't tell you this because you're sick. Yes, mom. I think

you're the nut job in the family… not me.

Years in and out of the mental health system have taught me two things. One,

that I'm not crazy. Two, that you need help. I won't tell you this because

you'll lash out. You're so predictable, mom, and you don't see it. I won't tell

you because you won't listen. I won't tell you because finally, FINALLY, I'll be

looking out for myself. The girl in the hospital who said " I'll do whatever mom

wants, " " whatever I do has to be for my mother, " is GONE. You pushed her too

far. Fuck " I statements " this is about you, and a life without you is a life

worth living.

July 22, 2010